Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 48

They scrambled off the bed in alarm. A few seconds later they were standing, in some disarray, on the steps leading down to the main room.
Nene was there, a key in her hand, looking up at them. She wore the uniform of a Seelie Court page. When she caught sight of them, her pale eyebrows raised. “What is it humans say? Is this a bad time?”
“It’s fine,” said Julian. His expression had gone back to normal, as if nothing much had happened. Emma didn’t know what her own face looked like, but she knew how she felt: as if a gaping hole had been punched through the center of her.
“I am glad to hear that,” Nene said, stalking to the center of the room and turning to face them. “Because we must speak now. Quickly, come downstairs. The Queen has betrayed you, and there is little time to act.”
* * *
Tavvy was finally asleep, clutching a book, his face still stained with recent tears. Mark was kneeling, tousling his soft hair. Helen felt her heart aching—with love for Tavvy, with worry, with missing Julian, who would have been able to calm Tavvy’s fears in minutes, not the hours it was taking Helen.
As Mark drew a blanket over his smallest brother, Helen got up to open the windows and let some fresh air into the room. She hadn’t heard from Julian or Emma since they’d left them behind in Alicante, though Jia swore up and down to Aline that they were all right.
And yet Helen had rarely felt so far from her family. Even on Wrangel Island, where she had felt cut off from the world, she had trusted that Julian was taking care of them—that they were as happy as they could be—and the images of them, happy, in her mind had sustained her.
The reality of them here was a shock. Without Julian, they were looking to her, and she had no idea for what. Tavvy cried when she touched him. Dru glared at her. Ty barely seemed to know she was there. And Mark . . .
“I should never have let them separate us,” Helen said. “In Idris. When they wanted to keep Jules and Emma behind, I shouldn’t have let them do it.”
“The Clave forced it,” said Mark, rising to his feet. “You didn’t have a choice.”
“We always have choices,” said Helen.
“You can’t blame yourself. It’s very hard to fight Julian when he’s being stubborn. He has a very strong will. And he wanted to stay.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I think he didn’t want to come back with us. He was acting strangely before we left Idris, don’t you think?”
“It’s hard to say.” Helen shut the window. “Julian has always been able to make sacrifices that were difficult and hide the pain it caused him.”
“Yes,” Mark said, “but even when he was hiding things, he was loving, not cold. Before we left he was cold.”
He spoke simply, without any doubt. He glanced at Tavvy again and rose to his feet. “I have to get back to Kieran. He is hurt, and Tavvy is settled.”
Helen nodded. “I will go with you.”
The corridors of the Institute were dark and quiet. Somewhere down the hall, Aline was sleeping. Helen let herself think for a moment of how much she wanted to crawl back into bed with her wife, curl up to Aline’s warmth and forget everything else.
“Perhaps we could try a Familias rune,” said Helen. “Something that would lead us to Julian.”
Mark looked puzzled. “You know that will not work over the border with Faerie. And Julian would need to be wearing one too.”
“Of course.” Helen felt as she had years ago, when Eleanor Blackthorn had died, as if she had frozen inside and it was difficult to think. “I—I know that.”
Mark gave her a worried look as they entered the spare bedroom where they had put Kieran. The room was dim, and Cristina was sitting in a chair beside the bed, holding Kieran’s hand; Kieran was very still under the blanket, though his chest rose and fell with the swift, regular breathing normal in faeries.
Helen had known only a little about Kieran, just what Mark had told her in the few quick conversations they’d had since he’d returned from Faerie, until she’d reached Idris; she and Mark had stayed up talking in the canal house after retrieving Tavvy, and she’d heard the whole story then. She knew how complicated Mark’s feelings for Kieran were, though in the moment, as Mark gazed at the other boy worriedly, she might have guessed they were simpler.
But nothing ever was simpler, was it? Helen caught Mark’s quick glance at her between his lashes as he sat down beside Cristina: worry, concern—for Kieran, for Emma and Julian, for all of them. There was plenty of worry to go around.
“I know you’re going to want to go after Julian,” said Helen. “To Faerie. Please don’t do anything foolish, Mark.”
Mark’s eyes burned in the darkness. Blue and gold, sea and sunlight. “I will do what I need to do to rescue Julian and Emma. I will rejoin the Hunt if I must.”
“Mark!” Helen was appalled. “You would never!”
“I would do what I needed to do,” he said again, and in his voice she heard not the smaller brother she had raised but the boy who had come back from the Wild Hunt an adult.
“I know you lived with the Hunt for years and know things that I don’t,” said Helen. “But I have been in touch with our aunt Nene, and I know things you don’t. I know how you and Julian and the others are thought of in Faerie—not as children but as fearsome enemies. You fought the Riders of Mannan. You shamed the Unseelie King in his own Court, and Emma slew Fal, who is almost like a god to the fey folk. Though you will find some friends in Faerie, you will find many, many foes.”
“That’s always been true,” Mark said.
“You don’t understand,” said Helen in a harsh whisper. “Outside of Idris, every entrance to Faerie is guarded now, and has been since the disaster in the Council Hall. The Fair Folk know that the Nephilim hold them to blame. Even if you took the moon’s road, the phouka who guards it would report your entry immediately, and you would be greeted with swords on the other side.”
“What do you propose, then?” Mark demanded. “Leaving our brother and Emma in Faerie to die and rot? I have been abandoned in Faerie, I know how it feels. I will never let that happen to Emma and Julian!”
“No. I propose that I go after them. I am not an enemy in Faerie. I will go straight to Nene. She will help me.”
Mark sprang to his feet. “You cannot go. The children need you here. Someone needs to take care of them.”
“Aline can take care of them. She’s already doing a better job than I am. The children don’t even like me, Mark.”
“They may not like you but they love you,” Mark said furiously, “and I love you, and I will not lose another sibling to Faerie!”
Helen straightened up—though she was nowhere near as tall as her brother, which unnerved her now—and glared at Mark. “Neither will I.”
“I might have a solution,” Cristina said. “There is an heirloom of the Rosales family. We call it the Eternidad, to mean a time that has no beginning or end, like time in Faerie. It will allow us to enter Faerie undetected.”
“Will you let me take it?” said Mark.
“I do not have it quite yet—and only a Rosales may properly use it, so I will go.”
“Then I will go with you,” said Kieran, who had propped himself up on his elbows. His hair was mussed and there were shadows under his eyes.
“You’re awake?” said Mark.
“I’ve been awake for a while,” Kieran admitted. “But I pretended to be asleep because it was awkward.”
“Hmm,” said Helen. “I think this is what Aline means by radical honesty.”
“Cristina cannot journey into Faerie alone,” said Kieran stubbornly. “It is too dangerous.”
“I agree,” said Mark. He turned to Helen. “I will go with Cristina and Kieran. We work best as a team, the three of us.”
Helen hesitated. How could she let them go, into such danger? And yet that was what Shadowhunters did, wasn’t it? Rush into danger? She wished desperately she could talk to her own mother. Perhaps the better question was, how could she stop them, when Mark and Kieran would be better at navigating Faerie than anyone else? To send Cristina alone would be like sending her into destruction; to send them all meant she might lose Mark as well as Julian. But not to let them go meant to abandon Julian in Faerie.