Lord of Shadows

“Were you trying to scare him?” Emma demanded, the moment the door shut behind him.

Jace just grinned sideways at her. “Thank Mark for his help,” he said, pulling Emma into a hug and ruffling her hair. The next few moments were a flurry of hugs and good-byes, Clary promising to send them a fire-message when she could, Jace making sure they had Alec and Magnus’s phone number in case they ran into trouble.

No one mentioned that technically, they had the Clave if they ran into trouble. But Clary and Jace had learned to be wary of the Clave when they were young, and it appeared that getting older hadn’t dimmed their suspicions.

“Remember what I told you on the roof,” Clary said to Emma in a low voice, hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. “What you promised.”

Emma nodded, looking uncharacteristically serious. Clary turned away from her, raising her stele, preparing to make a Portal into Faerie. Just as the shapes began to flow under her hands, the doorway starting to shimmer against the dry air, the Institute door banged open again.

This time it was Dru, her round face anxious. She was twisting one of her braids around her finger.

“Emma, you’d better come,” she said. “Something’s happened with Cristina.”

*

He wasn’t going to play their stupid spying game, Kit thought. No matter how much fun the twins seemed to be having, wedged into a corner of the second-floor gallery and looking down onto the main entryway, securely hidden from sight by the railings.

Mostly the game involved trying to figure out what people were saying to each other from their body language, or the way they gestured. Livvy was endlessly creative, able to imagine dramatic scenarios between people who were probably just chatting about the weather—she’d already decided the pretty South Asian girl with the stars on her jacket was in love with Julian, and that two of the other Centurions were secretly spies from the Clave.

Ty made rarer pronouncements, but Kit suspected they were more likely to be right. He was good at observing small things, like what family symbol was on the back of someone’s jacket, and what that meant about where they were from.

“What do you think of Perfect Diego?” Livvy asked Kit, when he returned from saying good-bye to Clary and Jace. She had her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped around her long legs. Her curling ponytail bounced on her shoulders.

“Smug bastard,” said Kit. “His hair’s too good. I don’t trust people with hair that good.”

“I think that girl with her hair in a bun is angry with him,” said Ty, leaning closer to the railing. His delicate face was all points and angles. Kit followed his gaze downward and saw Diego, deep in conversation with a pale-skinned girl whose hands were flying around as she spoke.

“The ring.” Livvy caught Kit’s hand, turning it over. The Herondale ring glinted on his finger. He’d already taken note of the delicate carving of birds that winged their way around the band. “Did Jace give you that?”

He shook his head. “Clary. Said it used to belong to James Herondale.”

“James . . .” She looked as if she were making an effort to remember something. She gave a squeak then and dropped his hand as a shadow loomed over them.

It was Emma. “All right, you little spies,” she said. “Where’s Cristina? I already looked in her room.”

Livvy pointed upward. Kit frowned; he hadn’t thought there was anything to the third floor but attic.

“Ah,” Emma said. “Thanks.” She shook out her hands at her sides. “When I get hold of Diego . . .”

There was a loud exclamation from below. All four of them craned forward to see the pale girl slap Diego sharply across the face.

“What . . . ?” Emma looked astonished, then furious again. She whirled and headed for the stairs.

Ty smiled, looking with his curls and light eyes for all the world like a painted cherub on a church wall.

“That girl was angry,” he said, sounding delighted to have gotten it right.

Kit laughed.

*

The sky above the Institute blazed with color: hot pink, blood red, deep gold. The sun was going down, and the desert was bathed in the glow. The Institute itself shimmered, and the water shimmered too, far out where it waited for the sun’s fall.

Cristina was exactly where Emma had guessed she would be: sitting as neatly as always, legs crossed, her gear jacket spread out on the shingles beneath her.

“He didn’t come after me,” she said, as Emma drew closer to her. Her black hair moved and lifted in the breeze, the pearls in her ears glimmering. The pendant around her neck shone too, the words on it picked out by the deep glow of the sun: Blessed be the Angel my strength, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.

Emma collapsed onto the roof next to her friend, as close as she could get. She reached out and took Cristina’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “Do you mean Diego?”

Cristina nodded. There were no marks of tears on her face; she seemed surprisingly composed, considering. “That girl came up and said she was his fiancée,” Cristina said. “And I thought it must be some sort of mistake. Even when I turned and ran out of the room, I thought it must be a mistake and he would come after me and explain. But he didn’t, which means he stayed because of her. Because she really is his fiancée and she matters to him more than I do.”

“I don’t know how he could do it,” Emma said. “It’s bizarre. He loves you so much—he came here because of you.”

Cristina made a muffled noise. “You don’t even like him!”

“I like him—well, liked him—sometimes,” Emma said. “The perfect thing was kind of annoying. But the way he looked at you. You can’t fake that.”

“He has a fiancée, Emma. Not even just a girlfriend. A fiancée. Who knows how long he’s even been engaged? Engaged. To get married.”

“I’ll crash the wedding,” Emma suggested. “I’ll jump out of the cake, but not in a sexy way. Like, with grenades.”

Cristina snorted, then turned her face away. “I just feel so stupid,” she said. “He lied to me and I forgave him, and then he lied to me again—what kind of idiot am I? Why on earth did I think he was trustworthy?”

“Because you wanted to,” Emma said. “You’ve known him a long time, Tina, and that does make a difference. When someone’s been part of your life for that long, cutting them out is like cutting the roots out from under a plant.”

Cristina was silent for a long moment. “I know,” she said. “I know you understand.”

Emma tasted the acid burn of bitterness at the back of her throat and swallowed it back. She needed to be here for Cristina now, not dwell on her own worries. “When I was little,” she said, “Jules and I used to come up here together at sunset practically every night and wait for the green flash.”

“The what?”

“The green flash. When the sun goes down, just as it disappears, you’ll see a flash of green light.” They both looked out at the water. The sun was disappearing below the horizon, the sky streaked red and black. “If you make a wish on it, it’ll come true.”

“Will it?” Cristina spoke softly, her eyes on the horizon along with Emma’s.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I’ve made a lot of wishes by now.” The sun sank another few millimeters. Emma tried to think what she could wish for. Even when she’d been younger, she’d understood somehow that there were some things you couldn’t wish for: world peace, your dead parents back. The universe couldn’t turn itself inside out for you. Wishing only bought you small blessings: a sleep without nightmares, your best friend’s safety for another day, birthday sunshine.

“Do you remember,” Emma said, “before you saw Diego again, you said we should go to Mexico together? Spend a travel year there?”

Cristina nodded.

“It’d be a while before I could go,” said Emma. “I don’t turn eighteen until the winter. But when I do . . .”

Leaving Los Angeles. Spending the year with Cristina, learning and training and traveling.