Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

His smile was blinding. She wondered how she’d ever thought he wasn’t as good-looking as Diego.

“That’s where you can help me,” he said.

*   *   *

Having climbed up the side of the cottage and onto the roof, Emma reached out to help Julian up after her. He declined the hand, though, flipping himself easily up onto the shingled surface.

The roof of Malcolm’s cottage was tilted at a slight grade, overhanging the front and back of the house. Emma walked down to the edge of the roof where it protruded over the front door.

From here, the trap was visible. Mark had told them what bait was best: Piskies loved milk and bread and honey. They also loved dead mice, but Emma was unwilling to go that far. She liked mice, despite Church’s deep-seated antagonism toward them.

“And now we wait,” Julian said, sitting down on the edge of the roof. The bowls of milk and honey and the plate of bread were out, shining temptingly on top of a pile of leaves near the path to the door.

Emma sat down beside Jules. The sky was cloudless blue, stretching away to where it met the darker sea on the horizon. Slow mackerel boats traced white patterns on the sea’s surface, and the dull booming roar of the waves was a soft counterpoint to the warm wind.

She couldn’t help but be reminded of all the times she and Jules had sat on the roof of the Institute, talking and looking at the ocean. An entirely different shore, perhaps, but all seas were connected.

“I’m sure there’s some kind of law about not trapping piskies without permission from the Clave,” said Emma.

“Lex malla, lex nulla,” said Julian with a regretful wave of his hand. It was the Blackthorn family motto: A bad law is no law.

“I wonder what other family mottoes are,” Emma mused. “Do you know any?”

“The Lightwood family motto is ‘We mean well.’ ”

“Very funny.”

Julian looked over at her. “No, really, it actually is.”

“Seriously? So what’s the Herondale family motto? ‘Chiseled but angsty’?”

He shrugged. ‘If you don’t know what your last name is, it’s probably Herondale’?”

Emma burst out laughing. “What about Carstairs?” she asked, tapping Cortana. “ ‘We have a sword’? ‘Blunt instruments are for losers’?”

“Morgenstern,” offered Julian. “ ‘When in doubt, start a war’?”

“How about ‘Has even one of us ever been any good, like ever, seriously’?”

“Seems long,” said Julian. “And kind of on the nose.”

They were both giggling almost too hard to talk. Emma bent forward—and gave a gasp, which combined with the giggle into a sort of cough. She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Piskies!” she whispered through her fingers, and pointed.

Julian moved soundlessly to the edge of the roof, Emma beside him. Standing near their trap were a group of scrawny, pallid figures dressed in rags. They had near-translucent skin, pale hair like straw, and bare feet. Huge black pupilless eyes stared from faces as delicate as china.

They looked exactly like the drawings on the wall of the inn where they’d eaten the day before. She hadn’t seen a single one in Faerie—indeed, it seemed true that they had been exiled to the mundane world.

Without a word, they fell on the dishes of bread, milk, and honey—and the ground gave way under them. The frail construction of branches and leaves Emma had laid over the mouth of the pit Julian had dug fell away, and the piskies tumbled into their trap.

*   *   *

Gwyn made no attempt at small talk as his horse soared through the air over Alicante and then the woods of Brocelind Forest. Diana was grateful for it. With the wind in her hair, cool and soft, and the forest spread out below her in deep green shadow, she felt freer than she had in what seemed like a long time. Talking would have been a distraction.

Dawn gave way to daylight as she watched the world rushing by under her: the sudden flash of water, the graceful shapes of fir trees and white pine. When Gwyn pointed the horse’s head downward, and it began to descend, she felt a pang of disappointment and a sudden flash of kinship with Mark. No wonder he had missed the Hunt; no wonder that even when he was back with his family, he had yearned for the sky.

They landed in a small clearing between linden trees. Gwyn slid from the horse’s back and offered Diana his hand to clamber down to the ground: The thick green moss was soft on her bare feet. She wandered among the white flowers and admired the blue sky while he spread out a linen cloth and food unpacked from his saddlebag.

She couldn’t quite hold back the urge to laugh—here she was, Diana Wrayburn, of the law-abiding and respectable Wrayburn family, about to have a picnic with the leader of the Wild Hunt.

“Come,” he said, when he was done and seated on the ground. His horse had wandered off to crop grass at the edge of the clearing. “You must be hungry.”

To Diana’s surprise, she found she was—and hungrier when she tasted the food: delicious fruit, cured meat, thick bread and honey, and glasses of wine that tasted the way rubies looked.