Also by Cassandra Clare

“Mark.” Cristina touched his face. He turned his cheek into her palm, involuntarily. She smelled
like coffee and bandages. He wondered if Julian had told her everything—of Kieran’s suspicions of
her, of Mark’s inability to protect his brother or Emma.
Her skin was soft against his; her eyes, upturned, were wide and dark. Mark thought of Kieran’s
eyes, like fragments of the glass inside a kaleidoscope, shattered and polychromatic. Cristina’s were
steady. Singular.
She brought her hand down the side of his jaw, her expression thoughtful. Mark felt as if his whole
body were tightening into a knot.
“Mark?” It was Julian’s voice, low, from the other side of the door.
“You should go in to your brother.” Cristina lowered her hand, brushing his shoulder once,
reassuringly. “This is not your fault,” she said. “It is not. You understand?”
Mark nodded, unable to speak.
“I will wake the children and tell them,” she said, and set off down the hall, her stride as
purposeful as if she were in gear, though she was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.
Mark took a deep breath and pushed open the door to Emma’s bedroom.
Emma lay unmoving, her pale hair spread out over the pillow, her chest rising and falling with
steady breaths. They had used sleep runes on her, as well as runes to kill pain, stop blood loss, and
heal.
Julian was still sitting beside her. Her hand was limp on the blanket; Julian had moved his own
hand close to hers, their fingers interlocking but not touching. His head was turned away from Mark’s;
Mark could only see the hunched set of his shoulders, the way the vulnerable curve of the nape of his
neck looked like the curve of Emma’s back as the whip came down.
He seemed very young.
“I tried,” Mark said. “I tried to take the lashes. Gwyn wouldn’t allow it.”
“I know. I saw you try,” Julian said in a flat voice. “But Emma’s killed faeries. You haven’t. They
wouldn’t have wanted to whip you, once they had the chance to whip her. It didn’t matter what you
did.”
Mark cursed himself silently. He had no idea what the human words were with which he could
comfort his brother.
“If she died,” Julian went on in the same flat voice, “I would want to die. I know that’s not healthy.
But it’s the truth.”
“She won’t die,” Mark said. “She’s going to be fine. She just needs to recover. I have seen what
men—what people—look like when they’re going to die. There is a look that comes over them. This
is not it.”
“I can’t help wondering,” said Julian. “This whole business. Someone’s trying to bring back the
person they loved, a person who died. It feels almost wrong. As if maybe we should let them.”
“Jules,” Mark said. He could feel the jagged edges of his little brother’s emotions, like the touch of
a razor on skin long covered by bandages. This was what it meant to be family, he thought. To hurt
when someone else hurt. To want to protect them. “They’re taking lives. You can’t pay for tragedy
with more tragedy, or draw life from death.”
“I just know that if it were her, if it were Emma, I would do the same thing.” Julian’s eyes were
haunted. “I would do whatever I had to.”
“You wouldn’t.” Mark put his hand on Julian’s shoulder, pulling him around. Julian moved
reluctantly to face his brother. “You would do the right thing. All your life, you’ve done the right
thing.”