Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 34

* * *
Emma and Julian had been walking for some hours when Emma realized that they were being followed.
It had actually been a fairly pleasant walk along a tramped path in the woods. Julian was easy enough to talk to when Emma tried not to think about the spell, or how he felt about her, or about how he felt, period. They avoided the topics of Livvy and the parabatai curse, and talked instead about the Clave and what its next plans might be, and how Zara might figure into them. Julian walked ahead, holding the map, consulting it when enough light rayed down through the trees to make the map readable.
“We could reach the Unseelie Court by tomorrow morning,” he said, pausing in the middle of a clearing. Blue and green flowers nodded in patches on the forest floor, and the sunlight turned the leaves to green veils. “Depending on how much we’re willing to travel at night—”
Emma stopped in her tracks. “We’re being followed,” she said.
Julian stopped as well and turned to her, folding the map into his pocket. “You’re sure?”
His voice was quiet. Emma strained to hear what she’d heard before: the tiny breakage of branches behind them, the thump of a footfall. “I’m sure.”
There was no doubt in Julian’s eyes; Emma felt a faint gratification that even in his current enchanted state, he trusted her skills implicitly. “We can’t run,” he said—he was right; the trail was too rocky and the undergrowth too thick for them to be sure they’d outrun a pursuer.
“Come on.” Emma grabbed Julian’s hand; a moment later they were skinning up the trunk of the tallest of the oak trees surrounding the clearing. Emma found the fork of a branch and settled into it; a second later, Julian swung up onto a branch across from hers. They clung to the tree trunk and looked down.
The footfalls were getting closer. Hoofbeats, Emma realized, and then a kelpie—dark green, with a mane of shimmering seaweed—strode into the clearing, a rider on its back.
Emma sucked in her breath. The rider was a man, wearing Shadowhunter gear.
She leaned down, eager to see more. Not a man, she realized, a boy—whippet thin and narrow-faced, with a shock of black hair.
“Dane Larkspear on a kelpie,” Julian muttered. “What is this?”
“If I see Zara come up riding the Loch Ness monster, we’re going home,” Emma hissed back.
The kelpie had stopped dead in the middle of the clearing. It was rolling its eyes—deep black with no whites. Closer up, it looked less like a horse, even though it had a mane and tail and four legs, and more like a frightening creature, something that had never been meant to be out of the water.
“Hurry up.” Dane jerked on the kelpie’s bridle and a memory flickered in the back of Emma’s mind—something about how bridling a kelpie forced it to obey you. She wondered how Dane had managed it. “We need to find Blackthorn and Carstairs’s trail before nightfall or we’ll lose them.”
The kelpie spoke. Emma jolted. Its voice sounded like the grinding of waves against rock. “I do not know these creatures, Master. I do not know what they look like.”
“It doesn’t matter! Pick up their trail!” Dane smacked the kelpie across the shoulder and sat back, glowering. “Okay, I’ll describe them for you. Julian’s the kind of guy who would have a girl as a parabatai. Get it?”
“No,” said the kelpie.
“Spends all his time chasing little kids around. Has like a million children and he acts like he’s their dad. It’s creepy. Now, Emma, she’s the kind of girl who’d be hot if she ever shut up.”
“I’ll kill him,” Emma muttered. “I’ll kill him while talking the whole time.”
“I don’t understand human attitudes toward beauty,” said the kelpie. “I like a fine sheen of seaweed on a woman.”
“Shut up.” Dane jerked the bridle and the kelpie exposed needlelike teeth in a hiss. “We need to find them before the sun goes down.” His smile was ugly. “Once I get back with the Black Volume, Horace will give me anything I want. Maybe Julian Blackthorn’s last sister to play with. Dru whatsit. Best tits in the family.”
Emma was out of the tree so fast that the world was a blur of green leaves and red rage. She landed on Dane Larkspear and knocked him clear of his saddle, forcing a gasp of pain from him when they hit the ground together. She punched him hard in the stomach and he doubled up while she sprang to her feet. She grabbed for her sword; for a moment she had been worried Julian wouldn’t have followed her but he was already on the ground, yanking off the kelpie’s bridle.
“My lord!” The kelpie bowed its forelegs to Julian. Dane was coughing and gagging, rolling on the ground in pain. “Thank you for freeing me.”
“Don’t mention it.” Julian tossed the bridle aside, and the kelpie dashed into the forest.
Emma was still standing over Dane with her sword pointed at his throat, where something gold flashed. Lying flat on the ground, he glared at her.
“What are you doing here, Larkspear?” she demanded. “We were sent to get the Black Volume, not you.”
“Get away from me.” Dane turned his head and spit blood. He wiped his mouth, leaving a red smear on his hand. “If you hurt me at all, the Dearborns will have your Marks stripped.”
“So what?” Emma said. “We don’t even have the Black Volume. So you just wasted your time following us, Dane. Which, by the way, you suck at. You sounded like an elephant. A sexist elephant. You’re a terrible Shadowhunter.”
“I know you don’t have it,” Dane said in disgust. “But you will. You’ll find it. And when you do—”
Dane broke off.
“What?” Emma’s voice dripped scorn. “Am I talking too much?”
Emma suddenly realized Dane wasn’t staring at her but behind her; Julian had come up and was standing with his longsword in his hand, gazing at Dane with a frightening coldness. “You do know,” he said quietly, “that if you ever touched Dru, I would kill you?”
Dane pushed himself up on his elbows. “You think you’re so special,” he hissed in a thin, whining voice. “You think you’re so great—you think your sister’s too good for me—”
“She’s too young for you,” said Emma. “She’s thirteen, creep.”
“You think the Inquisitor sent you on some special mission because you’re so great, but he sent you because you’re disposable! Because you don’t matter! He wants you gone!”
Dane froze, as if he realized he’d said too much.
Emma turned to Julian. “Does he mean—”
“He means the Inquisitor sent him to kill us,” said Julian. “He’s wearing one of the medallions Horace gave us. The ones that prevent time slippage.”
Dane put a hand protectively to his throat, but not before Emma saw that Julian was right.
She glared at Dane. “So Horace sent you to get the Black Volume and kill us and return with it alone?”
“And then he’d tell everyone we were murdered by the Fair Folk,” said Julian. “Extra bonus for him.”
A flicker of fear crossed Dane’s face. “How did you guess that?”
“I’m smarter than you,” said Julian. “But I wouldn’t give myself big props. So is sawdust.”
“There’s a difference between sending someone on a dangerous mission and sending someone after them to stab them in the back,” said Emma. “When the Clave finds out—”
“They won’t find out!” Dane shouted. “You’re never coming back from here! You think it’s just me?” He staggered to his feet; Emma took a step back, unsure what to do. They could knock Dane out, but then what? Tie him up? Return him to Idris somehow? “The Cohort has a long reach and we don’t need traitors like you. The fewer of you there are in the world, the better—we got a good start with Livvy, but—”
Julian’s sword flashed like lightning as he drove the blade into Dane’s heart.
Emma knew it was Dane’s heart, because Dane’s body spasmed and arched, like a fish caught with a hook through its body. He coughed out blood in a red spray, his eyes fixed on Julian with a look of incredulity.