Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

The room beyond was silent, eerily so, and empty of guards. Emma’s first impression was of a place both richly decorated and very cold. A large four-poster bed carved of a single massive piece of wood dominated the space. Tapestries hung from the walls, depicting exquisite scenes of natural beauty in Faerie—forests wreathed in mist, tumbling glacial waterfalls, wildflowers growing on cliffs above the sea.

Emma could not help but think about the blight. The tapestries were stunning, a loving ode to the beauty of Faerie, but outside these walls the true Lands of Unseelie were being consumed by the blight. Had the King decorated this space? Did he see the irony of it?

Julian had placed himself by the tapestry door, his sword unsheathed. He was looking around curiously—it was hard not to notice the clothes strewn everywhere. Apparently Ash, like most teenage boys, was something of a slob. A window had been wedged open and cold air drifted through. Ash’s golden crown had been dumped on the windowsill, almost as if he were daring a magpie to steal it.

Emma crept over to the bed where Ash lay, a still figure under a richly embroidered coverlet. His eyes were closed, perfect half circles fringed with silvery lashes. He looked innocent, angelic. Emma’s heart went out to him—surprising, considering his resemblance to Sebastian. But it wasn’t an exact duplication, she saw, stepping closer, so that her shadow fell over the bed.

“He looks a little like Clary,” she whispered.

“It doesn’t matter what he looks like,” Julian said. “He’s Sebastian’s son.”

He’s a child, she wanted to protest, but she knew it wouldn’t matter. She reached out to place a tentative hand on the boy’s shoulder; as she did, she saw that there was a wide scar on the side of Ash’s throat, no longer hidden by the collar of his shirt, in the shape of an X. There were odd markings on the wall behind his bed too: They looked like runes, but twisted and sinister runes, like the ones the Endarkened had worn.

A ferocious desire to protect him rose up in her, startling in both its strength and its complete lack of logic. She didn’t even know this boy, she thought, but she couldn’t stop herself from reaching over to shake him gently. “Ash,” she whispered. “Ash, wake up. We’re here to rescue you.”

His eyes flew open, and she truly saw Clary in him then; they were the same color green as hers. They fixed on Emma as he sat up, reaching out a hand. They were steady and clear and a thought flashed through her head: He could be a true leader, not like Sebastian, but like Sebastian should have been.

Across the room, Julian was shaking his head. “Emma, no,” he said. “What are you—”

Ash jerked his hand back and shouted: “Ethna! Eochaid! Riders, help me!”

Julian whirled toward the door, but the two Riders had already torn through the tapestry. Their bronze armor shone like blinding sunlight; Julian struck out with his blade, slashing it across the front of Eochaid’s chest, but the Rider pivoted away.

Ethna’s metallic hair flew around her as she launched herself at Julian with a scream of rage. He raised his sword but wasn’t fast enough; she crashed into him, seizing Julian and smashing him against the wall.

Ash rolled away across the coverlet; Emma seized him and yanked him back, her fingers sinking into his shoulder. She felt as if she’d emerged from a fog: dizzy, breathless, and suddenly very, very angry. “Stop!” she shouted. “Let Julian go or I’ll cut the prince’s throat.”

Ethna looked up with a snarl; she was standing over Julian, her blade out. He was crouched with his back against the wall, a trickle of blood running from his temple. His eyes were watchful.

“Do not be a fool,” said Eochaid. “Do you not understand that your only chance to live is letting the prince go?”

Emma pressed the blade closer against Ash’s throat. He was like a taut wire in her grip. Protect Ash, whispered a voice in the back of her head. Ash is what matters.

She bit down on her lip, the pain whiting out the voice in her head. “Explain yourself, Rider.”

“We are in the tower,” said Ethna in a tone of disgust. “We cannot slay you without the King’s permission. He would be angered. But if you were threatening Ash . . .” Her look was hungry. “Then we would have no choice but to protect him.”

Julian wiped blood from his face. “She’s right. They can’t kill us. Let Ash go, Emma.”

Ash was looking fixedly at Julian. “You look like her,” he said with surprise.

Puzzled, Emma hesitated, and Ash took the opportunity to sink his teeth into her hand. She yelled and let go of him; a circle of bleeding dents marked the curve of her thumb and forefinger. “Why?” she demanded. “You’re a prisoner here. Don’t you want to leave?”

Ash was crouched on the bed, an odd feral scowl on his face. He was fully dressed in breeches, a linen tunic, and boots. “In Alicante I would be the son of your most hated enemy. You would take me to my death.”

“It isn’t like that—” Emma began, but she didn’t finish; her head flew back as Ethna delivered a stinging slap to her cheek.

“Cease your yammering,” said Eochaid.

Emma turned back once to look at Ash as she and Julian were marched from the room at sword point. He stood in the middle of the chamber, looking after them; his face was blank, without Sebastian’s haughtiness and cruelty—but without Clary’s kindness, either. He looked like someone who had pulled off a successful chess move.

Neither Julian nor Emma spoke as they were marched along the corridors, the fey folk around them murmuring and staring. The corridors gave way soon to danker and danker hallways angling more steeply down. As the light dimmed, Emma caught a brief look at the expression of frustration and bitterness on Julian’s face before the shadows clustered and she could see only moving shapes in the occasional weak illumination of green bough torches hanging on the walls.

“It seems almost a pity,” said Eochaid, breaking the silence as they reached a long, serpentine hall that led to a dark hole in a distant wall. Emma could see the glimmer of guard uniforms even in the dark. “To kill these two before they can witness the destruction of the Nephilim.”

“Nonsense,” said Ethna curtly. “Blood for blood. They murdered our brother. Perhaps the King will let us swing the scythe that ends them.”

They had reached the hole in the far wall. It was a doorway without a door, cut into a thick wall of stone. The guards on either side seemed intrigued. “More prisoners?” said the one on the left, who was lounging atop a massive wooden chest.

“Captives of the King,” said Ethna in a clipped voice.

“Practically a party,” said the guard, and chuckled. “Not that they stay long, mind.”

Ethna rolled her eyes and hustled Emma forward with the prick of the sword between her shoulder blades. She and Julian were ushered into a wide, square room with rough-hewn stone walls. Vines grew from the ceiling, ribboning down to plunge into the hard-packed dirt floor. They wove closely together into the shape of boxes—cells, Emma realized: cells whose walls were made out of thorny vines, hard as flexible iron.

She remembered those thorns stabbing into her, and shuddered.

Ethna laughed unpleasantly. “Shiver all you want,” she said. “There is no escape here, and no pity.” She took Emma’s weapons belt from her waist and forced her to remove the Clave’s gold medallion from her throat. Emma cast Julian a panicked look—nothing would prevent them from suffering the time slippage in Faerie now.

Furious, Emma was shoved into a cell through a gap in the vines. To her relief, Julian followed a moment later. She had been afraid they would be separated and that she would go out of her mind alone. He was also weaponless. He turned to glare at the Riders as Ethna tapped the end of her sword against the cage; the vines that had parted quickly slithered and twisted together, closing up any possibility of an exit.

Ethna was grinning. The look of triumph on her face made Emma’s stomach twist acidly. “Little Shadowhunters,” she crooned. “What does all your angel blood avail you now?”

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“Come, sister,” said Eochaid, though he was smiling indulgently. “The King awaits.”

Ethna spat on the ground before turning to follow her brother. Their footsteps faded away, and there was darkness and silence—cold, pressuring silence. Only a little dim illumination came from smoky torches high up on the walls.

The strength left Emma’s limbs like water pouring out of a broken dam. She sank to the ground in the center of the cage, cringing away from the thorns all around her.

“Julian,” she whispered. “What are we going to do?”

He dropped to his knees. She could see where goose bumps had risen all over his skin. The bloody bandage around his wrist seemed to glow like a phantom in the dark.

“I got us in here,” he said. “I’ll get us out.”

Emma opened her mouth to protest, but no words came; it was close enough to the truth. The old Julian, her Julian, would have listened when she’d said she sensed the situation outside Ash’s room wasn’t right. He would have trusted her instinct. For the first time she felt something close to true mourning for that Julian, as if this Julian wasn’t just temporary—as if her Julian might never come back.

“Do you care?” she said.

“You think I want to die in here?” he said. “I still have a self-preservation instinct, Emma, and that means preserving you, too. And I know—I know I’m a better Shadowhunter than I just was.”

“Being a Shadowhunter isn’t just in fast reflexes or strong muscles.” She pressed her hand against his heart, the linen of his shirt soft against her fingers. “It’s here.” Here where you’re broken.

His blue-green eyes seemed the only color in the prison; even the vines of their cell were metallic gray. “Emma—”

“It is them!” said a voice, and Emma jumped as light flared all around them. And not just any light. White-silver light, radiating from the cell opposite theirs; she could see it now, in the new illumination. Two figures stood inside, staring at them through the vines, and one of them held a glowing rune-stone in her hand.

“Witchlight,” breathed Julian, rising to his feet.