Page 119 of Better in Black
My sister Nerissa, she understood. Why else would she invite me to witness her waste away? She refused healing: She wanted the quiet, the dark, the end. Every life needs a purpose and hers had left her for dead.
“I have not summoned you for me, my sister,” she said, “but for my children.”
They were barely old enough to stand, her son and daughter, half fey and half Shadowhunter, pale as angels. Miach and Alessa, delicate, beautiful children. Easy enough to love, perhaps, for those who had it in them.
“I thought I could live for them,” Nerissa said. “I thought I could love them, but I was wrong. They’re too much of him, and also not enough.”
Him,the black thorn who had pierced her heart.
“You want me to raise them for you,” I guessed, and this I would have done for her, though the thought chilled my blood.
My sister Nerissa had a beautiful laugh, and this was the final time I heard it.
“I would not have my children raised by one who cannot love,” Nerissa said. “To love another is to invite destruction, I know that now. But to never be loved by another? I’ve seen what becomes of a child who grows up without knowing what it is to be loved. I will not let that fate befall them. No. They must go to their father.”
She knew me well. I would not let myself love her children, as I would not let myself love her. If I had loved them, surely I would not have been able to carry out her wishes and leave my sister’s children on the doorstep of the Shadowhunter who had destroyed her, a man who might loathe them for what they were and how they came to be.
By the time I returned to her she had entered her last delirium. If I had loved her, surely I could not have sat quietly by her wasted body as she let her last flickers of life slip away.
—
Now you’ve met the humble teller of this tale, we can begin.
Once upon a time, and the time is then and now and may it be forevermore, there was a Seelie royal whose beauty was sharp as a blade, whose blood ran with ice, whose kingdom molded itself to the shape of her soul, whose people lived by her will and her whim. She was known only as my lady, the Queen.
Ah, did you think this was my story? Mine to tell maybe, but not mine. Stories require foolish choices of the heart. Every story has at its core a want, and remember: I am the sister too wise to want.
The Queen, however. What didn’t she want? Power, pleasure, pain—her wants were manifold and rarely denied.
Then came the Morning Star.
—
To serve at a banquet of the Seelie Queen is an honor. I had healed one of her handmaidens, and a night’s servitude was my reward. It was the closest I had ever been to the Queen, and I had eyes only for her. The banquet was a celebration of alliance, but I cared not for its purpose or its guest of honor, some mortal of the Shadow World puffed up with promises. I’d seen its like before. The Queen, however, mesmerized the eye. Hair like blood and fire, woven through with strands of glowing fireflies. I imagined, whenever a brief moment of silence fell, that I could hear the whisper of their panicked wings. Her gown was a shimmering scarlet, a match for her favored mortal, whose own scarlet gear was writ with golden runes.
Red to call enchantment down.The old Shadowhunter rhyme.
He was no ordinary Shadowhunter, the Queen’s guest. He was something different, special. I was less than no one to him, and yet as I ferried my tray of blackberry wine across the ballroom, he placed himself in my path. Cold fingers closed around my wrist.
“My lady, well met, I’m sure,” he said, and the words were entirely proper. There was no reason to shiver with fear, or wrench my hand away as if his touch could burn. And yet. “May I have a dance?”
I nodded to the tray, implication clear, I was here to serve, not revel. He swept the glasses away, grinning as they shattered.
“There,” he said. “No one can say that was your fault.”
No point in saying to him that, of course, it would still be considered my fault. To show clumsiness was a great crime in the Queen’s Court. But rudeness to a guest was worse: I held my tongue against my angry urge to lash out.
He seemed to know I was boiling with anger. I could see thatit amused him. He was beautiful—perhaps it was not surprising he had caught the favor of the Queen. He had an angel’s face with devil’s eyes, hair as fair as Miach’s or Alessa’s, features drawn by a delicate hand, and yet an air of menace hung around him, thick as velvet. “Or perhaps you find me unworthy of a dance,” he suggested. “My Queen will be so disappointed to hear I’ve fallen short.”
My lady was on her throne, but her hard gaze lay upon us. It would not do to refuse the whims of a guest favored by the Queen. And so I let him take my hand, and place his own at my waist, and sweep me into a dance, and he smiled exactly as he had at the shattered glass.
He brought his lips to my ear. “I’ve been watching you all night, Lady Nene,” he whispered.
“I highly doubt that. Whatever measure of beauty I may have is far outshone by the ladies of the Court.” And this, of course, was true.
“Oh, no doubt.” He laughed. “You’ve an utterly forgettable face, and yet—” He pulled back, just enough to get a good look at me. “You seem familiar, somehow. Have we met?”
“Never.”
