Lady Midnight (52 page)

“My brother was taken at the beginning of the Dark War,” Julian said. “He never fought in the battle. His hands are clean of faerie blood. Whereas I was in Alicante. I killed Fair Folk.”

“He’s goading you,” Mark said. “He doesn’t mean it—”

“I do mean it,” said Julian. “It is the truth.”

“If someone volunteers to take the place of a condemned man, we cannot gainsay it.” Gwyn’s look was troubled. “Are you sure, Julian Blackthorn? This is not your punishment to take.”

Julian inclined his head. “I’m sure.”

“Let him take the whipping,” Kieran said. “He wants it. Let him have it.”

After that, things happened very quickly. Mark threw himself at Kieran, his expression murderous. He was shouting as he dug his fingers into the front of Kieran’s shirt. Emma moved forward and was knocked back by Gwyn, who moved to pull Kieran and Mark apart, pushing Mark brutally aside.

“Bastard,” Mark said. His mouth was bleeding. He spit at Kieran’s feet. “You arrogant—”

“Enough, Mark,” snapped Gwyn. “Kieran is a prince of the Unseelie Court.”

“He is my enemy,” said Mark. “Now and forevermore, my enemy.” He raised a hand as if to strike Kieran; Kieran didn’t move, just looked at him with shattered eyes. Mark lowered his hand and turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Kieran any longer. “Jules,” he said instead. “Julian, please, don’t do this. Let me.”

Julian gave his brother a slow, sweet smile. In that smile was all the love and wonder of the little boy who’d lost his brother and
against all odds, gotten him back. “It can’t be you, Mark—”

“Take him,” Iarlath said to Gwyn, and Gwyn, reluctance written all over his face, stepped forward and caught hold of Mark, pulling him away from Julian. Mark struggled, but Gwyn was a massive man with enormous arms. He held tightly to Mark, his expression impassive, as Julian reached down and pulled off his jacket, and then his shirt.

In the bright daylight his skin, lightly tanned but paler over his back and chest, looked vulnerable and exposed. His hair was ruffled all over from the collar of the shirt, and as he dropped it on the ground he looked at Emma.

His look broke through the icy vise of shock that gripped her. “Julian.” Her voice shook. “You can’t do this.” She moved forward and found Iarlath blocking her way.

“Stay,” Iarlath hissed. He stepped away from Emma, who went to go after him and found her legs pinned in place. She couldn’t move. The buzz of enchantment prickled along her legs and spine, holding her as firmly in place as a bear trap. She tried to wrench herself forward and had to bite back a shriek of pain as the faerie magic clamped and tore at her skin.

Julian took a step forward and put his hands against the tree, bending his head. The long line of his spine was incongruously beautiful to Emma. It looked like the arch of a wave, just before it crashed. White scars and black Marks patterned his back like a child’s illustration drawn in skin and blood.

“Let me
go
!” Mark shouted, twisting in Gwyn’s grasp.

It was like a nightmare, Emma thought, one of those dreams where you were running and running and never getting anywhere, except now it was real. She was struggling to move her arms and legs against the invisible force that kept her pinned like a butterfly to a board.

Iarlath strode toward Julian. Something flashed in his hand,
something long and thin and silver. As it flicked forward, tasting the air, Emma saw he was clutching the black handle of a silver whip. He drew his arm back.

“Foolish Shadowhunters,” he said. “Too naive to even know who you can trust.”

The whip came down. Emma saw it bite into Julian’s skin, saw the blood, saw him arch back, his body bowing.

Pain exploded inside her. It was as if a bar of fire had been laid across her back. She flinched, tasting blood inside her mouth.

“Stop it!” Mark yelled. “Can’t you see you’re hurting them both?
That’s not the punishment!
Let me go, I don’t have a
parabatai
, let me go, whip me instead—”

His words ran together inside Emma’s head. Pain was still throbbing through her body.

Gwyn, Iarlath, and Kieran were looking from her to Julian. There was a long, bloody welt along Julian’s back, and he was clutching the trunk of the tree. Sweat darkened his hairline.

Emma’s heart cracked. If what she had felt had been agony, what had
he
felt? Twice, four times as much?

“Send her away,” she heard Iarlath say irritably. “This wailing is ridiculous.”

“This is not hysterics, Iarlath,” said Kieran. “It’s because she’s his
parabatai
. His warrior partner—they’re bonded—”

“By the Lady, such fuss,” Iarlath hissed, and brought the whip down again.

This time Julian made noise. A choked sound, barely audible. He slid to his knees, still clutching at the tree. Pain lanced through Emma again, but now she was braced, prepared. She screamed—not just any scream, but an echoing sound of horror and betrayal, a shriek of rage and pain and fury.

Gwyn threw his arm out toward Iarlath, but he was looking at Emma. “Stop,” he said.

Emma felt the weight of his gaze, and then a lightness as the enchantment that had pinned her in place snapped asunder.

She dashed toward Julian and dropped down beside him, yanking her stele from her belt. She could hear Iarlath protest, and Gwyn telling him gruffly to leave it be. She paid no attention. All she could see was Julian—Julian on his knees, his arms around the trunk of the tree, his forehead pressed to it. Blood ran down his naked back. The muscles in his shoulders flexed as she reached for him, as if he were bracing himself for a third blow.

Jules
, she thought, and as if he heard her, he half-turned his face. He had bitten through his lower lip. Blood dripped off his chin. He looked at her blindly, like a man staring at a mirage.

“Em?” he gasped.

“Shush,” she said, putting her hand against his cheek, her fingers in his hair. He was wet with blood and sweat, his pupils blown wide open. She could see herself in them, see her pale, strained face.

She laid her stele against his skin. “I need to heal him,” she said. “Let me heal him.”

“This is ridiculous,” Iarlath protested. “The boy should take the whipping—”

“Leave it, Iarlath,” said Gwyn. His arms were tight around Mark.

Iarlath subsided, muttering—Mark was struggling and gasping—the stele was cold in Emma’s hand—colder still as she brought it down against Julian’s skin—

She drew the rune.

“Sleep, my love,” she whispered, so low that only Julian could hear her. For a moment his eyes fluttered wide, clear and astonished. Then they shut, and he slumped to the ground.

“Emma!”
Mark’s voice was a shout. “What have you done?”

Emma rose to her feet, turning to see Iarlath’s face, blazing with rage. Gwyn, though—she thought she caught a flash of amusement in his eyes.

“I knocked him out,” she said. “He’s unconscious. Nothing you can do will wake him.”

Iarlath’s lip curled. “You think to deprive us of our punishment by depriving him of his ability to feel it? Are you such a fool?” He turned toward Gwyn. “Bring Mark forward,” he snarled. “We will whip him instead, and then we will have whipped two Blackthorns.”

“No!” Kieran cried. “No! I forbid it—I cannot bear it—”

“No one cares what you can bear, princeling, least of all I,” said Iarlath. His smile was twisted. “Yes, we will whip both brothers,” he said. “Mark will not escape. And I doubt your
parabatai
will soon forgive you for it,” he added, turning back to Emma.

“Instead of whipping two Blackthorns,” she said, “you can whip a Carstairs. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Gwyn hadn’t moved at Iarlath’s order; now his eyes widened. Kieran drew in his breath.

“Julian told you he killed faeries during the Dark War,” she said. “But I have killed many more. I cut their throats; I wet my fingers with their blood. I’d do it again.”

“Silence!” Rage filled Iarlath’s voice. “How dare you brag of such things?”

She reached down and yanked up her shirt. Mark’s eyes widened as she dropped it to the ground. She was standing in front of all of them in just her bra and jeans. She didn’t care. She didn’t feel naked—she felt clothed in rage and fury, like a warrior from one of Arthur’s tales.

“Whip me,” she said. “Agree to it and this will end here. Otherwise I swear I will hunt you through the lands of Faerie unto eternity. Mark can’t, but I can.”

Iarlath said something exasperated in a language Emma didn’t know, turning to look at the ocean. Kieran moved forward as he did so, toward Julian’s crumpled form.

“Don’t you touch him!” Mark yelled, but Kieran didn’t look at
him, just slid his hands under Julian’s arms and drew him away from the tree. He laid him down a few feet away, removing his own long tunic to wrap it around Jules’s unconscious, bleeding body.

Emma expelled a breath of relief. The sun felt hot on her naked back. “Do it,” she said. “Unless you are too cowardly to whip a girl.”

“Emma, stop,” said Mark. His voice was full of a terrible ache. “Let it be me.”

Iarlath’s eyes had brightened with a cruel light. “Very well, Carstairs,” he said. “Do as your
parabatai
did. Ready yourself for the whip.”

Emma saw Gwyn’s expression turn to one of sadness as she moved toward the tree. The bark, up close, was smooth and dark red-brown. It felt cool to the touch as she slid her arms around it. She could see the individual cracks in the bark.

She gripped the wood with her hands. She heard Mark call her name again, but it seemed to be coming from very far away. Iarlath moved to stand behind her.

The whip whistled as he raised it. She closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw Julian, and fire around him. Fire in the chambers of the Silent City. She heard his voice whisper the words, those old words from the Bible, taken and remade by Shadowhunters to form the
parabatai
oath.

Whither thou goest, I will go—

The whip came down. If she had thought she felt pain before, it was agony now. Her back felt as if it were being opened up by fire. She ground her teeth together to silence her scream.

Entreat me not to leave thee—

Again. The pain was worse this time. Her fingers bit into the wood of the tree.

Or to return from following after thee—

Again. She slid to her knees.

The Angel do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.

Again. The pain rose up like a wave, blotting out the sun. She screamed, but she couldn’t hear herself—her ears were stoppered, the world crumpling, folding in on itself. The whip came down a fifth time, a sixth, a seventh, but now she barely felt it as the darkness swallowed her.

23

T
O
L
OVE AND
B
E
L
OVED

Cristina came out of Emma’s
bedroom looking somber.

Mark caught a glimpse of the room before the door closed behind her: He saw Emma’s still form, looking small beneath a pile of heavy covers, and Julian sitting on the bed beside her. His brother’s head was bent, his dark hair falling to cover his face.

Mark had never seen him so miserable.

“Is she all right?” he asked Cristina. They were alone in the corridor. Most of the kids were still asleep.

Mark didn’t want to remember his brother’s face when Julian had woken up near the quickbeam and seen Mark kneeling over Emma’s body, her stele in his hand, drawing healing runes on her lacerated skin with the shaking, unpracticed hand of someone long unused to the language of angels.

He didn’t want to remember the way Julian had looked when they’d come inside, Mark carrying Cortana and Julian with Emma in his arms, her blood all over his shirt, her hair matted with it. He didn’t want to remember the way Emma had screamed when the whip came down, and the way she’d stopped screaming when she collapsed.

He didn’t want to remember Kieran’s face as Mark and Julian
had raced back toward the Institute. Kieran had tried to stop Mark, had put his hand on his arm. His face had been bleached and pleading, his hair a riot of black and despairing blue.

Mark had shaken off his grip. “Touch me again with your hand and you will see it parted from your wrist forever,” he had snarled, and Gwyn had pulled Kieran away from him, speaking to him in a voice that was equal parts sternness and regret.

“Let him be, Kieran,” he said. “Enough has been done here this day.”

They’d carried Emma into her bedroom, and Julian had helped lay her down on the bed while Mark had gone to get Cristina.

Cristina hadn’t screamed when he’d awoken her, or even when she’d seen Emma in her torn and blood-soaked clothes. She had gone to work helping them: She’d put Emma into clean, dry clothes, had retrieved bandages for Jules, had washed the blood from Emma’s hair.

“She will be all right,” Cristina said now. “She will heal.”

Mark didn’t want to remember the way Emma’s skin had opened as the whip had come down, or the sound the whip made. The smell of blood mixing with the salt of the ocean air.

“Mark.” Cristina touched his face. He turned his cheek into her palm, involuntarily. She smelled like coffee and bandages. He wondered if Julian had told her everything—of Kieran’s suspicions of her, of Mark’s inability to protect his brother or Emma.

Her skin was soft against his; her eyes, upturned, were wide and dark. Mark thought of Kieran’s eyes, like fragments of the glass inside a kaleidoscope, shattered and polychromatic. Cristina’s were steady. Singular.

She brought her hand down the side of his jaw, her expression thoughtful. Mark felt as if his whole body were tightening into a knot.

“Mark?” It was Julian’s voice, low, from the other side of the door.

“You should go in to your brother.” Cristina lowered her hand, brushing his shoulder once, reassuringly. “This is not your fault,” she said. “It is not. You understand?”

Mark nodded, unable to speak.

“I will wake the children and tell them,” she said, and set off down the hall, her stride as purposeful as if she were in gear, though she was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

Mark took a deep breath and pushed open the door to Emma’s bedroom.

Emma lay unmoving, her pale hair spread out over the pillow, her chest rising and falling with steady breaths. They had used sleep runes on her, as well as runes to kill pain, stop blood loss, and heal.

Julian was still sitting beside her. Her hand was limp on the blanket; Julian had moved his own hand close to hers, their fingers interlocking but not touching. His head was turned away from Mark’s; Mark could only see the hunched set of his shoulders, the way the vulnerable curve of the nape of his neck looked like the curve of Emma’s back as the whip came down.

He seemed very young.

“I tried,” Mark said. “I tried to take the lashes. Gwyn wouldn’t allow it.”

“I know. I saw you try,” Julian said in a flat voice. “But Emma’s killed faeries. You haven’t. They wouldn’t have wanted to whip you, once they had the chance to whip her. It didn’t matter what you did.”

Mark cursed himself silently. He had no idea what the human words were with which he could comfort his brother.

“If she died,” Julian went on in the same flat voice, “I would want to die. I know that’s not healthy. But it’s the truth.”

“She won’t die,” Mark said. “She’s going to be fine. She just needs to recover. I have seen what men—what people—look like when they’re going to die. There is a look that comes over them. This is not it.”

“I can’t help wondering,” said Julian. “This whole business. Someone’s trying to bring back the person they loved, a person who died. It feels almost wrong. As if maybe we should let them.”

“Jules,” Mark said. He could feel the jagged edges of his little brother’s emotions, like the touch of a razor on skin long covered by bandages. This was what it meant to be family, he thought. To hurt when someone else hurt. To want to protect them. “They’re taking lives. You can’t pay for tragedy with more tragedy, or draw life from death.”

“I just know that if it were her, if it were Emma, I would do the same thing.” Julian’s eyes were haunted. “I would do whatever I had to.”

“You wouldn’t.” Mark put his hand on Julian’s shoulder, pulling him around. Julian moved reluctantly to face his brother. “You would do the right thing. All your life, you’ve done the right thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Julian said.

“
You’re
sorry? All of this, Jules, the convoy— If I hadn’t told Cristina about Gwyn’s cloak—”

“They would have found something else to punish you with,” said Julian. “Kieran wanted to hurt you. You hurt him, so he wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry—sorry about Kieran, because I can see you cared about him. I’m sorry I didn’t know you’d left anyone you cared about behind. I’m sorry that for years I thought you were the one who had freedom, that you were enjoying yourself in Faerie while I killed myself here trying to raise four kids and run the Institute and keep Arthur’s secrets. I wanted to believe you were okay—I wanted to believe one of us was okay. So much.”

“You wanted to believe I was happy, just as I wanted to believe the same about you,” Mark said. “I had thought about whether you were happy, thriving, living. I had never stopped to wonder what kind of man you might have grown up to be.” He paused. “I am proud of you. I have had little hand in the shaping of you, but I am
proud nonetheless to call you my brother—to call all of you my brothers and sisters. And I will not leave you again.”

Julian’s eyes widened, their color Blackthorn bright in the gloom. “You won’t go back to Faerie?”

“No matter what happens,” Mark said, “I will stay here. I will always, always stay here.”

He put his arms around Julian and held him tightly. Julian exhaled, as if he were letting go of something heavy that he had carried for a long time, and leaning on Mark’s shoulder, he let his older brother bear just a little of his weight.

*   *   *

Emma dreamed about her parents.

They were in the small white-painted Venice house they had lived in when she was a child. She could see the faint glimmer of the canals from the window. Her mother sat at the kitchen island, a cloth spread out in front of her. On the cloth lay an array of knives, sorted from smallest to largest. The largest was Cortana, and Emma gazed at it hungrily, drinking in the smooth goldness, the sharp glow of the blade.

Compared to the brilliance of the weapon, her mother seemed a shadow. Her hair glowed, and her hands, as she worked, but the edges of her were indistinct, and Emma was terrified that if she reached for her mother she would disappear.

Music rose around them. Emma’s father, John, came into the kitchen, his violin tucked against his shoulder. Usually he played with a shoulder rest but not now. The violin poured forth music like water and—

The sharp crack of a whip, pain like fire.

Emma gasped. Her mother lifted her head.

“Is something wrong, Emma?”

“I—no, nothing.” She turned toward her father. “Keep playing, Dad.”

Her father gave his gentle smile. “You sure you don’t want to try?”

Emma shook her head. Whenever she touched bow to strings, it made the sound of a strangled cat.

“Music is in the blood of the Carstairs,” he said. “This violin once belonged to Jem Carstairs.”

Jem, Emma thought. Jem, who had helped her through her
parabatai
ceremony with gentle hands and a thoughtful smile. Jem, who had given her his cat to watch over her.

Pain that went through skin like a blade. Cristina’s voice saying, “Emma, oh, Emma, why did they hurt you so much?”

Her mother lifted Cortana. “Emma, I’m sure you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Maybe not quite that far.” Her father lowered his bow.

“Emma.” It was Mark’s voice. “Emma, come back. For Julian, please. Come back.”

“Trust him,” said John Carstairs. “He will come to you, and he will need your help. Trust James Carstairs.”

“But he said he had to go, Papa.” Emma had not called her father Papa since she was very small. “He said there was something he was looking for.”

“He is about to find it,” said John Carstairs. “And then there will be yet more for you to do.”

“Jules, come have something to eat—”

“Not now, Livvy. I need to stay with her.”

“But, Papa,” Emma whispered. “Papa, you’re dead.”

John Carstairs smiled sadly. “As long as there is love and memory, there is no true death,” he said.

He put bow to strings and began to play again. Music rose up, swirling around the kitchen like smoke.

Emma stood up from the kitchen chair. The sky was darkening outside, the setting sun reflected in the canal water. “I have to go.”

“Oh, Em.” Her mother came around the kitchen island toward her. She was carrying Cortana. “I know.”

Shadows moved across the inside of her mind. Someone was holding her hand so tightly it hurt. “Emma, please,” said the voice she loved the most in the world. “Emma, come back.”

Emma’s mother placed the sword in her hands. “Steel and temper, daughter,” she said. “And remember that a blade made by Wayland the Smith can cut anything.”

“Go back.” Her father kissed her on the forehead. “Go back, Emma, to where you are needed.”

“Mama,” she whispered. “Papa.”

She tightened her grip on the sword. The kitchen whirled away from her, folding up like an envelope. Her mother and father disappeared into it, like words written long ago.

*   *   *

“Cortana,”
Emma gasped.

She thrashed upward and cried out in pain. Sheets were tangled around her waist. She was in bed, in her room. The lamps were on but dimly lit, the window cracked open slightly. The table next to the bed was piled with bandages and folded towels. The room smelled of blood and burning.

“Emma?” An incredulous voice. Cristina was sitting at the foot of the bed, a roll of bandages and some scissors in her hand. She dropped them to the floor as she saw that Emma’s eyes were open, and flung herself onto the bed. “Oh, Emma!”

She threw her arms around Emma’s shoulders, and for a moment, Emma clung to her. She wondered if this was what it was like to have an older sister, someone who could be your friend and also take care of you.

“Ouch,” Emma said meekly. “It hurts.”

Cristina pulled back. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Emma, are you all right? Do you remember everything that happened?”

Emma put a hand to her head. Her throat hurt. She wondered if it was from screaming. She hoped not. She hadn’t wanted to give Iarlath the satisfaction. “I . . . how long have I been passed out?”

“Out? Oh, asleep. Since this morning. All day, really. Julian has been in here with you the whole time. I finally convinced him to eat something. He’ll be horrified that you woke up and he wasn’t here.” Cristina pushed Emma’s tangled hair back.

“I should get up. . . . I should see . . . Is everyone all right? Did anything happen?” Her mind suddenly full of awful images of the faeries, done with her, going after Mark or Julian or somehow, even, the children, Emma tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed.

“Nothing has happened.” Cristina pushed her back gently. “You are tired and weak; you need food and runes. A whipping like that . . . You can whip someone to
death
, you know that, Emma?”

“Yes,” Emma whispered. “Will my back be scarred forever?”

“Probably,” Cristina said. “But it won’t be bad—the
iratzes
closed the wounds quickly. They couldn’t quite heal them all. There will be marks, but they will be light.” Her eyes were red. “Emma, why did you do it? Why? You really think your body is so much stronger than Mark’s or Julian’s?”

“No,” Emma said. “I think everyone is strong and weak in different ways. There are things I’m terrified of that Mark isn’t. Like the ocean. But he’s been tortured enough—what it would have done to him, I don’t even know. And Julian . . . I felt it when they whipped him. In my body, in my heart. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt, Cristina. I would have done anything to stop it. It was selfish.”

“It was
not
selfish.” Cristina caught Emma’s hand and squeezed it. “I have thought now for a while that I would never want a
parabatai
,” she said. “But I would feel differently, I think, if that
parabatai
could have been you.”

I wish you were my
parabatai
, too
, Emma thought, but she couldn’t say it—it felt disloyal to Julian, despite everything.

Instead she said, “I love you, Cristina,” and squeezed the other girl’s hand back. “But the investigation—I should go with you—”

“To where? The library? Everyone has been reading and searching all day for more information about Lady Midnight. We will find something, but we have plenty of people to look at pages.”