Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3) Read online

  And yet he had held her and comforted her in her old bedroom, when she had told him what she had only ever told Catarina and her parents before, and her parents were dead. He had been kind—hadn’t he?

  Stop it. She turned back to the room; now wasn’t the time to think about Gwyn, even if some part of her hoped he would come and comfort her again. Not when Ty might wake up any moment into a world of new and terrible pain. Not when Kit was crouched against the wall as if he had fetched up on some lonely beach after a disaster at sea.

  She was about to put her hand on Kit’s shoulder when he looked up at her. There were no marks of tears on his face. He had been dry-eyed after his father’s death too, she recalled, when he had opened the door of the Institute for the first time and realized he was a Shadowhunter.

  “Ty likes familiar things,” said Kit. “He won’t know where he is when he wakes up. We should make sure his bag is here, and whatever stuff he brought from London.”

  “It’s over there.” Diana pointed to where Ty’s duffel had been placed under the bed that should have been Livvy’s. Without looking at her, Kit got to his feet and went over to it. He unzipped it and took out a book—a thick book, with old-fashioned page binding. Silently, he placed it on the bed just next to Ty’s open left hand, and Diana caught a glimpse of the title embossed in gold across the cover and realized that even her numb heart could twinge with pain.

  The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

  * * *

  The moon had begun to rise, and the demon towers of Alicante glowed in their light.

  It had been many years since Mark had been in Alicante. The Wild Hunt had flown over it, and he remembered seeing the land of Idris spread out below him as the others in the Hunt whooped and howled, amused at flying over Nephilim land. But Mark’s heart had always beaten faster at the sight of the Shadowhunter homeland; the bright silver quarter of Lake Lyn, the green of Brocelind Forest, the stone manor houses of the countryside, and the glimmer of Alicante on its hill. And Kieran beside him, thoughtful, watching Mark as Mark watched Idris.

  My place, my people. My home, he’d thought. But it seemed different from ground level: more prosaic, filled with the smell of canal water in summer, streets illuminated by harsh witchlight. It wasn’t far to the Inquisitor’s house, but they were walking slowly. It was several minutes before Helen spoke for the first time:

  “You saw our aunt in Faerie,” she said. “Nene. Only Nene, right?”

  “She was in the Seelie Court.” Mark nodded, glad to have the silence broken. “How many sisters did our mother have?”

  “Six or seven, I think,” said Helen. “Nene is the only one who is kind.”

  “I thought you didn’t know where Nene was?”

  “She never spoke of her location to me, but she has communicated with me on more than one occasion since I was sent to Wrangel Island,” said Helen. “I think she felt sympathy in her heart for me.”

  “She helped hide us, and heal Kieran,” said Mark. “She spoke to me of our faerie names.” He looked around; they had reached the Inquisitor’s house, the biggest on this stretch of pavement, with balconies out over the canal. “I never thought I would come back here. Not to Alicante. Not as a Shadowhunter.”

  Helen squeezed his shoulder and they walked up to the door together; she knocked, and a harried-looking Simon Lewis opened the door. It had been years since Mark had seen him, and he looked older now: His shoulders were broader, his brown hair longer, and there was stubble along his jaw.

  He gave Helen a lopsided smile. “The last time you and I were here I was drunk and yelling up at Isabelle’s window.” He turned to Mark. “And the last time I saw you, I was stuck in a cage in Faerie.”

  Mark remembered: Simon looking up at him through the bars of the fey-wrought cage, Mark saying to him: I am no faerie. I am Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute. It doesn’t matter what they say or what they do to me. I still remember who I am.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “You told me of my brothers and sisters, of Helen’s marriage. I was grateful.” He swept a small bow, out of habit, and saw Helen look surprised.

  “I wish I could have told you more,” Simon said, in a more serious voice. “And I’m so sorry. About Livvy. We’re grieving here, too.”

  Simon swung the door open wider. Mark saw a grand entryway inside, with a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling; off to the left was a family room, where Rafe, Max, and Tavvy sat in front of an empty fireplace, playing with a small stack of toys. Isabelle and Alec sat on the couch: She had her arms around his neck and was sobbing quietly against his chest. Low, hopeless sobs that struck an echo deep inside his own heart, a matching chord of loss.

  “Please tell Isabelle and Alec we are sorry for the loss of their father,” said Helen. “We did not mean to intrude. We are here for Octavian.”

  At that moment, Magnus appeared from the entryway. He nodded at them and went over to the children, lifting Tavvy up in his arms. Though Tavvy was getting awfully big to be carried, Mark thought, but in many ways Tavvy was young for his age, as if early grief had kept him more childlike. As Magnus approached them, Helen began to lift her hands, but Tavvy held out his arms to Mark.

  In some surprise, Mark took the burden of his little brother in his arms. Tavvy squirmed around, tired but alert. “What’s happened?” he said. “Everyone’s crying.”

  Magnus ran a hand through his hair. He looked extremely weary. “We haven’t told him anything,” he said. “We thought it was for you to do.”

  Mark took a few steps back from the door, Helen following after him so that they stood in the lighted square of illumination from the entryway. He set Tavvy down on the pavement. This was the way the Fair Folk broke bad news, face-to-face.

  “Livvy is gone, child,” he said.

  Tavvy looked confused. “Gone where?”

  “She has passed into the Shadow Lands,” said Mark. He was struggling for the words; death in Faerie was such a different thing than it was to humans.

  Tavvy’s blue-green Blackthorn eyes were wide. “Then we can rescue her,” he said. “We can go after her, right? Like we got you back from Faerie. Like you went after Kieran.”

  Helen made a small noise. “Oh, Octavian,” she said.

  “She is dead,” Mark said helplessly, and saw Tavvy wince away from the words. “Mortal lives are short and—and fragile in the face of eternity.”

  Tavvy’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Mark,” Helen said, and knelt down on the ground, reaching her hands out to Tavvy. “She died so bravely,” she said. “She was defending Julian and Emma. Our sister—she was courageous.”

  The tears began to spill down Tavvy’s face. “Where’s Julian?” he said. “Where did he go?”

  Helen dropped her hands. “He’s with Livvy in the Silent City—he’ll be back soon—let us take you back home to the canal house—”

  “Home?” Tavvy said scornfully. “Nothing here is home.”

  Mark was aware of Simon having come to stand beside him. “God, poor kid,” he said. “Look, Mark—”

  “Octavian.” It was Magnus’s voice. He was standing in the doorway still, looking down at the small tearstained boy in front of him. There was exhaustion in his eyes, but also an immense compassion: the kind of compassion that came with great old age.

  He seemed as if he would have said more, but Rafe and Max had joined him. Silently they filed down the steps and went over to Tavvy; Rafe was nearly as tall as he was, though he was only five. He reached to hug Tavvy, and Max did too—and to Mark’s surprise, Tavvy seemed to relax slightly, allowing the embraces, nodding when Max said something to him in a quiet voice.

  Helen got to her feet, and Mark wondered if his face wore the same expression hers did, of pain and shame. Shame that they could not do more to comfort a younger brother who barely knew them.

  “It’s all right,” Simon said. “Look, you tried.”

  “We did not succeed,” said Mark.

&n
bsp; “You can’t fix grief,” said Simon. “A rabbi told me that when my father died. The only thing that fixes grief is time, and the love of the people who care about you, and Tavvy has that.” He squeezed Mark’s shoulder briefly. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Shelo ted’u od tza’ar, Mark Blackthorn.”

  “What does that mean?” said Mark.

  “It’s a blessing,” said Simon. “Something else the rabbi taught me. ‘Let it be that you should know no further sorrow.’ ”

  Mark inclined his head in gratitude; faeries knew the value of blessings freely given. But his chest felt heavy nonetheless. He could not imagine the sorrows of his family would be ending soon.

  2

  MELANCHOLY WATERS

  Cristina stood despairingly in the extremely clean kitchen of the Princewater Street canal house and wished there was something she could tidy up.

  She’d washed dishes that didn’t need washing. She’d mopped the floor and set and reset the table. She’d arranged flowers in a vase and then thrown them out, and then retrieved them from the trash and arranged them again. She wanted to make the kitchen nice, the house pretty, but was anyone really going to care if the kitchen was nice and the house was pretty?

  She knew they wouldn’t. But she had to do something. She wanted to be with Emma and comfort Emma, but Emma was with Drusilla, who had cried herself to sleep holding Emma’s hands. She wanted to be with Mark, and comfort Mark, but he’d left with Helen, and she could hardly be anything but glad that at last he was getting to spend time with the sister he’d missed for so long.

  The front door rattled open, startling Cristina into knocking a dish from the table. It fell to the floor and shattered. She was about to pick it up when she saw Julian come in, closing the door behind him—Locking runes were more common than keys in Idris, but he didn’t reach for his stele, just looked sightlessly from the entryway to the stairs.

  Cristina stood frozen. Julian looked like the ghost from a Shakespeare play. He clearly hadn’t changed since the Council Hall; his shirt and jacket were stiff with dried blood.

  She never quite knew how to talk to Julian anyway; she knew more about him than was comfortable, thanks to Emma. She knew he was desperately in love with her friend; it was obvious in the way he looked at Emma, spoke to her, in gestures as tiny as handing her a dish across a table. She didn’t know how everyone else didn’t see it too. She’d known other parabatai and they didn’t look at each other like that.

  Having such personal information about someone was awkward at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. Julian’s expression was blank; he moved into the hall, and as he walked, his sister’s dried blood flaked off his jacket and drifted to the floor.

  If she just stood still, Cristina thought, he might not see her, and he might go upstairs and they’d both be spared an awkward moment. But even as she thought it, the bleakness in his face tugged at her heart. She was in the doorway before she realized she’d moved.

  “Julian,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t seem startled. He turned to face her as slowly as an automaton winding down. “How are they?”

  How did you answer that? “They’re well taken care of,” she said finally. “Helen has been here, and Diana, and Mark.”

  “Ty . . .”

  “Is still asleep.” She tugged nervously at her skirt. She’d changed all her clothes since the Council Hall, just to feel clean.

  For the first time, he met her eyes. His were shot through with red, though she didn’t remember having seen him cry. Or maybe he had cried when he was holding Livvy—she didn’t want to remember that. “Emma,” he said. “Is she all right? You’d know. She would—tell you.”

  “She’s with Drusilla. But I’m sure she’d like to see you.”

  “But is she all right?”

  “No,” Cristina said. “How could she be all right?”

  He glanced toward the steps, as if he couldn’t imagine the effort it would take to climb them. “Robert was going to help us,” he said. “Emma and me. You know about us, I know that you do, that you know how we feel.”

  Cristina hesitated, stunned. She’d never thought Julian would mention any of this to her. “Maybe the next Inquisitor—”

  “I passed through the Gard on my way back,” Julian said. “They’re already meeting. Most of the Cohort and half the Council. Talking about who’s going to be the next Inquisitor. I doubt it’s going to be someone who will help us. Not after today. I should care,” he said. “But right now I don’t.”

  A door opened at the top of the steps, and light spilled onto the dark landing. “Julian?” Emma called. “Julian, is that you?”

  He straightened a little, unconsciously, at the sound of her voice. “I’ll be right there.” He didn’t look at Cristina as he went up the stairs, but he nodded to her, a quick gesture of acknowledgment.

  She heard his footsteps die away, his voice mingling with Emma’s. She glanced back at the kitchen. The broken dish lay in the corner. She could sweep it up. It would be the more practical thing to do, and Cristina had always thought of herself as practical.

  A moment later she had thrown her gear jacket on over her clothes. Tucking several seraph blades into her weapons belt, she slipped quietly out the door and into the streets of Alicante.

  * * *

  Emma listened to the familiar sound of Julian coming up the stairs. The tread of his feet was like music she had always known, so familiar it had almost stopped being music.

  Emma resisted calling out again—she was in Dru’s room, and Dru had just fallen asleep, worn-out, still in the clothes she’d worn to the Council meeting. Emma heard Julian’s step in the hall, and then the sound of a door opening and closing.

  Careful not to wake Dru, she slipped out of the room. She knew where Julian was without having to wonder: Down the hall a few doors was Ty’s borrowed bedroom.

  Inside, the room was softly lit. Diana sat in an armchair by the head of Ty’s bed, her face tight with grief and weariness. Kit was asleep, propped against the wall, his hands in his lap.

  Julian stood by Ty’s bed, looking down, his hands at his sides. Ty slept without restlessness, a drugged sleep, hair dark against the white pillows. Still, even in sleep he kept himself to the left side of the bed, as if leaving the space beside him open for Livvy.

  “. . . his cheeks are flushed,” Julian was saying. “Like he has a fever.”

  “He doesn’t,” Diana said firmly. “He needs this, Jules. Sleep heals.”

  Emma saw the open doubt on Julian’s face. She knew what he was thinking: Sleep didn’t heal me when my mother died, or my father, and it won’t heal this, either. It will always be a wound.

  Diana glanced over at Emma. “Dru?” she said.

  Julian looked up at that, and his eyes met Emma’s. She felt the pain in his gaze like a blow to her chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Asleep,” she said, almost in a whisper. “It took a little while, but she finally crashed.”

  “I was in the Silent City,” he said. “We brought Livvy down there. I helped them lay her body out.”

  Diana reached up to put her hand on his arm. “Jules,” she said quietly. “You need to go and get yourself cleaned up, and get some rest.”

  “I should stay here,” Julian said in a low voice. “If Ty wakes up and I’m not here—”

  “He won’t,” Diana said. “The Silent Brothers are precise with their doses.”

  “If he wakes up and you’re standing here covered in Livvy’s blood, Julian, it won’t help anything,” Emma said. Diana looked at her, clearly surprised by the harshness of her words, but Julian blinked as if coming out of a dream.

  Emma held out her hand to him. “Come on,” she said.

  * * *

  The sky was a mixture of dark blue and black, where storm clouds had gathered over the mountains in the distance. Fortunately, the way up to the Gard was lit by witchlight torches. Cristina slipped along beside the path, keeping to the
shadows. The air held the ozone tang of an oncoming storm, making her think of the bitter-penny tang of blood.

  As she reached the front doors of the Gard, they opened and a group of Silent Brothers emerged. Their ivory robes seemed to glimmer with what looked like raindrops.

  Cristina pressed herself back against the wall. She wasn’t doing anything wrong—any Shadowhunter could come to the Gard when they liked—but she instinctively didn’t want to be seen. As the Brothers passed close by her, she saw that it wasn’t rain after all sparkling on their robes but a fine dusting of glass.

  They must have been in the Council Hall. She remembered the window smashing inward as Annabel had disappeared. It had been a blur of noise, splintering light: Cristina had been focused on the Blackthorns. On Emma, the look of devastation on her face. On Mark, his body hunched inward as if he were absorbing the force of a physical blow.

  The inside of the Gard was quiet. Head down, she walked rapidly down the corridors, following the sound of voices toward the Hall. She veered aside to take the stairs up to the second-floor seats, which jutted out over the rest of the room like the balcony in a theater. There was a crowd of Nephilim milling around on the dais below. Someone (the Silent Brothers?) had cleared away the broken glass and blood. The window was back to normal.

  Clear up the evidence all you want, Cristina thought as she knelt down to peer over the railing of the balcony. It still happened.

  She could see Horace Dearborn, seated on a high stool. He was a big, bony man, not muscular though his arms and neck were ropy with tendons. His daughter, Zara Dearborn—her hair in a neat braid around her head, her gear immaculate—stood behind him. She didn’t resemble her father much, except perhaps in the tight anger of their expressions and in their passion for the Cohort, a faction within the Clave who believed in the primacy of Shadowhunters over Downworlders, even when it came to breaking the Law.

  Crowded around them were other Shadowhunters, young and old. Cristina recognized quite a few Centurions—Manuel Casales Villalobos, Jessica Beausejours, and Samantha Larkspear among them—as well as many other Nephilim who had been carrying Cohort signs at the meeting. There were quite a few, though, who as far as she knew were not members of the Cohort. Like Lazlo Balogh, the craggy head of the Budapest Institute, who had been one of the main architects of the Cold Peace and its punitive measures against Downworlders. Josiane Pontmercy she knew from the Marseilles Institute. Delaney Scarsbury taught at the Academy. A few others she recognized as friends of her mother’s—Trini Castel from the Barcelona Conclave, and Luana Carvalho, who ran the Institute in São Paulo, had both known her when she was a small girl.