Lord of Shadows
Page 52

“Let it begin,” said the King.
Like a racehorse bursting out of the box, the knight rushed toward Emma, sword leaping forward. Caught off guard by his speed, Emma spun out of the way of the blade. But it was a late start. She should have raised Cortana earlier. She’d been counting on the swiftness of her Sure-Strike rune, but it was no longer working. A sharp terror she hadn’t known in a long time went through her as she felt the whisper of the tip of the knight’s sword gliding inches from her side.
Emma remembered her father’s words when she’d first been learning. Strike at your enemy, not his weapon. Most fighters went for your blade. A good fighter went for your body.
This was a good fighter. But had she expected anything else? The King had chosen him, after all. Now she just had to hope that the King had underestimated her.
Two quick turns brought her to a slightly raised hillock of grass. Maybe she could even their height difference. The grass rustled. Emma didn’t need to look to know that the knight was plunging toward her again. She whirled, bringing Cortana around in a slicing arc.
He barely moved backward. The sword cut along the material of his thick leather armor, opening a wide slit. He didn’t flinch, though, or seem hurt. He certainly wasn’t slowed down. He lunged for Emma, and she slid into a crouch, his blade whistling over her head. He lunged again and she sprang back.
She could hear her own breath, ragged in the cool air of the forest. The faerie knight was good, and she didn’t have the benefit of runes, of seraph blades—any of the armaments of a Shadowhunter. And what if she was tiring earlier? What if this dark land was sucking out even the power in her blood?
She parried a blow, leaped back, and remembered, oddly, Zara’s sneering voice, Faeries fight dirty. And Mark, Faeries don’t fight dirty, actually. They fight remarkably cleanly. They have a strict code of honor.
She was already bending, striking at the other knight’s ankles—he leaped upward, nearly levitating, and brought his own sword down, just as she seized a handful of leaves and dirt and rose, hurling them at the gaps in the faerie warrior’s mask.
He choked and stumbled back. It was only a second, but it was enough; Emma slashed at his legs, one-two, and then his torso. Blood soaked his armored chest; his legs went out from under him, and he hit the ground on his back with a crash like a felled tree.
Emma slammed her foot down on his blade, as the crowd roared. She could hear Cristina calling her name, and Julian and Mark. Heart pounding, she stood over the motionless knight. Even now, sprawled in the grass, blackened around him by his own blood, he didn’t make a sound.
“Remove his helmet and end it,” said the King. “That is our tradition.”
Emma took a deep breath. Everything that was Shadowhunter in her revolted against this, against taking the life of someone lying weaponless at her feet.
She thought of what Julian had said to her just before the combat. Show no mercy.
The tip of Cortana clanged against the rim of the helmet. She wedged it beneath the edge and pushed.
The helmet fell away. The man lying in the grass beneath Emma was human, not faerie. His eyes were blue, his hair blond streaked with gray. His face was more familiar to Emma than her own.
Her hand fell to her side, Cortana dangling from nerveless fingers.
It was her father.
 
 
11

ON A BLACK THRONE
Kit sat on the steps of the Institute, looking out at the water. It had been a long and uncomfortable day. Things were tenser than ever between the Centurions and the inhabitants of the Institute, though at least the Centurions didn’t know why.
Diana had made a heroic effort to teach lessons, as if everything were normal. No one could concentrate—for once Kit, despite being completely at sea regarding the comparisons of various seraphic alphabets, wasn’t the most distracted person in the room. But the point of the lessons was to keep up appearances in front of the Centurions, so they slogged on.
Things didn’t get much better at dinner. After a long, wet day during which they hadn’t found anything, the Centurions were testy. It didn’t help that Jon Cartwright had apparently had some kind of temper tantrum and stalked off, his whereabouts unknown. Judging by Zara’s thinly compressed lips, he’d had an argument with her, though about what, Kit could only wonder. The morality of locking warlocks up in camps or escorting faeries to torture chambers, he guessed.
Diego and Rayan did their best to make cheerful conversation, but it failed. Livvy stared at Diego for most of the meal, probably thinking about their plan to use him to stop Zara, but it was clearly making Diego nervous, since he tried twice to cut his steak with a spoon. To make it worse, Dru and Tavvy seemed to pick up on the prickly vibes in the room and spent dinner peppering Diana with questions about when Julian and the others would be back from their “mission.”
When it was all over, Kit thankfully slipped away, avoiding the washing-up after dinner, and found himself a quiet spot under the front portico of the house. The air blowing off the desert was cool and spiced, and the ocean gleamed under the stars, a sheet of deep black that ended in a series of unfurling white waves.
For the thousandth time, Kit asked himself what was keeping him here. While it seemed silly to disappear because of awkward dinner conversation, he’d been reminded sharply in the past day that the Blackthorns’ problems weren’t his, and probably never should be. It was one thing to be Johnny Rook’s son.
It was another thing completely to be a Herondale.
He touched the silver of the ring on his finger, cool against his skin.
“I didn’t know you were out here.” It was Ty’s voice; Kit knew it before he looked up. The other boy had come around the side of the house and was looking up at him curiously.
There was something around Ty’s neck, but it wasn’t his usual earphones. As he came up the stairs, a slim shadow in dark jeans and sweater, Kit realized it had eyes.
He pressed his back against the wall. “Is that a ferret?”
“It’s wild,” said Ty, leaning against the railing around the porch. “Ferrets are domesticated. So technically, it’s a weasel, though if it was domesticated, it would be a ferret.”
Kit stared at the animal. It blinked its eyes at him and wiggled its small paws.
“Wow,” Kit said. He meant it.
The weasel ran down Ty’s arm and leaped onto the railing, then disappeared into the darkness. “Ferrets make great pets,” Ty said. “They’re surprisingly loyal. Or at least, people say it’s surprising. I don’t know why it would be. They’re clean, and they like toys and quiet. And they can be trained to—” He broke off. “Are you bored?”
“No.” Kit was jolted; had he looked bored? He’d been enjoying the sound of Ty’s voice, lively and thoughtful. “Why?”
“Julian says sometimes people don’t want to know as much about some topics as I do,” said Ty. “So I should just ask.”
“I guess that’s true for everyone,” said Kit.
Ty shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m different.” He didn’t sound bothered, or at all upset about it. It was a fact he knew about himself and that was all. Ty had a quiet confidence Kit found to his surprise that he envied. He never thought he would have envied anything about a Shadowhunter.