Lady Midnight (57 page)

“What do you mean?” he asked guardedly. He had learned well in the past to be wary of the Fair Folk, their verbal entrapments and their false implications.

“He said you were gentle,” said Kieran. “The most gentle person he knew.” He smiled, and there was a cold beauty to his face when he smiled, like the crystalline surface of frost. “You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart.”

For several long moments Julian was silent, hearing only the sounds of their steps on the stairs. At the last step he turned.

“Remember it,” he said, and walked away.

*   *   *

Because I am a Shadowhunter.

Mark stood beside Kieran on the sweep of grass that led down to the bluff and then the sea. The Institute rose behind them, dark and lightless, though from here, at least, the hole in the roof was invisible.

Kieran put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, a sound achingly familiar to Mark. The sight of Kieran was still enough to make his heart ache, from the way he held himself, every line of his body speaking of his early Court training, to the way that his hair had grown too long since Mark had not been there to cut it, and the blue-dark strands fell into his eyes and tangled with his long eyelashes. Mark remembered being enchanted by the curve and sweep of those lashes. He remembered how they felt against his skin.

“Why?” Kieran said. He was standing facing a little away from Mark, his posture rigid, as if he expected to be slapped. “Why come with me?”

“Because you require watching,” said Mark. “I could trust you once. I cannot trust you now.”

“That is not the truth,” said Kieran. “I know you, Mark. I know when you lie.”

Mark spun on him. He had always felt a little afraid of Kieran, he realized: of the power of his rank, of his unassailable surety in himself. That fear was gone now, and he couldn’t say if it was because of the Courage rune on his shoulder or because he no longer desperately needed Kieran to live. Wanted him, loved him—those were different questions. But he could survive, either way. He was a Shadowhunter.

“Fine,” Mark said, and he knew he should have said “very well,” but the language wasn’t in him anymore, it didn’t beat in his blood, the high speech of Faerie. “I’ll tell you why I wanted to come with you—”

There was a flash of white. Windspear cleared a small rise and bounded up to them, answering the call of her master. She whinnied when she saw Mark and nosed at his shoulder.

He stroked her neck. A hundred times she had carried him and Kieran in the Hunt, a hundred times they had shared a single mount, and ridden together, and fought together, and as Kieran climbed up onto the horse’s back the familiarity was like fishhooks under Mark’s skin.

Kieran looked down at him, every inch the prince despite his bloodstained clothes. His eyes were half-lidded crescents of silver and black. “So tell me,” he said.

Mark felt the Agility rune burn on his back as he swung himself up behind Kieran. His arms went around Kieran automatically, hands settling themselves where they had always settled, at Kieran’s belt. He felt Kieran inhale sharply.

He wanted to drop his head to Kieran’s shoulder. He wanted to put his hands over Kieran’s and lace their fingers together. He wanted
to feel what he had felt living among the Hunt, that with Kieran he was safe, with Kieran he had someone who would never leave him.

But there were worse things than being left.

“Because,” Mark said, “I wished to ride with you in the Hunt one last time.” He felt Kieran flinch. Then the faerie boy leaned forward, and Mark heard him say a few words to Windspear in the Fair Speech. As the horse began to run, Mark reached back to touch the place where Julian had put the runes. He had felt a rush of panic when the stele touched his skin, and then a calm that had flowed through him, surprising him.

Maybe the runes of Heaven truly did belong on his skin. Maybe he’d been born to them after all.

He held tight to Kieran as Windspear lifted up into the sky, hooves tearing the air, and the Institute spun away below them.

*   *   *

When Emma and the others reached the convergence, Mark and Kieran were already there. They cantered out of the shadows on the back of a gorgeous white stallion that made Emma think of all the times in her childhood that she had wanted a horse.

The Toyota came to a stop. The sky was bare of clouds, and the moonlight was sharp and silver as a knife. It outlined Mark and Kieran, turned them into the brilliantly illuminated outlines of faerie knights. Neither of them looked human.

The field that reached to the bluff lay deceptively peaceful under the moonlight. The wide space of sea grass and sage bushes moved with soft rustles. The granite hill rose above it all, the dark space in the wall seeming to beckon them closer.

“We killed many Mantids,” said Mark. His eyes met Emma’s. “Cleared the way.”

Kieran sat glowering, his face half-hidden by dark hair. Mark had his hands on Kieran’s belt, steadying himself. As if suddenly recollecting this, Mark let go and slid to the ground.

“We’d better go in,” Mark said, tipping his face up to Kieran’s. “You and Windspear stand guard.”

“But I—” Kieran began.

“This is Blackthorn family business,” said Mark in a tone that brooked no argument. Kieran looked toward Cristina and Diego, opened his mouth as if to voice a protest, and then closed it again.

“Weapons check, everyone,” Julian said. “Then we head in.”

Everyone, even Diego, obediently checked their belts and gear. Ty fished an extra seraph blade out of the car trunk. Mark looked over Dru’s gear, reminded her again that her job was to stay behind them and to stick close to the others.

Emma unbuckled her arm guard and rolled up her sleeve. She held her arm out to Julian. He looked at her bare arm and then up at her face and nodded. “Which one?”

“Endurance,” she said. She was already marked with runes for courage and accuracy, runes for precision and healing. The Angel had never really given the Shadowhunters runes for emotional pain, though—there were no runes to mend grief or a broken heart.

The idea that her parents’ death had been a failed experiment, a pointless throwaway, hurt more than Emma could have imagined. She had thought all these years they had died for some reason, but it was no reason at all. They had simply been the only Shadowhunters available.

Julian took her arm gently, and she felt the familiar and welcome pressure of the stele against her skin. As the Mark emerged, it seemed to flow into her bloodstream, like a shaft of cool water.

Endurance.
She would have to endure this, this knowledge, fight past and through it. Do it for Tavvy, she thought. For Julian. For all of them. And maybe at the end of it, she would have her revenge.

Julian lowered his hand. His eyes were wide. The Mark blazed against her skin, infused with a brightness she had never seen
before, as if the edges of it were burning. She drew her sleeve down quickly, not wanting anyone else to notice.

At the edge of the bluff, Kieran’s white horse reared up against the moon. The sea crashed in the distance. Emma turned and marched toward the opening in the rock.

25

T
OMB BY THE
S
OUNDING
S
EA

Emma and Julian led the
way into the cavern, and Mark brought up the rear, sandwiching the others between them. As before, the tunnel was narrow at first, the ground tumbled with uneven pebbles. The rocks were disturbed now, many of them kicked aside. Even in the dimness—Emma had not dared illuminate her witchlight—she could see where the moss growing along the cave wall had been clawed at by human fingers.

“People came through here earlier,” Emma murmured. “A lot of people.”

“Followers?” Julian’s voice was low.

Emma shook her head. She didn’t know. She was cold, the good sort of cold, the battle cold that came from your stomach and spread outward. The cold that sharpened your eyes and seemed to slow time around you, so that you had infinite hours to correct the sweep of a seraph blade, the angle of a sword.

She could feel Cortana between her shoulder blades, heavy and golden, whispering to her in her mother’s voice.
Steel and temper, daughter
.

They came out into the high-ceilinged cavern. Emma stopped dead, and the others crowded around her. No one said a word.

The cavern was not as Emma remembered it. It was dim, giving the impression of immense space spreading away into darkness. The portholes were gone. Etched into the stone of the cave near her were the words of the poem that had become so familiar to them all. Emma could see sentences here and there, flashing out at her.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

The wingèd seraphs of Heaven.

Shadowhunters.

Julian’s witchlight flared up in his hand, illuminating the space, and Emma gasped.

In front of them was a stone table. It rose chest high, the surface rough and pitted. It looked as if it had been carved out of black lava. A wide circle of white chalk, sketched on the floor, surrounded the table.

On it lay Tavvy. He seemed to be sleeping, his small face soft and slack, his eyes closed. His feet were bare, and his wrists and ankles were locked into chains that were attached by loops of iron to the table’s stone legs.

A metal bowl, splashed with ominous-looking stains, had been placed by his head. Beside it was a jagged-toothed copper knife.

The witchlight cut into the shadows that seemed to hang in the room like a living thing. Emma wondered how big the cave really was, and how much of it was a shifting illusion.

Livvy cried out her brother’s name and lunged forward. Julian caught hold of her, hauling her back. She struggled incredulously
against his grip. “We need to save him,” she hissed. “We have to get to him—”

“There’s a protection circle,” Julian hissed back. “Drawn around him on the floor. If you step through it, it could kill you.”

Someone was murmuring softly. Cristina, whispering a prayer.

Mark had stiffened. “Be quiet,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”

They did their best to melt back into the shadows, even Livvy, who had not stopped struggling. Julian’s witchlight winked out.

A figure had appeared out of the darkness. Someone in a long black robe, a hood hiding their face. A tall someone with hands sheathed in black gloves.
He always showed up in a robe and gloves and a hood, okay? Completely covered.

Emma’s heart began to pound.

The figure approached the table, and the protection circle opened like a lock, runes vanishing and fading until there was a gap to step through. Head down, the figure came closer to Tavvy.

And closer. Emma felt the Blackthorns all around her, their fear like a living thing. She could taste blood in her mouth; she was biting her lip, so badly did she want to throw herself forward, risk the circle, grab Tavvy and run.

Livvy broke away from Julian and burst into the cavern. “No!” she cried. “Step away from my brother, or I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you—”

The figure froze. Slowly, it raised its head. Its hood fell back, and long, curling black hair spilled out. A familiar koi tattoo glimmered against brown skin. “Livvy?”

“Diana?” Ty spoke, voicing his sister’s disbelief. Livvy was stricken silent.

Diana jerked away from the table, staring. “By the Angel,” she breathed. “How many of you are here?”

It was Julian who spoke. His voice was level, though Emma could feel the effort it took to keep it that way. Diego was leaning
forward, his eyes narrow.
Jace Herondale and the Lightwoods were betrayed by their own tutor.
“All of us,” Julian said.

“Even Dru? You don’t understand how dangerous this is—Julian, you have to get everyone out of here.”

“Not without Tavvy,” Emma snapped. “Diana, what the hell are you doing? You told us you were in Thailand.”

“If she was, no one at the Bangkok Institute knew about it,” said Diego. “I checked.”

“You lied to us,” Emma said. She remembered Iarlath saying:
Foolish Shadowhunters, too naive to even know who you can trust
. Had he meant Malcolm or Diana? “And you’ve barely been here, this whole investigation, like you were hiding something from us—”

Diana recoiled. “Emma, no, it’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like? Because I can’t imagine what possible reason you could have for being here—”

There was a noise. Approaching footsteps, from the shadows. Diana flung out a hand. “Get back—get away—”

Julian grabbed for Livvy, hauling his sister back into the shadows just as Malcolm appeared.

Malcolm.

He looked just as he always did. A bit scruffy in jeans and a white linen jacket that matched his hair. In his hand he carried a large black book, tied with a leather strap.

“It
is
you,” Diana whispered.

Malcolm looked at her calmly.

“Diana Wrayburn,” he said. “Now, now. I didn’t expect to see you here. I rather thought you’d run away.”

Diana faced him. “I don’t run.”

He seemed to look at her again, to see how close she was to Tavvy. He frowned. “Step away from the boy.”

Diana didn’t move.

“Do it,” he said, tucking the Black Volume into his jacket.
“He’s nothing to you, anyway. You’re not a Blackthorn.”

“I’m his tutor. He has grown up in my care.”

“Oh, come now,” said Malcolm. “If you’d cared about those children, you’d have taken the post as head of the Institute years ago. But I suppose we all know why you didn’t do that.”

Malcolm grinned. It transformed his whole face. If Emma had still held lingering doubts about his guilt, about the story Kieran had told, they vanished in that moment. His mobile, amusing features seemed to harden. There was cruelty in that smile, framed against a backdrop of echoing, depthless loss.

A flare went up from the table, a burst of fire. Diana cried out and stumbled back, out of the circle of protection. It sealed itself up behind her. She hurled herself to her feet and threw herself toward Tavvy, but this time the circle held fast; she bounced off it as if off a glass wall, the force sending her staggering back.

“No human thing can cross that barrier,” said Malcolm. “I’m guessing you had a charm to get you through the first time, but it won’t work again. You should have stayed away.”

“You can’t possibly hope for success, Malcolm,” Diana gasped. She was clutching her left arm with her right; the skin looked burned. “If you kill a Shadowhunter, the Nephilim will hunt you for the rest of your days.”

“They hunted me two hundred years ago. They killed
her
,” said Malcolm, and the throb of emotion in his voice was something Emma had never heard before. “And we had done nothing. Nothing. I do not fear them, their unjust justice or unlawful laws.”

“I understand your pain, Malcolm,” Diana said carefully. “But—”

“Do you? Do you understand, Diana Wrayburn?” he snarled—then his voice softened. “Maybe you do. You have known the injustice and intolerance of the Clave. If only you hadn’t come here—it’s the Blackthorns I despise, not the Wrayburns. I always rather liked you.”

“You liked me because you thought I was too frightened of the Clave to look closely at you,” Diana said, turning away from him. “To suspect you.” For a moment she faced Emma and the others. She mouthed
RUN
at them silently, before turning back to Malcolm.

Emma didn’t budge, but she did hear a movement behind her. It was quiet; if she hadn’t been wearing a rune that sharpened her hearing, it would have been inaudible. To her surprise, the movement was Julian, disappearing from her side. Mark was next to him. Silently they slipped back into the tunnel.

Emma wanted to call after Julian—what was he doing?—but she couldn’t, not without alerting Malcolm. Malcolm was still moving toward Diana; in a moment he’d be where he could see them. She put a hand to the hilt of Cortana. Ty was gripping a knife, white-knuckled; Livvy held her saber, her face set and determined.

“Who told you?” Malcolm said. “Was it Rook? I didn’t think he’d guessed.” He tipped his head to the side. “No. You weren’t sure when you got here. You suspected . . .” His mouth turned down at the corners. “It was Catarina, wasn’t it?”

Diana stood with her feet apart, her head back. A warrior stance. “When the second line of the poem was deciphered and I heard the phrase ‘Blackthorn blood,’ I realized that we weren’t searching for a killer of mundanes and faeries. That this was about the Blackthorn family. And there is no one more likely to know about a grudge that goes back years than Catarina. I went to her.”

“And you couldn’t tell the Blackthorns where you went because of the reason you know Catarina,” said Malcolm. “She’s a nurse—a nurse to mundanes. How do you think I found out—?”

“She didn’t tell you about me, Malcolm,” snapped Diana. “She keeps secrets. What she told me about you was simply what she knew—that you’d loved a Nephilim girl and that she’d become an Iron Sister. She’d never questioned the story because as far as she knew, you’d never questioned the story. But once she told me that,
I was able to check with the Iron Sisters. No Nephilim girl with that story had become one of them. And once I realized
that
was a lie, the rest began to come together. I remembered what Emma had told us about what she’d found here, the clothes, the candelabra. Catarina went to the Spiral Labyrinth and I came here—”

“So Catarina gave you the charm to get you through the protection circle,” said Malcolm. “Unfortunate that you wasted it. Did you have a plan or did you just rush here in a panic?”

Diana said nothing. Her face looked carved out of stone.

“Always have a plan,” said Malcolm. “I, for one, have been crafting my current plan for years. And now here you are, the proverbial fly in the ointment. I suppose there’s nothing to do but kill you, though I hadn’t planned to, and exposing you to the Clave would have been so much more fun—”

Something silver bloomed from Diana’s hand. A sharp-pointed throwing star. It whipped toward Malcolm; one moment he was in its path, the next he was across the room. The throwing star hit the wall of the cave and tumbled to the ground, where it lay glimmering.

Malcolm made a hissing noise, like an angry cat. Sparks flew from his fingers. Diana was lifted up into the air and flung back against the wall, then to the floor, her arms clamping themselves to her sides. She rolled into a sitting position, but when she tried to stand, her knees crumpled under her. She thrashed at her invisible bonds.

“You won’t be able to move,” Malcolm said in a bored voice. “You’re paralyzed. I could have killed you instantly, of course, but well, this is quite a trick I’m about to perform and every trick needs an audience.” He smiled suddenly. “I suppose I shouldn’t forget the audience I have. It’s just that they aren’t very lively.”

Suddenly the cavern was alive with light. The thick shadows behind the stone table dissolved, and Emma could see that the
cavern reached back and back—there were long rows of seats set up, like church pews, neat and orderly, and the seats were filled with people.

“Followers,” Ty breathed. He had only seen them before out of the window of the Institute, Emma thought, and wondered what he thought of them up close. It was strange to know that Malcolm had led all these people, that he had had such power over them that they did anything for him—Malcolm, who they’d all thought of as a foolish figure, someone who tied his own shoelaces together.

The Followers sat very still, their eyes wide open, their hands in their laps, like rows of dolls. Emma recognized Belinda and some of the others who had come to retrieve Sterling. Their heads were tilted to the side—a gesture of interest, Emma thought, until she realized how awkward the angle was and knew that it wasn’t fascination that kept them so still. It was that their necks were broken.

Someone pressed forward and put a hand on Emma’s shoulder. It was Cristina. “Emma,” she whispered. “We must attack. Diego thinks we can surround Malcolm, that enough of us could bring him down—”

Emma stood paralyzed. She wanted to run forward, to attack Malcolm. But she could feel something in the back of her mind, an insistent voice, telling her to wait. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t her own hesitation. If she hadn’t known better, if she didn’t think it would mean she was going crazy, she would have said it was Julian’s voice.
Emma, wait. Please wait.

“Wait,” she whispered.

“Wait?” Cristina’s anxiety was palpable. “Emma, we need to—”

Malcolm strode into the circle. He was standing close to Tavvy’s feet, which looked bare and vulnerable in the light. He reached out to the draped object standing at the foot of the table and twitched the cloth off it.

It was the candelabra Emma remembered, the brass one that
had been bare of candles. It had become a far more macabre thing. Onto each spiked point was jammed a severed hand, wrist down. Rigid, dead fingers reached for the ceiling.

One hand bore a ring with a flashy pink stone. Sterling’s hand.