Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

Ty looked up, his brief gray gaze like a light touch. “You’ve always been there for us, Jules. You did everything for us. You used to run the whole Institute.”

“I—”

“It’s my turn to be there for the rest of you,” said Ty, and set the brush down. “I should go. I have to meet Kit.”

When he was gone, Julian sat down on a stool pulled up to a blank easel. He stared unseeingly ahead of him, hearing Ty’s voice echo in his mind.

You used to run the whole Institute.

He thought of Horace, of Horace’s determination to have the whole Shadowhunter world see him speak with the Unseelie King. He hadn’t understood why before. Without his emotions, he hadn’t been able to understand Horace’s reasons. Now he did, and he knew it was even more imperative than he had believed to stop him.

He thought of Arthur’s old office, of the hours he’d spent there at dawn, composing and answering letters. The weight of the Institute’s seal in his hand. That seal was in Aline and Helen’s office now. They’d taken what they could from Arthur’s office to help them with their new job. But they hadn’t known about the secret compartments in Arthur’s desk, and Julian hadn’t been there to tell them.

You used to run the whole Institute.

In those compartments were the careful lists he’d kept of names—every important Downworlder, every Council member, every Shadowhunter at every Institute.

He glanced at the window. He felt alive, energized—not precisely happy, but buzzing with purpose. He would finish the artwork now. Later, when everyone was asleep, his real work would begin.

26

A STIR IN THE AIR

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Emma spun and threw the balanced knives one after the other, fast: overhead, overhead, sideways. They sliced through the air and jammed point-first into the target painted on the wall, their handles trembling with kinetic force.

She bent down and grabbed two more from the pile at her feet. She hadn’t changed into training clothes and she was sweating in her tank top and jeans, her loose hair plastered to the back of her neck.

She didn’t care. It was almost as though she’d returned to the time before she’d realized she was in love with Julian. A time when she’d been full of a rage and despair she’d attributed entirely to her parents’ deaths.

She flung the next two knives, blades sliding through her fingers, their flight smooth and tightly controlled. Thunk. Thunk. She remembered the days when she’d thrown so many bo-shuriken that she’d made her hands split and bleed. How much of that rage had been about her parents—because a lot of it had been, she knew—and how much had been about the fact that she’d kept the doors of her awareness tightly shut, never letting herself know what she wanted, what would make her truly happy?

She picked up two more knives and positioned herself facing away from the target, breathing hard. It was impossible not to think about Julian. Now that the spell was off him, she felt a desperate desire to be with him, mixed with the bitterness of regret—regret for past choices made, regret for wasted years. She and Julian had both been in denial, and look what it had cost them. If either of them had been able to acknowledge why they shouldn’t be parabatai, they wouldn’t be facing separation from each other. Or exile from everything they loved.

Love is powerful, and the more you’re together, and let yourself feel what you do, the stronger it’ll be. You need to not touch each other. Not speak to each other. Try not to even think about each other.

Thunk. A knife sailed over her shoulder. Thunk. Another. She turned to see the handles vibrating where they stuck out from the wall.

“Nice throw.”

Emma spun around. Mark was leaning against the doorway, his body like a long, lean spoke in the shadows. He was wearing his gear and he looked tired. More than tired, he looked weary.

It had been a while since she’d spent time with Mark alone. It was neither of their faults—there had been the separation in Idris, then Faerie and Thule—but there was another piece to it too, perhaps. There was an apprehensive sadness in Mark these days, as if he were constantly waiting to be told he had lost something. It seemed deeper than what he had carried back with him from Faerie.

She picked up another knife. Held it out. “Do you want a turn?”

“Very much so.”

He came and took the knife from her. She stepped back a little while he took aim, sighting down the line of his arm toward the target.

“Do you want to talk about what’s going on with Cristina?” she said hesitantly. “And . . . Kieran?”

He let the knife go. It sank into the wall beside one of Emma’s. “No,” he said. “I am trying not to think about it, and I do not think discussing it will accomplish that goal.”

“Okay,” Emma said. “Do you want to just throw knives in a silent, angry bro way together?”

He cracked a slight smile. “There are other things we could discuss than my love life. Like your love life.”

It was Emma’s turn to grab a knife. She threw it hard, viciously, and it hit the wall hard enough to crack the wood. “That sounds like about as much fun as stabbing myself in the head.”

“I think mundanes discuss the weather when they have nothing else to talk about,” said Mark. He had gone to lift a bow and quiver down from the wall. The bow was a delicate piece of workmanship, carved with filigreed runes. “We are not mundanes.”

“Sometimes I wonder what we are,” Emma said. “Considering I don’t think the current powers that be in Alicante would like us to be Nephilim at all.”

Mark drew back the bow and let an arrow fly. It whipped through the air, plunging directly into the center of the target on the wall. Emma felt a twist of grim pride; people often underestimated how good a warrior Mark was.

“It doesn’t matter what they think,” Mark said. “Raziel made us Shadowhunters. Not the Clave.”

Emma sighed. “What would you do if things were different? If you could do anything, be anything. If this was all over.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You always wanted to be like Jace Herondale,” he said. “The greatest of all fighters. But I would like to be more like Alec Lightwood. I would like to do something important for Shadowhunters and Downworlders. For I will always be part of each world.”

“I can’t believe you remember I always wanted to be like Jace. That’s so embarrassing.”

“It was cute that you wanted to be such a fighter, especially when you were very small.” He smiled a

real smile, one that lit up his face. “I remember you and Julian when you were ten—both of you with wooden swords, and me trying to teach you not to smack each other in the head with them.”

Emma giggled. “I thought you were so old—fourteen!”

He sobered. “I have been thinking that not everything that is strange is bad,” he said. “Since I came from Faerie the way I did—it closed the gap of years between me and Julian, and me and you. I have been able to be much better friends with both of you now, rather than an older sibling, and that has been a gift.”

“Mark—” she began, and broke off, staring out the west-facing picture window. Something—someone—was walking up the road toward the Institute, a dark figure moving purposefully.

She caught a flash of gold.

“I have to go.” Emma grabbed a longsword and bolted out of the training room, leaving Mark staring after her. Energy was ping-ponging through her body. She took the stairs three at a time, burst out the front doors, and crossed the grass just as the figure she’d seen reached the top of the road.

The moon was bright, flooding the world with bright spears of illumination. Emma blinked away stars and gazed at Zara Dearborn, stalking toward her across the grass.

Zara was fully decked out in her Centurion gear, Primi Ordines pin and all. Her hair was tightly braided around her head, her brown eyes narrowed. In her hand was a golden sword that shone like the light of dawn.

Cortana. A flash of gold.

Emma stiffened all over. She whipped the longsword from its scabbard, though it felt like dead weight in her hand now that she was looking at her own beloved blade. “Stop,” she said. “You aren’t welcome here, Zara.”

Zara gave her a narrow little smile. She was gripping Cortana all wrong, which blinded Emma with rage. Wayland Smith had made that blade, and now Zara had it in her sticky, incompetent hand. “Aren’t you going to ask about this?” she asked, twirling the sword as if it were a toy.