Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 81

There was a horrible choking cry. Adaon, Emma thought wildly, stumbling down the steps, but no, Eochaid was turning away from his captive, his sword still raised, his face contorted in surprise.
The King was sinking to his knees, blood running freely down the front of his rich doublet. Kieran’s hand was still raised in the air. Something protruded from the King’s throat—a sliver of what looked almost like glass. . . .
The elf-bolt arrowhead, Emma realized with a start. Kieran had flung his necklace at the King with incredible force.
Eochaid and Ethna rushed toward the King, their gleaming swords in hand, their faces pictures of dismay. Adaon, too, walked toward his father. Kieran did not move. He was leaning heavily on Cristina’s shoulder, his face expressionless.
Kneeling, the King clawed at his throat. To Emma’s shock, he seemed to be weakening—his hand scrabbled at the embedded elf-bolt, and then fell to his side, hanging uselessly.
Adaon looked down at him. “Father,” he said in a low voice. “Forgive me.”
Ethna’s face contorted into a mask. Jace and Clary, both bloody and filthy, were staring in amazement. Distantly, Emma knew she was seeing something remarkable. The dying of a King who had ruled for a thousand years.
Ethna whirled to glare at Kieran. “Kinslayer!” she cried. “Patricide!”
“He was trying to save Adaon!” Mark shouted back. “Are you blind, Rider?”
“Because he wants to be King,” snarled Eochaid. “Because he wants the throne!”
The Queen began to laugh. She drew free of the redcaps who had held her as if their touch were no more than spiderwebs, though several fell screaming to the floor, their palms burned and blackened, their fingers snapped.
“Already they scavenge for your throne like dogs worrying at a bone,” she said to the King, as blood ran out of the corners of his mouth and his eyes rolled up to the whites.
She seized Adaon by the arm. He cried out in shock and pain; the Queen’s hair whipped around them both as she grinned down at the King.
“You took my son,” she said. “Now I take yours.”
She vanished, and Adaon vanished with her. The King gave a cry and fell to the ground, scrabbling at the earth with gauntleted hands. His crown tumbled from his head and struck the stone floor as he choked out garbled words. Perhaps he was trying to say the Queen’s name, perhaps Adaon’s. Perhaps even Kieran’s. Emma would never know. The King’s body stiffened and slumped, and both Eochaid and Ethna cried out.
He had gone still. But his blood continued to run out around him, snaking across the floor in rivulets. The redcaps were scrambling back from the King’s body, their faces masks of horror.
Winter lowered the pikestaff he had been aiming at Emma. “The King is dead! King Arawn is dead!” he cried, and Emma realized it must be true: It was safe to speak the King’s true name now that he was no longer alive.
The redcaps fled—save Winter, who held his ground—pouring out of the throne room in a river of crimson. Cristina was shouting for the other Shadowhunters; she held Mark by one hand, and he gripped a stunned-looking Kieran. Jace and Clary were scrambling over a pile of boulders to get to them. Julian was only yards away; Emma began to run as the King’s body burst into flames.
She cast one look back over her shoulder. The King was burning and so was the ground everywhere his blood had spilled—small fires and larger ones, burning fierce and hot, consuming the stone floor as if it were kindling. The King’s body had already vanished behind a sheet of flames.
A figure reared up out of the smoke, cutting Emma off.
It was Ethna. She gleamed all over like a weapon, her bronze armor unsmudged, her metallic eyes gleaming with bloodlust. “My oath to the King died with him,” she said, baring her teeth. “Your life is forfeit now, murderer!”
She lunged at Emma. Emma’s sword was gone; she flung up the copy of the Black Volume, and Ethna’s sword plunged into it. Ethna flung it aside in disgust; the shredded remains of the book landed on the burning ground, its pages bursting into flames.
Emma could hear Clary calling out to her, and the others, shouting for her to come quickly. She realized with a sinking heart that they must not be able to see her; they wouldn’t know she needed help, they wouldn’t know—
Ethna’s blade flew through the air, bronze cutting through smoke. Emma twisted aside and fell to the ground, rolling to avoid the slashing blows that followed. Each time Ethna’s blade barely missed her, it cut a deep gouge into the stone floor.
It was getting harder for Emma to breathe. She scrambled to her knees, only to have Ethna plant a booted foot in her shoulder. She shoved, and Emma sprawled backward, hitting the ground hard.
“Die on your back, bitch,” Ethna said, raising her sword high.
Emma flung her hands out as if they could ward off the blade. Ethna laughed, swung down—
And toppled sideways. Emma scrambled upright, choking on smoke and disbelief.
Julian.
He had thrown himself onto Ethna and was kneeling on her back, stabbing her over and over with something clutched in his fist. Emma realized with a shock that it was the iron figurine that Simon had given to him. Ethna was screaming, trying to writhe away from the iron. Emma whirled around: The room was blazing with fire, the boulders glowing like red-hot coals. Hot pain stabbed her side; a coal had landed on the sleeve of her jacket. She yanked it off furiously and stomped on it, putting the fire out. Sorry, Clary.
She thought she could still see the dim figures of the others through the smoke. The surface of the Portal seemed to ripple like melting glass.
“Julian!” she screamed, and held out her hand. “Leave her! We have to get to the others!”
He looked up, his eyes wild with rage, and Ethna wrenched away from him with a yelp of anger and pain. Julian landed on his feet, already racing toward Emma. Together they fled toward the sound of Cristina’s voice, rising and desperate, shouting their names. Emma thought she could hear Mark, too, and the others—
A sheet of flame blazed up from the ground, knocking them backward. They swung around, looking for a way around it, and Emma gasped: Ethna and Eochaid were striding toward them, Ethna bloodied and glaring, Eochaid gleaming and deadly.
The Riders were at the heart of their power. Emma and Julian were starving, exhausted, and weakened. Emma’s heart sank.
“Cristina!” she screamed. “Go! Go! Get out of here!”
Julian caught hold of her wrist. “There’s only one way.”
His eyes flicked toward the wall—she tensed, then nodded—and the two of them took off running, just as the Riders began to raise their blades.
Emma heard them cry out in confusion and disappointed bloodlust. She didn’t care; the Portal was looming up in front of her like the dark window of a high-rise building, all shadow and gleam.
She reached it and leaped, Julian’s hand in hers, and together they sailed through the Portal.
* * *
Diego wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the barren stone cell. There were no windows, no sense of time passing. He knew Rayan and Divya were in the same prison, but the thick stone walls of the cells kept them from being able to shout or call to each other.
It was almost a relief when there were footsteps in the corridor and—instead of the usual guard who came twice a day with a plate of bland food—Zara appeared, resplendent in Centurion gear. He would have thought she would be smirking, but she was oddly expressionless. Cortana was strapped to her side, and she caressed its hilt absently as she looked at him through the bars, as if she were stroking the head of a dog.
“My dear fiancé,” she said. “How are you finding the accommodations? Not too cold and unwelcoming?”
He said nothing. The rune of Quietude the Cohort had put on him had been removed almost immediately after the meeting, but that didn’t mean he had anything to talk to Zara about.
“And to think,” she went on. “If you’d played your cards a little differently, you might have been living in the Gard tower with me.”
“And that wouldn’t have been cold and unwelcoming?” spat Diego. “Living with someone I hate?”
She flinched a little. Diego was surprised. Surely she knew they hated each other?