“Last night,” she said, “you told me you believed me. About Sebastian not killing my parents. About there being more to it. Their deaths weren’t just—just Sebastian wiping out the Conclave. Someone wanted them dead. Their deaths meant something—”
“Everyone’s death means something,” Diana said in a clipped tone. She passed a hand across her eyes. “I talked to the Silent Brothers last night. I found out what they know. And God, I’ve been telling myself I ought to lie to you about it—I’ve been struggling with it all day—”
“Please,” Emma whispered. “Please, don’t lie.”
“But I can’t. I remember when I came here, and you were this little girl, you were twelve years old, and you were wrecked. You’d lost everything. All you had to hang on to was Julian and your need for revenge. For Sebastian not to have been the reason your parents died, because if he was, then how could you punish him?” She took a deep breath. “I know Johnny Rook told you there’ve been a rash of murders. He’s right. Twelve total, counting the one last night. No trace of the murderer left behind. All of the victims unidentified. Their teeth broken, wallets missing, fingerprints sanded off.”
“And the Silent Brothers didn’t know about this? The Clave, the Council—?”
“They did know. And this is the part you’re not going to like.” Diana’s fingernails tapped on the glass of her desk. “Several of the dead were Fair Folk. That makes this a matter for the Scholomance, the Centurions, and the Silent Brothers. Not for Institutes. The Silent Brothers knew. The Clave knew. They didn’t tell us, deliberately, because they don’t want us involved.”
“The Scholomance?”
The Scholomance was a piece of Shadowhunter history come to life. A cold castle of towers and corridors carved into the side of a mountain in the Carpathians, it had existed for centuries as a place where the most elite of Shadowhunters were trained to deal with the double menaces of demons and Downworlders. It had been closed when the first Accords were signed: a show of faith that Downworlders and Shadowhunters were no longer at war.
Now with the advent of the Cold Peace, it had been reopened and was operational again. One had to pass a series of harsh tests to be admitted, and what was learned at the school was not to be shared with others. Those who graduated were called Centurions, scholars and legendary warriors; Emma had never met one in person.
“It might not be fair, but it’s the truth.”
“But the markings. They admitted they were the same markings that were on my parents’ bodies?”
“They didn’t admit anything,” Diana said. “They said they’d handle it. They said not to get involved, that the rule had come down from the Council itself.”
“The bodies?” Emma said. “Did the bodies dissolve when they tried to move them, like my parents’ bodies?”
“Emma!” Diana rose to her feet. Her hair was a dark, lovely cloud around her face. “We don’t interfere with what happens to the fey, not anymore. That’s what the Cold Peace means. The Clave hasn’t just suggested we don’t do this. It’s forbidden to interfere with faerie business. If you involve yourself, it could have consequences not just for you but for Julian.”
It was as if Diana had picked up one of the heavy paperweights from the desk and smashed it into Emma’s chest. “Julian?”
“What does he do every year? On the anniversary of the Cold Peace?”
Emma thought of Julian, sitting here, in this office. Year after year, from the time he was twelve and all scraped elbows and torn jeans. He would sit patiently with pen and ink, writing his letter to the Clave, petitioning them to let his sister Helen come home from Wrangel Island.
Wrangel Island was the seat of all the world’s wards, a set of magical spells that had been set up to protect the earth from certain demons a thousand years ago. It was also a tiny ice floe thousands of miles away in the Arctic Sea. When the Cold Peace had been declared, Helen had been sent there; the Clave had said it was in order that she study the wards, but no one believed it was anything other than an exile.
She had been allowed a few trips home since then, including the one to Idris when she had married Aline Penhallow, the daughter of the Consul. But even that powerful connection couldn’t free her. Every year Julian wrote. And every year he was denied.
Diana spoke in a softer voice. “Every year the Clave says no because Helen’s loyalty might be to the Fair Folk. How will it look if they think we’re investigating faerie killings against their orders? How would it affect the chance that they might let her go?”
“Julian would want me to—” Emma started.