Also by Cassandra Clare

She wanted to go to Julian and put her arms around him, but a thousand things held her back.
“If you want me to tell the others,” Julian said hoarsely, “I will.”
“Now is not the time to decide,” Mark said, and in that single sentence, in the way he looked at
Julian now, for the first time since Mark had returned Emma could see a world in which Mark and
Julian had been together, had raised their siblings together and come to agreements about what to do
together. For the first time, she could see the harmony they had lost. “Not when there are enemies
circling us and the Institute, not when our lives and blood are on the line.”
“It’s a heavy burden to bear, this secret,” said Julian, and there was a warning in his tone, but
hopefulness as well. Emma’s heart ached for the wrongness of all of it: for the painful and desperate
choices made by a twelve-year-old boy to keep his family with him. For the darkness that surrounded
Arthur Blackthorn, which was not of his making but which if revealed would only find him punished
by his own government. For the weight of a thousand lies, told in good faith, because lies told in good
faith were still lies. “And if the Followers go through with their threat—”
“But how did they know?” Emma said. “How did they know about Arthur?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I think we’re going to need to find out.”
Cristina watched as Diego, having laid her down on one of the infirmary beds, realized that he
couldn’t sit beside her with a sword and crossbow attached to him and began awkwardly to remove
them.
Diego was rarely awkward. In her memory he was graceful, the more graceful of the two Rocio
Rosales brothers, though Jaime was more warlike and more fierce. He hung his crossbow and sword
up, then unzipped his dark hoodie and flung it over one of the pegs near the door.
He was facing away from her; through his white T-shirt she could see that he had dozens of new
scars, and even more Marks, some of them permanent. A great black rune for Courage in Battle
spread down his right shoulder blade, a tendril of it rising above his collar. He looked as if he’d
grown broader, his waist, shoulders, and back hard with a new layer of muscle. His hair had grown
out, long enough to touch his collar. It brushed against his cheek as he turned to look at her.
She’d been able to fight off her shock at seeing Diego in the whirl of events since she’d seen his
face in the alley. But now it was only the two of them, alone in the infirmary, and she was looking at
him and seeing the past. The past she’d run away from and tried to forget. It was there in the way he
pulled out the chair beside her bed and leaned over to carefully unlace her boots, pull them away, and
roll up the left leg of her pants. It was there in the way his lashes brushed his cheeks when he
concentrated, running the point of his stele over her leg beside the wound, circling it in healing runes.
It was there in the freckle at the corner of his mouth and the way he frowned as he sat back and
surveyed his rune work critically. “Cristina,” he said. “Is it better?”
The pain had eased. She nodded, and he sat back, his stele in his hand. He was gripping it tightly
enough that the old scar across the back of his hand stood out whitely, and she remembered the same
scar and his fingers unbuttoning his shirt in her bedroom in San Miguel de Allende, while the bells of
the parroquia rang out through the windows.
“It’s better,” she said.
“Good.” He put the stele away. “Tenemos que hablar.”
“In English, please,” she said. “I am trying to keep up my practice.”
An irritated look passed across his face. “You don’t need the practice. Your English is perfect, as
mine is.”
“Modest as always.”