Also by Cassandra Clare

should have been able to fix you. Even accounting for the strength of parabatai runes, you absolutely
shouldn’t have survived.” His odd violet eyes fixed on Julian. “I don’t know if it’s something you did,
or something Emma did, but whatever it was—was impossible. You shouldn’t be breathing right
now.”
Julian trailed up the stairs slowly. He could hear yelling from above him, but not the sort that sounded
as if anyone was in actual trouble. Telling the difference between play yelling and actual yelling was
an absolute necessity when you were in charge of four kids.
His mind was still on what Malcolm had told him, about the cataplasm. It was unnerving to be told
that you should be dead. There was always the possibility that Malcolm was wrong, but somehow
Julian doubted it. Hadn’t Emma said something about finding belladonna plants near the convergence?
Thoughts of poison and convergences vanished from his mind as he turned down the corridor from
the stairs. The room they kept Tiberius’s computer in was filled with light and noise. Julian moved
into the doorway and stared.
There was a video game alive and flickering on the computer screen. Mark was sitting in front of
it, mashing rather desperately at the buttons on a controller as a truck sped toward him on-screen. It
crushed his character with a splat, and he tossed the controller aside. “The box serves the Lord of
Lies!” he announced indignantly.
Ty laughed, and Julian felt something tug at his heart. The sound of his brother laughing was one of
Julian’s favorite noises, in part because Ty did it so sincerely, without any attempt to cover up his
laughter or any sense he should hide it. Wordplay and irony often weren’t funny to Ty, but people
acting silly was, and he had an absolute and sincere amusement at the behavior of animals—Church
falling off a table and trying to regain his dignity—that was beautiful to Julian.
In the dead of night, lying in bed staring at his murals of thorns, Julian sometimes wished he could
put down the role that required him to always be the one telling Ty he couldn’t have skunks in his
room or reminding him it was time to study or coming in to shut his lights off when he was reading
instead of sleeping. What if, like a normal brother, he could watch Sherlock Holmes movies with Ty
and help him collect lizards without worrying that they were going to escape and run through the
Institute? What if?
Julian’s mother had always stressed the difference between doing something for someone and
giving them the tools to do it themselves. It was how she had taught Julian to paint. Julian had always
tried to do that for Ty, too, though it had often seemed like he was feeling his way in the dark: making
books, toys, lessons that seemed tailored to the special way Ty thought—was it the right thing to do?
He thought it had helped. He hoped. Sometimes hope was all you had.
Hope, and watching Ty. There was a pleasure in seeing Ty become more himself, need help and
guidance less and less. Yet there was a sadness, too, for the day his brother wouldn’t need him
anymore. Sometimes, in the depths of his heart, Julian wondered if Ty would want to spend time with
him at all, once that day had come—with the brother who was always making him do things and was
no fun at all.
“It’s not a box,” Ty said. “It’s a controller.”
“Well, it lies,” said Mark, turning around in his chair. He saw Julian, leaning in the doorway, and
nodded. “Well met, Jules.”
Julian knew this was a faerie greeting and struggled internally not to point out to Mark that they’d
already met that morning in the kitchen, not to mention several thousand times before that. He won
over his baser impulses, but just barely. “Hi, Mark.”