Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

Maybe it was the wine, but she found that Gwyn, despite his quiet nature, was easy to talk to. He asked her about herself, though not her past; her passions instead, her interests and her dreams. She found herself telling him of her love for teaching, how she wished to teach at the Academy someday. He asked her about the Blackthorns, and how Mark was settling in, and nodded gravely at her answers.

He was not beautiful in the manner of many faeries, but she found his face more pleasing for it. His hair was thick and brown, his hands wide and capable and strong. There were scars on his skin—at his neck and chest, and on the backs of his palms—but that made her think of her own scars and Shadowhunting. It was comforting in its familiarity.

“Why are there no women in the Wild Hunt?” she asked. It was something she had always wondered.

“Women are too savage,” he said with a grin. “We reap the dead. It was discovered that when Rhiannon’s Ladies ran with the Hunt, they were unwilling to wait until the dead were dead.”

Diana laughed. “Rhiannon. The name is familiar.”

“The women left the hunt and became Adar Rhiannon. The Birds of Rhiannon. Some call them ‘Valkyrie.’ ”

She smiled at him sadly. “Faerie can be so lovely,” she said. “And yet also terrible.”

“You are thinking of Mark?”

“Mark loves his family,” she said. “And they are happy to have him back. But he does miss the Hunt. Which is hard to understand sometimes. When he came to us, he was so scarred, in body and mind.”

“Many Shadowhunters are scarred,” he said. “That does not mean they no longer wish to be Shadowhunters.”

“I’m not sure it’s the same.”

“I am not sure it is so different.” He leaned back against a large gray boulder. “Mark was a fine Hunter, but his heart was not in it. It is not the Hunt he misses, but the freedom and the open sky, and perhaps Kieran.”

“You knew they had fought,” said Diana. “But when you came to us, you were so sure Mark would save him.”

“Shadowhunters desire to save everyone. And more so when there is love.”

“You think Mark still loves Kieran?”

“I think you cannot root out love entirely. I think where there has been love, there will always be embers, as the remains of a bonfire outlast the flame.”

“But they die eventually. They become ashes.”

Gwyn sat forward. His eyes, blue and black, were grave on hers. “Have you ever loved?”

She shook her head. She could feel the shaking all through her nerves—the anticipation, and the fear. “Not like that.” She should tell him why, she thought. But the words didn’t come.

“That is a shame,” he said. “I think to be loved by you would be a tremendous honor.”

“You barely know me at all,” Diana said. I shouldn’t be affected by his words. I shouldn’t want this. But she did, in a way she had tried to bury long ago.

“I saw who you are in your eyes the night I came to the Institute,” said Gwyn. “Your bravery.”

“Bravery,” echoed Diana. “The kind that kills demons, yes. Yet there are many kinds of bravery.”

His deep eyes flashed. “Diana—”

But she was on her feet, walking to the edge of the glade, more for the relief of movement than anything else. Gwyn’s horse whinnied as she neared it, backing away.

“Be careful,” Gwyn said. He had risen, but was not following her. “My Wild Hunt horses can be uneasy around women. They have little experience with them.”

Diana paused for a moment, then stepped around the horse, giving it a wide berth. As she neared the edge of the wood, she caught a flash of something pale out of the corner of her eye.

She moved closer, realizing suddenly how vulnerable she was, here in the open without her weapons, wearing only pajamas. How had she agreed to this? What had Gwyn said to convince her?

I saw who you are.

She pushed the words to the back of her mind, reaching a hand out to steady herself on the slender trunk of a linden. Her eyes saw before her mind could process: a bizarre sight, a circle of blasted nothingness in the center of Brocelind. Land like ash, trees burned to stumps, as if acid had charred away everything living.

“By the Angel,” she whispered.

“It is blight.” Gwyn spoke from behind her, his big shoulders taut with tension, his jaw set. “I have seen this before only in Faerie. It is the mark of a great dark magic.”

There were burned places, white as ash, like the surface of the moon.

Diana gripped the tree trunk harder. “Take me back,” she said. “I need to return to Alicante.”

21

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Mark sat on the edge of his bed, examining his wrist. The wound that wrapped it appeared darker, crusted with blood at the edges, and the bruises that radiated out from it shaded from deep red to purple.