Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

6

T

HERE THE

T

RAVELLER

Since the kitchen was too small to hold the inhabitants of the Institute plus twenty-odd Centurions, breakfast was set up in the dining room. Portraits of Blackthorns past looked down on plates of eggs and bacon and racks of toast. Cristina moved unobtrusively among the crowd, trying not to be seen. She doubted she would have come down at all if it hadn’t been for her desperate need for coffee.

She looked around for Emma and Mark, but neither of them were here yet. Emma wasn’t an early riser, and Mark still tended toward the nocturnal. Julian was there, dishing up food, but he was wearing the pleasant, almost blank expression he always wore around strangers.

Odd, she thought, that she knew Julian well enough to realize that. They had a sort of bond, both of them loving Emma, but separated from each other by the knowledge Julian didn’t realize she had. Julian trying to hide that he loved Emma, and Cristina trying to hide that she knew. She wished she could offer him sympathy, but he would only recoil in horror—

“Cristina.”

She nearly dropped her coffee. It was Diego. He looked awful—his face drawn, bags under his eyes, his hair tangled. He wore ordinary gear and seemed to have misplaced his Centurion pin.

She held up her hand. “Aléjate de mí, Diego.”

“Just listen to me—”

Someone moved between them. The Spanish boy with the sandy hair—Manuel. “You heard her,” he said, in English. No one else was looking at them yet; they were all involved in their own conversations. “Leave her alone.”

Cristina turned and walked out of the room.

She kept her back straight. She refused to hurry her steps—not for anyone. She was a Rosales. She didn’t want the Centurions’ pity.

She pushed through the front door and clattered down the stairs. She wished Emma was awake. They could go to the training room and kick and punch away their frustrations.

She strode on unseeing until she nearly collided with the twisted quickbeam tree that still grew in the shabby grass in front of the Institute. It had been put there by faeries—a whipping tree, used for punishment. It remained even when the punishment was over, when rain had washed Emma’s blood from the grass and stones.

“Cristina, please.” She whirled. Diego was there, apparently having decided to ignore Manuel. He really did look awful. The shadows under his eyes looked as if they had been cut there.

He had carried her across this grass, she remembered, only two weeks ago, when she had been injured. He had held her tightly, whispering her name over and over. And all the time, he’d been engaged to someone else.

She leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “You really don’t understand why I don’t want to see you?”

“Of course I understand it,” he said. “But it’s not what you think.”

“Really? You’re not engaged? You’re not supposed to marry Zara?”

“She is my fiancée,” he said. “But—Cristina—it’s more complicated than it looks.”

“I really don’t see how it could be.”

“I wrote to her,” he said. “After you and I got back together. I told her it was over.”

“I don’t think she got your letter,” Cristina said.

Diego shoved his hands into his hair. “No, she did. She told me she read it, and that’s why she came here. Honestly, I never thought she would. I thought it was over when I didn’t hear from her. I thought—I really thought I was free.”

“So you broke up with her last night?”

He hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, any thought that Cristina had been harboring in the deepest recesses of her heart, any fleeting hope that this was all a mistake, vanished like mist burned away by the sun. “I didn’t,” he said. “I can’t.”

“But you just said you did, in your letter—”

“Things are different now,” he said. “Cristina, you’ll have to trust me.”

“No,” she said. “No, I won’t. I already trusted you, despite the evidence of my own ears. I don’t know if anything you said before was true. I don’t know if the things you’ve said about Jaime are true. Where is he?”

Diego dropped his hands to his sides. He looked defeated. “There are things I cannot tell you. I wish you could believe me.”

“What’s going on?” Zara’s high, clear voice cut across the dry air; she was walking toward them, her Centurion pin gleaming in the sun.

Diego glanced at her, a look of pain on his face. “I was talking to Cristina.”

“I see that.” Zara’s mouth was set into a little smile, a look that never seemed to leave her face. She swept a glance over Cristina and put her hand on Diego’s shoulder. “Come back inside,” she said. “We’re figuring out what grids we’re going to search today. You know this area well. Time to help out. Tick, tick.” She tapped her watch.

Diego looked once at Cristina, then turned back to his fiancée. “All right.”

With a last superior glance, Zara slipped her hand into Diego’s and half-dragged him back toward the Institute. Cristina watched them go, the coffee she had drunk roiling in her stomach like acid.

* * *

To Emma’s disappointment, the Centurions refused to allow any of the Blackthorns to accompany them on the search for Malcolm’s body. “No, thanks,” said Zara, who appeared to have appointed herself unofficial head of the Centurions. “We’ve trained for this, and dealing with less experienced Shadowhunters on this kind of mission is just distracting.”

Emma glared at Diego, who was standing next to Zara. He looked away.

They were gone almost all day, returning in time for dinner, which the Blackthorns wound up making. It was spaghetti—lots of spaghetti. “I miss the vampire pizza,” Emma muttered, glaring at an enormous bowl of red sauce.

Julian snorted. He was standing over a pot of boiling water; the steam rose and curled his hair into damp ringlets. “Maybe they’ll at least tell us if they found anything.”

“I doubt it,” said Ty, who was preparing to set the table. It was an activity he’d enjoyed since he was little; he loved setting up each utensil in precise and even repeated order. Livvy was helping him; Kit had skulked off and was nowhere to be found. He seemed to resent the intrusion of the Centurions more than anyone else. Emma couldn’t really blame him—he’d barely been adjusting to the Institute as it was, when in swept these people whose needs he was expected to cater to.

Ty was mostly right. Dinner was a large, lively affair; Zara had somehow managed to wedge herself in at the head of the table, ousting Diana, and gave them an abbreviated account of the day—sections of ocean had been searched, nothing significant found, though trace elements of dark magic indicated a point farther out in the ocean where sea demons clustered. “We’ll approach it tomorrow,” she said, elegantly forking up spaghetti.

“How are you searching?” Emma asked, her eagerness to know more about advanced Shadowhunting techniques outweighing her dislike of Zara. After all, as Cristina had said earlier, the situation wasn’t really Zara’s fault; it was Diego’s. “Do you have special gear?”

“Unfortunately, that information is proprietary to the Scholomance,” Zara said with a cool smile. “Even for someone who’s supposed to be the best Shadowhunter of her generation.”

Emma flushed and sat back in her chair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know how people talk about you in Idris,” said Zara. Her tone was careless, but her hazel eyes were dagger points. “Like you’re the new Jace Herondale.”

“But we still have the old Jace Herondale,” said Ty, puzzled.

“It’s a saying,” Julian said, in a low voice. “It means, like, someone just as good.”

Normally he would have said, I’ll draw it for you, Ty. Visual representations of sometimes-confusing expressions, like “he laughed his head off” or “the best thing since sliced bread” resulted in hilarious drawings by Julian with explanatory notes about the real meaning of the expression underneath.

The fact that he didn’t say it made Emma look at him a little more sharply. His hackles were up because of the Centurions, not that she blamed him. When Julian didn’t trust someone, all his protective instincts kicked into gear: to hide Livvy’s love of computers, Ty’s unusual way of processing information, Dru’s horror movies. Emma’s rule breaking.

Julian raised his glass of water with a brilliantly artificial smile. “Shouldn’t all Nephilim information be shared? We fight the same demons. If one branch of Nephilim has an advantage, isn’t that unfair?”

“Not necessarily,” said Samantha Larkspear, the female half of the twin Centurions Emma had met the day before. Her brother’s name was Dane; they shared the same thin, whippety faces, pale skin, and straight dark hair. “Not everyone has the training to use every tool, and a weapon you don’t know how to wield is wasted.”

“Everyone can learn,” said Mark.

“Then perhaps one day you will attend the Scholomance and be trained,” said the Centurion from Mumbai. Her name was Divya Joshi.

“It’s unlikely the Scholomance would accept someone with faerie blood,” said Zara.

“The Clave is hidebound,” said Diego. “That is true.”

“I dislike the word ‘hidebound,’ ” said Zara. “What they are is traditional. They seek to restore the separations between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that have always been in place. Mixing creates confusion.”

“I mean, look at what’s happened with Alec Lightwood and Magnus Bane,” said Samantha, waving her fork. “Everyone knows that Magnus uses his influence with the Lightwoods to get the Inquisitor to let Downworlders off the hook. Even for things like murder.”

“Magnus would never do that,” Emma said. She’d stopped eating, though she’d been starving when they’d sat down.

“And the Inquisitor doesn’t try Downworlders—only Shadowhunters,” said Julian. “Robert Lightwood couldn’t ‘let Downworlders off the hook’ if he wanted to.”

“Whatever,” said Jessica Beausejours, a Centurion with a faint French accent and rings on all her fingers. “The Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance will be shut down soon enough.”

“No one’s shutting it down,” said Cristina. Her mouth was a tight line. “That’s a rumor.”

“Speaking of rumors,” said Samantha, “I heard Bane tricked Alec Lightwood into falling in love with him using a spell.” Her eyes glittered, as if she couldn’t decide if she found the idea appealing or disgusting.

“That’s not true,” said Emma, her heart beating fast. “That is a lie.”

Manuel raised an eyebrow at her. Dane laughed. “I wonder what will happen when it wears off, in that case,” he said. “Bad news for Downworlders if the Inquisitor’s not so friendly.”

Ty looked bewildered. Emma could hardly blame him. None of Zara’s circle seemed to care about facts. “Didn’t you hear Julian?” he said. “The Inquisitor doesn’t supervise cases where Downworlders have broken the Accords. He doesn’t—”

Livvy put her hand on his wrist.

“We all support the Accords here,” said Manuel, leaning back in his chair.

“The Accords were a fine idea,” said Zara. “But every tool needs sharpening. The Accords require refining. Warlocks should be regulated, for instance. They are too powerful, and too independent. My father plans to suggest a registry of warlocks to the Council. Every warlock must give their information to the Clave and be tracked. If successful, it will be expanded to all Downworlders. We can’t have them running around without us being able to keep tabs on them. Look what happened with Malcolm Fade.”

“Zara, you sound ridiculous,” said Jon Cartwright, one of the older Centurions—about twenty-two, Emma would have guessed. Jace and Clary’s age. The only thing Emma could remember about him was that he had a girlfriend, Marisol. “Like an ancient Council member, afraid of change.”

“Agreed,” said Rayan. “We’re students and fighters, not lawmakers. Whatever your father may be doing, it’s not relevant to the Scholomance.”

Zara looked indignant. “It’s just a registry—”

“Am I the only one who’s read X-Men and realizes why this is a bad idea?” said Kit. Emma had no idea when he’d reappeared, but he had, and was idly twirling pasta on his fork.

Zara began to frown, then brightened. “You’re Kit Herondale,” she said. “The lost Herondale.”

“I didn’t realize I was lost,” said Kit. “I never felt lost.”

“It must be exciting, suddenly finding out you’re a Herondale,” Zara said. Emma restrained the urge to point out that if you didn’t know much about Shadowhunters, finding out you were a Herondale was about as exciting as finding out you were a new species of snail. “I met Jace Herondale once.”

She looked around expectantly.

“Wow,” said Kit. He really was a Herondale, Emma thought. He’d managed to insert Jace-levels of indifference and sarcasm into one word.

“I bet you can’t wait to get to the Academy,” said Zara. “Since you’re a Herondale, you’ll certainly excel. I could put in a good word for you.”

Kit was silent. Diana cleared her throat. “So what are your plans for tomorrow, Zara, Diego? Is there anything the Institute can do to assist you?”

“Now that you mention it,” Zara said, “it would be incredibly useful . . .”

Everyone, even Kit, leaned forward with interest.

“If, while we were gone during the day, you did our laundry. Ocean water does ruin clothes quickly, don’t you find?”

* * *

Night fell with the suddenness of shadows in the desert, but despite the sound of waves coming in through her window, Cristina couldn’t sleep.

Thoughts of home tore at her. Her mother, her cousins. Better, past days with Diego and Jaime: She remembered a weekend she had spent with them once, tracking a demon in the dilapidated ghost town of Guerrero Viejo. The dreamlike landscape all around them: half-drowned houses, feathery weeds, buildings long discolored by water. She had lain on a rock with Jaime under uncountable stars, and they had told each other what they wanted most in the world: she, to end the Cold Peace; he, to bring honor back to his family.

Exasperated, she got out of bed and went downstairs, with only witchlight to illuminate her steps. The stairs were dark and quiet, and she found her way out the back door of the Institute with little noise.

Moonlight swept across the small dirt lot where the Institute’s car was parked. Behind the lot was a garden, where white marble classical statues poked incongruously out of the desert sand.

Cristina missed her mother’s rose garden with a sudden intensity. The scent of the flowers, sweeter than desert sage; her mother walking between the orderly rows. Cristina used to joke that her mother must have a warlock’s help in keeping the flowers blooming even during the hottest summer.

She moved farther away from the house, toward the rows of hollyleaf cherry and alder trees. Drawing closer to them, she saw a shadow and froze, realizing she had brought no weapons with her. Stupid, she thought—the desert was full of dangers, not all of them supernatural. Mountain lions didn’t distinguish between mundanes and Nephilim.

It wasn’t a mountain lion. The shadow moved closer; she tensed, then relaxed. It was Mark.

The moonlight turned his hair silvery white. His feet were bare under the hems of his jeans. Astonishment crossed his face as he saw her; then he walked up to her without hesitation and put a hand on her cheek.

“Am I imagining you?” he said. “I was thinking about you, and now here you are.”

It was such a Mark thing to say, a frank statement of his emotions. Because faeries couldn’t lie, she thought, and he had grown up around them, and learned how to speak of love and loving with Kieran, who was proud and arrogant but always truthful. Faeries did not associate truth with weakness and vulnerability, as humans did.

It made Cristina feel braver. “I was thinking about you, too.”

Mark feathered his thumb across her cheekbone. His palm was warm on her skin, cradling her head. “What about me?”

“The look on your face when Zara and her friends were talking about Downworlders during dinner. Your pain . . .”

He laughed without humor. “I should have expected it. Had I been an active Shadowhunter for the past five years, I would doubtless be more used to such talk.”

“Because of the Cold Peace?”

He nodded. “When a decision like that is made by a government, it emboldens those who are already prejudiced to speak their deepest thoughts of hate. They assume they are simply brave enough to say what everyone really thinks.”

“Mark—”

“In Zara’s mind, I am hated,” said Mark. His eyes were shadowed. “I am sure her father is part of that group that demands Helen remain prisoned on Wrangel Island.”

“She will come back,” Cristina said. “Now that you have come home, and fought so loyally for Shadowhunters, surely they will let her go.”

Mark shook his head, but all he said was: “I am sorry about Diego.”

She reached up and put her hand over his, his fingers light and cool as willow branches. She wanted to touch him more, abruptly, wanted to test the feel of his skin under his shirt, the texture of his jawline, where he had clearly never shaved and never needed to. “No,” she said. “You’re not, not really. Are you?”

“Cristina,” Mark breathed, a little helplessly. “Can I . . . ?”

Cristina shook her head—if she actually let him ask, she’d never be able to say no. “We can’t,” she said. “Emma.”

“You know that’s not real,” Mark said. “I love Emma, but not like that.”

“But it’s important, what she’s doing.” She drew away from Mark. “Julian has to believe it.”

He looked at her in puzzlement and she remembered: Mark didn’t know. Not about the curse, not that Julian loved Emma, or that Emma loved him.

“Everyone has to believe it. And besides,” she added hastily, “there’s Kieran. You only just ended things with him. And I just ended things with Diego.”

He only looked more puzzled. She supposed faeries had never adopted the human ideas of giving each other space and having time to get over relationships.

And maybe they were stupid ideas. Maybe love was love and you should take it when you found it. Certainly her body was screaming at her mind to shut up: She wanted to put her arms around Mark, wanted to hold him as he held her, feel his chest against hers as his expanded with breath.

Something echoed out in the darkness. It sounded like the snap of an enormous branch, followed by a slow, dragging noise. Cristina whirled, reaching for her balisong. But it was inside, on her nightstand.

“Do you think it’s the Centurions’ night patrol?” she whispered to Mark.

He was looking out into the darkness too, narrow-eyed. “No. That was not a human noise.” He took out two seraph blades and pressed one into her hand. “Nor was it an animal.”

The weight of the blade in Cristina’s hand was familiar and comforting. After a moment’s pause to apply a Night Vision rune, she followed Mark into the desert shadows.

* * *

Kit opened his bedroom door a crack and peered through.

The hallway was deserted. No Ty sitting outside his door, reading or lying on the floor with headphones on. No lights seeping from underneath other doors. Just the dim glow of the rows of white lights that ran across the ceiling.

He half-expected alarms to go off as he crept through the silent house and opened the front door of the Institute, some kind of shrieking whistle or burst of lights. But there was nothing—just the sound of an ordinary heavy door creaking open and shut behind him.

He was outside, on the porch above the steps that led toward the trampled grass in front of the Institute, and then the road to the highway. The view over the cliff and down to the sea was bathed in moonlight, silver and black, a white path slashing across the water.

It was beautiful here, Kit thought, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder. But not beautiful enough to stay. You couldn’t trade a beach view for freedom.

He started down the stairs. His foot hit the first step and went out from under him as he was yanked backward. His duffel bag went flying. A hand was gripping his shoulder, hard; Kit wrenched himself sideways, nearly falling down the steps, and flung out his arm, colliding with something solid. He heard a muffled grunt—there was a barely visible figure, just a shadow among the shadows, looming over him, blocking the moon.

A second later they were both falling, Kit thudding to the porch on his back, the dark shadow collapsing on top of him. He felt sharp knees and elbows poke into him and a moment later a light flared: one of those stupid little stones they called witchlights.

“Kit,” said a voice above him—Tiberius’s voice. “Stop thrashing.” Ty shook his dark hair out of his face. He was kneeling over Kit—sitting on his solar plexus, pretty much, which made it hard to breathe—dressed all in black the way Shadowhunters did when they went out to fight. Only his hands and face were bare, very white in the darkness.

“Were you running away?” he said.

“I was going for a walk,” said Kit.

“No, you’re lying,” said Ty, eyeing Kit’s duffel bag. “You were running away.”

Kit sighed and let his head fall back with a thump. “Why do you care what I do?”

“I’m a Shadowhunter. We help people.”

“Now you’re lying,” said Kit, with conviction.

Ty smiled. It was a genuine, light-up-your-face-type smile, and it made Kit remember the first time he’d met Ty. Ty hadn’t been sitting on him then, but he had been holding a dagger to Kit’s throat.

Kit had looked at him and forgotten the knife and thought, Beautiful.

Beautiful like all the Shadowhunters were beautiful, like moonlight shearing off the edges of broken glass: lovely and deadly. Beautiful things, cruel things, cruel in that way that only people who absolutely believed in the rightness of their cause could be cruel.

“I need you,” Ty said. “You might be surprised to hear that.”

“I am,” Kit agreed. He wondered if anyone was going to come running. He couldn’t hear approaching feet, or voices.

“What happened to the night patrol?” he demanded.

“They’re probably half a mile from here,” said Ty. “They’re trying to keep demons from getting near the Institute, not keep you from getting out. Now do you want to know what I need you for, or not?”

Almost against his will, Kit was curious. He propped himself up on his elbows and nodded. Ty was sitting on him as casually as if Kit was a sofa, but his fingers—long, quick fingers, deft with a knife, Kit recalled—hovered near his weapons belt. “You’re a criminal,” Ty said. “Your father was a con man and you wanted to be like him. Your duffel bag is probably full of things you stole from the Institute.”

“It . . . ,” Kit began, and trailed off as Ty reached over, yanked the zipper on the bag down, and eyed the cache of stolen daggers, boxes, scabbards, candlesticks, and anything else Kit had scavenged revealed in the moonlight. “. . . might be,” Kit concluded. “What’s that got to do with you, anyway? None of it’s yours.”

“I want to solve crimes,” Ty said. “To be a detective. But nobody here cares about that sort of thing.”

“Didn’t you just all catch a murderer?”

“Malcolm sent a note,” Ty said in a withering tone, as if he were disappointed that Malcolm had ruined crime-solving with his confession. “And then he admitted he did it.”

“That does rather narrow down the list of suspects,” Kit said. “Look, if you need me so you can arrest me for fun, I feel I should point out it’s the sort of thing you can only do once.”

“I don’t want to arrest you. I want a partner. Someone who knows about crimes and people who commit them so they can help me.”

A lightbulb went off in Kit’s head. “You want a—wait, you’ve been sleeping outside my room because you want a sort of Watson for your Sherlock Holmes?”

Ty’s eyes lit up. They still moved restlessly around Kit as if he were reading him, examining him, never quite meeting Kit’s own, but that didn’t dim their glow. “You know about them?”

Everyone in the whole world knows about them, Kit almost said, but instead only said, “I’m not going to be anybody’s Watson. I don’t want to solve crimes. I don’t care about crimes. I don’t care if they’re being committed, or not committed—”

“Don’t think of them as crimes. Think of them as mysteries. Besides, what else are you going to do? Run away? And go where?”

“I don’t care—”

“You do, though,” said Ty. “You want to live. Just like everyone else does. You don’t want to be trapped, is all.” He cocked his head to the side, his eyes a depthless almost-white in the witchlight glow. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and it was the only illumination.

“How’d you know I was going to run away tonight?”

“Because you were getting used to it here,” said Ty. “You were getting used to us. But the Centurions, you don’t like them. Livvy noticed it first. And after what Zara said today about you going to the Academy—you must feel like you’re not going to have any choices about what you do, after this.”

It was true, surprisingly so. Kit couldn’t find the words to explain how he’d felt at the dinner table. As if becoming a Shadowhunter meant being shoved into a machine that would chew him up and spit out a Centurion.

“I look at them,” he said, “and I think, ‘I can’t possibly be like them, and they can’t stand anyone different.’ ”

“You don’t have to go to the Academy,” said Ty. “You can stay with us as long as you want.”

Kit doubted Ty had the authority to make a promise like that, but he appreciated it regardless. “As long as I help you solve mysteries,” he said. “How often do you have mysteries to solve, or do I have to wait until another warlock goes crazypants?”

Ty leaned against one of the pillars. His hands fluttered at his sides like night butterflies. “Actually, there’s a mystery going on right now.”

Kit was intrigued despite himself. “What is it?”

“I think they’re not here for the reason they claim they are. I think they’re up to something,” Ty said. “And they’re definitely lying to us.”

“Who’s lying?”

Ty’s eyes sparkled. “The Centurions, of course.”

* * *

The next day was blistering hot, one of those rare days when the air seemed to stand still and the proximity of the ocean offered no relief. When Emma arrived, late, for breakfast in the dining room, the rarely used ceiling fans were whirling full speed.

“Was it a sand demon?” Dane Larkspear was asking Cristina. “Akvan and Iblis demons are common in the desert.”

“We know that,” said Julian. “Mark already said it was a sea demon.”

“It slithered off the moment we shone witchlight upon it,” said Mark. “But it left behind a stink of seawater, and wet sand.”

“I can’t believe there aren’t perimeter wards here,” Zara said. “Why has no one ever seen to it? I ought to ask Mr. Blackthorn—”

“The perimeter wards failed to keep out Sebastian Morgenstern,” said Diana. “They weren’t used again after that. Perimeter wards rarely work.”

She sounded as if she were struggling to keep her temper. Emma couldn’t blame her.

Zara looked at her with a sort of superior pity. “Well, with all these sea demons crawling up out of the ocean—which they wouldn’t be doing if Malcolm Fade’s body wasn’t in there somewhere, you know—I think they’re called for. Don’t you?”

There was a murmur of voices: most of the Centurions, except for Diego, Jon, and Rayan, seemed to be in agreement. As they made plans to set the wards up that morning, Emma tried to catch Julian’s eye to share his annoyance, but he was looking away from her, toward Mark and Cristina. “What were you two doing outside last night, anyway?”

“We couldn’t sleep,” Mark said. “We bumped into each other.”

Zara smiled. “Of course you did.” She turned to whisper something into Samantha’s ear. Both girls giggled.

Cristina blushed angrily. Emma saw Julian’s hand tighten on his fork. He laid it down slowly next to his plate.

Emma bit her lip. If Mark and Cristina wanted to date, she’d give them her blessing. She’d stage some kind of breakup with Mark; their “relationship” had already done a lot of what it needed to do. Julian could barely look at her anymore, and that was what she’d wanted—wasn’t it?

He didn’t seem happy about the idea that she and Mark might be over, though. Not even a little bit. If he was even thinking about that. There had been a time when she could always tell what Julian had on his mind. Now, she could read only the surface of his thoughts: His deeper feelings were hidden.

Diego looked from Mark to Cristina and stood up, shoving back his chair. He walked out of the room. After a moment, Emma dropped her napkin onto her plate and followed.

He had stomped all the way to the back door and out into the parking lot before he noticed she was following him—a sure sign he was upset, given Diego’s level of training. He turned to face her, his dark eyes glittering. “Emma,” he said. “I understand you wish to scold me. You have for days. But this is not a good time.”

“And what would be a good time? You want to pencil it into your day planner under Never Going to Happen?” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I thought. Come on.”

She stalked around the side of the Institute, Diego reluctantly following. They reached a spot where a small mound of dirt rose between cacti, familiar to Emma from long experience. “You stand there,” she said, pointing. He gave her a disbelieving look. “So we won’t be seen from the windows,” she explained, and he grouchily did as she’d asked, crossing his arms across his muscular chest.

“Emma,” he said. “You do not and cannot understand, and I cannot explain to you—”

“I bet you can’t,” she said. “Look, you know I haven’t always been your biggest fan, but I thought a lot better of you than this.”

A muscle twitched in his face. His jaw was rigid. “As I said. You cannot understand, and I cannot explain.”

“It would be one thing,” Emma said, “if you’d just been two-timing, which I still would think was despicable, but—Zara? You’re the reason she’s here. You know we aren’t— You know Julian has to be careful.”

“He should not worry too much,” said Diego tonelessly. “Zara is only interested in what profits her. I do not think she has any interest in Arthur’s secrets, only in getting attention from the Council for completing this mission successfully.”

“Easy for you to assume.”

“I have reasons for everything I do, Emma,” he said. “Maybe Cristina does not know them now, but one day she will.”

“Diego, everyone has reasons for everything they do. Malcolm had reasons for what he did.”

Diego’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “Do not compare me to Malcolm Fade.”

“Because he was a warlock?” Emma’s voice was low, dangerous. “Because you think like your fiancée does? About the Cold Peace? About warlocks, and faeries? About Mark?”

“Because he was a murderer.” Diego spoke through his teeth. “Whatever else you think of me, Emma, I am not a senseless bigot. I do not believe Downworlders are lesser, to be registered or to be tortured—”

“But you admit Zara does,” said Emma.

“I have never told her anything,” he said.

“Maybe you can understand why I’m wondering how you could prefer her to Cristina,” Emma said.

Diego tensed—and shouted. Emma had forgotten how fast he could move, despite his bulk: He leaped back, cursing and kicking out with his left foot. Muttering in pain, he kicked off his shoe. Columns of ants marched over his ankle, scurrying up his leg.

“Oh, dear,” said Emma. “You must have stood on a red-ant hill. You know, accidentally.”

Diego slapped the ants away, still cursing. He’d kicked away part of the top of the mound of dirt, and ants were pouring out of it.

Emma stepped back. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re not poisonous.”

“You tricked me into standing on an anthill?” He had shoved his foot back into his shoe, but Emma knew he’d have itchy bites for a few days unless he used an iratze.

“Cristina made me promise not to touch you, so I had to get creative,” Emma said. “You shouldn’t have lied to my best friend. Desgraciado mentiroso.”

He stared at her.

Emma sighed. “I hope that meant what I think it meant. I’d hate to have just called you a rusty bucket or something.”

“No,” he said. To her surprise, he sounded wearily amused. “It meant what you thought it meant.”

“Good.” She stalked back toward the house. She was almost out of earshot when he called after her. She turned and saw him standing where she’d left him, apparently heedless of the ants or the hot sun beating down on his shoulders.

“Believe me, Emma,” he said, loudly enough for her to hear him, “no one hates me more than I hate myself right now.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked. Emma didn’t shout, but she knew the words carried. He looked at her for a long moment, silently, before she walked away.

* * *

The day stayed hot until the late afternoon, when a storm rolled in over the ocean. The Centurions had left before noon, and Emma couldn’t help but stare out the windows anxiously as the sun set behind a mass of black and gray clouds on the horizon, shot through with heat lightning.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Dru asked, her hands worrying the hilt of her throwing knife. “Aren’t they out in a boat? It looks like a bad storm.”

“We don’t know what they’re doing,” Emma said. She almost added that thanks to the Centurions’ snobbish desire to conceal their activities from the Institute’s Shadowhunters, it would be very difficult to rescue them if something dangerous did happen, but she saw the look on Dru’s face and didn’t. Dru had practically hero-worshipped Diego—despite everything, she was probably still fond of him.

Emma felt briefly guilty about the ants.

“They’ll be fine,” said Cristina reassuringly. “Centurions are very careful.”

Livvy called Dru over to fence with her, and Dru trailed off toward where Ty, Kit, and Livvy stood together on a training mat. Somehow Kit had been convinced to don training gear. He looked like a mini Jace, Emma thought with amusement, with his blond curls and angular cheekbones.

Behind them, Diana was showing Mark a training stance. Emma blinked—Julian had been there, a moment ago. She was sure of it.

“He went to check on your uncle,” Cristina said. “Something about him not liking storms.”

“No, it’s Tavvy who doesn’t like . . .” Emma’s voice trailed off. Tavvy was sitting in the corner of the training room, reading a book. She remembered all the times Julian had disappeared during storms, claiming Tavvy was frightened of them.

She slid Cortana into its sheath. “I’ll be back.”

Cristina watched her go with troubled eyes. No one else seemed to notice as she slipped out the training room door and down the hallway. The massive windows spaced along the corridor let in a peculiar gray light, hazed with pinpoints of silver.

She reached the door to the attic and ran up the stairs; though she didn’t bother to conceal the sound of her footfalls, neither Arthur nor Julian seemed to have noticed her when she entered the main attic room.

The windows were tightly closed and sealed with paper, all except one, over the desk at which Arthur sat. The paper had been torn away from it, showing clouds racing across the sky, colliding and untangling like thick rounds of gray and black yarn.

Trays of uneaten food were scattered on Arthur’s several desks. The room smelled like rot and mildew. Emma swallowed, wondering if she’d made a mistake in coming.

Arthur was slumped in his desk chair, lank hair falling over his eyes. “I want them to go,” he was saying. “I don’t like having them here.”

“I know.” Julian spoke with a gentleness that surprised Emma. How could he not be angry? She was angry—angry about everything that had conspired to force Julian to grow up years too fast. That had deprived him of a childhood. How could he look at Arthur and not think of that? “I want them to go too, but there’s nothing I can do to send them away. We have to be patient.”

“I need my medicine,” Arthur whispered. “Where is Malcolm?”

Emma winced at the look on Julian’s face—and Arthur seemed suddenly to notice her. He raised his eyes, their gaze fixing on her—no, not on her. On her sword.

“Cortana,” he said. “Made by Wayland the Smith, the legendary forger of Excalibur and Durendal. Said to choose its bearer. When Ogier raised it to slay the son of Charlemagne on the field, an angel came and broke the sword and said to him, ‘Mercy is better than revenge.’ ”

Emma looked at Julian. It was shadowy in the attic, but she could see his hands clenched at his sides. Was he angry at her for following him?

“But Cortana has never been broken,” she said.

“It’s only a story,” Julian said.

“There is truth in stories,” said Arthur. “There is truth in one of your paintings, boy, or in a sunset or a couplet from Homer. Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact. If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.”

“I understand, Uncle.” Julian sounded tired. “I’ll be back later. Please eat something. All right?”

Arthur lowered his face into his hands, shaking his head. Julian began to move across the room to the stairs; halfway there, he caught Emma’s wrist, drawing her after him.

He exerted no real force, but she followed him anyway, shocked into compliance simply by the physical sensation of his hand on her wrist. He only touched her to apply runes these days—she missed those friendly touches she was used to from the years of their friendship: a hand brushing her arm, a tap on her shoulder. Their secret way of communicating: fingers drawings words and letters on each other’s skin, silent and invisible to everyone else.

It seemed like forever. And now sparks were racing up her arm from that one point of contact, making her body feel hot, stinging, and confused. His fingers looped her wrist as they went out the front door.

When it closed behind them, he let go, turning to face her. The air felt heavy and dense, pressing against Emma’s skin. Mist obscured the highway. She could see the heaving surfaces of gray waves slapping against the shore; from here, each looked as big as a humpbacked whale. She could see the moon, struggling to show itself between clouds.

Julian was breathing hard, as if he’d been running flat out for miles. The dampness of the air stuck his shirt to his chest as he leaned back against the wall of the Institute. “Why did you come to the attic?” he said.

“I’m sorry.” She spoke stiffly. She hated being stiff around Jules. They’d rarely had a fight that didn’t end in a casual apology or joking. I had this feeling, that you needed me, and I couldn’t not come. “I understand if you’re angry—”

“I’m not angry.” Lightning sizzled out over the water, briefly whitening the sky. “That’s the hell of it, I can’t be angry, can I? Mark doesn’t know a thing about you and me, he isn’t trying to hurt me, none of it’s his fault. And you, you did the right thing. I can’t hate you for that.” He pushed off from the wall, took a restless few paces. The energy of the pent-up storm seemed to crackle off his skin. “But I can’t stand it. What do I do, Emma?” He raked his hands through his hair; the humidity was making it curl into ringlets that clung to his fingers. “We can’t live like this.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll go away. It’s only a few months. I’ll be eighteen. We’ll take our travel years away from each other. We’ll forget.”

“Will we?” His mouth twisted into an impossible smile.

“We have to.” Emma had begun to shiver; it was cold, the clouds above them roiling like the smoke of a scorched sky.

“I should never have touched you,” he said. He’d drawn closer to her, or maybe she’d moved closer to him, wanting to take his hands, the way she always had. “I never thought what we had could break so easily.”

“It’s not broken,” she whispered. “We made a mistake—but being together wasn’t the mistake.”

“Most people get to make mistakes, Emma. It doesn’t have to ruin their whole lives.”

She closed her eyes, but she could still see him. Still feel him, inches away from her, the heat of his body, the scent of cloves that clung to his clothes and hair. It was making her insane, making her knees shake as if she’d just staggered off a roller coaster. “Our lives aren’t ruined.”

His arms went around her. She thought for a moment of resisting, but she was so tired—so tired of fighting what she wanted. She hadn’t thought she’d ever get this, Jules in her arms again, all lean muscle and taut tension, strong painter’s hands smoothing down her back, his fingers tracing letters, words, on her skin.

I A-M R-U-I-N-E-D.

She opened her eyes, appalled. His face was so close it was almost a blur of light and shadow. “Emma,” he said, his arms leashing her, pulling her closer.

And then he was kissing her; they were kissing each other. He drew her against him; he fit her body to his, curves and hollows, muscles and softness. His mouth was open over hers, his tongue running gently along the seam of her lips.

Thunder exploded around them, lightning shattering against the mountains, blazing a path of dry heat across the inside of Emma’s eyelids.

She opened her mouth under his, pressed up against him, her arms wrapping around his neck. He tasted like fire, like spice. He ran his hands down her sides, over her hips. Drew her more firmly against him. He was making a low sound in his throat, a sort of anguished wanting sound.

It felt like forever. It felt like no time at all. His hands molded the shape of her shoulder blades, the curve of her body beneath her rib cage, thumbs arching over the crests of her hips. He lifted her up and against him as if they could fit into each other’s empty spaces, as words spilled from his mouth: frantic, hurried,

“Emma—I need you, always, always think about you, I was wishing you were with me in that goddamned attic and then I turned around and you were there, like you heard me, like you’re always there when I need you . . . .”

Lightning forked again, illuminating the world: Emma could see her hands on Julian’s shirt hem—what the hell was she thinking, was she planning for them both to strip down on the Institute’s front porch? Reality reasserted itself; she pushed away, her heart slamming against her chest.

“Em?” He looked at her, dazed, his eyes sleepy and hot and wanting. It made her swallow hard. But his words echoed in her head: He’d wanted her, and she’d come as if she’d heard him call—she’d felt that wanting, known it, not been able to stop herself.

All these weeks of insisting to herself that the parabatai bond was weakening, and now he was telling her they’d just practically read each other’s minds.

“Mark,” she said, and it was just one word but it was the word, the most brutal reminder of their situation. The sleepy look left his eyes; he whitened, aghast. He raised a hand as if he meant to say something—explain, apologize—and the sky seemed to rip down the middle.

They both turned to stare as the clouds directly above them parted. A shadow grew in the air, darkening as it neared them: the figure of a man, massive and bound in armor, bareback on a red-eyed, foaming brindled horse—black and gray, like the storm clouds overhead.

Julian moved as if to thrust Emma behind him, but she wouldn’t budge. She simply stared as the horse came to a neighing, pawing stop at the foot of the Institute steps. The man looked up at them.

His eyes, like Mark’s, were two different colors, in his case blue and black. His face was terrifyingly familiar. It was Gwyn ap Nudd, the lord and leader of the Wild Hunt. And he did not look pleased.