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

That got Jaime’s attention. He struggled into a sitting position. “I have been thinking about Cristina. Zara doesn’t know that she has the Eternidad—the heirloom—and there is no reason for her ever to know.”

“We could try to figure out a way to warn Cristina. Tell her to abandon the heirloom somewhere—give it to someone else—it would give her a head start—”

“No.” Jaime’s eyes glimmered with fever. “Absolutely not. If we told Zara that Cristina had it, she’d torture Cristina to get the information just like she tortured me. Even if it had been thrown into the depths of the ocean, Zara wouldn’t care—she would torture Cristina regardless. Zara can’t know who has it.”

“What if we told Cristina to give it to Zara?” Diego said slowly.

“We can’t. Would you really want the Cohort to get their hands on it? We don’t even understand everything it does.” He reached out and took Diego’s hand in his fever-hot one. His fingers felt as thin as they had when he was ten. “I will be okay,” he said. “Please. Do not do any of these things for me.”

There was a clang as Zara appeared in the corridor, followed by the hunched figure of Anush Joshi. Cortana glimmered at her hip. The sight annoyed Diego: A blade like Cortana should be worn strapped to the back. Zara cared more about showing off the sword than she did about having such a special weapon.

Anush carried a tray with two bowls of the usual glop on it. Kneeling, he slid it through the low gap in the bottom of the cell door.

How can someone as wonderful as Divya have such a terrible cousin? Diego thought.

“That’s right, Anush,” Zara said, prowling around her companion. “This is your punishment for deserting us in the forest—bringing slop to our worst, smelliest prisoners.” She sneered at Diego. “Your brother doesn’t look too good. Feverish, I think. Changed your mind yet?”

“Nobody’s changed their mind, Zara,” Jaime said.

Zara ignored him, looking at Diego. He could tell her what she wanted to know and trade Jaime’s safety for the heirloom. The part of him that was a big brother, that had always protected Jaime, entreated him to do it.

But strangely, in the moment, he remembered Kieran saying: You decide you will find a solution when the time comes, but when the worst happens, you find yourself unprepared.

He could save Jaime in the moment, but he understood Zara well enough to know that that wouldn’t mean Jaime and Diego would walk free.

If the Cohort got their way, no one would ever walk free again.

“Jaime is correct,” Diego said. “No one has changed their mind.”

Zara rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll see you later.”

She stalked away, Anush hurrying like a dispirited shadow in her wake.

*

Emma sat beside Cristina on the office desk and drank in the view. The walls were glass, and through them she could see the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. It felt as if the colors of the world had been restored to her, after the darkness of Thule. The sea seemed to sing blues and silvers, golds and greens. The desert, too, glowed with green bright and dull, rich terra-cotta sand and dirt, and deep purple shadows between the hills.

Cristina took a small vial out of her pocket, made of thick blue glass. She unstoppered it and held it up to the light.

Nothing happened. Emma looked at Cristina sideways.

“It always takes a bit of time,” Cristina said reassuringly.

“I heard you in the Unseelie Court,” Emma said. “You said that it wasn’t the ley lines—that it was the blight. You figured it out, didn’t you? What was causing the warlocks’ sickness?”

Cristina turned the vial around. “I suspected it, but I wasn’t totally sure. I knew the blight in Brocelind was the same as the blight in Faerie, but when I realized the King was causing them both—that he wanted to poison our world—I realized it might be what was hurting the warlocks.”

“And Catarina knows?”

“I told her when we got back. She said she’d look into it—”

Smoke began to stream out of the vial, gray-white and opaque. It slowly shaped itself into a slightly distorted scene, wavering at the edges: They were looking at Tessa in a loose blue dress, a stone wall visible behind her.

“Tessa?” Emma said.

“Tessa!” Cristina said. “Is Catarina there as well?”

Tessa tried to smile, but it wavered. “Last night Catarina fell into a sleep that we haven’t been able to wake her from. She is—very ill.”

Cristina murmured in sympathy. Emma couldn’t stop staring at Tessa. She looked so different—not older or younger, but more alive. She had not realized how much Thule Tessa’s emotions had seemed deadened, as if she had long ago given up on having them.

And this Tessa, Emma remembered, was pregnant. It wasn’t visible yet, though Tessa did rest one hand with light protectiveness on her belly as she spoke.

“Before Catarina fell into unconsciousness,” Tessa said, “she told me that she thought Cristina was right about the blight. We have some samples of it here, and we’ve been studying them, but I fear we will be too late to save Magnus and Catarina—and so many others.” Her eyes were bright with tears.

Emma sprang to reassure her. “We think we might have the answer,” she said, and scrambled to tell her story again, ending it on her meeting with Tessa in the cave. There seemed no reason to tell her now what had come after that.

“I told you this?” Tessa seemed astonished. “A me that you encountered in another world?”

“I know it sounds hard to believe. You were living in that cave, the big one up by Staircase Beach. You had Church with you.”

“That does sound right.” Tessa seemed dazed. “What’s the plan? I can help you, though there are few other warlocks well enough to join me—”

“No, it’s all right,” Cristina said. “Jace and Clary are going.”

Tessa frowned. “That seems dangerous.”

“Aline found a time tomorrow when she thinks there won’t be guards at Lake Lyn,” said Cristina. “They’re going to leave at dawn.”

“I suppose danger can never be avoided for Nephilim,” said Tessa. She glanced at Cristina. “Could Emma and I speak for a moment alone, please?”

Cristina blinked in surprise, then hopped down from the desk. “Of course.” She bumped Emma’s shoulder companionably as she headed out the door, and then Emma was alone in the office with a wavering but determined-looking Tessa.

“Emma,” Tessa said as soon as the door had shut behind Cristina. “I wanted to talk to you about Kit Herondale.”

*

Kit picked his way across the sand, his sneakers already wet where the incoming tide had caught him unawares.

It was the first time he’d been down to the beach near the Institute without Ty. He felt almost guilty, though when he’d told Ty he was taking a walk, Ty had just nodded and said he’d see him later—Kit knew Ty wanted to talk to Julian, and he didn’t want to interrupt anyway.

There was something restful about this space, where the sea met the shore. Kit had learned long ago in the Shadow Market that there were “in-between” spaces in the world where it was easier to do certain kinds of magic: the middle of bridges, caves between the earth and the underworld, borderlands between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. And the Shadow Market itself, between Downworld and the mundane.

The tide line was a place like that, and because of that it felt like home. It reminded him of an old song he remembered someone singing to him. It must have been his father, though he always remembered it in a woman’s voice.

Tell him to buy me an acre of land,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Between the salt water and the sea sand,

Then he shall be a true love of mine.