Queen of Air and Darkness

by Cassandra Clare

  “Probably for the best,” he muttered to himself.

  “Kit! Kit! Pssst,” someone hissed, and Kit jumped several feet in the air and spun around to see Drusilla leaning out of an upper window and gesturing at him. “You said we could talk.”

  Kit blinked. Unfolding events had blown his agreement with Dru cleanly out of his mind. “All right. I’ll come up.”

  As he jogged up the steps toward Dru’s floor, he wondered where Ty was. Kit had been used to going everywhere with him—to finding Ty in the hallway, reading, when he got up in the morning, and to going to bed only after they’d both worn themselves out researching or sneaking around the Shadow Market under the amused eye of Hypatia. Though Ty didn’t care for the clamor of the Shadow Market, everyone at it seemed to love him, the extremely polite Shadowhunter boy who didn’t display weapons, didn’t threaten, just calmly asked if they had this or that that he was looking for.

  Ty was remarkable, Kit thought. The fact that tensions were escalating among Downworlders and Shadowhunters didn’t seem to touch him. He was entirely focused on one thing: the spell that would bring back Livvy. He was happy when the search was going well and frustrated when it wasn’t, but he didn’t take his frustrations out on others.

  The only person he was unkind to, Kit thought, was himself.

  In the past days, though, since Julian and Emma had woken up, Ty had been harder to find. If he was working on something, he hadn’t included Kit in it—a thought that hurt with surprising intensity. Still, they did have plans for that night, so that was something.

  It wasn’t hard to find Dru’s room: She was hovering in the doorway, dancing up and down with impatience. On catching sight of Kit, she ushered him inside and shut the door behind him, locking it for emphasis.

  “You’re not planning on murdering me, are you?” he asked, raising both eyebrows.

  “Ha-ha,” she said darkly, and plonked herself down on the bed. She was wearing a black T-shirt dress with a screaming face on it. Her hair had been done up in braids so tight they stuck out perpendicular to her head. It was hard to recall her dressed as the vampy businesswoman who’d tricked Barnabas Hale. “You know perfectly well what I want to talk to you about.”

  Kit leaned his back against the desk. “Ty.”

  “He isn’t okay,” Dru said. “Not like he seems. Did you know that?”

  Kit expected himself to say something defensive, or to deny that anything unusual was going on. Instead he slumped back against the desk, as if he’d put down a heavy weight but his legs were still shaking from carrying it. “It’s like—I don’t know how—people just aren’t seeing it,” he said, so relieved to be able to say the words that it almost hurt. “He isn’t doing well. How could he be?”

  When Dru spoke again, her voice was gentler. “None of us are okay,” she said. “Maybe that’s part of it. When you’re hurting, it’s sometimes hard to see how other people might be hurting differently or worse.”

  “But Helen—”

  “Helen doesn’t know us that well.” Dru tugged a lock of her hair. “She’s trying,” she admitted. “But how can she see how Ty’s different now when she doesn’t know how he was before? Mark’s been caught up in faerie stuff, and Julian and Emma weren’t here. If anyone will notice, now that things have settled down a little, Julian will.”

  Kit wasn’t sure how you could describe “society probably on the edge of a war” as “settled down,” but he sensed the Blackthorns had a different scale for these things than he did.

  “I mean, in some ways, he is okay,” said Kit. “I think that’s what’s confusing. It seems like he’s functioning and doing normal, everyday stuff. He eats breakfast. He washes his clothes. It’s just that the only thing getting him through all that is—”

  He broke off, his palms suddenly sweaty. He’d almost said it. Jesus Christ, he’d almost broken his promise to Ty just because Dru was a friendly face to talk to.

  “Sorry,” he said into the silence. Dru was looking at him quizzically. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You promised him you wouldn’t say,” she said. “Okay, how about I guess what he’s up to, and you tell me if I’m right or wrong?”

  Kit shrugged wearily. There was no way she was going to guess it anyway.

  “He’s trying to communicate with Livvy’s ghost,” she said. “The Thule story made me think of it. People who die, they exist in other forms. Whether it’s as ghosts or in other dimensions. We just can’t . . . reach them.” She blinked very quickly and looked down.

  “Yeah,” Kit heard himself say, as if at an enormous distance. “That’s it. That’s what he’s doing.”

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Dru looked unhappy. “If Livvy’s passed on, if she’s in a good place, her spirit won’t be here on earth. I mean, they say ghosts can appear sometimes briefly for something important . . . or if they’re called in the right way. . . .”

  Kit thought of Robert Lightwood’s parabatai, at the side of his burning pyre. Something important.

  “I could try to talk to him,” Dru said in a small voice. “Remind him that he still has a sister.”

  Kit thought of the night Dru had come with them to con Barnabas. Ty had seemed lighter, happy to have her there even if he wouldn’t admit it. “We’re going tonight to—” No. Better not to tell her about Shade. “To get the last piece of what we need for the spell,” he lied rapidly. “We’re meeting down at the highway at ten. If you turn up there, you can threaten to tell on us unless we let you come with us.”

  Dru wrinkled up her nose. “I have to be the bad guy?”

  “Come on,” said Kit. “You’ll get to boss us around. Don’t tell me you won’t enjoy it a little bit.”

  She grinned. “Yeah, probably. Okay, deal. I’ll see you there.”

  Kit turned to unlock the door and let himself out. Then paused. Without looking at Dru, he said, “I’ve spent my whole life lying and tricking people. So why is it so hard for me to lie to this one person? To Ty?”

  “Because he’s your friend,” said Dru. “What other reason do you need?”

  * * *

  Opening the drawer that held his paints had meaning to Julian again. Each tube of paint carried its own promise, its own personality. Tyrian red, Prussian blue, cadmium orange, manganese violet.

  He returned to the fabric canvas he’d left blank the night before. He dumped the paint tubes he’d selected onto the tabletop. Titanium white. Raw umber. Naples yellow.

  They were colors he always used to paint Emma’s hair. The memory of her went through him like a knife: the way she’d looked in the doorway of her bedroom, her face white, eyelashes starred with tears. There was a horror in not being able to touch the person you loved, to kiss them or hold them, but an even worse horror in not being able to comfort them.

  Leaving Emma, even after she’d asked him to, had felt like wrenching himself apart: His emotions were all too new, too raw and intense. He had always sought comfort in the studio, though he had found none the night before, when trying to paint had felt like trying to speak a foreign language he’d never learned.

  But everything was different now. When he picked up the paintbrush, it felt like an extension of his arm. When he began to paint in long, bold strokes, he knew exactly the effect he wanted. As the images took shape, his mind quieted. The pain was still there, but he could bear it.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been painting when the knock came on the door. It had been a long time since he’d been able to fall into the dizzy dream-state of creating; even in Thule, he’d had only a short time with the colored pencils.

  He placed the brushes he’d been using in a glass of water and went to see who it was. He half-expected it to be Emma—half-hoped it was Emma—but it wasn’t. It was Ty.

  Ty had his hands in the front pockets of his white sweatshirt. His gaze flickered across Julian’s face. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.�
� Julian watched Ty as he ambled around the room, glancing at the paintings, before coming to study Julian’s new canvas. Ty had long wanted this room as an office or darkroom, but Julian had always held on to it stubbornly.

  Not that he’d kept Ty out of it. When Ty was younger, experimentation with paints and paper had kept him distracted for hours. He never drew anything concrete, but he had an excellent sense of color—not that Julian was biased. All his paintings turned out as intense swirls of interleaving pigments, so bright and bold they seemed to jump off the paper.

  Ty was looking at Julian’s canvas. “This is Livvy’s sword,” he said. He didn’t sound annoyed—more questioning, as if he weren’t quite sure why Julian would be painting it.

  Julian’s heart skipped a beat. “I was trying to think of what would best symbolize her.”

  Ty touched the gold pendant at his throat. “This always makes me think of Livvy.”

  “That’s—that’s a good idea.” Julian leaned against the center island. “Ty,” he said. “I know I haven’t been here for you since Livvy died, but I’m here now.”

  Ty had picked up an unused brush. He ran his fingers over the bristles, touching them to each fingertip as if lost in the sensation. Julian said nothing: He knew Ty was thinking. “It’s not your fault,” Ty said. “The Inquisitor sent you away.”

  “Whether it was my fault or not, I was still gone,” said Julian. “If you want to talk to me about anything now, I promise to listen.”

  Ty looked up, his brief gray gaze like a light touch. “You’ve always been there for us, Jules. You did everything for us. You used to run the whole Institute.”

  “I—”

  “It’s my turn to be there for the rest of you,” said Ty, and set the brush down. “I should go. I have to meet Kit.”

  When he was gone, Julian sat down on a stool pulled up to a blank easel. He stared unseeingly ahead of him, hearing Ty’s voice echo in his mind.

  You used to run the whole Institute.

  He thought of Horace, of Horace’s determination to have the whole Shadowhunter world see him speak with the Unseelie King. He hadn’t understood why before. Without his emotions, he hadn’t been able to understand Horace’s reasons. Now he did, and he knew it was even more imperative than he had believed to stop him.

  He thought of Arthur’s old office, of the hours he’d spent there at dawn, composing and answering letters. The weight of the Institute’s seal in his hand. That seal was in Aline and Helen’s office now. They’d taken what they could from Arthur’s office to help them with their new job. But they hadn’t known about the secret compartments in Arthur’s desk, and Julian hadn’t been there to tell them.

  You used to run the whole Institute.

  In those compartments were the careful lists he’d kept of names—every important Downworlder, every Council member, every Shadowhunter at every Institute.

  He glanced at the window. He felt alive, energized—not precisely happy, but buzzing with purpose. He would finish the artwork now. Later, when everyone was asleep, his real work would begin.

  26

  A STIR IN THE AIR

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  Emma spun and threw the balanced knives one after the other, fast: overhead, overhead, sideways. They sliced through the air and jammed point-first into the target painted on the wall, their handles trembling with kinetic force.

  She bent down and grabbed two more from the pile at her feet. She hadn’t changed into training clothes and she was sweating in her tank top and jeans, her loose hair plastered to the back of her neck.

  She didn’t care. It was almost as though she’d returned to the time before she’d realized she was in love with Julian. A time when she’d been full of a rage and despair she’d attributed entirely to her parents’ deaths.

  She flung the next two knives, blades sliding through her fingers, their flight smooth and tightly controlled. Thunk. Thunk. She remembered the days when she’d thrown so many bo-shuriken that she’d made her hands split and bleed. How much of that rage had been about her parents—because a lot of it had been, she knew—and how much had been about the fact that she’d kept the doors of her awareness tightly shut, never letting herself know what she wanted, what would make her truly happy?

  She picked up two more knives and positioned herself facing away from the target, breathing hard. It was impossible not to think about Julian. Now that the spell was off him, she felt a desperate desire to be with him, mixed with the bitterness of regret—regret for past choices made, regret for wasted years. She and Julian had both been in denial, and look what it had cost them. If either of them had been able to acknowledge why they shouldn’t be parabatai, they wouldn’t be facing separation from each other. Or exile from everything they loved.

  Love is powerful, and the more you’re together, and let yourself feel what you do, the stronger it’ll be. You need to not touch each other. Not speak to each other. Try not to even think about each other.

  Thunk. A knife sailed over her shoulder. Thunk. Another. She turned to see the handles vibrating where they stuck out from the wall.

  “Nice throw.”

  Emma spun around. Mark was leaning against the doorway, his body like a long, lean spoke in the shadows. He was wearing his gear and he looked tired. More than tired, he looked weary.

  It had been a while since she’d spent time with Mark alone. It was neither of their faults—there had been the separation in Idris, then Faerie and Thule—but there was another piece to it too, perhaps. There was an apprehensive sadness in Mark these days, as if he were constantly waiting to be told he had lost something. It seemed deeper than what he had carried back with him from Faerie.

  She picked up another knife. Held it out. “Do you want a turn?”

  “Very much so.”

  He came and took the knife from her. She stepped back a little while he took aim, sighting down the line of his arm toward the target.

  “Do you want to talk about what’s going on with Cristina?” she said hesitantly. “And . . . Kieran?”

  He let the knife go. It sank into the wall beside one of Emma’s. “No,” he said. “I am trying not to think about it, and I do not think discussing it will accomplish that goal.”

  “Okay,” Emma said. “Do you want to just throw knives in a silent, angry bro way together?”

  He cracked a slight smile. “There are other things we could discuss than my love life. Like your love life.”

  It was Emma’s turn to grab a knife. She threw it hard, viciously, and it hit the wall hard enough to crack the wood. “That sounds like about as much fun as stabbing myself in the head.”

  “I think mundanes discuss the weather when they have nothing else to talk about,” said Mark. He had gone to lift a bow and quiver down from the wall. The bow was a delicate piece of workmanship, carved with filigreed runes. “We are not mundanes.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what we are,” Emma said. “Considering I don’t think the current powers that be in Alicante would like us to be Nephilim at all.”

  Mark drew back the bow and let an arrow fly. It whipped through the air, plunging directly into the center of the target on the wall. Emma felt a twist of grim pride; people often underestimated how good a warrior Mark was.

  “It doesn’t matter what they think,” Mark said. “Raziel made us Shadowhunters. Not the Clave.”

  Emma sighed. “What would you do if things were different? If you could do anything, be anything. If this was all over.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “You always wanted to be like Jace Herondale,” he said. “The greatest of all fighters. But I would like to be more like Alec Lightwood. I would like to do something important for Shadowhunters and Downworlders. For I will always be part of each world.”

  “I can’t believe you remember I always wanted to be like Jace. That’s so embarrassing.”

  “It was cute that you wanted to be such a fighter, especially when you were very small.” He smiled a
real smile, one that lit up his face. “I remember you and Julian when you were ten—both of you with wooden swords, and me trying to teach you not to smack each other in the head with them.”

  Emma giggled. “I thought you were so old—fourteen!”

  He sobered. “I have been thinking that not everything that is strange is bad,” he said. “Since I came from Faerie the way I did—it closed the gap of years between me and Julian, and me and you. I have been able to be much better friends with both of you now, rather than an older sibling, and that has been a gift.”

  “Mark—” she began, and broke off, staring out the west-facing picture window. Something—someone—was walking up the road toward the Institute, a dark figure moving purposefully.

  She caught a flash of gold.

  “I have to go.” Emma grabbed a longsword and bolted out of the training room, leaving Mark staring after her. Energy was ping-ponging through her body. She took the stairs three at a time, burst out the front doors, and crossed the grass just as the figure she’d seen reached the top of the road.

  The moon was bright, flooding the world with bright spears of illumination. Emma blinked away stars and gazed at Zara Dearborn, stalking toward her across the grass.

  Zara was fully decked out in her Centurion gear, Primi Ordines pin and all. Her hair was tightly braided around her head, her brown eyes narrowed. In her hand was a golden sword that shone like the light of dawn.

  Cortana. A flash of gold.

  Emma stiffened all over. She whipped the longsword from its scabbard, though it felt like dead weight in her hand now that she was looking at her own beloved blade. “Stop,” she said. “You aren’t welcome here, Zara.”

  Zara gave her a narrow little smile. She was gripping Cortana all wrong, which blinded Emma with rage. Wayland Smith had made that blade, and now Zara had it in her sticky, incompetent hand. “Aren’t you going to ask about this?” she asked, twirling the sword as if it were a toy.