Something flashed across the backs of Malcolm’s eyes, something secretive and dark. “When I heard it, I thought it was a sickening coincidence,” he said. “But it obsessed me. I went to talk to the poet, but he had died. ‘Annabel’ was his last work.” His voice was bleak with memory. “Years went by, and I believed her to be in the Adamant Citadel. It was all that comforted me. That she was alive somewhere. When I found out, I wanted to deny it, but it was the poem that proved the facts of it—Poe had learned the truth from Downworlders, learned it before I did—how Annabel and I had loved as children, how she would have left the Nephilim for me, but her family heard of it and decided death was preferable to life with a warlock. They’d walled her up in a tomb by the Cornwall sea, walled her up alive. Later, when I moved her body, I kept it near the ocean. She always loved the water.”
His breath was coming in sobs now. Emma, unable to move, stared. His grief was as raw and real as if what he were talking about had happened yesterday.
“They told me she’d become an Iron Sister. All of them lied to me—Magnus, Catarina, Ragnor, Tessa—corrupted by Shadowhunters, drawn in by their lies! And I, oblivious, grieving for her, until finally I found out the truth—”
Sudden voices echoed in the hall; Emma heard the sound of running feet. Malcolm snapped his fingers. Violet light shimmered in the tunnel behind them, its iridescence fading as it grew dimmer and more opaque, solidifying into a wall.
The sound of voices and footsteps vanished. Emma stood inside a sealed cave with Malcolm.
She backed up, clutching the candelabra. “I’ll destroy the hands,” she warned, her heart pounding. “I’ll do it.”
Dark fire sparked at his fingertips. “I could let you go,” he said. “Let you live. Swim away through the ocean like you did before. You could carry my message back for me. My message to the Clave.”
“I don’t need you to let me go.” She was breathing hard. “I’d rather fight.”
His smile was twisted, almost sorrowful. “You and your sword, no matter its history, are no match for a warlock, Emma.”
“What do you want from me?” she demanded, her voice rising, echoing off the walls of the cave. “What do you want, Malcolm?”
“I want you to understand,” he said through gritted teeth. “I want someone to tell the Clave what they’re responsible for, I want them to know the blood on their hands, I want them to know why.”
Emma stared at Malcolm, a thin, stretched figure in a stained white jacket, sparks dancing along the edges of his fingertips. He frightened her and made her sad, all at the same time.
“Your why doesn’t matter,” she said finally. “Maybe you did what you did in the name of love. But if you think that makes any difference, you’re no better than the Clave.”
He moved toward her—and Emma flung the candelabra at him. He ducked away and it missed, hitting the rock floor with a clang. The fingers of the severed hands seemed to curl in as if to protect themselves. Emma planted her feet apart, remembering Jace Herondale, years ago in Idris, showing her how to stand so you’d never be knocked down.
She gripped the hilt of Cortana in a two-fisted grip, and this time she remembered Clary Fairchild, and the words she’d said to Emma in Idris, when Emma had been twelve years old. Heroes aren’t always the ones who win. They’re the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don’t give up. That’s what makes them heroes.
Emma sprang toward Malcolm, Cortana upraised. He reacted with a second’s delay—flinging his hand toward her, light bursting from his fingers. It sizzled toward her, a streak of gold-and-violet light.
The delay gave her time to duck. She spun and raised Cortana over her head. Magic slid off the blade. She threw herself at Malcolm again and he ducked away, though not before she had slashed open his sleeve, just above the elbow. He barely seemed to notice.
“The death of your parents was necessary,” he said. “I had to see if the book worked.”
“No, you didn’t,” Emma snarled, brandishing Cortana. “You should know better than to try to raise the dead.”
“Because if Julian died, you wouldn’t try to bring him back?” said Malcolm with a delicate rise of his eyebrows, and Emma recoiled as if he’d slapped her. “You wouldn’t bring your mother and father back? Oh, it’s so easy for you, as it is for all Shadowhunters, standing there, making your moral pronouncements, as if you’re better than the rest of us—”
“I am better,” Emma said. “I’m better than you. Because I’m not a murderer, Malcolm.”
To Emma’s shock, Malcolm recoiled—a true recoil of surprise, as if he hadn’t imagined being called a murderer before. Emma lunged, Cortana outstretched. The sword drove into Malcolm’s chest, splitting his blazer—and rammed to a stop, as if she’d stabbed it into a boulder.
She shrieked with pain as what felt like a bolt of electricity went up her arm. She heard Malcolm laugh, and a wave of energy shot from his outstretched fingers, slamming into her body. She was lifted and hurled backward, magic tearing through her like a bullet ripping a hole through a paper screen. She hit the uneven stone ground on her back, Cortana still gripped in her nerveless hand.