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

  They were all Council members. Cristina said a silent prayer of thanks that her mother wasn’t here, that she’d been too busy dealing with an outbreak of Halphas demons in the Alameda Central to attend, trusting Diego to represent her interests.

  “There is no time to lose,” Horace said. He exuded a sense of humorless intensity, just like his daughter. “We are without an Inquisitor, now, at a critical time, when we are under threat from outside and inside the Clave.” He glanced around the room. “We hope that after today’s events, those of you who have doubted our cause will come to be believers.”

  Cristina felt cold inside. This was more than just a Cohort meeting. This was the Cohort recruiting. Inside the empty Council Hall, where Livvy had died. She felt sick.

  “What do you think you’ve learned, exactly, Horace?” said a woman with an Australian accent. “Be clear with us, so we’re all understanding the same thing.”

  He smirked a little. “Andrea Sedgewick,” he said. “You were in favor of the Cold Peace, if I recall correctly.”

  She looked pinched. “I don’t think much of Downworlders. But what happened here today . . .”

  “We were attacked,” said Dearborn. “Betrayed, attacked, inside and out. I’m sure you all saw what I saw—the sigil of the Unseelie Court?”

  Cristina remembered. As Annabel had disappeared, borne away through the shattered window of the Hall as if by unseen hands, a single image had flashed on the air: a broken crown.

  The crowd murmured their assent. Fear hung in the air like a miasma. Dearborn clearly relished it, almost licking his lips as he gazed around the room. “The Unseelie King, striking at the heart of our homeland. He sneers at the Cold Peace. He knows we are weak. He laughs at our inability to pass stricter Laws, to do anything that would really control the fey—”

  “No one can control the fey,” said Scarsbury.

  “That’s exactly the attitude that’s weakened the Clave all these years,” snapped Zara. Her father smiled at her indulgently.

  “My daughter is right,” he said. “The fey have their weaknesses, like all Downworlders. They were not created by God or by our Angel. They have flaws, and we have never exploited them, yet they exploit our mercy and laugh at us behind their hands.”

  “What are you suggesting?” said Trini. “A wall around Faerie?”

  There was a bit of derisive laughter. Faerie existed everywhere and nowhere: It was another plane of existence. No one could wall it off.

  Horace narrowed his eyes. “You laugh,” he said, “but iron doors at all the entrances and exits of Faerie would do a great deal to prevent their incursions into our world.”

  “Is that the goal?” Manuel spoke lazily, as if he didn’t have much invested in the answer. “Close off Faerie?”

  “There is not only one goal, as you well know, boy,” said Dearborn. Suddenly he smiled, as if something had just occurred to him. “You know of the blight, Manuel. Perhaps you should share your knowledge, since the Consul has not. Perhaps these good people should be aware of what happens when the doors between Faerie and the world are flung wide.”

  Holding her necklace, Cristina seethed silently as Manuel described the patches of dead blighted earth in Brocelind Forest: the way they resisted Shadowhunter magic, the fact that the same blight seemed to exist in the Unseelie Lands of Faerie. How did he know that? Cristina agonized silently. It had been what Kieran was going to tell the Council, but he hadn’t had the chance. How did Manuel know?

  She was only grateful that Diego had done what she had asked him to do, and taken Kieran to the Scholomance. It was clear there would have been no safety for a full-blood faerie here.

  “The Unseelie King is creating a poison and beginning to spread it to our world—one that will make Shadowhunters powerless against him. We must move now to show our strength,” said Zara, cutting Manuel off before he was finished.

  “As you moved against Malcolm?” said Lazlo. There were titters, and Zara flushed—she had proudly claimed to have slain Malcolm Fade, a powerful warlock, though it had later turned out she had lied. Cristina and the others had hoped the fact would discredit Zara—but now, after what had happened with Annabel, Zara’s lie had become little more than a joke.

  Dearborn rose to his feet. “That’s not the issue now, Balogh. The Blackthorns have faerie blood in their family. They brought a creature—a necromantic half-dead thing that slew our Inquisitor and filled the Hall with blood and terror—into Alicante.”

  “Their sister was killed too,” said Luana. “We saw their grief. They did not plan what happened.”

  Cristina could see the calculations going on inside Dearborn’s head—he would have dearly liked to blame the Blackthorns and see them all tossed into the Silent City prisons, but the spectacle of Julian holding Livvy’s body as she died was too raw and visceral for even the Cohort to ignore. “They are victims too,” he said, “of the Fair Folk prince they trusted, and possibly their own faerie kin. Perhaps they can be brought around to see a reasonable point of view. After all, they are Shadowhunters, and that is what the Cohort is about—protecting Shadowhunters. Protecting our own.” He laid a hand on Zara’s shoulder. “When the Mortal Sword is restored, I am sure Zara will be happy to lay any doubts you have about her accomplishments to rest.”

  Zara flushed and nodded. Cristina thought she looked guilty as sin, but the rest of the crowd had been distracted by the mention of the Sword.

  “The Mortal Sword restored?” said Trini. She was a deep believer in the Angel and his power, as Cristina’s family was too. She looked anxious now, her thin hands working in her lap. “Our irreplaceable link to the Angel Raziel—you believe it will be returned to us?”

  “It will be restored,” Dearborn said smoothly. “Jia will be meeting with the Iron Sisters tomorrow. As it was forged, so can it be reforged.”

  “But it was forged in Heaven,” protested Trini. “Not the Adamant Citadel.”

  “And Heaven let it break,” said Dearborn, and Cristina suppressed a gasp. How could he claim such a brazen thing? Yet the others clearly trusted him. “Nothing can shatter the Mortal Sword save Raziel’s will. He looked upon us and he saw we were unworthy. He saw that we had turned away from his message, from our service to angels, and were serving Downworlders instead. He broke the sword to warn us.” His eyes glittered with a fanatic light. “If we prove ourselves worthy again, Raziel will allow the Sword to be reforged. I have no doubts.”

  How dare he speak for Raziel? How dare he speak as if he were God? Cristina shook with fury, but the others seemed to be looking at him as if he offered them a light in darkness. As if he were their only hope.

  “And how do we prove ourselves worthy?” said Balogh in a more somber voice.

  “We must remember that Shadowhunters were chosen,” said Horace. “We must remember that we have a mandate. We stand first in the face of evil, and therefore we come first. Let Downworlders look to their own. If we work together with strong leadership—”

  “But we don’t have strong leadership,” said Jessica Beausejours, one of Zara’s Centurion friends. “We have Jia Penhallow, and she is tainted by her daughter’s association with faeries and half-bloods.”

  There was a gasp and a titter. All eyes turned toward Horace, but he only shook his head. “I will not utter a word against our Consul,” he said primly.

  More murmurs. Clearly Horace’s pretense of loyalty had won him some support. Cristina tried not to grind her teeth.

  “Her loyalty to her family is understandable, even if it may have blinded her,” said Horace. “What matters now is the Laws the Clave passes. We must enforce strict regulations on Downworlders, the strictest of all on the Fair Folk—though there is nothing fair about them.”

  “That won’t stop the Unseelie King,” said Jessica, though Cristina got the feeling she didn’t so much doubt Horace as desire to prompt him to go further.

  “The issue is preventing faeries and other Downworlders from joining
the King’s cause,” said Horace. “That is why they need to be observed and, if necessary, incarcerated before they have a chance to betray us.”

  “Incarcerated?” Trini echoed. “But how—?”

  “Oh, there are several ways,” said Horace. “Wrangel Island, for instance, could hold a host of Downworlders. The important thing is that we begin with control. Enforcement of the Accords. Registration of each Downworlder, their name and location. We would start with the faeries, of course.”

  There was a buzz of approval.

  “We will, of course, need a strong Inquisitor to pass and enforce those laws,” said Horace.

  “Then let it be you!” cried Trini. “We have lost a Mortal Sword and an Inquisitor tonight; let us at least replace one. We have a quorum—enough Shadowhunters are here to put Horace forward for the Inquisitor’s position. We can hold the vote tomorrow morning. Who is with me?”

  A chant of “Dearborn! Dearborn!” filled the room. Cristina hung on to the railing of the balcony, her ears ringing. This couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. Trini wasn’t like that. Her mother’s friends weren’t like that. This couldn’t be the real face of the Council.

  She scrambled to her feet, unable to stand another second of it, and bolted from the gallery.

  * * *

  Emma’s room was small and painted an incongruously bright shade of yellow. A white-painted four-poster bed dominated the space. Emma tugged Julian toward it, sitting him down gently, and went to bolt the door.

  “Why are you locking it?” Julian raised his head. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left Ty’s room.

  “You need some privacy, Julian.” She turned toward him; God, the way he looked broke her heart. Blood freckled his skin, darkened his stiff clothes, had dried in patches on his boots.

  Livvy’s blood. Emma wished she’d been closer to Livvy in those last moments, paid more attention to her, rather than worrying about the Cohort, about Manuel and Zara and Jessica, about Robert Lightwood and exile, about her own broken, messed-up heart. She wished she had held Livvy one more time, marveling at how tall and grown-up she was, how she had changed from the chubby toddler Emma recalled in her own earliest memories.

  “Don’t,” Julian said roughly.

  Emma came closer to him; she couldn’t stop herself. He had to look up to meet her eyes. “Don’t do what?”

  “Blame yourself,” he said. “I can feel you thinking about how you should have done something different. I can’t let those kind of thoughts in, or I’ll go to pieces.”

  He was sitting on the very edge of the bed, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of lying down. Very gently, Emma touched his face, sliding the palm of her hand across his jaw. He shuddered and caught her wrist, hard.

  “Emma,” he said, and for one of the first times in her life, she couldn’t read his voice—it was low and dark, rough without being angry, wanting something, but she didn’t know what.

  “What can I do,” she breathed. “What can I do, I’m your parabatai, Julian, I need to help you.”

  He was still holding her wrist; his pupils were wide disks, turning the blue-green of his irises into halos. “I make plans one step at a time,” he said. “When everything seems overwhelming, I ask myself what problem needs to be solved first. When that’s solved, the next one. But I can’t even begin here.”

  “Julian,” she said. “I am your warrior partner. Listen to me now. This is the first step. Get up.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then obliged by rising to his feet. They were standing close together; she could feel the solidity and warmth of him. She pushed his jacket off his shoulders, then reached up and gripped the front of his shirt. It had a texture like oilcloth now, tacky with blood. She pulled at it and it tore open, leaving it hanging from his arms.

  Julian’s eyes widened but he made no move to stop her. She ripped away the shirt and tossed it to the ground. She bent down and yanked off his bloodied boots. When she rose up, he was looking at her with eyebrows raised.

  “You’re really going to rip my pants off?” he said.

  “They have her blood on them,” she said, almost choking on the words. She touched his chest, felt him draw in a breath. She imagined she could feel the jagged edges of his heart beneath the muscle. There was blood on his skin, too: Patches of it had dried on his neck, his shoulder. The places he had held Livvy close against him. “You need to shower,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”

  He touched her jaw, lightly, with the tips of his fingers. “Emma,” he said. “We both need to be clean.”

  He turned and went into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. After a moment, she followed.

  He had left the rest of his clothes in a pile on the floor. He was standing in the shower in just his underwear, letting the water run down over his face, his hair.

  Swallowing hard, Emma stripped down to her panties and camisole and stepped in after him. The water was scalding hot, filling the small stone space with steam. He stood unmoving under the spray, letting it streak his skin with pale scarlet.

  Emma reached around him and turned the temperature down. He watched her, wordless, as she took up a bar of soap and lathered it between her hands. When she put her soapy hands on his body he inhaled sharply as if it hurt, but he didn’t move even an inch.

  She scrubbed at his skin, almost digging her fingers in as she scraped at the blood. The water ran pinkish red into the drain. The soap had a strong smell of lemon. His body was hard under her touch, scarred and muscled, not a young boy’s body at all. Not anymore. When had he changed? She couldn’t remember the day, the hour, the moment.

  He bent his head and she worked the lather into his hair, stroking her fingers through the curls. When she was done, she tilted back his head, let the water run over both of them until it ran clear. She was soaked to the skin, her camisole sticking to her. She reached around Julian to turn the water off and felt him turn his head into her neck, his lips against her cheek.

  She froze. The shower had stopped running, but steam rose up around them. Julian’s chest was rising and falling fast, as if he were close to collapsing after a race. Dry sobs, she realized. He didn’t cry—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. He needed the release of tears, she thought, but he’d forgotten the mechanisms of weeping after so many years of holding back.

  She put her arms around him. “It’s all right,” she said. His skin was hot against hers. She swallowed the salt of her own tears. “Julian—”

  He drew back as she raised her head, and their lips brushed—and it was instant, desperate, more like a tumble over a cliff’s edge than anything else. Their mouths collided, teeth and tongues and heat, jolts shuddering through Emma at the contact.

  “Emma.” He sounded stunned, his hands knotting in the soaked material of her camisole. “Can I—?”

  She nodded, feeling the muscles in his arms tighten as he swung her up into his arms. She shut her eyes, clutching at him, his shoulders, his hair, her hands slippery with water as he carried her into her bedroom, tumbling her onto the bed. A second later he was above her, braced on his elbows, his mouth devouring hers feverishly. Every movement was fierce, frantic, and Emma knew: These were the tears he couldn’t cry, the words of grief he couldn’t speak. This was the relief he could only allow himself like this, in the annihilation of shared desire.

  Frantic gestures rid them of their wet garments. She and Julian were skin to skin now: She was holding him against her body, her heart. His hand slid down, shaking fingers dancing across her hipbone. “Let me—”

  She knew what he wanted to say: Let me please you, let me make you feel good first. But that wasn’t what she wanted, not now. “Come closer,” she whispered. “Closer—”

  Her hands curved over the wings of his shoulder blades. He kissed her throat, her collarbones. She felt him flinch, hard, and whispered, “What—?”

  He had already drawn away from her. Sitting up, he reached for
his clothes, pulling them on with shaking hands. “We can’t,” he said, his voice muffled. “Emma, we can’t.”

  “All right—but, Julian—” She struggled into a sitting position, pulling the blanket up over herself. “You don’t have to go—”

  He leaned over the edge of the bed to grab his torn and bloodied shirt. He looked at her with a sort of wildness. “I do,” he said. “I really do.”

  “Julian, don’t—”

  But he was already up, retrieving the rest of his clothes, yanking them on while she stared. He was gone without putting his boots on, almost slamming the door behind him. Emma stared into the darkness, as stunned and disoriented as if she had fallen from a great height.

  * * *

  Ty woke up suddenly, like someone exploding through the surface of water, gasping for air. The noise snapped Kit out of his doze—he’d been fitfully sleeping, dreaming about his father, walking around the Shadow Market with a massive wound across his stomach that seeped blood.

  “This is how it is, Kit,” he’d been saying. “This is life with the Nephilim.”

  Still half-asleep, Kit pushed himself up the wall with one hand. Ty was a motionless shadow on the bed. Diana was no longer there—she was probably catching a few moments of sleep in her own room. He was alone with Ty.

  It came to him how completely unprepared he was for all of this. For Livvy’s death, yes, though he’d seen his own father die, and he knew there were still aspects of that loss he hadn’t faced. Never having coped with that loss, how could he cope with this one? And given that he’d never known how to help anyone else, how to offer normal kinds of comfort, how could he help Ty?