Queen of Air and Darkness Read online

  The tea had about three thousand tablespoons of sugar in it, which was both sweet and sweet of Cristina, but it didn’t take the edge off the bitterness of the Inquisitor news.

  Emma was looking out the window when Cristina came in again, this time carrying a pile of clothes. She was dressed all in white, the color of Shadowhunter mourning and funerals. White gear jacket, white shirt, white flowers in her loose dark hair.

  Cristina frowned. “Come away from there.”

  “Why?” Emma glanced through the window; the house had a commanding view out over the lower part of the city. The walls were visible, and green fields beyond.

  She could see a line of very distant figures in white, filing through the gates of the city. In the center of the green fields, two massive stacks of kindling rose like pyramids.

  “They already built the pyres,” Emma said, and a wave of dizziness came over her. She felt Cristina’s warm hand close over hers, and a moment later they were both sitting on the edge of the bed and Cristina was telling her to breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go to pieces.”

  Some of Emma’s hair had come down out of its knot. Cristina’s hands were skillful as she reached up to tuck the strands back in place. “When my uncle died,” she said, “he was buried in Idris, and I could not come to the funeral, because my mother thought Idris was still dangerous. When she came home, I went to hug her and her clothes smelled like smoke. I thought: that is all there is left of my uncle now, this smoke on my mother’s jacket.”

  “I need to be strong,” Emma said. “I have to be there for the Blackthorns. Julian is—” Broken, smashed up, in pieces. Missing. No, not missing. Just not with me.

  “You can grieve Livvy too,” said Cristina. “She was a sister to you. Family is more than blood.”

  “But—”

  “Grief does not make us weak,” Cristina said firmly. “It makes us human. How could you comfort Dru, or Ty, or Jules, if you didn’t know what they missed about her? Sympathy is common. Knowing the exact shape of the hole someone’s loss leaves in your heart is rare.”

  “I don’t think any of us can understand the shape of what Ty lost,” said Emma. Her fear for Ty was intense, like a constant bitter taste in the back of her throat, mixing with her grief for Livvy until she thought she might choke.

  Cristina gave Emma a last pat on the hand. “You’d better get dressed,” she said. “I’ll be down in the kitchen.”

  Emma dressed in a half-dazed state. When she was done, she glanced at herself in the mirror. The white gear was covered with the scarlet runes of mourning, over and over, an overlapping pattern that became quickly meaningless to the eye like a word that is said repeatedly becomes meaningless to the ear. It made her hair and skin look paler, and even her eyes seemed cold. She looked like an icicle, she thought, or the blade of a knife.

  If only she had Cortana with her. She could go into Brocelind and scream and scream and slash at the air until she fell exhausted to the ground, the agony of loss seeping from her every pore like blood.

  Feeling incomplete without her sword, she headed downstairs.

  * * *

  Diana was in the kitchen when Ty came downstairs. There was no one with him, and her hand tightened on the glass she was holding so fiercely that her fingers ached.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. She’d sat with Ty much of the night as he slept, a dead, silent, unmoving sleep. She’d tried to remember how to pray to Raziel, but it had been such a long time. She had made offerings of incense and flowers in Thailand after her sister had died, but none of it had helped or come close to healing the hole in her heart where Aria should have been.

  And Livvy was Ty’s twin. Neither had ever known a world without the other one in it. Livvy’s last words had been Ty, I—. No one would ever know the rest of what she’d wanted to say. How could he cope? How could anyone?

  The Consul had provided them all with mourning clothes, which had been kind. Diana wore her own white gown and a gear jacket, and Ty was in full formal mourning dress. Elegantly cut white coat, white trousers and boots, his hair very stark and black against it all. For the first time Diana realized that when Ty grew up he was going to be stunning. She’d thought about him as an adorable child for so long it had never crossed her mind that one day the more adult concept of beauty or handsomeness might be applied to him.

  He frowned. He was very, very, pale, almost the color of bleached paper, but his hair was neatly brushed and he looked otherwise put together and almost ordinary. “Twenty-three minutes,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It will take us twenty-three minutes to get down to the Fields, and the ceremonies begin in twenty-five. Where is everyone?”

  Diana almost reached for her phone to text Julian before remembering phones didn’t work in Idris. Focus, she told herself. “I’m sure they’re on their way—”

  “I wanted to talk to Julian.” Ty didn’t sound demanding; he sounded more as if he were trying to remember a significant list of things he needed, in proper order. “He went with Livvy to the Silent City. I need to know what he saw and what they did to her there.”

  I wouldn’t have wanted to know those things about Aria, Diana thought, and immediately chided herself. She was not Ty. Ty took comfort from facts. He hated the unknown. Livvy’s body had been taken away and locked behind stone doors. Of course he would want to know: Had they honored her body, had they kept her things, had they cleaned the blood from her face? Only by knowing would he be able to understand.

  There was a clatter of feet on the stairs. Suddenly the kitchen was full of Blackthorns. Ty moved to stand out of the way as Dru came down, red-eyed in a gear jacket a size too small. Helen, carrying Tavvy, both of them in white; Aline and Mark, Aline with her hair up and small gold earrings in the shape of mourning runes. Diana realized with a start she had been looking for Kieran beside Mark, expecting him there now, and had forgotten he was gone.

  Cristina followed and then Emma, both subdued. Diana had put out toast and butter and tea, and Helen put Tavvy down and went to get him some. No one else seemed interested in eating.

  Ty glanced anxiously at the clock. A moment later Kit was downstairs, looking uncomfortable in a white gear jacket. Ty didn’t say anything, or even glance over at him, but the tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly.

  To Diana’s surprise, the last to come down the stairs was Julian. She wanted to run over to him to see if he was all right, but it had been a long time since he’d let her do that. If he ever had. He’d always been a self-contained boy, loath to show any negative emotion in front of his family.

  She saw Emma glance at him, but he didn’t return her glance. He was looking around the room, sizing up everyone’s moods, whatever mental calculations he was making invisible behind the shield of his blue-green eyes.

  “We should go,” he said. “They’ll wait for us, but not long, and we should be there for Robert’s ceremony.”

  There was something different about his voice; Diana couldn’t place it, exactly. The flatness of grief, most likely.

  Everyone turned toward him. He was the center, Diana thought, the fulcrum on which the family turned: Emma and Cristina stood back, not being Blackthorns, and Helen looked relieved when Julian spoke, as if she’d been dreading trying to corral the group.

  Tavvy went over to Julian and took his hand. They went out the door in a silent procession, a river of white flowing down the stone steps of the house.

  Diana couldn’t help thinking of her sister and how she had been burned in Thailand and her ashes sent back to Idris for burial in the Silent City. But Diana hadn’t been there for the funeral. At the time, she’d thought she’d never return to Idris again.

  As they passed along the street toward Silversteel Bridge, someone threw open a window overhead. A long white banner marked with a mourning rune tumbled out; Ty raised his head, and Diana realized that the bridge and then the stre
et, all the way to the city gates, were festooned with white banners. They strode between them, even Tavvy looking up and around in wonder.

  Perhaps they flew mostly for Robert, the Inquisitor, but they were also for Livvy. At least the Blackthorns would always have this, she thought, this remembrance of the honor that had been shown to their sister.

  She hoped the election of Horace as Inquisitor wouldn’t taint the day even more. Through all her life she had been aware of the uneasy truce not just between Shadowhunters and Downworlders but between those among the Nephilim who thought Downworlders should be embraced by the Clave—and those who did not. Many had celebrated when Downworlders had finally joined the Council after the Dark War. But she had heard the whispers of those who had not—those like Lazlo Balogh and Horace Dearborn. The Cold Peace had given them the liberty to express the hate in their hearts, confident that all right-thinking Nephilim agreed with them.

  She had always believed they were wrong, but the election of Horace filled her with fear that there were more Nephilim than she had ever dreamed who were irretrievably soaked in hatred.

  As they stepped onto the bridge, something brushed against Diana’s shoulder. She reached up to flick it away and realized it was a white flower—one of the kind that grew only in Idris. She looked up; clouds were scudding across the sky, pushed by a brisk wind, but she saw the outline of a man on horseback vanish behind one of them.

  Gwyn. The thought of him lit a spark of warmth in her heart. She closed her hand carefully around the petals.

  * * *

  The Imperishable Fields.

  That was what they were called, though most people called them simply the Fields. They stretched across the flat plains outside Alicante, from the city walls that had been built after the Dark War to the trees of Brocelind Forest.

  The breeze was soft and unique to Idris; in some ways Emma preferred the wind off the ocean in Los Angeles, with its sideways bite of salt. This wind felt too gentle for the day of Livvy’s funeral. It lifted her hair and blew her white dress around her knees; it made the white banners that were raised on either side of each pyre drift like ribbons across the sky.

  The ground sloped down from the city toward the woods, and as they neared the funeral pyres Cristina took Emma’s hand. Emma squeezed back gratefully as they came close enough to the crowd for Emma to see people staring and hear the mutters rise around them. There was sympathy for the Blackthorns, certainly, but also glares for her and Julian; Julian had brought Annabel into Idris, and Emma was the girl who had broken the Mortal Sword.

  “A blade as powerful as Cortana has no business in the hands of a child,” said a woman with blond hair as Emma passed by.

  “The whole thing smacks of dark magic,” said someone else.

  Emma decided to try not to listen. She stared straight ahead: She could see Jia standing between the pyres, all in white. Memories of the Dark War flooded over her. So many people in white; so very many burning pyres.

  Beside Jia stood a woman with long red hair who Emma recognized as Clary’s mother, Jocelyn. Beside her was Maryse Lightwood, her black hair loose down her back. It was liberally threaded with gray. She seemed to be speaking intently to Jia, though they were too far away for Emma to hear what they were saying.

  Both pyres were finished, though the bodies had not been brought from the Silent City yet. Quite a few Shadowhunters had gathered—no one was required to attend funerals, but Robert had been popular, and his and Livvy’s deaths shocking in their horror.

  Robert’s family stood close to the pyre on the right—the ceremonial robes of the Inquisitor had been draped across the top. They would burn with him. Surrounding the kindling were Alec and Magnus, Simon and Isabelle, all in ritual mourning clothes, even little Max and Rafe. Isabelle looked up at Emma as she approached and waved a greeting; her eyes were swollen from crying.

  Simon, beside her, looked tense as a drawn bowstring. He was glancing around, his gaze darting among the people in the crowd. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking for the same people she was—the people who by all rights ought to be here when Robert Lightwood was laid to rest.

  Where were Jace and Clary?

  * * *

  The Shadowhunters had rarely seemed as alien to Kit as they did now. They were everywhere, dressed in their white, a color he associated with weddings and Easter. The banners, the runes, the glittering demon towers in the distance—all of it combined to make him feel as if he were on another planet.

  Not to mention that the Shadowhunters didn’t cry. Kit had been to funerals before, and seen them on TV. People held handkerchiefs and sobbed into them. But not here; here they were silent, pulled taut, and the sound of birds was louder than the sound of talking or crying.

  Not that Kit was crying himself, and not that he had cried when his father died. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but his father had always made it sound like to break down in grief meant you would be broken forever. Kit owed too much to the Blackthorns, especially Ty, to let himself shatter over Livvy. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She would have wanted him to be there for Ty.

  One after another the Nephilim came up to the Blackthorns and offered their condolences. Julian had placed himself at the head of his family like a shield and was coolly fending off all cordial attempts to talk to his brothers and sisters, who stood in a group behind him. Julian seemed colder and more removed than usual, but that wasn’t surprising. Grief hit everyone in different ways.

  It did mean he’d let go of Tavvy’s hand, though, so Tavvy had gone over to stand next to Dru, pressing himself into her side. It also left Ty on his own, and Kit made his way over to the other boy, feeling resplendently silly in white leather pants and jacket. He knew it was a formal mourning outfit, but it made him feel like he was cosplaying someone in an eighties music video.

  “Funerals are always so sad,” said a woman who had introduced herself as Irina Cartwright, staring at Julian with a deep pitying stare. When he didn’t respond, she shifted her gaze to Kit. “Don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Kit. “My father was eaten by demons.”

  Irina Cartwright looked discomfited and hurried away after a few more trite phrases. Julian raised an eyebrow at Kit before greeting the next mourner.

  “Do you still have . . . the phone?” Kit asked Ty, and felt immediately like an idiot. Who went up to someone at their twin sister’s funeral and asked them if they had their phone? Especially when there was no signal anywhere in Idris? “I mean. Not that you can call. Anyone.”

  “There’s one phone in Idris that works. It’s in the Consul’s office,” said Ty. He didn’t look like he was cosplaying an eighties music-video star; he looked icy and striking and—

  The word “beautiful” blinked on and off in Kit’s head like a flickering neon sign. He ignored it.

  Elegant. Ty looked elegant. People with dark hair probably just looked naturally better in white.

  “It’s not the phone signal I need,” said Ty. “It’s the photos on the phone.”

  “Photos of Livvy?” Kit asked, confused.

  Ty stared at him. Kit remembered the days in London, in which they’d been working together, solving—well, solving mysteries. Like Watson and Holmes. He hadn’t ever felt like he didn’t understand Ty. But he felt it now.

  “No,” Ty said.

  He glanced around. Kit wondered if the growing number of people was bothering Ty. He hated crowds. Magnus and Alec were standing with their kids near the Consul; they were with a beautiful black-haired girl with eyebrows just like Alec’s and a boy—well, he was probably in his twenties—with untidy brown hair. The boy gave Kit a considering look that seemed to say you look familiar. Several people had done the same. Kit guessed it was because he looked like Jace, if Jace had suffered a sudden and unexpected height, muscle, and overall hotness reduction.

  “I need to talk to you, later,” Ty said, his voice low, and Kit wasn’t sure whether to be worried or grateful. A
s far as he knew, Ty hadn’t really talked to anyone since Livvy died.

  “You don’t—want to talk to your brother? To Julian?”

  “No. I need to talk to you.” Ty hesitated, as if he was about to say something else.

  There was a low, mournful sound as if of a horn blowing, and people turned to stare back at the city. Kit followed their gazes and saw that a procession was leaving the gates. Dozens of Silent Brothers in their parchment uniforms, walking in two lines on either side of two biers. The biers were carried at shoulder height by Council guards.

  They were too distant for Kit to see which bier was Livvy’s: He could see only a body lying on each platform, wrapped in white. And then they came closer, and he saw that one body was much smaller than the other, and he turned to Ty without being able to stop himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ty was looking toward the city. One of his hands was opening and closing, his long fingers curling under, but other than that he showed no signs of any emotion. “There really isn’t any reason for you to be sorry,” he said. “So please don’t be.”

  Kit stood without speaking. There was a cold tension inside him, a fear he couldn’t shake—that he had lost not just Livvy but Ty as well.

  * * *

  “They haven’t come back yet,” Isabelle said. She was composed, immaculate in gear, a white silk band holding back her hair. She was holding Simon’s hand, her knuckles as white as the flower in her lapel.

  Emma had always thought of grief as a claw. The claw of a massive monster you couldn’t see, that reached down out of the sky and seized hold of you, punching out your breath, leaving only a pain you couldn’t wriggle away from or avoid. You just had to endure it for as long as the claw had you in its grasp.

  She could see the pain of it in Isabelle’s eyes, behind her calm exterior, and part of her wanted to reach out and hug the other girl. She wished Clary were here—Clary and Isabelle were like sisters, and Clary could comfort Izzy in the way only a best friend could.