Dru had gone to bed as soon as she politely could. She lay with the covers tucked up to her chin, looking at the last bits of sunlight fading from the circular windows. This side of the house faced onto a garden full of roses the color of old lace. A trellis climbed to the windows and circled them: At the height of summer they probably looked like necklaces of roses. Houses of old stone fell away down the hill toward the walls of Alicante—walls that tomorrow would be lined with Shadowhunters facing the Imperishable Fields.
Dru burrowed farther under the covers. She could hear Maryse in the room next door, singing to Max and Rafe and Tavvy, a lilting song in French. It was strange to be too old for singing to comfort you but too young to take part in battle preparations. She started to say their names to herself, as a sort of good luck charm: Jules and Emma. Mark and Helen. Ty and Li—
No. Not Livvy.
The singing had stopped. Dru heard footsteps in the hall and her door open; Maryse stuck her head in. “Is everything all right, Drusilla? Do you need anything?”
Dru would have liked a glass of water, but she didn’t know exactly how to talk to Max and Rafe’s imposing, dark-haired grandmother. She’d heard Maryse playing with Tavvy earlier, and she appreciated how kind this woman who was basically a stranger was being to them. She just wished she knew how to say it.
“No, that’s okay,” Dru said. “I don’t need anything.”
Maryse leaned against the doorjamb. “I know it’s hard,” she said. “When I was young, my parents always used to take my brother, Max, with them to hunt demons and leave me alone at home. They said I’d be frightened if I went with them. I always tried to tell them I was more frightened worrying they’d never come back.”
Dru tried to picture Maryse young, and couldn’t quite. She seemed old to Dru to even be a mom, though she knew she wasn’t. She was actually quite a young grandmother, but Dru had gotten used to people who looked like Julian and Helen being like mothers and fathers to her.
“They always did come back, though,” Maryse said. “And so will your family. I know it feels like what Julian is doing is risky, but he’s smart. Horace won’t try anything dangerous in front of so many people.”
“I should go to sleep,” Dru said in a small voice, and Maryse sighed, gave her an understanding nod, and closed the door. If she were home, a small voice said in the back of Dru’s mind, she wouldn’t have had to ask for anything—Helen, who knew she loved tea but that the caffeine kept her up, would have come in with a mug of the special decaffeinated blend they’d bought in England, with milk and honey in the mug the way Dru liked it.
She missed Helen, Dru realized. It was a weird feeling—somewhere along the way her resentment toward Helen had vanished. Now she just wished she’d said a better good-bye to her older sister before she’d left the Institute.
Maybe it was better that she hadn’t said the right kind of good-byes to her family. Maybe it meant she was definitely going to see them again.
Maybe it meant they’d be more forgiving when they found out what she was planning to do.
The light blinked out in the hall; Maryse must be going to sleep. Dru threw off her blanket; she was fully dressed underneath, down to her boots and gear jacket. She slid out of bed and went over to the circular window; it was stuck shut, but she’d been expecting that. Taking a small dagger with an adamas blade out of her pocket, she started to jimmy it open.
* * *
Kit lay awake in the darkness, counting the stars he could see through the open flap of the tent.
Emma and Julian had said the stars in Faerie were different, but here in Idris they were the same. The same constellations he had looked at all his life, peeking through the smog above Los Angeles, shone above Brocelind Forest. The air was clear here, clear as cut crystal, and the stars seemed almost alarmingly close, as if he could reach out and catch one in his hand.
Ty hadn’t come back with him from the campfire. Kit didn’t know where he was. Had he gone to talk to Jules or Helen? Was he wandering in the forest? No, Simon and Isabelle would have stopped him. But maybe Ty had found an animal he liked in the campsite. Kit’s mind started to race. Where is he? Why didn’t he take me with him? What if he can’t tame these squirrels the way he can the ones at home? What if he’s attacked by squirrels?
With a groan, Kit kicked off his covers and reached for a jacket.
Ty stuck his head into the tent, momentarily blotting out the stars. “Oh good, you’re already getting ready.”
Kit lowered his voice. “What do you mean, I’m getting ready? Ready for what?”
Ty dropped into a crouch and peered into the tent. “To go to the lake.”
“Ty,” said Kit. “I need you to explain. Don’t assume I know what you’re talking about.”
Ty exhaled with enough force to make his dark fringe of hair flutter above his forehead. “I brought the spell with me, and all the ingredients,” he said. “The best place to raise the dead is by water. I thought we’d do it next to the ocean, but Lake Lyn’s even better. It’s already a magic place.”
Kit blinked dizzily; he felt as if he’d woken up from a nightmare only to discover he was still dreaming. “But we don’t have what we need to make the spell work. Shade never gave us the catalyst.”
“I thought he might not do it,” said Ty. “That’s why I picked up an alternate energy source last time we were at the Shadow Market.” He reached into his pocket and took out a clear glass ball the size of an apricot. Red-orange flame blazed inside it as if it were a small, fiery planet, though it was clearly cool to the touch.
Kit jerked back. “Where did that come from?”
“I told you—the Shadow Market.”
Kit felt a wave of panic. “Who sold it to you? How do we even know it’ll work?”
“It has to.” Ty slipped the crystal back into his pocket. “Kit. This is something I have to do. If there’s a battle tomorrow, you know we’re not going to be part of it. They think we’re too young to fight. This is the way that I can help that isn’t fighting. If I bring Livvy back, our family will be whole for the battle. It will mean that everyone will be happy again.”
But happiness isn’t that simple, Kit wanted to cry; you can’t rip it apart and put it back together again without seeing the seams.
Kit’s voice was ragged. “It’s dangerous, Ty. It’s too dangerous. I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess around with this kind of magic, with an unknown power source.”
Ty’s expression closed down. It was like watching a door shut. “I’ve already scouted for traps. I know how we can get there. I thought you would come with me, but even if you don’t, I’m going to go alone.”
Kit’s mind raced. I could wake up the camp and get Ty in trouble, he thought. Julian would stop him. I know he would.
But Kit’s whole mind revolted at the idea; if there was one thing his father had brought him up to understand, it was that everybody hated a snitch.
And besides, he couldn’t bear the look on Ty’s face.
“All right,” Kit said, feeling dread settle in his stomach like a rock. “I’ll go with you.”
* * *
Shapes danced in the heart of the fire. Emma sat on a log nearby, her hands thrust into the sleeves of her oversize sweater to keep them warm. The group had drifted away from the fire when the meal was done, retiring to their individual tents to sleep. Emma stayed where she was, watching the fire die down; she supposed she could have gone back to her own tent, but Cristina wasn’t there, and Emma didn’t feel much like lying alone in the dark.
She glanced up as a shadow approached. It was Julian. She recognized him by the way he walked, even before the firelight illuminated his face—hand in his pocket, his shoulders relaxed and his chin upturned. Deceptively casual. The damp in the cool air had curled his hair against his cheeks and temples.
Julian hid so many things, from so many people. Now for the first time she was hiding something from him. Was this how he had always felt? This
weight in his chest, the pinching pain at his heart?
She half-expected him to pass by her without speaking, but he paused, his fingers toying with the sea-glass bracelet on his wrist.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.
Emma nodded.
Sparks from the fire reflected in Julian’s blue eyes. “I know we shouldn’t talk to each other,” he said. “But we need to discuss something with someone. It’s not about you or me.”
I can’t do it, Emma thought. You don’t understand. You still think we could get my Marks stripped if things went wrong.
But then again—her rune hadn’t burned since they’d left Los Angeles. The black webbing on her forearm hadn’t grown. It was as if her misery were holding the curse back. Maybe it was.
“Who’s it about?”
“It’s about one of the things we learned in Thule,” he said. “It’s about Diana.”
* * *
Diana woke from dreams of flying to the sound of scratching at the door of her tent. She rolled out of her blankets and caught up a knife, rising to a crouch.
She heard the sound of two voices, one rising over the other: “Octopus!”
She had a vague memory that this was the code word they had all chosen earlier. She put her knife away and went to unzip the flap of the tent. Emma and Julian stood on the other side, blinking in the dark, pale and wide-eyed like startled meerkats.
Diana raised her eyebrows at them. “Well, if you want to come in, come in. Don’t just stand there letting all the cold air in.”
The tents were just high enough to stand up in, unfurnished by anything but rugs and bedding. Diana sank back into the nest of her covers, while Julian leaned against her pack and Emma sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Sorry for waking you up,” said Julian, ever the diplomat. “We didn’t know when else we might get to talk to you.”
She couldn’t help yawning. Diana always slept surprisingly well the night before a battle. She knew Shadowhunters who couldn’t get to sleep, who stayed awake with pounding hearts, but she wasn’t one of them. “Talk to me about what?”
“I want to apologize,” Julian said, as Emma worried at the frayed knee of her jeans. Emma didn’t seem like herself—hadn’t for a while now, Diana thought. Not since they’d come back from that other world, though an experience like that would change anyone. “For pushing you to be the head of the Institute.”
Diana narrowed her eyes. “What brought this on?”
“The Thule version of you told us about your time in Bangkok,” Emma said, biting her lip. “But you don’t have to talk about anything to us that you don’t want to.”
Diana’s first reaction was a reflex. No. I don’t want to talk about this. Not now.
Not on the eve of battle, not with so much on her mind, not while she was worried about Gwyn and trying not to think about where he was or what he might do tomorrow.
And yet. She’d been on her way to tell Emma and Julian precisely what they were asking about now when she’d found out she couldn’t reach them. She recalled her disappointment. She’d been determined then.
She didn’t owe them the story, but she owed it to herself to tell it.
They both sat quietly, looking at her. The night before a battle and they had come to her for this—not for reassurance, but to let her know it was her choice to engage or not to.
She cleared her throat. “So you know that I’m transgender. Do you know what that means?”
Julian said, “We know that when you were born, you were assigned a gender that does not reflect who you actually are.”
Something in Diana loosened; she laughed. “Someone’s been on the Internet,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right, more or less.”
“And when you were in Bangkok, you used mundane medicine,” said Emma. “To become who you really are.”
“Baby girl, I’ve always been who I really am,” said Diana. “In Bangkok, Catarina Loss helped me find doctors who would change my body to represent who I am, and people who were like me, to help me understand I wasn’t alone.” She settled back against the rolled-up jacket she’d been using as a pillow. “Let me tell you the story.”
And in a quiet voice, she did. She didn’t vary the telling much from the story she’d told Gwyn, because that story had eased her heart. She watched their expressions as she spoke: Julian calm and silent, Emma reacting to every word with widened eyes or bitten lips. They had always been like this: Emma expressing what Julian couldn’t or wouldn’t. So alike and so different.
But it was Julian who spoke first when she was finished. “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him in a little surprise, but then of course—that would be what would strike a chord with Jules, wouldn’t it?
“In some ways, the hardest part of any of it was not being able to talk about Aria,” she said.
“Gwyn knows, right?” Emma said. “And he was good about it? He’s kind to you, right?” She sounded as fierce as Diana had ever heard her.
“He is, I promise,” Diana said. “For someone who reaps the dead, he’s surprisingly empathic.”
“We won’t tell anyone unless you want us to,” Emma said. “It’s your business.”
“I worried that they’d find out about my medical treatment if I ever tried to become Institute head,” said Diana. “That I’d be taken away from you children. Punished with exile.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “But the Inquisitor found out anyway.”
Emma sat up straight. “He did? When?”
“Before I fled Idris. He threatened to expose me to everyone as a traitor.”
“He’s such a bastard,” Julian said. His face was tight.
“Are you angry with me?” Diana said. “For not telling you before?”
“No,” Julian said, his voice quiet and firm. “You had no obligation to do that. Not ever.”
Emma scooted closer to Diana, her hair a pale halo in the moonlight streaming through the tent flap. “Diana, these past five years, you’ve been the closest thing I’ve had to an older sister. And since I met you, you’ve shown me the kind of woman I want to grow up to be.” She reached out and took Diana’s hand. “I feel so grateful and so privileged that you wanted to tell us your story.”
“Agreed,” Julian said. He bent his head, like a knight acknowledging a lady in an old painting. “I’m sorry I pushed you. I didn’t understand. We—I—thought of you as an adult, someone who couldn’t possibly have problems or be in any danger. I was so focused on the kids that I didn’t realize you were also vulnerable.”
Diana touched his hair lightly, the way she often had when he was younger. “That’s growing up, isn’t it? Figuring out that adults are people with their own issues and secrets.”
She smiled wryly just as Helen stuck her head in through the still-unzipped flap. “Oh good, you’re up,” she said. “I wanted to go over who’s staying behind tomorrow—”
“I’ve got a list,” Julian said, sliding his hand into the pocket of his jacket.
Emma got to her feet, murmuring that she needed to go find Cristina. She slipped out the door of the tent, stopping only to glance back once at Julian as she went, but he was deep in conversation with Helen and didn’t seem to notice.
Something was going on with that girl, Diana thought. Once they’d gotten through tomorrow, she’d have to find out what it was.
29
TEMPT THE WATERS
“Cristina! Cristina!”
Voices rang through the woods below. Surprised, Cristina stood up, peering down into the darkness.
It had been too painful at the campfire, looking at Mark and at Kieran, knowing she was counting down hours until one or both of them left her life forever. She had slipped away to sit among the trees and grass and shadows of Brocelind. There were white flowers here, among the green, native to Idris. She had seen them before only in pictures, and to touch their petals gave her a feeling of peace, thou
gh her sorrow remained beneath it.
Then she had heard the voices. Mark and Kieran, calling for her. She had been sitting at the top of a green rise of grass between the trees; she rose, brushed herself off, and hurried down the hill toward the sound of her name.
“Estoy aquí!” she called, nearly tripping as she rushed down the hill. “I’m right here!”
They burst from the shadows, both white-faced. Mark found her first and swung her up off her feet, hugging her tightly. After a moment he released her to Kieran’s arms as they tried to explain: something about Magnus and traps and being afraid she’d fallen into a pit lined with knives.
“I would never do that,” she protested as Kieran stroked her hair back from her face. “Mark—Kieran—I think we were wrong.”
Kieran let her go immediately. “Wrong about what?”
Mark was standing next to Kieran, their shoulders just brushing. Her boys, Cristina thought. The ones she loved. She could not choose between them any more than she could choose between night and day. Nor did she wish to.
“Wrong that it’s impossible,” she said. “I should have said it before. I was afraid. I did not want to be hurt. Isn’t that what we all fear? That we will be hurt? We keep our hearts in prison, in terror that if we let them go free in the world they would be injured. But I do not want to be in a prison. And I think you feel the same, but if you do not—”
In his soft, husky voice, Mark said, “I love both of you, and I could not say I love one of you the most. But I am afraid. The loss of both of you would kill me, and here it seems I am risking having my heart broken not once but twice.”
“Not all love ends in heartbreak,” said Cristina.
“You know what I want,” Kieran said. “I was the one to say it first. I love and desire you both. Many are happy like this in Faerie. It is common, such marriages—”
“Are you proposing to us?” said Mark with a crooked grin, and Kieran turned bright red.
“There is one thing,” he said. “The King of Faerie can have no human consort. You both know that.”
Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3) Page 65
