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

He still had the X-shaped scar on his throat, though. It was unmistakable, even at this distance.

Ash crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m here, Father,” he said blandly, and it struck Julian how peculiar it was, this boy calling someone who looked five years older than he did “Father.”

“This is our world’s Ash,” Julian said. “The one Annabel brought through the Portal.”

Emma nodded. “His scar. I saw.”

Jace drew the last of the coverings away from the kneeling woman’s face. Emma flinched back as if struck.

It was Maryse Lightwood.

Her hair had been cut very short, and her face was haggard. Ash watched expressionless as she gazed around her in silent horror. A silver chain dangled around his throat; Julian didn’t recall him having it in Faerie. How many years had elapsed for him here between his escape into the Portal and Emma and Julian’s arrival in Thule?

“Maryse Lightwood,” said Sebastian, pacing in a slow circle around her. Emma hadn’t moved or made a sound since her initial flinch. Julian wondered if she was remembering Maryse in their world—grieving at the side of her former husband’s pyre, but surrounded by her children, her grandchildren. . . .

Emma must be wondering about her own parents, he realized with a jolt. Wondering if they were alive in this world. But she hadn’t said a word.

“You stand accused of aiding and assisting rebels against the cause of the Fallen Star. Now, we know you did it, so we’re not having a trial, because we’re against those anyway. But you—you committed the greatest treason of all. You tried to break the bond between two brothers. Jace and I are brothers. You are not his mother. The only family he has is me.”

“Oh my God,” Emma whispered. “This is that weird bond they had—when Sebastian possessed Jace, remember? So that happened in this world. . . .”

“I killed my own mother, Lilith, for Jace,” said Sebastian. “Now he will kill his mother for me.”

Jace unsheathed the sword at his waist. It had a long, wicked silver blade that glimmered red in the moonlight. Julian thought again of the Jace in their world: laughing, joking, animated. It seemed like something more than possession was at work here. Like this Jace was dead inside.

Sebastian’s lips were turned up at the corners; he was smiling, but it wasn’t a very human smile. “Any last words, Maryse?”

Maryse twisted around so that she was looking up at Jace. The tense lines of her face seemed to relax, and for a moment, Julian saw John Carstairs looking at Emma, or his own mother looking at him, that mixture of love for what is and sorrow for what cannot be kept. . . .

“Do you remember, Jace?” she said. “That song I used to sing to you when you were a boy.” She began to sing, her voice high and wavering.

à la claire fontaine

m’en allant promener

J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle

que je m’y suis baigné.

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,

jamais je ne t’oublierai.

Julian only knew enough French to translate a few words. I have loved you for a long time. I will never forget you.

“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime—” Maryse sang, her voice rising, quavering at the highest note—

Ash was gripping his own elbows tightly. He turned his head aside, just at the moment that Jace brought the sword down and across, severing Maryse’s head from her body. White bone, red blood; her body crumpled to the sand, her head rolling to lie cheek down, open-eyed. She still seemed to be staring at Jace.

Blood had splattered Ash’s face, his shirt. The crowd was clapping and cheering. Jace bent to clean his sword on the sand as Sebastian strolled over to Ash, his smile turning from inhuman to something else. Something possessive.

“I hope that was a learning experience,” he said to Ash.

“I learned not to wear white to an execution,” said Ash, brushing his hand down the front of his shirt; it left red smears behind. “Useful.”

“Once we have the Mortal Instruments in hand, you’ll see a lot more death, Ash.” Sebastian chuckled and once again raised his voice. “Feeding time,” he announced, and the words rang up and down the beach. There was a scream inside Julian’s head, clawing to get out; he glanced at Emma and saw the same scream in her eyes. Maybe it belonged to them both.

She grabbed his wrist with enough force to grind the small bones together. “We have to go. We have to get away.”

Her words tumbled over each other; Julian didn’t even have time to agree. As the vampires closed in on Maryse’s body, they ran for the bluffs, keeping low. The night was filled with a cacophony of shrieks and howls and the air carried the coppery tinge of blood. Emma was whispering, “No, no, no,” under her breath, even as she hit the bottom of a rickety wooden staircase and bolted up it in a crouching run. Julian followed, doing his best not to look back.

The stairs shook underfoot but held; the top of the bluffs was in sight. Emma reached the end of the stairs—and cried out as she was whisked out of sight.

Julian’s vision went white. He had no awareness of climbing the rest of the steps; he was simply at the top of the bluffs—familiar highway, rows of parked cars, sand and grass underfoot—and there was Emma, held in the grip of a tall, redheaded boy whose familiar face smacked Julian like a punch in the gut.

“Cameron?” Julian said, incredulous. “Cameron Ashdown?”

Cameron looked about nineteen or twenty. His thick red hair was cut military short. He was whipcord lean, wearing a tan T-shirt and camo pants, a Sam Browne belt slung diagonally over his shoulder. There was a pistol thrust through it.

His face twisted in disgust. “Both of you together. I might have guessed.”

Julian took a step forward. “Let her go, you Endarkened piece of—”

Cameron’s eyes rounded with almost comical surprise, and Emma took advantage of the moment to kick backward savagely, twisting her body to deliver several quick punches to his side. She spun away from him as he gagged, but he’d already gotten the pistol out of its holster.

He pointed it at both of them. Shadowhunters didn’t use guns, but Julian could tell just by the way he held it that this Cameron Ashdown knew them well.

If Cameron shot, Julian thought, there might be time for him to throw himself in front of Emma. He’d take the bullet, even if he hated the idea of leaving her here alone. . . .

Cameron raised his voice. “Livia!” he called. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Julian’s chest turned to ice. He imagined he was still breathing, he must be or he’d die, but he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel the blood in his body or the pulse of his breath or the beat of his heart. He only saw her, appearing from between two cars: She walked toward them casually, her long dark Blackthorn hair blowing in the wind off the sea.

Livvy.

She looked about seventeen. She wore black leather pants with a bullet belt slung around her waist and a gray tank top with holes in it over a mesh shirt. Her boots were thick-soled with a dozen buckles. On her wrists were D-ring canvas bracelets with short throwing knives shoved under the straps. A scar—one of many—cut across her face, from the top of her left temple, across her eye, to the middle of her cheek. She carried a shotgun, and as she walked toward them, she raised it effortlessly and pointed it directly at Julian.

“It’s them,” Cameron said. “Don’t know what they’re doing away from the other Endarkened.”

“Who cares?” Livvy said. “I’m gonna kill them, and they’d thank me for it if they still had souls.”

Julian threw up his hands. Joy at seeing her, uncontrollable and dizzying, warred with panic. “Livvy, it’s us—”

“Don’t even try,” she spat. She pumped the shotgun expertly. “I’d tell you to pray, but the Angel is dead.”

“Look—” Emma started, and Livvy began to swing the gun toward her; Julian took a step toward his sister, and then Cameron, who Julian had almost forgotten was there, said:

“Wait.”

Livvy froze. “This had better be good, Cam.”