Lady Midnight

“Blood is blood,” Malcolm said. “We are all what we were born to be. I was born to love Annabel and that was taken from me. Now I live only for revenge. Just as you have, Emma. How many times have you told me that all you want in life is to kill the one who killed your parents? What would you give up for it? Would you give up the Blackthorns? Would you give up your precious parabatai? The one you’re in love with?” His eyes glittered as she shook her head in denial. “Please. I always saw the way you looked at each other. And then Julian told me that your rune had healed him from Rook’s poison. No normal Shadowhunter’s rune should have been able to do that.”

“Not—proof of anything—” Emma gasped.

“Proof? You want proof? I saw you, the two of you. On the beach, sleeping in each other’s arms. I stood over you and watched you and thought how easy it would be to kill you. But then I realized that that would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? Killing the two of you while you were in each other’s arms? There’s a reason you can’t fall in love with your parabatai, Emma. And when you find out what it is, you will feel the cruelty of the Shadowhunters, just as I have.”

“You’re a liar,” she said in her weakest voice, her words trailing off into a whisper. The pain in her arm had gone. She thought of people who bled nearly to death, how they talked about the fact that in the last moments, all the pain vanished.

Smiling, Malcolm knelt down beside her. He patted her left hand; her fingers twitched. “Let me tell you a truth before you die, Emma,” he said. “It is a secret about the Nephilim. They hate love, human love, because they were born of angels. And while God charged his angels to take care of humans, the angels were made first, and they have always hated God’s second creation. That is why Lucifer fell. He was an angel who would not bow to mankind, God’s favored child. Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it, and the Clave despises it too, and therefore they punish it. Do you know what happens to parabatai who fall in love? Do you know why it’s forbidden?”

She shook her head.

His mouth quirked into a smile. There was something about that smile, so faint and yet so full of bone-deep hatred, that chilled her the way none of his grinning had. “Then you have no idea what your death will spare your beloved Julian,” he said. “So think about that as the life leaves your body. In a way, your death is a mercy.” He raised his hand, violet fire beginning to crackle between his fingers.

He hurled his magic at her. And Emma flung her arm up, the arm that Julian had carved the Endurance rune on, the arm that had been burning and aching and screaming at her to use it since she’d struck the Black Volume.

Fire slammed into her arm. She felt it like a hard blow, but nothing more. The Endurance rune was pulsing through her body with its power, and alongside that power rose her own rage.

Rage at knowing Malcolm had killed her parents, rage for the wasted years she’d searched for their killer when he’d been right in front of her. Rage for every time he’d smiled at Julian or picked up Tavvy when his heart was full of hate. Rage at one more thing that had been taken from the Blackthorns.

She seized Cortana and wrenched herself to her knees, her hair flying as she drove the sword into Malcolm’s gut.

This time there was no Black Volume to block her thrust. She felt the blade go in, felt it tear through skin and rip past bone. Saw the tip of it burst out through his back, his white jacket soaked through with red blood.

She sprang to her feet, yanking the sword free. He made a choking noise. Blood was spilling onto the ground, running across the stone, spattering the Hands of Glory.

“This is for my parents,” she said, and slammed his body as hard as she could against the glass wall.

She felt his ribs snap as the glass behind him fissured. Water began to pour through the cracks. She felt it splatter against her face, salty as tears.

“I’ll tell you about the parabatai curse,” he gasped. “The Clave will never let you know it—it’s forbidden. Kill me and you’ll never learn—”

With her left hand, Emma yanked down the lever.

She threw herself behind the glass door as it swung open, and the current exploded through. It moved like a living thing—like a hand, shaped out of water, formed by the sea. It surrounded Malcolm, and for a frozen moment Emma saw him there clearly, struggling with feeble motions, within a whirlpool of water, water that spilled across the floor, water that gripped him, encircling him like an unbreakable net.

It lifted Malcolm off his feet. He gave a cry of terror and the ocean took him, the current rushing back out, carrying him with it. The glass door slammed shut.

The silence the water left behind was deafening. Exhausted, Emma slumped against the glass of the porthole door. Through it she could see the ocean, the color of the night sky. Malcolm’s body was a pale white star in the darkness, drifting among the weeds, and then a dark, spiky talon curled upward, through the ripples, and caught hold of Malcolm by the ankle. With a quick jerk, his body was yanked down and out of view.

There was a bright flicker. Emma turned to see that the violet wall of light in the corridor behind her had vanished—spells disappeared when the warlocks who cast them died.

“Emma!” There were pounding footsteps in the corridor. Out of the shadows, Julian appeared. She saw his stricken expression as he caught her to him, his hands knotting in her soaked, bloodstained gear. “Emma, God, I couldn’t get to you through the wall, I knew you were there but I couldn’t save you—”