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

She supposed it wasn’t surprising that she couldn’t sleep. She’d slept for three days and awakened to a series of shocks: realizing what had happened, Jem’s explanation, the house full of people. The odd feeling that followed her constantly that she’d forgotten something, that she’d put something down in the other room and needed to remember to get it.

It was the parabatai bond, she knew. Her body and her brain hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was gone. She was missing it the way people who lost limbs sometimes still felt them there.

She was missing Julian. They’d been together all day, but always surrounded by other people. When the house had finally emptied of strangers, Julian had taken Tavvy up to bed, bidding her an awkward good night in front of the others.

She’d gone up to bed herself not long after, and had been lying there worrying for hours. Would everything be awkward now that they weren’t parabatai? Now that they floated in a new, foreign place between being friends and lovers? They had never declared themselves because words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” seemed banal in the face of curses and giant monsters. What if everything that had happened was so devastating that they could never reach a place of normalcy?

She couldn’t stand it. She rolled out of bed, got to her feet, and smoothed down her nightgown. She flung open her bedroom door, ready to march across the hall to Julian’s room and make him talk to her, no matter how awkward it might be.

Just outside her door stood Julian, his hand outstretched, looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

He lowered his hand slowly, the distant moonlight glinting off his sea-glass bracelet. The hallway was dark and quiet, casting Julian’s face into shadow. “I didn’t know if you’d want me to come in,” he said.

Relief made Emma sag against the doorway. “I do want you to come in.”

She moved back into the room while he shut the door behind him. They were both in darkness now, only the light of the glass towers providing illumination. Julian, in all black, was a shadow among shadows as he looked down at her; his hair looked black too, striking against his pale skin. “I didn’t know if you’d want me to kiss you.”

She didn’t move. More than anything else she wanted him to come to her and put his hands on her. She wanted to feel him against her when the space between them was no longer a space of cursed and forbidden things.

“I do want you to kiss me,” she whispered.

He closed the distance between them in one step. His hands cupped the back of her head, his mouth slanting down over hers, hot and sweet as tea with honey. She ran her teeth lightly across his bottom lip and he made a guttural sound that raised the hairs along her arms.

His warm lips moved to graze her cheek, her jawbone. “I didn’t know if you’d want me to touch you,” he murmured against her skin.

It was a pleasure just to look up at him slowly. To know that none of this needed to be rushed. She slipped her nightgown over her head and watched his face go tight with desire, his eyes dark as the bottom of the sea.

“I want you to touch me,” she said. “There’s nothing you could do to me that I wouldn’t want, because it’s you.”

He caught her in his arms and it was strange for a moment, her bare skin against his clothes, cotton and denim and metal rivets as he lifted her up and carried her to the bed. They crashed onto it together, Julian struggling out of his shirt, his jeans; Emma crawled atop him, leaning down to kiss his throat, to lick and suck at the pulse point there where she could feel the beating of his heart.

“I want to go slowly,” she whispered. “I want to feel everything.”

He gripped her hips and flipped their position, rolling over so that he was above her. He grinned down at her wickedly.

“Slowly it is,” he said.

He started with her fingers, kissing each one; he kissed the palms of her hands and her wrists, her shoulders and her collarbones. He traced a path of kisses over her stomach until she was writhing and gasping and threatening him, which only made him laugh softly and turn his attention to even more sensitive places.

When the world had gone white behind her eyes several times, he rose up over her and brushed her damp hair away from her face. “Now,” he whispered, and covered her mouth with his own as he joined their bodies together.

It was slow as he had said it would be, as it had never been before; there was no desperation beyond their desire. They lay crosswise on the bed, sprawled and hungry, yearning and touching. She stroked his face lightly, reverently: the curve of his mouth, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheekbones, and with every touch and moment his breath grew more ragged, his grip on the sheets tighter. Her back arched to meet him, her head full of sparks: they rose and blended together until everything was fire. And when they caught alight at last, neither able to wait a moment longer, they were one person. They were incandescent as angels.

*

From Mark’s room, he could see the moon, and it troubled him.

There had been so many nights on horseback, the moon riding with them as if it, too, hunted the sky. He could hear Kieran’s laughter in his ears, even now, clear laughter untouched by sorrow.

He hoped Kieran would laugh again like that someday.

He could only picture him sitting in darkness, in the blackened throne room of the Unseelie King, a bleak and lonely place. A King of shattered hearts and broken souls, solitary on his granite throne, growing older slowly through the ages of the world.

It was more than he could stand. He was grateful beyond measure when Cristina slipped into his room and crawled onto the bed with him. She wore white pajamas, her hair loose and dark. She curled up against his side, pressing her face into his neck. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Is this really how it ends? The three of us, all miserable?” he said.

She placed her hand over his heart. “I love you, Mark,” she said, her voice gentle. “I hate to think of your heart torn as mine is.”

“I am happier when you are here,” he said, placing his hand over hers. “And yet . . .”

“And yet,” she said. “I have an idea, Mark. Perhaps a mad one. But it might work. It might mean we could see him again.” Her dark eyes were straightforward. “I would need your help.”

He drew her up his body and kissed her; she went soft against him, her body curving into his. She was rich and sweet as honey, silken as a bed of wildflowers. She was the only woman he would ever love.

He thumbed the tears away from her cheeks and whispered, “My hand, my heart, my blade are yours. Tell me what I need to do.”

*

Emma lay with her head on Julian’s chest, feeling the beat of her heart slowly return to normal. Somehow most of the covers had come off the bed and were on the floor; they were half-wrapped in sheets, Julian’s free hand idly playing with her hair.

“So I guess you feel pretty good about yourself,” she said.

He blinked at her sleepily. “Why would that be?”

She laughed, her breath stirring the soft dark curls of his hair. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

He smiled. “How do you feel?”

She folded her arms on his chest, looking up at him. “Happy. So happy but also like I don’t deserve to be.”

His hand stilled in her hair. “Why not? You deserve to be happy more than anyone I know.”

“If it wasn’t for you, I would have done a terrible thing,” Emma said. “I would have broken all the parabatai bonds. It would have caused so much devastation.”

“You were half-crazy from the curse,” Julian said. “You weren’t thinking straight.”

“Still. I let myself be manipulated by the Queen. Even though I knew she only cares about herself. I knew it, and I let her get into my head. I should have had faith.”

“But you did,” he said. “Faith isn’t never having any doubts; it’s having what you need to overcome them.” He lightly stroked her cheek. “We all have things we regret doing. I regret asking Magnus to do that spell. I regret that we couldn’t help Ash. He was just a kid.”