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

Clary had hugged Alec and Magnus, and Jace had given Magnus a friendly high five. Then he’d grabbed hold of Alec and they’d hugged each other for what seemed like hours or possibly years. They’d patted each other on the back and clung on while Clary and Magnus looked on indulgently.

Being parabatai did seem like intense stuff, Kit thought, rolling his shoulders to get rid of the crick in his neck. And oddly, it had been a long time since he’d thought about being Ty’s parabatai. Maybe it was because Ty was in no shape to make that kind of decision.

Maybe it was something else, but he pushed away from the thought as Alec and Jace let go of each other. Jace stepped back, sliding his hand into Clary’s. Magnus raised his hands, and the blue sparks flew from his fingers to create the whirling door of a Portal.

The wind that blew from it kicked up dust and sand; Kit squinted, barely able to see as Alec and Magnus stepped through. When the wind died down, he saw that Alec and Magnus were gone, and Jace and Clary were headed back to the Institute, hand in hand.

Kit closed his eyes and banged his head silently against the wall.

“Do you do that because you enjoy it, or because it feels good when you stop?” said a voice.

Kit’s eyes popped open. Jace was standing in front of him, muscular arms crossed, an amused look on his face. Clary must have gone inside.

“Sorry,” Kit muttered.

“Don’t apologize. It doesn’t make any difference to me if you want to scramble your brains like eggs.”

Grumbling, Kit stepped out of the shadows and stood blinking in the sun, dusting off his shirt. “I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want to interrupt all the good-bye hugging,” he said.

“Alec and I are unafraid to express our manly love,” said Jace. “Sometimes he carries me around like a swooning damsel.”

“Really?” said Kit.

“No,” said Jace. “I’m very heavy, especially when fully armed. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Actually, that,” said Kit.

“My weight?”

“Weapons.”

Jace looked delighted. “I knew you were a Herondale. This is excellent news. What do you want to discuss? Types of swords? Two-handed versus one-handed? I have a lot of thoughts.”

“Having my own weapon,” said Kit. “Emma has Cortana. Livvy had her sabers. Ty likes throwing knives. Julian’s got crossbows. Cristina has her balisong. If I’m going to be a Shadowhunter, I should have a weapon of choice.”

“So you decided?” Jace said. “You’re going to be a Shadowhunter?”

Kit hesitated. He didn’t know when exactly it had happened, but it had. He’d realized it on the beach with Shade, when he’d feared for a moment that he wasn’t Nephilim after all. “What else would I be?”

Jace’s mouth curled up at the corners in a cheeky grin. “I never doubted you, kid.” He ruffled Kit’s hair. “You don’t have any training, so I’d say archery and crossbows and throwing knives are out for you. I’ll find you something. Something that says Herondale.”

“I could slay with my deadly sense of humor and wicked charm,” said Kit.

“Now that says Herondale.” Jace looked pleased. “Christopher—can I call you Christopher?”

“No,” said Kit.

“Christopher, family for me was never blood. It was always the family I chose. But it turns out it’s nice to have someone I’m related to in this world. Someone I can tell boring family stories to. Do you know about Will Herondale? Or James Herondale?”

“I don’t think so,” said Kit.

“Excellent. Hours of your time will be ruined,” said Jace. “Now I’m off to find you a weapon. Don’t hesitate to come to me any time if you need advice about life or weaponry, preferably both.” He saluted sharply and jogged off before Kit could ask him what you were supposed to do if someone you really cared about wanted to raise the dead in an ill-advised manner.

“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?”