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It was not the first time he had been in battle. In Idris, he had fought at the Imperishable Fields. He had seen men and women, Shadowhunters and werewolves and warlocks and fey, dying in the blood-soaked grass. He had heard their cries for water, for light, for their mothers.

But this war, the dream war, was different. It appeared to be taking place at the end of the world.

The land was devastated. No water, no soft earth, no trees. Cracked desert stretched out in front of Kit for miles and miles, and the ground was scattered with bodies. There was no sound, and no wind; the only movement was a flicker of light in the distance.

Kit moved toward it through the silence. He knew he was dreaming, and he was thankful for it. The sand was soaked with blood, and if this were not a dream, he was sure the stench of bodies would be horrendous. He didn’t think his waking mind could sustain such a scene of bloody desolation.

He made his way past huge granite boulders, and passed into a smaller space, pressed between two high cliffs. Here stood a man in a black cloak. Around him swirled visible magic, threads of charcoal and pale gray that encircled him and then dissolved into the air. In his right hand was the Mortal Sword of the Nephilim, its blade red with blood.

His back was to Kit. But Kit knew, with that certainty possible only in dreams, that this was him. The one who had caused all this, all this death, this bloodshed. Rage rose within Kit. He could not undo so much death, but at least he could end this monster before he caused more destruction.

“Turn around,” Kit called, his voice echoing off the rock walls. “Turn around and face me.”

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

“You came,” Ty Blackthorn said.

—

Kit sat up gasping, clutching at his blankets. His heart was racing, and panic pressed in on him, a heavy dark dread. He swung his right hand out wildly and it connected with the nightstand, sending pain shooting up his arm.

The pain cleared his head. Kit tore the tangled blankets away from his body—his pajamas were stuck to him with sweat—and rolled out of bed. His room was dark, but there was enough light from the window that he could navigate the familiar space. Bed, dresser, curtains, posters on the walls. He was in his room at Cirenworth, not in some desolate land full of corpses. He wasn’t in battle; he hadn’t been for years.

So much had changed since then. But not everything, said a small voice in the back of his head. You still dream about Ty. Four years later, and you still wake up angry at him.

Kit told the small voice in his head to shut up, and went to grab a jacket off the hook by the door. He kicked his feet into a pair of sneakers, and almost slammed his way out of his bedroom before remembering the noise would wake up Mina. He closed the door quietly behind him.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had a dream like this. As Kit made his way along the hallway that led to the main stairs, he recalled telling Jem about his troubled dreams; Jem had replied that many Shadowhunters had such nightmares, and he’d had his own when he was young—dreams of London destroyed, of fire and deadly metal creatures. He had reminded Kit that such a destruction of London had not come, and that such dreams were not inevitable prophecies.

But that only helped so much in the dead of night, when the shadows pressed in like heavy dark fabric. Kit stopped at the door to Mina’s room and glanced inside. She was asleep under her frog-print blanket, her thumb in her mouth. For a moment he just looked at her, letting himself feel the protective love he always experienced when he was with her, and the lessening of anxiety that came every time he saw she was all right.

But Mina deserved better than his restlessness, his anger. He slipped away, past Jem and Tessa’s room and down the steps. He carefully worked the multiple locks on the oak front door, and found himself outside in the autumn air. It was cool and damp—England was so very much wetter than Los Angeles, where he’d grown up—and smelled like earth and grass. He started to wander across the front garden, keeping an eye out for the ghostly golden retriever who sometimes accompanied him on walks.

In the distance, at the bottom of the garden, before it turned into a dirt road, he could see the faint glimmer of the wards that protected Cirenworth. That protected him. If he had come from a different bloodline, had a different inheritance, there would be no danger here. Jem and Tessa would not need multiple locks on their front door. Mina would not need to grow up surrounded by wards.

Kit often wished he had been born someone else. He had inherited powerful magic, but that unfortunately wasn’t much good when you didn’t know how to use it, or really what it even did. If he were someone else, they’d have sent him to Shadowhunter Academy, like Dru, but that hadn’t been an option. He felt bad enough putting his adoptive family in danger. He certainly wouldn’t have done it to a whole school. He’d even been half-relieved when all his Devon friends went off to university.

He had reached the foot of the garden, where the wards hummed, giving off their faint glow. Past them was a country road and another meadow, dotted with copses of trees. Kit had walked there often enough, but not at night. Not alone. However much he wanted to push past the wards, it would be foolish to do so.

At the edge of the world, the moon hung low, saturating the fields with silvery light. As Kit, hands in his pockets, looked out at the view, something caught his eye.

He moved a little closer to the wards, enough to make them crackle a warning. Squinting, he could see that something had been laid out across the grass of the meadow. Piles and piles of acorns, of all things, arranged into neat lines and loops and whorls. Arranged, Kit realized when he stepped back a pace, into letters.

Letters that spelled out a message. A single word, in a dead language.

Incipit.

Kit stood very still, his heart pounding. He knew Latin; every Shadowhunter was taught it, along with ancient Greek. He knew this message was for him. He was the one with faerie blood, and the fey often sent their messages through acorns. Though this was, perhaps, not a message at all, Kit thought, his mouth very dry. It was something else.

A warning. Slowly he whispered the translation, under his breath:

“It is beginning.”

Jaime

Jaime crept along the dark corridor, keeping his back to the wall. Ahead of him, he could hear the sound of the Huntsman, whose boots were making a heavy scraping sound against the packed earth of the tunnel. The Huntsman was even whistling, although the tune was off.

It was supposed to be a short trip, Jaime thought. Alec, the Consul, had asked him to use his family’s Faerie heirloom, the Eternidad, to sneak into the Seelie Court. He was meant to collect information on what the Seelie Queen was up to, since her communication with the Clave had dwindled to almost nothing. Besides, Mark and Helen had been worried about their aunt, Nene, who the Queen had exiled from the Seelie Court. She had stopped answering their letters months ago, and they had begged him to learn what he could.