Also by Cassandra Clare

always be neat and presentable echoed in her head.
“I am eighteen,” she said. “I was assigned to study the ways of the Los Angeles Institute as part of
my travel year. How old are you?”
This time Mark’s hesitation went on for so long, Cristina wondered if he was going to speak at all.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I was gone—I thought I was gone—a long time. Julian was twelve.
The others were babies. Ten and eight and two. Tavvy was two.”
“For them it has been five years,” Cristina said. “Five years without you.”
“Helen,” Mark said. “Julian. Tiberius. Livia. Drusilla. Octavian. Every night I counted out their
names among the stars, so I would not forget. Are they all living?”
“Yes, all of them, though Helen is not here—she is married and lives with her wife.”
“Then they are living, and happy together? I am glad. I had heard the news of her wedding in
Faerie, though it seems long ago now.”
“Yes.” Cristina studied Mark’s face. Angles, planes, sharpness, that curve at the top of his ear that
spoke of faerie blood. “You have missed a great deal.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Heat boiled up in his voice, mixed with bewilderment. “I don’t
know how old I am. I don’t recognize my own sisters and brothers. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“You do,” said Cristina. “You were there when the faerie convoy was speaking to Arthur in the
Sanctuary.”
He tilted his face toward hers. There was a scar across the side of his neck, not the mark of a
vanished rune, but a raised welt. His hair was untidy and looked as if it had been uncut for months,
years even. The curling white tips touched his shoulders. “Do you trust them? The faeries?”
Cristina shook her head.
“Good.” He looked away from her. “You shouldn’t.” He reached for the cardboard box that Ty had
left on the floor and pulled it toward him. “What is this?”
“Things they thought you might want,” Cristina said. “Your brothers and sisters.”
“Gifts of welcome,” said Mark in a puzzled tone, and knelt down by the box, removing a
hodgepodge of odd items—some T-shirts and jeans that were probably Julian’s, a microscope, bread
and butter, a handful of desert wildflowers from the garden behind the Institute.
Mark raised his head to look at Cristina. His eyes glittered with unshed tears. His shirt was thin
and ragged; she could see through the material, see other welts and scars on his skin. “What do I say
to them?”
“To who?”
“My family. My brothers and sisters. My uncle.” He shook his head. “I remember them, and yet I
don’t. I feel as if I have lived here all my life, and yet I have also always been with the Wild Hunt. I
hear the roar of it in my ears, the call of the horns, the sound of the wind. It overpowers their voices.
How do I explain that?”
“Don’t explain it,” said Cristina softly. “Just say you love them and you missed them every day.
Tell them you hated the Wild Hunt. Tell them you’re glad to be back.”
“But why would I do that? Won’t they know I’m lying?”
“Didn’t you miss them? Aren’t you glad to be back?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I cannot hear my heart or what it tells me. I can only hear the wind.”
Before Cristina could reply, a sharp tap came at the window. It rattled again, a pattern of taps that
sounded almost like a code.
Mark sprang to his feet. He crossed the room to the window and flung it open, leaning out. When he
ducked back in, there was something in his hand.