Kieran said, “Your brother would burn the world if it saved his family. Some are like that. But you are not.”
“I understand you cannot believe this matters to me as much as it does, Kieran,” Mark said. “But it is the truth.”
“Remember,” Kieran whispered. Even now, in the mundane world, there was something proud and arrogant about Kieran’s gestures, his voice. Despite the jeans Mark had lent him, he looked as if he should be at the head of a faerie army, flinging out his arm in sweeping command. “Remember that none of it is real.”
And Mark did remember. He remembered a note written on parchment, wrapped in the shell of an acorn. The first message Kieran had sent him after he’d left the Hunt.
“It is real to me,” Mark said. “All of this is real to me.” He leaned forward. “I need to know you are here in this with me, Kieran.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no more anger,” said Mark. “It means no more sending me dreams. I needed you for so long, Kieran. I needed you so much, and that kind of need, it bends you and warps you. It makes you desperate. It makes you not choose.”
Kieran had frozen. “You’re saying you didn’t choose me?”
“I’m saying the Wild Hunt chose us. I’m saying if you are finding strangeness in me, and distance, it is because I cannot help but ask myself, over and over: In another world, in another situation, would we still have chosen each other?” He looked hard at the other boy. “You are a gentry prince. And I am half-Nephilim, worse than the lowest chaff, tainted in blood and lineage.”
“Mark.”
“I am saying the choices we make in captivity are not always the choices we make in freedom. And thus we question them. We cannot help it.”
“It is different for me,” said Kieran. “After this, I return to the Hunt. You are the one with freedom.”
“I will not let you be forced back into the Hunt if you do not wish it.”
Kieran’s eyes softened. In that moment, Mark thought he would have promised him anything, no matter how rash.
“I would like us both to have freedom,” Mark said. “To laugh, to enjoy ourselves together, to love in the ordinary way. You are free here with me, and perhaps we could take that chance, that time.”
“Very well,” Kieran said, after a long pause. “I will stay with you. And I will help you with your dull books.” He smiled. “I am in this with you, Mark, if that is how we will learn what we mean to each other.”
“Thank you,” Mark said. Kieran, like most faeries, had no use for “you’re welcome”; instead he slid off the windowsill and went in search of a book on the shelves. Mark stared after him. He had said nothing to Kieran that was not true, and yet he felt as leaden inside as if every word he had spoken was a lie.
* * *
The sky over London was cloudless and blue and beautiful. The water of the Thames, parting on either side of the boat, was almost blue. Sort of the color of tea, Kit thought, if you put blue ink into it.
The place they were going—Ty had the address—was on Gill Street, Magnus had explained, in Limehouse. “Used to be a terrible neighborhood,” he said. “Full of opium dens and gambling houses. God, it was fun back then.”
Mark had looked immediately panicked.
“Don’t worry,” Magnus had added. “It’s very dull now. All fancy condos and gastropubs. Very safe.”
Julian would have forbidden this excursion, Kit was fairly sure. But Mark hadn’t hesitated—he seemed, far more than his brother, to regard Livvy and Ty as adult Shadowhunters who were simply expected to work like the others.
It was Ty who had hesitated for a moment, looking worriedly at his sister. Livvy seemed absolutely fine now—they were on the top level of the boat, open to the air, and she was raising her face into the wind with unabashed pleasure, letting it lift her hair and whip it around.
Ty was watching everything around them with that absorbed fascination of his, as if he were memorizing every building, every street. His fingers drummed a tattoo on the metal railing, but Kit didn’t think that indicated anxiety. He’d noticed that Ty’s gestures didn’t always correspond to a bad mood. Sometimes they corresponded to a good one: If he was feeling relaxed, he’d watch his own fingers make lazy patterns against the air, the way a meteorologist might watch the movement of clouds.
“If I became a Shadowhunter,” Kit said, to neither of the twins specifically, “would I have to do a lot of homework? Or could I just, sort of, start doing it?”
Livvy’s eyes sparkled. “You are doing it.”
“Yes, but this is a state of emergency,” said Ty. “He’s right—he’d have to catch up on some classes. It’s not as if you’re as ignorant as a mundane would be,” he added to Kit, “but there are some things you’d probably need to learn—classes of demons, languages, that sort of thing.”
Kit made a face. “I was really hoping I could learn on the job.”
Livvy laughed. “You could always go in front of the Council and make a case for it.”
“The Council?” said Kit. “How are they different from the Clave?”
Livvy laughed harder.
“I can see how your case might not be successful,” said Ty. “Though I suppose we could tutor you a bit.”
“A bit?” said Kit.
Ty smiled his rare, dazzling smile. “A bit. I do have important things to do.”
Kit thought of Ty on the roof the night before, how desperate he had seemed. He was back to his old self now, as if Livvy’s restoration had restored him, too. He rested his elbows on the rail as the boat chugged past an imposing fortress-like building that loomed over the riverbank.
“The Tower of London,” said Livvy, noticing Kit’s gaze.
“The stories say that six ravens must always guard the Tower,” said Ty, “or the monarchy will fall.”
“All the stories are true,” said Livvy in a soft voice, and a chill went up Kit’s spine.
Ty turned his head. “Wasn’t it a raven that carried Annabel and Malcolm’s messages?” he said. “I think that was in Emma and Julian’s notes.”
“Seems unreliable,” said Kit. “What if the raven got bored, or distracted, or met a hot falcon on the way?”
“Or was intercepted by faeries,” said Livvy.
“Not all faeries are bad,” said Ty.
“Some faeries are good, some are bad, like anyone,” said Kit. “But that might be too complicated for the Clave.”
“It’s too complicated for most people,” Ty said.
From anyone else, Kit would have thought that the comment was meant to be reproving. Ty, though, probably just meant it. Which was oddly pleasant to know.
“I don’t like what we’ve been hearing from Diana,” said Livvy. “About how Zara’s claiming she killed Malcolm.”
“My dad used to say that a big lie was often easier to carry off than a small one,” said Kit.
“Well, hopefully he was wrong,” said Livvy, a little sharply. “I can’t stand the idea that anyone thinks Zara and people like her are heroes. Even if they don’t know she’s lying about Malcolm, the Cohort’s plans are despicable.”
“It’s too bad none of you can just tell the Clave what Julian saw happen in the scrying glass,” said Kit.
“If they knew he’d gone to Faerie, he could be exiled,” said Livvy, and there was an edge of real fear in her voice. “Or have his Marks stripped.”
“I could pretend I’m the one who saw it—it matters a lot less if I get tossed out of the Nephilim,” Kit said.
Kit had meant to lighten the mood with an obvious joke, but the twins looked rattled. “Don’t you want to stay?” Ty’s question was direct and sharp as a knife.
Kit had no answer. There was a clamor of voices, and the boat jerked to a halt. It had docked at Limehouse, and the three of them hurried to get off—they were unglamoured, and as they pushed past several mundanes to get to the exit, Kit heard one of them mutter about kids getting tattooed way too young these days.