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Ash gave her a sharp look. “That wasn’t the reason,” he said. “Though it is a nice side effect.”

“Then what?” Clary asked, but she’d already seen his shields go up, his gaze flicking away from her as he rose to his feet. He’d given her a chance to show she understood him, and she’d guessed wrong.

“Janus will be back from the hunt. I should go,” he said, and swept out imperiously, as if surrounded by a retinue of invisible servants. Clary, looking after him, thought: He isn’t at all like Sebastian. Could that really be because of Nene? On balance, she was glad someone had loved him and taken care of him when he was a child, but could those first few years be enough to sweep away the poisonous influence of everyone he had been surrounded by since?

10

Every Impure Spirit

The cold felt like knives, stabbing Kit’s skin. It was all Kit could do to keep from screaming as he sank down into the dark water.

He blinked his eyes open. The lake was black as night; Kit could see nothing at all. He fumbled his witchlight out of his pocket with numb fingers, willing it to light.

Brightness came sluggishly, as if the rune-stone was also affected by the cold. The light turned the black water to dark gray, heavy with silt. Strange translucent fish flickered in and out of sight, their mouths lined with rows of tiny needle teeth.

Kit looked down. Something like a spark gleamed up at him from below. He repositioned himself and kicked downward, feeling the pressure in his ears increase as he neared the bottom of the lake. He angled the light of his rune-stone to try to catch the gleam he’d seen before. Then there they were, just below him: three small doors set into the rocky basin.

They weren’t human-sized, more like the doors in a dollhouse, and they were made of metal, not wood. They shimmered slightly, the only luminous things other than Kit’s witchlight. Through the grayness, he could see that each was a different color: one red, one blue, and one gold.

Kit reached out toward the handle of the red door—and jerked his hand back. He knew, without knowing quite how, that choosing the wrong door would have dire consequences. It didn’t help that his lungs were throbbing, his chest aching with the need for air.

He reached down and tugged on the rope at his waist. A second later he felt a hard jerk on the line and he was being pulled upward through the water, much faster than he could swim.

His head broke the surface of the pond and he gasped for air, his heart pounding. Another second later and he was half in, half out of the water like a landed fish, still breathing hard.

He looked up and saw Ty kneeling in front of him, the rope still gripped in his hand. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. “Kit,” he whispered, though it was more of an exhalation than a word. “You were down there for so long—”

“Too long,” Kit said. “I know—” He blinked; the cavern was empty save for Ty. “Wait. Where’s Jinfeng?”

“She heard something upstairs and went to investigate,” said Ty. “Did you see the artifact?”

Kit explained about the dark water, the bottom of the pool, and the three doors. “I don’t know which one to choose,” he said. “But I know I only get one chance.”

“That’s the nature of tests,” Ty said. “You have to be able to fail.” He shook his damp hair out of his eyes; the air down here felt dank and waterlogged. “Pick the gold door,” he said.

Kit was shivering hard, worse than he had been in the water. “Why?”

“Auraline,” said Ty. “It means gold.”

Kit couldn’t help but laugh, although it was a cold, rattling sound. “That simple?”

“I hope so.” Ty fixed his gaze on a point just behind Kit. “You should let me take the second dive—”

Kit pushed himself up on his knees. “It has to be me,” he said, then sucked in a lungful of breath and fell backward into the water.

The shock of the cold was just as bad the second time, but at least he knew where he was going. Kit kicked hard, swimming directly down, willing his witchlight to illuminate the shadows. A few more kicks and he saw the three small doors again, like escape hatches for underwater mice.

He kept his gaze fixed on the golden door. His lungs, already sore, were starting to hurt again; he grabbed for the knob and yanked hard.

He’d expected the door to be rusted shut, but it opened so easily that he would have fallen if he weren’t underwater. A geyser of bubbles sprayed upward, and Kit ducked aside until they evaporated.

He needed to breathe. Really needed to breathe. But he was so close. He grabbed at the metal door and pulled himself back down to the now-open hatch, inside which something was glimmering.

He reached in and closed his hand around it. Heavy, metallic, even colder than the water. He shoved it into his pocket—just as the rope around his waist pulled taut. Kit found himself being dragged upward, his witchlight flying out of his hand. He flailed after it, but it was already falling, just as he was rising, drawn steadily up until he burst from the pool, chest heaving, sucking in air.

He spun around in the water, but the rope was already dragging him toward the rocky shore, pulling him up the shallow incline of stone until he was completely out of the pool, sopping wet and shivering on the cavern floor.

“Kit.” The voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. Not Ty’s voice, either. Kit felt as if ice had been injected into his veins, but he forced himself to roll over onto his back.