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“Yes,” Zara replied firmly. “He’s a true warrior. He believes the same things we do—that the time has come to purify the Nephilim and the whole world—and he can help us do that.”

Jaime felt a wave of cold anger and fear wash over him.

Zara’s voice lowered now, a little more friendly, almost conspiratorial. “Look, Manuel, Janus and his…friends…have already trapped almost all our Nephilim enemies here in Idris. Just think—when the ritual is performed here in Alicante, the power of every Shadowhunter who has denied the Cohort will be poured into our bodies. As they die, their power will be given to us. All our sacrifice will be rewarded.”

Jaime tightened his grip on his dagger, sensing the familiar weight, his heart pounding. He felt Thais’s hand on his arm, steadying him. When he glanced back at her, she shook her head slightly, as if to say that she knew he wanted to leap out from behind the rock and stab Zara and Manuel to death, but that doing so would accomplish nothing more than alerting Janus and his “friends” to the fact that Jaime and Thais were here and knew their plans.

Zara continued, her voice rising with the cruel rhythm of her conviction. “We will rule the world with fewer Shadowhunters, but those of us who remain will have immense strength. And with the Ring of Solomon in our possession, we will be able to do more than just slay demons—we will control them. We will be an invincible army.”

Manuel’s reply was deceptively calm. “And who will we be fighting?”

Zara’s tone turned anticipatory, almost dreamlike. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we will be unstoppable.”

11

Entertaining Angels

In the dream, the war was over.

Kit stood on a vacant plain under a dead sky. The land that stretched out in every direction was a moonscape of sand and rocks, covered with a thin layer of ice.

The sky was a uniform gray, shading into darkness at the horizon. A slim figure stood silhouetted in the distance, facing away from Kit.

The ice sounded like breaking glass as Kit started toward the figure. The cold was intense, making his bones ache, his steps slow. But there was no reason to hurry. He knew what he was going to find.

“Turn around,” he called, as he neared the place the figure was standing: a patch of stunted, twisted trees and scorched earth. “Turn around and face me.”

The figure stiffened, then slowly turned. His cloak swirled around him like more magic; his dark hair fell to his shoulders, and his scarred face was pale. Familiar gray eyes looked into Kit’s.

“Shhh,” Ty Blackthorn said, putting a finger to his lips. “It’s our secret.”

—

Kit came awake slowly, aware of warmth and heaviness, as if he were buried in sand. Part of him wanted to curl into the warmth—his bones still felt like ice inside him—and part of him wanted to push away from the pressure.

He blinked to clear his blurry vision, and his surroundings came into focus. He was in a small, whitewashed room; the wooden ceiling overhead slanted the way roofs in very old houses tended to do. He could see the knots and whorls in the grain of the wood. White curtains hung at the windows, edged with handmade embroidery in colorful patterns, and the blankets on his bed seemed to be hand-knitted, too. The room had a storybook feeling to it—not so much a room from a fairy tale, but rather a room in which you were supposed to read fairy tales, maybe with a cat curled up in your lap.

Get hold of yourself, man, Church doesn’t even like you, Kit thought. He pushed himself up on his elbows, but he still felt the same pressure, weighing on him. He could see now that there were two beds in the room (though the other looked as if it hadn’t been touched, much less slept in) and a nightstand between them, on which rested a blue-and-white china pitcher.

There was a faint rushing sound in Kit’s ears. He was starting to wonder if he’d drowned and this was the afterlife, when the door to the room creaked open and Ty slid inside, carrying a hot-water bottle wrapped in a towel.

His cheeks were pink, his dark hair mussed. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on in the cavern in Bruges: a gray sweater and jeans, stained with pond water. When he caught sight of Kit, he dropped the water bottle onto a white-painted table and hurried over to him.

“You’re awake,” Ty said, sitting on the side of Kit’s bed. “I wondered—”

He looked down at his hands, his long fingers flexing. Kit could see where his palms were rubbed raw from the rope Ty had used to pull Kit to safety.

“I’m fine,” Kit said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. He still felt frozen at his core, and when he tried to sit up again, he felt the same weight pressing him down. “Well. Mostly fine.”

“Hang on.” Ty folded down the handmade blanket covering Kit, revealing a second blanket. “I put my weighted blanket on you,” Ty explained, carefully removing it. “I thought it might help you get warm.”

Somehow the thought of Ty carefully laying a blanket over him made Kit’s chest feel tight. He sat up, looking at himself. He was still in his damp, dirty clothes; only his boots had been removed. He reeked of cold stone and algae. His sleeves had been pushed up, he realized, and his forearms were speckled with new Marks. Warmth runes, healing runes. The kind Ty must have forgotten to put on himself, judging by the state of his hands.

“I started putting the Warmth ones on you as soon as I could,” Ty said. Of course he hadn’t missed what Kit was looking at. He didn’t miss much. “You were so cold. When you came up from the pool that second time, you could barely talk. Do you remember anything?”

“I got the second artifact,” Kit said. “I remember that.”

“I know. I put it in your backpack.”