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

The house felt echoingly empty.

The trip back and forth to the Portal room at the Gard had been chaotic, with Tavvy complaining, and Helen frantically asking Julian about the everyday running of the Institute, and the odd electricity between Cristina and Mark, and Ty doing something odder with his phone. On the walk back Diana had mercifully broken the silence between Emma and Julian by chatting about whether or not she was going to sell the weapons shop on Flintlock Street. Emma could tell Diana was making a conscious effort to avoid awkward breaks in conversation, but she appreciated it all the same.

Now Diana was gone, and Emma and Julian climbed the steps to the canal house in silence. Several guards had been posted around the place, but it still felt empty. The house had been full of people that morning; now it was only her and Julian. He threw the bolt on the front door and turned to go up the stairs without a word.

“Julian,” she said. “We need—I need to talk to you.”

He stopped where he was, hand on the banister. He didn’t turn to look at her. “Isn’t that sort of a cliché?” he said. “We need to talk?”

“Yeah, that’s why I changed it to ‘I need to talk to you,’ but either way, it’s a fact and you know it,” Emma said. “Especially since we’re going to be alone with each other for the next few days. And we have to face the Inquisitor together.”

“But this isn’t about the Inquisitor.” He did finally turn to look at her, and his eyes burned, acid blue-green. “Is it?”

“No,” Emma said. For a moment she wondered if he was actually going to refuse to have a conversation, but he shrugged finally and led the way upstairs without speaking.

In his room, she closed the door, and he laughed, a tired sort of noise. “You don’t need to do that. There’s no one else here.”

Emma could think of a time they would have been delighted to have a house to themselves. When it was a dream they’d shared. A house to themselves, forever, a life of their own, forever. But it did seem almost blasphemous to think about that, with Livvy dead.

She had laughed, earlier, with Cristina. A flicker of joy in the dark. Now she wanted to shiver as Julian turned around, his face still blank, and looked at her.

She moved closer to him, unable to stop herself from studying his face. He had explained to her once that what fascinated him about painting and drawing was the moment when an illustration took on life. The dab of paint or flick of a pen that changed a drawing from a flat copy to a living, breathing interpretation—the Mona Lisa’s smile, the look in the eyes of the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

That was what was gone from Julian, she thought, shivering again. The thousands of emotions that had always lived behind his expressions, the love—for her, for his siblings—behind his eyes. Even his worry seemed to have gone, and that was stranger than anything else.

He sat down on the edge of his bed. There was a spiral-bound drawing notebook there; he shoved it carelessly aside, almost under one of his pillows. Julian was usually fastidious about his art supplies; Emma pushed back the urge to rescue the sketch pad. She felt lost at sea.

So much seemed to have changed.

“What’s going on with you?” she said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Julian said. “I’m grieving my sister. How am I supposed to be acting?”

“Not like this,” Emma said. “I’m your parabatai. I can tell when something’s wrong. And grief isn’t wrong. Grief is what I’m feeling, what I know you were feeling last night, but Julian, what I feel from you now isn’t that. And it scares me more than anything.”

Julian was silent for a long moment. “This is going to sound strange,” he said finally. “But can I touch you?”

Emma stepped forward so that she was standing between his legs, within arm’s reach. “Yes,” she said.

He put his hands on her hips, just over the band of her jeans. He drew her closer, and she put her hands gently on the sides of his face, curling her fingertips against his cheekbones.

He closed his eyes, and she felt his lashes brush the sides of her fingers. What is this? she thought. Julian, what is this? It wasn’t as if he’d never hidden anything from her before; he’d hidden a whole secret life from her for years. Sometimes he’d been like a book written in an indecipherable language. But now he was like a book that had been shut and locked with a dozen heavy clasps.

He leaned his head against her, soft wavy hair brushing her skin where her T-shirt rode up. He raised his head slightly and she felt the warmth of his breath through the fabric. She shivered as he pressed a soft kiss to the spot just above her hip bone; when he looked up at her, his eyes were fever bright.

“I think I solved our problem,” he said.

She swallowed down her desire, her confusion, her tangle of unsorted feelings. “What do you mean?”

“When Robert Lightwood died,” Julian said, “we lost our chance of exile. I thought maybe grief, the overwhelming pain of it, would make me stop loving you.” His hands were still on Emma’s hips, but she didn’t feel comforted by that: His voice was terrifyingly flat. “But it didn’t. You know that. Last night—”

“We stopped,” Emma said, her cheeks flushing as she remembered: the shower, the tangle of sheets, the salt-and-soap taste of kisses.

“It’s not the actions, it’s the emotions,” said Julian. “Nothing made me stop loving you. Nothing made me even slow down. So I had to fix it.”

A cold knot of dread settled in Emma’s stomach. “What did you do?”

“I went to Magnus,” Julian said. “He agreed to do a spell. Magnus said this kind of magic, messing with people’s emotions, can have dangerous repercussions, but—”

“Messing with your emotions?” Emma took a step back, and his hands fell to his sides. “What do you mean?”

“He took them away,” said Julian. “My emotions. My feelings for you. They’re gone.”

“I don’t understand.” Emma had always wondered why people said that when it was clear they did understand, perfectly. She realized now: It was because they didn’t want to understand. It was a way of saying: No, you can’t mean it. Not what you just said.

Tell me it isn’t true.

“As long as our feelings aren’t mutual,” he said, “it’s not a problem, right? The curse can’t come to pass.”

“Maybe.” Emma took a deep, shaking breath. “But it’s not just how you feel about me. You’re different. You didn’t fight Jia about leaving the kids—”

He looked a little surprised. “I suppose I didn’t,” he said. He stood up, reaching out a hand for her, but she backed away. He dropped his arm. “Magnus said this stuff wasn’t precise. That that was why it was a problem. Love spells, real love spells, the kind that make you fall for someone, those are black magic. They’re a way of forcing emotion on people. Something like what he did to me is almost the opposite—he wasn’t forcing anything on me, I asked for it, but he said emotions aren’t singular—that’s why there are no real ‘cancel out love’ spells. All your feelings are tied to other feelings, and they’re tied to your thoughts and to who you are.” Something fluttered on his wrist as he gestured: It looked like a loop of red fabric. “So he said he would do his best to affect only one part of my emotions. The eros part. Romantic love. But he did say it would probably affect everything else I felt too.”

“And has it?” Emma said.

He frowned. And watching him frown tore at her heart: It was an emotion, even if it was just frustration or wonderment. “I feel as if I’m behind a pane of glass,” he said. “And everyone else is on the other side. My anger is still there, I can feel that easily. I was angry at Jia. And when I climbed the pyre after Ty, it was atavistic, the need to protect him, there was no conscious thought to it.” He glanced down at his bandaged hands. “I still feel grief, over Livvy, but it’s bearable. It doesn’t feel like it’s ripping away my breath. And you . . .”

“And us,” Emma said grimly.