Lord of Shadows
Page 13

And so they’d spent every night since then together, sprawled in the covers piled on the floor, trading stories; Emma spoke of the Dark War, of how she felt lost sometimes now that she was no longer searching for the person who’d killed her parents, and Mark talked about his brothers and sisters, about how he and Ty had argued and he worried he’d made his younger brother feel as if he wasn’t there to be relied on, as if he might leave at any minute.
“Just tell him you might leave, but you’ll always come back to him,” Emma said. “Tell him you’re sorry if you ever made him feel any different.”
He only nodded. He never told her if he’d taken her advice, but she’d taken his and told Cristina everything. It had been a huge relief, and she’d cried in Cristina’s arms for several hours. She’d even gotten Julian’s permission to tell Cristina an abbreviated version of the situation with Arthur—enough to make it clear how badly Julian was needed here at the Institute, with his family. She’d asked Julian’s permission to share that information; an extremely awkward conversation, but he’d almost seemed relieved that someone else would know.
She’d wanted to ask him if he’d tell the rest of the family the truth about Arthur soon. But she couldn’t. Walls had gone up around Julian that seemed as impenetrable as the thorns around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. She wondered if Mark had noticed, if any of the others had noticed, or if only she could see it.
She turned to look at Mark now. He was asleep on the floor, his cheek pillowed on his hand. She slid off the bed, settling among the blankets and pillows, and curled up next to him.
Mark slept better when he was with her—he’d said so, and she believed it. He’d been eating better too, putting on muscle fast, his scars fading, color back in his cheeks. She was glad. She might feel like she was dying inside every day, but that was her problem—she’d handle it. No one owed her help, and in a way she welcomed the pain. It meant Julian wasn’t suffering alone, even if he believed he was.
And if she could help Mark at all, then that was something. She loved him, the way she should love Julian: Uncle Arthur would have called it philia, friendship love. And though she could never tell Julian about the way she and Mark were helping each other, it was at least something she felt she could do for him: make his brother happier.
Even if he’d never know.
A knock on the door yanked her out of her reverie. She started up; the room was dim, but she could make out bright red hair, Clary’s curious face peering around the door’s edge. “Emma? Are you awake? Are you on the floor?”
Emma peered down at Mark. He was definitely asleep, huddled in blankets, out of Clary’s view. She held up two fingers to Clary, who nodded and shut the door; two minutes later Emma was out in the hallway, zipping up a hoodie.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Clary said. She was still so small, Emma thought, it was sometimes hard to remember that she was in her twenties. Her hair was caught back in braids, making her seem even younger.
“On the roof,” Emma decided. “I’ll show you.”
She led Clary up the stairs, to the ladder and trapdoor, and then out to the dark expanse of roof. She hadn’t been there herself since the night she’d come up with Mark. It seemed like years ago, though she knew it was only weeks.
The day’s heat had left the black, shingled roof sticky and hot. But the night was a cool one—desert nights always were, the temperature dropping like a rock as soon as the sun set—and the breeze off the ocean ruffled Emma’s damp hair.
She crossed the roof, with Clary following, to her favorite spot: a clear view of the ocean below, the highway folded into the hill below the Institute, mountains rising behind in shadowy peaks.
Emma sat down on the roof’s edge, knees drawn up, letting the desert air caress her skin, her hair. The moonlight silvered her scars, especially the thick one along the inside of her right forearm. She had gotten it in Idris, when she’d woken up there screaming for her parents, and Julian, knowing what she needed, had put Cortana into her arms.
Clary settled herself lightly beside Emma, her head cocked as if she were listening to the breathing roar of the ocean, its soft push-pull. “Well, you’ve definitely got the New York Institute beat in terms of views. All I can see from the roof there is Brooklyn.” She turned toward Emma. “Jem Carstairs and Tessa Gray send their regards.”
“Are they the ones who told you about Kit?” Emma asked. Jem was a very distant, very old relative of Emma’s—though he looked twenty-five, he was more like a hundred and twenty-five. Tessa was his wife, a powerful warlock in her own right. They had uncovered the existence of Kit and his father, just in time for Johnny Rook to be slaughtered by demons.
Clary nodded. “They’re off on a mission—they wouldn’t even tell me what they were looking for.”
“I thought they were looking for the Black Volume?”
“Could be. I know they were headed for the Spiral Labyrinth first.” Clary leaned back on her hands. “I know Jem wishes he was around for you. Someone you could talk to. I told him you could always talk to me, but you haven’t called since the night after Malcolm died—”
“He didn’t die. I killed him,” Emma interrupted. She kept having to remind herself that she had killed Malcolm, shoved Cortana through his guts, because it seemed so unlikely. And it hurt, the way brushing up suddenly against barbed wire hurt: a surprising pain out of nowhere. Though he had deserved it, it hurt nonetheless.
“I shouldn’t feel bad, right?” Emma said. “He was a terrible person. I had to do it.”
“Yes, and yes,” said Clary. “But that doesn’t always fix things.” She reached out and put her finger under Emma’s chin, turning Emma’s face toward her. “Look, if anyone’s going to understand about this, I will. I killed Sebastian. My brother. I put a knife in him.” For a moment Clary looked much younger than she was; for a moment, she looked Emma’s age. “I still think about it, dream about it. There was good in him—not much, just a tiny bit, but it haunts me. That tiny potential I destroyed.”
“He was a monster,” Emma said, horrified. “A murderer, worse than Valentine, worse than anyone. You had to kill him. If you hadn’t, he would have literally destroyed the world.”
“I know.” Clary lowered her hand. “There was never anything like a chance of redemption for Sebastian. But it doesn’t stop the dreams, does it? In my dreams, I still sometimes see the brother I might have had, in some other world. The one with green eyes. And you might see the friend you thought you had in Malcolm. When people die, our dreams of what they could be die with them. Even if ours is the hand that ends them.”
“I thought I would be happy,” Emma said. “For all these years, all I’ve wanted was revenge. Revenge against whoever killed my parents. Now I know what happened to them, and I’ve killed Malcolm. But what I feel is . . . empty.”
“I felt the same way, after the Dark War,” Clary said. “I’d spent so much time running and fighting and desperate. And then things were ordinary. I didn’t trust it. We get used to living one way, even if it’s a bad way or a hard one. When that’s gone, there’s a hole to fill. It’s in our nature to try to fill it with anxieties and fears. It can take time to fill it with good things instead.”