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“If you do not, I will cut a hand from each of them. All will suffer. If you tell me who it was, we shall only take her finger.” Her smile was a blade of ice. “You told me you wished to make your own choices, my son. Here you may begin.”

21

Silence in the Stone

The potion was exactly where Round Tom had said it would be. Kit swiped it off the altar and, without a word, chugged a mouthful before handing the vial over to Ty.

The liquid burned as it went down, a bitter, spicy taste that lingered on his tongue, like cinnamon and char. He grimaced, but swallowed it as Ty did the same, Ty’s expression making it more than clear what he thought of the taste. For a brief, absurd moment, Kit wondered if Ty would be invisible to him—it only worked on the fey, but he was the Heir, wasn’t he? Calm down, he told himself. Even if that was true, you also have the power to cancel out magic.

Still reassuringly visible, Ty set the now-empty vial back on the altar, and they checked themselves over quickly—gear on correctly, weapons in their weapons belts, witchlight rune-stone at hand. Neither of them spoke; there seemed no point. They knew what they had to do.

It was dark when they stepped out into the city, the intense darkness that comes when clouds blot out the stars. They had agreed that they would track the basilisk by following what it left in its path—human statues. They started off down Sendlinger Strasse, headed northeast, where the statue of a young girl in a windbreaker stood outside a closed shop door.

It was strange, Kit thought, as they turned onto Rosenstrasse, to imagine that they were, at the moment, invisible to faerie eyes. Eight hours. They had eight hours of safety.

The mundanes, of course, couldn’t see them either, but Kit was used to that. They passed a laughing family—a mother and father with two kids, a girl and a boy—and Kit felt that sick plunge in his stomach that always came when he was reminded of home.

He wondered if Jem and Tessa would be proud of him if they knew what he was doing. Or maybe they would be worried, or even angry, that he was taking such huge risks. It made him wonder even more: Did he want them to be proud? Or would he rather have the proof of love that came from worry, that panic that he felt when he thought of Mina in danger…?

“Are you all right?” Ty’s voice was soft under the rain that had started to fall, a fine, light drizzle that made the city streets sparkle with unlikely beauty.

Kit didn’t want to lie; changing the subject seemed better. “What do we know about basilisks? It’s not the sort of thing I can Google.”

“They change you to stone if you meet their gaze. And you can kill them with pretty much any weapon—longswords are probably the most effective—but the trick is to kill them without seeing them.”

They had reached Marienplatz, a sprawling square that was almost deserted. Which couldn’t be normal, even at night. The whole city felt strangely empty. Kit suspected that quite a few mundanes were instinctively avoiding being out, even if they didn’t know why.

He glanced sideways at Ty. The rain was still falling, the raindrops gleaming like seed pearls among the dark strands of Ty’s hair, clinging to his lashes. Kit couldn’t stop looking at him. The rain was like a curtain between them and the world. Kit felt it cling to his clothes, felt it bead against his skin, cold but not unpleasant.

“If I recall correctly,” Ty said, “past heroes have defeated basilisks by making them look into reflective surfaces. Shields, glass, mirrors. They’ll turn to stone at the sight of their own gaze. That’s why there were so many mirrors at the Asamkirche. It was meant to make the challenge a bit easier.”

Kit exhaled, watching his breath change to white smoke. “Yeah, but we don’t do things the easy way, do we?”

“You sound like someone in one of Dru’s movies.”

Kit laughed. “The only movies we watch at Cirenworth are old black-and-white ones. I’ve seen Casablanca sixteen times. Every time Jem and Tessa watch it, they cry. Well, Jem cries.”

Ty looked up at the sky, his face impassive as the rain splattered on his skin. “So this is it. The last piece. Once we get it, and put the whole artifact together, the quest will be over.”

It seemed like a change of subject, but Kit knew it wasn’t really. The mention of Jem and Tessa had made Ty think of Kit’s family, and of Kit’s ultimate goal. “Well, not totally over,” he said, voice careful. “We still have to get Dru and Clary back from Faerie.”

Ty didn’t look at him but Kit could feel the shift in his mood. They had left Marienplatz, and were making their way down a narrow lane. The streetlights cast gleaming circles on the wet cobblestones. “I know you have to open the way to Faerie,” Ty said. “But I can go after Dru on my own. She’s my sister, and my responsibility.”

Kit stopped walking, frozen, staring at Ty’s back as he kept walking ahead. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Of course I’m going with you into Faerie,” Kit said.

Now Ty stopped, too. He met Kit’s gaze, his lips parting in surprise. “Why?”

Before Kit could stop himself, he had taken hold of Ty’s sleeve. He steered him toward an arched doorway carved with the figures of angels. He ducked them both under the overhang, blocking the worst of the rain.

“Ty,” he said hoarsely, inclining his head so that their foreheads touched. “I know that at the beginning of this we had this idea that we’d find all the artifacts, I’d open a door to Faerie, and after we got Clary and Dru, I’d go off to find my family on my own. But things have changed since we made that plan.”

Ty’s gaze flicked up to him, silver in the rain. “Changed how?”

“I don’t want to do this separately anymore,” Kit said, but Ty only looked more confused.

Kit dropped his voice to a whisper, half afraid it might otherwise crack. “Don’t you understand? No matter what, I want to be where you are. I’m not going to leave you. Not a second time.”

Ty’s head snapped back in surprise, his wet black hair falling into his eyes. A moment later he had hold of the front of Kit’s jacket, and was pulling him in for a kiss.