Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 71

“They hate your father,” said Mark. “But I do not think they hate you.”
They had reached the steps of the tower. They paused as Oban and the others dismounted. There was a flash of movement in the crowd. A small faerie child, a girl with her hair in ribbons and bare feet, slipped from among the other fey folk and darted up to Kieran. She pressed something shyly into his hand. “For your kindness, Prince Kieran.”
“What was that?” Mark asked as Kieran closed his hand around the object. But the guards had already surrounded them and were pushing them toward the doors of the tower, and Kieran did not answer.
* * *
As Diana flew with Gwyn over Brocelind, smoke furled up from the forest below like gray-and-black fingers unclosing against the sky.
The Cohort had burned the blighted areas, but haphazardly—Diana could see the smoking stumps of trees, but the gray-black ashy land stretched out even farther than it had before, and some patches seemed untouched by fire. Diana looked on in dismay. What did the Cohort think they were doing?
They landed and Gwyn helped Diana down from Orion’s back. Jia was waiting for them anxiously.
Diana ran to her. “I heard you had news about Emma and Julian. Are they all right? Have they been sent back to L.A.?”
Jia hesitated. She was looking thin and drawn, her skin papery and gray. “They have not. No.”
Relief flowed through Diana: So Emma and Julian were still in Alicante. “I was so worried at the meeting,” she said. “What Horace is doing to Diego and the others is unthinkable. Blaming them for crimes and sealing their mouths shut so they can’t speak for themselves. It made me almost glad Emma and Julian are sequestered in that house—”
“Diana. No,” Jia said. She laid a thin hand on Diana’s wrist; Gwyn had come up and was listening quietly, his grizzled head tipped to one side. “A Clave member, someone loyal to me, overheard Zara talking to Manuel. She says that Horace sent Emma and Julian to Faerie on a suicide mission. I had my people check the house, and it’s empty. They aren’t here, Diana. They were sent to Faerie.”
It was a soft explosion inside her head: rage, fury, anger at herself—she’d known something was wrong, had felt it. Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts?
“Gwyn,” she said, her voice barely recognizable in her own ears. “Take me to Faerie. Now.”
Jia gripped Diana’s wrist. “Diana, think. Faerie is a huge land—we don’t know where they might be—”
“Gwyn and his people are hunters,” said Diana. “We will find them. Gwyn—”
She turned to him, but he had stiffened all over, like a fox scenting hounds. “’Ware!” he cried, and whipped an ax from the scabbard on his back.
The trees rustled; Jia and Diana barely had time to draw their own weapons when the Cohort burst into the clearing, led by Zara Dearborn, brandishing a glittering sword.
A glittering sword that Diana knew. With a feeling as if she had swallowed a lump of ice, Diana recognized Cortana.
Jessica Beausejours was with Zara, along with Anush Joshi, Timothy Rockford, and Amelia Overbeck. Zara, in her Centurion uniform, grinned in triumph. “I knew it! I knew we would catch you conspiring with Downworlders!”
Gwyn raised an eyebrow. “There is only one Downworlder here.”
Zara ignored him. “I expected no better of you, Diana Wrayburn, but Consul Penhallow? Violating the Cold Peace in your own homeland? How could you?”
Jia held her curved dao across her chest. “Spare me the dramatics, Zara,” she said in clipped tones. “You don’t understand what’s happening, and your tantrums cause nothing but trouble.”
“We’re not conspiring with faeries, Zara,” Diana said.
Zara spat on the ground. It was a startling gesture in its savage contempt. “How dare you deny that you are conspiring when we’ve caught you red-handed?”
“Zara—”
“Don’t bother,” Jia said to Diana. “She and the Cohort won’t listen to you. They only hear what they want to hear. They accept nothing that contradicts the beliefs they already hold.”
Zara turned to her followers. “Take them into custody,” she said. “We will bring them to the Gard.”
Gwyn threw his ax. It was a gesture so sudden that Diana leaped back in surprise; the ax sailed over the heads of the Cohort and slammed into the trunk of an oak tree. Several members of the Cohort screamed as the tree crashed over with the deafening roar of snapping branches and shattering earth.
Gwyn extended his hand, and the ax flew back into his grip. He bared his teeth at the cowering Shadowhunters. “Stay back, or I shall cut you to pieces!”
“See!” Zara had fallen to her knees when the tree had collapsed; she struggled up now, clutching Cortana tightly. “See? A conspiracy! We must fight—Anush!”
But Anush had fled into the bushes. The others, visibly shaken, reluctantly grouped around Zara as she took several determined steps toward Gwyn.
“What will he do?” Jia said in a quiet voice.
“He will kill them all. He’s the Wild Hunt’s leader, they are nothing to him.”
“They are children,” Jia said. “Poor Anush fled. He is only sixteen.”
Diana hesitated. They were only children—hateful children, but Gwyn could not strike them down. It was no solution.
She ran to him, heedless of what the Cohort would think, and spoke in his ear. “Leave us,” she whispered. “Please. They will take us to the Gard, but it will not be for long. You must go after Emma and Julian.”
Gwyn turned to her, concern plain on his face. “But you—”
“Find them for me,” Diana said. “I will be safe!” She whistled. “Orion!”
Orion cantered into the clearing, cutting between the Cohort and Gwyn. Gwyn clambered onto his horse’s back and leaned down to kiss Diana, holding her face in his hands for a long moment.
“Be safe,” he said, and Orion lifted into the sky. The Cohort were all shouting: Most had never seen anything like a steed of the Wild Hunt before. They really were children, Diana thought wearily: They still had wonder in them, mixed with their ignorance and hate.
And she could not hurt children. She stood quietly beside Jia as Zara and Timothy relieved them of their weapons and chained their hands behind their backs.
* * *
With their invisibility potions gone, Emma and Julian had to rely on staying in the shadows, hoods up, as they crept along the corridors of the tower. Luckily, it seemed as if everyone had been summoned to some kind of event—the crowds had thinned out, and there were fewer Unseelie fey hurrying to and fro along the corridors. The guards seemed distracted as well, and no one questioned them as they slipped around the turn of a corridor and found themselves in front of the hanging tapestry with its pattern of stars.
Emma glanced around, concerned. “The guards are gone.”
The corridor was, in fact, empty. Emma’s nerves tingled. Something wasn’t right.
“Good,” Julian said. “Maybe they took a break or something.”
“I don’t like it,” Emma said. “They wouldn’t leave Ash unguarded.”
“The guards might be inside the room.”
“This doesn’t feel right—”
“Someone’s coming.” Indeed, there were footsteps in the distance. Julian’s face was tight with tension. “Emma, we have to move.”
Against her better judgment, Emma drew a shortsword from her belt and slipped past the tapestry after Julian.
The room beyond was silent, eerily so, and empty of guards. Emma’s first impression was of a place both richly decorated and very cold. A large four-poster bed carved of a single massive piece of wood dominated the space. Tapestries hung from the walls, depicting exquisite scenes of natural beauty in Faerie—forests wreathed in mist, tumbling glacial waterfalls, wildflowers growing on cliffs above the sea.
Emma could not help but think about the blight. The tapestries were stunning, a loving ode to the beauty of Faerie, but outside these walls the true Lands of Unseelie were being consumed by the blight. Had the King decorated this space? Did he see the irony of it?