Also by Cassandra Clare

me to find a book. I almost went out of my mind. Years of translation and all I got was a riddle about
a book—” His eyes bored into hers, as if he were willing her to understand. “It was just chance that it
was your parents,” he said. “They returned to the Institute while I was there. But it didn’t work. I did
everything the spell book said, and Annabel didn’t stir.”
“My parents—”
“Your love for them wasn’t greater than my love for Annabel,” Malcolm said. “I was trying to
make things fair. It was never about hurting you. I don’t hate the Carstairs. Your parents were
sacrifices.”
“Malcolm—”
“They would have sacrificed themselves, wouldn’t they?” he asked reasonably. “For the Clave?
For you?”
A rage so great it was numbing washed through Emma. It was all she could do to stay still. “So you
waited five years?” She choked out the question. “Why five years?”
“I waited until I thought I’d gotten the spell right,” said Malcolm. “I used the time to learn. To
build. I took Annabel’s body from her tomb and moved it to the convergence. I created the Followers
of the Guardian. Belinda was the first murderer. I followed the ritual—burned and soaked the body,
carved the markings onto it—and I felt Annabel move.” His eyes shone, an unholy blue-violet. “I
knew I was bringing her back. After that nothing could have stopped me.”
“But why those markings?” Emma pressed herself back against the wall. The candelabra was
heavy; her arm was throbbing. “Why the Unseelie King’s poem?”
“Because it was a message!” Malcolm cried. “Emma, for someone who’s talked so much about
revenge, who’s lived it and breathed it, you don’t seem to understand much about it. I needed the
Shadowhunters to know. I needed the Blackthorns to know, when the youngest of them lay dead,
whose hand had dealt them that blow. When someone has wronged you, it isn’t enough that they suffer.
They need to look at your face and know why they suffer. I needed the Clave to decipher that poem
and learn exactly who would be their destruction.”
“Destruction?” Emma couldn’t help her incredulous echo. “You’re insane. Killing Tavvy wouldn’t
destroy the Nephilim—and none of them who are alive even know about Annabel—”
“And how do you think that feels?” he shouted. “Her name forgotten? Her fate buried? The
Shadowhunters turned her into a story. I think several of her kinsmen went mad—they couldn’t bear
what they’d done, couldn’t bear the weight of the secret.”
Keep him talking, Emma thought. “If it was such a secret, how did Poe know? The poem, ‘Annabel
Lee’—”
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.