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

Julian let go of Zara and ran at her. He tore across the ground and flung himself at Annabel, just as Emma screamed his name, screamed at him that something was wrong, screamed at him to stop. She started toward him, and a blow hit her hard in the back.

The pain came a second later, hot and red. Emma turned in surprise and saw Zara standing with a small knife in her hand. She must have taken it from her belt.

The hilt was red and dripping. She had stabbed Emma in the back.

Emma tried to lift Cortana, but her arm felt as if it wasn’t working. Her mind, too, was racing, trying to catch up to her injury. As she tried to call out to Julian, choking on blood, Zara slammed the knife into Emma’s chest.

Emma’s legs went out from under her. She fell.





32


HEAVEN COME DOWN


It was all happening again.

Annabel was in front of him and she was looking at him with a sneering contempt. In her eyes he could see the reflection of himself on the dais in the Council Hall, soaked in Livvy’s blood. He saw her in Thule, screaming for Ash. He remembered the swing of his sword, her blood spreading all around her body.

None of it mattered. She would kill Emma if she could. She would kill Mark and Helen; she would cut Ty’s throat, and Dru’s, and Tavvy’s. She was the ghost of every fear he had ever had that his family would be taken from him. She was the nightmare he had wakened and not been able to destroy.

He reached her without slowing and plunged his longsword into her body. It slid in as if there was no resistance—no bones, no muscle. Like a knife through air or paper. It sank to the hilt and he found himself staring into her bloodshot scarlet eyes, barely an inch away.

Her lips drew back from her teeth in a hiss. But her eyes aren’t red. They’re Blackthorn blue.

He jerked back, dragging the sword with him. The hilt was dark with blackish ichor. The stench of demon was everywhere. Somewhere in the back of his head he could hear Emma calling to him, shouting that something was wrong.

“You’re not Annabel,” he said. You’re a demon.

Annabel began to change. Her features seemed to melt, to drip like candle wax. Beneath her pale skin and dark hair Julian could see the outlines of an unformed Eidolon demon—greasy and white, like a bar of dirty soap, pocked all over with gray craters. The glittering vial made of etched glass still dangled around its neck.

“You knew my brother,” the demon hissed. “Sabnock. Of Thule.”

Julian remembered blood. A church in Cornwall. Emma.

He reached for a seraph blade on his belt and named it quickly, “Sariel.”

The demon was grinning. It lunged at Julian, and he plunged the seraph blade into it.

Nothing happened.

This can’t be. Seraph blades slew demons. They always, always worked. The demon yanked the blade from its side as Julian stared in disbelief. It lunged for him, Sariel outstretched. Unprepared for the attack, Julian raised an arm to ward off the blow—

A dark shape slid between them. A kelpie, all razor-sharp, pawing hooves and fanged, glassy teeth. The faerie horse reared into the air between Julian and the Eidolon, and Julian recognized the kelpie: It was the one he had saved from Dane Larkspear.

It slammed a hoof into the Eidolon’s chest, and the demon flew backward, the seraph blade skidding from its hand. The kelpie glanced over its shoulder at Julian and winked, then gave chase as the Eidolon got to its feet and began to run.

Julian began to follow. He had gone only a few steps when pain went through him, sudden, searing.

He doubled over. The pain was all through him. His back, his chest. There was no reason for it except—

Emma.

He turned around.

It was all happening again.

Emma was on the ground, somehow, the front of her gear wet with blood. Zara knelt over her—it seemed as if they were struggling. Julian was already running, pushing past the pain, every stride a mile, every breath an hour. All that mattered was getting to Emma.

As he got closer, he saw that Zara was crouched beside Emma, trying to wrest Cortana from her red-streaked hand, but Emma’s grip was too fierce. Her throat, her hair, were wet with blood, but her fingers on Cortana’s hilt were unyielding.

Zara glanced up and saw Julian. He must have looked like death in human form, because she scrambled to her feet and ran, vanishing into the crowd.

No one else seemed to have noticed what had happened yet. A howl was building in Julian’s chest. He skidded to his knees beside Emma and lifted her into his arms.

She was limp in his grasp, heavy the way Livvy had been heavy. The way people felt weighted when they had stopped holding themselves up. He curled Emma in toward him and her head fell against his chest.

The grass all around them was wet. There was so much blood.

It was all happening again.

“Livvy, Livvy, my Livvy,” he whispered, cradling her, feverishly stroking her blood-wet hair away from her face. There was so much blood. He was covered in it in seconds; it had soaked through Livvy’s clothes, even her shoes were drenched in it. “Livia.” His hands shook; he fumbled out his stele, put it to her arm.

His sword had fallen. His stele was in his hand; the iratze was a muscle memory, his body acting even without his mind’s ability to comprehend what was happening.

Emma’s eyes opened. Julian’s heart lurched. Was it working? Maybe it was working. Livvy had never even looked at him. She’d been dead when he lifted her from the dais.

Emma’s gaze fixed on his. Her dark brown eyes held his gaze like a caress. “It’s all right,” she whispered.

He reached to draw another iratze. The first had vanished without a trace. “Help me,” he rasped. “Emma, we need to use it. The parabatai bond. We can heal you—”

“No,” she said. She reached up to touch his cheek. He felt her blood against his skin. She was still warm, still breathing in his arms. “I’d rather die like this than be separated from you forever.”

“Please don’t leave me, Emma,” Julian said. His voice broke. “Please don’t leave me in this world without you.”

She managed to smile at him. “You were the best part of my life,” she said.

Her hand fell slack into her lap, her eyes slipping closed.

Through the crowd now Julian could see people running toward them. They seemed to be moving slowly, as if in a dream. Helen, calling his name; Mark, running desperately; Cristina beside him, crying out to Emma—but none of them would reach him in time, and besides, there was nothing they could do.

He seized Emma’s hand and clutched it tightly, so tightly he could feel the small bones grind under his grip. Emma. Emma, come back. Emma, we can do this. We’ve melted stone. You saved my life. We can do anything.

He reached deep into his memories: Emma on the beach, looking back over her shoulder at him, laughing. Emma clinging to the iron bar of the Ferris wheel at Pacific Park. Emma handing him a bunch of limp wildflowers she’d picked on the day of his mother’s funeral. His arms around Emma as they rode a motorcycle through Thule. Emma in her pale dress at the Midnight Theater. Emma lying in front of the fire in Malcolm’s cottage.

Emma.

Her eyes flew open. They were full of flame, golden and bronze and copper. Her lips moved. “I remember,” she said.

Her voice sounded distant, almost inhuman, like the ringing of a bell. Something deep inside Julian went cold with fear and exultation.

“Should I stop?” he said.

“No.” Emma had begun to smile. Her eyes were all fire now. “Let us burn.”

He put his arms around her, the parabatai connection burning between them, shimmering gold and white. The ends of her hair had begun to burn, and the tips of his fingers. There was no heat and no pain. Only the fire. It rose up to consume them in a fiery cascade.

*

Diego flung Zara into the Malachi Configuration. There were quite a few other Cohort members in there and she staggered, nearly tripping in her effort to avoid bumping into them. Most of them were looking at her with deep dislike. Diego didn’t imagine that Horace’s daughter would be very popular right now.