Helen Blackthorn was leaning over her, blue-green eyes worried, a witchlight glowing in her hand. They were in a room with a steeply gabled roof, slanting down hard on either side, like in a fairytale cabin. A big four-poster wooden bed was in the center of the room, and in the shadows behind Helen, Emma could see furniture looming: a big square wardrobe, a long sofa, a table with rickety legs. “W-where am I?” Emma gasped.
“Idris,” Helen said, stroking her arm in a soothing manner. “You made it to Idris, Emma. We’re in the attic of the Penhallows’ house.”
“M-my parents.” Emma’s teeth chattered. “Where are my parents?”
“You came through the Portal with Julian,” said Helen gently, not answering her question. “All of you made it through somehow—it’s a miracle, you know. The Clave opened the way, but Portal travel is hard. Dru came through holding on to Tavvy, and the twins came through together, of course. And then, when we’d almost given up hope, you two. You were unconscious, Em.” She brushed Emma’s hair back from her forehead. “We were so worried. You should have seen Jules—”
“What’s happening?” Emma demanded. She pulled back from Helen’s touch, not because she didn’t like Helen but because her heart was pounding. “What about Mark, and Mr. Blackthorn—”
Helen hesitated. “Sebastian Morgenstern has attacked six Institutes over the past few days. He’s either killed everyone or Turned them. He can use the Infernal Cup to make Shadowhunters—not themselves anymore.”
“I saw him do it,” Emma whispered. “To Katerina. And he Turned your father, too.
They were going to do it to Mark, but Sebastian said he didn’t want him because he had faerie blood.”
Helen flinched. “We have reason to think Mark’s still alive,” she said. “They were able to track him to a point where he disappeared, but the runes indicate he’s not dead. It’s possible that Sebastian may be holding him hostage.”
“My—my parents,” Emma said again, through a dryer throat this time. She knew what it meant that Helen hadn’t answered her question the first time she’d asked it. “Where are they? They weren’t in the Institute, so Sebastian couldn’t have hurt them.”
“Em . . .” Helen exhaled. She looked young suddenly, almost as young as Jules.
“Sebastian doesn’t just attack Institutes; he murders or takes Conclave members from their own homes. Your parents—the Clave tried to track them, but they couldn’t. Then their bodies washed up in Marina dell Rey, on the beach, this morning. The Clave doesn’t know what happened exactly, but . . .”
Helen’s voice trailed off into a meaningless string of words, words such as “positive identification” and “scars and markings on the bodies” and “no evidence recovered.” Things like “in the water for hours” and “no way to transport the corpses” and “given all the proper funeral rites, burned on the beach as they had both requested, you understand—”
Emma screamed. It was a scream with no words at first, rising higher and higher, a scream that tore her throat and brought the taste of metal into her mouth. It was a scream of loss so immense there was no speech for it. It was the wordless cry of having the sky over your head, the air in your lungs, ripped away from you forever. She screamed, and screamed again, and tore at the mattress with her hands until she gouged through it, and there were feathers and blood stuck under her fingernails, and Helen was sobbing, trying to hold her, saying, “Emma, Emma, please, Emma, please.” And then there was more illumination. Someone had turned on a lantern in the room, and Emma heard her name, in a soft urgent familiar voice, and Helen let her go and there was Jules, leaning against the edge of the bed, and holding something out to her, something that gleamed gold in the new harsh light.
It was Cortana. Unsheathed, lying bare across his palms like an offering. Emma thought she was still screaming, but she took the sword, the words flashing across the blade, burning across her eyes: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal.
She heard her father’s voice in her head. Carstairs have carried this sword for generations.
The inscription reminds us that Shadowhunters are the Angel’s weapons. Temper us in the fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.
Emma choked, pushing back on the screams, forcing them down and into silence. This was what her father had meant: Like Cortana, she had steel in her veins and she was meant to be strong. Even if her parents were not there to see it, she would be strong for them.
She hugged the sword against her chest. As if from a distance she heard Helen exclaim and reach for her, but Julian, Julian who always knew what Emma needed, tugged Helen’s hand back. Emma’s fingers were around the blade, and blood was running down her arms and chest where the tip sliced at her collarbone. She didn’t feel it. Rocking back and forth, she clutched the sword like it was the only thing she had ever loved, and let the blood spill down instead of tears.
Simon couldn’t quite shake a feeling of déjà vu.
He’d been here before, standing just outside the Institute, watching the Lightwoods disappear through a shimmering Portal. Though then, back before he had ever borne the Mark of Cain, the Portal had been created by Magnus, and this time it was under the oversight of a blue-skinned warlock woman named Catarina Loss. That time, he’d been summoned because Jace had wanted to talk to him about Clary before he disappeared into another country.
This time Clary was disappearing with them.
He felt her hand on his, her fingers lightly ringing his wrist. The whole of the Conclave—nearly every Shadowhunter in New York City—had come through the gates of the Institute and passed through the shimmering Portal. The Lightwoods, as guardians of the Institute, would go last. Simon had been here since the start of twilight, bars of red sky sliding down behind the buildings of the New York skyline, and now witchlight lit the scene in front of him, picking out small glimmering details: Isabelle’s whip, the spark of fire that jumped from Alec’s family ring as he gestured, the glints in Jace’s pale hair.
“It looks different,” Simon said.
Clary looked up at him. Like the rest of the Shadowhunters, she was dressed in what Simon could only describe as a cloak. It seemed to be what they broke out during cold winter weather, made of a heavy, velvety black material that buckled across the chest. He wondered where she’d gotten it. Maybe they just issued them. “What does?”
“The Portal,” he said. “It looks different from when Magnus did it. More—blue.”
“Maybe they all have different senses of style?”
Simon looked over at Catarina. She seemed briskly efficient, like a hospital nurse or kindergarten teacher. Definitely not like Magnus. “How’s Izzy?”
“Worried, I think. Everyone’s worried.”
There was a short silence. Clary exhaled, her breath floating white on the winter air.
“I don’t like you going,” Simon said, at exactly the same time that Clary said, “I don’t like going and leaving you here.”
“I’ll be fine,” Simon said. “I have Jordan looking after me.” Indeed, Jordan was there, sitting on top of the wall that ran around the Institute and looking watchful. “And no one’s tried to kill me in at least two weeks.”
“Not funny.” Clary scowled. The problem, Simon reflected, was that it was difficult to reassure someone that you’d be fine when you were a Daylighter. Some vampires might want Simon on their side, eager to benefit from his unusual powers. Camille had attempted to recruit him, and others might try, but Simon had the distinct impression that the vast majority of vampires wanted to kill him.