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

He let her go and frowned. “Why are you on the field? You should be in the city. Tavvy, too.” He turned to Jaime. “It’s dangerous.”

“Yes,” said Jaime. “I am aware of that.”

“You’re out here,” Dru pointed out.

“I was up a tree,” Ty said, as if that made it better somehow. Before Dru could get into a really enjoyable sibling argument about it, Helen had come rushing up, her pale blond curls fluttering. Aline was just on her heels.

“Dru! Tavvy!” Helen darted tearfully toward the two of them, reaching to pick Tavvy up; Dru noticed that he held his arms out to her automatically, something he only really had ever done for Julian before. Helen lifted him up and squeezed him, hard. “What are you two doing here? Dru, did you use the Familias rune on purpose?”

“Of course I did!” Dru said. “We have to get out there on the field. We have to stop Emma and Jules. We have to get them back—back to themselves.”

“We’ve been trying,” Helen said as she set Tavvy down. “Don’t you think we’ve been trying?”

Dru wanted to grind her teeth together. Why didn’t Helen listen? She’d thought things were better, but she needed her sister to hear her so badly she could feel it like a lump in her throat.

She knew what they had to do. It seemed so clear. How could she make the rest of them see it?

She felt a twinge in her arm, where the rune was, and then Mark was there, racing up with Cristina at his side. “Dru! You called us—” He saw Ty and smiled delightedly. “I was watching you with your slingshot,” he said. “Your aim is true, little brother.”

“Don’t encourage him, Mark,” said Helen. “He was supposed to stay back at camp.”

“Look,” Dru said. “I know it doesn’t make much sense. But if we all go up to Emma and Jules together, if we go right up to them and talk to them, we can get through. We have to try. If we can’t do it, no one can, and then everyone is in danger.”

Helen shook her head. “But why is this happening?”

Cristina and Mark exchanged a glance that Dru couldn’t decipher. “I think it is because of the parabatai bond,” Cristina said.

“Because Emma almost died?” Aline said, bewildered.

“I do not know,” Cristina said. “I can only guess. But there is heavenly fire burning inside them. And no mortal being can survive that for very long.”

“It’s too dangerous for us to approach them,” Mark said. “We have to trust Emma and Julian. Trust that they can end this on their own.”

There was a long pause. Jaime watched impassively as the Blackthorns and their extended family stood in the stillness of an intense silence.

“No,” Helen said finally, and Dru’s heart sank. Helen raised her eyes, blazing Blackthorn blue in her grime-streaked face. “Dru is right. We have to go.” She looked at Dru. “You’re right, my love.”

“I will walk with you to the field,” Jaime said to Dru.

She was glad for his company as they all set out, Blackthorns together. But it wasn’t Jaime she was thinking about as they turned to walk toward the heart of the battle. It was her sister. Helen believed me. Helen understood.

In the midst of the darkness of battle, her heart felt a tiny bit lighter.

Jaime suddenly jerked upright. “Diego,” he said, and then a torrent of Spanish. Dru and Helen whipped around, and Dru sucked in her breath.

Not far away, a redcap was dragging Diego’s limp body across the field. At least, Dru guessed it was Diego: His clothes were familiar, and his mop of dark hair. But his face was obscured entirely by blood.

Helen touched Jaime’s shoulder. “Go to your brother,” she said. “Quickly. We’ll be fine.”

Jaime took off running.

*

Jace was awake. He had been blinking and starting to sit up when Clary reached him, and she’d been torn between throwing herself into his arms and smacking him for terrifying her.

She was drawing an iratze on his arm. It seemed to be doing its work—the long bloody scratch along the side of his face had already healed. He was half-sitting up, leaning against her to catch his breath, when Alec came running up and knelt down beside them.

“Are you all right, parabatai?” Alec said, looking anxiously into Jace’s face.

“Please promise you’ll never do that again,” Clary said.

“I promise that I will never stand between Zara Dearborn and a marauding giant again,” said Jace. “Alec, what’s happening? You’ve been out on the field—”

“Julian and Emma just tossed Vanessa Ashdown about twenty feet,” said Alec. “I think they’re angry that she stabbed Cameron, though why, I couldn’t tell you.”

Clary looked over at Emma and Julian. They stood very still, looking down at the Cohort, as if choosing what to do with them. Every once in a while a Cohort member would break free and run, and Emma or Julian would move to pen them back in again.

It was almost like a game, but angels did not play. Clary couldn’t help but remember the sight of Raziel, rising from Lake Lyn. Not many people had looked at an angel. Not many people had stared into the cold eyes of Heaven, with its indifference to petty mortal concerns. Did Emma and Julian feel a fraction of that indifference, that unconcern that was not cruelty but something stranger and altogether bigger—something not human at all?

Emma suddenly lurched and went down on one knee. Clary stared in shock as the Cohort howled and fled, but Emma made no movement toward them.

Julian, beside her, reached down a shining hand to lift her back up.

“They’re dying,” Jace said quietly.

Alec looked puzzled. “What?”

“They are Nephilim—true Nephilim,” said Jace. “The monsters of old who once strode the earth. They have heavenly fire inside them, powering everything they do. But it’s too much. Their mortal bodies will burn away. They’re probably in agony.”

He got to his feet.

“We have to stop them. If they get too maddened with pain, who knows what they’ll do.”

Emma began to move toward the city. Clary could see Isabelle and Simon running toward the blockade of Shadowhunters standing between Emma and Julian and the city of Alicante.

“Stop them how?” Alec said.

Grimly, Jace unsheathed the Mortal Sword. Before he could move, Clary put a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” she said. “Look.”

Not far away now, a small group was walking steadily toward the shining, monstrous figures of Emma and Julian. Helen Blackthorn, with all her siblings beside her—Mark and Tiberius, Drusilla and Octavian. They moved together in a strong and steady line.

“What are they doing?” Alec asked.

“The only thing they can do,” said Clary.

Slowly, Jace lowered the Mortal Sword. “By the Angel,” he said, drawing in his breath. “Those kids . . .”

*

“Diego. Wake up, my brother. Please wake up.”

There had been only darkness, interspersed with bright sparks of pain. Now there was Jaime’s voice. Diego wanted to stay in the darkness and the quiet. To rest where the pain was held at arm’s length, here in the silent world.

But his brother’s voice was insistent, and from childhood Diego had been trained to respond to it. To rise from bed when his brother cried, to run to help him up when he fell down.

He peeled his eyes open. They felt sticky. His face burned. Above him was roiling dark sky and Jaime, his expression starkly distraught. He was on his knees, his bow at his side; a distance away, a redcap lay dead with an arrow protruding from its chest.

Jaime was clutching a stele in his hand. He reached out and pushed back Diego’s hair; when he drew his hand back, it was red with blood. “Stay still,” he said. “I have given you several iratzes.”

“I must get up,” Diego whispered. “I must fight.”

Jaime’s dark eyes flashed. “Your face is sliced open, Diego. You have lost blood. You cannot get up. I will not allow it.”

“Jaime . . .”

“In the past, you have always healed me,” said Jaime. “Let me be the one who heals you.”

Diego coughed. His mouth and throat were thick with blood. “How bad—how bad will the scars be?”