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

In the end, she’d fallen into a fitful sleep full of dreams of fire and blood. She’d been woken up by the sound of Cristina knocking on her door with a mug of tea and the unpleasant news that Horace had been elected the new Inquisitor in an emergency vote that morning. She’d already told the rest of the family, who were awake and readying themselves for the funeral.

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.