Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

26

W

ALK IN

S

HADOW

Emma sat on Cristina’s bed, brushing her friend’s hair. She was beginning to understand why her mother had loved brushing her hair so much when she was a little girl: There was something oddly soothing about the smooth dark locks slipping through her fingers, the repetitive motion of the brush.

It soothed the ache in her head, her chest. The one that felt not just her own pain, but Julian’s. She knew how much he hated saying good-bye to Tavvy, even if it was for Tavvy’s own good, and she felt a hollowness inside herself where Julian was parting from his smallest brother now.

Being with Cristina helped. Emma had spilled everything that happened in Cornwall while clucking over Cristina’s wrist and rubbing a mundane cream called Savlon into the red mark from the binding rune. Cristina ouched and complained that it stung, and handed Emma the hairbrush and told her to do something actually useful.

“So does anything help the binding?” said Emma. “Like if Mark came in here and lay down directly on top of you, would the pain go away?”

“Yes,” Cristina said, sounding a bit muffled.

“Well, it’s very inconsiderate of him not to, if you ask me.”

Cristina gave a little wail that sounded like “Kieran.”

“Right, Mark has to pretend he still cares about Kieran. I guess lying on top of you wouldn’t do much for that.”

“He does care about Kieran,” Cristina said. “It’s just—I think he cares about me, too.” She half-turned to look at Emma. Her eyes were big and dark and worried. “I danced with him. With Mark. And we kissed.”

“That’s good! That is good, right?”

“It was, but then Kieran came in—”

“What?”

“But he wasn’t angry, he just told Mark that he should dance better, and he danced with me. It was like dancing with fire.”

“Whoa, sexy weirdness,” said Emma. “This may be more sexy weirdness than I can handle.”

“It is not weird!”

“It is,” said Emma. “You are headed for a faerie threesome. Or some kind of war.”

“Emma!”

“Hot faerie threesome,” said Emma cheerfully. “I can say I knew you when.”

Cristina groaned. “Fine. What about you and Julian? Do you have a plan, after what happened in Cornwall?”

Emma sighed and put the hairbrush down. It was a lovely old silver-backed Victorian object. She wondered if it had been in the room when Cristina got here or if she’d found it somewhere else in the Institute. Already Cristina’s London room bore signs of her personality—pictures had been cleaned and straightened, she’d found a colorful coverlet for her bed somewhere, and her balisong hung on a new hook by the fireplace.

Emma began to braid Cristina’s hair, plaiting the thick strands between her fingers. “We don’t have a plan,” she said. “It’s always the same thing—we’re together and we feel like we’re invincible. And then we start to realize it’s still all the same choices and they’re all bad ones.”

Cristina looked troubled. “It is always the same choices, isn’t it? Separation from each other or ceasing to be Shadowhunters.”

Emma had finished the braid. She leaned her chin on Cristina’s shoulder, thinking about what Julian had learned from the Seelie Queen. The terrifying possibility of ending all parabatai bonds. But it was too horrible a thing to even voice aloud. “I used to think it would help, physical distance from Julian,” she said. “But now I don’t think it would. Nothing else has. I think no matter where I went, or for how long, I would always feel like this.”

“Some loves are strong, like cords. They bind you,” Cristina said. “The Bible says love is as strong as death. I believe that.”

Emma scooted around to peer closer into her friend’s face. “Cristina,” she said. “There’s something else going on, isn’t there? Something about Diego, or Jaime?”

Cristina looked down. “I can’t say.”

“Let me help you,” Emma said. “You’re always so strong for everyone else. Let me be strong for you.”

There was a knock on the door. They both looked up in surprise. Mark, Emma thought. There was something about the look on Cristina’s face. It must be Mark.

But it was Kieran.

Emma froze in surprise. Though she’d grown somewhat used to Kieran being around, he still made the fine hairs on Emma’s arms rise with tension. It wasn’t that she blamed him, specifically, for the injuries she’d suffered at Iarlath’s hands. But the sight of him still brought it back to her, all of it: the hot sun, the sound of the whip, the copper scent of blood.

It was true that he looked enormously different now. His black hair was a little wilder, more untidy, but otherwise he cut an incongruously human figure in his jeans. The wild hair hid the tops of his pointed ears, though his black and silver eyes were still startling.

He gave a small, courtly bow. “My ladies.”

Cristina looked puzzled. Clearly she hadn’t expected this visit either.

“I came to speak with Cristina, if she will permit it,” Kieran added.

“Go ahead, then,” Emma said. “Speak.”

“I think he wishes to speak to me alone,” said Cristina, in a whisper.

“Yes,” said Kieran. “That is my request.”

Cristina looked at Emma. “I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

Humph, Emma thought. She’d missed Cristina, and now a brash faerie princeling was kicking her out of her friend’s room. Kieran barely spared her a glance as she climbed off the bed and headed to the door.

As she passed Kieran on her way out, Emma paused, her shoulder almost touching his. “If you do anything to hurt or upset her,” she said, in a voice low enough that she doubted Cristina could hear it, “I will pull off your ears and turn them into lock picks. Get it?”

Kieran glanced at her with his night-sky eyes, unreadable as clouds. “No,” he said.

“Let me spell it out,” Emma said sharply. “I love her. Don’t mess around with her.”

Kieran put his long, delicate hands in his pockets. He looked absolutely unnatural in his modern clothes. It was like seeing Alexander the Great in a biker jacket and leather pants. “She is easy to love.”

Emma looked at him in surprise. It hadn’t been what she’d expected him to say at all. Easy to love. Nene had behaved as if the concept was bizarre. But then what did the Fair Folk know about love, anyway?

* * *

“Would you like to sit down?” Cristina inquired. Then she wondered if she was turning into her mother, who had always claimed that the first thing one did with a guest was offer them a seat. Even if they are a murderer? Cristina had asked. Yes, even murderers, her mother had insisted. If you didn’t want to offer a murderer a seat, you shouldn’t have invited him in the first place.

“No,” Kieran said. He moved across the room, hands in his pockets, his body language restless. Not unlike Mark’s, Cristina thought. They both moved as if they had energy trapped beneath their skin. She wondered what it would be like to contain so much movement, and yet be forced to stay still.

“My lady,” he said. “Because of what I swore to you in the Seelie Court, there is a bond between us. I think you have felt its force.”

Cristina nodded. It wasn’t the enchanted bond she had with Mark. But it was there anyway, a shimmering energy when they danced, when they spoke.

“I think that force can help us do something together I could not do alone.” Kieran came closer to the bed, drawing his hand out of his pocket. Something glimmered in his palm. He held it out to Cristina, and she saw the acorn there that Mark had used earlier, to summon Gwyn. It looked slightly dented, but it was whole, as if it had been sealed back together after breaking open.

“You want to summon Gwyn again?” Cristina shook her head. Her hair fell completely out of its unfastened braid, spilling down her back. She saw Kieran glance at it. “No. He won’t interfere again. You want to speak to someone else in Faerie. Your brother?”

“As I thought.” He inclined his head slightly. “You guess my intentions exactly.”

“And you can do it? The acorn won’t just call Gwyn?”

“The magic is a fairly simple one. Remember, you are not of the blood than can cast spells, but I am. It should bring a Projection of my brother to us. I will ask him of our father’s plans. I shall ask him as well if he can stop the Riders.”

Cristina was astonished. “Can anyone stop the Riders?”

“They are servants of the Court, and under its command.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Cristina asked.

“Because to summon my brother, I must reach out with my mind into Faerie,” said Kieran. “And it would be safer, should I wish to keep my mind intact, for me to have a connection here in the world. Something—someone—to keep me anchored while I seek my brother.”

Cristina slid off the bed. Standing straight, she was only a little shorter than Kieran. Her eyes were level with his mouth. “Why me? Why not Mark?”

“I have asked enough of Mark,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, “but even if that is true, I do not think it is the whole truth.”

“Few of us are lucky enough ever to know the whole truth of anything.” She knew Kieran was young, but there was something ancient in his eyes when he spoke. “Will you put your hand in mine?”

She gave him the hand whose wrist bore the red mark of her bond with Mark. It seemed fitting, somehow. His fingers closed around hers, cool and dry, light as the touch of a leaf.

With his other hand, Kieran dashed the golden acorn against the wall beside the fireplace mantel.

For a moment, there was silence. Cristina could hear his ragged breathing. It seemed strange for a faerie—everything they did was at such a remove from ordinary human emotion, it was odd to hear Kieran gasp. But then she remembered his arms around her, the uneven thud of his heart. They were flesh and blood after all, weren’t they? Bone and muscle, just as Shadowhunters were. And the flame of angelic blood burned in them, too . . . .

Darkness spread across the wall like a stain. Cristina sucked in her breath, and Kieran’s hand tightened on hers. The darkness moved and shivered, trembled and re-formed. Light danced within it, and Cristina could see the multicolored night sky of Faerie. And within the shadow, a darker shadow. A man, wrapped in a dark cloak. As the darkness lightened, Cristina saw his grin before she saw anything else, and her heart seemed to stop.

It was a grin of bones set within a skeletal half face, beautiful on one side, deathly on the other. The cloak that wrapped him was ink-black and bore the insignia of a broken crown. He stood straight and broad, grinning his lopsided grin down at Kieran.

They had not summoned Adaon at all. It was the Unseelie King.

* * *

“No. NO!” Tavvy wept, his face buried in Julian’s shoulder. He’d taken the news that he was going to Idris with Alec, Max, and Rafe worse than Mark had expected. Did all children cry like this, like everything in the world was ruined and their hearts were broken, even at the news of a short parting?

Not that Mark blamed Tavvy, of course. It was only that he felt as if his own heart was being shredded into pieces inside his chest as he watched Julian walk up and down the room, holding his small brother in his arms as Tavvy sobbed and pounded his back.

“Tavs,” Julian said in his gentle voice, the voice Mark could hardly reconcile with the boy who had faced down the Unseelie King in his own Court with a knife to a prince’s throat. “It’s only going to be a day, two days at most. You’ll get to see the canals in Alicante, the Gard . . . .”

“You keep leaving,” Tavvy choked against his brother’s shirtfront. “You can’t leave again.”

Julian sighed. He dipped his chin, rubbing his cheek against his brother’s unruly curls. Over Tavvy’s head, his eyes met Mark’s. There was no blame in them, and no self-pity, only a terrible sadness.

Yet Mark felt as if guilt were crushing his rib cage. If only were wasted words, Kieran had once said, when Mark had speculated on whether the two of them would ever have met if they had never joined the Hunt. But he couldn’t stop the flood of if onlys now: if only he had been able to stay with his family, if only Julian hadn’t needed to be mother and father and brother to all the younger ones, if only Tavvy hadn’t grown up in the shadow of death and loss. Perhaps then, every parting would not feel like the last one.

“It’s not your fault,” said Magnus, who had appeared noiselessly at Mark’s side. “You can’t help the past. We grow up with losses, all of us except the supremely lucky.”

“I cannot help wishing my brother had been one of the supremely lucky,” said Mark. “You can understand.”

Magnus glanced toward Jules and Tavvy. The little boy had cried himself out and was clinging to his older brother, his face mashed against Julian’s shoulder. His small shoulders were slumped in exhaustion. “Which brother?”

“Both of them,” said Mark.

Magnus reached out and, with curious fingers, touched the glimmering arrowhead slung around Mark’s neck. “I know this material,” he said. “This arrowhead once tipped the weapon of a soldier in the King’s Guard of the Unseelie Court.”

Mark touched it—cool, cold, smooth under his fingers. Unyielding, like Kieran himself. “Kieran gave it to me.”

“It is precious,” said Magnus. He turned as Alec called him, and let the pendant fall back against Mark’s chest.

Alec stood with Max in his arms and Rafe by his side, along with a small duffel bag of their things. It occurred to Mark that Alec was close to the same age Mark would have been if only he had never been kidnapped by the Hunt. He wondered if he would be as mature as Alec seemed, as self-collected, as able to take care of other people as well as himself.

Magnus kissed Alec and ruffled his hair with infinite tenderness. He bent to kiss Max, too, and Rafe, and straightened up to begin to create the Portal. Light sparked from and between his fingers, and the air before him seemed to shimmer.

Tavvy had sagged into a bundle of hopelessness against Julian’s chest. Jules held him closer, the muscles in his arms tensing, and murmured soothing words. Mark wanted to go over to them but couldn’t seem to make his feet move. They seemed, even in their unhappiness, a perfect unit who needed no one else.

The melancholy thought vanished a moment later as pain shot up Mark’s arm. He grabbed at his wrist, his fingers encountering agonizing soreness, the slickness of blood. Something’s wrong, he thought, and then, Cristina.

He bolted. The Portal was growing and shimmering in the center of the room; through its half-formed door, Mark could see the outline of the demon towers as he darted by and into the corridor.

Some sense in his blood told him he was getting closer to Cristina as he ran, but to his surprise, the pain in his wrist didn’t fade. It pulsed again and again, like the warning beam from a lighthouse.

Her door was closed. He set his shoulder against it and shoved without bothering to try the knob. It flew open and Mark half-fell inside.

He choked, eyes stinging. The room smelled as if something inside it had been burning—something organic, like dead leaves or rotted fruit.

It was dark. His eyes adjusted quickly and he made out Cristina and Kieran, both standing by the foot of the bed. Cristina was clutching her balisong. A massive shadow loomed over them—no, not a shadow, Mark realized, moving closer. A Projection.

A Projection of the King of the Unseelie Court. Both sides of his face seemed to gleam with unnatural humor, both the beautiful, kingly side, and the hideous, defleshed skull.

“You thought to summon your brother?” the King sneered, his gaze on Kieran. “And you thought I would not feel you reaching into Faerie, searching for one of my own? You are a fool, Kieran, and always have been.”

“What have you done to Adaon?” Kieran’s face was bloodless. “He knew nothing. He had no idea I planned to summon him.”

“Worry not about others,” said the King. “Worry about your own life, Kieran Kingson.”

“I have been Kieran Hunter for a long time,” said Kieran.

The King’s face darkened. “You should be Kieran Traitor,” he said. “Kieran Betrayer. Kieran Kin-Slayer. All are better names for you.”

“He acted in self-defense,” said Cristina sharply. “If he hadn’t killed Erec, he would have been killed himself. And he acted to protect me.”

The King gave her a brief look of scorn. “And that in itself is a traitorous act, foolish girl,” he said. “Placing the lives of Shadowhunters above the lives of your own people—what could be worse?”

“Selling your son to the Wild Hunt because you worried that people liked him better than they liked you,” said Mark. “That’s worse.”

Cristina and Kieran looked at him in astonishment; it was clear they hadn’t heard him come in. The King, though, evinced no surprise. “Mark Blackthorn,” he said. “Even in his choice of lovers, my son gravitates to the enemies of his people. What does that say about him?”

“That he knows better than you who his people are?” Mark said. Very deliberately, he turned his back on the King. It would have been a hanging offense in the Court. “We must get rid of him,” he said, in a low voice, to Kieran and Cristina. “Should I get Magnus?”

“He is only a Projection,” Kieran said. His face was drawn. “He cannot hurt us. Nor can he remain forever. It is an effort for him, I think.”

“Do not turn your back on me!” the King roared. “Do you think I do not know your plans, Kieran? Do you think I do not know you plan to stand up and betray me before the Council of Nephilim?”

Kieran turned his face away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at his father. “Then cease to do what I know you are doing,” he said, in a shaking voice. “Parlay with the Nephilim. Do not make war on them.”

“There is no parlay with those who can lie,” snarled the King. “And have done, and will do again. They will lie and spill the blood of our people. And once they are done with you, do you think they will let you live? Treat you like one of them?”

“They have treated me better than my own father has.” Kieran raised his chin.

“Have they?” The King’s eyes were dark and empty. “I took some memories from you, Kieran, when you came to my Court. Shall I give them back?”

Kieran looked confused. “What use could you possibly have for my memories?”

“Some of us would know our enemies,” said the King.

“Kieran,” Mark said. The look in the King’s eyes made fear roil in the pit of his stomach. “Do not listen. He seeks to hurt you.”

“And what do you seek?” the King demanded, turning toward Mark. Only the fact that Mark could see through him, could see the outline of Cristina’s bed, her wardrobe, through the transparent frame of his body, kept him from darting toward the fireplace poker and swinging it at the King. If only . . .

If only the King had been any sort of father, if only he hadn’t thrown his son to the Hunt like a bone to a pack of hungry wolves, if only he hadn’t sat complacently by while Erec tortured Kieran . . .

How different would Kieran be? How much less afraid of losing love, how much less determined to hold on to it at all costs, even if it meant trapping Mark in the Hunt with him?

The King’s lip curled, as if he could read Mark’s thoughts. “When I looked into my son’s memories,” he said, “I saw you, Blackthorn. Lady Nerissa’s son.” His smile was malignant. “Your mother died of sorrow when your father left her. My son’s thoughts were half of you, of the loss of you. Mark, Mark, Mark. I wonder what it is in your bloodline that has the power to enchant our people and make fools of them?”

A small line had appeared between Kieran’s brows. The loss of you.

Kieran didn’t remember losing Mark. The cold fear in Mark’s stomach had spread to his veins.

“Those who cannot love do not understand it,” said Cristina. She turned toward Kieran. “We will protect you,” she said. “We won’t let him harm you for testifying at the Council.”

“Lies,” said the King. “Well-intentioned, perhaps, but still lies. If you testify, Kieran, there will be no place on this earth or in Faerie where you will be safe from me and from my warriors. I will hunt you forever, and when I find you, you will wish you had died for what you did to Iarlath, to Erec. There is no torment you can imagine that I will not visit on you.”

Kieran swallowed hard, but his voice was steady. “Pain is just pain.”

“Oh,” said his father, “there is all manner of pain, little dark one.” He did not move or make any gesture the way warlocks did when they cast spells, but Mark felt an increase in the weight of the atmosphere in the room, as if the air pressure had risen.

Kieran gasped and reeled back as if he’d been shot. He hit the bed, grasping at the footboard to keep himself from sliding to the floor. His hair fell over his eyes, changing from blue to black to white. “Mark?” He raised his face slowly. “I remember. I remember.”

“Kieran,” Mark whispered.

“I told Gwyn you had betrayed a law of Faerie,” said Kieran. “I thought they would only bring you back to the Hunt.”

“Instead they punished my family,” said Mark. He knew Kieran hadn’t meant it to happen, hadn’t anticipated it. But the words still hurt to say.

“That’s why you weren’t wearing your elf-bolt.” Kieran’s eyes fixed on a point below Mark’s chin. “You did not want me. You turned me away. You hated me. You must hate me now.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Mark said. “Kier—”

“Listen to him,” murmured the King. “Listen to him lie.”

“Then why?” Kieran said. He backed away from Mark, just a step. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Consider it, child,” said the King. He looked as if he were enjoying himself. “What did they want from you?”

Kieran breathed in hard. “Testimony,” he said. “Witnessing in front of the Council. You—you planned this, Mark? This deception? Does everyone in the Institute know? Yes, they must. They must.” His hair had gone black as oil. “And the Queen knows, too, I suppose. She planned to make a fool of me, with you?”

The agony on his face was too much; Mark couldn’t look at it, at Kieran. It was Cristina who spoke for him. “Kieran, no,” she said. “It wasn’t like that—”

“And you knew?” Kieran turned a look on her that was hardly less betrayed than the one he’d turned on Mark. “You knew as well?”

The King laughed. Rage went through Mark then, a blinding fury, and he seized up the poker from the fireplace. The King continued laughing as he stalked toward him, raised the poker, and swung it—

It slammed against the golden acorn where it lay on the hearth before the fireplace, shattering it into powder. The King’s laughter cut off abruptly; he turned a look of pure hatred on Mark and vanished.

“Why did you do that?” Kieran demanded. “Were you afraid of what else he’d tell me?”

Mark threw the poker against the grate with a loud clang. “He gave you back your memories, didn’t he?” he said. “Then you know everything.”

“Not everything,” said Kieran, and his voice cracked and broke; Mark thought of him hanging in the thorn manacles at the Unseelie Court, and how the same despair showed in his eyes now. “I don’t know how you planned this, when you decided you would lie to me to get me to do what you wanted. I don’t know how much it sickened you every time you had to touch me, to pretend to want me. I don’t know when you planned to tell me the truth. After I testified? Did you plan to mock me and laugh at me before all the Council, or wait until we were alone? Did you tell everyone what a monster I am, how selfish and how heartless—”

“You are not a monster, Kieran,” Mark interrupted. “There is nothing wrong with your heart.”

There was only hurt in Kieran’s eyes as he regarded Mark across the small space that separated them. “That cannot be true,” he said, “for you were my heart.”

“Stop.” It was Cristina, her voice small and worried, but firm. “Let Mark explain to you—”

“I am done with human explanations,” said Kieran, and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

The last of the shimmering Portal disappeared. Julian and Magnus stood, almost shoulder to shoulder, watching Alec and the children until they vanished.

With a sigh, Magnus tossed the end of his scarf over his shoulder and stalked across the room to fill a glass from the decanter of wine that rested dustily on a table by the window. It was nearly dark outside, the sky over London the color of pansy petals. “Do you want some?” he asked Julian, recapping the decanter.

“I should probably stay sober.”

“Suit yourself.” Magnus picked up his wineglass and examined it; the light shining through it turned the liquid ruby red.

“Why are you helping us so much?” Julian asked. “I mean, I know we’re a likable family, but no one’s that likable.”

“No,” Magnus agreed, with a slight smile. “No one is.”

“Then?”

Magnus took a sip of the wine and shrugged. “Jace and Clary asked me to,” he said, “and Jace is Alec’s parabatai, and I have always had a fatherly feeling toward Clary. They’re my friends. And there is little I wouldn’t do for my friends.”

“Is that really all of it?”

“You might remind me of someone.”

“Me?” Julian was surprised. People rarely said that to him. “Who do I remind you of?”

Magnus shook his head without answering. “Years ago,” he said, “I had a recurring dream, about a city drowned in blood. Towers made of bone and blood running in the streets like water. I thought later that it was about the Dark War, and indeed the dream vanished in the years after the war was fought.” He drained his glass and set it down. “But lately I’ve been dreaming it again. I can’t help but think something is coming.”

“You warned them,” said Julian. “The Council. The day they decided to exile Helen and abandon Mark. The day they decided on the Cold Peace. You told them what the consequences would be.” He leaned against the wall. “I was only twelve, but I remember it. You said, ‘The Fair Folk have long hated the Nephilim for their harshness. Show them something other than harshness, and you will receive something other than hate in return.’ But they didn’t listen to you, did they?”

“They wanted their revenge, the Council,” said Magnus. “They didn’t see how revenge begets more revenge. ‘For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’ ”

“From the Bible,” said Julian. He had not grown up around Uncle Arthur without learning more classic quotes than he’d ever know what to do with. “But then there’s a difference between revenge and vengeance,” he added. “Between punishing the guilty, and punishing at random. ‘Justly we rid the earth of human fiends, who carry hell for pattern in their souls.’ ”

“I suppose one can find a quote to justify anything,” Magnus said. “Look—I don’t tattle to the Clave, whatever the warlocks of the Shadow Market might think to the contrary. But I’ve known parabatai, dozens of them, what they’re supposed to be like, and you and Emma are different. I can’t imagine that if it hadn’t been for the chaos of the Dark War they would even have allowed you to go through with it.”

“And now, because of a ceremony that was supposed to bind us forever, we have to figure out how to separate,” Julian said bitterly. “We both know it. But with the Riders out there—”

“Yes,” said Magnus. “You are forced together for the moment.”

Julian exhaled through his teeth. “Just confirm something for me,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a spell that cancels out love?”

“There are a few temporary charms,” said Magnus. “They don’t last forever. Real love and the complexities of the human heart and brain are still beyond the tinkering of most magic. Maybe an angel or a Greater Demon . . .”

“So Raziel could do it,” said Julian.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath,” said Magnus. “Have you really already looked this up? Spells to cancel out love?”

Julian nodded.

“You are ruthless,” said Magnus. “Even with yourself.”

“I thought Emma didn’t love me anymore,” said Julian. “And she thought the same about me. Now we know the truth. It’s not just that it’s forbidden by the Clave. It’s cursed.”

Magnus winced. “I wondered if you knew about that.”

Julian felt cold all over. No chance it was some kind of mistake of Jem’s, then. Not that he’d really thought it might be. “Jem told Emma. But he didn’t say exactly how it worked. What would happen.”

There was a slight tremor in Magnus’s hand as he passed it over his eyes. “Look up the story of Silas Pangborn and Eloisa Ravenscar. There are other stories too, though the Silent Brothers do their best to keep it quiet.” His cat’s eyes were bloodshot. “You go mad yourself, first,” he said. “You become unrecognizable as a human being. And after you become a monster, you are no longer able to tell friend from enemy. As your family run toward you to save you, you will rip the hearts from their chests.”

Julian felt as if he were going to throw up. “That—I’d never hurt my family.”

“You won’t know who they are,” said Magnus. “You won’t know love from hate. And you’ll destroy what’s around you, not because you want to, any more than a crashing wave wants to shatter the rocks it breaks on. You’ll do it because you won’t know not to.” He looked at Julian with an ancient sympathy. “It doesn’t matter if your intentions are good or bad. It doesn’t matter that love is a positive force. Magic doesn’t take note of small human concerns.”

“I know,” Julian said. “But what can we do? I can’t become a mundane or a Downworlder and leave my family. It would kill me and them. And not being a Shadowhunter anymore would be like suicide for Emma.”

“There is exile,” Magnus said. His gaze was fathomless. “You would still be Shadowhunters, but you’d be stripped of some of your magic. That’s what exile means. That’s the punishment. And because parabatai magic is some of the most precious and most ingrained in what you are, exile deadens its power. All the things the curse intensifies—the power your runes give each other, the ability to feel what the other is feeling or know if they’re hurt—exile takes those away. If I understand magic, and I know I do, then that means exile would slow the curse down immeasurably.”

“And exile would also take me away from the children,” said Julian, in despair. “I might never see them again. I might as well become a mundane. At least then I could try to sneak around and maybe watch them from a distance.” Bitterness corroded his voice. “The terms of exile are determined by the Inquisitor and the Clave. It would be totally out of our control.”

“Not necessarily,” said Magnus.

Julian looked at him sharply. “I think you’d better tell me what you mean.”

“That you have only one choice. And you won’t like it.” Magnus paused, as if waiting for Julian to refuse to hear it, but Julian said nothing at all. “All right,” said Magnus. “When you get to Alicante, tell the Inquisitor everything.”

* * *

“Kit . . .”

Something cool touched his temple, brushed back his hair. Shadows surrounded Kit, shadows in which he saw faces familiar and unfamiliar: the face of a woman with pale hair, her mouth forming the words of a song; his father’s face, the angry countenance of Barnabas Hale, Ty looking at him through eyelashes as thick and black as the soot covering the London streets in a Dickens novel.

“Kit.”

The cool touch became a tap. His eyelids fluttered, and there was the ceiling of the infirmary in the London Institute. He recognized the strange tree-shaped burn on the plastered wall, the view of rooftops through the window, the fan that spun its lazy blades over his head.

And hovering over him, a pair of anxious blue-green eyes. Livvy, her long brown hair spilling down in tangled curls. She exhaled a relieved sigh as he frowned.

“Sorry,” she said. “Magnus said to shake you awake every few hours or so, to make sure your concussion doesn’t get worse.”

“Concussion?” Kit remembered the rooftop, the rain, Gwyn and Diana, the sky full of clouds sliding up and away as he fell. “How did I wind up with a concussion? I was fine.”

“It happens, apparently,” she said. “People get hit on the head; they don’t realize it’s serious until they pass out.”

“Ty?” he said. He started to sit up, which was a mistake. His skull ached as if someone had taken a bludgeon to it. Bits and pieces of memory flashed against the backs of his eyes: the faeries in their terrifying bronze armor. The concrete platform by the river. The certainty that they were going to die.

“Here.” Her hand curved around the back of his neck, supporting him. The rim of something cold clinked against his teeth. “Drink this.”

Kit swallowed. Darkness came down, and the pain went away with it. He heard the singing again, down in the deepest part of everything he’d ever forgotten. The story that I love you, it has no end.

When he opened his eyes again, the candle by his bed had guttered. There was light, though, in the room—Ty sat by the side of his bed, a witchlight in his hand, looking up at the rotating blades of the fan.

Kit coughed and sat up. This time it hurt a little bit less. His throat felt like sandpaper. “Water,” he said.

Ty drew his gaze away from the fan blades. Kit had noticed before that he liked to look at them, as if their graceful motion pleased him. Ty found the water pitcher and a glass, and handed it to Kit.

“Do you want more water?” Ty asked, when Kit’s thirst had emptied the pitcher. He’d changed clothes since Kit had seen him last. More of the odd old-fashioned stuff from the storage room. Pinstriped shirt, black pants. He looked like he ought to be in an old advertisement.

Kit shook his head. He held tightly to the glass in his hand. A strange sense of unreality had settled over him—here he was, Kit Rook, in an Institute, having gotten his head bashed in by large faeries for defending Nephilim.

His father would have been ashamed. But Kit felt nothing but a sense of rightness. A sense that the piece that had always been missing from his life, that had made him anxious and uneasy, had been returned to him by chance and fate.

“Why did you do it?” Ty said.

Kit propped himself up. “Why’d I do what?”

“That time I came out of the magic shop and you and Livvy were arguing.” Ty’s gray gaze rested on a point around Kit’s collarbone. “It was about me, wasn’t it?”

“How did you know we were arguing?” Kit said. “Did you hear us?”

Ty shook his head. “I know Livvy,” he said. “I know when she’s angry. I know the things she does. She’s my twin. I don’t know those things about anyone else, but I know them about her.” He shrugged. “The argument was about me, wasn’t it?”

Kit nodded.

“Everyone always tries to protect me,” said Ty. “Julian tries to protect me from everything. Livvy tries to protect me from being disappointed. She didn’t want me to know that you might leave, but I’ve always known it. Jules and Livvy, they have a hard time imagining that I’ve grown up. That I might understand that some things are temporary.”

“You mean me,” Kit said. “That I’m temporary.”

“It’s your choice to stay or leave,” said Ty. “In Limehouse, I thought maybe it would be leaving.”

“But what about you?” said Kit. “I thought you were going to the Scholomance. And I could never go there. I don’t even have basic training.”

Kit set his water glass down. Ty immediately picked it up and began turning it in his hands. It was made of milky glass, rough on the outside, and he seemed to like the texture.

Ty was silent, and in that silence, Kit thought of Ty’s headphones, the music in his ears, the whispered words, the way he touched things with such total concentration: smooth stones, rough glass, silk and leather and textured linen. There were people in the world, he knew, who thought human beings like Ty did those things for no reason—because they were inexplicable. Broken.

Kit felt a wash of rage go through him. How could they not understand everything Ty did had a reason? If an ambulance siren blared in your ears, you covered them. If something hit you, you doubled up to protect yourself from hurt.

But not everyone felt and heard exactly the same way. Ty heard everything twice as loud and fast as everyone else. The headphones and the music, Kit sensed, were a buffer: They deadened not just other noises, but also feelings that would otherwise be too intense. They protected him from hurt.

He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to live so intensely, to feel things so much, to have the world sway into and out of too-bright colors and too-bright noises. When every sound and feeling was jacked up to eleven, it only made sense to calm yourself by concentrating all your energy on something small that you could master—a mass of pipe cleaners to unravel, the pebbled surface of a glass between your fingers.

“I don’t want to tell you not to go to the Scholomance if it’s what you want,” said Kit. “But I would just say that it isn’t always about people trying to protect you, or knowing what’s best for you, or thinking they do. Sometimes they just know they’d miss you.”

“Livvy would miss me—”

“Your whole family would miss you,” said Kit, “and I would miss you.”

It was a bit like stepping off a cliff, far scarier than any con Kit had ever run for his dad, any Downworlder or demon he’d ever met. Ty looked up in surprise, forgetting the glass in his hands. He was blushing. It was very visible against his pale skin. “You would?”

“Yeah,” said Kit, “but like I said, I don’t want to stop you from going if you want to—”

“I don’t,” Ty said. “I changed my mind.” He set the glass down. “Not because of you. Because the Scholomance appears to be full of assholes.”

Kit burst out laughing. Ty looked even more astonished than he had when Kit had said he’d miss him. But after a second, he started to laugh too. They were both laughing, Kit doubled up over the blankets, when Magnus came into the room. He looked at the two of them and shook his head.

“Bedlam,” he said, and went over to the counter where the glass tubes and funnels had been set up. He gave them a pleased look. “Not that anyone here probably cares,” he said, “but the antidote to the binding spell is ready. We should have no problem leaving for Idris tomorrow.”

* * *

Cristina felt as if a tornado had blown through the room. She set her balisong down on the mantel and turned to Mark.

He was leaning against the wall, his eyes wide but not focused on anything. She remembered an old book she had read when she was a girl. There had been a boy in it whose eyes had been two different colors, a knight in the Crusades. One eye for God, the book had said, and one for the devil.

A boy who had been split down the middle, part good and part evil. Just as Mark was split between faerie and Nephilim. She could see the battle raging in him now, though all his anger was for himself.

“Mark,” she began. “It is not—”

“Don’t say it’s not my fault,” he said tonelessly. “I couldn’t stand it, Cristina.”

“It is not only your fault,” said Cristina. “We all knew. It is all our fault. It was not the right thing to do, but we had very few choices. And Kieran did wrong you.”

“I still shouldn’t have lied to him.”

A ragged dark crack across the plaster of Cristina’s wall, bulging through the paint, was the only sign of what had happened. That, and the crushed golden acorn on the hearth. “I am only saying that if you can forgive him, you should forgive yourself as well,” she said.

“Can you come here?” Mark said, in a strangled sort of voice.

Mark had his eyes closed and was clenching and unclenching his hands. She nearly tripped getting to him across the room. He seemed to sense her approach; without opening his eyes, he reached for her and caught her hand in a bone-crushing grip.

Cristina glanced down. He held her hand so tightly it should have hurt, but all she saw was the red marks around both of their wrists. This close together, they had faded to almost nothing.

She felt again what she had felt that night in the ballroom, as if the binding spell amplified their nearness into something else, a thing that dragged her mind back to that hill in Faerie, the memory of being wrapped up in Mark.

Mark’s mouth found hers. She heard him groan: He was kissing her hard and desperately; her body felt as if fire was pouring through it, turning her light as ashes.

Yet she could not forget Kieran kissing Mark in front of her, forceful and deliberate. It seemed she could not think of Mark now without thinking of Kieran, too. Could not see blue and gold eyes without seeing black and silver.

“Mark.” She spoke against his lips. His hands were on her, stirring her blood to soft heat. “This is not the right way to make yourself forget.”

He drew away from her. “I want to hold you,” he said. “I want it very badly.” He let go of her slowly, as if the motion were an effort. “But it would not be fair. Not to you or Kieran or myself. Not now.”

Cristina touched the back of his hand. “You must go to Kieran and make things right between you. He is too important a part of you, Mark.”

“You heard what the King said.” Mark let his head fall back against the wall. “He’ll kill Kieran for testifying. He’ll hunt him forever. That’s our doing.”

“He agreed to it—”

“Without knowing the truth! He agreed to it because he thought he loved me and I loved him—”

“Isn’t that true?” Cristina said. “And even if it wasn’t, he didn’t just forget that you fought. He forgot what he did. He forgot what he owes. He forgot his own guilt. And that is part of why he is so angry. Not at you, but at himself.”

Mark’s hand tightened on hers. “We owe each other now, Kieran and I,” he said. “I have endangered him. The Unseelie King knows he plans to testify. He’s sworn to hunt Kieran. Cristina, what do we do?”

“We try to keep him safe,” Cristina said. “Whether he testifies or not, the King won’t forgive him. We need to find a place Kieran will be protected.” Her chin jerked up as realization hit her. “I know exactly where. Mark, we must—”

There was a knock on the door. They stepped away from each other as it swung open; both of them had been expecting Kieran, and Mark’s disappointment when it turned out to be Magnus was clear.

Magnus was carrying two etched metal flasks and raised an eyebrow when he saw Mark’s expression. “I don’t know who you were waiting for, and I’m sorry I’m not it,” he said dryly. “But the antidote is ready.”

Cristina had expected a thrill of relief to go through her. Instead she felt nothing. She touched her left hand to her sore wrist and glanced toward Mark, who was staring at the floor.

“Don’t rush to thank me or anything,” said Magnus, handing them each a flask. “Profuse expressions of gratitude only embarrass me, though cash gifts are always welcome.”

“Thank you, Magnus,” Cristina said, blushing. She unscrewed the flask: A dark and bitter scent wafted from it, like the smell of pulque, a drink that Cristina had never liked.

Magnus held up a hand. “Wait until you’re in separate rooms to drink it,” he said. “In fact, you should spend at least a few hours apart so that the spell can settle properly. All the effects should be gone by tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” said Mark, and headed for the door. He paused there and looked back at Cristina. “I agree with you,” he said to her. “About Kieran. If there’s anything you can do to guarantee his safety—do it.”

He was gone noiselessly, with cat-soft footsteps. Magnus glanced at the cracked wall, and then at Cristina.

“Do I want to know?” he asked.

Cristina sighed. “Can a fire-message get outside the wards you put up?”

Magnus stared at the wall again, shook his head, and said, “You’d better give it to me. I’ll get it sent.”

She hesitated.

“I won’t read it, either,” he added irritably. “I promise.”

Cristina set down her flask, found paper, pen, and stele, and scribbled a message with a rune-signature before folding it and handing it to Magnus, who gave a low whistle when he saw the name of the recipient across the top. “Are you sure?”

She nodded with a resolution she didn’t feel. “Absolutely.”