br /> Emma struck his shoulder lightly, her fingers sliding across his back, drawing a quick symbol they both knew. It meant: I have a plan. “Distracted by a dryad, were you?” she said. She dug her heels into Silvermane’s side and the horse, startled, trotted sharply in place. “The Queen will have your head for this. Come along!”
Giggles spread throughout the nearby faeries. Emma turned Silvermane and began to ride toward the back of the procession. After a moment, Julian followed her. The giggles faded behind them as they trotted down the line; Emma didn’t want to attract notice by going too fast.
To her relief, no one paid much attention to them. As they rode away from the tower, the Seelie procession’s order began to deteriorate. Faerie folk were grouped together laughing, joking, and playing cards. None of them seemed interested in their progress toward the tower, much less anything closer at hand.
“This way,” Julian murmured. He bent low over Widowmaker, and the horse bolted toward a nearby thicket of trees. Emma grabbed her own reins tightly as Silvermane leaped after the stallion. The world rushed by in a blur—she was galloping, which was like flying, the horse’s feet barely seeming to touch the ground. Emma caught her breath. It was like the terror and freedom of being in the ocean, at the mercy of something far stronger than you. Her hood flew back and the wind tore at her, her blond hair whipping like a banner.
They pulled up at the far side of the thicket, out of sight of the Seelie folk. Emma looked at Julian, breathless. His cheeks were flushed to brightness by the cold air. Behind him, the horizon had turned to bright gold.
“Nice work,” he said.
Emma couldn’t suppress a smile as she slid from Silvermane’s back. “We might not have angelic magic here, but we’re still Shadowhunters.”
Julian dismounted beside her. Neither needed to say they couldn’t keep the horses with them; Emma struck Silvermane lightly on the flank, and the mare took off toward the lightening horizon. She knows her own way home.
Widowmaker vanished after her in a dark blur, and Emma and Julian turned toward the tower. The long shadows of dawn were beginning to stretch out across the grass. The tower rose before them, the high hedge circling it like a deadly necklace.
Emma eyed the grass between their trees and the hedge nervously. There was no cover, and though they were out of sight of the gates, anyone watching from the tower could see them approach.
Julian turned toward her, pushing his hood back. Emma supposed it no longer mattered; he was done pretending to be Fergus. His hair was tousled and sweat-dampened from the hood. As if he had read her mind, he said, “We can’t worry about cover. We’ll have to brazen it out till we get to the hedge.”
He slid his hand into hers. Emma tried to stop herself from jumping. His palm was warm against her palm; he drew her toward him and they began to walk across the grass.
“Keep your head turned toward me,” Julian said in a low voice. “Faeries are romantics, in their way.”
Emma realized with a jolt that they were playing at being a couple, taking an affectionate walk in the dawn light. Their shoulders brushed, and she shivered, even as the sun rose higher, warming the air.
She glanced sideways at Julian. He didn’t look like someone on a romantic walk; his eyes were wary, his jaw set. He looked like a statue of himself, one carved by someone who didn’t know him well, who had never seen the sparkle in his eyes he saved for his family, who had never seen the smile he had once saved for Emma alone.
They had reached the hedge. It rose above them, a tangle of closely woven vines, and Emma drew her hand out of Julian’s with an indrawn breath. Up close, the hedge looked as if it were made out of shining steel, the thorns sticking out everywhere at jagged angles. Some were as long as swords. What Emma had thought were flowers were the whitening skeletons of those who had tried to climb the wall, a warning to future trespassers.
“This might be impossible,” said Julian, looking up. “We could wait until nightfall—try to sneak through the gates.”
“We can’t wait that long—it’s dawn now. We have to stop the Queen.” Emma drew a dagger from her belt. It wasn’t Cortana, but it was still Shadowhunter steel, long and sharp. She laid the edge against one of the thorns, cutting at an angle. She had expected resistance; there was none. The thorn sliced away easily, leaving behind a stump that dripped grayish sap.
“Ugh,” she said, kicking the fallen thorn away. An odd scent, dull and green, rose from the damaged hedge. She took a deep breath, trying to push down her unease. “Okay. I’m going to cut my way through. I can even see the tower through the vines.” It was true; this close up, it was clear that the hedge wasn’t a solid wall, and there were gaps between the vines big enough to shove a human body through.
“Emma—” Julian made as if to reach out to her, then dropped his hand. “I don’t like this. We’re not the first people who’ve tried to get through the hedge.” He indicated the skeletons above and around them with a jerk of his chin.
“But we’re the first Shadowhunters,” said Emma, with a bravado she didn’t feel. She slashed at the hedge. Thorns pattered down around her in a light rain.
Light began to fade as she pushed on, farther into the hedge. It was as thick as the lane of a highway, and the vines seemed to weave together above her, forming a shield against the sunlight. She thought she heard Julian call out to her, but his voice was muffled. She glanced back in surprise—and stiffened in horror.
The hedge had closed up behind her like water. She was surrounded by a thick green-gray wall, studded with deadly spikes. She slashed out wildly with her dagger, but the edge of it bounced off the nearest thorn with a clang, as if it were made of steel.
A sharp pain stabbed at her chest. The vines were moving, pressing in toward Emma slowly. The sharp tip of one jabbed her above her heart; another stabbed at her wrist; she jerked her hand away, dropping the dagger; she had more in her pack, but there was no way she could reach them now. Her heart was pounding as the vines surged toward her; she could see flashes of white through the vines as they moved, others who had been trapped in the heart of the hedge wall.
The tip of a thorn slashed along her cheek and blood ran warmly down her face. Emma shrank back, and more thorns stabbed into her back and shoulders. I’m going to die, she thought, her thoughts blackening with terror.
But Shadowhunters weren’t meant to be afraid, weren’t meant to feel fear. In her mind, Emma begged the forgiveness of her parents, her parabatai, her friends. She had always thought she’d die in battle, not be crushed to death by a thousand blades, alone and without Cortana in her hand.
Something stabbed into her throat. She twisted, trying to pull away from the agony; she heard Julian call her name—
Something slammed into her palm. Her fingers closed reflexively around it, her body knowing the feel of the sword’s hilt before her mind registered what she was holding.
It was a sword. A sword with a white blade, like a slice cut out of the moon. She recognized it immediately from illustrations in old books: It was Durendal, the sword of Roland, brother blade to Cortana.
There was no time to ask questions. Against the thorns, she swung her arm up, Durendal a silvery blur. There was a scream, as of twisting metal, as Durendal sliced through thorns and vines. Sap sprayed, stinging Emma’s open cuts, but she didn’t care; she cut again and again, the blade whipsawing in her hand, and the vines fell away around her. The hedge writhed as if in pain and the vines began to draw back as if afraid of Durendal. A path opened both ahead of her and behind her, like the parting of the Red Sea. Emma fled through the narrow gap between the vines, calling for Julian to follow her.
She exploded out the other side into a world of color and light and noise: green grass, blue sky, the distant sounds of the procession advancing to the tower. She fell to her knees, still clutching Durendal. Her hands were slicked with blood and sap; she was gasping, bleeding from long rents in her tunic.
A shadow darkened the sky above he
r. It was Julian. He fell to his knees across from her, his face bone white. He caught at her shoulders and Emma held back a wince. Having his hands on her was more than worth the pain, as was the look on his face. “Emma,” he said. “That was incredible. How—?”
She held up the sword. “Durendal came to me,” she said. Blood from her cuts pattered down onto the blade as it began to shimmer and fade. In a moment, she was holding only empty air, her fingers still curved around the place the golden hilt had been. “I needed Cortana, and it sent Durendal to me.”
“?‘I am of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal,’??” Julian murmured. “Twinned blades. Interesting.” He released her shoulders and tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his tunic, wadding it up to press against the cut on her cheek with a surprising gentleness.
Joy surged through her, brighter than her pain. She knew he couldn’t love her, but in that moment it felt as if he did.
* * *
“Mother?” Aline said. “Mother, are you there?”
Helen squinted. She was seated on the desk in the Institute’s office, Aline next to her. Jia seemed to be trying to appear as a Projection against the far wall, but at the moment she was just a rather wobbly shadow, like an image taken with a handheld camera.
“Ma!” Aline exclaimed, clearly exasperated. “Could you please appear? We really need to talk to you.”
Jia sharpened at the edges. Now Helen could see her, still in her Consul robes. She looked drawn, so thin as to be worryingly emaciated.
The texture of the wall was still visible through her, but she was solid enough for Helen to read her expression: It mirrored her daughter’s in annoyance. “It isn’t easy to Project from the Gard,” she said. “We could have spoken on the phone.”
“I wanted to see you,” said Aline. There was a slight tremble in her voice. “I needed to know what’s going on with this Registry. Why did the Council pass this piece of trash?”
“Horace—” Jia began.