Now it made sense why no one else had been on the path when so many had crossed the bridge with us. Why hadn’t I picked up on that at the time? Oh yes, because I’d been too busy trying to stay alive.
“I’m sorry,” Clary said softly.
I blinked and fixed a smile on my face. “It’s fine. I’m used to it, but this…” I pointed between the two of them. “Arcanus being nice to me? That I amnotused to.” I narrowed my eyes, injecting a playful tone into my voice before asking a very real question. “What do you both want from me?”
Clary balked, but Dori rolled her eyes.
“I told you she’d think we were playing her,” Dori said to Clary.
“We’re not,” Clary said. “Honest.”
“We’re just not assholes—unlike some of the people you’ve met.”
Everyone had an agenda, even if they didn’t consciously know it, but I needed these women on my side if I was going to survive—and get to the book.
“We just want to be friends,” Clary said.
Friends…that loaded word again. “Fine. Okay. Friends, it is.” I grabbed my coat. “Let’s go get some food.”
CHAPTER 11
I want her to walk the halls of Aakash Ghar. To be by my side. Mine to claim. To love. But it can never be, and that tears me up inside. When this is all done, how will I leave her?
UNNAMED JOURNAL (VAULT ARCHIVES)
The lift ride up the side of the mountain offered a sweeping view of the coast and the five towers that made up the Academy residences. But as we neared the top, the elevator took a curve around the mountain, revealing a tower isolated on an island out at sea.
“What’s that?”
“Coral Isle,” Clary said. “It’s where we go to blow off steam—and have a little fun.”
“There are a few places to eat, a market, and some night lounges,” Dori added.
“And the tower?”
“It’s been sealed for a long time,” Dori said. “Rumor is that it belonged to the Blackthorne bloodline.”
“They had a whole tower to themselves?”
“I guess so.”
Now that was interesting. The Blackthornes had been powerful enough to claim an entire tower on their own island—yet Dharma had supposedly wiped them out single-handedly?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Clary said.
“No. You don’t.”
“You’re wondering how one sorcerer could have exterminated a whole bloodline as powerful as Blackthorne.”
“Okay, so you do know what I’m thinking. Please don’t tell me you can read minds.” Shit, what if she could?
“No. I just… I’ve often wondered the same.”
“It doesn’t help that the details are classified,” Dori said.
They had no idea. “Imagine being punished for a crime, not being given the details of said crime, and being forced to simply accept that the punishment is just.”
We fell into silence, watching the sea shift beneath the night sky as Coral Isle flickered to life with twinkling lights. A boat bobbed across the waves toward it, two figures silhouetted in the moonlight.
