Queen of Air and Darkness

by Cassandra Clare

  “I know.” Julian’s hands were shaking. “I already went through it in Thule. I can—do it again.”

  “It made you sick in Thule,” Emma said. “On the beach.”

  Julian looked at her. And Emma’s heart leaped: In that look was everything, all of her Julian, her parabatai and best friend and first love. In it was the shining connection that had always bound them.

  He smiled. A careful smile, thoughtful. In it she saw a thousand memories: of childhood and sunshine, playing in the water as it rushed up and down the beach, of Julian always saving the best and biggest seashells for her. Carefully holding her hand in his when she’d cut it on a piece of glass and was too young for an iratze. He’d cried when they stitched it up, because he knew she didn’t want to even though the pain was awful. He’d asked her for a lock of her hair when they both turned twelve, because he wanted to learn to paint the color. She remembered sitting on the beach with him when they were sixteen; the strap of her swimsuit had fallen down and she recalled the sharp hitch of his breath, the way he’d looked away quickly.

  How had she not known? she thought. How he felt. How she felt herself. The way they looked at each other wasn’t the way Alec looked at Jace, or Clary at Simon.

  “Emma,” Julian whispered. “Your Marks . . .”

  She shook her head, tears bitter in the back of her throat. It’s done.

  The look on his face broke her heart. He knew there was no point arguing that he should be the one to have his Marks stripped instead, Emma thought. He could read her again, just like she could read him.

  “Julian,” Magnus said. “Give me your arm. The left one.”

  Julian tore his gaze away from Emma’s and offered his scarred arm to Magnus.

  Magnus ran his blue-sparking fingers with surprising gentleness along Julian’s forearm, and the incised letters, one by one, faded and disappeared. When he was done, he released Julian and looked between him and Emma. “I’ll give you a small piece of good news,” he said. “You weren’t parabatai when you were in Thule. That was an injury to your bond that’s healing. So you have a small cushion of time during which the bond will be weaker.”

  Thank the Angel. “How long?” Emma said.

  “That depends on you. Love is powerful, and the more you’re together, and let yourself feel what you do, the stronger it’ll be. You need to stay away from each other. To not touch each other. Not speak to each other. Try not to even think about each other.” He waved his arms like an octopus. “If you find yourselves thinking fondly of each other, for God’s sake stop yourselves right away.”

  They both stared at him.

  “We can’t do that forever,” Emma said.

  “I know. But hopefully, when the Cohort is gone, we’ll have a new Inquisitor who can gift you with exile. And hopefully it’ll happen soon.”

  “Exile is a pretty bitter gift,” Julian said.

  Magnus’s smile was full of sorrow. “Many gifts are.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t hard to find Kieran. He hadn’t gone very far; he was standing in the hallway near one of the windows that looked out over the hills. He had his palm pressed flat against the glass, as if he could touch the sand and desert flowers through the barrier.

  “Kieran,” Mark said, stopping before he reached him. Cristina stopped too; there was something remote in Kieran’s expression, something distant. The awkwardness that had been between all of them since the night before was still there too, forbidding simple gestures of comfort.

  “I fear my people will be murdered and my country will be destroyed,” Kieran said. “That all the beauty and magic of Faerie will be dissolved and forgotten.”

  “Faeries are strong and magical and wise,” said Cristina. “They have lived through all the ages of mortals. These—these culeros cannot wipe them out.”

  “I will not forget the beauty of Faerie and neither will you,” said Mark. “But it will not come to that.”

  Kieran turned to look at them with unseeing eyes. “We need a good King. We need to find Adaon. He must take the throne from Oban and end this madness.”

  “If you want to find Adaon, we will find him. Helen knows how to reach Nene. She can ask Nene to find him in the Seelie Court,” said Cristina.

  “I did not want to presume she would do that for me,” Kieran said.

  “She knows how dear you are to me,” said Mark, and Cristina nodded in agreement. Helen, part-faerie herself, would surely understand.

  But Kieran only half-closed his eyes, as if in pain. “I thank you. Both of you.”

  “There is no need to be so formal—” Cristina began.

  “There is every need,” Kieran said. “What we had last night—I was happy in those moments, and I know now we will not ever have it again. I will lose one of you and possibly I will lose both of you. In fact, it seems the most likely outcome.”

  He looked from Mark to Cristina. Neither of them moved or spoke. The moment stretched on and on; Cristina felt paralyzed. She longed to reach out to both of them, but perhaps they had already decided? Perhaps it truly was impossible, just as Kieran said. Surely he would know. And Mark looked agonized—surely he would not look like that if he did not have the same fears she did? And Kieran—

  Kieran’s mouth set in a hard line. “Forgive me. I must go.”

  Cristina watched him hurry away, vanishing into the shadows at the end of the corridor. Outside the window, she saw Alec and Magnus emerge from the back door of the Institute into the bright sunlight. Clary and Jace followed. It was clear they were bidding Magnus and Alec good-bye for now.

  Mark leaned his back against the window. “I wish Kieran understood he would be a great King.”

  The light through the window edged his pale hair with gilt. His eyes burned amber and sapphire. Her golden boy. Though Kieran’s silver darkness was just as beautiful, in its own way.

  “We must talk in private, Mark,” Cristina said. “Meet me outside the Institute tonight.”

  * * *

  Emma and Julian left the library in silence, and made it back to her room in the same silence before Julian finally spoke.

  “I should leave you here,” he said, gesturing at her door. He sounded as if his throat hurt—gruff and husky. His sleeve was still rolled up to the elbow, showing the healed skin of his forearm. She wanted to touch it—to touch him, to reassure herself he was back to himself. Her Julian again. “Will you be all right?”

  How could I be all right? She reached for the knob blindly, couldn’t make herself turn it. The words Magnus had spoken whirled in her brain. Curse, Marks stripped, stay away from each other.

  She turned around, pressing her back against the wood of the door. Looked at him for the first time since they’d been in the library. “Julian,” she whispered. “What do we do? We can’t live without talking to each other or even thinking about each other. It’s not possible.”

  He didn’t move. She drank in the sight of him like an alcoholic promising themselves this was the last bottle. She had kept it together for what felt like so long by telling herself that when the spell was over, she’d have him back. Not as a romantic partner, even, but as Jules: her best friend, her parabatai.

  But perhaps they had just exchanged one kind of cage for another.

  She wondered if he thought the same. His face was no longer blank: It was alive with color, emotion; he looked stunned, as if he’d come up too quickly from a deep sea dive and the pain of the bends had just struck him.

  He took her face in his hands. His palms curved against her cheeks: He held her with a light, gentle wonder that she associated with the reverent handling of precious and breakable objects.

  Her knees went weak. Amazing, she thought; Julian under the spell could kiss her bare skin and she felt hollow inside. This Julian—her real Julian—touched her face lightly and she was swamped by a yearning so strong it was almost pain.

  “We have to,” he said. “In Alicante, before I went to Magnus to ask him to p
ut the spell on me, it was because I knew—” He swallowed hard. “After we almost—on the bed—I felt my rune starting to burn.”

  “That’s why you ran out of the room?”

  “I could feel the curse.” He ducked his head. “My rune was burning. I could see flames under my skin.”

  “You didn’t tell me that part.” Emma’s mind whirled; she remembered what Diana had said in Thule: Their runes began to burn like fire. As if they had fire in their veins instead of blood.

  “This is the first time it mattered,” he said. She could see everything that had seemed invisible to her before: the bruise-dark shadows under his eyes, the lines of tension beside his mouth. “Before this, I had the spell on me, or we were in Thule and nothing could happen. We weren’t parabatai there.”

  She caught at his left wrist. He flinched; it wasn’t pain, though. She knew that instinctively. It was the intensity of every touch; she felt it too, like the reverberation of a bell. “Are you sorry that Magnus took the spell off you?”

  “No,” he said immediately. “I need to be at my best right now. I need to be able to help with what’s happening. The spell made me into a person I don’t want to be. A person I don’t like or even trust. And I can’t have someone I don’t trust around you—around the kids. You matter too much to me.”

  She shivered, still holding his wrist. His palms were rough against her cheeks; he smelled of turpentine and soap. She felt as if she were dying; she had lost him, gained him back, was losing him again.

  “Magnus told us we had a cushion of time. We just have to—to do what he says. Stay away from each other. It’s all we can do for now,” Julian said.

  “I don’t want to stay away from you,” she whispered.

  His eyes were fixed on her, relentless sea-glass blue. Dark as the sky in Thule. His voice was restrained, quiet, but the raw hunger in his gaze was like a scream.

  “Maybe if we kiss one last time,” he said roughly. “Get it out of our systems.”

  Did someone dying of thirst refuse water? All Emma had to do was nod and they fell into each other with such force that her bedroom door rattled in its frame. Anyone could come along the hall and see them, she knew. She didn’t care. She grabbed his hair, the back of his shirt; her head hit the door as their mouths crashed together.

  She opened her lips under his, making him moan and swear and pull her up against him, harder and harder, as if he could smash their bones to pieces against each other, fuse them into a single skeleton. She clawed his shirt into fistfuls in her hands; his fingers raked her sides, tangled in her hair. Emma was aware of how close they were to something truly dangerous—she could feel the strain in his body, not from the effort of holding her, but of holding himself back.

  She felt behind her for the knob of the door. Twisted it. It swung open behind her and they stumbled apart.

  It felt like having her skin ripped away. Like agony. Her rune ached with a deep pain. Halfway into her room, she hung on to the door as if nothing else would keep her standing.

  Julian was gasping, disheveled; she felt as if she could hear his heart beating. Maybe it was her own, a deafening drumbeat in her ears. “Emma—”

  “Why?” she said, her voice shaking. “Why would something this horrible happen because of the parabatai bond? It’s supposed to be something so good. Maybe the Queen was right and it’s evil.”

  “You don’t—trust the Queen,” Julian said breathlessly. His eyes were all pupil: black with a rim of blue. Emma’s heart beat like a supernova, a collapsing dark star of frustrated longing.

  “I don’t know who to trust. ‘There is a corruption at the heart of the bond of parabatai. A poison. A darkness in it that mirrors its goodness.’ That’s what the Queen said.”

  The hand at Julian’s side clenched into a fist. “But the Queen—”

  It’s more than the Queen. I should tell him. What Diana said in Thule about parabatai. But Emma held back: He was in no state to hear it, and besides, they both knew what they needed to do.

  “You know what has to happen,” she said finally, her voice barely more than a whisper. “What Magnus said. We have a little time. We need to not—not push it.”

  His eyes were bleak, haunted. He didn’t move. “Tell me to go away,” he said. “Tell me to leave you.”

  “Julian—”

  “I will always do what you ask me to do, Emma,” he said, his voice harsh. The bones of his face seemed suddenly too sharp and pronounced, as if they were cutting through his skin. “Please. Ask me.”

  She remembered the time all those years ago when Julian had put Cortana in her arms and she had held it so tightly it had left a scar. She remembered the pain and the blood. And the gratitude.

  He had given her what she needed then. She would give him what he needed now.

  She raised her chin. It might hurt like death, but she could do this. I am of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal.

  “Go away, Julian,” she said, putting every ounce of steel she could into the words. “I want you to go away and leave me alone.”

  Even though he had asked her to say it, even though he knew it wasn’t her real wish, he still flinched as if the words were arrows piercing his skin.

  He gave a short, jerky nod. Turned with sharp precision. Walked away.

  She closed her eyes. As his footsteps receded down the hall, she felt the pain in her parabatai rune fade, and told herself that it didn’t matter. It would never happen again.

  * * *

  Kit was lurking about in the shadows. Not because he wanted to, precisely; he liked to think he’d turned over a new leaf and was less prone to lurking and planning underhanded deeds than he used to be.

  Which, he realized, might be an exaggeration. Necromancy was pretty underhanded, even half-hearted participation in necromancy. Maybe it was like the tree falling in the forest: If no one knew about your necromantic activities, were they still underhanded?

  Pressing himself back against the wall of the Institute, he decided that they probably were.

  He’d come outside to talk to Jace, not realizing when he saw Jace heading out the back door that he was on his way to join Clary, Alec, and Magnus. Kit realized he’d wandered into their good-byes, and scrunched himself awkwardly into the shadows, hoping not to be noticed.

  Clary had hugged Alec and Magnus, and Jace had given Magnus a friendly high five. Then he’d grabbed hold of Alec and they’d hugged each other for what seemed like hours or possibly years. They’d patted each other on the back and clung on while Clary and Magnus looked on indulgently.

  Being parabatai did seem like intense stuff, Kit thought, rolling his shoulders to get rid of the crick in his neck. And oddly, it had been a long time since he’d thought about being Ty’s parabatai. Maybe it was because Ty was in no shape to make that kind of decision.

  Maybe it was something else, but he pushed away from the thought as Alec and Jace let go of each other. Jace stepped back, sliding his hand into Clary’s. Magnus raised his hands, and the blue sparks flew from his fingers to create the whirling door of a Portal.

  The wind that blew from it kicked up dust and sand; Kit squinted, barely able to see as Alec and Magnus stepped through. When the wind died down, he saw that Alec and Magnus were gone, and Jace and Clary were headed back to the Institute, hand in hand.

  Kit closed his eyes and banged his head silently against the wall.

  “Do you do that because you enjoy it, or because it feels good when you stop?” said a voice.

  Kit’s eyes popped open. Jace was standing in front of him, muscular arms crossed, an amused look on his face. Clary must have gone inside.

  “Sorry,” Kit muttered.

  “Don’t apologize. It doesn’t make any difference to me if you want to scramble your brains like eggs.”

  Grumbling, Kit stepped out of the shadows and stood blinking in the sun, dusting off his shirt. “I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want to interrupt all the good-bye hugging,
” he said.

  “Alec and I are unafraid to express our manly love,” said Jace. “Sometimes he carries me around like a swooning damsel.”

  “Really?” said Kit.

  “No,” said Jace. “I’m very heavy, especially when fully armed. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Actually, that,” said Kit.

  “My weight?”

  “Weapons.”

  Jace looked delighted. “I knew you were a Herondale. This is excellent news. What do you want to discuss? Types of swords? Two-handed versus one-handed? I have a lot of thoughts.”

  “Having my own weapon,” said Kit. “Emma has Cortana. Livvy had her sabers. Ty likes throwing knives. Julian’s got crossbows. Cristina has her balisong. If I’m going to be a Shadowhunter, I should have a weapon of choice.”

  “So you decided?” Jace said. “You’re going to be a Shadowhunter?”

  Kit hesitated. He didn’t know when exactly it had happened, but it had. He’d realized it on the beach with Shade, when he’d feared for a moment that he wasn’t Nephilim after all. “What else would I be?”

  Jace’s mouth curled up at the corners in a cheeky grin. “I never doubted you, kid.” He ruffled Kit’s hair. “You don’t have any training, so I’d say archery and crossbows and throwing knives are out for you. I’ll find you something. Something that says Herondale.”

  “I could slay with my deadly sense of humor and wicked charm,” said Kit.

  “Now that says Herondale.” Jace looked pleased. “Christopher—can I call you Christopher?”

  “No,” said Kit.

  “Christopher, family for me was never blood. It was always the family I chose. But it turns out it’s nice to have someone I’m related to in this world. Someone I can tell boring family stories to. Do you know about Will Herondale? Or James Herondale?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Kit.

  “Excellent. Hours of your time will be ruined,” said Jace. “Now I’m off to find you a weapon. Don’t hesitate to come to me any time if you need advice about life or weaponry, preferably both.” He saluted sharply and jogged off before Kit could ask him what you were supposed to do if someone you really cared about wanted to raise the dead in an ill-advised manner.