“I don’t care,” Tessa lied; her voice shook slightly. Despite everything, hearing that her brother hated her hurt more than she had thought it could.
“Did he say what I am? Why I have the power I do?”
“He said that your father was a demon.” Jessamine’s lips twitched. “And that your mother was a Shadowhunter.”
The door opened softly, so softly that had Magnus not already been drifting in and out of sleep, the noise would not have woken him.
He looked up. He was sitting in an armchair near the fire, as his favorite place on the sofa was taken up by Wil . Wil , in bloody shirtsleeves, was sleeping the heavy sleep of the drugged and healing. His forearm was bandaged to the elbow, his cheeks flushed, his head pil owed on his unhurt arm. The tooth Wil had pul ed from his arm sat on the side table beside him, gleaming like ivory.
The door to the drawing room stood open behind him. And there, framed in the archway, was Camil e.
She wore a black velvet traveling cloak open over a bril iant green dress that matched her eyes. Her hair was dressed high on her head with emerald combs, and as he watched, she drew off her white kid gloves, deliberately slowly, one by one, and laid them on the table by the door.
“Magnus,” she said, and her voice, as always, sounded like silvery bel s. “Did you miss me?”
Magnus sat up straight. The firelight played over Camil e’s shining hair, her poreless white skin. She was extraordinarily beautiful. “I did not realize you would be favoring me with your presence tonight.”
She looked at Wil , asleep on the sofa. Her lips curled upward. “Clearly.”
“You sent no message. In fact, you have sent me no messages at al since you left London.”
“Are you reproaching me, Magnus?” Camil e sounded amused. Gliding behind the sofa, she leaned over the back, looking down into Wil ’s face.
“Wil Herondale,” she said. “He is lovely, isn’t he? Is he your newest amusement?”
Instead of answering, Magnus crossed his long legs in front of him. “Where have you been?”
Camil e leaned forward farther; if she had had breath, it would have stirred the curling dark hair on Wil ’s forehead. “Can I kiss him?”
“No,” said Magnus. “Where have you been, Camil e? Every night I lay here on your sofa and I waited to hear your step in the hal , and I wondered where you were. You might at least tel me.”
She straightened, rol ing her eyes. “Oh, very wel . I was in Paris, having some new dresses fitted. A much-needed holiday from the dramas of London.”
There was a long silence. Then, “You’re lying,” Magnus said.
Her eyes widened. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s the truth.” He took a crumpled letter from his pocket and threw it onto the floor between them. “You cannot track a vampire, but you can track a vampire’s subjugate. You took Walker with you. It was easy enough for me to track him to Saint Petersburg. I have informants there.
They let me know that you were living there with a human lover.”
Camil e watched him, a little smile playing about her mouth. “And that made you jealous?”
“Did you want me to be?”
“?a m’est égal,” said Camil e, dropping into the French she used when she truly wanted to annoy him. “It’s al the same to me. He had nothing to do with you. He was a diversion while I was in Russia, nothing more.”
“And now he is . . .”
“Dead. So he hardly represents competition for you. You must let me have my little diversions, Magnus.”
“Otherwise?”
“Otherwise I shal become extremely cross.”
“As you became cross with your human lover, and murdered him?” Magnus inquired. “What of pity? Compassion? Love? Or do you not feel that emotion?”
“I love,” Camil e said indignantly. “You and I, Magnus, who endure forever, love in such a manner as cannot be conceived of by mortals—a dark constant flame to their brief, sputtering light. What do they matter to you? Fidelity is a human concept, based upon the idea that we are here but for a short time. You cannot demand my faithfulness for eternity.”
“How foolish of me. I thought I could. I thought I could at least expect you not to lie to me.”
“You are being ridiculous,” she said. “A child. You expect me to have the morals of some mundane when I am not human, and neither are you.