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

“The tower?” echoed Emma.

“It is the one permanent stronghold of Unseelie, the place they retreat when under siege. Its fortifications are unmatched in Faerie; none can scale the walls or brave the thorns, and the throne room at the top of the tower is guarded by redcaps. You must join the procession so that you might reach the Queen before she is inside the tower, and it is too late.”

“Join the procession? We’ll be noticed!” Emma exclaimed, but Nene was already seizing up a hooded cloak that had been hung by the door and tossing it to Julian.

“Wear this,” she said. “It’s Fergus’s. Pull up the hood. No one will be looking that closely.” She drew off her own cloak and handed it to Emma. “And you will be disguised as me.” She eyed Emma critically as Emma put the cloak on, fastening it at the throat. “At least the blond hair is right.”

Julian had disappeared up the steps; when he returned, he was carrying his weapons belt and Emma’s. Fergus’s cloak—black, with raven wings shimmering like oil on the breast and hood—covered him completely. “We’re not going without these.”

“Keep them beneath your cloaks,” Nene said. “They are clearly of Shadowhunter make.” She looked them up and down. “As are you. Ah well. We will do the best we can.”

“What if we need to flee from Faerie?” said Emma. “What if we get the Black Volume and need to go back to Idris?”

Nene hesitated.

“You’ve already betrayed faerie secrets,” said Julian. “What’s one more?”

Nene narrowed her eyes. “You have changed,” she said. “I can only hope it is grief.”

Grief. Everyone in Alicante had thought it was grief that had altered Julian’s behavior, his reactions. Emma had thought it herself at first.

“Make your way to Branwen’s Falls,” said Nene. “Beneath the falls you will find a path back to Alicante. And if you ever speak of this secret to another soul besides each other, my curse will be on your heads.”

She pushed open the door, and they crept out into the corridor.

*

Tavvy had never been satisfied with sandcastles. They bored him. He liked to build what he called sand cities—rows of square sand structures shaped by empty milk cartons turned upside down. They were houses, stores, and schools, complete with signs made with the torn-off fronts of matchbooks.

Dru scuffed her way up and down the beach barefoot, helping Tavvy find sticks, rocks, and seashells that would become lampposts, walls, and bus stops. Sometimes she’d find a piece of sea glass, red or green or blue, and tuck it into the pocket of her overalls.

The beach was empty except for her and Tavvy. She was watching him out of the corner of her eye as he knelt on the wet sand, shaping a massive wall to surround his city—after what had happened with Malcolm, she didn’t plan to take her gaze off him again. But most of her mind was filled up with thoughts of Mark and Emma and Julian. Mark was going to Faerie, and he was going because Julian and Emma were in trouble. Mark hadn’t said, but Dru was pretty sure it was bad trouble. Nothing good came from going to Faerie, and Mark and Cristina and Kieran wouldn’t be running to save them if they thought they’d be all right on their own.

People are leaving me one by one, she thought. First Livvy, then Julian and Emma, now Mark. She stopped to glance out at the ocean: sparkling blue waves rolling over and under. Once she’d watched that ocean thinking that somewhere across it was Helen on her island, protecting the wards of the world. She had remembered her sister’s laugh, her blond hair, and imagined her as a sort of Valkyrie, holding up a spear at the entrance to the world, not letting the demons pass her by.

These days, she could tell that every time Helen looked at her she was sad that Dru wasn’t more friendly, more open to sisterly bonding. Dru knew it was true, but she couldn’t change it. Didn’t Helen understand that if Dru let herself love her older sister, Helen would just be another person for Dru to lose?

“Someone’s coming,” Tavvy said. He was looking down the beach, his blue-green eyes squinted against the sun.

Dru turned and stared. A boy was walking down the empty beach, consulting a small object in his hand as he went. A tall, rail-thin boy with a mop of black hair, brown skin that shone in the sun, and bare, runed arms.

She dropped the seashells she was holding. “Jaime!” she screamed. “Jaime!”

He glanced up and seemed to see her for the first time. A wide grin spread across his face and he started to run, loping across the sand until he reached her. He grabbed her up in a hug, whooping and spinning her around.

She still remembered the odd dream she’d had before Jaime left the London Institute, in which she’d been somewhere—it had felt like Faerie, but then how would she know what Faerie felt like? She’d dismissed it, but the faint memory came back now that he was here—along with other memories: of him sitting and watching movies with her, talking to her about her family, listening to her.

“It’s good to see you again, friend,” he said, setting her down on the sand and ruffling her hair. “It’s very good.”

He looked tired, inexpressibly tired, as if he hadn’t hit the ground except for running since the last time she’d seen him. There were dark circles under his eyes. Tavvy was running over to see who he was, and Jaime was asking if she still had the knife he’d given her, and she couldn’t help smiling, her first real smile since Livvy.

He came back, Dru thought. Finally, someone didn’t leave—they came back instead.

*

They crept along the corridors with Nene, keeping to the shadows. Both Emma and Julian kept their hoods drawn up; Nene had tucked her hair under a cap and, in breeches and a loose shirt, looked like a page boy at first glance.

“What about Fergus?” Emma said.

Nene smiled grimly. “Fergus has been waylaid by a dryad of the sort he most admires. A young sapling.”

“Ouch,” said Julian. “Splinters.”

Nene ignored him. “I’ve known Fergus a long time, I know all about his inclinations. He’ll be busy for a good long time.”

They had reached a sloping hallway familiar to Emma. She could smell night air coming from one end of the corridor, the scent of leaves and sap and fall. She wondered if it was the same season in Faerie as it was at home. It felt later, as if autumn had already touched the Lands of Faerie with an early frost.

The corridor ended abruptly, opening into a clearing full of grass and stars. Trees stood around in a tall circle, shaking down leaves of gold and russet on a crowd of faerie courtiers and their horses.

The Queen herself sat sidesaddle on a white mare at the head of the procession. A white lace veil covered her face and her shoulders, and white gloves covered her hands. Her red hair streamed down her back. Her courtiers, in gold silk and bright velvet, rode behind her: most on horses, but some on massive, pad-pawed cats and narrow-eyed wolves the size of small cars. A green-skinned dryad with a mass of leaves for hair rode tucked into the branches of a walking tree.

Emma couldn’t help looking around herself in wonder. She was a Shadowhunter, used to magic; still, there was something so alien at the heart of the Courts of Faerie that it still made her marvel.

Nene led them through the shadows to where her horse and Fergus’s waited, already in the procession’s line, between a sprite riding a winged toadstool and two faerie girls in russet dresses with identical black hair, who sat one in front of the other on a bay mare. Emma pulled herself up into the saddle of Nene’s gray palfrey.

Nene patted the horse’s neck fondly. “Her name is Silvermane. Be kind to her. She knows her own way home.”

Emma nodded as Julian mounted Fergus’s bay stallion. “What’s his name?” he asked as the horse pawed the ground and snorted.

“Widowmaker,” said Nene.