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

Jaime whistled, his grin infectious. “Abre las puertas!”

The cry rose into the air. More and more Nephilim joined in—Kadir Safar and Vivianne Penhallow, the cry of “Open the gates!” lifting into a chorus. Tavvy and Dru joined in, Dru losing herself for a moment in the shouting, the feeling of being part of something bigger and stronger than herself alone. She climbed onto a bench, pulling Tavvy up beside her, so she could see the whole scene: the obviously uncomfortable Cohort, the shouting Nephilim, the few Shadowhunters who stood quiet and uncertain.

“We will not disobey the true Consul!” shouted Lazlo, his face darkening. “We will die here before you force us to betray the Law!”

The cries faltered; no one had expected that. Tavvy’s eyes widened. “What does he mean?”

The crowd had frozen. No Nephilim wanted to be forced to harm another Nephilim, especially after the nightmare of the Dark War. Jia seemed to hesitate.

A Silent Brother stepped forward. Then another, and another, their parchment robes rustling like leaves in the wind. The crowd shrank back to make way for them. Dru couldn’t help but stare. The last time she had looked at a group of Silent Brothers, it had been the day of her sister’s funeral.

A silent voice echoed across the square. Dru could see by the expressions on the faces of the others in the crowd that everyone could hear it, echoing inside their minds.

I am Brother Shadrach. We have conferred among ourselves as to what the Law instructs us to do. We have concluded that the true Consul is Jia Penhallow. Brother Shadrach paused. He and the others made a soundless tableau, ranged against the members of the Cohort. Open the gates.

There was a silence. Balogh’s face worked.

“No!” It was Paige Ashdown. There was a high, angry note in her voice—the same sharp and mean tone she’d always used when she called Ty names, when she sneered at Dru’s clothes and weight. “You can’t tell us what to do—”

Brother Shadrach raised his right hand. So did each of the other Brothers. There was a sound like something enormous tearing in half, and the gates blew open, slamming into the Cohort members as if they had been smacked by a gigantic hand. The air was full of the sound of their yells as they were knocked aside; the gates yawned open, and beyond them, Dru could see the Imperishable Fields, green under a gray sky and overrun with fighting.

“Nephilim!” Jia had drawn her dao; she lowered it to point directly ahead at the raging battle. “Nephilim, go forth!”

Roaring with the desire to fight, Shadowhunters began to pour out of the open gates of the city. Most of them stepped over the fallen Cohort as they rolled on the ground, groaning in pain. Only Cameron Ashdown, visible thanks to his red hair, paused to help his sister Paige to her feet.

Diego and the others began to move toward the gates. Dru saw Jaime reach over and tap his brother on the shoulder; Diego nodded, and Jaime peeled off from the group and ran toward Dru. She stood frozen in surprise on her bench as he flew through the crowd toward her. He was graceful as a thrown knife, his smile as bright as the edge of its flashing blade.

He reached her; with her standing on the bench, they were the same height. “We could not have done this without you,” he said. “You are the one who set us free.” He kissed her on the forehead, his lips light and quick. “On the battlefield, I will think of you.”

And he was gone, running toward his brother as Dru wished she were running toward hers.

She had dreamed that she might fight too, alongside the others. But she could not leave Tavvy. She sat down on the bench and pulled him into her lap, holding him as they watched Diego and Jaime, Rayan and Divya, even Cameron Ashdown, vanishing into the crowd surging through the gates onto the Fields.





31


A REDDER GLOW


“I can’t believe Magnus did this to us,” said Ty. He and Kit were sitting in the hollow below the oak tree, near the half-destroyed campsite. Kit was chilled from sitting on the ground for so long, but it wasn’t as if he could go anywhere. Before heading out to the battlefield with the others, Magnus had fastened both Ty and Kit to the roots of the oak tree with flickering chains of light.

“Sorry, guys,” he’d said, blue sparks dancing from his fingers. “But I promised Julian you’d stay safe, and the best way to make sure that happens is to make sure you stay right here.”

“If he hadn’t, you’d be following Julian and the others to the Imperishable Fields,” said Kit. “You can see his reasoning.” He kicked at the chain around his ankle. It was made of glimmer—there was no real substance to it, just shining loops of light, but it held him in place as tightly as if it had been made of adamas. When he touched the light itself, he got a faint shock, like the shock of static electricity.

“Stop fighting it,” said Ty. “We haven’t been able to break out yet; we’re not going to be able to now. We’ll have to find another solution.”

“Or we could just accept that we have to wait for them to get back,” said Kit, sinking back against the roots. He suddenly felt very tired—not physically, but deep down.

“I don’t accept that,” said Ty, poking at the glimmering chain around his ankle with a stick.

“Maybe you should learn to accept things that can’t be changed.”

Ty looked up, his gray eyes flashing in his thin face. “I know what you’re really talking about,” he said. “You are mad at me.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “I’m mad at you.”

Ty threw the stick aside; Kit jumped. “You knew I was going to raise Livvy,” he said. “You knew it all along and you told me it was fine. You went along with it until the very last minute and then you told me not to do it. I thought you cared, but you lied to me. Just like everyone else.”

Kit gasped with the unfairness of it. I thought you cared? He’d told Ty how much he cared and Ty had treated it like nothing. The humiliation of the night before flooded back over him in a hot wave, sparking a bitter rage. “You only care about what’s best for you,” he said between his teeth. “You raised Livvy for you, not for her or anyone else. You knew the damage it might do. You only thought of yourself. I wish— I wish I’d never known you—”

Ty’s eyes filled with sudden tears. Shocked, Kit fell silent. Ty was Ty; he didn’t weep easily, but he was wiping tears from his face with shaking hands. Kit’s rage vanished; he wanted to crawl across the hollow toward Ty, who was shaking his head, saying something under his breath in a low voice—

“I’m here.”

Ty’s expression changed completely. There were still tears on his cheeks, but his lips had parted in amazement. In wonder.

She knelt at the edge of the hollow, half-transparent. The wind didn’t lift the edges of her brown hair, nor did she shiver in her long white dress. The dress he had wondered about the night before, thinking she would never have chosen it.

Only now did Kit realize that she hadn’t: The dress was what she had been burned in, a Shadowhunter funeral dress.

“Livvy,” Ty said. He tried to stand, but the cord of light around his ankle jerked him back down. He tumbled onto some moss.

The ghost of Livvy Blackthorn smiled. She came down into the hollow—not climbing or falling, but drifting, like a feather on the wind.

“What are you doing?” asked Ty as she knelt down beside him.

“I shouldn’t have been so angry with you last night,” said Livvy. “You meant well.”

“You came to apologize?” said Kit.

Livvy turned to look at him. The gold locket gleamed at her throat. It was strange to see two of it—the one Ty wore, real and shining, and the one that flickered on Livvy’s neck. A whisper of her memories? Death’s way of projecting an image of what people expected Livvy to look like?

“I forgot,” Livvy said. “You can see ghosts, Herondale.”