Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 144

“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?”