فصل 3

3

ETERNAL REST

The funeral was set for noon, but Emma had been tossing and turning since three or four in the morning. Her eyes felt dry and itchy and her hands shook as she brushed her hair and wound it carefully into a knot on the back of her head.

After Julian had left, she’d run to the window, wrapped in a sheet, and stared out in mingled shock and disbelief. She’d seen him come out of the house and run into the drizzling rain, not even bothering to slow down to zip his jacket.

After that, there hadn’t seemed like much she could do. It wasn’t like Julian was in danger in the streets of Alicante. Still, she’d waited until she heard his step on the stairs, returning, and heard his bedroom door open and close.

She’d gotten up then and gone to check on Ty, who was still asleep, Kit beside him. She’d realized Livvy’s duffel bag was still in the room and taken it, afraid that it would hurt Ty to see it when he woke up. In her room, she’d sat on the bed and unzipped it briefly. There hadn’t been much to Livvy’s scant belongings—some shirts and skirts, a book, carefully packed toothbrush and soap. One of the shirts had dirt on it, and Emma thought maybe she should wash Livvy’s clothes, maybe that would be helpful, and then she’d realized exactly why it wouldn’t be helpful and didn’t matter and she’d curled up over the bag, sobbing as if her heart would crack in half.

In the end, she’d fallen into a fitful sleep full of dreams of fire and blood. She’d been woken up by the sound of Cristina knocking on her door with a mug of tea and the unpleasant news that Horace had been elected the new Inquisitor in an emergency vote that morning. She’d already told the rest of the family, who were awake and readying themselves for the funeral.

The tea had about three thousand tablespoons of sugar in it, which was both sweet and sweet of Cristina, but it didn’t take the edge off the bitterness of the Inquisitor news.

Emma was looking out the window when Cristina came in again, this time carrying a pile of clothes. She was dressed all in white, the color of Shadowhunter mourning and funerals. White gear jacket, white shirt, white flowers in her loose dark hair.

Cristina frowned. “Come away from there.”

“Why?” Emma glanced through the window; the house had a commanding view out over the lower part of the city. The walls were visible, and green fields beyond.

She could see a line of very distant figures in white, filing through the gates of the city. In the center of the green fields, two massive stacks of kindling rose like pyramids.

“They already built the pyres,” Emma said, and a wave of dizziness came over her. She felt Cristina’s warm hand close over hers, and a moment later they were both sitting on the edge of the bed and Cristina was telling her to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go to pieces.”

Some of Emma’s hair had come down out of its knot. Cristina’s hands were skillful as she reached up to tuck the strands back in place. “When my uncle died,” she said, “he was buried in Idris, and I could not come to the funeral, because my mother thought Idris was still dangerous. When she came home, I went to hug her and her clothes smelled like smoke. I thought: that is all there is left of my uncle now, this smoke on my mother’s jacket.” “I need to be strong,” Emma said. “I have to be there for the Blackthorns. Julian is—” Broken, smashed up, in pieces. Missing. No, not missing. Just not with me.

“You can grieve Livvy too,” said Cristina. “She was a sister to you. Family is more than blood.”

“But—”

“Grief does not make us weak,” Cristina said firmly. “It makes us human. How could you comfort Dru, or Ty, or Jules, if you didn’t know what they missed about her? Sympathy is common. Knowing the exact shape of the hole someone’s loss leaves in your heart is rare.” “I don’t think any of us can understand the shape of what Ty lost,” said Emma. Her fear for Ty was intense, like a constant bitter taste in the back of her throat, mixing with her grief for Livvy until she thought she might choke.

Cristina gave Emma a last pat on the hand. “You’d better get dressed,” she said. “I’ll be down in the kitchen.” Emma dressed in a half-dazed state. When she was done, she glanced at herself in the mirror. The white gear was covered with the scarlet runes of mourning, over and over, an overlapping pattern that became quickly meaningless to the eye like a word that is said repeatedly becomes meaningless to the ear. It made her hair and skin look paler, and even her eyes seemed cold. She looked like an icicle, she thought, or the blade of a knife.

If only she had Cortana with her. She could go into Brocelind and scream and scream and slash at the air until she fell exhausted to the ground, the agony of loss seeping from her every pore like blood.

Feeling incomplete without her sword, she headed downstairs.

Diana was in the kitchen when Ty came downstairs. There was no one with him, and her hand tightened on the glass she was holding so fiercely that her fingers ached.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. She’d sat with Ty much of the night as he slept, a dead, silent, unmoving sleep. She’d tried to remember how to pray to Raziel, but it had been such a long time. She had made offerings of incense and flowers in Thailand after her sister had died, but none of it had helped or come close to healing the hole in her heart where Aria should have been.

And Livvy was Ty’s twin. Neither had ever known a world without the other one in it. Livvy’s last words had been Ty, I—. No one would ever know the rest of what she’d wanted to say. How could he cope? How could anyone?

The Consul had provided them all with mourning clothes, which had been kind. Diana wore her own white gown and a gear jacket, and Ty was in full formal mourning dress. Elegantly cut white coat, white trousers and boots, his hair very stark and black against it all. For the first time Diana realized that when Ty grew up he was going to be stunning. She’d thought about him as an adorable child for so long it had never crossed her mind that one day the more adult concept of beauty or handsomeness might be applied to him.

He frowned. He was very, very, pale, almost the color of bleached paper, but his hair was neatly brushed and he looked otherwise put together and almost ordinary. “Twenty-three minutes,” he said.

“What?”

“It will take us twenty-three minutes to get down to the Fields, and the ceremonies begin in twenty-five. Where is everyone?” Diana almost reached for her phone to text Julian before remembering phones didn’t work in Idris. Focus, she told herself. “I’m sure they’re on their way—” “I wanted to talk to Julian.” Ty didn’t sound demanding; he sounded more as if he were trying to remember a significant list of things he needed, in proper order. “He went with Livvy to the Silent City. I need to know what he saw and what they did to her there.” I wouldn’t have wanted to know those things about Aria, Diana thought, and immediately chided herself. She was not Ty. Ty took comfort from facts. He hated the unknown. Livvy’s body had been taken away and locked behind stone doors. Of course he would want to know: Had they honored her body, had they kept her things, had they cleaned the blood from her face? Only by knowing would he be able to understand.

There was a clatter of feet on the stairs. Suddenly the kitchen was full of Blackthorns. Ty moved to stand out of the way as Dru came down, red-eyed in a gear jacket a size too small. Helen, carrying Tavvy, both of them in white; Aline and Mark, Aline with her hair up and small gold earrings in the shape of mourning runes. Diana realized with a start she had been looking for Kieran beside Mark, expecting him there now, and had forgotten he was gone.

Cristina followed and then Emma, both subdued. Diana had put out toast and butter and tea, and Helen put Tavvy down and went to get him some. No one else seemed interested in eating.

Ty glanced anxiously at the clock. A moment later Kit was downstairs, looking uncomfortable in a white gear jacket. Ty didn’t say anything, or even glance over at him, but the tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly.

To Diana’s surprise, the last to come down the stairs was Julian. She wanted to run over to him to see if he was all right, but it had been a long time since he’d let her do that. If he ever had. He’d always been a self-contained boy, loath to show any negative emotion in front of his family.

She saw Emma glance at him, but he didn’t return her glance. He was looking around the room, sizing up everyone’s moods, whatever mental calculations he was making invisible behind the shield of his blue-green eyes.

“We should go,” he said. “They’ll wait for us, but not long, and we should be there for Robert’s ceremony.” There was something different about his voice; Diana couldn’t place it, exactly. The flatness of grief, most likely.

Everyone turned toward him. He was the center, Diana thought, the fulcrum on which the family turned: Emma and Cristina stood back, not being Blackthorns, and Helen looked relieved when Julian spoke, as if she’d been dreading trying to corral the group.

Tavvy went over to Julian and took his hand. They went out the door in a silent procession, a river of white flowing down the stone steps of the house.

Diana couldn’t help thinking of her sister and how she had been burned in Thailand and her ashes sent back to Idris for burial in the Silent City. But Diana hadn’t been there for the funeral. At the time, she’d thought she’d never return to Idris again.

As they passed along the street toward Silversteel Bridge, someone threw open a window overhead. A long white banner marked with a mourning rune tumbled out; Ty raised his head, and Diana realized that the bridge and then the street, all the way to the city gates, were festooned with white banners. They strode between them, even Tavvy looking up and around in wonder.

Perhaps they flew mostly for Robert, the Inquisitor, but they were also for Livvy. At least the Blackthorns would always have this, she thought, this remembrance of the honor that had been shown to their sister.

She hoped the election of Horace as Inquisitor wouldn’t taint the day even more. Through all her life she had been aware of the uneasy truce not just between Shadowhunters and Downworlders but between those among the Nephilim who thought Downworlders should be embraced by the Clave—and those who did not. Many had celebrated when Downworlders had finally joined the Council after the Dark War. But she had heard the whispers of those who had not—those like Lazlo Balogh and Horace Dearborn. The Cold Peace had given them the liberty to express the hate in their hearts, confident that all right-thinking Nephilim agreed with them.

She had always believed they were wrong, but the election of Horace filled her with fear that there were more Nephilim than she had ever dreamed who were irretrievably soaked in hatred.

As they stepped onto the bridge, something brushed against Diana’s shoulder. She reached up to flick it away and realized it was a white flower—one of the kind that grew only in Idris. She looked up; clouds were scudding across the sky, pushed by a brisk wind, but she saw the outline of a man on horseback vanish behind one of them.

Gwyn. The thought of him lit a spark of warmth in her heart. She closed her hand carefully around the petals.

The Imperishable Fields.

That was what they were called, though most people called them simply the Fields. They stretched across the flat plains outside Alicante, from the city walls that had been built after the Dark War to the trees of Brocelind Forest.

The breeze was soft and unique to Idris; in some ways Emma preferred the wind off the ocean in Los Angeles, with its sideways bite of salt. This wind felt too gentle for the day of Livvy’s funeral. It lifted her hair and blew her white dress around her knees; it made the white banners that were raised on either side of each pyre drift like ribbons across the sky.

The ground sloped down from the city toward the woods, and as they neared the funeral pyres Cristina took Emma’s hand. Emma squeezed back gratefully as they came close enough to the crowd for Emma to see people staring and hear the mutters rise around them. There was sympathy for the Blackthorns, certainly, but also glares for her and Julian; Julian had brought Annabel into Idris, and Emma was the girl who had broken the Mortal Sword.

“A blade as powerful as Cortana has no business in the hands of a child,” said a woman with blond hair as Emma passed by.

“The whole thing smacks of dark magic,” said someone else.

Emma decided to try not to listen. She stared straight ahead: She could see Jia standing between the pyres, all in white. Memories of the Dark War flooded over her. So many people in white; so very many burning pyres.

Beside Jia stood a woman with long red hair who Emma recognized as Clary’s mother, Jocelyn. Beside her was Maryse Lightwood, her black hair loose down her back. It was liberally threaded with gray. She seemed to be speaking intently to Jia, though they were too far away for Emma to hear what they were saying.

Both pyres were finished, though the bodies had not been brought from the Silent City yet. Quite a few Shadowhunters had gathered—no one was required to attend funerals, but Robert had been popular, and his and Livvy’s deaths shocking in their horror.

Robert’s family stood close to the pyre on the right—the ceremonial robes of the Inquisitor had been draped across the top. They would burn with him. Surrounding the kindling were Alec and Magnus, Simon and Isabelle, all in ritual mourning clothes, even little Max and Rafe. Isabelle looked up at Emma as she approached and waved a greeting; her eyes were swollen from crying.

Simon, beside her, looked tense as a drawn bowstring. He was glancing around, his gaze darting among the people in the crowd. Emma couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking for the same people she was—the people who by all rights ought to be here when Robert Lightwood was laid to rest.

Where were Jace and Clary?

The Shadowhunters had rarely seemed as alien to Kit as they did now. They were everywhere, dressed in their white, a color he associated with weddings and Easter. The banners, the runes, the glittering demon towers in the distance—all of it combined to make him feel as if he were on another planet.

Not to mention that the Shadowhunters didn’t cry. Kit had been to funerals before, and seen them on TV. People held handkerchiefs and sobbed into them. But not here; here they were silent, pulled taut, and the sound of birds was louder than the sound of talking or crying.

Not that Kit was crying himself, and not that he had cried when his father died. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but his father had always made it sound like to break down in grief meant you would be broken forever. Kit owed too much to the Blackthorns, especially Ty, to let himself shatter over Livvy. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She would have wanted him to be there for Ty.

One after another the Nephilim came up to the Blackthorns and offered their condolences. Julian had placed himself at the head of his family like a shield and was coolly fending off all cordial attempts to talk to his brothers and sisters, who stood in a group behind him. Julian seemed colder and more removed than usual, but that wasn’t surprising. Grief hit everyone in different ways.

It did mean he’d let go of Tavvy’s hand, though, so Tavvy had gone over to stand next to Dru, pressing himself into her side. It also left Ty on his own, and Kit made his way over to the other boy, feeling resplendently silly in white leather pants and jacket. He knew it was a formal mourning outfit, but it made him feel like he was cosplaying someone in an eighties music video.

“Funerals are always so sad,” said a woman who had introduced herself as Irina Cartwright, staring at Julian with a deep pitying stare. When he didn’t respond, she shifted her gaze to Kit. “Don’t you think?” “I wouldn’t know,” said Kit. “My father was eaten by demons.”

Irina Cartwright looked discomfited and hurried away after a few more trite phrases. Julian raised an eyebrow at Kit before greeting the next mourner.

“Do you still have . . . the phone?” Kit asked Ty, and felt immediately like an idiot. Who went up to someone at their twin sister’s funeral and asked them if they had their phone? Especially when there was no signal anywhere in Idris? “I mean. Not that you can call. Anyone.” “There’s one phone in Idris that works. It’s in the Consul’s office,” said Ty. He didn’t look like he was cosplaying an eighties music-video star; he looked icy and striking and— The word “beautiful” blinked on and off in Kit’s head like a flickering neon sign. He ignored it.

Elegant. Ty looked elegant. People with dark hair probably just looked naturally better in white.

“It’s not the phone signal I need,” said Ty. “It’s the photos on the phone.”

“Photos of Livvy?” Kit asked, confused.

Ty stared at him. Kit remembered the days in London, in which they’d been working together, solving—well, solving mysteries. Like Watson and Holmes. He hadn’t ever felt like he didn’t understand Ty. But he felt it now.

“No,” Ty said.

He glanced around. Kit wondered if the growing number of people was bothering Ty. He hated crowds. Magnus and Alec were standing with their kids near the Consul; they were with a beautiful black-haired girl with eyebrows just like Alec’s and a boy—well, he was probably in his twenties—with untidy brown hair. The boy gave Kit a considering look that seemed to say you look familiar. Several people had done the same. Kit guessed it was because he looked like Jace, if Jace had suffered a sudden and unexpected height, muscle, and overall hotness reduction.

“I need to talk to you, later,” Ty said, his voice low, and Kit wasn’t sure whether to be worried or grateful. As far as he knew, Ty hadn’t really talked to anyone since Livvy died.

“You don’t—want to talk to your brother? To Julian?”

“No. I need to talk to you.” Ty hesitated, as if he was about to say something else.

There was a low, mournful sound as if of a horn blowing, and people turned to stare back at the city. Kit followed their gazes and saw that a procession was leaving the gates. Dozens of Silent Brothers in their parchment uniforms, walking in two lines on either side of two biers. The biers were carried at shoulder height by Council guards.

They were too distant for Kit to see which bier was Livvy’s: He could see only a body lying on each platform, wrapped in white. And then they came closer, and he saw that one body was much smaller than the other, and he turned to Ty without being able to stop himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Ty was looking toward the city. One of his hands was opening and closing, his long fingers curling under, but other than that he showed no signs of any emotion. “There really isn’t any reason for you to be sorry,” he said. “So please don’t be.” Kit stood without speaking. There was a cold tension inside him, a fear he couldn’t shake—that he had lost not just Livvy but Ty as well.

“They haven’t come back yet,” Isabelle said. She was composed, immaculate in gear, a white silk band holding back her hair. She was holding Simon’s hand, her knuckles as white as the flower in her lapel.

Emma had always thought of grief as a claw. The claw of a massive monster you couldn’t see, that reached down out of the sky and seized hold of you, punching out your breath, leaving only a pain you couldn’t wriggle away from or avoid. You just had to endure it for as long as the claw had you in its grasp.

She could see the pain of it in Isabelle’s eyes, behind her calm exterior, and part of her wanted to reach out and hug the other girl. She wished Clary were here—Clary and Isabelle were like sisters, and Clary could comfort Izzy in the way only a best friend could.

“I thought you knew,” Simon said, his eyebrows wrinkled as he looked at Emma. She thought of Clary saying that she couldn’t tell Simon about her visions of death, that he’d fall apart. “I thought they told you where they were going.” No one seemed to be paying much attention to them—Jia was still deep in conversation with Jocelyn and Maryse, and the other Shadowhunters present had descended on Julian and the others to offer condolences. “They did. They went to Faerie. I know.” Simon and Isabelle moved instinctively closer to her. She hoped they didn’t look too much as if they were huddling, sharing secrets, since that was exactly what was happening.

“It’s just that I thought they’d be back by now,” Emma said.

“They’re meant to get back tomorrow.” Isabelle made a cooing noise, and bent down to scoop up Max. She held him in her arms, nuzzling her chin into his hair. “I know—it’s awful. If there had only been a way to get them a message . . .” “We couldn’t exactly ask the Clave to delay the funeral,” said Simon. Shadowhunter bodies weren’t embalmed; they were burned as soon as possible, before they began to decay.

“Jace is going to be wrecked,” said Izzy. She glanced back over her shoulder to where her brother was holding Rafe by the hand, looking up at Magnus as they talked. “Especially not to have been here for Alec.” “Grief lasts a long time,” said Emma, her throat tight. “Lots of people are there for you in the beginning, when it first happens. If Jace is there for Alec later, after all the noise of the funeral and all the platitudes from total strangers go away, that’ll be better anyway.” Izzy’s eyes softened. “Thanks. And try not to worry about Clary and Jace. We knew we wouldn’t be able to be in touch with them while they were gone. Simon—he’s Clary’s parabatai. He would feel it if anything had happened to her. And Alec would as well, about Jace.” Emma couldn’t argue the strength of the parabatai bond. She glanced down, wondering—

“They’ve come.” It was Magnus, reaching to take Max from Isabelle. He gave Emma an odd sideways look that she couldn’t read. “The Brothers.” Emma glanced over. It was true: They had glided almost soundlessly into the crowd, parting it like the Red Sea. Shadowhunters fell back as the biers carrying Livvy and Robert passed among them, and stopped between the pyres.

Livvy lay pale and bloodless, her body swathed in a white silk dress, white silk binding her eyes. Her gold necklace glittered at her throat. Her long brown hair was scattered with white flowers.

Livvy dancing on her bed, wearing a pale green chiffon dress she’d bought at Hidden Treasures. Emma, Emma, look at my new dress! Emma struggled against the memory, against the cold truth: This was the last dress she would see Livvy wear. This was the last time she would see her familiar brown hair, the curve of her cheek, her stubborn chin. Livvy, my Livvy, my wise little owl, my sweet little sister.

She wanted to scream, but Shadowhunters didn’t cry out at death. They spoke the old words instead, handed down through the ages.

“Ave atque vale.” The murmur went through the crowd. “Ave atque vale, Robert Lightwood. Ave atque vale, Livia Blackthorn.” Isabelle and Alec turned to face their father’s bier. Julian and the other Blackthorns were still pinned in by well-wishers. For a moment, Emma was alone with Simon.

“I talked to Clary before she left,” she said, the words feeling like a hot pressure in the back of her throat. “She was worried something bad was going to happen.” Simon looked puzzled. “What kind of bad thing?”

Emma shook her head. “Just—if she doesn’t come back when she’s supposed to—”

Simon looked at her with troubled eyes, but before he could say anything, Jia stepped forward and began to speak.

“Shadowhunters die young,” said someone in the crowd. Julian didn’t recognize the man: He was probably in his early forties, with thick black eyebrows. He wore a patch on his gear with the symbol of the Scholomance on it, but little else differentiated him from the dozens of other people who had come up to Julian to tell him they were sorry his sister was dead.

“But fifteen—” The man shook his head. Gladstone, Julian recalled. His last name was Gladstone. “Robert lived a full life. He was a distant cousin of mine, you know. But what happened to your sister should never have happened. She was only a child.” Mark made a strangled noise behind Julian. Julian said something polite to send Gladstone on his way. Everything felt distant, muffled, as if he or the world had been wrapped in cotton padding.

“I didn’t like him,” said Dru, after Gladstone had gone. The skin under her eyes was shiny and tight where tears had left traces that couldn’t be washed away.

It was as if there were two Julians. One was Julian Before, the Julian who would have reached over to comfort Dru, ruffle her hair. Julian Now didn’t. He remained motionless as the crowd started to surge apart to make way for the funeral procession, and saw Helen lift Tavvy up into her arms.

“He’s seven,” he said to her. “He’s too old to be carried everywhere.”

She gave him a half-surprised, half-reproachful look but said nothing. The Silent Brothers were walking between them with their biers, and the Blackthorn family stilled as the air filled with the chant of the Nephilim.

“Ave atque vale, Livia Blackthorn. Hail and farewell.”

Dru jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Aline put an arm around her. Julian looked for Ty. He couldn’t stop himself.

Mark had gone over to Ty and was talking to him; Kit stood beside him, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched, altogether wretched. Ty himself was staring at Livvy’s bier, a spot of red burning on each of his cheeks. On the way down from the city, he had peppered Julian with questions: Who touched her in the Silent City? Did they wash the blood off her? Did they brush her hair? Did they take her necklace? Did they let you have her clothes? Who picked the dress for her to be buried in? Did they close her eyes before they tied the silk over them? until Julian had been exhausted and near snapping.

Ladders had been placed beside the pyres, each one a massive stack of logs and kindling. A Silent Brother took Livvy’s body and began to climb the ladder. When he reached the top, he laid her body down; at the second pyre, a Silent Brother was doing the same with Robert Lightwood’s corpse.

Diana had also gone to stand beside Ty. There was a white flower tucked into her collar, pale against her dark skin. She said something quietly to him, and Ty looked up at her.

Julian ached inside, a physical ache, as if he’d been punched in the stomach and was just now getting his breath back. He could feel the bloody cloth tied around his wrist, like a circle of fire.

Emma. He looked for her in the crowd, saw her standing beside Simon. Cristina had come to stand with them. The ladders had been drawn away, and the Silent Brothers stepped forward with their lit torches. Their fire was bright enough to illuminate even the daylight scene. Emma’s hair sparked and caught its brilliance as the Silent Brothers took their places around the pyres.

“These flames, this burning,” said Mark, who had appeared at Julian’s side. “In the Wild Hunt we practiced sky burial.” Julian glanced at him. Mark was flushed, his pale curls disordered. His mourning runes had been applied with care and precision, though, which meant he hadn’t done them himself. They were beautiful and delicately done—Cristina’s work.

“We would leave bodies at the tops of glaciers or high trees, for the birds to pick clean,” Mark said.

“How about you not suggest that to anyone else at this funeral,” said Julian.

Mark winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t always know the right thing to say.”

“When in doubt, don’t say anything,” Julian said. “Literally, it’s better if you don’t talk at all.” Mark gave him the same look Helen had before—half hurt and half surprise—but before he could say anything, Jia Penhallow, in ceremonial robes of dazzling snow white, began to speak.

“Fellow Shadowhunters,” she said, her rich voice carrying across the Imperishable Fields. “A great tragedy has come to us. One of our most faithful servants of the Clave, Robert Lightwood, was slain in the Council Hall, where our Law has always prevailed.” “Good job not mentioning he was a traitor,” muttered someone in the crowd.

It was Zara. A hissing spurt of giggles erupted around her, like a teapot exploding. Her friends, Manuel Villalobos, Samantha Larkspear, and Jessica Beausejours, stood around her in a tight circle.

“I can’t believe they’re here.” It was Emma. Somehow she had come up beside Julian. He didn’t remember it happening, but reality seemed to be flickering in and out like a camera shutter opening and closing. She looked slightly taken aback when Julian didn’t reply, but she stalked off into the crowd, stiff-arming Gladstone out of the way.

“Also one of our youngest and most promising Shadowhunters was murdered, her blood spilled in front of us all,” said Jia as Emma reached Zara and her friends. Zara jumped back slightly, then tried to hide her loss of poise with a glare.

Emma wouldn’t care one way or another, Julian thought, about Zara’s poise. She was gesturing at Zara, and then at the Blackthorns and Ty, as Jia’s voice rang out over the meadow: “We will not let these deaths go unpunished. We will not forget who was responsible. We are warriors, and we will fight, and fight back.” Zara and her friends were looking mulish—all but Manuel, who was smiling a sideways smile that under other circumstances would have given Julian the creeps. Emma turned and walked away from them. Her expression was grim.

Still, Zara had stopped talking, which was something.

“They are gone,” said Jia. “The Nephilim have lost two great souls. Let Raziel bless them. Let Jonathan Shadowhunter honor them. Let David the Silent remember them. And let us commend their bodies to the necropolis, where they will serve forever.” The Consul’s voice had softened. Everyone was looking toward her, even the children like Tavvy, Rafe, and Max, so everyone saw her expression change and darken. She spoke the next words as if they tasted bitter in her mouth.

“And now, our new Inquisitor wants to say a few words.”

Horace Dearborn stepped forward; Julian hadn’t noticed him until that moment. He wore a white mourning robe and a suitably grave expression, though there seemed to be a sneer behind it, like a shadow behind glass.

Zara was grinning openly, and more of her friends from the Scholomance had gathered near her. She gave her father a little wave, still grinning, and Manuel’s smirk spread until it covered most of his face.

Julian saw the nausea in Isabelle’s and Simon’s expressions, the horror on Emma’s face, the anger on Magnus’s and Alec’s.

He strained to feel what they felt, but he couldn’t. He felt nothing at all.

Horace Dearborn took a long moment to survey the crowd. Kit had gleaned enough from the others to know that Zara’s father was an even worse bigot than she was and that he’d been named the new Inquisitor by a majority of the Council, all of whom seemed more scared of the Unseelie Court and the threat of Downworlders than they were of investing a clearly evil man with power.

Not that Kit found any of this surprising. Just depressing.

Ty, beside him, didn’t seem to be looking at Horace at all. He was staring up at Livvy, or the little of her they could see—she was a scrap of white at the top of a tall pile of kindling wood. As he looked at his sister, he drew his right index finger across the back of his left hand, over and over; otherwise he was motionless.

“Today,” Horace said finally, “as the Consul says, may indeed be a day for grief.”

“Nice of him to acknowledge,” murmured Diana.

“However!” Horace’s voice rose, and he stabbed a finger out into the crowd, as if accusing them all of a terrible crime. “These deaths did not come from nowhere. There is no question who was responsible for these murders—though foolish Shadowhunters may have allowed them to occur, the hand of the Unseelie King and all faeries, and all Downworlders by connection, were behind this act!” Why would that be? Kit thought. Horace reminded him of politicians shouting on TV, red-faced men who always seemed angry and always wanted you to know there was something you needed to be afraid of.

The idea that if the Unseelie King was responsible for Livvy’s and Robert’s deaths, all Downworlders were guilty, made no sense to Kit, but if he was hoping for a protest from the crowd, he was disappointed. The gathering was strangely quiet, but Kit didn’t get the sense that they were against Horace. Rather they seemed as if they felt it would be impolite to cheer. Magnus looked on with no expression at all, as if it had been wiped from his face with an eraser.

“Death serves as a reminder,” said Horace, and Kit glanced over at Julian, whose dark brown hair was blowing in the rising wind. Kit doubted this was a reminder Julian had needed. “A reminder that we have only one life and we must live it as warriors. A reminder that we have only one chance to make the correct choices. A reminder that the time is coming soon when all Shadowhunters will have to decide where they stand. Do they stand with traitors and Downworlder-lovers? Do they stand with those who would destroy our way of life and our very culture? Do they—young man, what are you doing? Get down from there!” “Oh, by the Angel,” Diana whispered.

Ty was climbing up the side of his sister’s pyre. It didn’t look easy—the wood had been piled up for maximum-efficiency burning, not for clambering, but he was finding handholds and footholds anyway. He was already high enough off the ground that Kit felt a bolt of fear go through him at the thought of what would happen if one of the logs of wood came free and he fell.

Kit started after him without thinking, only to feel a hand close on his collar. He was jerked back by Diana. “No,” she said. “Not you.” Her face was set in grim lines.

Not you. Kit saw what she meant in a moment: Julian Blackthorn was already running, shoving past the Inquisitor—who squawked indignantly—and leaping for the pyre. He began to climb after his brother.

“Julian!” Emma called, but she doubted he could hear her. Everyone was shouting now—the Council guards, the mourners, the Consul and Inquisitor. Zara and her friends were hooting with laughter, pointing at Ty. He had nearly reached the top of the pyre and didn’t seem to hear anyone or anything around him: He was climbing with a dogged intensity. Julian, below him, climbing more carefully, couldn’t match his speed.

Only the Blackthorns were utterly silent. Emma tried to push forward, but Cristina held on to her wrist, shaking her head. “Don’t—it’s not safe, better not to distract Julian—” Ty had reached the platform atop the pyre. He sat down there, perched beside his sister’s body.

Helen gave a little whimper in her throat. “Ty.”

There was no protection from the wind at the top of the pyre. Ty’s hair whipped around his face as he bent over Livvy. It looked as if he were touching her folded hands. Emma felt a wave of empathic sorrow like a punch to the gut, followed by another wave of anxiety.

Julian reached the platform beside Ty and Livvy. He knelt beside his brother. They looked like two pale chess pieces, only the color of their hair—Ty’s a little darker—differentiating them in color.

Emma felt her heartbeat in her throat. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, not to run to the pyre and climb it. Everything else but Julian and Ty seemed distant and far off, even when she heard Zara and her friends giggle that the Silent Brothers should light the pyre, should burn Ty and Julian along with Livvy if they wanted to be with her so badly.

She felt Cristina stiffen beside her. Mark was walking across the grass, toward the two pyres. Zara and her friends were muttering about him now, about his pointed ears, his faerie blood. Mark walked with his head down, determined, and Emma couldn’t stand it anymore: She broke away from Cristina and ran across the grass. If Mark was going to go after Julian and Ty, then she was too.

She caught a glimpse of Jia, beside Maryse and Jocelyn, all of them motionless, a horrified tableau. Shadowhunters didn’t do this sort of thing. They didn’t make a spectacle of their grief. They didn’t scream or rage or collapse or break down or climb to the tops of pyres.

Julian had bent and taken his brother’s face in his hands. It made for a peculiarly tender portrait, despite their location. Emma could imagine how difficult this was for him: He hated showing emotion in front of anyone he couldn’t trust, but he didn’t seem to be thinking about that; he was murmuring to Ty, their foreheads almost touching.

“The ladders,” Emma said to Mark, and he nodded without asking anything further. They pushed past a knot of onlookers and grabbed one of the heavy ladders the Silent Brothers had carried to the Field, propping it against the side of Livvy’s pyre.

“Julian,” Emma called, and she saw him glance down at her as she and Mark held the ladder steady. Somewhere Horace was shouting at them to leave it alone and for the Council guards to come and drag the boys down. But nobody moved.

Julian touched Ty once on the cheek and Ty hesitated, his arms coming up to hug himself briefly. He dropped them and followed Julian as they climbed down the ladder, Julian first. When he hit the ground he didn’t move, just looked up, poised to catch his brother if he fell.

Ty reached the ground and walked away from the pyre without stopping to catch his breath, heading across the grass toward Kit and Diana.

Someone was shouting at them to move the ladder: Mark hoisted it and carried it over to the Silent Brothers, while Emma took hold of Julian’s wrists and drew him gently away from the site of the pyres.

He looked stunned, as if he’d been hit with enough force to make him dizzy. She stopped some distance from any other people and took both his hands in hers.

No one would think anything odd of it; that was a normal sort of affection between parabatai. Still, she shivered, at the combination of touching him and the horror of the situation and the blank look on his face.

“Julian,” she said, and he winced.

“My hands,” he said, sounding surprised. “I didn’t feel it.”

She glanced down and sucked in her breath. His palms were a crazy quilt of bloody splinters from the kindling wood. Some were small dark lines against his skin, but others were bigger, snapped-off toothpicks of wood that had gone in at an angle, oozing blood.

“You need an iratze,” she said, letting go of one of his wrists and reaching to her belt for a stele. “Let me—” “No.” He drew his other wrist free of her hold. His expression was colder than glacial ice. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.” He walked away as Emma struggled to breathe. Ty and Mark had returned to where the Blackthorns were standing: Ty was near Kit, as he almost always was, like a magnet clicking into place.

She saw Mark reach out to take Cristina’s hand and hold it and thought: I should be holding Julian’s hands, I should be there for him, reminding him there are still things in the world worth living for.

But Julian’s hands were bloody and wounded and he didn’t want her to touch them. As his soul was torn and bloody and maybe he didn’t want anyone near that, either, but she was different, she was his parabatai, wasn’t she?

It is time. The silent voice of one of the Brothers rippled across the Fields: They all heard it—except Magnus and Max, who looked around in confusion. Emma barely had time to brace herself before the Silent Brothers touched their torches to the kindling wood at the foot of each pyre. Fire blasted upward, rippling in shades of gold and red, and for a moment it was almost beautiful.

Then the roar of the flames hit her, like the sound of a crashing wave, and the heat rolled across the grass, and Livvy’s body vanished behind a sheet of smoke.

Kit could barely hear the soft chant of the Nephilim over the greedy crackle of the flames: “Vale, vale, vale. Farewell, farewell, farewell.” The smoke was thick. His eyes stung and burned, and he couldn’t stop thinking of the fact that his own father had had no funeral, that there had been little of him left to bury, his flesh turned to ash by Mantid venom, his remains disposed of by the Silent Brothers.

Kit couldn’t bear to look at the Blackthorns, so he stared at the Lightwoods. He had overheard all their names by now: he knew Alec’s sister was Isabelle, the girl with the black hair who stood with her arms around Alec and her mother, Maryse. Rafe and Max held each other’s hands; Simon and Magnus stood close to the others, like small moons of comfort orbiting a planet of grief. He remembered someone saying that funerals were for the living, not the dead, so that they could say good-bye. He wondered about the burning: Was it so that the Nephilim could bid good-bye in fire that reminded them of angels?

He saw a man come toward the Lightwoods and blinked his watering eyes. He was a young man, handsome, with curling brown hair and a square jaw. He wasn’t wearing white, like the others, but plain black gear. As he passed Maryse he stopped and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She didn’t turn or seem to notice. Neither did anyone else. Magnus glanced over quickly, frowning, but looked away again; Kit realized with a coldness in his chest that he was the only one who actually could see the young man—and that the smoke seemed to flow through the stranger, as if he were made of air.

A ghost, he thought. Like Jessamine. He looked around wildly: Surely there would be more ghosts here, in the Imperishable Fields, their dead feet leaving no traces on the grass?

But he saw only the Blackthorns, clinging together, Emma and Cristina side by side, and Julian with Tavvy, as the smoke rose up and around them. Half-reluctantly he glanced back: The young man with the dark hair had moved to kneel beside Robert Lightwood’s pyre. He was closer to the flames than any human could have gotten, and they seemed to eddy within the outline of his body, lighting eyes with fiery tears.

Parabatai, Kit thought suddenly. In the slump of the young man’s shoulders, in his outstretched hands, in the longing stamped on his face, he saw Emma and Julian, he saw Alec as he spoke about Jace; he knew he was looking at the ghost of Robert Lightwood’s parabatai. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.

A cruel sort of bond, he thought, that made one person out of two people, and left such devastation when half was gone.

He glanced away from the ghost, realizing that smoke and fire had made a wall now, and the pyres were no longer visible. Livvy had disappeared behind the boiling darkness. The last thing he saw before tears blinded him was Ty beside him, lifting his face and closing his eyes, a dark silhouette outlined by the brilliance of the fire as if he was haloed in gold.