He began to turn away. Thomas reached out to catch at him, and the feel of Alastair’s shoulder under his fingers almost undid him. He had touched him, like this, in the Sanctuary: had rested his hands on Alastair’s shoulders, letting Alastair bear up his weight as they kissed.
“Don’t,” Alastair said, not looking at him. “It isn’t possible. It won’t ever be.”
He pulled away, hurrying to rejoin Jem. Thomas stood looking after them as they vanished down the hall. Somehow, he kept expecting Alastair to turn and look back at him, even once. But Alastair never did.
* * *
You are being a fool, Malcolm Fade told himself.
It was the same thing he’d been telling himself for the past few days; it made no more difference now. The sun was bright overhead as he crossed the Institute courtyard. A wind had picked up, scattering flurries of snow, white and glittering in the sunshine. He wondered how long it would take for the Shadowhunters to put their broken Institute back together. Less time than one might expect, he guessed. They were surprisingly resourceful, Nephilim, and stubborn in a way warlocks were not. There was little point being stubborn when you lived forever. You learned to bend rather than break.
He thought he had bent, all those years ago when he had first lost Annabel. She has become an Iron Sister, he had been told. You will never see her again. It is her choice.
He had walked the world since that moment bent and twisted into a new shape: the shape of a man who had lost the only thing that mattered in his life and had to learn to live without it. Food tasted flat; the wind and sun visited him differently; the sound of his heartbeat was always audible in his ears, a broken metronome. This was his life now—it had been for more than nine decades—and he had come to accept it.
Until Lucie and Grace had appeared in his life. In learning that Annabel was dead, he had realized how much he’d resigned himself to never seeing her again. Though it ran counter to sense, learning of her death had brought with it the hope that there was a chance of somehow—after all this time—being able to save her.
He could see her, in his mind’s eye, in her plain calico dress, the ribbons of her bonnet streaming in the wind. May Day in Padstow—so long ago now—but he could remember the girls with flowers in their hands, and the blue of the water. Her dark brown hair. Annabel.
You are being a fool, he told himself again. He drew his overcoat around him as he reached the gates of the courtyard. There was someone there, leaning against the iron railings. Not a Shadowhunter—a tall man dressed in green and black, an emerald stickpin gleaming at his lapel.
“Magnus,” Malcolm said, slowing his gait. “How odd to see you here.”
Magnus had his arms crossed over his chest. His expression as he surveyed the courtyard was somber. “Is it?”
“I would have expected you to rush to the rescue earlier,” said Malcolm. He was fond of Magnus, as fond as he could be of anyone. But the other warlock had a well-deserved reputation for throwing his energy away on Shadowhunters. “Are you regretful to have missed the battle?”
Magnus’s gold-green eyes glittered like the emerald in his pin. “Mock my guilt if you like, but it is real. After the last series of attacks, I rushed to London, settled myself here, and waited for something else to happen. But it has been quiet. When I was asked to bring some of the spell books from the Cornwall Institute to the Spiral Labyrinth itself, I thought it safe to go. And now this has happened in my absence.”
“The Labyrinth required you for some time,” said Malcolm. “I know Hypatia was—displeased.”
The corner of Magnus’s mouth twitched upward. “It turns out that moving a collection of powerful spell books from one place to another without awakening an ancient evil is more difficult than expected.”
Malcolm felt a mild stirring of interest. “An ancient evil?”
Magnus skimmed a glance over the courtyard. “Unrelated to this one, admittedly, and less destructive.” He cocked his head to the side. “Speaking of which. You seem—different, Malcolm. Are you, too, affected by what you see here?”
At another time, in another world, Malcolm would also have been concerned. Now he could think only of Annabel, of the cliffs of Cornwall, of a different future. “I learned something while you were gone. Something I had given up ever knowing.”
Magnus’s gaze was unreadable. He did not ask what Malcolm had discovered; he was wiser than that. “How did you learn it?”
“From no one of import,” Malcolm said, quickly. “A—faerie.” He turned his gaze back to the broken courtyard. “Magnus,” he said. “Do the Nephilim really understand what is happening to them? It has been thousands of years since Princes of Hell walked on the Earth. The Nephilim are descended from angels, but to them angels are fairy tales. A power that exists but is never seen.” He sighed. “It is not wise to forget to believe.”