Lord of Shadows

Cristina could hear cars whizzing by on the highway below. They’d climbed up the side of the hill to get here, and she felt sweaty and itchy. Clary Fairchild was standing atop the rubble of Malcolm’s house, wielding an odd-looking object that looked like a cross between a seraph blade and one of those machines mundanes used to find metal hidden under sand. Mark, Julian, and Emma were ranged around different parts of the collapsed house, picking through the metal and glass.

Jace had opted to spend the day with Kit in the training room at the Institute. Cristina admired that. She’d been raised to believe nothing was more important than family, and Kit and Jace were the only Shadowhunters of the Herondale bloodline alive in the world. Plus, the boy needed friends—he was an odd little thing, too young to be handsome but with big blue eyes that made you want to trust him even as he was picking your pocket. He had a gleam of mischief about him, a little like Jaime, her childhood best friend, had once had—the sort that could tip over easily into criminality.

“?En que piensas?” asked Diego, coming up behind her. He wore jeans and work boots. Cristina wished it didn’t annoy her that he insisted on pinning his Centurion badge even to the sleeve of a completely ordinary black T-shirt.

He was very handsome. Much handsomer than Mark, really, if you were being completely objective. His features were more regular, his jaw squarer, his chest and shoulders broader.

Cristina shoved aside a few chunks of painted plaster. She and Diego had been assigned the eastern segment of the house, which she was fairly sure had been Malcolm’s bedroom and closet. She kept turning up shreds of clothes. “I was thinking of Jaime, actually.”

“Oh.” His dark eyes were sympathetic. “It’s all right to miss him. I miss him too.”

“Then you should talk to him.” Cristina knew she sounded short. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why Diego was driving her crazy, and not in a good way. Maybe it was that she’d blamed him for betraying her for so long that it was hard to let go of that anger. Maybe it was that no longer blaming him meant more blame laid on Jaime, which seemed unfair, as Jaime wasn’t around to defend himself.

“I don’t know where he is,” Diego said.

“At all? You don’t know where he is in the world or how to contact him?” Somehow Cristina had missed this part. Probably because Diego hadn’t mentioned it.

“He doesn’t want to be bothered by me,” said Diego. “All my fire-messages come back blocked. He hasn’t talked to our father.” Their mother was dead. “Or any of our cousins.”

“How do you know he’s even alive?” Cristina asked, and instantly regretted it. Diego’s eyes flashed.

“He is my little brother, still,” he said. “I would know if he was dead.”

“Centurion!” It was Clary, gesturing from the top of the hill. Diego began to jog up the ruins toward her without looking back. Cristina was conscious that she’d upset him; guilt spilled through her and she kicked at a heavy chunk of plaster with a bolt of rebar stuck through it like a toothpick.

It rolled to the side. She blinked at the object revealed under it, then bent to pick it up. A glove—a man’s glove, made of leather, soft as silk but a thousand times tougher. The leather was printed with the image of a golden crown snapped in half.

“Mark!” she called. “?Necesito que veas algo!”

A moment later she realized she’d been so startled she’d actually called out in Spanish, but it didn’t seem to matter. Mark had come leaping nimbly down the stones toward her. He stood just above her, the wind lifting his airy, pale-gold curls away from the slight points of his ears. He looked alarmed. “What is it?”

She handed him the glove. “Isn’t that the emblem of one of the Faerie Courts?”

Mark turned it over in his hands. “The broken crown is the Unseelie King’s symbol,” he murmured. “He believes himself to be true King of both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts, and until he rules both, the crown will remain snapped in half.” He tilted his head to the side like a bird studying a cat from a safe distance. “But these kind of gloves—Kieran had them when he arrived at the Hunt. They are fine workmanship. Few but the gentry would wear them. In fact, few but the King’s sons would wear them.”

“You don’t think this is Kieran’s?” Cristina said.

Mark shook his head. “His were . . . destroyed. In the Hunt. But it does mean that whoever visited Malcolm here, and left this glove, was either high in the Court, or the King himself.”

Cristina frowned. “It’s very odd that it’s here.”

Her hair had escaped from its braids and was blowing in long curls around her face. Mark reached up to tuck one back behind her ear. His fingers skimmed her cheek. His eyes were dreamy, distant. She shivered a little at the intimacy of the gesture.

“Mark,” she said. “Don’t.”

He dropped his hand. He didn’t look angry, the way a lot of boys tended to when asked not to touch a girl. He looked puzzled and a little sad. “Because of Diego?”

“And Emma,” she said, her voice very low.

His puzzlement increased. “But you know that’s—”

“Mark! Cristina!” It was Emma, calling to them from where she and Julian had joined Diego and Clary. Cristina was grateful not to have to answer Mark; she raced up the pile of rocks and glass, glad her Shadowhunter boots and gear protected her from stray sharp edges.

“Did you find something?” she asked as she approached the small group.

“Have you ever wanted a really up-close look at a gross tentacle?” Emma asked.

“No,” said Cristina, drawing closer warily. Clary did appear to have something unpleasantly floppy speared on the end of her odd weapon. It wriggled a bit, showing pink suckers against green, mottled skin.

“No one ever seems to say yes to that question,” said Emma sadly.

“Magnus introduced me to a warlock with tentacles like this once,” Clary said. “His name was Marvin.”

“I assume these aren’t Marvin’s remains,” Julian said.

“I’m not sure they’re anyone’s remains,” said Clary. “To command sea demons, you’d need either the Mortal Cup or something like this—a piece of a powerful demon you could enchant. I think we have some definite evidence that Malcolm’s death is tied to the recent Teuthida attacks.”

“Now what?” said Emma, side-eyeing the tentacle. She wasn’t a huge fan of the ocean, or the monsters that lived in it, though she’d fight anything or anyone on dry land.

“Now we go back to the Institute,” said Clary, “and decide what our next step is. Who wants to carry the tentacle?”

There were no volunteers.

*

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kit said. “There’s no way I’m jumping off that.”

“Just consider it.” Jace leaned down from a rafter. “It’s surprisingly easy.”

“Give it a try,” Emma called. She had come to the training room when they’d gotten back from Malcolm’s, curious to see how it was going. She had found Ty and Livvy sitting on the floor, watching as Jace tried to convince Kit to throw a few knives (which he was willing to do) and then to learn jumping and falling (which he wasn’t).

“My father warned me you people would try to kill me,” Kit said.

Jace sighed. He was in training gear, balanced on one of the intricate network of rafters that intersected the interior of the training room’s pitched roof. They ranged from thirty to twenty feet above the floor. Emma had taught herself to fall from those exact rafters over the years, sometimes breaking bones.

A Shadowhunter had to know how to climb—demons were fast and often multi-legged, scurrying up the sides of buildings like spiders. But learning how to fall was just as important.

“You can do it,” Emma called now.

“Yeah? And what happens if I splatter myself all over the floor?” asked Kit.

“You get a big state funeral,” Emma said. “We put your body in a boat and shove you over a waterfall like a Viking.”

Kit glared at her. “That’s from a movie.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

Jace, losing patience, launched himself from the highest rafter. He somersaulted gracefully in the air before landing in a soundless crouch. He straightened up and winked at Kit.

Emma hid a smile. She’d had a horrendous crush on Jace when she was twelve. Later that had turned into wanting to be Jace—the best there was: the best fighter, the best survivor, the best Shadowhunter.