Queen of Air and Darkness

by Cassandra Clare

All his energy had gone into Ty, all his devotion and hopes for the future. He liked the other Blackthorns, but he hardly knew them well. He probably knew Dru the best, and he liked her as a friend, but that was a small thing compared to the burning hurt and humiliation he felt when he thought about Ty.

  He didn’t blame Ty for what had happened. He blamed himself: He’d been too fixated on not losing Ty to tell him what he needed to hear. Everyone needed to be stopped from making bad choices sometimes, but he hadn’t stopped Ty. And he’d gotten what he deserved, really. Now that he knew he meant nothing much to Ty, how could he live in the Institute again? See him every day? Feel like an idiot constantly, feel the pity of his family, listen to them tell him he should try to make other friends, survive in the same house with Ty while Ty avoided him? There was no real question about it. I can’t face going back there and living with them. This is my chance to start again and learn what it means to be who I am.

  “I’ll go with you. I’d like to live with you,” Kit said.

  “Oh.” Tessa blinked. “Oh!” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, smiling all over her kind face. “That’s lovely, Kit, that’s wonderful. Jem will be so happy too. And it will be wonderful for the baby to have company. I mean, hopefully you’ll like the baby as well.” She blushed. Kit thought it would actually be kind of nice to have a small sibling-type person in his life, but he said nothing. “I’m babbling,” Tessa said. “I’m just so excited. We’ll go tonight—get you safe and settled as fast as possible. We’ll arrange for you to have a tutor—for all the necessary protection spells to be done by the Silent Brothers—”

  “That sounds good,” Kit said, a little exhausted already by the thought of everything that needed to be done. “I only have this bag—no other luggage.” It was true, and there was nothing he cared about much in the bag either, besides the Herondale dagger and the witchlight Ty had given him.

  “I imagine you’d like to say good-bye to the Blackthorns before we go—”

  “No,” Kit said. “I don’t want to see them.”

  Tessa blinked.

  “It’s better if they don’t know about all this First Heir stuff,” Kit said. “It’s safer for them. Jem can tell them I just decided L.A. wasn’t for me. They’re all so far ahead of me in training, and I should learn from the beginning if I want to be a Shadowhunter.”

  Tessa nodded. Kit knew she didn’t entirely buy his excuse, but she also knew enough not to pry. It was very reassuring.

  “I do have one question before we go,” Kit said, and Tessa looked at him curiously. “Will I be growing pointy ears? Maybe a tail? I’ve seen some weird-looking faeries in the Shadow Market.”

  Tessa grinned. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  * * *

  Everyone wanted to come by the canal house and say hello to Emma and Julian now that they had left the Basilias. People Dru was familiar with as well as people she wasn’t flooded into the ground floor, bringing flowers and small gifts: new gauntlets for Emma, a gear jacket for Julian.

  Some were overly bright and cheery and greeted Emma and Julian as if nothing odd had happened to them at all. Some complimented them as if they thought the whole “becoming enormous and almost dying” was part of a predetermined plan that had paid off nicely. Others were awkward—those who had been a little too close to the Cohort, Dru suspected—as if they wondered if Emma and Julian might grow huge at any moment and squash them right there in the kitchen. One kindly older lady complimented Julian on being tall and a terrible silence fell; Tavvy said, “What’s going on?” and Dru had to drag him into the sitting room.

  A few others seemed to have had major life experiences. “It just came to me on the field that I should spend more time with my family,” said Trini Castel. “Moments of peace are precious moments. We’ll never get them back.”

  “So true,” said Julian.

  He looked as if he was trying not to laugh. Everyone else nodded thoughtfully. It was very strange—for days, Dru had been worried that Emma and Julian would be punished in some way when they woke up: either officially, by the Clave, or by the ignorant judgment of other Shadowhunters. But it didn’t seem to be happening.

  She edged close to Magnus, who was sitting by the fire eating the chocolates out of a box someone had brought for Emma. He’d come over with Maryse, Max, and Rafe so they could play with Tavvy. Alec, Jace, and Clary were coming later, apparently with some sort of surprise. Isabelle and Simon had already returned to the New York Institute to keep an eye on things.

  “Why aren’t people mad?” she whispered. “At Emma and Julian?”

  Magnus wiggled his eyebrows at her. Magnus had very amusing eyebrows; Dru had always found him an amusing person generally, with his immense tallness and refusal to take anything seriously. “Well,” Magnus said, “without Julian’s war council and his strategy for dealing with Dearborn, it’s likely that the Cohort would have prevailed. The road the Cohort was traveling led to civil war and bloodshed. Everyone is glad it was avoided.”

  “True,” said Drusilla, “but that was before they became giant angel monsters.”

  “Angels are messengers.” Magnus dusted cocoa powder off his hands, looking thoughtful. “They speak in strange ways, even to you, their children. Horace and his Cohort spoke as if they were doing the angels’ will, and because of it, people feared them. On the battlefield, burning with heavenly fire, Julian and Emma proved that wasn’t the case. The angels spoke through them.”

  “So basically everyone who didn’t like Horace wanted a big angel to squash the Cohort?” Dru said.

  Magnus grinned. “They don’t want to say that, but believe me, it was immensely satisfying to them.”

  At that moment Jace and Clary arrived with Alec and an enormous cake they’d iced themselves. Most of the strangers had already departed, and Ty helped them put it on the sideboard, where the cake box was opened to reveal that the lettering said: CONGRATULATIONS ON NOT BEING GIANTS ANYMORE!

  Everyone laughed and gathered around to cut pieces of the lemon-chocolate cake. Julian and Emma leaned against each other, their shoulders touching. Since they had returned from the Basilias, it had seemed that a massive weight was off Julian’s shoulders. He seemed lighter and happier than he had since before the Dark War. Dru knew that he and Emma were no longer parabatai: the angel magic had burned it out of them somehow. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were probably very pleased about that, considering all the smiling and hand touching they were doing.

  Mark and Cristina, on the other hand, seemed sad. They were quiet among all the bright chatter in the room. At one point Dru saw Emma take Cristina into the kitchen and hug her as if something bad had happened.

  Dru didn’t know what it was, but she did notice that Kieran wasn’t there.

  Ty was also quiet. Every time he passed Julian, Jules would pull him in for a hug and ruffle his hair the way he’d liked when he was little. Ty would smile, but he seemed unusually listless, uninterested even in eavesdropping on the guests’ conversations and making notes for his detective manuals the way he usually did.

  Eventually he went up to Magnus, who was sitting in a deep blue chair by the fireplace holding his deep blue son on his lap and tickling him. Dru edged closer to the hearth, wondering what Ty wanted to say to the warlock.

  “Where’s Kit, really?” Ty said, and Dru thought: I should have known. Jem had told them that Kit was coming to live with him and Tessa in Devon, but not why, nor why they had to leave in such a hurry. Julian and the others seemed to think Kit would visit them soon, but Dru wasn’t so sure. “I keep asking, but no one will tell me.”

  Magnus looked up, his cat’s eyes hooded. “Kit’s all right. He’s with Tessa and Jem. He’s going to be living with them.”

  “I know,” Ty said. His voice shook. “I know, but—can I say good-bye to him? If I could just talk to him once—”

  “He’s already gone,” Magnus said. “He didn’t want to say good-bye to you. To anyone re
ally, but I suspect it was mostly you.”

  Dru had to stifle a gasp. Why would Magnus say something so flatly unkind?

  “I don’t understand,” Ty said, his left hand fluttering at his side. He caught at his wrist with his right hand as if he could stop it.

  Julian had always called Ty’s hands his butterflies and told him they were beautiful, graceful, and useful—why not let them fly? But Dru worried. She thought they fluttered like hearts, a sign that Ty was uneasy.

  Magnus’s expression was grave. “Come with me.”

  Magnus gave his son to Maryse to carry into the sitting room and headed upstairs, Ty at his heels. Dru didn’t hesitate. If Magnus was angry with Ty she was going to find out why, and defend Ty if necessary. Even if Magnus turned her into a toad. She followed.

  There was an empty bedroom at the top of the stairs. Magnus and Ty went into it, Magnus leaning his long body against the bare wall. Ty sat down on the edge of the bed while Dru stationed herself by the crack in the mostly open door.

  “I don’t understand,” Ty said again. Dru knew he’d probably been working on the problem in his mind all the way up the steps: What did Magnus mean? Why did Kit not want to say good-bye to him?

  “Ty,” said Magnus. “I know what you did. Ragnor told me. I wish he’d told me earlier, but then I was dying, so I understand why he didn’t. Also, he thought he’d headed you off. But he didn’t, did he? You got an energy source from the Market and you did the spell anyway.”

  The spell? The one to raise Livvy’s ghost?

  Ty stared. “How do you know?”

  “I have sources in the Markets,” said Magnus. “I’m also a warlock, and the son of a Greater Demon. I can sense the dark magic on you, Ty. It’s like a cloud around you I can see.” He sat down on the window ledge. “I know you tried to raise your sister from the dead.”

  He did what? Realization exploded in Dru’s mind, along with shock: You didn’t just try to raise the dead. Look what had happened to Malcolm. Trying to communicate with a spirit was one thing, necromancy quite another.

  Ty didn’t protest, though. He sat on the bed, his fingers knotting and unknotting.

  “You are so, so lucky your spell didn’t work,” Magnus said. “What you did was bad, but what you could have done would have been so much worse.”

  How could you, Ty? How could you, Kit?

  “Clary brought Jace back from the dead,” Ty said.

  “Clary asked Raziel to bring Jace back from the dead. Think about it—Raziel himself. You are messing about in magic reserved for gods, Ty. There are reasons necromancy is something people hate. If you bring back a life, you must pay with something of equal consequence. What if it had been another life? Would you have wanted to kill someone to keep Livvy with you?”

  Ty lifted his head. “What if it was Horace? What if it was someone bad? We kill people in battle. I don’t see the difference.”

  Magnus looked at Ty for a long time; Dru was afraid he might say something harsh to him, but the lines of Magnus’s face had softened. “Tiberius,” he said at last. “When your sister died, she didn’t deserve it. Life and death aren’t doled out by a judge who decides what is fair, and if it were, would you want to be that judge? Every life at your fingertips, and also every death?”

  Ty squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered. “I just want my sister back. I miss her all the time. It feels like there’s a hole in me that will never be filled up.”

  Oh, Dru thought. How odd that it would be Ty who would most accurately describe what it felt like to lose Livvy. She pressed her hand to her side. A hole where my sister should be.

  “I know,” Magnus said gently. “And I know that you’ve spent a lot of your life knowing you’re different and that’s true. You are. So am I.”

  Ty looked up at him.

  “So you think this feeling you have, of missing half of yourself, must be fixed. That it can’t be what everyone else is feeling when they lose someone. But it is. Grief can be so bad you can’t breathe, but that’s what it means to be human. We lose, we suffer, but we have to keep breathing.”

  “Are you going to tell everyone?” Ty said in a near whisper.

  “No,” Magnus said. “Provided you promise never to do anything like that again.”

  Ty looked nauseated. “I never would.”

  “I believe it. But, Ty, there’s something else I’d like you to do. I can’t order you to do it. I can only suggest it.”

  Ty had picked up a pillow; he was running his hand over the rough, textured side of it, over and over, his palm reading messages in the fabric.

  “I know you always wanted to go to the Scholomance,” said Magnus.

  Ty started to protest. Magnus held up a hand.

  “Just let me finish, and then you can say anything you want to,” Magnus said. “At the L.A. Institute, Helen and Aline can keep you safe and love you, and I know you might not want to leave your family. But what you need is mysteries to solve to keep your mind busy and your soul filled. I’ve known people like you before—they don’t rest until their minds are flying free and solving problems. I knew Conan Doyle back in the day. He loved to travel. Spent his third year of medical school on a whaling boat.”

  Ty stared.

  Magnus seemed to realize he’d veered off course. “All I’m saying is that you have a curious mind,” he said. “You want to solve mysteries, to be a detective of life—that’s why you always wanted to go to the Scholomance. But you didn’t think you could. Because your twin wanted to be parabatai with you, and you couldn’t do both.”

  “I would have given up the Scholomance for her,” Ty said. “Besides, everyone I met who went there—Zara and the others—was awful.”

  “The Scholomance is going to be quite different now,” said Magnus. “The Cohort poisoned it, but they’ll be gone. I think it would be a wonderful place for you.” His voice gentled. “Grief is hard. Change can be all that helps.”

  “Thanks,” Ty said. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course.” Magnus looked weary and a little regretful. As if he wished things could have been different; as if he wished there were something else to say than the things he’d said. He turned toward the door—Dru shrank back—and paused.

  “You understand that from now on you’re tied to the ghost of your sister,” Magnus said.

  Tied to the ghost of your sister?

  Livvy’s ghost?

  “I do understand,” Ty said.

  Magnus stared at the door of the bedroom as if he were seeing through into the past. “You think you do,” he said. “But you don’t really see it. I know she set you free in the forest. Right now this feels better than nothing, better than being without her. You don’t yet understand the price. And I hope you never have to pay it.”

  He touched Ty’s shoulder lightly, without looking at him, and left. Dru ducked into the next bedroom until Magnus’s footsteps had disappeared down the stairs.

  Then she took a deep breath and went in to talk to Ty.

  He hadn’t moved from the end of the bed in the empty room. He stared into the gathering shadows, his face pale as he looked up at her. “Dru?” he said haltingly.

  “You should have told me,” Dru said.

  He furrowed his arched eyebrows. “You were listening?”

  She nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “I didn’t want you to stop me. And I’m not good at lying. It’s easier for me to just not say.”

  “Kit lied to me,” she said. She was furious at Kit, though she tried not to show it. Maybe it was better that he wasn’t coming back with them. Even if he had shown her how to pick locks. “Livvy’s ghost—is she really around?”

  “I saw her today. She was in the Basilias when Emma and Julian woke up. She was sitting on one of the bureaus. I never know when she’s going to be there or not be there. Magnus said she’s tied to me, so . . .”

  “Maybe you can teach me to see her.” Dru knelt down and put her arms aroun
d Ty. She could feel the slight vibrations going through his body; he was shaking. “Maybe we can see her together.”

  “We can’t tell anyone,” Ty said, but he had put his arms around Dru, too; he was hugging her, his hair against her cheek as soft and fine as Tavvy’s. “No one can know.”

  “I won’t say anything.” She held on to her brother, held on hard, as if she could keep him tethered to the earth. “I’ll never tell.”

  * * *

  Emma lay atop the covers of her bed, the only light in the room the reflected radiance of the demon towers as it shone through the window.

  She supposed it wasn’t surprising that she couldn’t sleep. She’d slept for three days and awakened to a series of shocks: realizing what had happened, Jem’s explanation, the house full of people. The odd feeling that followed her constantly that she’d forgotten something, that she’d put something down in the other room and needed to remember to get it.

  It was the parabatai bond, she knew. Her body and her brain hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was gone. She was missing it the way people who lost limbs sometimes still felt them there.

  She was missing Julian. They’d been together all day, but always surrounded by other people. When the house had finally emptied of strangers, Julian had taken Tavvy up to bed, bidding her an awkward good night in front of the others.

  She’d gone up to bed herself not long after, and had been lying there worrying for hours. Would everything be awkward now that they weren’t parabatai? Now that they floated in a new, foreign place between being friends and lovers? They had never declared themselves because words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” seemed banal in the face of curses and giant monsters. What if everything that had happened was so devastating that they could never reach a place of normalcy?

  She couldn’t stand it. She rolled out of bed, got to her feet, and smoothed down her nightgown. She flung open her bedroom door, ready to march across the hall to Julian’s room and make him talk to her, no matter how awkward it might be.

  Just outside her door stood Julian, his hand outstretched, looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him.