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

The last thing she felt like was sleeping, but she’d learned to snatch rest at any time on missions. She changed into her nightgown and mounted the stone steps behind the waterfall. They led to a stone platform hidden behind the water.

Despite her miserable mood, Emma was struck by the beauty of it. The bed was massive, piled with cloudy white cushions and a heavy coverlet. The waterfall sheeted by past the foot of the bed in a curtain of glimmering silver; the rush and roar of water surrounded the space, reminding Emma of the crash of waves against the beach.

She sank down on the bed. “Nice room,” she said, to no one in particular. “Sorry. Bower.”

Time to sleep, she decided. She lay down and closed her eyes, but the first image that sprang up against her lids was the image of Julian holding Livvy’s body in the Council Hall. His face against her blood-wet hair. Emma’s eyelids popped open, and she turned over restlessly. It didn’t help; the next time she tried, she saw Dane’s open, staring eyes as the kelpie sank its teeth into his body.

Too much. Too much blood, too much horror. She wanted Julian badly; she missed him as if it had been a week since she’d seen him. In a way, it had been. Even her parabatai rune felt strange—she was used to the pulse of its energy, but even before they had come to Faerie, reaching for that energy had been like slamming into a blank wall.

She turned over again, wishing for Cristina, who she could talk to. Cristina, who would understand. But could she tell even Cristina about the spell that had stripped Julian of his emotions? And what about his deal with the Queen? It had been an ugly sort of brilliant, she thought, to make a copy for the Fair Folk. They were both tricky and literal enough to at least consider the copy as sufficient for their purposes. It was too bad Julian couldn’t simply have given the copy to Horace, but he would have laughed in their faces: Even a Dearborn knew what printer paper looked like. He didn’t want to perform the spells in the book, after all; he simply wanted back the property he believed Annabel had stolen, the Black Volume that had lived so many years on the shelves of the Cornwall Institute.

She heard the door of the room open, voices, Julian’s tread on the stairs, and then he was by the bed; she hadn’t realized how the light pouring through the water would turn him into an effigy of silver. Even his dark hair was silvered, as if she was seeing him the way he might look in thirty years.

She sat up. He didn’t move or seem as if he was about to say anything. He stood looking at her, and when he raised his hand to push his hair back, she saw again the stained cloth tied around his wrist.

“So how’d it go?” she asked finally. “Did you find out how to break all the parabatai bonds in the world?”

“As it turns out, it’s not possible.” He leaned against a bedpost. “You must be pleased.”

“Yes.” She kicked a pillow down to the foot of the bed. “I mean, that’s a relief, but I’m still curious why you suddenly decided to trust the Seelie Queen when she’s literally never been trustworthy.”

“She didn’t betray us before,” said Julian. “We made a deal with her, but we never brought her the Black Volume—until now.”

“She did terrible things to Jace and Clary—”

“Maybe they just didn’t know how to deal with her properly.” His blue-green eyes glittered. “The Queen only cares about the Queen. She isn’t interested in causing pain for the sake of causing it. She just wants what she wants. If you remember that, you can deal with her.”

“But why did we ever have to—”

“Look, it was obvious we couldn’t trust Dearborn from the beginning. This isn’t just a secret mission like Clary and Jace’s. He brought us to Brocelind alone. He sent us through the door to Faerie without anyone else there. Horace Dearborn is not on our side,” Julian said. “He thinks we’re enemies. Downworlder-lovers. Sure, he thinks we can get the Black Volume back for him—but he planned for us to die doing it. What do you think happens, Emma, when we go home if we don’t have it? In fact, how do you think we even get back—do you really feel like we can trust some guy standing at Bram’s Crossroads on Horace’s orders?”

She’d been so caught up in anger at Julian she hadn’t stopped to think about how they might get home from Faerie. “Dane said it wasn’t just him,” she said. “Do you think he meant there’ll be someone waiting at Bram’s Crossroads to kill us?”

“There could be someone waiting around every corner to kill us,” Julian said. “Dane was an idiot—he came for us too fast, before we had the real book. But they may not all be. Our lives are in danger here every second. If we have a deal with the Queen, we’re under her protection.”

“We need an ally,” Emma said. “And she’s weird and opportunistic and terrible but better than nothing. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Every plan involves risk,” Julian said. “Not going to the Queen was a risk. Strategy is choosing between the risks—there is no safe way, Emma, not for us. Not since the minute Horace called us into his office.”

“And if we return with the real Black Volume, he’ll just kill us and take it,” said Emma. “That was his plan anyway.”

“No,” Julian said. “That was his plan when he thought he was controlling how we returned. If we decide how and where we return, we can walk into any Council meeting and present the Black Volume, bravely rescued from our faerie foes. Horace thought he could get rid of us easily because we were in disgrace. It’ll be much harder to do if we return in triumph.”

“Fine,” she said. “I get what you think we’re doing. I don’t know if I agree about working with the Queen, but at least I understand. But you know what would have been better? If you’d included me in the part where you chose what risk we were going to take.”

“I didn’t see the point,” he said. “You would have worried, and for what?”

Emma felt tears burn behind her eyes. “This isn’t you. You’d never say that.”

Julian’s eyes flashed. “You know I’ve always done whatever needed to be done to keep us safe. I thought you understood that about me.”

“This is different. Remember—Julian, remember what Dane said, that you were the kind of guy who would have a girl for a parabatai?” She knelt up on the bed, raising her chin to look him directly in the eye. “That’s what I always loved about you, even before I was in love with you. You never thought for a second about it diminishing you to have a girl as your warrior partner, you never acted as if I was anything less than your complete equal. You never for a moment made me feel like I had to be weak for you to be strong.”

He looked away. Emma pressed on:

“You knew we were always stronger together. You’ve always treated me as though my opinion matters. You’ve always respected my ability to make decisions for myself. But you’re not acting like that now. It’s not some small thing that you lied to me, Julian, it’s a betrayal of everything we swore in our parabatai ceremony. It’s one thing for you to not want to treat me like your girlfriend, but it’s entirely another for you to not treat me like your parabatai.”

Julian crawled onto the bed beside her. “This isn’t what I planned,” he said. “I was concerned that you’d refuse to go to the Seelie Court, and I was just trying to move fast.” The shimmer of the waterfall altered, and Julian’s hair was dark again, his lashes making shadows against his cheeks. “I had no idea you’d be so upset about—everything.”

“Of course you had no idea.” Having Julian this close made her nerves feel like they were jumping inside her skin. They were both kneeling, facing each other; he was so close she could have reached out and put her arms around him without even needing to lean forward. “You have no idea because you have no feelings. Because you turned off all your emotions, not just about me, but about everything”—about Livvy, even about Livvy—“and that’s going to come back and bite you in the end.”

“I don’t,” he said.