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

“You remember when I tried to teach you to draw, when you were nine?” said Julian. “And you snapped all my pencils?”

Something almost like a smile touched the edge of Livvy’s mouth. For a moment, she was familiar Livvy, despite the scars and black leather. A second later it was as if a mask had passed across her face, and she was a different Livia, a rebel leader, a scarred warrior. “You don’t need to try to convince me anymore,” she said. She turned away, her movements precise and military. “Finish getting cleaned up. I’ll meet you two in the main office in an hour.”

*

“Did we ever date in this world?” Emma said. “You know, you and me.”

Cameron nearly fell down several metal steps. They were in the maze of stairs and catwalks that crisscrossed the inside of the Bradbury Building. “Of course not!”

Emma felt mildly stung. She knew it wasn’t a big deal, considering, but sometimes you wanted to focus on something trivial to take your mind off the apocalypse. Cameron in her world had been almost embarrassingly devoted, always coming back after they broke up, sending love notes and flowers and sad llama pictures.

“You were always with Julian,” Cameron added. “Aren’t you together in your world?”

“I’m right here,” Julian said in the deceptively mild tone that meant he was annoyed.

“I mean, yes,” Emma said. “At least, we’re on and off. Sometimes very on, sometimes very off. You and I dated briefly, is all.”

“We don’t really have time for that kind of personal drama here,” Cameron said. “It’s hard to focus on your love life when giant spiders are chasing you.”

Cameron was pretty funny here, Emma thought. If he’d been this amusing at home, their relationship might have lasted longer.

“When you say ‘giant,’ how giant exactly?” she said. “Bigger than Dumpsters?”

“Not the babies,” Cameron said, and gave them a horrible smile. “We’re here—go on in, and don’t tell Livvy we dated in your world, because it’s weird.”

They found Livvy in another repurposed office—this one had clearly once been more of a loft, big and airy and probably full of light before the windows had been covered. Strips of brick alternated with polished wood on the walls, and dozens of vintage fruit labels advertising California apples, pears, and oranges hung between the boarded-up windows. A group of four sleek, modern couches formed a square around a glass coffee table. Livvy was lounging on one of the couches, drinking a glass of something dark brown.

“That’s not alcohol, is it?” Julian sounded appalled. “You shouldn’t be drinking.”

“You’ll be drinking tomorrow,” Livvy said, and pointed at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the glass table. “Just saying.” She waved a hand. “Sit down.”

They settled themselves on the couch opposite her. There was a fireplace in the room too, but the grate had been plugged with metal some time ago. Someone with a sense of humor had painted flames on the metal. It was too bad. Emma would have liked a fire. It would have felt like something natural.

Livvy turned her glass around in her scarred hands. “So I believe you,” she said. “You are who you say you are. Which means I know what you want to ask me.”

“Yeah,” Julian said. He cleared his throat. “Mark?” he said. “Ty? Helen, and Dru—”

“But you also probably want to get out of here,” Livvy interrupted. “Since you ended up here by accident and your world sounds like a much better place.”

“We have to leave,” Emma said. “There are people at home who could be hurt or even killed if we don’t come back—”

“But we want to take you with us,” Julian said. Emma had known he was going to say it; they hadn’t discussed it, but it had never been a question. Of course Julian would want Livvy to come back with them.

Livvy gave a long, slow nod. “Right,” she said. “Do you have a reason to think that there’s any way you can get back at all? Interdimensional travel isn’t exactly easy.”

“We’d only just started to discuss it,” Emma said. “But we’ll think of something.” She spoke with more confidence than she felt.

Livvy held up a hand. “If there’s any chance you can get away, are you really sure that you want to know what happened to—to everyone? Because I wish every single day that I didn’t.”

Without taking his eyes off Livvy, Julian said, “What I wish is that I could’ve been here for you.”

Livvy’s gaze was distant. “You were, I guess. Both of you.” She pulled her knees up under her. “You saved our lives when you sacrificed yourselves to get us out of Manhattan the day it fell.”

Emma shivered. “New York? Why were we in New York?”

“The Battle of the Burren was when everything went wrong,” said Livvy. “Clary was there, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood, Magnus Bane—and Helen and Aline, of course. They were winning. Jace was under Sebastian’s thrall, but Clary was wielding Glorious, the sword of the Angel of Paradise. She was about to break him free when Lilith appeared. She cast the sword into Hell and cut Clary down. Helen and the others were lucky to escape with their lives.

“That was Sebastian’s great victory. After that he joined forces with the Fair Folk. They stormed Alicante while we hid in the Hall of Accords. The Shadowhunters fought—our father fought—but Sebastian was too powerful. As Alicante fell to his forces, a group of warlocks opened up a Portal for the children. Just people under fifteen. We had to leave Helen and Mark behind. Dru was screaming as they ripped her out of Helen’s arms and drove us through the Portal to Manhattan.

“Catarina Loss and Magnus Bane had set up a temporary shelter there. The war raged on in Idris. We got a message from Helen. Mark had been taken by the Fair Folk. She didn’t know what they would do to him. I still don’t know. I hope he’s in Faerie and it’s green and bright and he’s forgotten all of us.”

“He hasn’t,” Julian said in a low voice. “Mark doesn’t forget.”

Livvy just blinked, fast, as if her eyes stung. “Helen and Aline hung on, fighting. Sometimes we got a fire-message from them. We heard that strange gray patches started to appear in Brocelind Forest. They called them the ‘blight.’ They turned out to be doorways for demons.”

“Doorways for demons?” Emma demanded, sitting up straight, but Livvy was caught up in her story, turning her glass over and over in her hands so fast Emma was surprised it hadn’t started sparking.

“Demons flooded into Idris. The Fair Folk and Endarkened drove the Shadowhunters out of Alicante, and the demons finished them off. We were in New York when we learned Idris had fallen. Everyone wanted to know the names of the dead, but there was no information. We couldn’t find out what had happened to Helen and Aline, if they’d lived or been Endarkened—we didn’t know.

“We did know we wouldn’t be safe for long. Sebastian didn’t care about keeping secrets from the human world. He wanted to burn it all down. Demons began to appear everywhere, running rampant, slaughtering humans in the streets. The blight spread, appearing all over the world. It poisoned everything it touched and the warlocks started to sicken.

“After two months the shelter was destroyed. The streets were full of monsters, and the warlocks were getting sicker and sicker. The more powerful they were, the more magic they’d used, the quicker they got sick and the more likely they were to turn into demons. Catarina fled so she wouldn’t hurt anyone. You heard what happened to Alec and Magnus. The shelter collapsed and the kids spilled into the streets.” She looked at Julian. “It was winter. We had nowhere to go. But you kept us together. You said, at all costs, we stay together. We live because we’re together. We never leave each other.”