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

“I must speak to you of what I have learned,” Kieran was saying; he was perched on the chair, all long limbs and dark, odd clothes and burning eyes. His hair shimmered deep blue. He looked like a faerie out of place in the human world, and it stabbed Mark through with a painful sympathy mixed with a fear that he might look like that himself.

“Let me see your face.” Cristina brushed Kieran with gentle fingers; he leaned into her touch, and Mark could not blame him.

“What’s going on?” Light blazed up in the kitchen; it was Helen, carrying a rune-stone in one hand. “Is someone hurt?”

Mark and Cristina exchanged startled looks; Kieran looked between Mark and Helen, his lips parting in realization.

“Were you waiting up for us?” Mark demanded. “It’s past midnight.”

“I was . . . not.” Helen looked down at her sweatpants guiltily. “I wanted a sandwich.” She squinted at Kieran. “Did you trade in Diana’s truck for a faerie prince?”

Kieran was still looking at her with that same realization and Mark knew what he must be seeing: someone who was so clearly Mark’s sister, so clearly the Helen that Mark had spoken about with such pain for so many years in the Hunt.

He rose to his feet and crossed the room to Helen. He lifted her free hand and kissed the back of it.

“The beloved sister of my beloved Mark. It is a joy to behold you well and reunited with your family.”

“I like him,” Helen said to Mark.

Kieran lowered her hand. “May I share my sorrow at the passing of your sister Livia,” he said. “It is a shame to see such a bright and beautiful star untimely extinguished.”

“Yes.” Helen’s eyes glistened. “Thank you.”

I don’t understand. Mark felt as if he were in a dream. He had imagined Kieran meeting his family, but it had not been like this, and Kieran had never been so gracious, even in Mark’s imagination.

“Perhaps we should all sit down,” Helen said. “I think I’d better hear about what happened tonight on your ‘normal patrol.’?” She raised an eyebrow at Mark.

“I must first tell you of what befell at the Scholomance,” said Kieran firmly. “It is imperative.”

“What happened?” Cristina said. “I thought it would be safe for you there—”

“It was, for a short time,” said Kieran. “Then the Cohort returned from Idris and discovered me. But that story must wait. I came to bring you news.” He glanced around at their expectant faces. “The Inquisitor of the Clave has sent Emma and Julian on a secret mission to Faerie. They are not expected either to return or to survive.”

Mark felt numb all over. “What do you mean?”

“It is a dangerous mission—and someone has been sent after them to make sure they don’t complete it—” Gasping, Kieran slumped back in his chair, looking terribly pale.

Mark and Cristina both reached to steady him at the same time. They looked at each other in some surprise over Kieran’s bowed head.

“Kieran, you’re bleeding!” Cristina exclaimed, taking her hand away from his shoulder. It was stained red.

“It is nothing,” Kieran said roughly. Not a lie, precisely—Mark was sure he believed it, but his ashen face and feverish eyes told another story.

“Kier, you’re unwell,” said Mark. “You must rest. You cannot do anyone any good in this condition.”

“Agreed.” Cristina stood up, her hand still red with Kieran’s blood. “We must see to your wounds at once.”

*

“You have changed, son of thorns,” said the Queen.

She had been silent for some minutes while the room emptied of guards and observers. Even then, Julian did not entirely believe that they were alone. Who knew what sprites or cluricauns might hide among the shadows?

Julian had been pacing, impelled by a restlessness he couldn’t explain. Then again, he could explain little of what he felt these days. There were impulses he followed, others he avoided, angers and dislikes and even hopes, but he could not have explained the emotion that led him to kill Dane, or what he felt afterward. It was as if the words he needed to describe what he had felt had disappeared from his mental vocabulary.

He remembered someone had once told him that the last words of Sebastian Morgenstern had been I’ve never felt so light. He felt light himself, having put down a weight of constant fear and longing he had grown so used to carrying he no longer noticed it. But still, deep down, the thought of Sebastian chilled him. Was it wrong to feel lightness?

He was conscious now of impatience, and a knowledge, though it was distant, that he was playing with fire. But the knowledge did not come accompanied either by fear or by excitement. It was distant. Clinical.

“We are alone,” said the Queen. “We could amuse ourselves.”

Now he did look at her. Her throne had changed, and so had she. She seemed to be draped along the cushions of a red chaise, her coppery hair tumbling around her. She was radiantly beautiful, the gaunt outlines of her face filled in with youth and health, her brown eyes glowing.

The Queen’s eyes are blue. Emma’s are brown.

But it didn’t change what he was seeing; the Queen’s eyes were the color of tiger’s-eye stones and shimmered as she gazed at him. Her dress was white satin, and as she slowly drew up one leg, sliding her toe along her opposite calf, it fell open at the slit, revealing her legs up to her hips.

“That’s a glamour,” Julian said. “I know what’s underneath.”

She rested her chin on her hand. “Most people would not dare to speak that way to the Seelie Queen.”

“Most people don’t have something the Seelie Queen wants,” said Julian. He felt nothing, looking at her: She was beautiful, but he could not have desired her less if she’d been a beautiful rock or a beautiful sunset.

She narrowed her eyes and they flickered back to blue. “You are indeed different,” she said, “more like a faerie.”

“I’m better,” he said.

“Really?” The Queen sat up slowly, her silken dress resettling around her. “There is a saying among my people, about the mortals we bring here: In the Land of Faerie, as mortals feel no sorrow, neither can they feel joy.”

“And why is that?” asked Julian.

She laughed. “Have you ever wondered how we lure mortals to live amongst faeries and serve us, son of thorns? We choose those who have lost something and promise them that which humans desire most of all, a cessation to their grief and suffering. Little do they know that once they enter our Lands, they are in the cage and will never again feel happiness.” She leaned forward. “You are in that cage, boy.”

A shiver went up Julian’s spine. It was atavistic, primal, like the impulse that had driven him to climb Livvy’s pyre. “You’re trying to distract me, my lady. How about giving me what you promised?”

“What do you mind about the parabatai bond now? It seems you no longer care for Emma. I saw it in the way she looked at you. As if she missed you though you were standing beside her.”

“The bonds,” Julian said through his teeth. “How can they be broken?” His head throbbed. Maybe he was dehydrated.

“Very well.” The Queen leaned back, letting her long hair spill over the side of the chaise and down to the ground. “Though it may not please you.”

“Tell me.”

“The parabatai rune has a weakness that no other rune has, because it was created by Jonathan Shadowhunter, rather than the Angel Raziel,” said the Queen. As she spoke she drew on the air with her fingertip, in lazy spirals. “Kept in the Silent City is the original parabatai rune inscribed by Jonathan Shadowhunter and David the Silent. If it is destroyed, all the parabatai runes in the world will be broken.”

Julian could hardly breathe. His heart was hammering against his chest. All the bonds in the world. Broken. He still couldn’t explain what he was feeling, but the intensity of it made him feel as if he were bursting out of his own skin. “Why would I not be pleased to hear that?” he asked. “Because it would be difficult?”

“Not difficult. Impossible. Oh, it wasn’t always impossible,” said the Queen, sitting up and smirking at him. “When I spoke to you about it first, it was in good faith. But things have changed.”

“What do you mean?” Julian demanded. “How have things changed?”

“I mean there is only one way to destroy the rune,” the Queen said. “It must be cut through and through by the Mortal Sword.”





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