فصل 2

2

MELANCHOLY WATERS

Cristina stood despairingly in the extremely clean kitchen of the Princewater Street canal house and wished there was something she could tidy up.

She’d washed dishes that didn’t need washing. She’d mopped the floor and set and reset the table. She’d arranged flowers in a vase and then thrown them out, and then retrieved them from the trash and arranged them again. She wanted to make the kitchen nice, the house pretty, but was anyone really going to care if the kitchen was nice and the house was pretty?

She knew they wouldn’t. But she had to do something. She wanted to be with Emma and comfort Emma, but Emma was with Drusilla, who had cried herself to sleep holding Emma’s hands. She wanted to be with Mark, and comfort Mark, but he’d left with Helen, and she could hardly be anything but glad that at last he was getting to spend time with the sister he’d missed for so long.

The front door rattled open, startling Cristina into knocking a dish from the table. It fell to the floor and shattered. She was about to pick it up when she saw Julian come in, closing the door behind him—Locking runes were more common than keys in Idris, but he didn’t reach for his stele, just looked sightlessly from the entryway to the stairs.

Cristina stood frozen. Julian looked like the ghost from a Shakespeare play. He clearly hadn’t changed since the Council Hall; his shirt and jacket were stiff with dried blood.

She never quite knew how to talk to Julian anyway; she knew more about him than was comfortable, thanks to Emma. She knew he was desperately in love with her friend; it was obvious in the way he looked at Emma, spoke to her, in gestures as tiny as handing her a dish across a table. She didn’t know how everyone else didn’t see it too. She’d known other parabatai and they didn’t look at each other like that.

Having such personal information about someone was awkward at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. Julian’s expression was blank; he moved into the hall, and as he walked, his sister’s dried blood flaked off his jacket and drifted to the floor.

If she just stood still, Cristina thought, he might not see her, and he might go upstairs and they’d both be spared an awkward moment. But even as she thought it, the bleakness in his face tugged at her heart. She was in the doorway before she realized she’d moved.

“Julian,” she said quietly.

He didn’t seem startled. He turned to face her as slowly as an automaton winding down. “How are they?” How did you answer that? “They’re well taken care of,” she said finally. “Helen has been here, and Diana, and Mark.” “Ty . . .”

“Is still asleep.” She tugged nervously at her skirt. She’d changed all her clothes since the Council Hall, just to feel clean.

For the first time, he met her eyes. His were shot through with red, though she didn’t remember having seen him cry. Or maybe he had cried when he was holding Livvy—she didn’t want to remember that. “Emma,” he said. “Is she all right? You’d know. She would—tell you.” “She’s with Drusilla. But I’m sure she’d like to see you.”

“But is she all right?”

“No,” Cristina said. “How could she be all right?”

He glanced toward the steps, as if he couldn’t imagine the effort it would take to climb them. “Robert was going to help us,” he said. “Emma and me. You know about us, I know that you do, that you know how we feel.” Cristina hesitated, stunned. She’d never thought Julian would mention any of this to her. “Maybe the next Inquisitor—” “I passed through the Gard on my way back,” Julian said. “They’re already meeting. Most of the Cohort and half the Council. Talking about who’s going to be the next Inquisitor. I doubt it’s going to be someone who will help us. Not after today. I should care,” he said. “But right now I don’t.” A door opened at the top of the steps, and light spilled onto the dark landing. “Julian?” Emma called. “Julian, is that you?” He straightened a little, unconsciously, at the sound of her voice. “I’ll be right there.” He didn’t look at Cristina as he went up the stairs, but he nodded to her, a quick gesture of acknowledgment.

She heard his footsteps die away, his voice mingling with Emma’s. She glanced back at the kitchen. The broken dish lay in the corner. She could sweep it up. It would be the more practical thing to do, and Cristina had always thought of herself as practical.

A moment later she had thrown her gear jacket on over her clothes. Tucking several seraph blades into her weapons belt, she slipped quietly out the door and into the streets of Alicante.

Emma listened to the familiar sound of Julian coming up the stairs. The tread of his feet was like music she had always known, so familiar it had almost stopped being music.

Emma resisted calling out again—she was in Dru’s room, and Dru had just fallen asleep, worn-out, still in the clothes she’d worn to the Council meeting. Emma heard Julian’s step in the hall, and then the sound of a door opening and closing.

Careful not to wake Dru, she slipped out of the room. She knew where Julian was without having to wonder: Down the hall a few doors was Ty’s borrowed bedroom.

Inside, the room was softly lit. Diana sat in an armchair by the head of Ty’s bed, her face tight with grief and weariness. Kit was asleep, propped against the wall, his hands in his lap.

Julian stood by Ty’s bed, looking down, his hands at his sides. Ty slept without restlessness, a drugged sleep, hair dark against the white pillows. Still, even in sleep he kept himself to the left side of the bed, as if leaving the space beside him open for Livvy.

“. . . his cheeks are flushed,” Julian was saying. “Like he has a fever.”

“He doesn’t,” Diana said firmly. “He needs this, Jules. Sleep heals.”

Emma saw the open doubt on Julian’s face. She knew what he was thinking: Sleep didn’t heal me when my mother died, or my father, and it won’t heal this, either. It will always be a wound.

Diana glanced over at Emma. “Dru?” she said.

Julian looked up at that, and his eyes met Emma’s. She felt the pain in his gaze like a blow to her chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Asleep,” she said, almost in a whisper. “It took a little while, but she finally crashed.” “I was in the Silent City,” he said. “We brought Livvy down there. I helped them lay her body out.” Diana reached up to put her hand on his arm. “Jules,” she said quietly. “You need to go and get yourself cleaned up, and get some rest.” “I should stay here,” Julian said in a low voice. “If Ty wakes up and I’m not here—”

“He won’t,” Diana said. “The Silent Brothers are precise with their doses.”

“If he wakes up and you’re standing here covered in Livvy’s blood, Julian, it won’t help anything,” Emma said. Diana looked at her, clearly surprised by the harshness of her words, but Julian blinked as if coming out of a dream.

Emma held out her hand to him. “Come on,” she said.

The sky was a mixture of dark blue and black, where storm clouds had gathered over the mountains in the distance. Fortunately, the way up to the Gard was lit by witchlight torches. Cristina slipped along beside the path, keeping to the shadows. The air held the ozone tang of an oncoming storm, making her think of the bitter-penny tang of blood.

As she reached the front doors of the Gard, they opened and a group of Silent Brothers emerged. Their ivory robes seemed to glimmer with what looked like raindrops.

Cristina pressed herself back against the wall. She wasn’t doing anything wrong—any Shadowhunter could come to the Gard when they liked—but she instinctively didn’t want to be seen. As the Brothers passed close by her, she saw that it wasn’t rain after all sparkling on their robes but a fine dusting of glass.

They must have been in the Council Hall. She remembered the window smashing inward as Annabel had disappeared. It had been a blur of noise, splintering light: Cristina had been focused on the Blackthorns. On Emma, the look of devastation on her face. On Mark, his body hunched inward as if he were absorbing the force of a physical blow.

The inside of the Gard was quiet. Head down, she walked rapidly down the corridors, following the sound of voices toward the Hall. She veered aside to take the stairs up to the second-floor seats, which jutted out over the rest of the room like the balcony in a theater. There was a crowd of Nephilim milling around on the dais below. Someone (the Silent Brothers?) had cleared away the broken glass and blood. The window was back to normal.

Clear up the evidence all you want, Cristina thought as she knelt down to peer over the railing of the balcony. It still happened.

She could see Horace Dearborn, seated on a high stool. He was a big, bony man, not muscular though his arms and neck were ropy with tendons. His daughter, Zara Dearborn—her hair in a neat braid around her head, her gear immaculate—stood behind him. She didn’t resemble her father much, except perhaps in the tight anger of their expressions and in their passion for the Cohort, a faction within the Clave who believed in the primacy of Shadowhunters over Downworlders, even when it came to breaking the Law.

Crowded around them were other Shadowhunters, young and old. Cristina recognized quite a few Centurions—Manuel Casales Villalobos, Jessica Beausejours, and Samantha Larkspear among them—as well as many other Nephilim who had been carrying Cohort signs at the meeting. There were quite a few, though, who as far as she knew were not members of the Cohort. Like Lazlo Balogh, the craggy head of the Budapest Institute, who had been one of the main architects of the Cold Peace and its punitive measures against Downworlders. Josiane Pontmercy she knew from the Marseilles Institute. Delaney Scarsbury taught at the Academy. A few others she recognized as friends of her mother’s—Trini Castel from the Barcelona Conclave, and Luana Carvalho, who ran the Institute in São Paulo, had both known her when she was a small girl.

They were all Council members. Cristina said a silent prayer of thanks that her mother wasn’t here, that she’d been too busy dealing with an outbreak of Halphas demons in the Alameda Central to attend, trusting Diego to represent her interests.

“There is no time to lose,” Horace said. He exuded a sense of humorless intensity, just like his daughter. “We are without an Inquisitor, now, at a critical time, when we are under threat from outside and inside the Clave.” He glanced around the room. “We hope that after today’s events, those of you who have doubted our cause will come to be believers.” Cristina felt cold inside. This was more than just a Cohort meeting. This was the Cohort recruiting. Inside the empty Council Hall, where Livvy had died. She felt sick.

“What do you think you’ve learned, exactly, Horace?” said a woman with an Australian accent. “Be clear with us, so we’re all understanding the same thing.” He smirked a little. “Andrea Sedgewick,” he said. “You were in favor of the Cold Peace, if I recall correctly.” She looked pinched. “I don’t think much of Downworlders. But what happened here today . . .”

“We were attacked,” said Dearborn. “Betrayed, attacked, inside and out. I’m sure you all saw what I saw—the sigil of the Unseelie Court?” Cristina remembered. As Annabel had disappeared, borne away through the shattered window of the Hall as if by unseen hands, a single image had flashed on the air: a broken crown.

The crowd murmured their assent. Fear hung in the air like a miasma. Dearborn clearly relished it, almost licking his lips as he gazed around the room. “The Unseelie King, striking at the heart of our homeland. He sneers at the Cold Peace. He knows we are weak. He laughs at our inability to pass stricter Laws, to do anything that would really control the fey—” “No one can control the fey,” said Scarsbury.

“That’s exactly the attitude that’s weakened the Clave all these years,” snapped Zara. Her father smiled at her indulgently.

“My daughter is right,” he said. “The fey have their weaknesses, like all Downworlders. They were not created by God or by our Angel. They have flaws, and we have never exploited them, yet they exploit our mercy and laugh at us behind their hands.” “What are you suggesting?” said Trini. “A wall around Faerie?”

There was a bit of derisive laughter. Faerie existed everywhere and nowhere: It was another plane of existence. No one could wall it off.

Horace narrowed his eyes. “You laugh,” he said, “but iron doors at all the entrances and exits of Faerie would do a great deal to prevent their incursions into our world.” “Is that the goal?” Manuel spoke lazily, as if he didn’t have much invested in the answer. “Close off Faerie?” “There is not only one goal, as you well know, boy,” said Dearborn. Suddenly he smiled, as if something had just occurred to him. “You know of the blight, Manuel. Perhaps you should share your knowledge, since the Consul has not. Perhaps these good people should be aware of what happens when the doors between Faerie and the world are flung wide.” Holding her necklace, Cristina seethed silently as Manuel described the patches of dead blighted earth in Brocelind Forest: the way they resisted Shadowhunter magic, the fact that the same blight seemed to exist in the Unseelie Lands of Faerie. How did he know that? Cristina agonized silently. It had been what Kieran was going to tell the Council, but he hadn’t had the chance. How did Manuel know?

She was only grateful that Diego had done what she had asked him to do, and taken Kieran to the Scholomance. It was clear there would have been no safety for a full-blood faerie here.

“The Unseelie King is creating a poison and beginning to spread it to our world—one that will make Shadowhunters powerless against him. We must move now to show our strength,” said Zara, cutting Manuel off before he was finished.

“As you moved against Malcolm?” said Lazlo. There were titters, and Zara flushed—she had proudly claimed to have slain Malcolm Fade, a powerful warlock, though it had later turned out she had lied. Cristina and the others had hoped the fact would discredit Zara—but now, after what had happened with Annabel, Zara’s lie had become little more than a joke.

Dearborn rose to his feet. “That’s not the issue now, Balogh. The Blackthorns have faerie blood in their family. They brought a creature—a necromantic half-dead thing that slew our Inquisitor and filled the Hall with blood and terror—into Alicante.” “Their sister was killed too,” said Luana. “We saw their grief. They did not plan what happened.”

Cristina could see the calculations going on inside Dearborn’s head—he would have dearly liked to blame the Blackthorns and see them all tossed into the Silent City prisons, but the spectacle of Julian holding Livvy’s body as she died was too raw and visceral for even the Cohort to ignore. “They are victims too,” he said, “of the Fair Folk prince they trusted, and possibly their own faerie kin. Perhaps they can be brought around to see a reasonable point of view. After all, they are Shadowhunters, and that is what the Cohort is about—protecting Shadowhunters. Protecting our own.” He laid a hand on Zara’s shoulder. “When the Mortal Sword is restored, I am sure Zara will be happy to lay any doubts you have about her accomplishments to rest.” Zara flushed and nodded. Cristina thought she looked guilty as sin, but the rest of the crowd had been distracted by the mention of the Sword.

“The Mortal Sword restored?” said Trini. She was a deep believer in the Angel and his power, as Cristina’s family was too. She looked anxious now, her thin hands working in her lap. “Our irreplaceable link to the Angel Raziel—you believe it will be returned to us?” “It will be restored,” Dearborn said smoothly. “Jia will be meeting with the Iron Sisters tomorrow. As it was forged, so can it be reforged.” “But it was forged in Heaven,” protested Trini. “Not the Adamant Citadel.”

“And Heaven let it break,” said Dearborn, and Cristina suppressed a gasp. How could he claim such a brazen thing? Yet the others clearly trusted him. “Nothing can shatter the Mortal Sword save Raziel’s will. He looked upon us and he saw we were unworthy. He saw that we had turned away from his message, from our service to angels, and were serving Downworlders instead. He broke the sword to warn us.” His eyes glittered with a fanatic light. “If we prove ourselves worthy again, Raziel will allow the Sword to be reforged. I have no doubts.” How dare he speak for Raziel? How dare he speak as if he were God? Cristina shook with fury, but the others seemed to be looking at him as if he offered them a light in darkness. As if he were their only hope.

“And how do we prove ourselves worthy?” said Balogh in a more somber voice.

“We must remember that Shadowhunters were chosen,” said Horace. “We must remember that we have a mandate. We stand first in the face of evil, and therefore we come first. Let Downworlders look to their own. If we work together with strong leadership—” “But we don’t have strong leadership,” said Jessica Beausejours, one of Zara’s Centurion friends. “We have Jia Penhallow, and she is tainted by her daughter’s association with faeries and half-bloods.” There was a gasp and a titter. All eyes turned toward Horace, but he only shook his head. “I will not utter a word against our Consul,” he said primly.

More murmurs. Clearly Horace’s pretense of loyalty had won him some support. Cristina tried not to grind her teeth.

“Her loyalty to her family is understandable, even if it may have blinded her,” said Horace. “What matters now is the Laws the Clave passes. We must enforce strict regulations on Downworlders, the strictest of all on the Fair Folk—though there is nothing fair about them.” “That won’t stop the Unseelie King,” said Jessica, though Cristina got the feeling she didn’t so much doubt Horace as desire to prompt him to go further.

“The issue is preventing faeries and other Downworlders from joining the King’s cause,” said Horace. “That is why they need to be observed and, if necessary, incarcerated before they have a chance to betray us.” “Incarcerated?” Trini echoed. “But how—?”

“Oh, there are several ways,” said Horace. “Wrangel Island, for instance, could hold a host of Downworlders. The important thing is that we begin with control. Enforcement of the Accords. Registration of each Downworlder, their name and location. We would start with the faeries, of course.” There was a buzz of approval.

“We will, of course, need a strong Inquisitor to pass and enforce those laws,” said Horace.

“Then let it be you!” cried Trini. “We have lost a Mortal Sword and an Inquisitor tonight; let us at least replace one. We have a quorum—enough Shadowhunters are here to put Horace forward for the Inquisitor’s position. We can hold the vote tomorrow morning. Who is with me?” A chant of “Dearborn! Dearborn!” filled the room. Cristina hung on to the railing of the balcony, her ears ringing. This couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. Trini wasn’t like that. Her mother’s friends weren’t like that. This couldn’t be the real face of the Council.

She scrambled to her feet, unable to stand another second of it, and bolted from the gallery.

Emma’s room was small and painted an incongruously bright shade of yellow. A white-painted four-poster bed dominated the space. Emma tugged Julian toward it, sitting him down gently, and went to bolt the door.

“Why are you locking it?” Julian raised his head. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left Ty’s room.

“You need some privacy, Julian.” She turned toward him; God, the way he looked broke her heart. Blood freckled his skin, darkened his stiff clothes, had dried in patches on his boots.

Livvy’s blood. Emma wished she’d been closer to Livvy in those last moments, paid more attention to her, rather than worrying about the Cohort, about Manuel and Zara and Jessica, about Robert Lightwood and exile, about her own broken, messed-up heart. She wished she had held Livvy one more time, marveling at how tall and grown-up she was, how she had changed from the chubby toddler Emma recalled in her own earliest memories.

“Don’t,” Julian said roughly.

Emma came closer to him; she couldn’t stop herself. He had to look up to meet her eyes. “Don’t do what?” “Blame yourself,” he said. “I can feel you thinking about how you should have done something different. I can’t let those kind of thoughts in, or I’ll go to pieces.” He was sitting on the very edge of the bed, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of lying down. Very gently, Emma touched his face, sliding the palm of her hand across his jaw. He shuddered and caught her wrist, hard.

“Emma,” he said, and for one of the first times in her life, she couldn’t read his voice—it was low and dark, rough without being angry, wanting something, but she didn’t know what.

“What can I do,” she breathed. “What can I do, I’m your parabatai, Julian, I need to help you.”

He was still holding her wrist; his pupils were wide disks, turning the blue-green of his irises into halos. “I make plans one step at a time,” he said. “When everything seems overwhelming, I ask myself what problem needs to be solved first. When that’s solved, the next one. But I can’t even begin here.” “Julian,” she said. “I am your warrior partner. Listen to me now. This is the first step. Get up.”

He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then obliged by rising to his feet. They were standing close together; she could feel the solidity and warmth of him. She pushed his jacket off his shoulders, then reached up and gripped the front of his shirt. It had a texture like oilcloth now, tacky with blood. She pulled at it and it tore open, leaving it hanging from his arms.

Julian’s eyes widened but he made no move to stop her. She ripped away the shirt and tossed it to the ground. She bent down and yanked off his bloodied boots. When she rose up, he was looking at her with eyebrows raised.

“You’re really going to rip my pants off?” he said.

“They have her blood on them,” she said, almost choking on the words. She touched his chest, felt him draw in a breath. She imagined she could feel the jagged edges of his heart beneath the muscle. There was blood on his skin, too: Patches of it had dried on his neck, his shoulder. The places he had held Livvy close against him. “You need to shower,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.” He touched her jaw, lightly, with the tips of his fingers. “Emma,” he said. “We both need to be clean.” He turned and went into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. After a moment, she followed.

He had left the rest of his clothes in a pile on the floor. He was standing in the shower in just his underwear, letting the water run down over his face, his hair.

Swallowing hard, Emma stripped down to her panties and camisole and stepped in after him. The water was scalding hot, filling the small stone space with steam. He stood unmoving under the spray, letting it streak his skin with pale scarlet.

Emma reached around him and turned the temperature down. He watched her, wordless, as she took up a bar of soap and lathered it between her hands. When she put her soapy hands on his body he inhaled sharply as if it hurt, but he didn’t move even an inch.

She scrubbed at his skin, almost digging her fingers in as she scraped at the blood. The water ran pinkish red into the drain. The soap had a strong smell of lemon. His body was hard under her touch, scarred and muscled, not a young boy’s body at all. Not anymore. When had he changed? She couldn’t remember the day, the hour, the moment.

He bent his head and she worked the lather into his hair, stroking her fingers through the curls. When she was done, she tilted back his head, let the water run over both of them until it ran clear. She was soaked to the skin, her camisole sticking to her. She reached around Julian to turn the water off and felt him turn his head into her neck, his lips against her cheek.

She froze. The shower had stopped running, but steam rose up around them. Julian’s chest was rising and falling fast, as if he were close to collapsing after a race. Dry sobs, she realized. He didn’t cry—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. He needed the release of tears, she thought, but he’d forgotten the mechanisms of weeping after so many years of holding back.

She put her arms around him. “It’s all right,” she said. His skin was hot against hers. She swallowed the salt of her own tears. “Julian—” He drew back as she raised her head, and their lips brushed—and it was instant, desperate, more like a tumble over a cliff’s edge than anything else. Their mouths collided, teeth and tongues and heat, jolts shuddering through Emma at the contact.

“Emma.” He sounded stunned, his hands knotting in the soaked material of her camisole. “Can I—?”

She nodded, feeling the muscles in his arms tighten as he swung her up into his arms. She shut her eyes, clutching at him, his shoulders, his hair, her hands slippery with water as he carried her into her bedroom, tumbling her onto the bed. A second later he was above her, braced on his elbows, his mouth devouring hers feverishly. Every movement was fierce, frantic, and Emma knew: These were the tears he couldn’t cry, the words of grief he couldn’t speak. This was the relief he could only allow himself like this, in the annihilation of shared desire.

Frantic gestures rid them of their wet garments. She and Julian were skin to skin now: She was holding him against her body, her heart. His hand slid down, shaking fingers dancing across her hipbone. “Let me—” She knew what he wanted to say: Let me please you, let me make you feel good first. But that wasn’t what she wanted, not now. “Come closer,” she whispered. “Closer—” Her hands curved over the wings of his shoulder blades. He kissed her throat, her collarbones. She felt him flinch, hard, and whispered, “What—?” He had already drawn away from her. Sitting up, he reached for his clothes, pulling them on with shaking hands. “We can’t,” he said, his voice muffled. “Emma, we can’t.” “All right—but, Julian—” She struggled into a sitting position, pulling the blanket up over herself. “You don’t have to go—” He leaned over the edge of the bed to grab his torn and bloodied shirt. He looked at her with a sort of wildness. “I do,” he said. “I really do.” “Julian, don’t—”

But he was already up, retrieving the rest of his clothes, yanking them on while she stared. He was gone without putting his boots on, almost slamming the door behind him. Emma stared into the darkness, as stunned and disoriented as if she had fallen from a great height.

Ty woke up suddenly, like someone exploding through the surface of water, gasping for air. The noise snapped Kit out of his doze—he’d been fitfully sleeping, dreaming about his father, walking around the Shadow Market with a massive wound across his stomach that seeped blood.

“This is how it is, Kit,” he’d been saying. “This is life with the Nephilim.”

Still half-asleep, Kit pushed himself up the wall with one hand. Ty was a motionless shadow on the bed. Diana was no longer there—she was probably catching a few moments of sleep in her own room. He was alone with Ty.

It came to him how completely unprepared he was for all of this. For Livvy’s death, yes, though he’d seen his own father die, and he knew there were still aspects of that loss he hadn’t faced. Never having coped with that loss, how could he cope with this one? And given that he’d never known how to help anyone else, how to offer normal kinds of comfort, how could he help Ty?

He wanted to shout for Julian, but something told him not to—that the shouting might alarm Ty. As Kit’s eyes adjusted, he could see the other boy more clearly: Ty looked . . . “disconnected” might be the best word for it, as if he hadn’t quite alighted back on earth. His soft black hair seemed crumpled, like dark linen, and there were shadows under his eyes.

“Jules?” he said, his voice low.

Kit pushed himself fully upright, his heart beating unevenly. “It’s me,” he said. “Kit.”

He had braced himself for Ty’s disappointment, but Ty only looked at him with wide gray eyes. “My bag,” Ty said. “Where is it? Is it over there?” Kit was too stunned to speak. Did Ty remember what had happened? Would it be worse if he did or didn’t?

“My duffel bag,” Ty said. There was definite strain in his voice now. “Over there—I need it.”

The duffel bag was under the second bed. As Kit went to retrieve it, he glanced out at the view—the crystal spires of the demon towers reaching toward the sky, the water glimmering like ice in the canals, the walls of the city and the fields beyond. He had never been in a place so beautiful or so unreal-looking.

He carried the bag over to Ty, who was sitting with his legs dangling over the side of the bed. Ty took the duffel and started to rummage through it.

“Do you want me to get Julian?” Kit said.

“Not right now,” Ty said.

Kit had no idea what to do. He’d never in his entire life had so little idea what to do, in fact. Not when he’d found a golem examining the ice cream in his fridge at four a.m. when he was ten. Not when a mermaid had camped out for weeks on his sofa when he was twelve and spent every day eating goldfish crackers.

Not even when he’d been attacked by Mantid demons. There had been an instinct then, a Shadowhunter sense that had kicked in and propelled his body into action.

Nothing was propelling him now. He was overwhelmed by the desire to drop down to his knees and grab Ty’s hands, and hold him the way he had on the rooftop in London when Livvy had been hurt. At the same time, he was just as overwhelmed by the voice in his head that told him that would be a terrible idea, that he had no clue what Ty needed right now.

Ty was still rustling around in his bag. He must not remember, Kit thought with rising panic. He must have blanked out the events in the Council Hall. Kit hadn’t been there when Robert and Livvy died, but he’d heard enough from Diana to know what Ty must have witnessed. People forgot horrible things sometimes, he knew, their brains simply refusing to process or store what they’d seen.

“I’ll get Helen,” he said finally. “She can tell you—what happened—”

“I know what happened,” Ty said. He had located his phone, in the bottom of the bag. The tension left his body; his relief was clear. Kit was baffled. There was no signal anywhere in Idris; the phone would be useless. “I’m going to go back to sleep now,” Ty said. “There are still drugs in my system. I can feel them.” He didn’t sound pleased.

“Should I stay?” Kit said. Ty had tossed the duffel bag onto the floor and lain back on the pillows. He was gripping the phone in his right hand, so tightly that his knuckles were white, but otherwise he showed no recognizable signs of distress.

He looked up at Kit. His gray eyes were silver in the moonlight, flat as two quarters. Kit couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. “Yes, I’d rather you did,” he said. “And go to sleep if you want. I’ll be fine.” He closed his eyes. After a long moment, Kit sat down on the bed opposite Ty’s, the one that was supposed to be Livvy’s. He thought of the last time he’d seen her alone, helping her with her necklace before the big Council meeting, the way she’d smiled, the color and life in her face. It seemed absolutely impossible that she was gone. Maybe Ty wasn’t the one acting oddly at all—maybe the rest of them, in accepting the fact of her death, were the ones who didn’t understand.

It felt like a hundred miles between Emma’s room and his, Julian thought. Like a thousand. He made his way through the halls of the canal house as if he were in a dream.

His shoulder burned and ached.

Emma was the only person he had ever desired, and the force of that desire sometimes stunned him. Never more than tonight. He had lost himself in her, in them, for some totality of time; he had felt only his body and the part of his heart that loved and was uninjured. Emma was all the good in him, he thought, all that burned bright.

But then the pain had come, and the sense of something wrong, and he had known. As he hurried toward his room, fear tapped against the outside of his consciousness, howling to be let in and acknowledged, like skeleton hands scratching at a window. It was the fear of his own despair. He knew that he was cushioned by shock now, that he had only touched the tip of the iceberg of grief and howling loss. It would come, the darkness and the horror: He had lived through it before, with the loss of his father.

And this—Livvy—would be worse. He couldn’t control his grief. He couldn’t control his feelings for Emma. His whole life had been built around exerting control over himself, over the mask he showed the world, and now it was cracking.

“Jules?”

He had reached his bedroom, but he wasn’t home free. Mark was waiting for him, leaning against the door. He looked bone tired, hair and clothes rumpled. Not that Julian had any ground to stand on, since his own clothes were torn and bloody, his feet bare.

Julian stopped dead. “Is everything all right?”

They were going to be asking each other that constantly for quite some time, he guessed. And it never would really be okay, but they would reassure each other anyway about the small things, the measure of tiny victories: yes, Dru slept a little; yes, Ty is eating a bit; yes, we’re all still breathing. Julian listened mechanically as Mark explained to him that he and Helen had picked up Tavvy, and Tavvy knew about Livia now, and it wasn’t good but it was all right and Tavvy was sleeping.

“I didn’t want to bother you in the middle of the night,” Mark said, “but Helen insisted. She said otherwise the first thing that would happen when you woke up was that you’d freak out about Tavvy.” “Sure,” said Julian, amazed he sounded so coherent. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Mark gave him a long look. “You were very young when we lost Eleanor, your mother,” he said. “She told me once there is a clock in the hearts of parents. Most of the time it is silent, but you can hear it ticking when your child is not with you and you do not know where they are, or when they are awake in the night and wanting you. It will tick until you are with them again.” “Tavvy isn’t my child,” said Julian. “I’m not a parent.”

Mark touched his brother’s cheek. It was almost more a faerie touch than a human one, though Mark’s hand felt warm and calloused and real. Actually, it didn’t feel like a touch at all, Julian thought. It felt like a blessing. “You know you are,” Mark said. “I must ask your forgiveness, Julian. I told Helen of your sacrifice.” “My—sacrifice?” Julian’s mind was a blank.

“The years you ran the Institute in secret,” said Mark. “How you have taken care of the children. The way they look to you, and how you have loved them. I know it was a secret, but I thought she should know it.” “That’s fine,” Julian said. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. “Was she angry?”

Mark looked surprised. “She said she felt such pride in you that it broke her heart.”

It was like a tiny point of light, breaking through the darkness. “She—did?”

Mark seemed about to reply when a second hot dart of pain went through Julian’s shoulder. He knew exactly the location of that twinge. His heartbeat sped up; he said something to Mark about seeing him later, or at least he thought he did, before going into his bedroom and bolting the door. He was in the bathroom in seconds, turning up the witchlight’s brilliance as he gazed into the mirror.

He drew aside the collar of his shirt to get a better look—and stared.

There was his parabatai rune. It was stark against his skin—but no longer black. Within the thickly drawn lines he saw what looked like red and glowing flecks, as if the rune had begun to burn from the inside out.

He grabbed the rim of the sink as a wave of dizziness passed over him. He’d been forcing himself not to think about what Robert’s death meant, about their broken plans for exile. About the curse that would come on any parabatai who fell in love. A curse of power and destruction. He had been thinking only of how much he desperately needed Emma, and not at all of the reasons that he couldn’t have her, which remained unchanged.

They had forgotten, reaching for each other in the abyss of grief, as they had always reached for each other all their lives. But it couldn’t happen, Julian told himself, biting down hard on his lip, tasting his own blood. There could be no more destruction.

It had begun to rain outside. He could hear the soft patter on the roof of the house. He bent down and tore a strip of material from the shirt he’d worn at the Council meeting. It was stiff and dark with his sister’s dried blood.

He tied it around his right wrist. It would stay there until he had vengeance. Until there was justice for Livvy. Until all this bloody mess was cleared up. Until everyone he loved was safe.

He went back out into the bedroom and began to hunt for clean clothes and shoes. He knew exactly where he needed to go.

Julian ran through the empty streets of Idris. Warm summer rain plastered his hair to his forehead and soaked his shirt and jacket.

His heart was pounding: He missed Emma already, regretted leaving her. And yet he couldn’t stop running, as if he could outrun the pain of Livvy’s death. It was almost a surprise that he could grieve his sister and love Emma at the same time and feel both, neither diminishing the other: Livvy had loved Emma too.

He could imagine how thrilled Livvy would have been to know he and Emma were together; if it were possible for them to get married, Livvy would have been wild with delight at the idea of helping plan a wedding. The thought was like a stabbing blow to the midsection, the twist of a blade in his guts.

Rain was splashing down into the canals, turning the world to mist and water. The Inquisitor’s house loomed up out of the fog like a shadow, and Julian ran up the front steps with such force that he nearly crashed into the front door. He knocked and Magnus opened it, looking pinched and unusually pale. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans with a blue silk robe thrown over them. His hands were bare of their usual rings.

When he saw Julian, he sagged a little against the doorframe. He didn’t move or speak, just stared, as if he were looking not at Julian but at something or someone else.

“Magnus,” Julian said, a little alarmed. He recalled that Magnus wasn’t well. He’d nearly forgotten it. Magnus had always seemed the same: eternal, immutable, invulnerable. “I—” “I’m here on my own account,” Magnus said, in a low and distant voice. “I need your help. There is absolutely no one else that I can ask.” “That’s not what I . . .” Julian pushed sopping-wet hair out of his eyes, his voice trailing off in realization. “You’re remembering someone.” Magnus seemed to shake himself a little, like a dog emerging from the sea. “Another night, a different boy with blue eyes. Wet weather in London, but when was it anything else?” Julian didn’t press it. “Well, you’re right. I do need your help. And there isn’t anyone else I can ask.” Magnus sighed. “Come in, then. But be quiet. Everyone’s asleep, and that’s an achievement, considering.” Of course, Julian thought, following Magnus into a central drawing room. This was also a house of grief.

The interior of the house was grand in its scope, with high ceilings and furniture that looked heavy and expensive. Robert seemed to have added little in terms of personality and decoration. There were no family pictures, and little art on the wall besides generic landscapes.

“I haven’t seen Alec cry in a long time,” Magnus said, sinking onto the sofa and staring into the middle distance. Julian stood where he was, dripping onto the carpet. “Or Isabelle. I understand what it’s like to have a father who’s a bastard. He’s still your bastard. And he did love them, and tried to make amends. Which is more than you can say for mine.” He flicked a glance at Julian. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t use a drying spell on you. I’m trying to conserve energy. There’s a blanket on that chair.” Julian ignored the blanket and the chair. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Magnus’s gaze dropped to the bloody cloth tied around Julian’s wrist. His expression softened. “It’s all right,” he said. “For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling despair. It makes me lash out. My Alec lost his father, and the Clave has lost a decent Inquisitor. But you, you lost your hope of salvation. Don’t think I don’t understand that.” “My rune started to burn,” Julian said. “Tonight. As if it had been drawn on my skin with fire.”

Magnus hunched forward and rubbed wearily at his face. Lines of pain and tiredness were etched beside his mouth. His eyes looked sunken. “I wish I knew more about it,” he said. “What destruction this will bring to you, to Emma. To others.” He paused. “I should be kinder to you. You’ve lost a child.” “I thought it would wipe everything else out,” Julian said, his voice scraped raw. “I thought there wouldn’t be anything else in my heart but agony, but there’s room in there for me to be terrified for Ty, and panicked about Dru, and there’s room for more hate than I ever thought anyone could feel.” The pain in his parabatai rune flared, and he felt his legs give out.

He staggered and went down on his knees in front of Magnus. Magnus didn’t seem surprised that he was kneeling. He only looked down at Julian with a quiet, rarefied patience, like a priest hearing a confession.

“What hurts more,” Magnus asked, “the love or the hate?”

“I don’t know,” Julian said. He dug wet fingers into the carpet on either side of his knees. He felt as if he were having a hard time catching his breath. “I still love Emma more than I ever thought was possible. I love her more every day, and more every time I try to stop. I love her like I’m being ripped in half. And I want to cut the throats of everyone in the Cohort.” “There’s an unconventional love speech,” Magnus said, leaning forward. “What about Annabel?”

“I hate her, too,” said Julian, without emotion. “There’s plenty of room for me to hate them all.”

Magnus’s cat eyes glittered. “Don’t think I don’t know what you feel,” he said. “And there is something I could do. It would be a stopgap. A harsh one. And I wouldn’t do it lightly.” “Please.” Kneeling on the ground in front of the warlock, Julian looked up; he had never begged for anything in his life, but he didn’t care if he was begging now. “I know you’re sick, I know I shouldn’t even ask, but I have nothing else I can do and nowhere else I can go.” Magnus sighed. “There would be consequences. Have you ever heard the expression ‘the sleep of reason brings forth monsters’?” “Yes,” Julian said. “But I’m going to be a monster either way.”

Magnus stood up. For a moment he seemed to tower over Julian, a figure as tall and dark as the grim reaper in a child’s nightmare.

“Please,” Julian said again. “I don’t have anything left to lose.”

“Yes, you do,” said Magnus. He raised his left hand and looked at it quizzically. Cobalt sparks had begun to burn at the tips of each of his fingers. “Oh yes, you do.” The room lit with blue fire, and Julian closed his eyes.