Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(195)

The sound of voices and footsteps vanished. Emma stood inside a sealed cave with Malcolm.

She backed up, clutching the candelabra. “I’ll destroy the hands,” she warned, her heart pounding. “I’ll do it.”

Dark fire sparked at his fingertips. “I could let you go,” he said. “Let you live. Swim away through the ocean like you did before. You could carry my message back for me. My message to the Clave.”

“I don’t need you to let me go.” She was breathing hard. “I’d rather fight.”

His smile was twisted, almost sorrowful. “You and your sword, no matter its history, are no match for a warlock, Emma.”

“What do you want from me?” she demanded, her voice rising, echoing off the walls of the cave. “What do you want, Malcolm?”

“I want you to understand,” he said through gritted teeth. “I want someone to tell the Clave what they’re responsible for, I want them to know the blood on their hands, I want them to know why.”

Emma stared at Malcolm, a thin, stretched figure in a stained white jacket, sparks dancing along the edges of his fingertips. He frightened her and made her sad, all at the same time.

“Your why doesn’t matter,” she said finally. “Maybe you did what you did in the name of love. But if you think that makes any difference, you’re no better than the Clave.”

He moved toward her—and Emma flung the candelabra at him. He ducked away and it missed, hitting the rock floor with a clang. The fingers of the severed hands seemed to curl in as if to protect themselves. Emma planted her feet apart, remembering Jace Herondale, years ago in Idris, showing her how to stand so you’d never be knocked down.

She gripped the hilt of Cortana in a two-fisted grip, and this time she remembered Clary Fairchild, and the words she’d said to Emma in Idris, when Emma had been twelve years old. Heroes aren’t always the ones who win. They’re the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don’t give up. That’s what makes them heroes.

Emma sprang toward Malcolm, Cortana upraised. He reacted with a second’s delay—flinging his hand toward her, light bursting from his fingers. It sizzled toward her, a streak of gold-and-violet light.

The delay gave her time to duck. She spun and raised Cortana over her head. Magic slid off the blade. She threw herself at Malcolm again and he ducked away, though not before she had slashed open his sleeve, just above the elbow. He barely seemed to notice.

“The death of your parents was necessary,” he said. “I had to see if the book worked.”

“No, you didn’t,” Emma snarled, brandishing Cortana. “You should know better than to try to raise the dead.”

“Because if Julian died, you wouldn’t try to bring him back?” said Malcolm with a delicate rise of his eyebrows, and Emma recoiled as if he’d slapped her. “You wouldn’t bring your mother and father back? Oh, it’s so easy for you, as it is for all Shadowhunters, standing there, making your moral pronouncements, as if you’re better than the rest of us—”

“I am better,” Emma said. “I’m better than you. Because I’m not a murderer, Malcolm.”

To Emma’s shock, Malcolm recoiled—a true recoil of surprise, as if he hadn’t imagined being called a murderer before. Emma lunged, Cortana outstretched. The sword drove into Malcolm’s chest, splitting his blazer—and rammed to a stop, as if she’d stabbed it into a boulder.

She shrieked with pain as what felt like a bolt of electricity went up her arm. She heard Malcolm laugh, and a wave of energy shot from his outstretched fingers, slamming into her body. She was lifted and hurled backward, magic tearing through her like a bullet ripping a hole through a paper screen. She hit the uneven stone ground on her back, Cortana still gripped in her nerveless hand.

Red pain misted behind her eyelids. Through the fog, she saw Malcolm standing over her. “Oh, that was precious.” He grinned. “That was amazing. That was the hand of God, Emma!” He yanked his blazer open, and Emma saw what Cortana had struck—the Black Volume, tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Cortana dropped from her hand, the metal hitting stone. Wincing, Emma shoved herself up onto her elbows, just as Malcolm bent down and seized the dropped candelabra. He looked at it and then down at her, his grin still slashed across his face.

“Thank you,” he said. “These Hands of Glory would have been very hard to replace. Now, Blackthorn blood, that’ll be easy.”

“Stay away from the Blackthorns,” Emma said, and was horrified to hear the weakness of her own voice. What had the Black Volume done to her? Her chest felt as if something heavy had been rolled onto it, and her arm burned and ached.

“You don’t know anything,” Malcolm snarled. “You don’t know the monsters they are.”

“Have you,” Emma said in a near whisper, “have you always hated them? Julian and the rest?”

“Always,” he said. “Even when it seemed like I loved them.”

Emma’s arm was still burning, an agony that felt as if her skin was being lanced down to the bone. Her Endurance rune felt as if it were on fire. She tried not to let it show on her face. “That’s horrible. It’s not their fault. You can’t blame them for their ancestors’ sins.”