Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

“He means you look like Jace,” said Magnus. “Jace Herondale.”

“My parabatai,” said Alec, with love and pride.

“I know Jace,” said Kit. He was looking at Ty, who was struggling to move a chair. It wasn’t that it was too heavy for him, but that his hands were opening and closing at his sides, making his gestures unusually clumsy and uncoordinated. “He came out to the L.A. Institute after my—after they found out who I was.”

“The legendary Lost Herondale,” said Magnus. “You know, I was starting to think that was a rumor Catarina made up, like the Loch Ness Monster or the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Catarina made up the Bermuda Triangle?” said Alec.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alexander. That was Ragnor.” Magnus touched Livvy’s arm lightly. She cried out. Ty dropped the chair he’d been struggling with and took a ragged breath.

“You’re hurting her,” he said. “Don’t.”

His voice was quiet, but in it Kit could hear steel in it, and see the boy who’d held him at knifepoint in his father’s house.

Magnus leaned his hands on the table. “I’ll try not to, Tiberius,” he said. “But I may have to cause her pain to heal her.”

Ty seemed about to answer, just as the door flew open and Mark burst in. He caught sight of Livvy, and blanched. “Livvy. Livia!”

He tried to start forward, but Alec caught at his arm. For all Alec’s slenderness, he was deceptively strong. He held Mark back while blue fire sparked from Magnus’s hand and he passed it down Livvy’s side. The sleeve of her jacket and shirt seemed to melt away, revealing a long, ugly cut seeping yellow fluid.

Mark sucked in a breath. “What’s going on?”

“Fight at the Shadow Market,” Magnus said briefly. “Livia was cut with a piece of glass with orias root on it. Very poisonous, but curable.” He moved his fingers over Livvy’s arm; as he did, a bluish light seemed to glow under her skin, as if it were pulsing from the inside out.

“The Shadow Market?” Mark demanded. “What the hell was Livvy doing at the Shadow Market?”

Nobody answered. Kit felt as if he was shrinking inward.

“What’s going on?” Ty demanded. His hands were still opening at his sides, as if he were trying to shake something off his skin. His shoulders rolled back. It was as if his worry and agitation were expressing themselves through a silent music that made his nerves and muscles dance. “Is that blue light normal?”

Mark said something to Alec, and Alec nodded. He released the other boy’s arm, and Mark came around the table to put his hand on Ty’s shoulder. Ty leaned into him, though he didn’t stop moving.

“Magnus is the best there is,” Alec said. “Healing magic is his specialty.” Alec’s voice was gentle. The voice of someone who wasn’t quieting his tone to keep someone calm, but who actually empathized. “Magnus cured me, once,” he added. “It was demon poison; I shouldn’t have lived, but I did. You can trust him.”

Livvy gave a sudden gasp and her back jerked; Ty put his hand to his own arm, his fingers clenching. Then her body relaxed. Color began to come back to her face, her cheeks turning from yellowish-gray to pink. Ty, too, relaxed visibly.

“That’s the poison gone,” said Magnus matter-of-factly. “Now we have to work on the blood loss and the cut.”

“There are runes for both those things,” said Ty. “I can put them on her.”

But Magnus was shaking his head. “Better not to use them—runes draw some of their strength from the bearer,” he said. “If she had a parabatai, we could try pulling strength from them, but she doesn’t, does she?”

Ty didn’t say anything. His face had gone still and completely white.

“She doesn’t,” Kit said, realizing Ty wasn’t going to say anything.

“That’s all right. She’ll be fine,” Magnus reassured them. “Might as well move her to her bedroom, though. No reason for her to sleep on a table.”

“I’ll help you take her,” Mark said. “Ty, why don’t you come with us.”

“Alec, can you go to the infirmary?” Magnus said, as Mark went to lift his sister into his arms. Poor Livvy, Kit thought; she would hate to be dragged around like a sack of potatoes. “You’ll know what I need.”

Alec nodded.

“Take Kit with you,” said Magnus. “You’ll want help carrying everything.”

Kit found himself not minding the idea of making conversation with Alec. Alec had a comforting sort of presence—quiet, and contained. As he and Alec headed out of the room, Kit glanced back once at Ty. Kit had never had siblings, never had a mother, had only had Johnny. His father. His father who had died, and he didn’t think he’d ever looked the way Ty looked now, as if the possibility of something happening to Livvy was enough to break him inside.

Maybe there was something wrong with him, Kit thought as he followed Alec into the hallway. Maybe he didn’t have the right kind of feelings. He’d never wondered that much about his mother, who she was: Wouldn’t someone who knew how to feel properly wonder that?

“So you met Jace,” said Alec, scuffing his shoes along the carpet as they went. “What did you think?”

“Of Jace?” Kit was puzzled. He didn’t know why anyone would solicit his opinion on the head of the New York Institute.

“Just making small talk.” Alec had an odd half smile, as if he were keeping a number of thoughts to himself. They passed through a door marked INFIRMARY into a large room, filled with old-fashioned single metal beds. Alec went behind a counter and started rummaging.

“Jace isn’t much like you,” said Kit. There was a weird dark patch of wall across from him, as if paint had smeared up and across it in almost the shape of a tree.

“That’s an understatement.” Alec piled bandages on the countertop. “But it doesn’t matter. Parabatai don’t need to be like each other. They just need to complement each other. To work well together.”

Kit thought of Jace, all shining gold and confidence, and Alec, all steady, quiet ease. “And you and Jace complement each other?”

“I remember when I met him,” Alec said. He’d found two boxes and was dumping bandages into one, jars of powder into another. “He walked out of a Portal from Idris. He was skinny and he had bruises and he had these big eyes. He was arrogant, too. He and Isabelle used to fight . . . .” He smiled at the memory. “But to me everything about him said, ‘Love me, because nobody ever has.’ It was all over him, like fingerprints.

“He was worried about meeting you,” Alec added. “He’s not used to having living blood relatives. He cared what you thought. He wanted you to like him.” He glanced over at Kit. “Here, take a box.”

Kit’s head was swimming. He thought of Jace, swaggering and amused and proud. But Alec spoke of Jace as if he saw him as a vulnerable child, someone who needed love because he’d never gotten it. “I’m no one, though,” he said, taking the box full of bandages. “Why would he care what I think? I don’t matter. I’m nothing.”

“You matter to Shadowhunters,” said Alec. “You’re a Herondale. That’ll never be nothing.”

*

Holding Rafe in her arms, Cristina sang softly. He was small for five years old, and his rest was fitful. He squirmed and sighed in his sleep, his small brown fingers twisted into a lock of his dark hair. He reminded her a little of her own small cousins, always wanting another hug, another sweet, another song before sleep.