Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“Maybe at first.” Annabel stopped twirling. “But it was no longer the case by the time he raised me, was it? He had kept me trapped and tortured all those years, so he could bring me back for him, not for me. That is not love, to sacrifice your beloved’s happiness for your own needs. By the time he was able to get me back, he was so divorced from the world that he cared about his goal more than he cared about the kinds of love that matter. A thing that was true and pure and beautiful became corrupt and evil.” She smiled, and her teeth shone like underwater pearls. “Once you no longer feel empathy, you become a monster. You may not be under the spell here, Julian Blackthorn, but what about when you return? What will you do then, when you cannot bear to feel what you feel?”

“Shut up,” Emma said through her teeth. “You don’t understand anything.” She turned to Julian. “Let’s get away from here.”

But Julian was still staring at Annabel. “You want something,” he said in a deadly flat voice. “What?”

“Ah.” Annabel was still smiling. “When I open the Portal, take Ash with you. He is in danger.”

“Ash?” Julian repeated, incredulous.

“Ash seems to be doing fine here,” said Emma, lowering her Glock. “I mean, maybe he’s getting bored with his video game selection since, you know, Sebastian killed all the people who make video games. Or he could be running out of batteries. But I’m not sure that qualifies as danger.”

Annabel’s face darkened. “He is too good for this place,” she said. “And more than that—when we first found ourselves here, I brought him to Sebastian. I believed Sebastian would take care of Ash because he is his father. And for a time, he did. But rumors are circulating that the energy drain of maintaining so many Endarkened is slowly tearing Sebastian apart. The life forces of the Endarkened are poisoned. Useless. But Ash’s is not. I believe eventually he will kill Ash and use his considerable life force to rejuvenate himself.”

“No one’s safe, huh?” said Julian. He sounded distinctly unimpressed.

“This is a good world for me,” said Annabel. “I hate the Nephilim, and I am powerful enough to be safe from demons.”

“And Sebastian lets you torture Nephilim,” Emma said.

“Indeed. I visit upon them the wounds that were once visited upon me by the Council.” There was no emotion in her voice, not even a faint hint of gloating, only a deadly dullness that was even worse. “But it is not a good place for Ash. We cannot hide—Sebastian would hunt him down anywhere. He will be better off in your world.”

“Then why don’t you take him there yourself?” said Emma.

“I would if I could. It sickens me to be parted from him,” Annabel said. “I have given all my life these years to his care.”

Perfect loyalty, Emma thought. Was it that loyalty that had made Annabel so haggard, so sick-looking? Always putting Ash before herself, following him from place to place, ready to die for him at any moment, and never really knowing why?

“But in your world,” Annabel went on, “I would be hunted, and torn from Ash. He would have no one to protect him. This way, he will have you.”

“You seem to have a lot of trust in us,” said Julian, “given that you know we hate you.”

“But you don’t hate Ash,” Annabel said. “He is innocent, and you have always protected the innocent. It is what you do.” She smiled, a knowing smile, as if she felt in her heart that she had caught them in a net. “Besides. You are desperate to get home, and desperation always has a price. So how about it, Nephilim? Do we have a deal?”

* * *

Ash scooped the piece of paper that had fallen from Julian Blackthorn’s jacket off the floor of the nightclub. He was careful not to let Sebastian see him do it. He’d been in Thule long enough to know that it was never a good idea to catch Sebastian’s attention unawares.

Not that Sebastian was always cruel. He was generous in fits and starts, when he remembered Ash existed. He’d hand him weapons or games he found in raids on rebel homes. He ensured that Ash dressed nicely, since he considered Ash a reflection of himself. Jace was the only one who was ever actually kind, though, seeming to find in Ash somewhere to put the frustrated, bottled-up feelings he still carried for Clary Fairchild and Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood.

And then there was Annabel. But Ash didn’t want to think about Annabel.

Ash unfolded the paper. A jolt went through his body. He turned away quickly so that Jace and Sebastian, deep in conversation, wouldn’t see his expression.

It was her, the strange human girl he’d once seen in the Unseelie weapons room. Dark hair, eyes the color of the sky he only partially remembered. A murder of crows circled in the sky behind her. Not a photograph, but a drawing, done with a wistful hand, a sense of love and longing emanating from the page. A name was scribbled in a corner: Drusilla Blackthorn.

Drusilla. She looked lonely, Ash thought, but determined as well, as if a hope lived behind those summer-blue eyes, a hope that could not be quenched by loss, a hope too strong to feel despair.

Ash’s heart was pounding, though he could not have said why. Hastily, he folded the drawing and thrust it into his pocket.

* * *

Diana was waiting for them outside the Bradbury, leaning against the closed garage door with a shotgun over her shoulder. She lowered the weapon with a look of visible relief as Emma and Julian’s motorcycle puttered to a stop in front of her.

“I knew you’d make it,” she said as Julian swung himself off the bike.

“Aw,” said Emma, dismounting. “You were worried about us!”

Diana tapped on the garage door with the tip of her shotgun. She said something to Emma that was lost in the grinding of the gears as the door opened.

Julian watched Emma answer Diana with a smile and wondered how she did it. Somehow Emma could always find lightness or a joke even under the greatest stress. Maybe it was the same way he could stand in front of Sebastian and pretend to be the Endarkened version of himself without even feeling his hands shake. That started only when it was over.

“I’m sorry I had to take off,” Diana said once the door was shut and bolted and their bike stowed back under Raphael’s tarp. “If I’d stuck around and you’d been caught—”

“There’s nothing you could have done for us,” said Julian. “And they would have killed you, once they figured out who we really were.”

“At least this way someone was bringing the news about Tessa back to Livvy. We get it,” Emma added. “Have you told her yet?”

“I was waiting for you.” She grinned sideways. “And I didn’t want to have to tell Livvy I’d lost her brother.”

Her brother. The words were like dream words, half-true, however Julian might want them to be fully real.

“So what did Sebastian want from you?” Diana asked as she let them back into the building. They must have come in very late the night before, Julian realized—at this hour, the corridors were still full of people, hurrying back and forth. They passed the open door of a pantry, full of canned and jarred goods. The kitchen was probably nearby; the air smelled like tomato soup.

“He offere

d us a house in Bel Air,” said Emma.

Diana clucked her tongue. “Fancy. Bel Air is where Sebastian lives, and the more favored Endarkened. The moat protects it.”

“The one made of giant bones?” said Julian.

“Yeah, that moat,” said Diana. They’d reached the door of Livvy’s office; Diana bumped it open with her hip and ushered them inside.

Somehow Julian had thought Livvy would be alone, waiting for them, but she wasn’t. She was standing at one of the long architectural tables with Bat and Maia, looking at a map of Los Angeles. Cameron was pacing up and down the room.

Livvy looked up as the door opened, and relief washed across her face. For a moment Julian was watching a small Livvy at the beach, trapped on a rock by the tide, the same look of desperate relief on her face when he came to pick her up and carry her back to shore.

But this Livvy was not the same little girl. She was not a little girl at all. She covered the look of relief quickly. “Glad you’re back,” she said. “Any luck?”

Julian filled them in on the meeting with Tessa—leaving out, for now, the part where she’d asked them to kill Sebastian—while Emma went to the coffeemaker in the corner and collected hot coffee for them both. It was bitter and black and stung when he swallowed it.

“I guess I owe you five thousand bucks,” Cameron said to Livvy when Julian was done. “I didn’t think Tessa was still alive, much less that she’d be able to get us into the Silent City.”

“This is great news,” Maia said. She was leaning back against the edge of the map table. One hand was casually looped around her opposing elbow, and Julian could glimpse a tattoo of a lily on Maia’s forearm. “We should start a strategy session. Assign groups. Some can circle the entrance to the Silent City, some can be on sniper watch, some can guard the warlock, some—”

“There’s also some bad news,” Julian said. “On the way back from the beach we were stopped at a checkpoint. Sebastian wanted to see us.”

Livvy tensed all over. “What? Why?”

“He thought we were the Endarkened versions of ourselves. Emma and Julian from this world,” Emma said.