This idea has been floating about since I read Queen of Air and Darkness, and I decided that it was long past overdue it be written. It tuned out less romantic and more heartbreaking then I had originally planned, but this is the Wild Hunt. It has the honour of being the first story I have written on my computer rather than my Kendle Fire, as well as my first fic in any Shadowhunter fandom. The title gave me nightmares, but I woke up with the words that are now the title running through my head, so I guess it was fated to be... a bit long a strange. I stayed up all night trying to get it posted on Valentines Day, but failed to finish in time. Anyway, it has a few easter eggs related to The Dark Artifices as well as a headcanon or two that is my own. I hope you have all had a wonderful Valentines Day, and that your lives are well. -Kay of Arda
My Blood, Me to You Binding
A century or a day could pass and the Wild Hunt would scarcely notice, for they did not put much stock in the passing time. They could ride for felt like ages only to discover later that barely an hour had passed or settle down for a nap and snore away a hundred years. Or at least in theory they could, in practice, Cristina found that the scales tip towards the side of eternity.
~O~
Cristina watched the earth speed past below them, sprawling cities like spiderwebs of light, plains of darkness and shadow where the seas lay and attempted to estimate how long it had been. Was everyone she and Mark had known dead or had only a few years passed?
They traded whispered stories and news in secret corners and half-forgotten halls, they even passed messages through Kieran, the handsome, if cold, faerie prince who was Mark's lover. Gwyn was careful not to leave them alone too much or for too long, Hunters got some freedom, especially when they rode through the open vault of the night sky, but even the Leader of the Wild Hunt had his limits when it came to Shadowhunters, he had to in this political climate of the Courts.
~O~
Kieran, who Cristina saw far more often than Mark, was forever telling her how lucky she was that it had been he and Mark, and not some wild and deadly creature of Faerieland who had found her; a Shadowhunter lost in the land of the faerie's, her companions, Diego and Jaime, long since disappeared. A young women sent on a simple mission with her friends, now lost beyond help or reason in uncanny woods and mountains of a land not her own.
"And you so fair and young," he would say, smirking as he did, "Who knows what might have happened to you?"
It took Cristina a while to realize he wasn't holding what had happened over her, that he was just terrible at being polite and that he didn't want her to try anything dangers, anything that could place Mark at risk.
~O~
Cristina was grateful to the Hunt and to Gwyn, she knew that both courts had withdrawn to their strongholds and would kill any Shadowhunters who approached. She knew Mark and Kieran had put themselves in danger, lobbying on her behalf when all they knew was that she was a Shadowhunter and that she had offered to help Mark escaped when they had first met in the wilds of Faerie, before she had seen his eyes, before Kieran had dropped from a tree onto her back.
"Mortals have been in the Hunt before." Kieran would any who would listen, his eyes on Mark as he spoke.
"As have women," Mark would echo, "The Birds of Rhiannon are still remembered and missed in the skies."
"There is precedent," Gwyn told the Seelie Queen, "Cristina will swear loyalty to me, to the Hunt, if she were given the chance."
Cristina had not known if she was ready, not until the moment Gwyn ap Nudd looked at, his eyes like warlock fire, and asked. She had paused for a moment, to look into the strange, mismatched eyes of the two lost, scared, and beautiful boys who stood behind him, boys who had put their lives on the line for her. In their faces, Cristina Rosales knew her answer.
Gwyn's blood burned like acid in her throat, she had no faerie heritage, she was not young, tortured, and lied to as Mark had been. This was a betrayal of every principle she had been raised on, yet she took it in silence because it was the only way she knew of that might keep her alive, and possibly one day pay back the kindness she had been shown.
She did not scream.
~O~
Kieran said, in one of his rare moments of unprompted generosity, that her eyes were beautiful. One a dark, rich brown, like the ground after a summer rain, the other a deep bloody red, like her mother's prize roses, that thought made her slip off and found a place to silently cry, missing her home, family, and friends.
~O~
"Teach my fingers to fight and my hands to war." Cristina whispered as rode onto her first battlefield, the red roan beneath her, a gift from Gwyn, eager at the scent of blood.
She was already a trained fighter, she did not need war and the bloody work of reaping the dead as well. What Cristina wanted, more than anything, even seeing her home and family again, was forgiveness from Raziel. She consoled herself with the reminder that her angel had a plan for everyone and that she, Cristina Rosales, only had to trust in the one he had drawn out for her.
~O~
"My name is Mark Antony Blackthorn and I am a Shadowhunter." Mark would whisper in the very darkest hours of that came before dawn.
Cristina echoed his words, and together, wherever they might be, they would speak of their families and homes, so far away. Telling stories of laughter and joy, of pillow forts and hair cuts, of siblings and friends, of days, light untouched by any darkness. Curled between them, left bloody by his own blades, Kieran would listen in silence.
~O~
The whisperer came on a cold and dark night, after a battle. The three of them lay together, beneath the same few blankets and upon the pelt of a massive wolf Mark had brought down. Cristina was curled on her side, closest their weapons, with her back to the boys, who lay curled around one another, looking for love and comfort.
"Cristina?" came the whisper in the darkness, Mark's voice, "Are you yet awake?"
"Yes," she replied, her voice soft, "But act as if I am not. Kieran needs you, tonight most of all."
"Do not speak as though I am not here," Kieran said, anger in his voice, "I am not a child to be sheltered for the darkness."
Cristina shivered at the faerie prince's words, the longer she lived with them, the more she saw what this life, and the one he had led before, had done to Kieran. His body was littered with scars to old to be from the hunt, the marks of a whip and other, some scaped cuts days old covered his pale skin. Cristina never asked, she let Mark do that, but she did hide the weapons and learn what she could of healing.
"You can join us," Mark said after a moment, "If you wish. The night is cold and dark."
It was a strang offer, yet not unexpected, Cristina thought that her eighteenth birthday must have passed by. She was an adult, a Hunter in full, she was old enough to make her own choices when it came to love. She gripped her medallion tight and moved closer under the blankets.
~O~
The Hunt was as deadly as it was beautiful. They saw every corner of the earth, sea, and sky as the galloped across the vaulted expanse of blue velvet, the stars their only lights. Bloodrose, Windspear, and Thorn racing one another across worlds, blood flying from their pounding hooves.
Together they road on, through hill and dale, storm and fair weather, spirits of the sky, wind, and air. The riding was easy and filled Cristina with the thrill of the chase, it appealed to her in a way nothing before it ever had.
The gory parts were the worst for Cristina, she knew blood, but the work of a Hunter was opposite to what Shadowhunters were supposed to do. Mark was beside her through it all, however, urging her on, his own bow singing as he did, and Kieran was storm, he left himself open, but none ever got close enough to take advantage. The three of them were untouchable, as long as they stayed close and watched over one another.
The language of Faerie came quickly to her, she was good at languages, after all. She had already known their customs from her years of study, even if it was different to see them in action. It was not hard, Cristina found, to fit herself into this life, and the laws that came with it.
For hundred years, a month, a week, forever and a day, she rode with the Wild hunt, unsure how much time had passed for the family she had left behind in Mexico, or for Mark's in the United States.
She was not even sure how much time had passed when Gwyn laid a gentle and scared hand on her shoulder and told her, Cristina Rosales, that she was a good hunter, one as great, he said, as Rhiannon herself had been.
I hope this was enjoyed, I know that it is a work a bit outside the ordinary. Please review, it is nice to know that people think my work worth a review and not just a read, sorry if that was harsh. Once again yours, -Kay of Arda.