Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

“Yeah?” He resisted the urge to pat her cheek or pull her braids. She’d stopped appreciating that when she was ten.

“I don’t want to go to Alicante,” she said. “I want to stay here with you.”

“Dru . . .”

She hunched her shoulders up. “You were younger than me in the Dark War,” she said. “I’m thirteen. You can send the babies where it’s safe, but not me. I’m a Blackthorn, just like you.”

“So is Tavvy.”

“He’s seven.” Dru took a shaky breath. “You make me feel like I’m not part of this family.”

Julian stopped dead. Dru stopped with him, and they both watched as the others went into the dining room. Julian could hear Bridget scolding them all; apparently she’d been holding dinner for them for hours, though it had never occurred to her to find them and tell them so.

“Dru,” he said. “You really want to stay?”

She nodded. “I really want to.”

“Then that’s all you had to say. You can stay with us.”

She threw herself into his arms. Dru wasn’t a huggy sort of person, and for a moment Julian was too surprised to move; then he put his arms around his sister and tightened them against the flood of memories—baby Dru sleeping in his arms, taking her first toddling steps, laughing as Emma held her over the water at the beach, barely getting her toes wet.

“You’re the heart of this family, baby girl,” he said in the voice that only his brothers and sisters ever heard. “I promise you. You’re our heart.”

*

Bridget had somewhat haphazardly set out cold chicken, bread, cheese, vegetables, and banoffee pie. Kieran picked at the vegetables while the rest of them talked over each other to lay out what they knew.

Emma sat beside Julian. Every once in a while their shoulders would bump or their hands collide as they reached for something. Each touch sent a shower of sparks through him, like a small explosion of fireworks.

Ty, his elbows on the table, took point on the discussion, explaining how he, Kit, and Livvy had found the aletheia crystal and the memories trapped within it. “Two hundred years ago Malcolm and Annabel broke into the Cornwall Institute,” he explained, his graceful hands slicing through the air as he talked. Something seemed different about Ty, Julian thought, though how could his brother have changed in the few short days he’d been away? “They stole the Black Volume, but they were caught.”

“Do we know why they wanted it?” Cristina asked. “I do not see how necromancy would have helped them.”

“They planned to trade it to someone else, it looks like,” said Emma. “The book wasn’t for them. Someone had promised to trade them protection from the Clave for it.”

“It was a time when a relationship between a Shadowhunter and a Downworlder could have meant a death sentence for both of them,” said Magnus. “Protection would have been a very attractive offer.”

“They never got that far,” Ty said. “They were caught and thrown in prison in the Silent City, and the Black Volume was taken from them and returned to the Cornwall Institute. Then something weird happened.” He frowned. Ty didn’t like not knowing things. “Malcolm disappeared. He left Annabel to be questioned and tortured.”

“He wouldn’t have done that willingly,” said Julian. “He loved her.”

“People can betray even those they love,” said Mark.

“No, Julian’s right,” said Emma. “I hate Malcolm more than anyone, but he absolutely would never have left Annabel. She was his whole life.”

“It’s still what happened,” said Ty.

“They tortured Annabel for information until she pretty much lost her mind,” said Livvy. “Then they released her to her family. And they killed her and told everyone she’d become an Iron Sister. But it wasn’t true.”

There was a tightness in Julian’s throat. He thought of Annabel’s drawings, the lightness in them, the hope, the love for Blackthorn Manor in Idris and for Malcolm.

“Fast-forward almost a hundred years,” said Emma. “Malcolm goes to the Unseelie King. He’s found out that Annabel wasn’t an Iron Sister, that she was murdered. He’s out for bloody vengeance.” She paused, combing her fingers back through her hair, still tangled from Cornish wind and rain. “The Unseelie King tells him how to raise Annabel, but there’s a catch—Malcolm needs the Black Volume to do it, and now he doesn’t have it. It’s in the Cornwall Institute. He broke in there once, he doesn’t dare do it again. So there it stays until the Blackthorns who run the Institute move to Los Angeles, and they take it with them.”

Ty’s eyes lit up. “Right. And Malcolm sees his chance when Sebastian Morgenstern attacks, and takes the book. He starts to raise Annabel, and finally he succeeds.”

“Except she’s pissed off and kills him,” said Emma.

“How ungrateful,” said Kieran.

“Ungrateful?” Emma said. “He was a murderer. She was right to kill him.”

“He may have been a murderer,” said Kieran, “but it sounds as if he became one for her. He killed to give her life.”

“Maybe she didn’t want life,” said Alec. He shrugged. “He never did ask her what she wanted, did he?”

As if sensing the tense atmosphere at the table, Max began to wail. With a sigh, Alec picked him up and carried him out of the room.

“I’m sure it’s useful to know all this,” said Magnus. “But does it bring us closer to the Black Volume?”

“Maybe if we had more time, and the Riders weren’t after us,” said Julian.

“I think,” said Kieran slowly, his gaze unfocused, “that it was my father.”

Apparently it was his day for startling pronouncements. Everyone stared at him again. To Julian’s surprise, it was Cristina who spoke.

“What do you mean, it was your father?”

“I think he was the one who wanted the book all those years ago, when Malcolm first stole it,” said Kieran. “He is the thread that ties all this together. He wanted the book then and he wants it now.”

“But why do you think he wanted it then?” Julian said. He kept his voice low and gentle. What Emma thought of as his leading-the-witness voice.

“Because of something Adaon said.” Kieran was looking down at his hands. “He said my father had wanted the book since the First Heir was stolen. It is an old story in Faerie, the theft of my father’s first child. It happened more than two hundred years ago.”

Cristina looked stunned. “I didn’t realize that’s what he meant.”

“The First Heir.” Magnus’s eyes looked unfocused. “I have heard that tale, or heard of it. The child was not just stolen, but murdered.”

“So the story goes,” said Kieran. “Perhaps my father wished to use necromancy to raise the child. I could not speak of his motives. But he could have offered Fade and Annabel protection in the Unseelie Lands. No Shadowhunter could touch them if they were safe in Faerie.”

Emma set her fork down with a clang. “Pretentious hair prince is right.”

Kieran blinked. “What did you call me?”

“I’m trying it out,” Emma said, with a wave. “And I said you were right. Enjoy it, because I doubt I’ll say it again.”

Magnus nodded. “The King is one of the few beings on this earth who could have kidnapped Malcolm from the prisons of the Silent City. He must not have wanted him to reveal their connection to the Council.”

“But why didn’t he take Annabel, too?” Livvy asked, a forkful of pie halfway to her mouth.

“Maybe because Malcolm had disappointed him by getting caught,” said Mark. “Maybe he wanted to punish them both.”

“But Annabel could have told on them,” said Livvy. “She could have said Malcolm was working for the King.”

“Not if she didn’t know,” said Emma. “There was nothing in the diaries Malcolm kept that mentioned who he was stealing the book for, and I bet he didn’t tell Annabel, either.”

“They tortured her,” said Ty, “and she still couldn’t say who it was, just that she had no idea. It must have been the truth.”

“That explains why when he found out Annabel wasn’t an Iron Sister, that he’d been lied to, Malcolm went to the Unseelie King,” said Julian. “Because he knew him.”