mirror shards // matthew fairchild {1}

twenty // beware of the devil, my child

In the red-blue glow of twilight, the cemetery seems eerie and intensely liminal, and the trees watch and whisper to each other, passing on gossip, legends spun out and rumors propagated,

See that girl, there, with the red hair? She is a great heroine, daughter of a great hero, from a line of many such legendary Shadowhunters.

What about him, with the black hair?

Oh, he is a good man, and a great warrior, grandson of a demon though he may be.

His charming friend, in the spats?

He is the son of the Consul. Lover of many, understood by very few. Some say he is mad. Some say he is the most wonderful thing to ever grace this earth.

And her?

But Sydney cannot imagine what the trees say about her. Would it be good, or bad? She does not know.

The tombstones and mausoleums glow in the twilight, their marble surfaces bright and pale.

They break off from the path, treading through grass, soft and silent under Sydney's feet, and she watches the trees just as much as they watch her.

What do you know? she sends out to them. What secrets to you keep, within your bark and your leaves, that you are not telling me?

They come to a stop in front of a tall, tall marble statue of an angel in armor, with a sword in one hand and his eyes turned to the sky.

James takes one step forward, then two, then three, raising one hand as if to touch the statue's cheek. "Quis ut Deus?" he asks. " 'Who is like God?' the Angel asks. The answer is 'No one. No one is like God.' "

Sydney and Matthew look at each other, and Sydney thinks back to their conversation at the Whittington Stone: truths and disinformation, predestination and free will and Pascal's Wager.

The stone angel's eyes open, matte and black, like looking through into the silent, empty void of outer space. Stone grinds as some strange, unseen gears turn, and the stone angel slides aside, revealing a set of stairs down into the caverns below.

"Sydney," says James, "I'd like for you to stay here."

"What?" Sydney asks.

"I'd like for you to stay here. One of us needs to guard the entryway."

"What for? Visitors are no longer allowed into the Silent City. Anyone you'll need to avoid, you'll encounter down there, not up here. Or are you trying to get rid of me?"

James lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Sydney...I saw the research from Romania you left scattered all over your library table. It wasn't just the Zmeul Zmeilor. You were up to your ears in everything. The old Scholomance and the cursed lake connected to it. Vlad Dracula and Erszabet Báthory. The Order of the Dragon. Vampires – the Library of Bats. Fortune Verda Kaya's letters to you call you stuha, and zmeioaice. I don't know what all you were doing there, but I don't fully trust you anymore, and I don't trust that your zmeul zmeilor, if he is our grandfather, is going to leave you alone. I don't want you anywhere those he has wounded."

"James there were a lot of synchronicities stacking up and a lot of clues leading to a lot of potential outcomes, I had to follow every thread –"

"Sydney Rhiannon Linette Herondale. Don't argue with me. Ever since you returned from Romania there has been a shadow at your back and it is thicker and heavier even than the one hanging over Matthew. Forgive me when I say that I don't trust you. But I don't. You're staying here."