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

Ty hugged him back, his forehead against Mark’s shoulder. He was still gripping the pen. Kit saw again the bruises on Ty’s hands and wrists, the ones he must have gotten climbing the pyre in Idris. They stood out so starkly against Ty’s pale skin that Kit imagined he could feel the pain of them himself.

And now he and Kit were sitting on one of the library tables, watching the others pack. Kit couldn’t shake off his feeling of strangeness. The last time Mark and Cristina had disappeared to Faerie, there’d been no warning and no preparation. They’d disappeared overnight with Emma and Julian. This time not only did everyone know about it, they were all pitching in to help as if it were a camping trip.

Mark, Cristina, and Kieran were dressed in the least Shadowhuntery clothes they’d been able to find. Cristina wore a knee-length white dress, and Mark and Kieran had on shirts and trousers that Aline had attacked with a pair of scissors to make them look ragged and uneven. They wore soft shoes, without metal buckles, and Cristina’s hair was tied back with ribbon.

Helen had packed them plastic containers of food—granola bars, apples, things that wouldn’t go bad. There were blankets and bandages and even antiseptic spray, since their steles wouldn’t work in Faerie. And of course there were all the weapons: Cristina’s balisong, dozens of daggers and throwing knives wrapped in soft leather, a crossbow for Mark, and even a bronze shortsword for Kieran, who had buckled it on at his waist with the delighted look of someone who missed being armed.

“Maybe we shouldn’t pack the food now,” Helen said nervously, taking a Tupperware container she’d just packed back out of the bag. “Maybe we should wait until they’re leaving.”

Aline sighed. She’d been flipping back and forth all day between looking as if she was going to cry and looking as if she was going to yell at Mark, Kieran, and Cristina for making Helen cry. “Most of that food will keep. That’s the point.”

“We can only wait so long to depart,” Mark said. “This is urgent.” He flicked his eyes toward Kit and Ty; Kit turned and realized that Ty had disappeared. No one had left the library, though, so he had to be somewhere in the room.

“Jaime will come as quickly as he can,” Cristina said. She was deftly knotting up a roll of throwing knives.

“If he isn’t here by tonight, we may need to take the moon’s road,” said Kieran.

“And risk being reported to the Courts?” Helen said. “It’s too dangerous. No. You can’t go anywhere until Jaime Rosales shows up.”

“He’ll come,” Cristina said, shoving the roll of knives into her pack with some force. “I trust him.”

“If he doesn’t, it’s too risky. Especially considering where you’re going.”

Kit slid off the table as Kieran protested; no one was paying attention to him anyway. He walked alongside the rows of bookshelves until he saw Ty, between two stacks of books, his head bent over a piece of paper.

He stopped for a moment and just looked at him. He was aware of Kieran watching him from across the room and wondered why; they’d shared an interesting conversation once, on the roof of the London Institute, where they realized they were both outsiders where the Blackthorn family was concerned.

Kit wasn’t sure that was true anymore, though. Either for him or for Kieran. And they hadn’t spoken since.

He slipped between the rows of books. He couldn’t help noticing they were somewhat ironically in the SEA CREATURES AND THINGS AQUATIC section.

“Ty,” he said. “Ty, what’s going on?”

Perhaps Ty had finally snapped; perhaps the weight of grief and loss and fear had gotten to him. There was something incredibly vulnerable about the thinness of his fingers, the flush on his cheeks when he glanced up. Maybe—

Kit realized Ty’s eyes were shining, and not with tears. Ty held up the paper in his hands; it was a letter. “It’s from Hypatia Vex,” he said in a low voice. “She’s agreed to help us with the Shadow Market.”

*

“What’s going on?” Julian jogged down the curving steps from Fergus’s bower, twisting his shirt around as he went. Emma followed more cautiously, having stopped to throw on clothes and grab her pack.

Nene stood in the center of Fergus’s room, wearing a long green dress and a heavy green cloak over it trimmed in green and blue feathers. She flicked the hood back with impatient fingers and faced them.

“The Queen has betrayed you,” she said again. “Even now she prepares to leave for the Unseelie Court with the Black Volume.”

Emma started. “The Unseelie Court? But why?”

Nene gave them a hard glance. “You understand I am betraying my Court and my lady by speaking to you like this,” she said. “If I am found out, it will go worse for me than you can imagine.”

“You came to us,” Julian pointed out. He was himself again, calm, measured. Maybe that was what being without your emotions meant; maybe you never really lost yourself in anything. “We didn’t come to you.”

“I came because I owe the Blackthorns,” she said. “Because of the wrong my sister Celithe did to Arthur in torturing him, in shattering his mind with magic so that he might never be cured. And because I do not want the Unseelie King to have the Black Volume of the Dead.”

“But he might well already have it,” Emma said. “He took Annabel—and Annabel has the book.”

“We have spies in the Court, of course,” said Nene. “He does have Annabel. But she will not give him the Black Volume, and because she knows his true name, he cannot make her.”

“So why is she staying in the Court?” Julian demanded.

“That I cannot tell you,” Nene said. “Only what the Queen is doing. She does not consider any promises she made to you binding, because the book you brought her is a copy and not the original.”

“That’s a ridiculous technicality,” said Emma.

“Faerie turns on ridiculous technicalities,” said Nene. “The Queen will do what the Queen wishes to do. That is the nature of Seelie.”

“But why does she want to give the book to the King? She hates the King! She said she wanted to keep it out of his hands—” Emma started.

“She did say she wanted to keep it out of his hands,” Julian said. He was pale. “But she didn’t say she wouldn’t give it to him anyway.”

“No,” said Nene. “She did not.”

The Queen’s words echoed in Emma’s head. The Black Volume is more than necromancy. It contains spells that will allow me to retrieve the captive from the Unseelie Court. “She’s going to trade the book for the captive in the Unseelie Court, whoever he is,” said Emma. “Or she.”

“He,” said Nene. “It is her son who is captive.”

Julian sucked in a breath. “Why didn’t you tell us that before? If I’d known that—”

Nene glared at him. “Betraying my Queen is no light thing to me! If it were not for my sister’s children, I would never—”

“I expected the Queen to betray us,” Julian said. “But not for her to do it so soon, or like this. She must be desperate.”

“Because she’s trying to save her child,” said Emma. “How old is he?”

“I do not know,” Nene said. “Ash was always hidden from us. I would not recognize him if I saw him.”

“The King can’t have the book. The Queen said that he was blighting the Lands of Faerie with dark magic and filling the rivers with blood. Imagine what he’d do if he had the Black Volume.”

“If we can believe the Queen,” said Julian.

“It is the truth as far as I know it,” said Nene. “Since the Cold Peace, the Land of Unseelie has been bleeding evil. It is said that a great weapon resides there, something that but needs the spells of the Black Volume to bring its powers to life. It is something that could wipe out all angelic magic.”

“We have to get to the Unseelie Court,” said Emma. “We have to stop the Queen.”

Julian’s eyes glittered. Emma knew what he was thinking. That in the Unseelie Court was Annabel, and with Annabel lay revenge for Livvy’s death. “I agree with you,” he said. “We can follow the Queen—”

“You cannot travel as fast as a procession of fey horses,” she said. “Not even Nephilim can run like that. You must intercept the Queen before she reaches the tower.”