Queen of Air and Darkness
Page 84

And he saw Emma.
It was clearly Emma. He would have known Emma anywhere, in any costume, in any darkness or light. The bloody moonlight spilled onto her pale hair; she wore a red dress with no back, and her skin was smooth and free of runes. She was talking to a tall boy who was mostly in shadow, but Julian barely looked at him: He was looking at her, his Emma, beautiful and alive and safe and—
She laughed and reached her arms up. The tall young man threaded his hands into Emma’s hair and she kissed him.
It hit him with the force of a train. Jealousy: white-hot, boiling, venomous. It was all Julian could do to stay behind the rock as the boy’s hands trailed down Emma’s bare back.
He shook with the force of his feeling. Emotion tore at him, threatened to overwhelm him and drive him to his knees. Hot waves of jealousy mixed with desperate longing. Those ought to be his hands on Emma’s hair, her skin.
He turned his head to the side, gasping. His shirt was stuck to his body with sweat. Emma—the real Emma—still pressed up against the rock beside him, looked at him with alarm. “Julian, what’s wrong?”
His heartbeat had already begun to slow. This was his Emma. The other was a fake, a simulacrum. “Look,” he whispered, and gestured.
Emma followed his gaze, and blushed. “Oh. That’s us?”
Julian stared around the rock again. Emma and the boy had pulled apart, and how had he not seen it? It was like looking into a mirror that showed you what you might look like in a few years. There he was, Blackthorn hair and eyes, sea-glass bracelet, dressed in red and black. Julian stared as the other him drew the other Emma closer and kissed her again.
It definitely wasn’t a first kiss, or even a second one. Other Julian’s fingers trailed down Other Emma’s back, obviously luxuriating in the feel of her bare skin. His hands found her satin-covered hips and splayed over them, pulling her body closer; she raised a leg and hooked it over his hip, letting her head fall back so he could press his lips to her throat.
Other Julian was a very confident kisser, apparently.
“This is the worst,” said Emma. “Not only are we apparently Endarkened in this world, we’re huge on PDA.”
“The other Endarkened probably can’t stand us,” said Julian. “Emma, this seems recent. This world couldn’t have split from ours that long ago—”
“Silence!” Sebastian’s voice echoed up and down the beach and the crowd hushed. Alternate Emma and Julian stopped kissing, which was a relief. “Jace, put the traitor on her knees.”
So it was a woman. Julian watched with a twisting feeling in his empty stomach as Jace shoved the prisoner to her knees and began slowly to unwind her blindfold.
“Ash!” Sebastian called. “Ash, come watch, my child, and learn!”
Julian felt Emma freeze up in shock beside him. There was a stir among the guards, and from among them appeared Ash Morgenstern, his expression rigid.
He had changed more since the last time they’d seen him than either Jace or Sebastian had. He had gone from thirteen to what Emma would have guessed was seventeen; he was no longer a skinny kid but a boy on the cusp of adulthood, tall and broad-shouldered. His white-blond hair had been cut short and he wasn’t wearing Endarkened red—just an ordinary white thermal shirt and jeans.
He still had the X-shaped scar on his throat, though. It was unmistakable, even at this distance.
Ash crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m here, Father,” he said blandly, and it struck Julian how peculiar it was, this boy calling someone who looked five years older than he did “Father.”
“This is our world’s Ash,” Julian said. “The one Annabel brought through the Portal.”
Emma nodded. “His scar. I saw.”
Jace drew the last of the coverings away from the kneeling woman’s face. Emma flinched back as if struck.
It was Maryse Lightwood.
Her hair had been cut very short, and her face was haggard. Ash watched expressionless as she gazed around her in silent horror. A silver chain dangled around his throat; Julian didn’t recall him having it in Faerie. How many years had elapsed for him here between his escape into the Portal and Emma and Julian’s arrival in Thule?
“Maryse Lightwood,” said Sebastian, pacing in a slow circle around her. Emma hadn’t moved or made a sound since her initial flinch. Julian wondered if she was remembering Maryse in their world—grieving at the side of her former husband’s pyre, but surrounded by her children, her grandchildren. . . .
Emma must be wondering about her own parents, he realized with a jolt. Wondering if they were alive in this world. But she hadn’t said a word.
“You stand accused of aiding and assisting rebels against the cause of the Fallen Star. Now, we know you did it, so we’re not having a trial, because we’re against those anyway. But you—you committed the greatest treason of all. You tried to break the bond between two brothers. Jace and I are brothers. You are not his mother. The only family he has is me.”
“Oh my God,” Emma whispered. “This is that weird bond they had—when Sebastian possessed Jace, remember? So that happened in this world. . . .”
“I killed my own mother, Lilith, for Jace,” said Sebastian. “Now he will kill his mother for me.”
Jace unsheathed the sword at his waist. It had a long, wicked silver blade that glimmered red in the moonlight. Julian thought again of the Jace in their world: laughing, joking, animated. It seemed like something more than possession was at work here. Like this Jace was dead inside.
Sebastian’s lips were turned up at the corners; he was smiling, but it wasn’t a very human smile. “Any last words, Maryse?”
Maryse twisted around so that she was looking up at Jace. The tense lines of her face seemed to relax, and for a moment, Julian saw John Carstairs looking at Emma, or his own mother looking at him, that mixture of love for what is and sorrow for what cannot be kept. . . .
“Do you remember, Jace?” she said. “That song I used to sing to you when you were a boy.” She began to sing, her voice high and wavering.
À la claire fontaine
m’en allant promener
J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle
que je m’y suis baigné.
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,
jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Julian only knew enough French to translate a few words. I have loved you for a long time. I will never forget you.
“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime—” Maryse sang, her voice rising, quavering at the highest note—
Ash was gripping his own elbows tightly. He turned his head aside, just at the moment that Jace brought the sword down and across, severing Maryse’s head from her body. White bone, red blood; her body crumpled to the sand, her head rolling to lie cheek down, open-eyed. She still seemed to be staring at Jace.
Blood had splattered Ash’s face, his shirt. The crowd was clapping and cheering. Jace bent to clean his sword on the sand as Sebastian strolled over to Ash, his smile turning from inhuman to something else. Something possessive.
“I hope that was a learning experience,” he said to Ash.
“I learned not to wear white to an execution,” said Ash, brushing his hand down the front of his shirt; it left red smears behind. “Useful.”
“Once we have the Mortal Instruments in hand, you’ll see a lot more death, Ash.” Sebastian chuckled and once again raised his voice. “Feeding time,” he announced, and the words rang up and down the beach. There was a scream inside Julian’s head, clawing to get out; he glanced at Emma and saw the same scream in her eyes. Maybe it belonged to them both.
She grabbed his wrist with enough force to grind the small bones together. “We have to go. We have to get away.”
Her words tumbled over each other; Julian didn’t even have time to agree. As the vampires closed in on Maryse’s body, they ran for the bluffs, keeping low. The night was filled with a cacophony of shrieks and howls and the air carried the coppery tinge of blood. Emma was whispering, “No, no, no,” under her breath, even as she hit the bottom of a rickety wooden staircase and bolted up it in a crouching run. Julian followed, doing his best not to look back.