Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“Julian,” she said, and he winced.

“My hands,” he said, sounding surprised. “I didn’t feel it.”

She glanced down and sucked in her breath. His palms were a crazy quilt of bloody splinters from the kindling wood. Some were small dark lines against his skin, but others were bigger, snapped-off toothpicks of wood that had gone in at an angle, oozing blood.

“You need an iratze,” she said, letting go of one of his wrists and reaching to her belt for a stele. “Let me—”

“No.” He drew his other wrist free of her hold. His expression was colder than glacial ice. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

He walked away as Emma struggled to breathe. Ty and Mark had returned to where the Blackthorns were standing: Ty was near Kit, as he almost always was, like a magnet clicking into place.

She saw Mark reach out to take Cristina’s hand and hold it and thought: I should be holding Julian’s hands, I should be there for him, reminding him there are still things in the world worth living for.

But Julian’s hands were bloody and wounded and he didn’t want her to touch them. As his soul was torn and bloody and maybe he didn’t want anyone near that, either, but she was different, she was his parabatai, wasn’t she?

It is time. The silent voice of one of the Brothers rippled across the Fields: They all heard it—except Magnus and Max, who looked around in confusion. Emma barely had time to brace herself before the Silent Brothers touched their torches to the kindling wood at the foot of each pyre. Fire blasted upward, rippling in shades of gold and red, and for a moment it was almost beautiful.

Then the roar of the flames hit her, like the sound of a crashing wave, and the heat rolled across the grass, and Livvy’s body vanished behind a sheet of smoke.

* * *

Kit could barely hear the soft chant of the Nephilim over the greedy crackle of the flames: “Vale, vale, vale. Farewell, farewell, farewell.”

The smoke was thick. His eyes stung and burned, and he couldn’t stop thinking of the fact that his own father had had no funeral, that there had been little of him left to bury, his flesh turned to ash by Mantid venom, his remains disposed of by the Silent Brothers.

Kit couldn’t bear to look at the Blackthorns, so he stared at the Lightwoods. He had overheard all their names by now: he knew Alec’s sister was Isabelle, the girl with the black hair who stood with her arms around Alec and her mother, Maryse. Rafe and Max held each other’s hands; Simon and Magnus stood close to the others, like small moons of comfort orbiting a planet of grief. He remembered someone saying that funerals were for the living, not the dead, so that they could say good-bye. He wondered about the burning: Was it so that the Nephilim could bid good-bye in fire that reminded them of angels?

He saw a man come toward the Lightwoods and blinked his watering eyes. He was a young man, handsome, with curling brown hair and a square jaw. He wasn’t wearing white, like the others, but plain black gear. As he passed Maryse he stopped and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She didn’t turn or seem to notice. Neither did anyone else. Magnus glanced over quickly, frowning, but looked away again; Kit realized with a coldness in his chest that he was the only one who actually could see the young man—and that the smoke seemed to flow through the stranger, as if he were made of air.

A ghost, he thought. Like Jessamine. He looked around wildly: Surely there would be more ghosts here, in the Imperishable Fields, their dead feet leaving no traces on the grass?

But he saw only the Blackthorns, clinging together, Emma and Cristina side by side, and Julian with Tavvy, as the smoke rose up and around them. Half-reluctantly he glanced back: The young man with the dark hair had moved to kneel beside Robert Lightwood’s pyre. He was closer to the flames than any human could have gotten, and they seemed to eddy within the outline of his body, lighting eyes with fiery tears.

Parabatai, Kit thought suddenly. In the slump of the young man’s shoulders, in his outstretched hands, in the longing stamped on his face, he saw Emma and Julian, he saw Alec as he spoke about Jace; he knew he was looking at the ghost of Robert Lightwood’s parabatai. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.

A cruel sort of bond, he thought, that made one person out of two people, and left such devastation when half was gone.

He glanced away from the ghost, realizing that smoke and fire had made a wall now, and the pyres were no longer visible. Livvy had disappeared behind the boiling darkness. The last thing he saw before tears blinded him was Ty beside him, lifting his face and closing his eyes, a dark silhouette outlined by the brilliance of the fire as if he was haloed in gold.

4

NOTHING THAT IS OURS

The pyres were still burning as the procession turned and headed back toward the city. It was customary for the smoke to rise all night, and for families to gather in Angel Square to mourn among others.

Not that Emma thought it was likely the Blackthorns would do that. They would remain in their house, sequestered with each other: They had been too much apart all their lives to want comfort from other Shadowhunters who they barely knew.

She had trailed away from the rest of the group, too raw to want to try to talk to Julian again in front of his family.

“Emma,” said a voice beside her. She turned and saw Jem Carstairs.

Jem. She was too surprised to speak. Jem had been a Silent Brother once, and though he was a Carstairs, he was a very distant relative, due to being more than a century old. He looked only about twenty-five, though, and was dressed in jeans and scuffed shoes. He wore a white sweater, which she guessed was his concession to Shadowhunter funeral whites. Jem was no longer a Shadowhunter, though he had been one for many years.

“Jem,” she whispered, not wanting to disturb anyone else in the procession. “Thanks for coming.”

“I wished you to know how sorry I am,” he said. He looked pale and drawn. “I know you loved Livia like a sister.”

“I had to watch her die,” said Emma. “Have you ever watched someone you loved die?”

“Yes,” said Jem.

This was the thing about nearly immortal people, Emma thought. It was rare that you had a life experience that they hadn’t.

“Can we talk?” she said abruptly. “Just us?”

“Yes. I wished to speak alone with you myself.” He indicated a low rise some distance away, partially hidden by a stand of trees. After whispering to Cristina that she was going to talk to Jem—“The Jem? The really old one? Who’s married to a warlock? Really?”—she followed Jem to where he was sitting on the grass, among a tumble of old stones.

They sat for a moment in silence, both of them looking out over the Imperishable Fields. “When you were a Silent Brother,” Emma said abruptly, “did you burn people?”

Jem looked over at her. His eyes were very dark. “I helped light the pyres,” he said. “A clever man I knew once said that we cannot understand life, and therefore we cannot hope to understand death. I have lost many I loved to death, and it does not get easier, nor does watching the pyres burn.”

“We are dust and shadows,” Emma said. “I guess we’re all ashes, too.”

“It was meant to make us all equal,” said Jem. “We are all burned. Our ashes all go to build the City of Bones.”

“Except for criminals,” said Emma.

Jem’s brow furrowed. “Livia was hardly that,” he said. “Nor you, unless you are thinking of committing a crime?”

I already have. I’m criminally in love with my parabatai. The desire to say the words, to confess to someone—to Jem, specifically—was like a pressure behind Emma’s eyes. She said hastily, “Did your parabatai ever pull away from you? When you, you know, wanted to talk?”

“People do strange things when they’re grieving,” said Jem gently. “I was watching from a distance, earlier. I saw Julian climb to the top of the pyre for his brother. I know how much he has always loved those children. Nothing he says or does now, in these f

irst and worst days, is who he is. Besides,” he added, with a slight smile, “being parabatai is complicated. I hit my parabatai in the face once.”

“You did what?”

“As I said.” Jem seemed to enjoy her astonishment. “I struck my parabatai—I loved him more than anyone else in the world I’ve ever loved save Tessa, and I struck him in the face because my heart was breaking. I can hardly judge anyone else.”

“Tessa!” Emma exclaimed. “Where is she?”

Jem’s hand made a fist in the grass. “You know of the warlock illness?”

Emma recalled hearing of Magnus’s weakness, the swiftness with which his magic was depleted. That it wasn’t just him, it was other warlocks too.

“Is Tessa sick?” she said.