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

“I know I loved you,” he said. “But I can’t feel it.”


Loved. The past tense was like being punched; she took another step backward, toward the door. She had to get out of the room.

“Entreat me not to leave thee,” she said, reaching for the doorknob, “but you’ve left me. You’ve left me, Julian.”

“Emma, stop,” he said. “Last night—when I went to Magnus—the curse was happening. I felt it. I know, I know I couldn’t stand one more person dying.”

“I never would have agreed to stay here with you if I’d known what you’d done,” Emma said. “You could at least have told me. Honesty isn’t an emotion, Julian.”

At that, she thought, he did flinch—though it could have been a start of surprise. “Emma—”

“No more,” she said, and fled from the room.

*

She wasn’t waiting for Gwyn, Diana told herself. She was definitely not sitting on her bed in the early hours of the morning, wearing a nice silk top she’d found in her closet, even though she would normally have put on her pajamas hours ago, for any reason except that she was up cleaning swords.

She had three or four swords strewn across the coverlet, and she’d been polishing them in an attempt to bring back some of their original glory. They’d once been etched with twining roses, stars, flowers, and thorns, but over the years some had darkened and discolored. She felt a twinge of guilt at having neglected her father’s shop, mixed with the old familiar guilt that always accompanied thoughts of her parents.

There had been a time when all she had wanted was to be Diana and own Diana’s Arrow, when she had ached for Idris and the chance to be herself in the Shadowhunter home country. Now she felt a restlessness that went beyond that; the old hopes felt too confining, as if they were a dress she had outgrown. Perhaps you outgrew your dreams, too, as your world expanded.

Tap. Tap. Diana was up and off the bed the moment the window rattled. She threw up the sash and leaned out. Gwyn was hovering at eye level, his dappled horse shining in the light of the demon towers. His helmet hung by a strap from his horse’s neck; there was a massive sword over his back, its hilt blackened with years of use.

“I could not come sooner,” he said. “I saw the smoke in the sky today and watched from above the clouds. Can you come with me to where it is safe?”

She began to climb out the window before he was even done with his question. Sliding onto the horse’s back in front of him felt familiar now, as did being circled by his enormous arms. She had always been a tall woman, and not much made her feel small and delicate, but Gwyn did. It was, if nothing else, a novel feeling.

She let her mind wander as they flew in silence past the city, over its walls and the Imperishable Fields. The pyres had burned away to ash, covering the grass in eerie circles of blanched gray. Her eyes stung, and she looked away, hurriedly, toward the forest: the green trees approaching and then stretching out below them, the rills of silver streams, and the occasional rise of a stone manor house at the fringes of the woods.

She thought of Emma and Julian, of the lonely shock on Emma’s face when the Consul had told them they’d have to stay in Idris, of the worrying blankness on Julian’s. She knew the emptiness shock could force on you. She could see it in Ty, as well, the deep silence and stillness brought on by a pain so great that no wailing or tears would touch it. She remembered her own loss of Aria, how she had lain on the floor of Catarina’s cottage, turning and twisting her body as if she could somehow get away from the pain of missing her sister.

“We are here,” Gwyn said, and they were landing in the glade she remembered. Gwyn dismounted and was reaching up to help her down.

She stroked the side of the horse’s neck, and it nudged her with its soft nose. “Does your horse have a name?”

Gwyn looked puzzled. “Name?”

“I’m going to call him Orion,” said Diana, settling herself on the ground. The grass under her was springy, and the air was scented with pine and flowers. She leaned back on her hands and some of the tension began to leave her body.

“I would like that. For my steed to be named by you.” Gwyn seated himself opposite her, large hands at his sides, his brow creased with concern. His size and bulk somehow made him seem more helpless than he would have otherwise. “I know what happened,” he said. “When death comes in great and unexpected ways, the Wild Hunt knows it. We hear the stories told by spilled blood.”

Diana didn’t know what to say—that death was unfair? That Livvy hadn’t deserved to die that way, or any way? That the broken hearts of the Blackthorns would never be the same? It all seemed trite, a hundred times said and understood already.

Instead she said, “I think I would like it if you kissed me.”

Gwyn didn’t hesitate. He was beside her in a moment, graceful despite his bulk; he put his arms around her and she was surrounded by warmth and the smell of the forest and horses. She wrinkled her nose slightly and smiled, and he kissed her smiling mouth.

It was a gentle kiss, for all his size. The softness of his mouth contrasted with the scratch of his stubble and the hard musculature under her hands when she put them timidly on his shoulders and stroked.

He leaned into the touch with a low rumble of pleasure. Diana reached up to gently cup his face, marveling at the feeling of someone else’s skin. It had been a long time, and she had never imagined something quite like this: Moonlight and flowers were for other people.

But apparently not. His big hands stroked her hair. She had never felt so warm or so cared for, so completely contained in someone else’s affection. When they stopped kissing it was as natural as when they had started, and Gwyn pulled her closer, tucking her into his body. He chuckled.

“What?” she asked, craning her head up.

“I wondered if kissing a faerie was different than kissing a Shadowhunter,” he said with a surprisingly boyish smile.

“I’ve never kissed one,” she said. It was true; long ago, she had been too shy to kiss anyone, and too deeply sad, and later . . . “I’ve kissed a few mundanes. I knew them in Bangkok; a few were trans, like me. But back then I always felt too much as if I were keeping the secret of being Nephilim, and it fell like a shadow between me and other people. . . .” She sighed. “I feel like you’re maybe the only person besides Catarina who really knows everything about me.”

Gwyn made a low, thoughtful noise. “I like everything about you that I know.”

And I like you, she wanted to say. She was shocked at how much she did like him, this odd faerie man with his capacity for great gentleness and equal capacity for enormous violence. She had experienced him as kind, but from Mark’s stories she knew there was another side to him: the side that led the Wild Hunt on their bloody pathway between the stars.

“I’m going to tell them everything,” she said. “Emma and Julian. We’re all stuck here in Idris together, and I love them like they were my little brother and sister. They should know.”

“Do it if it will bring you ease to do it,” said Gwyn. “You owe them nothing; you have cared for them and helped them and they know you as who you are. None of us owe every piece of our soul’s history to another.”

“I am doing it for me. I’ll be happier.”

“Then by all means.” Gwyn dropped a kiss on her head. Diana sat in the warm circle of his arms and thought of Livvy and how grief and contentment could share a place in the human heart. She wondered what losses Gwyn had sustained in his life. He must have had a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, but she couldn’t imagine them and couldn’t yet bring herself to ask.

Later, when she was walking to Gwyn’s horse for the return journey to Alicante, she noticed that the tips of her fingers were smudged with ash, and frowned. Ash must have blown on the wind from the pyres that morning, but still. It was very odd.

She put it from her mind as Gwyn lifted her onto Orion’s back and they sailed up, into the stars.