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

It was amazing not to have to be secret, not to hide. Emma wasn’t used to it yet, but she kissed Julian back anyway, not caring who saw.


He tasted like salt and ocean. Like home. He nuzzled his chin against her forehead.

“I’m glad everyone came,” she said.

It was quite a crowd. Down at the end of the beach, Maia, Simon, and Bat were playing volleyball with Anush. The vampires hadn’t shown up yet since the sun was still out, but Lily kept texting Alec to make sure they’d be providing O negative on ice for later. Isabelle was decorating the layer cake Aline had baked with icing frills, and Marisol and Beatriz were making a sandcastle. They both wore mourning white, and seemed to share a quiet, meditative sadness. Emma hoped they would be good for each other: both had lost someone they loved.

Jace and Clary had braved the water and were splashing each other as Ragnor drifted by on a massive pool float, drinking a lemonade. Jocelyn Fairchild and Luke Garroway sat with Jia, Patrick, and Maryse some distance down the beach, and Diana and Gwyn were cuddled together on a blanket near the shoreline.

“We have a lot of allies,” Julian said.

Emma’s gaze slid down the beach toward Magnus and Alec. “This is going to be an important night,” she said. “And it’s being shared with us. That’s not about having allies. That’s about having friends. We have a lot of friends.”

She figured he’d make a teasing retort; instead, his face softened.

“You’re right,” he said. “I guess we do.”

*

Keeping an eye on the kids had become habit. Even while playing at the tide line, digging up hermit crabs and letting them fuss up and down her hands, Dru kept a side-eye on Tavvy, Max, and Rafe. She knew they were all well looked after by a cadre of warlocks and anxious Shadowhunters, but she couldn’t help it.

“Drusilla?”

Jaime was coming down the beach toward her, just as he had when he’d come in response to Cristina’s summons. He looked healthier than he had then—less skinny, more color in his cheeks. Same wild black hair whipped by the wind, same sparkling brown eyes. He smiled down at her, and she wondered if she should have worn something more bright and pretty like the other girls. She’d been wearing black dresses everywhere for so long she barely thought about it, but maybe he’d think it was odd?

“So what’s in store for you after all this?” Jaime asked. “Are you going to go to the new Academy?”

The Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance had come together to build a new school for Shadowhunters in an already safe and warded location—Luke Garroway’s farm in upstate New York. According to reports, it was nearly done—and according to Simon, about a thousand times nicer than the old Academy, where he’d once found rats in his sock drawer.

“Not yet,” Dru said, and she saw the quick recall and realization in his eyes: She was too young to attend the new Academy, which began at fifteen. “Maybe in a few years.” She kicked at a seashell. “Will I see you again?”

He wore an expression she hadn’t seen on his face before. A sort of pained seriousness. “I don’t think that’s very likely. Cristina is leaving, so I’ve got no reason to come here any longer.” Dru’s heart sank. “I have to go back home to make things right with my father and the rest of my family. You know how it is. Family is the most important thing.”

She bit back the words she wanted to say.

“But maybe I’ll see you at the Academy someday,” he added. “Do you still have that knife I gave you?”

“Yes,” Dru said, a little worried. He’d said it was a gift—surely he wasn’t going to ask for it back?

“Good girl,” Jaime said. He ruffled her hair and walked away. She wanted to run after him and yank on his sleeve. Ask him to be her friend again. But not if he was going to treat her like a child, she reminded herself. She’d liked him because he acted as if she had a fully functioning brain. If he didn’t think so anymore . . .

“Dru!” It was Ty, barefoot and sandy, with a hermit crab he wanted to show her. It had a delicately spotted shell. She bent her head over his cupped hands, grateful for the distraction.

She let his voice flow around her as he turned the crab over in his careful, delicate hands. Things were different with her and Ty now. She was the only one besides Kit and Magnus who knew what had happened with his attempt to raise Livvy.

It was clear to her that Ty trusted her in a new way. That they kept each other’s secrets. She was the only one who knew that sometimes when he looked away and smiled he was smiling at Livvy’s ghost, and he was the only one who knew that she could pick a lock in under thirty seconds.

“There’s bioluminescence down at the other end of the beach,” Ty said, depositing the crab back onto the sand. It scurried for its hole. “Do you want to come see?”

She could still see Jaime, who had joined Maia and Diego and was chatting animatedly. She supposed she could go over to them and try to join the conversation, try to seem more grown-up and worth talking to. But I am thirteen, she thought. I’m thirteen and I’m worth talking to without pretending I’m something I’m not. And I’m not going to bother with anyone who doesn’t see that.

She picked up her long black skirt and raced after Ty down the beach, her footsteps scattering light.

*

“Okay, here,” Helen said, sitting down just at the tide line. She reached up to pull Aline down beside her. “We can watch the tide go out.”

Aline sat, and then scowled. “Now my butt is wet,” she said. “Nobody warned me.”

Helen thought of several saucy things to say but held back. Aline was looking especially gorgeous right now, she thought, in a skirt and flowered top, her brown shoulders bared to the sun. She wore small gold earrings in the shape of Love and Commitment runes. “You never sat on the beach on Wrangel?” she asked.

“No way. It was freezing.” Aline wiggled her bare toes in the sand. “This is much better.”

“It is much better, isn’t it?” Helen smiled at her wife, and Aline turned pink, because even after all the time they’d been together, Helen’s attention still made Aline blush and play with her hair. “We’re going to run the Institute.”

“Don’t remind me. So much paperwork,” Aline grumbled.

“I thought you wanted to run the Institute!” Helen laughed.

“I think steady employment is a good idea,” said Aline. “Also we need to keep an eye on the kids so they don’t become hooligans.”

“Too late, I think.” Helen gazed down the beach fondly in the direction of her siblings.

“And I think we should have a baby.”

“Really?” Helen opened her mouth. Closed it again. Opened it. “But—darling—how? Without mundane medicine—”

“I don’t know, but we should ask Magnus and Alec, because it seems to me that babies just fall from the sky when they’re around. Like toddler rain.”

“Aline,” Helen said in her be serious voice.

Aline tugged at her skirt. “Do you—want a baby?”

Helen scooted close to Aline, pulling her wife’s cold hands into her lap. “My love,” she said. “I do! Of course! It’s just—I still think of us in exile, a little bit. As if we’re waiting for our real life to truly start up again. I know it’s not logical. . . .”

Aline lifted their joined hands and kissed Helen’s fingers. “Every single minute I’ve spent with you has been my real life,” she said. “And even on Wrangel Island, a better life than I ever had without you.”

Helen felt herself starting to get teary-eyed. “A baby would be like a new sister or brother for Ty and Dru and Tavvy,” she said. “It would be so wonderful.”

“If it was a girl, we could name her Eunice,” Aline said. “It was my aunt’s name.”

“We will not.”

Aline grinned impishly. “We’ll see. . . .”

*

When Alec came up to talk to Mark, Mark was in the middle of making balloon animals for Tavvy, Rafe, and Max. Max seemed content, but Rafe and Tavvy had grown tired of Mark’s repertoire.

“It is a manticore,” said Mark, holding up a yellow balloon.