Page 107

When they’d gone into Kerepesi Cemetery, it had sported a single crack across the front. Now there were two. Kit remembered what Ty had said after leaving Amsterdam, about the crack in the necklace that already existed, how it had appeared after Livvy went to New York, straining their bond. About putting himself and Livvy in danger. He knew there had to be so many things exhausting Ty right now: the anxiety that must come from being pulled out of his daily routine, the wearying scrape of constant travel and messy sensory input, and the normal tiredness that came after a battle. It was hard to separate that inevitable exhaustion from whatever the necromantic bond was doing to him.

“How much longer until your train leaves?” Hyacinth asked. Faeries weren’t much for telling time.

Kit checked the station clock. “Twenty minutes.” Hyacinth had been glancing anxiously at the big picture windows over the station’s front door. He lowered his voice. “You’re worried about the Riders finding us, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Hyacinth bit her lip. “Ugh. Sometimes I wish I could lie.”

“We killed all the dullahans,” Ty said, wrapping his hands around his mug. “It is too bad that you arrived at the cemetery too late to be much help,” he added.

“That’s true,” said Hyacinth. She didn’t seem bothered.

It was interesting, Kit thought; it seemed like there was something about the bluntness of faeries, their inability to tell untruths, that meant that Ty’s own candor didn’t offend them—nor did theirs trouble him.

“So the dullahans won’t be carrying tales back to the Riders,” Kit said.

“Fey magic makes a sort of noise,” said Hyacinth. “And what you did in the cemetery”—she turned to Kit—“made a lot of noise. It will get back to the Riders eventually.”

Kit set his spoon down. “I don’t really know what I did.”

“You have a rare power,” Hyacinth said. “I have never seen a faerie or a Shadowhunter wield magic like that. There was a time before the splitting of Faerie when the High Monarch might have had that ability, but that time is long past.”

Kit pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes. His head ached. “If I knew how to use my power to get rid of the Riders, I would.”

“You took them by surprise before,” Ty said. “When you vanished their horses on the Imperishable Fields. That’s why they’re afraid of you.”

Kit’s laugh was hollow. “But I don’t think they’ll give me an opportunity to do the disappearing-horses trick a second time, and I don’t have giant Emma and Julian on my side now either. I doubt they’re afraid of me—”

“Oh, they must be,” said Hyacinth. “Or they would not have sent the dullahans to snatch you.” She popped her gum. “The question is not what the Riders feel. The question is who sent them. They serve only at the order of a fey monarch.”

Ty said, “Well, there are only two monarchs in Faerie. It wouldn’t be Kieran, so it has to be the Seelie Queen.”

Hyacinth’s lips parted slightly, and her gaze became distant, as if she were seeing something beyond the walls of the café. “It is known among faeries that Kit is descended from the First Heir and has a claim on the throne of Faerie. And well known among those of us in the mortal realms that he is no longer warded away from the world, but follows his own path now. The Queen plans to put her son on her throne, and she may think Kit will interfere with that.”

Kit felt a dull anger throb behind his eyes. “I don’t want the throne of Faerie. I never have. I wish there was some way I could renounce it publicly, so they’d leave me alone.”

Hyacinth looked grim. “Even if you could tell the Queen that to her face, she wouldn’t believe you. That’s why you’ve always been so carefully hidden away. At the end of the day, there are few denizens of Faerie who would believe that anyone exists who would not snatch power if it was offered to them.”

“Power is poison,” Kit said bitterly.

“But you’re not doing this for power,” said Ty. “We’re going into Faerie just long enough to grab Clary and Dru. That’s it. Then we go to Ragnor and see what we can do to help him get everyone back from Idris.”

There was something bracing about the conviction in Ty’s voice, even if he looked exhausted. Kit started to slide his hand across the table—he wasn’t sure what he was planning to do, but he still remembered the way Ty had lightly touched his own wrist in the ruin bar, and what that had been like—when the station loudspeaker blared into an announcement in Hungarian.

“That’s our train,” Kit said, without thinking.

Hyacinth had an odd expression on her face. “You’d better go, then. They don’t tend to stop here long.”

Kit pulled his hand back, and he and Ty grabbed up their belongings, along with a bag of pogácsa, scone-like pastries studded with cheese. As they turned to leave, Hyacinth stopped Kit with a hand on his arm.

“Christopher,” she said in a low voice, and it startled Kit, the way it always did when someone used his full name. “Ever since you were a small boy working with your father in the Shadow Market, I hoped that you would grow up to have a pleasant and uneventful life, unlike your father. It seems that will not be your fate. Some people are born to be extraordinary, and that is a destiny you cannot escape.”

Kit didn’t know what to say. He’d never felt special, chosen for a destiny; he’d never even really wanted to stand out. It still felt as if he were an imposter sometimes, as if surely it would turn out that someone else was descended from the First Heir and it had all been an enormous mistake.

“Kit!” Ty was already standing by the olive-painted train, one foot inside the train car, one on the platform. “Come on!”

With a last glance at Hyacinth, Kit ran for the platform.

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