Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

Jace looked over at Alec, the brother he had gained. Alec sat propped on one side of the big wooden bed in the room’s center: Magnus lay beside him, curled on his side, his black hair stark against the white pillow.

Jace hadn’t seen Alec this drained and exhausted-looking since Magnus had vanished into Edom five years ago. Alec had gone to get him back: He would have gone anywhere for Magnus.

But Jace was afraid—worse than afraid—that Magnus was going somewhere that Alec couldn’t follow.

He didn’t want to think about what would happen if Magnus went; the story of Thule had sent icy needles through his veins. He suspected he knew what would happen to him if he lost Clary. He couldn’t bear to think of Alec in such insupportable pain.

Alec bent over and kissed Magnus’s temple. Magnus stirred and murmured but didn’t wake. Jace hadn’t seen him awake since the night before.

Alec looked over at Jace, his eyes deeply shadowed. “What time is it?”

“Sunset,” said Jace, who never carried a watch. “I can go find out if you need to know.”

“No. It’s probably already too late to call the kids.” Alec rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Besides, I keep hoping I can call them with good news.”

Jace stood up and went to the window. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Take this pain away from Alec, he prayed to the Angel Raziel. Come on, we’ve met. Do this for me.

It was something of an unorthodox prayer, but it was heartfelt. Alec raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re praying?”

“How did you know?” Out of the window, Jace could see the grass in front of the Institute, the highway and the ocean beyond. The whole world going on in its ordinary way, not caring about the problems of Shadowhunters and warlocks.

“Your lips were moving,” said Alec. “You hardly ever pray, but I appreciate the thought.”

“I don’t usually have to pray,” said Jace. “Usually when things go wrong, we come to Magnus and he fixes them.”

“I know.” Alec picked at a stray thread on his cuff. “Maybe we should have gotten married,” he said. “Magnus and me. We’ve been unofficially engaged all this time, but we wanted to wait for the Cold Peace to be over. For Downworlders and Shadowhunters to be able to be properly married.”

“In Shadowhunter gold and warlock blue,” said Jace. He’d heard this before, the explanation for why Alec and Magnus hadn’t married yet, but planned to someday. He’d even gone with Alec to pick out rings for the day Alec and Magnus would finally tie the knot—simple gold bands with the words Aku Cinta Kamu etched on them. He’d known the rings were a secret from Magnus, because Alec wanted to surprise his partner, but he hadn’t known there were fears and worries behind something they seemed so sure would happen all in due time.

It was always hard to tell the truth of other people’s relationships.

“Then Magnus would at least know how much I love him,” Alec said, leaning forward to brush a stray hair from Magnus’s forehead.

“He knows,” Jace said. “You should never doubt he knows.”

Alec nodded. Jace glanced back out the window. “They just switched over watch,” he said. “Clary said she’d come see how Magnus was doing when she was done with this shift.”

“Should I take a turn at watch?” Alec asked. “I don’t want to let anyone down.”

The lump in Jace’s throat ached. He sat down next to his parabatai, who he had sworn to follow, to live beside, to die with. Surely that also encompassed the sharing of burdens and grief.

“This is your watch, brother,” he said.

Alec exhaled softly. He put one hand on Magnus’s shoulder, the lightest of touches. He reached out with his other hand and Jace took it, lacing their fingers together. They held fast to each other in silence as the sun went down over the ocean.

* * *

“So what happens?” Aline said. They stood at the edge of the bluffs, overlooking the highway and the sea. “If Magnus starts turning into a demon. What happens?”

Her eyes were red and swollen but her back was straight. She had talked to her father, who had told her only what he knew: That guards had come in the early morning to take Jia to the Gard. That Horace Dearborn had promised no harm would come to her, but that “a show of good faith” was necessary to reassure those who had “lost confidence.”

If he thought it was all lies, he didn’t say so, but Aline knew it was and had called Dearborn every name in the book to Helen the minute she had hung up the phone. Aline had always known an impressive number of curse words.

“We do have the Mortal Sword,” said Helen. “The one from Thule. It’s hidden, but Jace knows where, and what to do. He won’t let Alec do it himself.”

“Couldn’t we—I don’t know—try to capture the demon? Turn it back into Magnus?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” Helen said wearily. “I don’t think there’s any coming back from being turned into a demon, and Magnus wouldn’t want to live like that.”

“It’s not fair.” Aline kicked a good-size rock. It sailed off the edge of the bluffs; Helen could hear it tumbling down the slope toward the highway. “Magnus deserves better than this garbage. We all do. How did everything get like this—so bad, so fast? Things were all right. We were happy.”

“We were in exile, Aline,” Helen said. She wrapped her arms around her wife and rested her chin on Aline’s shoulder. “The cruelty of the Clave tore me from my family, because of my blood. Because of what I cannot help. The seeds of this poison tree were planted long ago. We are only now watching it begin to flower.”

* * *

The sun had set by the time Mark and Kieran began their watch. Mark had hoped to be paired up with Julian, but for some reason Emma had wanted to go with Clary and they’d ended up oddly matched.

They walked for a while in silence, letting the dusk settle into darkness around them. Mark hadn’t talked to Kieran about anything significant since they’d come back from Faerie. He had wanted to, ached to, but he had been afraid of making a confusing situation even worse.

Mark had started to wonder if the problem was him: if his human half and his faerie half held contradictory ideas about love and romance. If half of him wanted Kieran and the freedom of the sky and the other half wanted Cristina and the grandeur and responsibility of earthbound angels.

It was enough to make someone go out into the statue garden and bang their head repeatedly against Virgil.

Not that he’d done that.

“We might as well talk, Mark,” Kieran said. A bright moon was rising; it illuminated the dark ocean, turned it to a sheet of black-and-silver glass, the colors of Kieran’s eyes. The night desert was alive with the sound of cicadas. Kieran was walking beside Mark with his hands looped behind

him, deceptively human-looking in his jeans and T-shirt. He had drawn the line at donning any gear. “It does us no good to ignore each other.”

“I have missed you,” Mark said. There seemed no point in not being honest. “Nor did I intend to ignore you, or to hurt you. I apologize.”

Kieran looked up with a surprised flash of silver and black. “There is no need to apologize, Mark.” He hesitated. “I have had, as you say here in the mortal world, a lot on my mind.”

Mark hid a smile in the dusk. It was irritatingly cute when Kieran used modern phrases.

“I know you have as well,” Kieran went on. “You were fearful for Julian and for Emma. I understand. And yet I cannot keep myself from selfish thoughts.”

“What kind of selfish thoughts?” Mark said. They were near the parking lot, among the statues Arthur Blackthorn had paid to have shipped here years ago. Once they had stood in the gardens of Blackthorn House in London. Now Sophocles and the others inhabited this desert space and looked out on a sea far from the Aegean.

“I believe in your cause,” Kieran said slowly. “I believe the Cohort are evil people, or at least power-hungry people who seek evil solutions to the problems their fears and prejudices have created. Yet though I may believe, I cannot help but feel that no one is looking out for the welfare of my homeland. For Faerie. It was—it is—a place that possesses goodness and marvels among its dangers and trials.”

Mark turned to Kieran in surprise. The stars were brilliant overhead, the way they only ever were in the desert, as if they were closer to the earth here.

The stars will go out before I forget you, Mark Blackthorn.

“I have not heard you talk about Faerie that way before,” Mark said.

“I would not speak of it that way to most.” Kieran touched the place at his throat where once his elf-bolt necklace had rested, then dropped his hand. “But you—you know Faerie in a way others do not. The way the water tumbles blue as ice over Branwen’s Falls. The taste of music and the sound of wine. The honey hair of mermaids in the streams, the glittering of will-o’-the-wisps in the shadows of the deep forests.”