Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

“Diana,” said Gwyn in his deep voice, and stretched out a hand. But Diana shook her head.

“Don’t,” she said. “Or I won’t be able to get through it.” Her eyes were burning with unshed tears. “I pulled the rags of my clothes around my body. I screamed for my sister. But she was dead, had died while Catarina ministered to her. I broke down completely then. I had lost everything. My life was destroyed. That’s what I thought.” A tear slipped down her face. “Catarina nursed me back to health and sanity. I was in that cottage with her for weeks. And she talked to me. She gave me words, which I’d never had, as a gift. It was the first time I heard the word ‘transgender.’ I broke into tears. I had never realized before how much you can take from someone by not allowing them the words they need to describe themselves. How can you know there are other people like you, when you’ve never had a name to call yourself? I know there must have been other transgender Shadowhunters, that they must have existed in the past and exist now. But I have no way to search for them and it would be dangerous to ask.” A flicker of anger at the old injustice sharpened her voice. “Then Catarina told me of transitioning. That I could live as myself, the way I needed to and be acknowledged as who I am. I knew it was what I wanted.

“I went with Catarina to Bangkok. But not as David. I went as Diana. And I did not go as a Shadowhunter. I lived with Catarina in a small apartment. I told my parents of Aria’s death and that I was Diana now: They replied that they had told the Council that David was the one who had died. That they loved me and understood, but that I must live in the mundane world now, for I was seeing mundane doctors and that was against the law.

“It was too late for me to stop them. The Clave was told that David had died out on the island, fighting revenants. They gave David my sister’s death, a death with honor. I wished they had not lied, but if they had to wear white for the boy who was gone, even if he’d never really existed, I couldn’t deny them that.

“Catarina had worked as a nurse for years. She knew mundane medicine. She brought me to a clinic in Bangkok. I met others like myself there. I wasn’t alone any longer. I was there for three years. I never planned to be a Shadowhunter again. What I was gaining was too precious. I couldn’t risk being discovered, having my secrets flayed open, being called by a man’s name, having who I was denied.

“Through the years, Catarina guided me through the mundane medical procedure that gave me the body in whose skin I felt comfortable. She hid my unusual test results from the doctors so they would never be puzzled by my Shadowhunter blood.”

“Mundane medicine,” Gwyn echoed. “It is forbidden, is it not, for a Shadowhunter to seek out mundane medical treatment? Why did Catarina not simply use magic to aid you?”

Diana shook her head. “I wouldn’t have wanted that,” she said. “A magic spell can always be undone by another spell. I will not have the truth of myself be something that can be dissolved by a stray enchantment or passing through the wrong magical gate. My body is my body—the body I have grown into as a woman, as all women grow into their bodies.”

Gwyn nodded, though Diana couldn’t tell if he understood. “So that is what you fear,” was all he said.

“I’m not afraid for myself,” said Diana. “I’m afraid for the children. As long as I’m their tutor, I feel like I can protect them in some way. If the Clave knew what I’d done, that I’d sought out mundane doctors, I’d wind up in prison under the Silent City. Or in the Basilias, if they were being kind.”

“And your parents?” Gwyn’s face was unreadable. Diana wished he would give her some kind of sign. Was he angry? Would he mock her? His calmness was making her pulse race. “Did they come to you? You must have missed them.”

“I feared to expose them to the Clave.” Diana’s voice hitched. “Each time they spoke of a clandestine visit to Bangkok, I put them off. And then the news came that they had died, slain in a demon attack. Catarina was the one who told me. I wept all night. I could not tell my mundane friends of my parents’ deaths because they would not understand why I didn’t return home for a funeral.

“Then news came of the Mortal War. And I realized I was still a Shadowhunter. I could not let Idris suffer peril without a fight. I returned to Alicante. I told the Council that I was the daughter of Aaron and Lissa Wrayburn. Because that was the truth. They knew there had been a brother and a sister and the brother had died: I gave my name as Diana. In the chaos of war, no one questioned me.

I rose up as Diana in battle. I fought as myself, with a sword in my hand and angel fire in my veins. And I knew I could never go back to being a mundane. Among my mundane friends I had to conceal the existence of Shadowhunters. Among the Shadowhunters I had to hide that I had once used mundane medicine. I knew either way I would have to hide a part of myself. I chose to be a Shadowhunter.”

“Who else has known all this? Besides Catarina?”

“Malcolm knew. There is a medicine I must take, to maintain the balance of my body’s hormones—I usually get it from Catarina, but there was a time she couldn’t do it, and had Malcolm make it. After that, he knew. He never directly held it over my head, but I was always aware of his knowledge. That he could hurt me.”

“That he could hurt you,” Gwyn murmured. His face was a mask. Diana could hear her heart beating in her ears. It was as if she had come to Gwyn with her heart in her hands, raw and bleeding, and now she waited for him to produce the knives.

“All my life I’ve tried to find the place to be myself and I’m still looking for it,” said Diana. “Because of that, I have hidden things from people I loved. And I have hidden this from you. But I have never lied about the truth of myself.”

What Gwyn did next surprised Diana. He rose from the bed, took a step forward, and went down on his knees in front of her. He did it gracefully, the way a squire might kneel to a knight or a knight to his lady. There was something ancient in the essence of the gesture, something that went back to the heart and core of the folk of Faerie.

“It is as I knew,” he said. “When I saw you upon the stairs of the Institute, and I saw the fire in your eyes, I knew you were the bravest woman ever to set foot on this earth. I regret only that such a fearless soul was ever hurt by the ignorance and fear of others.”

“Gwyn . . .”

“May I hold you?” he asked.

She nodded. She couldn’t speak. She knelt down opposite the leader of the Wild Hunt and let him take her into his broad arms, let him stroke her hair and murmur her name in his voice that still sounded like the rumble of thunder—but now it was thunder heard from inside a warm, closed house, where everyone was safe inside.

*

Tavvy was the first one to sense Emma and Julian’s return when they Portaled back into the Institute library with Magnus. He had been sitting on the floor, systematically dismantling some old toys with the assistance of Max. The moment Julian felt the floor solid under his feet, Tavvy bounded upright and careened toward him, crashing into him like a train that had gone off its tracks.

“Jules!” he exclaimed, and Julian swung him up into his arms and crushed him in a hug as Tavvy clung to him and babbled about what he’d seen and eaten and done in the past few days, and Jules ruffled his brother’s hair and felt a tension he hadn’t even known he was carrying go out of him.

Cristina had been sitting with Rafe, talking to him quietly in Spanish. Mark was at a library table with Alec, and—to Julian’s surprise—Kieran, a mass of books open in front of them.