Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

It cracked jaggedly along the blade, the top half shearing away. Annabel shrieked and stumbled backward, and black fluid spilled from the broken sword like sap from a felled tree.

Emma collapsed to her knees. It was as if the hand that held Cortana had been struck by lightning. Her wrist was humming and a ringing sounded all the way up her bones, making her body shake. She grabbed for Cortana’s hilt with her right hand, panicking, desperate not to drop it.

“Emma!” Julian was holding his own arm stiffly, Emma saw, as if he had been hurt too.

The humming was receding. Emma tried to get to her feet and stumbled; her teeth bit down into her lip with frustration. How dare her body betray her. “I’m fine—fine—”

Livvy gasped at the sight of the smashed Mortal Sword. She had reached the top of the dais; Julian reached out, and Livvy tossed him the sword she was holding. He caught it neatly and spun to face Annabel, who was staring down at the broken weapon in her hand. The Consul had seen what had happened too, and was striding toward them.

“It’s over, Annabel,” Julian said. He didn’t look triumphant; he looked weary. “It’s done.”

Annabel gave a growl low in her throat and lunged. Julian raised his blade. But Annabel whipped past him, her black hair seeming to soar around her. Her feet left the ground, and for a moment she was truly beautiful, a Shadowhunter in full flowering glory, just before she landed lightly on the wooden floor at the dais’s edge and drove her jagged, broken half blade into Livvy’s heart.

Livvy’s eyes shot wide. Her mouth formed an O, as if she were astonished by discovering something small and surprising, like a mouse on the kitchen counter. An overturned vase of flowers, a broken wristwatch. Nothing huge. Nothing terrible.

Annabel stepped back, breathing hard. She no longer looked beautiful. Her dress, her arm, was soaked in red and black.

Livvy raised her hand and wonderingly touched the hilt protruding from her chest. Her cheeks flared red.

“Ty?” she whispered. “Ty, I—”

Her knees went out from under her. She thudded hard to the ground on her back. The blade was like an ugly massive insect fastened to her chest, a metal mosquito sucking the blood that ran from her wound, red mixed with the black of the sword, spilling across the floor.

In the aisle of the Council Hall, Ty looked up, his face turning the color of ashes. Emma had no idea if he could see them through the teeming crowd—see his sister, see what had happened—but his hands flew to his chest, pressing over his heart. He pitched to his knees, soundlessly, just as Livvy had, and crumpled to the ground.

Julian made a noise. It was a noise Emma couldn’t have described, not as human a sound as a howl or a scream. It sounded like it was ripped out of the inside of him, like something brutal was tearing through his chest. He dropped the longsword Livvy had risked so much to bring him, fell to his knees, and crawled to her, pulling her into his lap.

“Livvy, Livvy, my Livvy,” he whispered, cradling her, feverishly stroking her blood-wet hair away from her face. There was so much blood. He was covered in it in seconds; it had soaked through Livvy’s clothes, even her shoes were drenched in it. “Livia.” His hands shook; he fumbled out his stele, put it to her arm.

The healing rune vanished as quickly as he drew it.

Emma felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. There were wounds that were beyond an iratze’s power. Healing runes only vanished from skin when occult poison was involved—or when the person was already dead.

“Livia.” Julian’s voice rose, cracking and tumbling over itself like a wave breaking far out to sea. “Livvy, my baby, please, sweetheart, open your eyes, it’s Jules, I’m here for you, I’m always here for you, please, please—”

Blackness exploded behind Emma’s eyes. The pain in her arm was gone; she felt nothing at all but rage. Rage that bleached everything else out of the world except the sight of Annabel cringing against the lectern, staring at Julian cradling his sister’s dead body. At what she’d done.

Emma whirled and stalked toward Annabel. There was nowhere she could go. The guards had circled the dais. The rest of the room was a seething mass of confusion.

Emma hoped Ty was unconscious. She hoped he was seeing none of this. He would wake up eventually, and the horror of what he would wake up to drove her forward.

Annabel staggered back. Her foot slipped, and she tumbled to the floor. She raised her head as Emma loomed up over her. Her face was a mask of fear.

Emma heard Arthur’s voice in her head. Mercy is better than revenge. But it was fainter than Julian’s whispers or Dru’s sobs.

She brought Cortana down, scything the blade through the air—but as it sliced the air, inky smoke erupted from the window behind Annabel. It had the force of an explosion, the concussive wave knocking Emma backward. As she stumbled to her knees she caught sight of a moving shape inside the smoke—the gleam of gold, the flash of a symbol burned onto her brain: a crown, broken in half.

The smoke vanished, and Annabel vanished with it.

Emma curled her body over Cortana, clutching the blade to herself, her soul corroded with despair. All around her she could hear the rising voices in the room, cries and shrieks. She could see Mark bent over Ty, who was crumpled on the floor. Mark’s shoulders were shaking. Helen was struggling through the crowd toward both of them. Dru was on the ground, sobbing into her hands. Alec had slumped back against the doors of the Hall, staring at the devastation.

And there in front of her was Julian, his eyes and ears closed to anything but Livvy, her body cradled against his. She seemed a drift of fragile ash or snow, something impermanent that had blown into his arms accidentally: the petal of a faerie flower, the white feather of an angel’s wing. The dream of a little girl, the memory of a sister reaching up her arms: Julian, Julian, carry me.

But the soul, the spirit that made her Livvy was no longer there: It was something that had gone away to a far and untouchable place, even as Julian ran his hands over her hair again and again and begged her to wake up and look at him just one more time.

High above the Council Hall, the golden clock began to chime the hour.