Julian felt as if he were going to throw up. "That--I'd never hurt my family."
"You won't know who they are," said Magnus. "You won't know love from hate. And you'll destroy what's around you, not because you want to, any more than a crashing wave wants to shatter the rocks it breaks on. You'll do it because you won't know not to." He looked at Julian with an ancient sympathy. "It doesn't matter if your intentions are good or bad. It doesn't matter that love is a positive force. Magic doesn't take note of small human concerns."
"I know," Julian said. "But what can we do? I can't become a mundane or a Downworlder and leave my family. It would kill me and them. And not being a Shadowhunter anymore would be like suicide for Emma."
"There is exile," Magnus said. His gaze was fathomless. "You would still be Shadowhunters, but you'd be stripped of some of your magic. That's what exile means. That's the punishment. And because parabatai magic is some of the most precious and most ingrained in what you are, exile deadens its power. All the things the curse intensifies--the power your runes give each other, the ability to feel what the other is feeling or know if they're hurt--exile takes those away. If I understand magic, and I know I do, then that means exile would slow the curse down immeasurably."
"And exile would also take me away from the children," said Julian, in despair. "I might never see them again. I might as well become a mundane. At least then I could try to sneak around and maybe watch them from a distance." Bitterness corroded his voice. "The terms of exile are determined by the Inquisitor and the Clave. It would be totally out of our control."
"Not necessarily," said Magnus.
Julian looked at him sharply. "I think you'd better tell me what you mean."
"That you have only one choice. And you won't like it." Magnus paused, as if waiting for Julian to refuse to hear it, but Julian said nothing at all. "All right," said Magnus. "When you get to Alicante, tell the Inquisitor everything."
*
"Kit . . ."
Something cool touched his temple, brushed back his hair. Shadows surrounded Kit, shadows in which he saw faces familiar and unfamiliar: the face of a woman with pale hair, her mouth forming the words of a song; his father's face, the angry countenance of Barnabas Hale, Ty looking at him through eyelashes as thick and black as the soot covering the London streets in a Dickens novel.
"Kit."
The cool touch became a tap. His eyelids fluttered, and there was the ceiling of the infirmary in the London Institute. He recognized the strange tree-shaped burn on the plastered wall, the view of rooftops through the window, the fan that spun its lazy blades over his head.
And hovering over him, a pair of anxious blue-green eyes. Livvy, her long brown hair spilling down in tangled curls. She exhaled a relieved sigh as he frowned.
"Sorry," she said. "Magnus said to shake you awake every few hours or so, to make sure your concussion doesn't get worse."
"Concussion?" Kit remembered the rooftop, the rain, Gwyn and Diana, the sky full of clouds sliding up and away as he fell. "How did I wind up with a concussion? I was fine."
"It happens, apparently," she said. "People get hit on the head; they don't realize it's serious until they pass out."
"Ty?" he said. He started to sit up, which was a mistake. His skull ached as if someone had taken a bludgeon to it. Bits and pieces of memory flashed against the backs of his eyes: the faeries in their terrifying bronze armor. The concrete platform by the river. The certainty that they were going to die.
"Here." Her hand curved around the back of his neck, supporting him. The rim of something cold clinked against his teeth. "Drink this."
Kit swallowed. Darkness came down, and the pain went away with it. He heard the singing again, down in the deepest part of everything he'd ever forgotten. The story that I love you, it has no end.
When he opened his eyes again, the candle by his bed had guttered. There was light, though, in the room--Ty sat by the side of his bed, a witchlight in his hand, looking up at the rotating blades of the fan.
Kit coughed and sat up. This time it hurt a little bit less. His throat felt like sandpaper. "Water," he said.
Ty drew his gaze away from the fan blades. Kit had noticed before that he liked to look at them, as if their graceful motion pleased him. Ty found the water pitcher and a glass, and handed it to Kit.
"Do you want more water?" Ty asked, when Kit's thirst had emptied the pitcher. He'd changed clothes since Kit had seen him last. More of the odd old-fashioned stuff from the storage room. Pinstriped shirt, black pants. He looked like he ought to be in an old advertisement.
Kit shook his head. He held tightly to the glass in his hand. A strange sense of unreality had settled over him--here he was, Kit Rook, in an Institute, having gotten his head bashed in by large faeries for defending Nephilim.
His father would have been ashamed. But Kit felt nothing but a sense of rightness. A sense that the piece that had always been missing from his life, that had made him anxious and uneasy, had been returned to him by chance and fate.
"Why did you do it?" Ty said.
Kit propped himself up. "Why'd I do what?"
"That time I came out of the magic shop and you and Livvy were arguing." Ty's gray gaze rested on a point around Kit's collarbone. "It was about me, wasn't it?"
"How did you know we were arguing?" Kit said. "Did you hear us?"
Ty shook his head. "I know Livvy," he said. "I know when she's angry. I know the things she does. She's my twin. I don't know those things about anyone else, but I know them about her." He shrugged. "The argument was about me, wasn't it?"
Kit nodded.
"Everyone always tries to protect me," said Ty. "Julian tries to protect me from everything. Livvy tries to protect me from being disappointed. She didn't want me to know that you might leave, but I've always known it. Jules and Livvy, they have a hard time imagining that I've grown up. That I might understand that some things are temporary."
"You mean me," Kit said. "That I'm temporary."
"It's your choice to stay or leave," said Ty. "In Limehouse, I thought maybe it would be leaving."
"But what about you?" said Kit. "I thought you were going to the Scholomance. And I could never go there. I don't even have basic training."
Kit set his water glass down. Ty immediately picked it up and began turning it in his hands. It was made of milky glass, rough on the outside, and he seemed to like the texture.
Ty was silent, and in that silence, Kit thought of Ty's headphones, the music in his ears, the whispered words, the way he touched things with such total concentration: smooth stones, rough glass, silk and leather and textured linen. There were people in the world, he knew, who thought human beings like Ty did those things for no reason--because they were inexplicable. Broken.
Kit felt a wash of rage go through him. How could they not understand everything Ty did had a reason? If an ambulance siren blared in your ears, you covered them. If something hit you, you doubled up to protect yourself from hurt.
But not everyone felt and heard exactly the same way. Ty heard everything twice as loud and fast as everyone else. The headphones and the music, Kit sensed, were a buffer: They deadened not just other noises, but also feelings that would otherwise be too intense. They protected him from hurt.
He couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to live so intensely, to feel things so much, to have the world sway into and out of too-bright colors and too-bright noises. When every sound and feeling was jacked up to eleven, it only made sense to calm yourself by concentrating all your energy on something small that you could master--a mass of pipe cleaners to unravel, the pebbled surface of a glass between your fingers.
"I don't want to tell you not to go to the Scholomance if it's what you want," said Kit. "But I would just say that it isn't always about people trying to protect you, or knowing what's best for you, or thinking they do. Sometimes they just know they'd miss you."
"Livvy would miss me--"
"Your
whole family would miss you," said Kit, "and I would miss you."
It was a bit like stepping off a cliff, far scarier than any con Kit had ever run for his dad, any Downworlder or demon he'd ever met. Ty looked up in surprise, forgetting the glass in his hands. He was blushing. It was very visible against his pale skin. "You would?"
"Yeah," said Kit, "but like I said, I don't want to stop you from going if you want to--"
"I don't," Ty said. "I changed my mind." He set the glass down. "Not because of you. Because the Scholomance appears to be full of assholes."
Kit burst out laughing. Ty looked even more astonished than he had when Kit had said he'd miss him. But after a second, he started to laugh too. They were both laughing, Kit doubled up over the blankets, when Magnus came into the room. He looked at the two of them and shook his head.
"Bedlam," he said, and went over to the counter where the glass tubes and funnels had been set up. He gave them a pleased look. "Not that anyone here probably cares," he said, "but the antidote to the binding spell is ready. We should have no problem leaving for Idris tomorrow."
*
Cristina felt as if a tornado had blown through the room. She set her balisong down on the mantel and turned to Mark.
He was leaning against the wall, his eyes wide but not focused on anything. She remembered an old book she had read when she was a girl. There had been a boy in it whose eyes had been two different colors, a knight in the Crusades. One eye for God, the book had said, and one for the devil.
A boy who had been split down the middle, part good and part evil. Just as Mark was split between faerie and Nephilim. She could see the battle raging in him now, though all his anger was for himself.
"Mark," she began. "It is not--"
"Don't say it's not my fault," he said tonelessly. "I couldn't stand it, Cristina."
"It is not only your fault," said Cristina. "We all knew. It is all our fault. It was not the right thing to do, but we had very few choices. And Kieran did wrong you."
"I still shouldn't have lied to him."
A ragged dark crack across the plaster of Cristina's wall, bulging through the paint, was the only sign of what had happened. That, and the crushed golden acorn on the hearth. "I am only saying that if you can forgive him, you should forgive yourself as well," she said.
"Can you come here?" Mark said, in a strangled sort of voice.
Mark had his eyes closed and was clenching and unclenching his hands. She nearly tripped getting to him across the room. He seemed to sense her approach; without opening his eyes, he reached for her and caught her hand in a bone-crushing grip.
Cristina glanced down. He held her hand so tightly it should have hurt, but all she saw was the red marks around both of their wrists. This close together, they had faded to almost nothing.
She felt again what she had felt that night in the ballroom, as if the binding spell amplified their nearness into something else, a thing that dragged her mind back to that hill in Faerie, the memory of being wrapped up in Mark.
Mark's mouth found hers. She heard him groan: He was kissing her hard and desperately; her body felt as if fire was pouring through it, turning her light as ashes.
Yet she could not forget Kieran kissing Mark in front of her, forceful and deliberate. It seemed she could not think of Mark now without thinking of Kieran, too. Could not see blue and gold eyes without seeing black and silver.
"Mark." She spoke against his lips. His hands were on her, stirring her blood to soft heat. "This is not the right way to make yourself forget."
He drew away from her. "I want to hold you," he said. "I want it very badly." He let go of her slowly, as if the motion were an effort. "But it would not be fair. Not to you or Kieran or myself. Not now."
Cristina touched the back of his hand. "You must go to Kieran and make things right between you. He is too important a part of you, Mark."
"You heard what the King said." Mark let his head fall back against the wall. "He'll kill Kieran for testifying. He'll hunt him forever. That's our doing."
"He agreed to it--"
"Without knowing the truth! He agreed to it because he thought he loved me and I loved him--"
"Isn't that true?" Cristina said. "And even if it wasn't, he didn't just forget that you fought. He forgot what he did. He forgot what he owes. He forgot his own guilt. And that is part of why he is so angry. Not at you, but at himself."
Mark's hand tightened on hers. "We owe each other now, Kieran and I," he said. "I have endangered him. The Unseelie King knows he plans to testify. He's sworn to hunt Kieran. Cristina, what do we do?"
"We try to keep him safe," Cristina said. "Whether he testifies or not, the King won't forgive him. We need to find a place Kieran will be protected." Her chin jerked up as realization hit her. "I know exactly where. Mark, we must--"
There was a knock on the door. They stepped away from each other as it swung open; both of them had been expecting Kieran, and Mark's disappointment when it turned out to be Magnus was clear.
Magnus was carrying two etched metal flasks and raised an eyebrow when he saw Mark's expression. "I don't know who you were waiting for, and I'm sorry I'm not it," he said dryly. "But the antidote is ready."
Cristina had expected a thrill of relief to go through her. Instead she felt nothing. She touched her left hand to her sore wrist and glanced toward Mark, who was staring at the floor.
"Don't rush to thank me or anything," said Magnus, handing them each a flask. "Profuse expressions of gratitude only embarrass me, though cash gifts are always welcome."
"Thank you, Magnus," Cristina said, blushing. She unscrewed the flask: A dark and bitter scent wafted from it, like the smell of pulque, a drink that Cristina had never liked.
Magnus held up a hand. "Wait until you're in separate rooms to drink it," he said. "In fact, you should spend at least a few hours apart so that the spell can settle properly. All the effects should be gone by tomorrow."
"Thank you," said Mark, and headed for the door. He paused there and looked back at Cristina. "I agree with you," he said to her. "About Kieran. If there's anything you can do to guarantee his safety--do it."
He was gone noiselessly, with cat-soft footsteps. Magnus glanced at the cracked wall, and then at Cristina.
"Do I want to know?" he asked.
Cristina sighed. "Can a fire-message get outside the wards you put up?"
Magnus stared at the wall again, shook his head, and said, "You'd better give it to me. I'll get it sent."
She hesitated.
"I won't read it, either," he added irritably. "I promise."
Cristina set down her flask, found paper, pen, and stele, and scribbled a message with a rune-signature before folding it and handing it to Magnus, who gave a low whistle when he saw the name of the recipient across the top. "Are you sure?"
She nodded with a resolution she didn't feel. "Absolutely."
27
ILL ANGELS ONLY
"Emma." Julian rapped on her door with the back of his knuckles. At least he was fairly sure it was Emma's door. He'd never been inside her room at the London Institute. "Emma, are you awake? I know it's late."
He heard her call for him to come in, her voice muffled through the thick wooden door. Inside, the room was much like his own, small with heavy blocks of Victorian-looking furniture. The bed was a solid four-poster with silk hangings.
Emma was lying on the covers, wearing an overwashed T-shirt and pajama bottoms. She rolled onto her side and grinned at him.
An overwhelming feeling of love hit him like a punch to the chest. Her hair was tied messily back and she was lying on a rumpled blanket with a plate of pastries next to her, and he had to stop in the middle of the room for a moment and catch his breath.
She waved a tart at him cheerily. "Banoffee," she said. "Want some?"
He could have crossed the room in a few steps. Could have picked her up and swung her into his arms and held her. Could have told her how much he loved her
. If they were any other couple, it would be that easy.
But nothing for them would ever be easy.
She was looking at him in puzzlement. "Is everything all right?"
He nodded, a little surprised at his own feelings. Usually he kept better control over himself. Maybe it was the conversation he'd had with Magnus. Maybe it had given him hope.
If there was one thing Julian's life had taught him, it was that nothing was more dangerous than hope.
"Julian," she said, setting the tart down and brushing the crumbs off her hands. "Would you please say something?"
He cleared his throat. "We need to talk."
She groaned and flopped back against her pillows. "Okay, not that."
Julian sat down at the foot of her bed as she cleared off her covers, setting aside the food and a few things she'd been looking at--he saw an old photograph of a girl carrying a blade that looked like Cortana, and another one of four boys in Edwardian clothes by the side of a river.
When she was done, she brushed off her hands again and turned a set face to his.
"How soon do we have to separate?" she said. Her voice was shaking a little. "As soon as the meeting is over in Alicante? What will we tell the kids?"
"I talked to Magnus," Julian said. "He said we should go to the Inquisitor."
Emma made an incredulous noise. "The Inquisitor? As in, the Council leader who enforces Laws?"
"Pretty sure Magnus knows who the Inquisitor is," said Julian. "He's Alec's dad."
"Did he mean it as a sort of threat? Like, either we turn ourselves in to Robert Lightwood or he does it for us? But Magnus wouldn't--I can't see him doing that. He's much too loyal."
"That's not it," Julian said. "Magnus wants to help us. He remembers other parabatai like us and he--he pointed out that no parabatai have ever gone to the Clave for help."
"Because it's the Clave's Law--!"
"But that's not the problem," said Julian. "We could handle the Law. It's the curse, which is the reason the Law exists--even if the Clave doesn't know it. But we know it."