Queen of Air and Darkness Read online

  “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?

  He wanted to shout for Julian, but something told him not to—that the shouting might alarm Ty. As Kit’s eyes adjusted, he could see the other boy more clearly: Ty looked . . . “disconnected” might be the best word for it, as if he hadn’t quite alighted back on earth. His soft black hair seemed crumpled, like dark linen, and there were shadows under his eyes.

  “Jules?” he said, his voice low.

  Kit pushed himself fully upright, his heart beating unevenly. “It’s me,” he said. “Kit.”

  He had braced himself for Ty’s disappointment, but Ty only looked at him with wide gray eyes. “My bag,” Ty said. “Where is it? Is it over there?”

  Kit was too stunned to speak. Did Ty remember what had happened? Would it be worse if he did or didn’t?

  “My duffel bag,” Ty said. There was definite strain in his voice now. “Over there—I need it.”

  The duffel bag was under the second bed. As Kit went to retrieve it, he glanced out at the view—the crystal spires of the demon towers reaching toward the sky, the water glimmering like ice in the canals, the walls of the city and the fields beyond. He had never been in a place so beautiful or so unreal-looking.

  He carried the bag over to Ty, who was sitting with his legs dangling over the side of the bed. Ty took the duffel and started to rummage through it.

  “Do you want me to get Julian?” Kit said.

  “Not right now,” Ty said.

  Kit had no idea what to do. He’d never in his entire life had so little idea what to do, in fact. Not when he’d found a golem examining the ice cream in his fridge at four a.m. when he was ten. Not when a mermaid had camped out for weeks on his sofa when he was twelve and spent every day eating goldfish crackers.

  Not even when he’d been attacked by Mantid demons. There had been an instinct then, a Shadowhunter sense that had kicked in and propelled his body into action.

  Nothing was propelling him now. He was overwhelmed by the desire to drop down to his knees and grab Ty’s hands, and hold him the way he had on the rooftop in London when Livvy had been hurt. At the same time, he was just as overwhelmed by the voice in his head that told him that would be a terrible idea, that he had no clue what Ty needed right now.

  Ty was still rustling around in his bag. He must not remember, Kit thought with rising panic. He must have blanked out the events in the Council Hall. Kit hadn’t been there when Robert and Livvy died, but he’d heard enough from Diana to know what Ty must have witnessed. People forgot horrible things sometimes, he knew, their brains simply refusing to process or store what they’d seen.

  “I’ll get Helen,” he said finally. “She can tell you—what happened—”

  “I know what happened,” Ty said. He had located his phone, in the bottom of the bag. The tension left his body; his relief was clear. Kit was baffled. There was no signal anywhere in Idris; the phone would be useless. “I’m going to go back to sleep now,” Ty said. “There are still drugs in my system. I can feel them.” He didn’t sound pleased.

  “Should I stay?” Kit said. Ty had tossed the duffel bag onto the floor and lain back on the pillows. He was gripping the phone in his right hand, so tightly that his knuckles were white, but otherwise he showed no recognizable signs of distress.

  He looked up at Kit. His gray eyes were silver in the moonlight, flat as two quarters. Kit couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. “Yes, I’d rather you did,” he said. “And go to sleep if you want. I’ll be fine.”

  He closed his eyes. After a long moment, Kit sat down on the bed opposite Ty’s, the one that was supposed to be Livvy’s. He thought of the last time he’d seen her alone, helping her with her necklace before the big Council meeting, the way she’d smiled, the color and life in her face. It seemed absolutely impossible that she was gone. Maybe Ty wasn’t the one acting oddly at all—maybe the rest of them, in accepting the fact of her death, were the ones who didn’t understand.

  * * *

  It felt like a hundred miles between Emma’s room and his, Julian thought. Like a thousand. He made his way through the halls of the canal house as if he were in a dream.

  His shoulder burned and ached.

  Emma was the only person he had ever desired, and the force of that desire sometimes stunned him. Never more than tonight. He had lost himself in her, in them, for some totality of time; he had felt only his body and the part of his heart that loved and was uninjured. Emma was all the good in him, he thought, all that burned bright.

  But then the pain had come, and the sense of something wrong, and he had known. As he hurried toward his room, fear tapped against the outside of his consciousness, howling to be let in and acknowledged, like skeleton hands scratching at a window. It was the fear of his own despair. He knew that he was cushioned by shock now, that he had only touched the tip of the iceberg of grief and howling loss. It would come, the darkness and the horror: He had lived through it before, with the loss of his father.

  And this—Livvy—would be worse. He couldn’t control his grief. He couldn’t control his feelings for Emma. His whole life had been built around exerting control over himself, over the mask he showed the world, and now it was cracking.

  “Jules?”

  He had reached his bedroom, but he wasn’t home free. Mark was waiting for him, leaning against the door. He looked bone tired, hair and clothes rumpled. Not that Julian had any ground to stand on, since his own clothes were torn and bloody, his feet bare.

  Julian stopped dead. “Is everything all right?”

  They were going to be asking each other that constantly for quite some time, he guessed. And it never would really be okay, but they would reassure each other anyway about the small things, the measure of tiny victories: yes, Dru slept a little; yes, Ty is eating a bit; yes, we’re all still breathing. Julian listened mechanically as Mark explained to him that he and Helen had picked up Tavvy, and Tavvy knew about Livia now, and it wasn’t good but it was all right and Tavvy was sleeping.

  “I didn’t want to bother you in the middle of the night,” Mark said, “but Helen insisted. She said otherwise the first thing that would happen when you woke up was that you’d freak out about Tavvy.”

  “Sure,” said Julian, amazed he sounded so coherent. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  Mark gave him a long look. “You were very young when we lost Eleanor, your mother,” he said. “She told me once there is a clock in the hearts of parents. Most of the time it is silent, but you can hear it ticking when your child is not with you and you do not know where they are, or when they are awake in the night and wanting you. It will tick until you are with them again.”

  “Tavvy isn’t my child,” said Julian. “I’m not a parent.”

  Mark touched his brother’s cheek. It was almost more a faerie touch than a human one, though Mark’s hand felt warm and calloused and real. Actually, it didn’t feel like a touch at all, Julian thought. It felt like a blessing. “You know you are,” Mark said. “I must ask your forgiveness, Julian. I told Helen of your sacrifice.”

  “My—sacrifice?” Julian’s mind was a blank.

  “The years you ran the Institute in secret,” said Mark. “How you have taken care of the children. The way they look to you, and how you have loved them. I know it was a secret, but I thought she should know it.”

  “That�
�s fine,” Julian said. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. “Was she angry?”

  Mark looked surprised. “She said she felt such pride in you that it broke her heart.”

  It was like a tiny point of light, breaking through the darkness. “She—did?”

  Mark seemed about to reply when a second hot dart of pain went through Julian’s shoulder. He knew exactly the location of that twinge. His heartbeat sped up; he said something to Mark about seeing him later, or at least he thought he did, before going into his bedroom and bolting the door. He was in the bathroom in seconds, turning up the witchlight’s brilliance as he gazed into the mirror.

  He drew aside the collar of his shirt to get a better look—and stared.

  There was his parabatai rune. It was stark against his skin—but no longer black. Within the thickly drawn lines he saw what looked like red and glowing flecks, as if the rune had begun to burn from the inside out.

  He grabbed the rim of the sink as a wave of dizziness passed over him. He’d been forcing himself not to think about what Robert’s death meant, about their broken plans for exile. About the curse that would come on any parabatai who fell in love. A curse of power and destruction. He had been thinking only of how much he desperately needed Emma, and not at all of the reasons that he couldn’t have her, which remained unchanged.

  They had forgotten, reaching for each other in the abyss of grief, as they had always reached for each other all their lives. But it couldn’t happen, Julian told himself, biting down hard on his lip, tasting his own blood. There could be no more destruction.

  It had begun to rain outside. He could hear the soft patter on the roof of the house. He bent down and tore a strip of material from the shirt he’d worn at the Council meeting. It was stiff and dark with his sister’s dried blood.

  He tied it around his right wrist. It would stay there until he had vengeance. Until there was justice for Livvy. Until all this bloody mess was cleared up. Until everyone he loved was safe.

  He went back out into the bedroom and began to hunt for clean clothes and shoes. He knew exactly where he needed to go.

  * * *

  Julian ran through the empty streets of Idris. Warm summer rain plastered his hair to his forehead and soaked his shirt and jacket.

  His heart was pounding: He missed Emma already, regretted leaving her. And yet he couldn’t stop running, as if he could outrun the pain of Livvy’s death. It was almost a surprise that he could grieve his sister and love Emma at the same time and feel both, neither diminishing the other: Livvy had loved Emma too.

  He could imagine how thrilled Livvy would have been to know he and Emma were together; if it were possible for them to get married, Livvy would have been wild with delight at the idea of helping plan a wedding. The thought was like a stabbing blow to the midsection, the twist of a blade in his guts.

  Rain was splashing down into the canals, turning the world to mist and water. The Inquisitor’s house loomed up out of the fog like a shadow, and Julian ran up the front steps with such force that he nearly crashed into the front door. He knocked and Magnus opened it, looking pinched and unusually pale. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans with a blue silk robe thrown over them. His hands were bare of their usual rings.

  When he saw Julian, he sagged a little against the doorframe. He didn’t move or speak, just stared, as if he were looking not at Julian but at something or someone else.

  “Magnus,” Julian said, a little alarmed. He recalled that Magnus wasn’t well. He’d nearly forgotten it. Magnus had always seemed the same: eternal, immutable, invulnerable. “I—”

  “I’m here on my own account,” Magnus said, in a low and distant voice. “I need your help. There is absolutely no one else that I can ask.”

  “That’s not what I . . .” Julian pushed sopping-wet hair out of his eyes, his voice trailing off in realization. “You’re remembering someone.”

  Magnus seemed to shake himself a little, like a dog emerging from the sea. “Another night, a different boy with blue eyes. Wet weather in London, but when was it anything else?”

  Julian didn’t press it. “Well, you’re right. I do need your help. And there isn’t anyone else I can ask.”

  Magnus sighed. “Come in, then. But be quiet. Everyone’s asleep, and that’s an achievement, considering.”

  Of course, Julian thought, following Magnus into a central drawing room. This was also a house of grief.

  The interior of the house was grand in its scope, with high ceilings and furniture that looked heavy and expensive. Robert seemed to have added little in terms of personality and decoration. There were no family pictures, and little art on the wall besides generic landscapes.

  “I haven’t seen Alec cry in a long time,” Magnus said, sinking onto the sofa and staring into the middle distance. Julian stood where he was, dripping onto the carpet. “Or Isabelle. I understand what it’s like to have a father who’s a bastard. He’s still your bastard. And he did love them, and tried to make amends. Which is more than you can say for mine.” He flicked a glance at Julian. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t use a drying spell on you. I’m trying to conserve energy. There’s a blanket on that chair.”

  Julian ignored the blanket and the chair. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  Magnus’s gaze dropped to the bloody cloth tied around Julian’s wrist. His expression softened. “It’s all right,” he said. “For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling despair. It makes me lash out. My Alec lost his father, and the Clave has lost a decent Inquisitor. But you, you lost your hope of salvation. Don’t think I don’t understand that.”

  “My rune started to burn,” Julian said. “Tonight. As if it had been drawn on my skin with fire.”

  Magnus hunched forward and rubbed wearily at his face. Lines of pain and tiredness were etched beside his mouth. His eyes looked sunken. “I wish I knew more about it,” he said. “What destruction this will bring to you, to Emma. To others.” He paused. “I should be kinder to you. You’ve lost a child.”

  “I thought it would wipe everything else out,” Julian said, his voice scraped raw. “I thought there wouldn’t be anything else in my heart but agony, but there’s room in there for me to be terrified for Ty, and panicked about Dru, and there’s room for more hate than I ever thought anyone could feel.” The pain in his parabatai rune flared, and he felt his legs give out.

  He staggered and went down on his knees in front of Magnus. Magnus didn’t seem surprised that he was kneeling. He only looked down at Julian with a quiet, rarefied patience, like a priest hearing a confession.

  “What hurts more,” Magnus asked, “the love or the hate?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. He dug wet fingers into the carpet on either side of his knees. He felt as if he were having a hard time catching his breath. “I still love Emma more than I ever thought was possible. I love her more every day, and more every time I try to stop. I love her like I’m being ripped in half. And I want to cut the throats of everyone in the Cohort.”

  “There’s an unconventional love speech,” Magnus said, leaning forward. “What about Annabel?”

  “I hate her, too,” said Julian, without emotion. “There’s plenty of room for me to hate them all.”

  Magnus’s cat eyes glittered. “Don’t think I don’t know what you feel,” he said. “And there is something I could do. It would be a stopgap. A harsh one. And I wouldn’t do it lightly.”

  “Please.” Kneeling on the ground in front of the warlock, Julian looked up; he had never begged for anything in his life, but he didn’t care if he was begging now. “I know you’re sick, I know I shouldn’t even ask, but I have nothing else I can do and nowhere else I can go.”

  Magnus sighed. “There would be consequences. Have you ever heard the expression ‘the sleep of reason brings forth monsters’?”

  “Yes,” Julian said. “But I’m going to be a monster either way.”

  Magnus stood up. For a moment he seemed to tower
over Julian, a figure as tall and dark as the grim reaper in a child’s nightmare.

  “Please,” Julian said again. “I don’t have anything left to lose.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Magnus. He raised his left hand and looked at it quizzically. Cobalt sparks had begun to burn at the tips of each of his fingers. “Oh yes, you do.”

  The room lit with blue fire, and Julian closed his eyes.

  3

  ETERNAL REST

  The funeral was set for noon, but Emma had been tossing and turning since three or four in the morning. Her eyes felt dry and itchy and her hands shook as she brushed her hair and wound it carefully into a knot on the back of her head.

  After Julian had left, she’d run to the window, wrapped in a sheet, and stared out in mingled shock and disbelief. She’d seen him come out of the house and run into the drizzling rain, not even bothering to slow down to zip his jacket.

  After that, there hadn’t seemed like much she could do. It wasn’t like Julian was in danger in the streets of Alicante. Still, she’d waited until she heard his step on the stairs, returning, and heard his bedroom door open and close.

  She’d gotten up then and gone to check on Ty, who was still asleep, Kit beside him. She’d realized Livvy’s duffel bag was still in the room and taken it, afraid that it would hurt Ty to see it when he woke up. In her room, she’d sat on the bed and unzipped it briefly. There hadn’t been much to Livvy’s scant belongings—some shirts and skirts, a book, carefully packed toothbrush and soap. One of the shirts had dirt on it, and Emma thought maybe she should wash Livvy’s clothes, maybe that would be helpful, and then she’d realized exactly why it wouldn’t be helpful and didn’t matter and she’d curled up over the bag, sobbing as if her heart would crack in half.

  In the end, she’d fallen into a fitful sleep full of dreams of fire and blood. She’d been woken up by the sound of Cristina knocking on her door with a mug of tea and the unpleasant news that Horace had been elected the new Inquisitor in an emergency vote that morning. She’d already told the rest of the family, who were awake and readying themselves for the funeral.