"I was offered a post at the Gard," he said. "I couldn't pass up the chance for advancement. There are plenty of Centurions still in Los Angeles, guarding the Institute." He looked at Diana sideways; she said nothing. "It's a pleasure to see you in Alicante," Manuel went on. "The last time we were together, I believe, you were fleeing for London."
Diana gritted her teeth. "I was taking the children who were in my charge to safety," she said. "They're all fine, by the way."
"I assumed I would have heard if it had been otherwise," said Manuel airily.
"I'm sorry about your friend," she said. "Jon Cartwright."
Manuel was silent. They had reached the gate to the path leading up to the Gard. Once it had closed only with a latch. Now Diana watched as Manuel passed his hand over it and it clicked open.
The path was as rough as it had been when Diana was a child, snaked with the roots of trees. "I didn't know Jon well," said Manuel as they began the climb. "I understand his girlfriend, Marisol, is very upset."
Diana said nothing.
"Some people cannot manage their grief as Shadowhunters should," added Manuel. "It's a shame."
"Some people do not show the empathy and tolerance a Shadowhunter should," said Diana. "That's also a shame."
They had reached the upper part of the path, where Alicante spread out before them like a map, and the demon towers rose to pierce the sun. Diana remembered walking this path with her sister, when they were both children, and her sister's laughter. She missed her so much sometimes it felt as if her heart were being clutched by talons.
In this place, she thought, looking out over Alicante, I was lonely. In this place I had to hide the person I knew I was.
They reached the Gard. It rose up above them, a mountain of gleaming stone, sturdier than ever since its rebuilding. A path lined with witchlights led to the front gate. "Was that a jab at Zara?" Manuel looked amused. "She's very popular, you know. Especially since she killed Malcolm. Something the Los Angeles Institute couldn't manage."
Shocked out of her reverie, Diana could only stare at him. "Zara didn't kill Malcolm," she said. "That's a lie."
"Is it?" Manuel said. "I'd like to see you prove that." He grinned his beaming grin and walked away, leaving Diana to stare after him, squinting her eyes in the sunlight.
*
"Let me see your wrist," Cristina said to Mark. They were sitting side by side on the infirmary bed. His shoulder was warm against hers.
He drew his sweater up and held his arm out silently. Cristina folded back her bandage and put her wrist against his. They looked in silence at their identical wounds.
"I know nothing about this kind of magic," said Mark. "And we cannot go to the Clave or the Silent Brothers. They can't know we were in Faerie."
"I'm sorry about Kieran," she said. "That he's angry."
Mark shook his head. "Don't be--it's my fault." He took a deep breath. "I am sorry I was angry with you, in Faerie, after the revel. People are complicated. Their situations are complicated. I know why you hid Julian's feelings from me. I know you and Emma had little choice."
"And I am not angry at you now," she hastened to assure him. "About Kieran."
"I am changed," said Mark, "because of you. Kieran can sense that my feelings for him have altered in some way, though he doesn't know why. And I cannot tell him." He looked up at the ceiling. "He is a prince. Princes are spoiled. They cannot bear to be thwarted."
"He must feel so alone," said Cristina. She remembered the way she had felt with Diego, that what they'd had once had was gone, and she couldn't understand how to get it back. It had been like trying to catch smoke that had dissolved into the air. "You are his only ally here, and he cannot understand why his connection to you feels broken."
"He did swear to you," said Mark. He ducked his head, as if he were ashamed of what he was saying. "It is possible that if you order him to do something, he'll have to do it."
"I don't want to do that."
"Cristina."
"No, Mark," she said firmly. "I know this binding spell affects you, too. And upsetting Kieran affects the chances he'll testify. But I won't force him into anything."
"Aren't we already?" Mark said. "Lying to him about the situation so he'll talk to the Clave?"
Cristina's fingers crept to her injured wrist. The skin felt odd under her fingertips: hot and swollen. "And after he testifies? You'll tell him the truth, right?"
Mark rose to his feet. "By the Angel, yes. What do you take me for?"
"Someone in a difficult situation," said Cristina. "As we all are. If Kieran doesn't testify, innocent Downworlders may die; the Clave may sink further into corruption. I understand the need for deception. That doesn't mean I like it--or that you do either."
Mark nodded, not looking at her. "I had better search for him," he said. "If he'll agree to be helpful, he's our best way to fix this." He indicated his wrist.
Cristina felt a slight ache inside. She wondered if she had hurt Mark; she hadn't meant to. "Let's see what kind of range this has," she said. "How far from each other we can go without it hurting."
Mark stopped in the doorway. The clean, sharp planes of his face looked cut from glass. "It already hurt me to be away from you," he said. "Perhaps that was meant to be the joke."
He was gone before Cristina could answer.
She got to her feet and went to the counter where the powders and medicines were. She had a rough idea of medicinal Shadowhunter work: Here were the leaves that had anti-infection properties, here the poultices that kept swelling down.
The door of the infirmary opened while she was unscrewing a jar. She looked up: It was Kieran. He looked flushed and windblown, as if he'd been outside. There were patches of color on his high cheekbones.
He looked as discomfited to see her as she was to see him. She set the jar down carefully and waited.
"Where is Mark?" he said.
"He went to find you." Cristina leaned against the counter. Kieran was quiet. A faerie sort of quiet: inward, considering. She had a feeling many people would feel compelled to fill that silence. She let him have it; let him draw the silence into himself, shape and decipher it.
"I should apologize," he said finally. "It was uncalled for to accuse you and Mark of having arranged the binding spell. Foolish, too. You have nothing to gain from it. If Mark did not want to be with me, he would say so."
Cristina said nothing. Kieran took a step toward her, carefully, as if afraid of frightening her. "Might I see your arm again?"
She held her arm out. He took it--she wondered if he had ever touched her deliberately before. It felt like the touch of cool water in summer.
Cristina felt a slight shiver up her spine as he studied her injury. She wondered what he had looked like when both of his eyes had been black. They were even more startling now than Mark's, the contrast between the dark and the shimmering silver, like ice and ash.
"The shape of a ribbon," he said. "You say you were tied together during a revel?"
"Yes," said Cristina. "By two girls. They knew we were Nephilim. They laughed at us."
Kieran's grip on her tightened. She remembered the way he'd clung to Mark in the Unseelie Court. Not as if he were weak and needed help. It was a grip of strength, a grip that held Mark in place, that said, Stay with me, it is my command.
He was a prince, after all.
"That sort of binding spell is one of the oldest," he said. "Oldest and strongest. I do not know why someone would play such a prank on you. It is quite vicious."
"But do you know how to undo it?"
Kieran dropped Cristina's hand. "I was an unwanted son of the Unseelie King. I received little schooling. Then I was thrown into the Wild Hunt. I am no expert on magic."
"You're not useless," Cristina said. "You know more than you think you do."
Kieran looked as if she'd startled him once again. "I could speak to my brother, Adaon. I am meant to ask him about taking the throne. I could inquire of him as
to whether he knows anything of binding spells or how to end them."
"When do you think you will talk to him?" asked Cristina. An image came into her mind of the way Kieran, asleep, had clung to her hand in the Seelie Court. Trying not to blush, she glanced down at her bandage, tugging it back into place.
"Soon," he said. "I have tried to reach him already, but not yet with success."
"Tell me if there is anything I can do to help you," she said.
His eyebrow quirked. He bent down then and lifted her hand, this time to kiss it, not seeming to mind the blood or the bandage. It was a gesture of courts long past in this world, but not in Faerie. Startled, Cristina did not protest.
"Lady Mendoza Rosales," he said. "Thank you for your kindness."
"I'd rather you called me Cristina," she said. "Honestly."
"Honestly," he echoed. "Something we faeries never say. Every word we speak is an honest word."
"I wouldn't go that far," said Cristina. "Would you?"
A thunderclap shook the Institute. At least, it felt like a thunderclap: It rattled the windows and walls.
"Stay here," Kieran said. "I will go find out what that was."
Cristina almost laughed. "Kieran," she said. "Really, you don't need to protect me."
His eyes flashed; the infirmary door flew open and Mark was there, wide-eyed. He only grew more so when he saw Kieran and Cristina standing at the counter together.
"You'd better come," he said. "You won't believe who's just Portaled into the parlor."
*
The town of Polperro was tiny, whitewashed, and picturesque. It was nestled into a quiet harbor, with miles of blue sea spreading out where the harbor opened into the ocean. Small houses in different pale colors clambered up and down the hills that rose steeply on either side of the port. Cobblestoned streets wound among shops selling pastries and soft-serve ice cream.
There were no cars. The bus from Liskeard had let them off outside the town; nearing the harbor, they crossed a small bridge at the bottom of the marina. Emma thought of her parents. Her father's gentle smile, the sun on his blond hair. He'd loved the sea, living near the ocean, any kind of beach holiday. He would have loved a town like this, where the air smelled like seaweed and burnt sugar and sunscreen, where fishing boats traced white trails across the blue surface of the distant sea. Her mother would have loved it too--she had always liked to lie in the sun, like a cat, and watch the ocean dance.
"What about here?" Julian said. Emma blinked back to reality, realizing they'd been talking about finding something to eat before they'd passed over the bridge and her mind had wandered.
Julian was standing in front of a half-timbered house with a restaurant menu pasted up in the diamond-paned window. A group of girls passed by, in shorts and bikini tops, on their way to the sweetshop next door. They giggled and nudged each other when they saw Julian.
Emma wondered what he looked like to them--handsome, with all that windblown brown hair and luminous eyes, but surely odd as well, a little unearthly maybe, Marked and scarred as he was.
"Sure," she said. "This is fine."
Julian was tall enough to need to duck under the low-hanging doorframe to get into the inn. Emma followed, and a few moments later they were being shown to a table by a cheerful, plump woman in a flowered dress. It was nearly five o'clock and the place was mostly deserted. A sense of history hung lightly about it, from the uneven floorboards to the walls decorated with smuggling memorabilia, old maps, and cheerful illustrations of Cornish piskies, the mischievous Fair Folk native to the area. Emma wondered how much the locals believed in them. Not as much as they should, she suspected.
They ordered--Coke and fries for Jules, sandwich and lemonade for Emma--and Julian spread his map out over the table. His phone was next to it; he flipped through the photos he'd been taking with one hand, poking at the map with the other. Smears of colored pencil decorated his hand, familiar smudges of blue and yellow and green.
"The east side of the harbor is called the Warren," he said. "Lots of houses, and a lot of them are old, but most of them are rented out now to tourists. And none of them are on top of any caves. That leaves the area around Polperro and to the west."
Their food had arrived. Emma started wolfing her sandwich; she hadn't realized how hungry she was. "What's this?" she asked, pointing at the map.
"That's Chapel Cliff, love," said the waitress, setting down Emma's drink. She pronounced it chaypel. "Start of the coastal path. From there, you can walk all the way to Fowey." She glanced over at the bar, where two tourists had just sat down. "Oi! Be right there!"
"How do you find the path?" Julian said. "If we were to walk it today, where would we start?"
"Oh, it's a long way to Fowey," said the waitress. "But the path starts up behind the Blue Peter Inn." She pointed out the window, across the harbor. "There's a walking trail that goes up the hill. You turn onto the coastal path at the old net loft, it's all broken down now, you'll see it easy. It's just above the caves."
Emma raised her eyebrows. "The caves?"
The waitress laughed. "The old smugglers' caves," she said. "I guess you came in at high tide, didn't you? Or you'd have seen them for sure."
Emma and Julian exchanged a single look before scrambling to their feet. Heedless of the waitress's startled protests, they spilled out into the street beside the inn.
She'd been right, of course: The tide had come down and the harbor looked very different now, the boats beached on rises of muddy sand. Behind the harbor rose a narrow spit of land shingled with gray rocks. It was easy to see why it was called Chapel Cliff. The spit was tipped with gray rocks, which twisted narrowly up into the air like the spires of a church cathedral.
The water had lowered enough so that a great deal of the cliff was revealed. The sea had been pounding against the rocks when they'd arrived; now it sloshed quietly in the harbor, retreating to reveal a small, sandy beach, and behind it, the dark openings of several cave mouths.
Above the caves, perched on the steep slope of the cliff, was a house. Emma had barely spared it a glance when they'd first arrived--it had simply been one of many small houses that dotted the side of the harbor across from the Warren, though she could see now that it was farther out along the spit of land than any of the others. In fact, it was quite distant from them, standing small and alone between the sea and the sky.
Its windows were boarded up; its whitewash had peeled away in gray strips. But if Emma looked with her Shadowhunter eyes, she could see more than an abandoned house: She could see white lace curtains in the windows, and new shingles on the roof.
There was a mailbox nailed to the fence. A name was painted onto the box, in sloppy white letters, barely visible from this distance. They certainly wouldn't have been visible to a mundane, but Emma could see them.
FADE.
18
MEMORIES OF THE PAST
Jia Penhallow was seated behind the desk in the Consul's office, illuminated by the rays of the sun over Alicante. The spires of the demon towers glittered outside the window: red, gold, and orange, like shards of bloody glass.
She had the same warmth in her face Diana remembered, but she looked as if much more time had passed since the Dark War than five years. There was white in her black hair, which was pinned up elegantly on top of her head.
"It's good to see you, Diana," she said, inclining her head toward the chair opposite her desk. "We've all been very curious about your mysterious news."
"I imagine." Diana sat down. "But I was hoping what I had to say would stay between the two of us."
Jia didn't look surprised. Not that she would show it if she was. "I see. I'd wondered if you'd come about the Los Angeles Institute head position. I assumed you'd want to take over now that Arthur Blackthorn is dead." Her graceful hands fluttered as she shuffled and stacked papers, slotted pens into their holders. "It was very brave of him to approach the convergence alone. I was sorry to hear he was slain."
&n
bsp; Diana nodded. For reasons none of them knew, Arthur's body had been found near the destroyed convergence site, covered in blood from his cut throat and in stains of ichor that Julian told her grimly were Malcolm's blood. There was no reason to contradict the official assumption that he had waged a solo assault on the convergence and been killed by Malcolm's demons.
At least Arthur would be remembered as brave, though it gave her a pang that he had been burned and buried without his nieces and nephews there to mourn him. That in fact, no one in the wider world would know he had sacrificed himself for his family. Livvy had said to her that she hoped they would be able to have a remembrance ceremony for him when they all went to Idris. Diana hoped so too.
Jia didn't seem nonplussed by Diana's silence. "Patrick remembers Arthur from when they were boys," she said, "though I'm afraid I never knew him. How are the children coping?"
The children? How did you explain that the Blackthorns' second father had been their older brother since he was twelve years old? That Julian and Emma and Mark weren't children at all, really, having suffered enough for most adults' entire lifetimes? That Arthur Blackthorn had never, really, run the Institute, and the whole idea that he needed to be replaced was like an elaborate and terrible joke?
"The children are devastated," Diana said. "Their family has been fragmented, as you know. What they want is to return to Los Angeles, their home."
"But they cannot return while there is no one to head the Institute. Which is why I thought you--"
"I don't want it to be me," Diana said. "I'm not here to ask for that job. But neither do I want it to go to Zara Dearborn and her father."
"Really," said Jia. Her tone was neutral but her eyes glittered with interest. "If not the Dearborns, and not you, then who?"
"If Helen Blackthorn was allowed to return--"
Jia sat up straight. "And run the Institute? You know the Council would never allow--"
"Then let Aline run the Institute," said Diana. "Helen could simply remain in Los Angeles as her wife, and be with her family."
Jia's expression was calm, but her hands gripped the desk tightly. "Aline is my daughter. You think I don't want to bring her home?"
Lord of Shadows Page 33