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“Why is so much of this quest about me being soaking wet?” Kit muttered as he waded out of the lake, drenched and dripping.

Ty smiled wearily as he followed Kit onto dry land. “I don’t mind that part.”

“Very funny—”

Ty gasped. Kit rubbed his stinging eyes and saw in front of them, planted on the grass, what looked like a brand-new statue, untouched by years, wind, or rain. The basilisk, frozen in place in mid-attack, its fanged mouth wide open, its eyes cast down.

It had seen its own reflection in water, and turned itself to stone. Not far from the basilisk was Livvy, seated on the grass; her light was very dim, and the witchlight rune-stone, beside her, was dark. Her eyes, when she glanced up, were hollow as a skull’s, and Kit had to repress a shiver, the kind of shiver that says, death is here.

It’s nothing. She’s just exhausted, Kit thought, but his attention was snatched away by the sight of the artifact, sparkling gold, dangling from a chain around the basilisk’s neck: It had not been changed to stone along with the monster. Relief washed over him as they stopped in front of the stone basilisk, its massive form looming over them. The artifact was several feet above their heads.

“Okay, how do we get the artifact down?” Ty said. “Livvy—”

Ty glanced at his sister. Her light had dimmed further; she was barely visible beside the dark witchlight. A look of fear flashed across his face. He started toward Livvy, just as a voice called out to them from a short distance away.

“Don’t worry,” said a smooth, confident voice. And an extremely familiar one. “I’ll help you get the artifact.”

Kit spun around. There, standing in the shadow of the trees, was Magnus Bane.

Clary

Clary felt close to losing her mind.

She had lost count of the days that she had been in Faerie, lost track of the shifts between day and night. She was starting to believe that she had been in this cage for all her life, and that everything she had known before—her whole life as a Shadowhunter—had been a dream. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had seen either Dru or Ash. Janus had assured her that Dru was fine, and she was glad, but she was aware that it was foolish to sit around waiting for Dru to bring her the stele. For all she knew, Dru was under armed guard and unable to get away. Besides, they should both be working on getting out of Faerie. Dru was fiercely brave and strong-willed, but it was too much responsibility for anyone to carry alone.

And yet. Breaking out of the cage wasn’t possible. Tricking or bribing the servants into helping her wasn’t possible, when the punishment would surely be death. Clary had thought maybe Ash would help her, but he had stopped coming. The only way out of this prison was through the person who had put her here.

She heard a sound at the door, and stopped pacing inside her cage. Janus strode into the room. He wore his hunting gear—soft boots, a belt of daggers, and leather gauntlets designed to look like overlapping swan feathers. He wore Heosphoros across his back. “Dulse said you wished to speak with me,” he said without preamble.

“I do.” Clary tried to gather her wits. “I thought maybe we could go somewhere together. Any place you like, even just to a meadow. Somewhere romantic—”

At the sound of the word romantic, Janus’s eyes lit up. “Do you mean that?”

Clary could only nod. Beneath his eagerness, she could sense something else, an excitement that felt dangerous.

“I never wished to keep you imprisoned, but it was for your own safety. The Queen does not understand.” He shook his head as if clearing it. “That does not matter now. Today we are both escaping.”

Clary’s heart beat uncomfortably fast in her chest. “What do you mean? Where are we going?”

“To the place that will be our home for now and I hope forever—Idris.”

Idris. Once the sound of the word would have been a relief, but now Clary could only think of the Cohort. Still, better to be in Idris than in Faerie. It was one step closer to the mortal world. One step closer to Jace. “Is Dru coming too?”

“What she does is up to Ash,” he said indifferently. “She belongs to him.”

There was nothing Clary could say to that. Nothing that wasn’t just screaming. The first thing she would do if she reached safety, she thought, was come back for Dru. “I’m glad we are going,” she said, forcing the words out. “I’ve missed Idris. It will be good for us to be there together. We could walk in the forest…” Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of his expression. There was a glint of harshness in his eyes now that she hadn’t seen before.

“You’re clutching at your ring, Clarissa,” he said. “Am I making you nervous?”

Clary looked down. Fiddling with her engagement ring was such a habit, she hadn’t noticed that she was clinging to it, pinching the metal between her fingers. “I—”

“I understand that you think you will see your Jace again, once you return to the mortal world.” His voice was more than cold, it was empty, as if whatever gave feeling to words had long ago died inside him. “But soon he will be dead. I will kill him and take great pleasure in the killing.”

“You could never,” Clary burst out, knowing she shouldn’t argue, but unable to stop herself. “He’s stronger than you. A better fighter—”

“Oh, really?” he drawled, and she got the sense he was enjoying himself: that she was seeing a side of this Janus he had carefully hidden until now. “Even though he is already under my power? Under Lake Lyn, only half alive?” His eyes were bright with anticipation, and that in itself left Clary sure he was not lying. “If you wish to say your goodbyes to your Jace before I slay him, we could perhaps negotiate an exchange of favors…”

Clary felt her legs give out from under her. Suddenly she was sitting on the floor of the cage, shivering as if she were freezing in the Arctic. All she could think of was Jace, of his hand in hers, his body curled around her body while they slept, the way he made her laugh, the way he played the piano for her when no one else was there. The fragile beautiful thing she hadn’t yet told him, and that now he might never know.