Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3)

by Cassandra Clare

  “I don’t,” he said.

  “You don’t what?”

  He slid his hand across the bed so that his fingertips touched hers, just barely. Emma’s heart kicked into a faster beat. “I don’t have no feelings at all.” He sounded lost and a little baffled. “I just don’t entirely understand what it is that I do feel. Except that—I need you not to be angry, Emma.”

  She froze. His fingers curved around to stroke the inside of her wrist. Emma felt as if every nerve ending in her body was concentrated there, where his fingers touched. He was touching her pulse. Her heart.

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

  Her heart leaped. With a low cry, she reached out for him; on their knees, they wrapped their arms around each other. He dipped his head to kiss her, and all her breath left her body.

  He tasted the way she imagined faerie fruit would taste, sweeter than any sugar on earth. She was dizzy with the memory of the first time she’d kissed him, wet from seawater, hungry and desperate. This was languorous, hot with a slow desire: He explored her mouth thoroughly with his own, stroking his fingertips over her cheekbones, cupping her jaw to tilt her head back.

  He pulled her closer. His body still works the same, she thought. Feelings or no feelings.

  There was a terrible satisfaction in it. He felt something for her, even if it was only a physical something.

  But he had said he was sorry. Surely that meant something. Perhaps that the spell was wearing off. Maybe it wasn’t permanent. Maybe—

  He kissed the corner of her mouth, the pulse at her neck. His lips were soft against her throat; his hands caught the hem of her nightgown, working it up her thighs.

  Let it happen, her body said. Get whatever you can of him, because there might never be anything else.

  His hands were under her gown. He knew where she liked to be touched. Knew what would make her shiver and kiss him harder.

  No one knew her like Julian did.

  Her eyes fluttered open, her vision hazy with desire. She started—Julian was looking at her, his own eyes open, and the expression in them was cool and thoughtful. It was like a bucket of cold water dashed in her face; she almost gasped.

  I need you not to be angry, he’d said.

  His hands were still curved around the backs of her thighs, holding her against him. Against his mouth, she whispered, “You’re not really sorry, are you?”

  His eyes shuttered: She knew that look. He was thinking of the right thing to say. Not the true thing, but the best thing: the most clever and efficacious thing. The thing that would get him what he wanted and needed.

  She had always been proud of him for his cleverness; adored and understood the necessity of it. It was David’s slingshot; it was Julian’s only small defense against a massive world arrayed against him and his family. It was the only way he knew of protecting what he loved.

  But without love as the driving force behind everything he did, what would he be capable of? A Julian without feelings was a Julian who could and would manipulate anyone.

  Even her.

  He sank back on his heels, his hands falling to his sides, his expression still indecipherable. Before he could speak, the sound of someone entering the room echoed from downstairs.

  They scrambled off the bed in alarm. A few seconds later they were standing, in some disarray, on the steps leading down to the main room.

  Nene was there, a key in her hand, looking up at them. She wore the uniform of a Seelie Court page. When she caught sight of them, her pale eyebrows raised. “What is it humans say? Is this a bad time?”

  “It’s fine,” said Julian. His expression had gone back to normal, as if nothing much had happened. Emma didn’t know what her own face looked like, but she knew how she felt: as if a gaping hole had been punched through the center of her.

  “I am glad to hear that,” Nene said, stalking to the center of the room and turning to face them. “Because we must speak now. Quickly, come downstairs. The Queen has betrayed you, and there is little time to act.”

  * * *

  Tavvy was finally asleep, clutching a book, his face still stained with recent tears. Mark was kneeling, tousling his soft hair. Helen felt her heart aching—with love for Tavvy, with worry, with missing Julian, who would have been able to calm Tavvy’s fears in minutes, not the hours it was taking Helen.

  As Mark drew a blanket over his smallest brother, Helen got up to open the windows and let some fresh air into the room. She hadn’t heard from Julian or Emma since they’d left them behind in Alicante, though Jia swore up and down to Aline that they were all right.

  And yet Helen had rarely felt so far from her family. Even on Wrangel Island, where she had felt cut off from the world, she had trusted that Julian was taking care of them—that they were as happy as they could be—and the images of them, happy, in her mind had sustained her.

  The reality of them here was a shock. Without Julian, they were looking to her, and she had no idea for what. Tavvy cried when she touched him. Dru glared at her. Ty barely seemed to know she was there. And Mark . . .

  “I should never have let them separate us,” Helen said. “In Idris. When they wanted to keep Jules and Emma behind, I shouldn’t have let them do it.”

  “The Clave forced it,” said Mark, rising to his feet. “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “We always have choices,” said Helen.

  “You can’t blame yourself. It’s very hard to fight Julian when he’s being stubborn. He has a very strong will. And he wanted to stay.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I think he didn’t want to come back with us. He was acting strangely before we left Idris, don’t you think?”

  “It’s hard to say.” Helen shut the window. “Julian has always been able to make sacrifices that were difficult and hide the pain it caused him.”

  “Yes,” Mark said, “but even when he was hiding things, he was loving, not cold. Before we left he was cold.”

  He spoke simply, without any doubt. He glanced at Tavvy again and rose to his feet. “I have to get back to Kieran. He is hurt, and Tavvy is settled.”

  Helen nodded. “I will go with you.”

  The corridors of the Institute were dark and quiet. Somewhere down the hall, Aline was sleeping. Helen let herself think for a moment of how much she wanted to crawl back into bed with her wife, curl up to Aline’s warmth and forget everything else.

  “Perhaps we could try a Familias rune,” said Helen. “Something that would lead us to Julian.”

  Mark looked puzzled. “You know that will not work over the border with Faerie. And Julian would need to be wearing one too.”

  “Of course.” Helen felt as she had years ago, when Eleanor Blackthorn had died, as if she had frozen inside and it was difficult to think. “I—I know that.”

  Mark gave her a worried look as they entered the spare bedroom where they had put Kieran. The room was dim, and Cristina was sitting in a chair beside the bed, holding Kieran’s hand; Kieran was very still under the blanket, though his chest rose and fell with the swift, regular breathing normal in faeries.

  Helen had known only a little about Kieran, just what Mark had told her in the few quick conversations they’d had since he’d returned from Faerie, until she’d reached Idris; she and Mark had stayed up talking in the canal house after retrieving Tavvy, and she’d heard the whole story then. She knew how complicated Mark’s feelings for Kieran were, though in the moment, as Mark gazed at the other boy worriedly, she might have guessed they were simpler.

  But nothing ever was simpler, was it? Helen caught Mark’s quick glance at her between his lashes as he sat down beside Cristina: worry, concern—for Kieran, for Emma and Julian, for all of them. There was plenty of worry to go around.

  “I know you’re going to want to go after Julian,” said Helen. “To Faerie. Please don’t do anything foolish, Mark.”

  Mark’s eyes burned in the darkness. Blue and gold, sea and s
unlight. “I will do what I need to do to rescue Julian and Emma. I will rejoin the Hunt if I must.”

  “Mark!” Helen was appalled. “You would never!”

  “I would do what I needed to do,” he said again, and in his voice she heard not the smaller brother she had raised but the boy who had come back from the Wild Hunt an adult.

  “I know you lived with the Hunt for years and know things that I don’t,” said Helen. “But I have been in touch with our aunt Nene, and I know things you don’t. I know how you and Julian and the others are thought of in Faerie—not as children but as fearsome enemies. You fought the Riders of Mannan. You shamed the Unseelie King in his own Court, and Emma slew Fal, who is almost like a god to the fey folk. Though you will find some friends in Faerie, you will find many, many foes.”

  “That’s always been true,” Mark said.

  “You don’t understand,” said Helen in a harsh whisper. “Outside of Idris, every entrance to Faerie is guarded now, and has been since the disaster in the Council Hall. The Fair Folk know that the Nephilim hold them to blame. Even if you took the moon’s road, the phouka who guards it would report your entry immediately, and you would be greeted with swords on the other side.”

  “What do you propose, then?” Mark demanded. “Leaving our brother and Emma in Faerie to die and rot? I have been abandoned in Faerie, I know how it feels. I will never let that happen to Emma and Julian!”

  “No. I propose that I go after them. I am not an enemy in Faerie. I will go straight to Nene. She will help me.”

  Mark sprang to his feet. “You cannot go. The children need you here. Someone needs to take care of them.”

  “Aline can take care of them. She’s already doing a better job than I am. The children don’t even like me, Mark.”

  “They may not like you but they love you,” Mark said furiously, “and I love you, and I will not lose another sibling to Faerie!”

  Helen straightened up—though she was nowhere near as tall as her brother, which unnerved her now—and glared at Mark. “Neither will I.”

  “I might have a solution,” Cristina said. “There is an heirloom of the Rosales family. We call it the Eternidad, to mean a time that has no beginning or end, like time in Faerie. It will allow us to enter Faerie undetected.”

  “Will you let me take it?” said Mark.

  “I do not have it quite yet—and only a Rosales may properly use it, so I will go.”

  “Then I will go with you,” said Kieran, who had propped himself up on his elbows. His hair was mussed and there were shadows under his eyes.

  “You’re awake?” said Mark.

  “I’ve been awake for a while,” Kieran admitted. “But I pretended to be asleep because it was awkward.”

  “Hmm,” said Helen. “I think this is what Aline means by radical honesty.”

  “Cristina cannot journey into Faerie alone,” said Kieran stubbornly. “It is too dangerous.”

  “I agree,” said Mark. He turned to Helen. “I will go with Cristina and Kieran. We work best as a team, the three of us.”

  Helen hesitated. How could she let them go, into such danger? And yet that was what Shadowhunters did, wasn’t it? Rush into danger? She wished desperately she could talk to her own mother. Perhaps the better question was, how could she stop them, when Mark and Kieran would be better at navigating Faerie than anyone else? To send Cristina alone would be like sending her into destruction; to send them all meant she might lose Mark as well as Julian. But not to let them go meant to abandon Julian in Faerie.

  “Please, Helen,” Mark said. “My brother went to Faerie to save me. I must be able to do the same for him. I have been a prisoner before. Do not make me a prisoner again.”

  Helen felt her muscles sag. He was right. She sat down on the bed before she could start crying. “When would you be leaving?”

  “As soon as Jaime gets here with the heirloom,” said Cristina. “It’s been nearly an hour since I summoned him with a fire-message, but I don’t know how long it will take him to arrive.”

  “Jaime Rosales?” said Mark and Kieran at the same time.

  Helen glanced between them. They both looked surprised and a little watchful, as if jealous. She dismissed the thought. She was losing her mind, probably because of the strain.

  “Oh, Mark,” she said. In times of strain, the cadence of her voice, like his, slipped into an ancestral faerie formality. “I cannot bear to let you go, but I suppose I must.”

  Mark’s eyes softened. “Helen. I am sorry. I promise to come back to you safely, and to bring Julian and Emma back safely as well.”

  Before Helen pointed out that this wasn’t a promise he could truly make, Kieran cleared his throat. The sound was very ordinary and human and nearly made Helen smile despite herself.

  “I would that I had ever had a sibling who loved me as much as you love each other,” he said, sounding very much like a prince of Faerie. The semblance was quickly dispelled, though, when he cleared his throat again and said, “In the meantime, Helen, I must ask you to remove yourself from my leg. You are sitting on it and it is becoming quite painful.”

  * * *

  “Some monsters are human,” said Gwyn. They were in Diana’s rooms on Flintlock Street. She lay crosswise on her bed, her head in Gwyn’s lap as he stroked her hair. “Horace Dearborn is one of them.”

  Diana brushed her hand along the wool of Gwyn’s tunic. She liked seeing him like this—without his helmet or mail, just a man in a worn tunic and scuffed boots. A man with pointed ears and two-colored eyes, but Diana had stopped seeing those as odd. They were just part of Gwyn.

  “I believe there are good people in the Council,” Diana said. “They are frightened. Of Horace as well as his dire predictions. He has seized a great deal of power in a short time.”

  “He has made Idris unsafe,” said Gwyn. “I wish you to leave Alicante, Diana.”

  She sat up in surprise. “Leave Alicante?”

  “I have seen a great deal of history,” said Gwyn. “Terrible laws are usually passed before they are repealed after much suffering. Small-mindedness and fear have a way of winning out. You have told me Horace and his daughter do not like you.”

  “No,” said Diana. “Though I don’t know why—”

  “They fear your influence,” said Gwyn. “They know others listen to you. You are very persuasive, Diana, and startlingly wise.”

  She made a face at him. “Flatterer.”

  “I am not flattering you.” He stood up. “I am afraid for you. Horace Dearborn may not be a dictator yet, but he yearns to be one. His first move will to be to eliminate all who stand against him. He will move to extinguish the brightest lights first, those who illuminate the pathway for others.”

  Diana shivered. She could hear the hooves of his horse pacing back and forth across her roof. “You are bitter, Gwyn.”

  “It is possible I do not always see the best in people,” he said, “as I hunt down the souls of slain warriors on the battlefield.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Are you making a joke?”

  “No.” He looked puzzled. “I meant what I said. Diana, let me take you from here. We would be safe in Faerie. At night the stars are a thousand colors and during the day the fields are full of roses.”

  “I cannot, Gwyn. I cannot abandon this fight.”

  He sat back down on the bed, hanging his shaggy head in weariness. “Diana . . .”

  It was strange after so long to feel the desire to be close to someone, physically as well as emotionally. “Did you not tell me that the first time you saw me, you cared for me because I was so brave? You would now like me to be a coward?”

  He looked at her, emotion naked on his lined face. “It is different now.”

  “Why would it be different?”

  He curved his big hands around her waist. “Because I know that I love you.”

  Her heart gave a strong flutter inside her chest. She had not expected such words from anyone, had considered
it a price she would pay for being transgender and Nephilim. She had certainly never expected to hear it from someone like Gwyn: who knew all there was to know about her, who could not lie, a prince of wild magic.

  “Gwyn,” she said, and cupped his face in her hands, bending to kiss him. He leaned back, gently drawing her with him until they lay upon the bed, her heart beating fast against the roughness of his tunic. He curved over her, his bulk casting a shadow across her body, and in that shadow she closed her eyes and moved with the movements of his gentle kisses and touches as they turned sweeter and sharper, until they reached together a place where fear was gone, where there was only the gentle alliance of souls who had left loneliness behind.

  * * *

  Helen had gone to tell Aline what was going on; Mark couldn’t guess how late it was, but he could no longer see moonlight through the window. He was sitting on the mattress next to Kieran, and Cristina had curled herself into the chair beside the bed.

  He avoided meeting her eyes. He knew he had done nothing wrong by kissing her, or she by kissing him. He remembered the last time he had spoken to Kieran alone, in the London Sanctuary. How Kieran had touched the elf-bolt that hung around Mark’s neck. It had become a symbol, of sorts, of the two of them. What Kieran had said next still rang in his ears: We will be done with each other.

  He didn’t know if he could explain what he felt to Kieran, or even to Cristina. He knew only that he did not feel done: not with Kieran, nor with Cristina should Kieran choose to return to him.

  “Do you feel any better, Kieran?” he said softly.

  “Yes—Cristina is a very good nurse.”

  Cristina rolled her eyes. “I put on a bandage. Don’t exaggerate my talents.”

  Kieran gazed sadly down at his bandaged arm. “I do feel a bit odd with my sleeve missing.”

  Mark couldn’t help smiling. “It’s very stylish. Big with mundanes, the one-sleeve look.”

  Kieran’s eyes widened. “Is it?”