Page 12 of Better in Black
Will’s hands slipped around her waist. “When that wish took the pain from me, it took so many good memories with it. When the pain returned, the joy returned—it was overwhelming—and I realized that pain and joy cannot be separated. They are all one thing. Who would I be now, if I had never known Jem? If I had never known you? Not anyone I want to be.”
Tessa wrapped her arms around Will’s neck. “Are you telling me,” she said archly, “that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”
“Don’t you quote Tennyson at me,” Will growled, kissing her neck, and when Tessa giggled, he swung her off her feet, into hisarms. “Now,” he said, “shall we go back to the hotel and lock the door to our suite? Before I ravish you here in the street, possibly under the angry observation of the two fraudulent warlocks upstairs?”
Tessa gazed at him demurely. Deep in his eyes, she thought, there was sorrow; there would always be sorrow, for it underpinned every happiness. But that sorrow was part of Will, her Will, about whom she would not change a thing. Her Will, who she would love as hard as she could for every day of his life. Her Will, who was waiting now, very patiently, for her answer to his question.
“Why, Will Herondale,” Tessa said, smiling up at her husband, “that sounds like an absolutely delightful plan.”
The Beautiful Ajatara
Some stories are simple. Theybegin at the beginning and proceed, one reasonable plot turn after another, straight through to happily ever after. Some start in the middle, a jumble of confusion, and puzzle themselves out as they go. Some, of course, are cut short before they have a chance to resolve. And perhaps there is no greater tragedy than the story left untold.
Some stories, though: They begin before the beginning. Before time and memory, before the invention of story. Some stories, like some wounds, are ancient. Some stories have bled so long they have nearly forgotten what it might mean to heal.
Such was the story of the demon Ajatara; such was her wound.
The crystalline palace of Ajatara lay at the icy heart of her demon realm. The towering glassy walls were transparent, so she couldsurvey all she ruled from the comfort of home. She could, if she so pleased, wrap herself in a layer of skin and fur—freshly flayed from one of her willing servants—settle into the bed she’d had built from the blackened bones of her enemies, and watch acidic frozen rain batter blasted ice plains. She could watch demons of the sky swoop to pluck demons out of the sea in their iron jaws, sprinkling black blood across the glacial snow, watch her servants deposit gifts—sad little creatures snatched from other realms—and tear them limb from limb for her entertainment.
It no longer pleased her. Not as it once had.
Home was the place you could always return to; but home was not home if you were unable to leave. The word for that wasprison.
It was bad enough that Belial had broken her heart. A few centuries and she could have forgiven the suffering he’d inflicted. He was, after all, a Prince of Hell. Suffering was what she’d signed up for. But she could not forgive this imprisonment in her own realm, for countless ages. What had he said to her? “I’m sorry, darling, but for my own welfare I do have to lock you away until you’re a bit less angry at me. I’m sure you understand.”
And he’d blown her a kiss even as she went tumbling through space into this realm of blizzards and ice. The indignity of it! The impotence of it! The utter, intolerabledullnessof it, this eternity of sameness. What good was her power, her beauty, her bottomless well of devious rage, if she had nowhere to destroy and no one new to torment?
She was, she thought, too beautiful and too evil to be this alone.
“Mistresssss, you ssssummoned me?”
Not wholly alone, she reminded herself. She was waited upon hand and foot by Krog, her loyal attendant. Krog had webbed hands; dry, greenish skin spotted with warts; a sacral hump onlybarely disguised by the thin burlap he wore as a robe; and a long, sticky tongue that was excellent for snaring insects but not so useful for human speech. To some demons, he would have been very attractive, but Ajatara found him wanting when compared to Belial—who, after all, had been a Prince of Hell.
Now, Ajatara beckoned Krog toward her scrying bowl, and waved a hand over the still water. It shimmered and shifted at her command, gradually cohering into the image she desired.
A slim girl with a determined face. Her hair a light brown mass of curls, her fingers long and ink-stained. Her blue eyes were clear and steady.
The Herondale girl. Blood of Belial’s blood, flesh of his flesh.
Belial himself,herBelial, was gone from this world and all of its infinite realms. She had felt his death like a rupture in the earth—had felt the thinning of the barrier that held her here. For a brief moment she had allowed herself to imagine that his death would set her free. Then she understood—none but Belial, her Belial,couldset her free. Once he was gone he was replaced, his demonic energies reconstituted in a being who had no link to the curse that the original Belial had laid upon her. A being who did not know her, and had no reason to return and free her as Belial—she believed—would eventually have done. It seemed her imprisonment was complete. Unhappily ever after.
Unless.
If she could acquire an object that belonged to one of Belial’s blood, something imbued with a sufficient sliver of their power, she had a chance.
“This is Lucie Herondale,” she told Krog, who grunted in acknowledgment. “The granddaughter of the late Prince of Hell, Belial. She is in possession of a powerful magical grimoire. That will do nicely for my purposes. Krog, you shall bring it to me.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, his lidless eyes unnerving her. “Yessss, mistressss.”
She sent him out of her sight. It was too painful to remember that, as an Eidolon, this loathsome toad had a power denied to her. That he could walk the realm of the humans, disguised as one of them, while she cowered here in her icy prison; that a being like her was forced to depend on a being likehim.
He had best not disappoint, she thought. Like all Greater Demons, she had a fair amount of patience. She had lived a very long time, and expected to live an unfathomable time more. But her patience had been too sorely tested. She would bring this plan to fruition. Shewouldescape this place, and soon.
Those who stood in her path would be sorry.
—
The door to 48 Curzon Street flew open before Lucie could knock.
