Valentine's Arrow

27: Shattered Dreams

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ALEC

Rebecca's eyes were expressionless as they followed Mark down the tunnel. Again, Alec couldn't tell what she was thinking at all. Was she relieved to see him? Or did she blame herself for what had happened to him?

"You gave him your witchlight," Isabelle said. "You've always had that witchlight-"

"Screw the witchlight." Rather than sounding angry or indifferent, Rebecca sounded brittle, like something inside of her was on the verge of breaking. Without warning, she slammed her fist into the side of the cave wall. With a grimace, she withdrew her hand.

"Rebecca," Alec started to say. Then Simon interrupted, startling everyone a little. He'd been oddly quiet throughout their encounter with Mark.

"Guys," he said. "I don't know if you can see it, but there's something-something at the end of the tunnel."

"A light?" Jace said. Alec knew him well enough to detect the undercurrent of sarcasm in his tone, but he was not sure that anybody else noticed it.

"The opposite." Simon moved forward, and the rest of them followed hesitantly in his wake. A few hundred meters ahead, the tunnel curved slightly, and then they all saw what Simon must have seen - darkness. The tunnel ended in a whirling vortex of darkness. Something moved in it, shaping the dark like the wind shaping clouds. None of them said anything at first; they were all frozen to the spot, unable to do anything except watch the darkness shift and move like a living thing.

Almost compelled by the silence, Alec said, "This is the craziest thing we've ever done."

"What if we can't ever come back?" Isabelle said. The ruby around her neck was pulsing, glowing like a stoplight, illuminating her face.

"Then at least we'll be together," Clary said, and looked around at her companions. She reached out and took Jace's hand, and Simon's hand on the other side of her, and held them tight. "We go through together, and on the other side we stay together," she said. "All right?"

Nobody answered, but Isabelle took Simon's other hand, and grabbed Alec's. Alec reached out for Rebecca; her fingers were clammy.

They stepped forward, and the shadows swallowed them up.

THE SEELIE QUEEN

"Mirror, my mirror," said the Queen, placing her hand upon the mirror. "Show me my Morning Star."

The mirror hung on the wall of the Queen's bedroom. It was surrounded by wreaths of flowers: roses from which no one had cut away the thorns.

The mist inside the mirror coalesced, and Sebastian's angular face looked out. "My Queen," he said. His voice was calm and composed, though there was blood on his face and clothes. He was holding his sword, and the stars along the blade were dimmed with scarlet. "I am... somewhat occupied at the moment."

"I thought you might wish to know that your sister and adoptive brother have just left this place." The Queen hesitated. "The Lightwood girl is with them too."

Hope flared in Sebastian's eyes, but he squashed it almost immediately. "So she has betrayed me?"

"Yes, my Morning Star," the Queen said breathily. "It pains me to see you so hurt, but as I recall-"

"I assume," Sebastian interrupted, "that they made you promise not to tell me that they came to your court?"

"They did," said the Queen. "They said nothing about telling you of leaving."