Cristina and Her Faerie Boys

Chapter 5

Kieran closed the door with a loud click and finally Cristina exhaled. The boys stood somewhat awkwardly to the side as Cristina entered the room glancing around at the unfamiliar surroundings.

Kieran had been put into a strange room. It was down a long hall away from the other rooms and up a small flight of stairs as well. It looked a bit like an attic space with two high pitches in the ceiling and walls of slatted boards. No Edwardian wallpaper or tapestries as the rest of the house had. To the left was a balconet with arched glass doors. They were open and a cool breeze flowed steadily over Cristina's bare arms, it tousled loose pieces of her hair.

She was wearing another old-fashioned dress, one of the many items of clothes that Bridget had dug out for all of them when they had arrived straight from the L.A. Institute. It was a soft gray and Cristina knew she wasn't wearing it correctly to the time period. But there was no way she was going to wear a petticoat and all that other old-fashioned nonsense that people used to wear. So it was more of a shift, more like a light sundress without all the underthings that would have gone with it.

She turned back to the boys. Mark was wearing his own clothes that he had came here in, although they had been freshly laundered, a white T-shirt and slim faded jeans. Her eyes lingered over the points of his ears that poked through the blonde waves of his hair. She met his eyes and swallowed.

Kieran cleared his throat matter-of-factly, he was now leaning against one of the posts of his double bed that took up most of the right side of the room. His arms were crossed over his bare chest and thin, tapered drawstring pants hung low on his narrow hips. Cristina quickly looked away. "So...your wrist?" She asked Mark, bringing her own up in front of her and studying it.

"Perfectly normal, aside from the slight marking..." Mark replied, looking down at the wide reddened band encircling his wrist. He crossed the room and gently took Cristina's slender forearm in his hands, turning her wrist this way and that. "Perfect..." He whispered, but his eyes were locked on Cristina's face. She shuddered.

"You must be cold." Kieran said pointedly with his eyes narrowed at Mark. His skin felt hot as he brushed past Cristina. And he crossed the room in three swift strides, clasping his hands on the double glass doors, he closed and latched them.

"What is that?" Cristina asked, breaking the increasingly awkward silence. She peered over one of the lounge chairs at what looked to be a mess of even-lengthed twigs and waxy, thick green leaves. A small tan, leather pouch caught her eye. It lay on its side with what looked like an array of semi-precious stones spilling out onto the hardwood floor. Blue, and smoky crystal, black, deep red and pale green cut and polished stones, glinted off the dim witchlight.

Kieran smiled mischievously. Mark replied as he came to stand opposite of Cristina, "It's a faerie game. You play under a full moon, literally, but it was raining and...well...I--we could teach you sometime..." A faerie game. Alarms of warning went off in Cristina's head. She knew now more than ever to not play any faerie games. And by the look that now darkened Kieran's face she knew it wasn't an innocent game.

"We can teach you now." Kieran mused, he locked eyes with Mark challengingly before facing Cristina, "Want to play?" Cristina flicked her eyes over to Mark, she tried to read him but he appeared indifferent, it was the faerie in him. Cristina had noticed that his faerie side always seemed to come alight when he was with Kieran.

Cristina took a half step back. Closer to the door. She suddenly felt out of place. Sort of like the way she felt in Faerie. Out of place like a Shadowhunter is in Faerie. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I, well I just wanted to check on you, Mark. See how your wrist was healing up." She nodded as if deciding then that was the real reason she had come here tonight and nothing more. She backed up toward the door again and began to turn.

"Just one game?" It was Mark, who asked. Cristina turned fully toward him in surprise. He smiled. A full grin that lit his eyes, "Just...don't make any promises you cannot or do not wish to fulfill. Of course."

"Of course." Cristina heard herself reply.

"That was your first promise." Kieran said, he crouched down toward the small circle of faerie items strewn on the floor. He met her eyes, a wicked silver and black that shone with delight, "Your draw, Cristina."

A fluttering danced nervously in Cristina's stomach, setting her on a serious edge. She came around the lounge chair she had been standing behind and lowered herself onto the floor. Mark followed. They had inadvertently formed a triangle. With Kieran's back to the balconet, Mark's to the unlit fireplace and her's to the door. "Okay then. I suppose I should've known better." Cristina admitted with an airy laugh, she glanced between the boys, "What do I do?"

One corner of Kieran's mouth curved upward as he reached forward and gathered up the short sticks in his hand. His face blanked for a half second and then he lunged across the circle at Cristina, before she could react she felt his fingers in her hair and a sharp sting, she rubbed at her scalp and scowled at Kieran, "By the Angel! What...?"

Kieran sat back down with one long dark strand of Cristina's hair pinched between two fingers, he quickly began to wind it around one of the sticks. Then he set three of them in the middle of the floor between them. Cristina could see that the other two were wound with what looked like a golden piece of Mark's hair and dark blue, nearly black strand of Kieran's. More alarms went off in Cristina's head.

"The twigs represent your body. The leaves, your mind. The gemstones," Kieran paused reaching for the satchel, he poured the contents into his palm and began picking them up one by one, "Quartz," he began, lifting an opaque smoky white stone up between his thumb and forefinger for Cristina to see, "is for a memory. Garnet, a desire. Obsidian, a loss, Topaz, a dream. Jade, a greed."

Kieran replaced all the gemstones back into the pouch and pulled the drawstrings tight. He tossed it to Mark who caught it and gave it shake. Cristina continued to watch as Kieran then gathered up the sticks and the large thick leaves. "Unfortunately for you, due to the inclement weather, the game will be much less...enchanting. Mark spoke correctly when he told you that the game is meant to be played beneath a full moon. But," Kieran paused for effect, he smiled at Cristina and then thrust his hands into the air in front of him, releasing the sticks and leaves. Cristina gasped when they seemed to have been caught on a phantom wind and swirled in the air like a cyclone. "Three rotations and then pass your hand through the middle to break the enchantment. Whichever lands closest to you is your draw."

Cristina's eyes were wide as she watched this tiny cyclone of sticks and leaves. She quickly found her own hair-wrapped twig and counted one as it made a full rotation.

"Pixie Dust?" She blurted with a laugh to Mark. She immediately regretted it but then Mark threw his back and laughed. He laughed hard like she had never heard him before. His arm crossed over his stomach like a crutch from the strain of it. And Cristina couldn't help herself and laughed too. A warmth spread in her chest. Seeing Mark so unrestrained and free, happy. Freed from the Wild Hunt, back with his family and also with Kieran.

Mark deserves this, she thought. She recalled the thin and haunted looking boy she had first met not long ago, when Mark had first been returned to his family. He was broken and had been through so much pain and mental tortures. And now as she looked at him she still saw that boy, but this was who he really was, who he deserved to be. Free. Happy.

They both stopped laughing and looked at Kieran who had his head tilted to the side but otherwise showed no emotion. Cristina knew he wouldn't understand the joke. So she wasn't surprised by his non reaction. "That's three" Was all he said. And Cristina mechanically slashed her arm through the whirling debris.