The Queen's lips curved. "I cannot tell you," she said. "I do not know what will happen myself. But if you do not look, you will never know either. And it is not my experience of humans or Nephilim that they can bear not knowing." She glanced down into the water. "Ah," she said. "He arrives at the convergence."
Julian was beside the plinth before he could stop himself, gazing down into the water. What he saw shocked him.
The water was like sheer glass, like the screen of a television onto which a scene was projected with an almost frightening clarity. Julian was looking at night in the Santa Monica Mountains, a sight familiar enough to send a dart of homesickness through him.
The moon rose over the ruins of the convergence. Boulders lay tumbled around a plain of dry grass that stretched to a sheer drop toward the ocean, blue-black in the distance. Wandering among the boulders was Arthur.
Julian couldn't remember the last time he had seen his uncle out of the Institute. Arthur had put on a rough jacket and boots, and in his hand was a witchlight, dimly glowing. He had never looked quite so much like a Shadowhunter, not even in the Hall of Accords.
"Malcolm!" Arthur called out. "Malcolm, I demand you come to me! Malcolm Fade! I am here, with Blackthorn blood!"
"But Malcolm's dead," Julian murmured, staring at the bowl. "He died."
"It is a weakness of your kind, to regard death as so final," said the Queen with glee, "especially when it comes to warlocks."
Fear tore through Julian like an arrow. He had been sure when they'd left the Institute that they were leaving his family safe. But if Malcolm was there--still hunting for Blackthorn blood--though, if Arthur was offering it, Malcolm must still not have acquired it--but then, Arthur could hardly be trusted--
"Hush," said the Queen, as if she could hear the clamor of his thoughts. "Watch."
"Malcolm!" Arthur cried, his voice echoing off the mountains.
"I am here. Though you are early." The voice belonged to a shadow--a twisted, misshapen shadow. Julian swallowed hard as Malcolm stepped out into the moonlight and what had been done to him, or what he had done to himself, was clearly revealed.
The water in the bowl blurred. Julian almost reached for the image before checking himself and jerking his hand back. "Where are they?" he said, in a harsh voice. "What are they doing?"
"Patience. There is a place they must go. Malcolm will take your uncle there." The Seelie Queen gloated. She thought she had Julian in the palm of her hand now, he thought, and hated her. She dipped her long fingers into the water, and Julian saw a brief swirl of images--the doors of the New York Institute, Jace and Clary asleep in a green field, Jem and Tessa in a dark, shadowy place--and then the images resolved again.
Arthur and Malcolm were inside a church, an old-fashioned one with stained-glass windows and carved pew-ends. Something covered in a black cloth lay on the altar. Something that moved ever so slightly, restlessly, like an animal waking from sleep.
Malcolm stood watching Arthur, with a smile playing on his ruined face. He looked like something dragged up from some watery Hell dimension. Cracks and runnels in his skin leaked seawater. His eyes were milky and opaque; half his white hair was gone, and his bald skin was patchy and scabbed. He wore a white suit, and the raw fissures in his skin disappeared incongruously under expensive collar and cuffs.
"For any blood ritual, willing blood is better than unwilling," said Arthur. He stood in his usual slumped posture, hands in the pockets of his jeans. "I'll give you mine willingly if you'll swear to leave my family alone."
Malcolm licked his lips; his tongue was bluish. "That's all you want? That promise?"
Arthur nodded.
"You don't want the Black Volume?" Malcolm said in a taunting voice, tapping the book tucked into the waistband of his trousers. "You don't want assurance I'll never harm a single Nephilim?"
"Your revenge only matters to me inasmuch as my family remains unharmed," said Arthur, and relief weakened Julian's knees. "The Blackthorn blood I give you should slake your thirst for it, warlock."
Malcolm smiled. His teeth were twisted and sharp, like a shark's. "Now, if I make this agreement, am I taking advantage of you, given that you are a madman?" he mused aloud. "Has your shaky mind mistaken the situation? Are you confused? Bewildered? Do you know who I am?" Arthur winced, and Julian felt a pang of sympathy for his uncle, and a flash of hate for Malcolm.
Kill him, he thought. Tell me you brought a seraph blade, Uncle, and run him through.
"Your uncle will not be armed," said the Queen. "Fade would have seen to that." She was watching with an almost avaricious delight. "The mad Nephilim and the mad warlock," she said. "It is like a storybook."
"You are Malcolm Fade, betrayer and murderer," said Arthur.
"Quite an ungrateful thing to say to someone who's been providing you with your cures all these years," Malcolm murmured.
"Cures? More like temporary lies. You did what you had to do to continue to deceive Julian," said Arthur, and Julian started to hear his own name. "You gave him medicine for me because it made him trust you. My family loved you. More than they ever did me. You twisted a knife in their hearts."
"Oh," Malcolm murmured. "If only."
"I would rather be mad my way than yours," said Arthur. "You had so much. Love once, and power, and immortal life, and you have thrown it away as if it were trash by the side of the road." He glanced toward the twitching thing on the altar. "I wonder if she will still love you, the way you are now."
Malcolm's face contorted. "Enough," he said, and a quick look of triumph passed over Arthur's tired, battered features. He had outwitted Malcolm, in his own way. "I agree to your promise. Come here."
Arthur stepped forward. Malcolm seized him and began to propel him toward the altar. Arthur's witchlight was gone, but candles burned in brackets fastened to the walls, casting a flickering, yellowish light.
Malcolm held Arthur with one hand, bending him over the altar; with the other he drew the dark covering away from the altar. Annabel's body was revealed.
"Oh," breathed the Queen. "She was lovely, once."
She was not now. Annabel was a skeleton, though not the clean white down-to-the-bones type one usually saw in art and pictures. Her skin was leathery and dried, and pocked with holes where worms had crawled in and out. Nausea rose in Julian's stomach. She was covered with white winding-sheets, but her legs were visible, and her arms: There were places the skin had peeled away, and moss grew on the bones and dried tendons.
Brittle dark hair spilled from her skull. Her jaw worked as she saw Malcolm, and a moan issued from her destroyed throat. She seemed to be shaking her head.
"Don't worry, darling," said Malcolm. "I've brought you what you need."
"No!" Julian cried, but it was as he had feared: He could not halt the events unfolding before him. Malcolm snatched up the blade from beside Annabel and sliced open Arthur's throat.
Blood fountained over Annabel, over her body and the stone she lay on. Arthur groped at his neck, and Julian gagged, clutching the sides of the bowl with his fingers.
Annabel's winding-sheets had turned crimson. Arthur's hands dropped slowly to his sides. He was upright now only because Malcolm was holding him. Blood soaked Annabel's brittle hair and dried skin. It turned the front of Malcolm's white suit to a sheet of scarlet.
"Uncle Arthur," Julian whispered. He tasted salt on his lips. For a moment he was terrified that he was crying, and in front of the Queen--but to his relief he had only bitten his lip. He swallowed the metal of his own blood as Arthur went limp in Malcolm's grasp, and Malcolm shoved his body impatiently away. He crumpled to the ground beside the altar and lay still.
"Annabel," Malcolm breathed.
She had begun to stir.
Her limbs moved first, her legs and arms stretching, her hands reaching for nothing. For a moment Julian thought there was something wrong with the water in the bowl, an odd reflection, before he realized that it was actually Annabel herself. A
white glow was creeping over her--no, it was skin, rising to cover bare bones and stripped tendons. Her corpse seemed to swell up and out as flesh filled out the shape of her, as if a smooth, sleek glove had been drawn over her skeleton. Gray and white turned to pink: Her bare feet and her calves looked human now. There were even clear half-moons of nails at the tips of her toes.
The skin crawled up her body, slipping under the winding-sheets, rising to cover her chest and collarbones, spreading down her arms. Her hands starfished out, each finger splayed as she tested the air. Her neck arched back as black-brown hair exploded from her skull. Breasts rose under the sheets, her hollow cheeks filled, her eyes snapped open.
They were Blackthorn eyes, shimmering blue-green as the sea.
Annabel sat up, clutching the rags of her bloody winding-sheets to her. Under them she had the body of a young woman. Thick hair cascaded around a pale oval face; her lips were full and red; her eyes shimmered in wonder as she stared at Malcolm.
And Malcolm was transformed. Whatever the vicious damage done to him, it seemed to fade away, and for a moment Julian saw him as he must have been when he was a young man in love. There was a wondering sweetness about him; he seemed frozen in place, his face shining in adoration as Annabel slid down from the altar. She landed on the stone floor beside Arthur's crumpled body.
"Annabel," Malcolm said. "My Annabel. I have waited so long for you, done so much to bring you back to me." He took a stumbling step toward her. "My love. My angel. Look at me."
But Annabel was looking down at Arthur. Slowly, she bent down and picked up the knife that had fallen by his body. When she straightened up, her gaze fixed on Malcolm, tears streaked her face. Her lips formed a soundless word--Julian craned forward, but it was too faint to hear. The surface of the scrying glass had begun to roil and tremble, like the surface of the sea before a storm.
Malcolm looked stricken. "Do not weep," he said. "My darling, my Annabel." He reached for her. Annabel stepped toward him, her face lifting to his. He bent down as if to kiss her just as she swept her arm up, driving the knife she held into his body.
Malcolm stared at her in disbelief. Then he cried out. It was a cry of more than pain--a howl of utter, despairing betrayal and heartbreak. A howl that seemed to rip through the universe, tearing apart the stars.
He staggered back, but Annabel pursued him, a wraith of blood and terror in her white-and-scarlet grave clothes. She slashed at him again, opening his chest, and he fell to the ground.
Even then he didn't raise a hand to fend her off as she moved to stand over him. Blood bubbled from the corner of his lips when he spoke. "Annabel," he breathed. "Oh, my love, my love--"
She stabbed down viciously with the blade, driving it into his heart. Malcolm's body jerked. His head fell back, his eyes rolling to whites. Expressionless, Annabel bent over him and snatched the Black Volume from his belt. Without another glance at Malcolm, she turned and strode from the church, disappearing from the view of the scrying glass.
"Where did she go?" Julian said. He barely recognized his own voice. "Follow her, use the glass--"
"The scrying glass cannot find its way through so much dark magic," said the Queen. Her face was shining as if she'd just seen something wonderful.
Julian flinched away from her--he couldn't help it. He wanted nothing more than to stagger off to a corner of the room and be sick. But the Queen would see that as weakness. He found his way to a wall and leaned against it.
The Queen stood with one hand on the edge of the golden bowl, smiling at him. "Did you see how Fade never raised a hand to defend himself?" she said. "That is love, son of thorns. We welcome its cruelest blows and when we bleed from them, we whisper our thanks."
Julian braced himself against the wall. "Why did you show me that?"
"I would bargain with you," she said. "And there are things I would not have you be ignorant of when we do."
Julian tried to steady his breathing, forcing himself deeper into his own head, his own worst memories. He was in the Hall of Accords, he was twelve years old and he had just killed his father. He was in the Institute, and he had just found out that Malcolm Fade had kidnapped Tavvy. He was in the desert, and Emma was telling him that she loved Mark; Mark, and not him.
"What kind of bargain?" he said, and his voice was as steady as a rock.
She shook her head. Her red hair rayed out around her gaunt and hollowed face. "I would have all of your group there when the bargain is made, Shadowhunter."
"I will not bargain with you," said Julian. "The Cold Peace--"
She laughed. "You have shattered the Cold Peace a thousand times, child. Do not pretend that I know nothing of you or your family. Despite the Cold Peace, despite all I have lost, I am still the Queen of the Seelie Court."
Julian couldn't help but wonder what despite all I have lost meant--what had she lost, exactly? Did she only mean the strain of the Cold Peace, the shame of losing the Dark War?
"Besides," she said, "you don't know what I am offering yet. And neither do your friends. I think they might be quite interested, especially your lovely parabatai."
"You have something for Emma?" he demanded. "Then why did you bring me here alone?"
"There was something I wished to say to you. Something that you might not wish her to know that you knew." A tiny smile played across her lips. She took another step toward him. He was close enough to see the detail of the feathers on her dress, the flecks of blood that showed they had been torn by the roots from the bird. "The curse of the parabatai. I know how to break it."
Julian felt as if he could not catch his breath. It was what the phouka had said to him at the Gate: In Faerie, you will find one who knows how the parabatai bond might be broken.
He had carried that knowledge in his heart since they had arrived here. He had wondered who it would be. But it was the Queen--of course it was the Queen. Someone he absolutely should not trust.
"The curse?" he said, keeping his voice mild and a little puzzled, as if he had no idea why she'd called it that.
Something indefinable flashed in her eyes. "The parabatai bond, I should say. But it is a curse to you, is it not?" She caught his wrist, turning his hand over. The crescents he'd dug into his palms with his bitten nails were faint but visible. He thought of the scrying glass. Of her watching him with Emma in Fergus's room. Of course she had. She'd known when Emma fell asleep. When he was vulnerable. She knew he loved Emma. It might be something he could conceal from his family and friends, but to the Queen of the Seelie Court, accustomed to seeking out weakness and vulnerability and cruelly attuned to unpleasant truths, it would be as clear as a beacon. "As I said," she told him, smiling, "we welcome the wounds of love, do we not?"
A wave of rage went through him, but his curiosity was stronger. He drew his hand from hers. "Tell me," he said. "Tell me what you know."
*
Faerie knights in green and gold and red came to fetch Emma and bring her to the throne room. She was a little bewildered at Julian's absence, though reassured when she met Mark and Cristina in the hall, similarly escorted, and Mark told her in a low voice that he'd heard one of the guards say that Julian was already waiting for them in the throne room.
Emma cursed her own exhaustion. How could she not have noticed him leave? She'd forced herself to sleep, unable to bear another second of being so physically close to Jules without being able to even hug him. And he'd been so calm, so totally calm; he'd looked at her with distant friendliness--kindness, even, when he reassured her their friendship was intact--and it hurt like hell and all she wanted was for exhaustion to wipe it all away.
She reached to touch Cortana, strapped across her back. She carried the rest of her and Julian's things in her pack. She felt silly wearing a weapon over a filmy dress, but she hadn't been about to change in front of the Queen's Guard. They'd offered to carry the sword for her, but she'd refused. No one touched Cortana but her.
Cristina was nearly twitching with excitement.
"The throne room of the Seelie Queen," she whispered. "I have read about it but never thought to actually see it. The look of it is meant to change with the moods of the Queen, as she changes."
Emma remembered Clary telling her stories of the Court, of a room of ice and snow where the Queen wore gold and silver, of a curtain of fluttering butterflies. But it was not quite like that when they arrived. Just as Mark had said, Julian was already in the throne room. It was a bare oval place, filled with grayish smoke. Smoke drifted across the floor and crackled along the ceiling, where it was forked with small darts of black lightning. There were no windows, but the gray smoke formed patterns against the walls--a field of dead flowers, a crashing wave, the skeleton of a winged creature.
Julian was sitting on the steps that led up to the great stone block where the Queen's throne stood. He wore a piecemeal mix of gear and ordinary clothes, and over his shirt was thrown a jacket he could only have found here in Faerie. It shimmered with bright thread and bits of brocade, the sleeves turned back to expose his forearms. His sea-glass bracelet glittered on his wrist.
He looked up when they came in. Even against the colorless background, his blue-green eyes shone.
"Before you say anything, I have something to tell you," he said. Only half of Emma's mind was on his words as he began to speak; the other was on how strangely at ease he seemed.
He looked calm, and when Julian was calm was always when he was at his most frightening. But he spoke on, and she began to realize what he was saying. Waves of shock went through her. Malcolm: dead, alive, and dead again? Arthur, murdered? Annabel risen from the grave? The Black Volume gone?
"But Malcolm was dead," she said, numbly. "I killed him. I saw his body float away. He was dead."
"The Queen cautioned me against thinking death was final," said Julian. "Especially in the case of warlocks."
"But Annabel is alive," said Mark. "What does she want? Why did she take the Black Volume?"
"All good questions, Miach," said a voice from across the room. They all turned in surprise, save Julian.
She came out of the gray shadows wrapped in more gray: a long gray gown made of moth wings and ashes, dipped low in front so that it was easy to see the jutting bones of her clavicle. Her face was pinched, triangular, dominated by burning blue eyes. Her red hair was bound back tightly in a silver net. The Queen. There was a glitter in her eye: malice or madness, it would be hard to be sure.