Lady Midnight from Mark's POV

Entry One

 So many thoughts are swimming in my brain and I can feel myself drowning in them. It was like I was in cage of darkness, with shadows pouring in from all angles. It felt as if the shadows were alive and forcing their icy hands down my throat to wrap their icicles around my heart- and then I felt the burn. A familiar burn, the burn of a stele etching a rune into my skin,a burn I had vowed I would never feel again. I woke up and thrashed, I had to get away from it, I am apart of the Wild Hunt now and I am not a Shadowhunter anymore.Those marks didn't belong on my skin anymore, and the lash marks on my back remind me of that every moment. No matter what the strangers who call themselves my family say, I am no longer one of them.

The strangers brought me gifts later in the day. One of the strangers tried to lay a worn quilt over my shoulders and called himself Tiberius, my little brother. But that is just a hollow lie, Tiberius is a little boy, a child, my baby brother, there was no way the young Shadowhunter was my brother. I pinned him to the floor for his lies and within seconds a girl Shadowhunter all but flew into the room. I knew the look in her eyes, it was a look that I had only ever seen in the eyes of my little sister Livvy, I born fighter who would kill whoever touched her brother. The girl was so much like Livvy, but a different person, the girl seemed older, wiser and more world weary. The same went for the boy, he seemed so much like Tiberius and yet I didn't know these children from Adam. As Livvy screamed at me to let go of Tiberius another stranger came in and thankfully I didn't even have an inkling of who she was. It only took the girl a moment to survey the situation and say something to Livvy and for both Tiberius and Livvy to scramble out of the room. I didn't even remember loosening my grip on Tiberius but he slipped away like quicksilver anyway. The stranger started to back out of the room, but I begged her to stay, she was the only person I had seen today that hadn't looked at me like a kicked puppy or asked me to remember them. I was petrified to be alone at the moment, and I was positive that if she left the shadows would seep back in. She looked confused so I scrambled for an answer to why she had to stay and I asked for a glass of water. The Shadowhunter smiled and went into the attached bathroom, emerging only moments later holding a glass of water. As I took a sip a metallic taste hung on my tongue, tap water, I had almost forgotten the taste during my time in the Wild Hunt. While I drank the stranger sat down on the floor next to me and started talking like she had known me forever.

She said her name was Cristina, that she was on her travel year from Mexico, and that she was eighteen, like I was when I joined the Wild Hunt. In all honesty, joined isn't the best word to describe how I became a hunter, maybe forced would be a better word or maybe even enslaved. Then she asked me a question: "How old are you?" It was such a simple question, but the answer was something that had eluded me for years. Time worked differently in Faerie, what felt like an hour was a week and what felt like a year was mere days. There were no mirrors for me to even look at how I was aging, or if I was aging at all. Like I said, time worked differently and it affected everyone in Faerie, someone who looked eighteen was really seventy and there was no way to know. Though there was one thing I knew, I knew that my brother Julian was twelve, the twins Livvy and Ty were ten, Drusilla was eight and Tavvy; the youngest was two and I had made that memory of them immortal. Inside my mind this was the truth, so that was what I told Cristina. Five years, that was what she said. I had been away for half a decade. For a half decade I had given the stars their names and counted them each night, so I would not forget them. Helen. Julian. Tiberius. Livia. Drusilla. Octavian. I asked if they were all were living and when she said yes a weight that I didn't know was there lifted off my chest.

Then another weight smashed down on me. Helen, where is Helen? My full blood sister, the only other person in my family with Fae blood and I hadn't seen her yet. When I asked where she was, Cristina's features darkened.

"The Clave sent her to Wrangel Island, to study the magic wards." She said.

What a lie. The Clave hadn't sent her there to study the magic wards, they had sent her there because they were scared of the Fae blood in her veins thanks to the Fae's part in the Dark War. A war that had killed nearly half of the Shadowhunters. I remembered flying over Wrangel Island, seeing it's ice covered surface in the middle of the Arctic Ocean and never once had I thought that my sister was stuck there.

"Is she alright?" I asked.

"As far as I know she is as happy as she can be in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. She misses her family, you and her wife a lot though."

I nodded and frowned, my sister Helen was the an amazing Shadowhunter who never questioned her loyalties to the Clave and they had banished her to an iceflow a thousand miles away from everything she loved. What would they do to me when they found me? I was barely Shadowhunter and I had lived among the Faerie and related to them much more than the Shadowhunters. I pushed these thoughts away, this wasn't the time to decide who I would stay loyal to.

Once I knew my family was okay the words came easier and Cristina and I plunged into a conversation. I could tell she was very fascinated by the fae, but she kept her questions at bay, as if she could tell that for me to answer them it would be like pulling fishhooks from my skin. Instead of bombarding me with questions Cristina let me ask her mine. It felt like hours of questions, yet only a few really stuck out.

"Do you trust them? The faeries?" I asked.

"No."

"Good. You shouldn't."

There was silence before I asked my next question. "What should I say to them?"

"To whom?"

"My family. I remember them, yet I don't. I feel as if I have lived here all my life, and yet I have also always been with the Wild Hunt. I hear the roar of it in my ears, the call of the horns, the sound of the wind. The sheer power of it overpowers their voices. How do I explain that?"

"Don't explain it," Cristina said, her voice soft and strangely calming. "Just say you loved them and you missed them everyday. Tell them you hated the Wild Hunt."

"Why would I do that? Won't they know I'm lying?"

In all honesty I don't know if I would be lying or not if I told them that. I can no longer hear what my heart longs to tell me, I can only hear the wind beckoning.

Before the Shadowhunter had time to think up an answer, there was a series of taps on the window pane. A pattern that I knew well, someone had a message for me. On the window ledge was an acorn, this wasn't that strange because the faerie often used little objects in nature to relay notes to each other, the strange part was that I wasn't expecting a message so soon. With trembling fingers I crushed the acorn and removed I skinny slip of parchment, my stomach turned as my eyes moved over the words. Remember your promises. Remember that none of it is real.

None of it could be real. All a hallucination, a punishment from Gwyn to play jump rope with my emotions. Cristina was gone and a mirage of smoke that looks like Julian fed me lies, he said I am home. But I have no home anymore. He said he is my brother, but all I hear is deceit. I have no brothers, no sisters, no family. I am alone. I ride with the Wild Hunt. I am loyal to Gwyn the Hunter. Then the mirage says something that no illusion made with faerie magic could ever say.

"I remember the day you were taken by the Wild Hunt. We were training and we heard noises, you went downstairs to investigate, but before you went you told me something.You said, 'Stay with Emma."

Then fog fell away. I was in my room at the Institute, Gwyn wasn't anywhere to be seen and neither was the rest of the Wild Hunt. All that was in front of me was Julian, older and more worn down, but still my brother.