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

You are part of Livia’s Watch. Don’t forget it.

Livvy wouldn’t have hesitated, Dru knew. She would have hurtled forward, desperate to right any injustice she saw. She would never have held back. She would never have hesitated.

Livvy, this is for you, my sister.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She went to work on the lock.

*

The entrance to the Silent City was just as Emma remembered it. A barely marked trail cut through a corner of Brocelind Forest, surrounded by thick greenery. It was clear that few passed this way, and rarely—her witchlight revealed a path almost unmarked by footsteps.

She could hear the twitter of night birds and the movement of small animals among the trees. But something was missing from Brocelind. It had always been a place where one might have expected to see the glint of will-o’-the-wisps among the leaves or hear the crackle of a campfire around which werewolves were gathered. There was something very present about its current silence, something that made Emma walk with extra care.

The trees grew together more thickly as she reached the mountainside and found the door in among the rocks. It looked just as it had three years ago: pointed at the top and carved with a bas-relief of an angel. A heavy brass knocker hung from the wood.

Acting mostly on instinct, Emma reached behind her and drew the Mortal Sword from its scabbard. It had a weight in her hand that no other sword, not even Cortana, had, and it gleamed in the night as if it emitted its own light.

She had taken it from Julian’s tent where it had been hidden beneath the bedroll, wrapped in a velvet cloth. She had replaced it with another sword. It wouldn’t pass close examination, but he had no reason to be racing to the tent every five minutes to check on it. After all, the camp was guarded.

She placed her hand against the door. Brother Shadrach’s message had said that the Silent City would be empty tonight, the Silent Brothers serving as guards on the city walls the night before the parley. And still the door seemed to pulse against her palm, as if it beat like a heart.

“I am Emma Carstairs, and I bear the Mortal Sword,” she said. “Open in the name of Maellartach.”

For an agonizingly long moment, nothing happened. Emma began to panic. Maybe the Mortal Sword of Thule was different, somehow, its atoms too altered, its magic alien.

The door opened all at once, soundlessly, like a mouth yawning open. Emma slipped inside, glancing once over her shoulder at the silent forest.

The door slid shut behind her with the same silence, and Emma found herself in a narrow, smooth-walled passage that led to a staircase going down. Her witchlight seemed to bounce off the marble walls as she descended, feeling as if she were passing through memory. The Silent City in Thule, empty and abandoned. Circles of fire in rooms of bones as she sealed her parabatai ritual with Julian. Her greatest mistake. The one that had ended with this journey.

She shivered as she came out into the main part of the City, where the walls were lined in skulls and femurs and delicate chandeliers of bones hung from the ceiling. At least in Thule, she hadn’t been alone.

At last she entered the room of the Speaking Stars. It was just as it had been in her dream. The floor glimmered like the night sky turned upside down, the stars curving in a parabola before the basalt table where the Silent Brothers sat when in session. The table was bare, and no Sword hung behind it in its usual place.

Emma stepped onto the stars, her boots clanking softly against the marble. In her dream, the floor had simply opened. Now, nothing happened. She rubbed at her exhausted eyes with her knuckles, feeling inside herself for the instinct that had guided her in opening the door of the City.

I am a parabatai, she thought. The magic that binds me to Julian is woven into this place, into the fabric of Nephilim. Hesitantly, she touched a finger to the blade of the Mortal Sword. Ran her fingertip down it gently, letting her memory fall back to that moment she had stood in the fire with Julian—thy people shall be my people, thy God my God—

A bead of blood formed on her fingertip and splashed down onto the marble at her feet. There was a click, and the floor, which had appeared seamless, opened and slid back, revealing a black gap below it.

In that gap was a tablet. She could see it far more clearly than she had in her dream. It was made of white basalt, and on it was a parabatai rune painted in blood so ancient that the blood itself had long dissolved, leaving behind only a red-brown stain in the shape of the rune.

Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Despite everything, being in the presence of something so old and so powerful caught at her heart. Feeling as if she were choking, she raised the Sword in her hands, the tip of the blade pointed downward.

She could see herself doing it, driving the Sword down, splitting the tablet apart. She imagined the sound of it breaking. It would be the sound of hearts breaking, all over the world, as parabatai were cut apart. She imagined them reaching for each other in uncomprehending horror—Jace and Alec, Clary and Simon.

The pain that Julian would feel.

She began to sob silently. She would be an exile, a pariah, cast out like Cain. She imagined Clary and the others turning from her with looks of loathing. You couldn’t hurt people like that and be forgiven.

But she thought again of Diana in Thule. Their runes began to burn like fire, as if they had fire in their veins instead of blood. People said that the blades of those who fought them shattered in their hands. Black lines spread over their bodies and they became monstrous—physically monstrous. I never saw it happen, mind you—I heard this all thirdhand. Stories about ruthless, massive shining creatures, tearing cities apart. Sebastian had to release thousands of demons to take them down. A lot of mundanes and Shadowhunters died.

She and Julian could not become monsters. They could not destroy everyone they knew and loved. It was better to break the parabatai bonds than to be responsible for death and destruction. It felt like forever since Jem had explained the curse to her. They had tried everything to escape it.

Eventually the power would make them mad, until they became as monsters. They would destroy their families, the ones they loved. Death would surround them.

There was no escape but this. Her hands clamped tighter around the sword’s hilt. She raised Maellartach.

Forgive me, Julian.

“Stop!” A voice rang through the Bone City. “Emma! What are you doing?”

She turned, without moving from the Speaking Stars or lowering the Sword. Julian stood at the entrance to the chamber. He was white-faced, staring at her in total shock. He had clearly been running: He was breathless, leaves in his hair and mud on his shoes.

“Don’t try to stop me, Julian.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

He held his hands out as if to show they were empty of weapons and took a step forward, toward her. She shook her head and he stopped. “I always thought this would be me,” he said. “I never thought it would be you doing this.”

“Get out of here, Julian. I don’t want you to be here for this. If they find me here, I want them to find me alone.”

“I know,” he said. “You’re sacrificing yourself. You know they’ll blame someone—someone with access to the Mortal Sword—and you want it to be you. I know you, Emma. I know exactly what you’re doing.” He took another step toward her. “I won’t try to stop you. But you can’t make me leave you either.”