“I know what you’re thinkin g. You Shadowhunters all think alike. But I need you to understand—” Malcolm broke off, his face working. “If you understood,” he said, “you wouldn’t blame me.”

“Then tell me what happened,” Emma said. She could see the corridor behind him, over his shoulder, thought she could see shapes, shadows in the distance. If she could keep him distracted and the others could attack from behind . . . “You went to Faerie,” she said. “When you found out that Annabel wasn’t an Iron Sister. That she’d been murdered. Is that how you know Iarlath?”

“Despite not being born gentry, he was the right hand of the Unseelie King back then,” said Malcolm. “When I went, I knew the King might have me murdered. They don’t much like warlocks. But I didn’t care. And when the King asked me a favor, I did it. In return, he gave me the rhyme. A spell custom made to raise my Annabel. Blackthorn blood. Blood for blood, that’s what the King said.”

“So why didn’t you just raise her right then? Why wait?”

“Faerie magic and warlock magic are very different,” said Malcolm. “It was like translating something from another language. It took me years to decipher the poem. Then I realized it was telling me to find a book. I almost went out of my mind. Years of translation and all I got was a riddle about a book—” His eyes bored into hers, as if he were willing her to understand. “It was just chance that it was your parents,” he said. “They returned to the Institute while I was there. But it didn’t work. I did everything the spell book said, and Annabel didn’t stir.”

“My parents—”

“Your love for them wasn’t greater than my love for Annabel,” Malcolm said. “I was trying to make things fair. It was never about hurting you. I don’t hate the Carstairs. Your parents were sacrifices.”

“Malcolm—”

“They would have sacrificed themselves, wouldn’t they?” he asked reasonably. “For the Clave? For you?”

A rage so great it was numbing washed through Emma. It was all she could do to stay still. “So you waited five years?” She choked out the question. “Why five years?”

“I waited until I thought I’d gotten the spell right,” said Malcolm. “I used the time to learn. To build. I took Annabel’s body from her tomb and moved it to the convergence. I created the Followers of the Guardian. Belinda was the first murderer. I followed the ritual—burned and soaked the body, carved the markings onto it—and I felt Annabel move.” His eyes shone, an unholy blue-violet. “I knew I was bringing her back. After that nothing could have stopped me.”

“But why those markings?” Emma pressed herself back against the wall. The candelabra was heavy; her arm was throbbing. “Why the Unseelie King’s poem?”

“Because it was a message!” Malcolm cried. “Emma, for someone who’s talked so much about revenge, who’s lived it and breathed it, you don’t seem to understand much about it. I needed the Shadowhunters to know. I needed the Blackthorns to know, when the youngest of them lay dead, whose hand had dealt them that blow. When someone has wronged you, it isn’t enough that they suffer. They need to look at your face and know why they suffer. I needed the Clave to decipher that poem and learn exactly who would be their destruction.”

“Destruction?” Emma couldn’t help her incredulous echo. “You’re insane. Killing Tavvy wouldn’t destroy the Nephilim—and none of them who are alive even know about Annabel—”

“And how do you think that feels?” he shouted. “Her name forgotten? Her fate buried? The Shadowhunters turned her into a story. I think several of her kinsmen went mad—they couldn’t bear what they’d done, couldn’t bear the weight of the secret.”

Keep him talking, Emma thought. “If it was such a secret, how did Poe know? The poem, ‘Annabel Lee’—”

Something flashed across the backs of Malcolm’s eyes, something secretive and dark. “When I heard it, I thought it was a sickening coincidence,” he said. “But it obsessed me. I went to talk to the poet, but he had died. ‘Annabel’ was his last work.” His voice was bleak with memory. “Years went by, and I believed her to be in the Adamant Citadel. It was all that comforted me. That she was alive somewhere. When I found out, I wanted to deny it, but it was the poem that proved the facts of it—Poe had learned the truth from Downworlders, learned it before I did—how Annabel and I had loved as children, how she would have left the Nephilim for me, but her family heard of it and decided death was preferable to life with a warlock. They’d walled her up in a tomb by the Cornwall sea, walled her up alive. Later, when I moved her body, I kept it near the ocean. She always loved the water.”

His breath was coming in sobs now. Emma, unable to move, stared. His grief was as raw and real as if what he were talking about had happened yesterday.

“They told me she’d become an Iron Sister. All of them lied to me—Magnus, Catarina, Ragnor, Tessa—corrupted by Shadowhunters, drawn in by their lies! And I, oblivious, grieving for her, until finally I found out the truth—”

Sudden voices echoed in the hall; Emma heard the sound of running feet. Malcolm snapped his fingers. Violet light shimmered in the tunnel behind them, its iridescence fading as it grew dimmer and more opaque, solidifying into a wall.