Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“Oh, thank the Angel,” said Mark, dropping his balloons and scrambling to his feet. He followed Alec toward the bluffs as Magnus moved in to amuse the children. Mark overheard him telling Rafe the dragon had lost its head in a game of poker.

Mark and Alec stopped in the shadow of a bluff, not far from the tide line. Alec was wearing a lightweight sweater with a hole in the sleeve and looked calmly pleasant—surprisingly so for a Consul trying to piece together a shattered government.

“I hope this isn’t about the balloons,” said Mark. “I don’t have much training.”

“It’s not about the balloons,” said Alec. He reached around to rub the back of his neck. “I know we haven’t really had much of a chance to talk, but I’ve heard a lot about you from Helen and Aline. And I remembered you for a long time after we met you in Faerie. When you joined the Hunt.”

“You told me if I went to Edom with you, I’d die,” Mark recalled.

Alec looked faintly embarrassed. “I was trying to protect you. But I thought about you a lot after that. How tough you were. And how wrong it was, the way the Clave treated you, just because you were different. I always wished you were around to join the Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance. Working with it has been something I’m really going to miss.”

Mark was startled. “You’re not going to work with the Alliance anymore?”

“I can’t,” Alec said. “I can’t do that and be Consul—it’s too much, for anyone. I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but the government is setting itself up in New York City. Partly because of me—I can’t be too far from Magnus and the kids. And it has to be somewhere.”

“You don’t need to apologize about it,” said Mark, wondering where this was all going.

“There’s so much we have to do,” said Alec. “We have connections all over the world, with every religious organization, with secret societies that know about demons. They’ll all have to decide who they tithe to—us, or the government in Alicante. We have to face that we’re going to lose at least some of our allies. That we’ll be struggling—for funds, for credibility. For so much.”

Mark knew that Shadowhunters survived on the money they were given by organizations—religious, spiritual, mystic—who knew of demons and valued the guarding of the world. He’d never thought about what would happen without those funds. He didn’t envy Alec.

“I wondered if you’d want to join the Alliance,” said Alec. “Not just join it but help us head it up. You could be an ambassador to Faerie, now that the Cold Peace is being dissolved. It’s not going to be a short process. We have a lot of reconnecting to do with the fey, and we need to help them understand that the government in Idris no longer represents the majority of Shadowhunters.” He hesitated. “I know things have been crazy for your family, but you would truly be a valuable asset.”

“Where would I need to live?” Mark asked. “I don’t want to be too far from my family or Cristina.”

“We were going to ask Cristina to join us as well,” said Alec. “Her knowledge of faeries will be helpful, and her family’s relationship with them as well. You can both have a place in the New York Institute, and you’re welcome to Portal back to see your family whenever you want.”

Mark tried to wrap his head around the idea. New York seemed far away, but then, he hadn’t paused at all to consider what he might want to do now that the crisis seemed to be over. He had no interest in anything like the Scholomance. He could remain in Los Angeles, of course, but if he did, he’d be away from Cristina. He already missed Kieran, as did she; he couldn’t bear to miss her, too. But what would his purpose be, if he followed her to Mexico? What did Mark Blackthorn want to do with his life?

“I need to think about it,” Mark said, surprising himself.

“All right,” said Alec. “Take all the time you need.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got something important I have to do.”

* * *

Cristina sat with her legs tucked up under her, gazing out to sea. She knew she should join the rest of the party—her mother had always scolded her for hanging back in her room during social occasions—but something about the sea was comforting. She would miss it when she went home: the steady drumbeat of the tide, the ever-changing surface of the waves. Always the same yet always new.

If she turned her head a bit she could see Emma with Julian, Mark talking to Alec. That was enough for now.

A shadow fell across her view. “Hello, friend.”

It was Diego. He sat down beside her on the large, flat-topped rock she’d found. He looked more casual than she’d seen him in a long time, in a T-shirt and rolled-up cargo pants. The brutal, vicious scar across his face was healing quickly, as Shadowhunter scars did, but it would never fade to invisibility. He would never quite be Perfect Diego again on the outside. But he had changed so much for the better on the inside, she thought. And that was what truly mattered.

“En qué piensas?” It was the same question he’d always asked her, so common it was an inside joke between them. What are you thinking about?

“The world seems so strange to me now,” she said, gazing at her toes in their sandals. “I can’t quite fathom that Alicante is lost to us. The Shadowhunter homeland is our home no longer.” She hesitated. “Mark and I are happy to be together but also sad; Kieran being gone feels like a wedge cut out of our relationship. It’s like having Idris cut out of the world of the Shadowhunters. A piece that’s missing. We can still be happy but we won’t be whole.”

It was the first time she had spoken to Diego about the odd nature of her relationship. She had wondered how he would react. He only nodded. “There is no perfect world,” he said. “What we have now is a wound, but it’s still better than the Cold Peace was, and better than the Cohort was. Very few people have the opportunity to reach out and change the injustices they see in the world, but you did, Cristina. You always wanted to end the Cold Peace, and now it’s over.”

Oddly touched, she smiled at him. “Do you think that we’ll ever hear anything from Idris?”

“Ever is a long time.” He folded his arms on his knees. There had been no communication so far. Alec—the Consul—had sent a fire-message to Idris the day the Cold Peace was officially dissolved, but there had been no response. They couldn’t even be sure it had been received; the wards around Idris now were thicker and stronger than any wards seen before. The Shadowhunter homeland had become both prison and fortress. “Zara is very stubborn. It could be a long time.” Diego paused. “Alec offered me the position of Inquisitor. Of course there has to be a vote, but—”

Cristina flung her arms around his wide shoulders. “Congratulations! That’s wonderful!”

But Diego didn’t look entirely happy. “I feel as if I do not deserve to be Inquisitor,” he said. “I knew the Council guards, the ones who work in the Gard, were under the sway of the Cohort. I said as much to Jaime when they came in escorting Zara and the other prisoners. But I did not raise an objection. I believed it could not be possible that I alone saw a potential problem.”

“No one could have foreseen what happened,” said Cristina. “No one would have imagined that suicide gambit, and nothing else would have worked, even if they did have the guards on their side. Besides, being the Inquisitor isn’t a favor or reward. It is a service you give. It’s a way of paying back the world.”

He started to smile. “I suppose so.”

She winked. “Also, I’m happy to know that if I need someone to bend the Law in my favor, I will have a powerful friend.”

“I see you have learned way too much from the Blackthorns,” Diego said darkly.

A shadow passed over them—darker than a cloud, and too large to be a seagull. Drawing back from Diego, Cristina tipped her head back. A flying figure soared through the sky, shimmering white against the dark blue. It circled, and then began to descend, preparing to alight on the sand.

Cristina bolted to her feet and began to scramble down the rocks toward the beach.

* * *

The sun had dipped to touch the edge of the horizon. It was a massive glowing ball of orange and red now, illuminating the ocean with bands of metallic gold.

Julian stood at the high-water mark, a defined darker stripe on the sands. Emma was beside him, her pale gold hair escaping the clip she’d put in to hold it back; secretly, he was pleased. He loved her hair. He loved being able to stand next to her like this, to take her hand and have no one blink. In fact, nearly everyone they knew seemed so extremely fine with it that he wondered if many of them hadn’t already had suspicions.

Maybe they had. He didn’t mind.

He’d been painting again—Emma, when he could get her to sit still and be a model. He had painted her for so long in secret, the paintings his only outlet for his feelings, that painting her moving and laughing and smiling, a blur of golds and blues and ambers, was almost more than his heart could take.

He painted Ty, down by the water’s edge, and Dru looking thoughtful or scowling, and Helen and Aline together, and Mark with his eyes raised to the sky as if he were always looking for the stars.

And he painted Livvy. He painted the Livvy he had always known and loved, and sometimes he painted the Livvy in Thule who had helped heal his heart from the wound of his sister’s loss.

It would never be entirely healed. It would always hurt, as his mother’s death did, as his father’s death did. As Arthur’s death did. He would be as everyone was, especially Shadowhunters: a patchwork of love and grief, of gains and losses. The love helped you accept the grief. You had to feel it all.

He knew that now.