Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“Come back home with me,” Julian whispered. “Livvy—”

She sighed. “I can tell you want my permission to make this deal with the necromancer, Jules. I can tell you think it would make this an easier and better choice. But I can’t do that.” She shook her head. “In Thule, terrible choices are all we have. This one is yours to make.”

* * *

At the weapons supply closet, Emma waded in happily; she’d never been that interested in guns—they didn’t work on demons, so Shadowhunters didn’t use them—but there were plenty of other items of localized destruction. She thrust a handful of throwing knives through her belt and headed for a table of daggers.

Diana leaned against the wall and watched her with weary amusement. “In your world,” she said, “you were parabatai?”

Emma paused, a blade in her hand. “We were.”

“I wouldn’t mention that too much if I were you,” said Diana. “People here don’t really like to think about parabatai.”

“Why not?”

Diana sighed. “As Sebastian gained control of the world, and it became darker and more desperate, parabatai changed. It happened overnight, unlike the change of the warlocks. One day the world awoke to find that those who were parabatai had become monsters.”

Emma almost dropped the knife. “They became evil?”

“Monsters,” repeated Diana. “Their runes began to burn like fire, as if they had fire in their veins instead of blood. People said that the blades of those who fought them shattered in their hands. Black lines spread over their bodies and they became monstrous—physically monstrous. I never saw it happen, mind you—I heard this all thirdhand. Stories about ruthless, massive shining creatures, tearing cities apart. Sebastian had to release thousands of demons to take them down. A lot of mundanes and Shadowhunters died.”

“But why would that happen?” Emma whispered, her throat suddenly dry.

“Probably the same reason the warlocks turned into demons. The world turning twisted and demonic. No one knows, really.”

“Are you worried that’ll happen to us?” Emma asked. She was blindly picking up more weapons, not really looking at what she was taking anymore. “That we could change here?”

“No chance of that,” Diana said. “Once the angelic magic had stopped working completely, the few parabatai who’d survived were fine. Their bonds broke and they didn’t change.”

Emma nodded. “I can feel that my bond with Julian is broken here.”

“Yeah. There are no more Shadowhunters, so there are no more parabatai. Still, like I said, I wouldn’t mention it to people. Your runes will end up fading soon enough. You know. If you stay here.”

“If we stay here,” Emma echoed, a little faintly. Her head was spinning. “Right. I think I should go back now. Julian might be wondering where I am.”

* * *

“I see you’ve been decorating,” Julian said when he came into the bedroom. He looked tired but alert, his chocolate-brown hair still tousled from the bike ride.

Emma glanced around—she’d liberated a startling number of weapons from the supply closet downstairs. There was a pile of daggers and throwing knives in one corner, one of swords in another, and another of LAPD-issue guns: Glocks and Berettas, mostly. “Thanks,” she said. “The theme is Stuff That Can Kill You.”

Julian laughed and went into the bathroom; she heard the sink water running as he brushed his teeth. She’d borrowed one of the men’s button-down shirts they’d given Julian and was wearing it like a nightshirt over her underwear: not, she thought, the sexiest of all pajama options, but it was comfortable.

Emma curled her legs up under her and resisted the urge to ask Julian if he was all right. After she’d gotten back from her expedition with Diana, she’d waited for Julian with growing anxiety. This was a world that could hurt them in a lot of ways. They could be slaughtered by demons or hunted down by Endarkened. And if they’d arrived earlier, apparently, they could have turned into monsters and destroyed a city.

There is a corruption at the heart of the bond of parabatai. A poison. A darkness in it that mirrors its goodness. There is a reason parabatai cannot fall in love, and it is monstrous beyond all you could imagine.

She shook her head. She wouldn’t listen to the lying words of the Queen. Everything in Thule was twisted and monstrous—of course the parabatai bond would not have been spared.

More real and dangerous was the shadow of heartbreak around every corner. She knew how badly Julian wanted this Livvy to come back to their world with them, but she had seen Livvy’s expression when he’d asked, and she wondered.

When he came back to the bedroom, his hair and T-shirt were damp, and he looked slightly more awake. She guessed he’d splashed water on his face. “Did they have crossbows?” he asked, examining the pile of swords. He picked one up and examined it, the blade refracting light as he turned it this way and that.

Butterflies fluttered in Emma’s stomach. Only a few, but there was something about watching Julian be a Shadowhunter, be the warrior she had watched him grow into. The muscles moved smoothly in his arm and shoulder as he manipulated the blade and set it back down again, a considering look on his face.

Emma hoped her cheeks weren’t pink. “I got you one. It’s in the wardrobe.”

He went to check. “If we make it to the Silent City without any Endarkened or demons noticing, we might not have to use any of these.”

“Diana always said the best weapons were kept in great shape for use but never needed to be used,” said Emma. “Of course I never really knew what she was talking about.”

“Obviously.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Emma, I need to tell you something.”

She pushed herself upright against the headboard of the bed. Her heart skipped a beat, but she tried to keep her expression calm and welcoming. Julian wasn’t great at opening up even when he had emotions; still, she’d missed their sharing of each other’s secrets and burdens more than anything else when he’d been under the spell.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “I didn’t tell Livvy about Tessa asking us to kill Sebastian,” he said.

“Sure,” Emma said. “If we can’t get into the Silent City and get the Mortal Instruments, it’ll never matter anyway. Why freak her out early?”

“But I did tell her that if we got the Sword and the Cup, we’d bring them back with us. To protect them.”

Emma waited. She wasn’t sure where Julian was going with this.

“When we were in the Seelie Court,” Julian said, “just this last time—when I talked to the Queen—she told me how it would be possible to break all parabatai bonds at once.”

Emma gripped the covers. “Yes. And you told me it was impossible.”

His eyes were windows to an ocean that no longer existed in this world. “We did what she asked,” he said. “We brought her the Black Volume. So she told me, because she thought it would be funny. You see, there’s only one way to do it. You have to destroy the first recorded parabatai rune, which is kept in the Silent City. And you have to do it with the Mortal Sword.”

“And in our world, the Sword is shattered,” Emma said. It made sense, in a twisted way: She could imagine the Queen’s delight in delivering that news.

“I didn’t tell you because I thought it didn’t matter,” he said. “It was never going to be possible. The Sword was broken.”

“And you didn’t tell me because of the spell,” she said, gently. “You didn’t

feel like you had to.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took a shuddering breath. “But now we’re talking about bringing this sword back to our world, and I know it’s a million-in-one shot, but it could be possible—I mean, we could be looking at that choice. I could be.”

There were a million things Emma wanted to say. You promised you wouldn’t and it would be a terrible thing to do trembled on the tip of her tongue. She remembered the moral surety she’d felt when Julian had first told her the Queen had dangled this temptation in front of him.

But it was hard after Livvy’s death to have moral surety about anything.

“I asked Magnus to put that spell on me because I was terrified,” Julian said. “I imagined us turning into monsters. Destroying everything we loved. I still had Livvy’s blood under my fingernails.” His voice shook. “But there’s something else I’m just as afraid of, and that’s why the Queen’s voice keeps echoing in my mind.”

Emma looked at him, waiting.

“Losing you,” he said. “You’re the only person I’ve ever loved like this, and I know you’re the only person I ever will. And I’m not myself without you, Emma. Once you dissolve dye in water, you can’t take it back out. It’s like that. I can’t take you out of me. It means cutting out my heart, and I don’t like myself without my heart. I know that now.”

“Julian,” Emma whispered.

“I’m not going to do it,” he said. “I’m not going to use the Sword. I can’t cause other people pain like the pain I’ve felt. But if we do get home, and we have the Sword, I think we need to trade it to the Inquisitor for exile. I think we don’t have another choice.”

“True exile?” Emma said. “They’ll separate us from the kids, Julian, they’ll separate you—”

“I know,” he said. “There was a time I thought there could be nothing worse. But I realize now I was wrong. I held Livvy while she died, and that was worse. What happened to Livvy here—losing all of us—that’s unimaginably worse. I asked myself whether I would rather go through what Mark went through—being cut off from his family but thinking of them as well and happy—or what Livvy went through here, knowing her brothers and sisters were dead. It’s no question. I’d rather they were safe and alive even if I couldn’t be with them.”