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

Holding her necklace, Cristina seethed silently as Manuel described the patches of dead blighted earth in Brocelind Forest: the way they resisted Shadowhunter magic, the fact that the same blight seemed to exist in the Unseelie Lands of Faerie. How did he know that? Cristina agonized silently. It had been what Kieran was going to tell the Council, but he hadn’t had the chance. How did Manuel know?

She was only grateful that Diego had done what she had asked him to do, and taken Kieran to the Scholomance. It was clear there would have been no safety for a full-blood faerie here.

“The Unseelie King is creating a poison and beginning to spread it to our world—one that will make Shadowhunters powerless against him. We must move now to show our strength,” said Zara, cutting Manuel off before he was finished.

“As you moved against Malcolm?” said Lazlo. There were titters, and Zara flushed—she had proudly claimed to have slain Malcolm Fade, a powerful warlock, though it had later turned out she had lied. Cristina and the others had hoped the fact would discredit Zara—but now, after what had happened with Annabel, Zara’s lie had become little more than a joke.

Dearborn rose to his feet. “That’s not the issue now, Balogh. The Blackthorns have faerie blood in their family. They brought a creature—a necromantic half-dead thing that slew our Inquisitor and filled the Hall with blood and terror—into Alicante.”

“Their sister was killed too,” said Luana. “We saw their grief. They did not plan what happened.”

Cristina could see the calculations going on inside Dearborn’s head—he would have dearly liked to blame the Blackthorns and see them all tossed into the Silent City prisons, but the spectacle of Julian holding Livvy’s body as she died was too raw and visceral for even the Cohort to ignore. “They are victims too,” he said, “of the Fair Folk prince they trusted, and possibly their own faerie kin. Perhaps they can be brought around to see a reasonable point of view. After all, they are Shadowhunters, and that is what the Cohort is about—protecting Shadowhunters. Protecting our own.” He laid a hand on Zara’s shoulder. “When the Mortal Sword is restored, I am sure Zara will be happy to lay any doubts you have about her accomplishments to rest.”

Zara flushed and nodded. Cristina thought she looked guilty as sin, but the rest of the crowd had been distracted by the mention of the Sword.

“The Mortal Sword restored?” said Trini. She was a deep believer in the Angel and his power, as Cristina’s family was too. She looked anxious now, her thin hands working in her lap. “Our irreplaceable link to the Angel Raziel—you believe it will be returned to us?”

“It will be restored,” Dearborn said smoothly. “Jia will be meeting with the Iron Sisters tomorrow. As it was forged, so can it be reforged.”

“But it was forged in Heaven,” protested Trini. “Not the Adamant Citadel.”

“And Heaven let it break,” said Dearborn, and Cristina suppressed a gasp. How could he claim such a brazen thing? Yet the others clearly trusted him. “Nothing can shatter the Mortal Sword save Raziel’s will. He looked upon us and he saw we were unworthy. He saw that we had turned away from his message, from our service to angels, and were serving Downworlders instead. He broke the sword to warn us.” His eyes glittered with a fanatic light. “If we prove ourselves worthy again, Raziel will allow the Sword to be reforged. I have no doubts.”

How dare he speak for Raziel? How dare he speak as if he were God? Cristina shook with fury, but the others seemed to be looking at him as if he offered them a light in darkness. As if he were their only hope.

“And how do we prove ourselves worthy?” said Balogh in a more somber voice.

“We must remember that Shadowhunters were chosen,” said Horace. “We must remember that we have a mandate. We stand first in the face of evil, and therefore we come first. Let Downworlders look to their own. If we work together with strong leadership—”

“But we don’t have strong leadership,” said Jessica Beausejours, one of Zara’s Centurion friends. “We have Jia Penhallow, and she is tainted by her daughter’s association with faeries and half-bloods.”

There was a gasp and a titter. All eyes turned toward Horace, but he only shook his head. “I will not utter a word against our Consul,” he said primly.

More murmurs. Clearly Horace’s pretense of loyalty had won him some support. Cristina tried not to grind her teeth.

“Her loyalty to her family is understandable, even if it may have blinded her,” said Horace. “What matters now is the Laws the Clave passes. We must enforce strict regulations on Downworlders, the strictest of all on the Fair Folk—though there is nothing fair about them.”

“That won’t stop the Unseelie King,” said Jessica, though Cristina got the feeling she didn’t so much doubt Horace as desire to prompt him to go further.

“The issue is preventing faeries and other Downworlders from joining the King’s cause,” said Horace. “That is why they need to be observed and, if necessary, incarcerated before they have a chance to betray us.”

“Incarcerated?” Trini echoed. “But how—?”

“Oh, there are several ways,” said Horace. “Wrangel Island, for instance, could hold a host of Downworlders. The important thing is that we begin with control. Enforcement of the Accords. Registration of each Downworlder, their name and location. We would start with the faeries, of course.”

There was a buzz of approval.

“We will, of course, need a strong Inquisitor to pass and enforce those laws,” said Horace.

“Then let it be you!” cried Trini. “We have lost a Mortal Sword and an Inquisitor tonight; let us at least replace one. We have a quorum—enough Shadowhunters are here to put Horace forward for the Inquisitor’s position. We can hold the vote tomorrow morning. Who is with me?”

A chant of “Dearborn! Dearborn!” filled the room. Cristina hung on to the railing of the balcony, her ears ringing. This couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. Trini wasn’t like that. Her mother’s friends weren’t like that. This couldn’t be the real face of the Council.

She scrambled to her feet, unable to stand another second of it, and bolted from the gallery.

*

Emma’s room was small and painted an incongruously bright shade of yellow. A white-painted four-poster bed dominated the space. Emma tugged Julian toward it, sitting him down gently, and went to bolt the door.

“Why are you locking it?” Julian raised his head. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left Ty’s room.

“You need some privacy, Julian.” She turned toward him; God, the way he looked broke her heart. Blood freckled his skin, darkened his stiff clothes, had dried in patches on his boots.

Livvy’s blood. Emma wished she’d been closer to Livvy in those last moments, paid more attention to her, rather than worrying about the Cohort, about Manuel and Zara and Jessica, about Robert Lightwood and exile, about her own broken, messed-up heart. She wished she had held Livvy one more time, marveling at how tall and grown-up she was, how she had changed from the chubby toddler Emma recalled in her own earliest memories.

“Don’t,” Julian said roughly.

Emma came closer to him; she couldn’t stop herself. He had to look up to meet her eyes. “Don’t do what?”

“Blame yourself,” he said. “I can feel you thinking about how you should have done something different. I can’t let those kind of thoughts in, or I’ll go to pieces.”

He was sitting on the very edge of the bed, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of lying down. Very gently, Emma touched his face, sliding the palm of her hand across his jaw. He shuddered and caught her wrist, hard.

“Emma,” he said, and for one of the first times in her life, she couldn’t read his voice—it was low and dark, rough without being angry, wanting something, but she didn’t know what.

“What can I do,” she breathed. “What can I do, I’m your parabatai, Julian, I need to help you.”

He was still holding her wrist; his pupils were wide disks, turning the blue-green of his irises into halos. “I make plans one step at a time,” he said. “When everything seems overwhelming, I ask myself what problem needs to be solved first. When that’s solved, the next one. But I can’t even begin here.”