Page 125 of Better in Black
“Surely, you and the Queen will decide how to raise him together.”
The Queen could not see how he looked at me then, with a bladed amusement, as if to mock her foolish trust. The arrogance of him, to imagine that he could defy my lady, especially on the matter of her own heir.
Though with Sebastian, as with the Queen, it was never safe to assume imagination was only that.
“I believe that when two people love each other, they will raise a child well,” I said, thinking of my sister, my niece and nephew. Nerissa ensured they would grow to be the best versions of themselves, because they would grow with love. The Queen surely could do the same for this child, whatever lurked in his blood. There are those who have assumed that because I refuse love, I believe love has no power. Quite the opposite is true.
Sebastian leaned in, his cold lips brushing my cheek, thenwhispered in my ear. As if bestowing a secret. “There is no love here.”
—
And did I warn my lady, that this man with a bottomless chasm where his soul should have been was not a safe place for her heart?
I did not.
—
I held my tongue.
How easily quiet can become a habit.
The war came, of course. We were safe, in the land beneath the hill, and safer still at Court. Because the Queen was loyal to Sebastian and his cause, there were those sent off to fight in Alicante, and many of them did not return. Those of us who stayed behind hid in our ignorance. We heard rumors, of course, of slaughter, of war in Idris. Of weapons forged to defeat our people: rowan and salt and cold iron. Of the bodies left in Sebastian’s wake, not just Shadowhunters, but our folk too. No life was precious to him.
Life, below, continued as it ever did. I tended my lady, though she was hollow-eyed with lack of sleep, sharp and easily angered. I could see the fear in her eyes for Sebastian, even as I wished, silently, for his downfall. For the Shadowhunters, somehow, to best him. Because I knew—better than most, I knew—that a world ruled by Sebastian would mean a time of great darkness for us all.
I knew, and yet I said nothing.
Why throw away my small life, like throwing a pebble into the sea? Losing myself, gaining nothing.
When I was most afraid, for my Queen, for her child, for us all, I would think of Sebastian’s love for his sister.
A man like that, it was unthinkable he could love. But somehow, he did. His love was broken, was poisonous, and yet—thisthought I would tug around me like a warm blanket—his love left some slim hope for the world.
For love destroys.
If Sebastian could love, it meant he could be defeated.
—
And so, he was.
And so, as his allies, were we.
And so, my Queen was brought low by the Shadowhunters and their Cold Peace. Humiliated by our defeat, by the despair and oppression of our people, by the Clave’s sanctions, but most of all, I suspected, by Sebastian.
She grieved him, of course.
But she also bore the shame of it, that Sebastian had chosen to pursue his mad dream of power, to die at his sister’s hand rather than rule the Court beside the Queen.
And I, who had wished for precisely this, bore two shames.
That I had hoped so desperately for the outcome that so crushed my Queen.
That I had done nothing but hope.
Which was the same as doing nothing at all.
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