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[jesxsa]

Jem and Tessa to Alec

Memo to Consul Alec Lightwood

Re: Wild Fae Relations

After several days of tension, we’re relieved to report that the threats to Christopher Herondale and Wilhelmina Carstairs appear to have been resolved. We have liaised with Gwyn ap Nudd, of the Hunt, and he assures us that the unsworn faerie known as Mother Hawthorn has been relocated to a remote location and her place there will be maintained by the Hunt going forward.

Unfortunately, the safety of Christopher Herondale is still in question in the long term. Please see attached pages of personal correspondence for more informal thoughts and questions at your leisure.

Undersigned,

James Carstairs

Tessa Herondale-Carstairs

Dear Alec,

I made Jem do the formal part of the report because it makes my eyes cross. I felt bad for asking him, but he waved me off—apparently none of us would believe how much paperwork the Silent Brothers file. I was surprised because “paperwork” and “City of Bones” don’t really go together in my mind, but hey.

Anyway, the report is accurate. Julian Blackthorn, clever boy that he is, reached out to Gwyn, who agreed to deal with Mother Hawthorn. (Julian also didn’t tell anyone he did this, of course, because he also loves a dramatic reveal, which I’m sure we all remember well.) After being so terrified, it was certainly wonderful when the whole Wild Hunt swept in and seized Mother Hawthorn and brought Mina back to us. 

Mina, by the way, is happy and healthy and not the least bit shaken, unlike her parents. She was nothing but delighted by the Wild Hunt and has been excitedly and repeatedly telling us that she met a lot of horses and the horses are her friends. Kit, of course, is at least as shaken as we are, possibly more. He’s barely let her out of his sight since she got back. He’s even been sleeping on the floor of her room. (We did move a daybed in there after the first couple of nights.) He has taken this quite hard. He hasn’t wished to talk about it much, but it’s obviously weighting heavily upon him, and there is a familiar troubled look behind his eyes that has remained since the incident. He  is, we fear, beginning to understand what his heritage might really mean, as hard as we have tried to insulate him from it.

Despite Gwyn’s helpfulness, neither we nor Julian really know what exactly has happened between the Hunt and Mother Hawthorn, and we’re disinclined to ask. We know Faerie can be brutal, and most brutal to its own, and it has its own sense of justice and discipline, which often seems very…inhuman. That said, we do trust Gwyn, not least because we trust Diana Wrayburn. If he says that Mother Hawthorn won’t be bothering Kit again, we believe him.

We still don’t quite know what it was Mother Hawthorn said to Kit in that time in which they were alone — when we could see them, and Mina, but not hear them. Kit says it was only what we would have expected, but when he came back to us, his eyes were haunted. I wish I could demand to know what it was she said, or threatened, or revealed, but I know I cannot. He will tell us when he is ready.

That said, we don’t know if Mother Hawthorn has allies who might also know Kit’s secret. However she might have tried to wheedle Kit, we know her aim is hostile; we met her in Buenos Aires, before we even knew of Kit’s existence, and she was very clear. The words have stuck in my head: There is still a First Heir in the world. When the First Heir rises, in all the awful glory bought by the blood of Seelie and Unseelie and Nephilim, I hope destruction comes to the Shadowhunters as well as Faerie. I hope the whole world is lost.

I cannot look at Kit — stretched out on the daybed in Mina’s room, his hand fastened around one of the slats of her crib, even while he’s sleeping — and think awful glory. He’s like any Shadowhunter boy, an unordinary sort of ordinary. He likes movies and spaghetti nights and he bites his nails. He’s just a person, not a destiny.

As for now — very few people know of Kit’s heritage. Emma and Julian, of course, and you and Magnus, Jace and Clary, . . . even Julian’s brothers and sisters don’t know, or know only a vague shadow of the truth. But who else might Mother Hawthorn have told? Not the Seelie Court, surely; we are both sure that the Queen would have already taken steps to get hold of Kit if she knew. Kieran knows, of course, but we have no idea who in his Court he might have told (Emma says Mark and Cristina know some, but not all, of the situation). Obviously Kieran is an ally, and his Court loyal to him. But it’s too easy to imagine an enterprising courtier—or some wild fey—might learn the story and seek to take advantage of that knowledge.

The reality, we have realized, is that secrets like Kit’s come out eventually, and cannot be indefinitely contained. Just among Shadowhunters, keeping it within a small circle of trusted friends still means easily a dozen people.

Which leads us to our first actual request: would Magnus be able to come to Cirenworth sometime soon, to shore up its wards against the incursions of those who might wish to harm Kit? We’re forced to recognize that they are only a temporary solution, but for now they’re the best we can do.

Meanwhile, we feel strongly (and we’re sure you’ll agree) that we need to try to stay ahead of this threat. We’ve asked Kieran to have his spies keep an ear out for any rumors circulating about the First Heir in Faerie. Would you be willing to do the same, through the Alliance? We know that the timing of this is terrible for you—we surely would have chosen less of a precarious political moment for the Clave to have this trouble, if we could have. Know that we support you and will always stand by you. We may have withdrawn from active Shadowhunter life, but we will always be there if you need us.

You’re so young to have taken all of this on your shoulders. Does it not always seem that responsibility comes to us Shadowhunters too early in the morning of our lives? I look at my dear Kit, and I know. We all know what’s coming, like knowing sunset is coming on a day you don’t want to end. The long sunny day of Kit’s childhood is nearly over. I shudder to think what he will have to face when night comes.

With all our love,

Jem and Tessa

[jesxsa]

"She smiled then, her cheeks red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again."

[jesxsa]

IT IS THE HERONDALE BLOODLINE

WILL HERONDALE: "I'm cursed"

JAMES HERONDALE:" My father was cured, but me? I'm damned"

JACE HERONDALE:" To love is to destroy and to be loved is the one destroyed"

KIT HERONDALE: "I endanger everyone, just by existing"

[jesxsa]

Kit to Jace

Jace—

I don’t know why I’m writing, I don’t know why I’m writing to you, I’m just sitting here trying to stay calm but all these thoughts are in my head repeating over and over and I need to put them down and send them somewhere. You said you would always be there if I needed to talk so hi, yes, hello, I need to talk. I can’t go to Jem and Tessa, they’re just as traumatized as I am, maybe more. And Emma and Julian were there and they were having such a good time, enjoying their house that was finally safe and pleasant and comfortable and then suddenly a baby is kidnapped right out of that safe and pleasant house without anybody noticing anything.

The truth is—I haven’t wanted to admit it, but the truth is Mina’s always been in danger. Because of me. Because I have some long-past faerie ancestors, so everyone close to me is in danger. Nothing I can do about it, nothing I did to deserve it. And it means Jem and Tessa, because they adopted me, because they love me, got their daughter kidnapped for their troubles.  

By the way, since you are someone I care about, you’re a member of the group of people I’ve put in danger. Sorry about that. But you’re Jace Herondale! You eat danger for breakfast. You eat danger flakes topped with perilberries. You’ll be fine. But Mina…she’s so little. And she’s never been away from her family before.

I keep telling myself they won’t hurt her. It’s not her they want. It’s something else.

Every indication is that she was grabbed by faeries. Most of Round Tom’s workers have left and we don’t know if one of them maybe did it, or helped whoever did it. Round Tom himself says he doesn’t know anything and is as confused as everyone else—never concerns himself with politics. Everyone is suspicious of him anyway, but, well, he can’t lie, and the sentence, “I had no knowledge of anything to do with your daughter’s kidnapping,” is hard to interpret any other way.

But it may not matter. If Mina was kidnapped by faeries…especially faeries under direct orders by one of the Courts…that’s a violation of the Accords. And that means war with Faerie. Another war with Faerie.

How do you live like this, man? How do you get through the day knowing that you endanger everyone, just by existing?

I guess I can answer that myself. You are who you are because of everything you’ve been through. You handle stuff because you’ve had to handle stuff. Jem and Tessa adopted me thinking they could keep me safe, but maybe nothing can keep me safe. I’ve been drifting along, playing happy families, but the truth is I have to change. Be harder. Stronger. More powerful. Be someone the bad guys should be afraid of. Not a kid who has to be protected. That has to end.

I’m not a kid anymore.

Anyway. I just realized that you know the whole situation already, because I’m sure Alec has filled you in. But it helps to write it down myself, like I said. I don’t think there’s anything you can do, and I’m not asking for help. I just thought of all people, you’d get it. That you could be someone for me to talk to about this. Hope it’s okay for you to be that for me.

Kit

[jesxsa]

i miss them (fictional character i think about literally every single day)

[jesxsa]

idk I just personally think that getting chills from music is the best part of being alive. like when a song is so good you can feel it in your whole body. that's why I'm here.

[jesxsa]

Magnus to Alec

Dear delectable muffin of love,

I hope this perfumed letter finds you well, and that you and R and M are having an excellent time in your exotic journey to…well, I believe the term you used was “upstate.” I have heard legends of this Upstate[JL1] , but never did I know that my family would see for themselves its mountains, its twee farm markets, its River of the Son of Hud.

More to the point, I hope the kids are enjoying their visit with Grandma, and I hope you are referring to Maryse as “Grandma” as often as possible because I enjoy the face she makes when we do. On a less pleasant but more urgent note, I hope you’ve had a chance to talk with Luke about the Cohort/Idris stuff.

But do not tire your beautiful hands with a written reply. I will be heading to this “Upstate” myself to join you later this afternoon, as I am relieved to report that the business with the Blackthorn kids’ cursed house is more or less resolved. Although it was touch and go, let me tell you.

I don’t think I even showed you the note Jem sent, which said, “Emma and Julian are trying not to bother you about their house, and that is very nice of them, but unlike them, I feel absolutely no compunction about bothering you, and so this is me, now, in this note, bothering you. We are in need of a warlock and you are the best one I know for this. We would all really appreciate your help.”

As is often the case, I was both mildly annoyed and mildly impressed with Jem, who managed to be both very kind and also to remind me that I am a sucker when it comes to him and Tessa and will rush to their aid when I can. Because I am a sucker when it comes to him and Tessa, I wrote back quickly saying I would come.

I know what you’re thinking: “How could Tessa need a warlock when she is a warlock?” But different warlocks have different expertises, as you know, and while Jem was flattering me that I was the best choice, the reality is that I have dealt with a lot more curses than Tessa. That’s what comes of spending the past decades hiring your services out to any miscreants who come by, instead of more intelligently living a calm life as a magic researcher in the Spiral Labyrinth. Tessa always was the smartest of us.

Anyway, I must give Emma and Julian credit. I expected to arrive and find them banging the cursed objects against one another or something, but they had set up a decent enough protective circle and even found a spell. It was an old, kind of generic spell that I have found to rarely be of much use with actual curses in the modern day, but still.

Rather stupidly I set up a basic workaday curse-breaking circle of my own, and gave it a try. “Stupidly” because I had forgotten who did the curse in the first place. Your worst ancestor, Benedict Lightwood, all-around demon enthusiast and dilettante necromancer. How in bed with demons was Benedict? He literally died of demon pox — which if you do not know, because you are beautifully pure, my Alec — is a sexually transmitted demon disease.

But I forgot that in the moment, so I was surprised when the curse put up an impressive resistance. It writhed and thrashed and struck out, like Max being lowered into a bath. The cursed objects were all glowing, kind of neon green, where they were tied to the magic, and eventually I realized I was going to have to carefully unknot each object from the curse, one at a time.

I managed the flask, the dagger, and one of the candlesticks (don’t ask me to explain how THAT happens), but after that I was stuck.

It’s not a great look for a warlock to strike a big magic pose and then nothing happens. I am sure I looked ridiculous, like a mundane magician who couldn’t understand why the rabbit wasn’t coming out of the hat. Julian and Emma are very polite and only waited patiently but I felt quite silly.

And then I lost all my focus temporarily because the door opened and Kit walked in. He sort of looked around at the scene and finally said, “Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick, I see.”

“Purple is always an appropriate color for a warlock,” I said. “It is the decorative color of magic.”

Emma, of course, said, “Your magic is blue,” because she is an inveterate smartass.

“Maybe he meant me,” said Julian. “I’m wearing a purple hoodie. Also because it is the decorative color of magic,” he added with a nod in my direction, which I appreciated.

“Maybe you could put the objects on a purple tablecloth instead of a white one,” Kit said, and while he was talking he walked out to get a closer look.

And when he got close to the circle, Alec, I felt the strangest sensation. A feeling of…power, I suppose, kind of humming in Kit. You know the way your body kind of vibrates when there’s a really really low sound? That rumbling feeling? It was like that, but silent. I’ve never had that experience any of the times I’ve seen Kit before. I could also tell that Kit didn’t feel anything unusual. Or if he did, he was surprisingly casual about it.

So I suggested he come join us around the circle and add his focus to the magic. “Especially since Jem and Tessa have snuck off somewhere rather than helping out with this round.”

“They’re out in the garden with Mina,” Kit said, a little defensively.

I redirected everyone’s attention to the objects and established a somewhat souped-up version of my go-to curse breaker. I went for the other candlestick and BANG. No resistance anymore! There was a big burst of blue and all the knots of magic tying the objects to the curse broke into pieces.

Everyone blinked a bunch. Eventually I said something like, “Well, that was more what I was hoping for. I guess four people made the difference.”

I checked. The curse seemed…gone. I was actually a little shaken. I haven’t mentioned it to Tessa and Jem, because I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but I think it worked because of Kit. Not because we needed a fourth person. Something is going on with him, some magic that is totally outside his awareness. I assume it has something to do with being a descendant of the First Heir, but I’ve never been an expert on that kind of faerie enchantment. (And do burn this letter, after you get it — very few of us know about Kit being the First Heir, and it’s best if we keep it that way.)

It makes me sad to think of it. Kit is a good kid who deserves a good, ordinary life. I know that’s what Jem and Tessa want for him, more than anything, after the chaos that was his growing up. But I am not sure he will have a choice in the matter. Fae may not let him choose.

Julian reached out and took hold of the flask. He held it for a moment, frowning.

“What?” said Emma.

“Nothing,” Julian said. He looked up at me. “Is that it? No more curse?”

“No more curse,” I said. “I hope.”

And then down from the ceiling drifted Rupert the Ghost. I never met Rupert Blackthorn when he was alive. I don’t know what to think of him. On the one hand, he seems to have been an innocent who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a spirit trapped in a house he never lived in because of evil he never knew about while he lived. On the other hand, he met Tatiana Lightwood and thought that lady seems like marriage material, so there must have been something weird going on with him.

Rupert had been hovering and he descended until he was right above the table. He was staring at something on it.

“What is it, Rupert?” said Emma. “What are you looking at?”

Kit followed his gaze and started pushing the objects out of the way. “It’s the ring,” he said.

Emma said, “What ring?”

Indeed, what ring? There wasn’t a ring among the cursed objects. But there was a ring on the table now. Kit picked it up. It was a gold ring, etched with a design of thorns and set with a black stone.

“Blackthorn family ring?” Kit said.

“It’s not how family rings usually look,” Emma said.

“Wedding band?” said Kit.

“Shadowhunters don’t use wedding rings,” said Emma, but Julian had that thoughtful look he gets.

“I am bound here by a silver band,” he said softly.

“Shadowhunters can exchange wedding rings,” I said. “They just aren’t expected to. But they can if they want.”

Whatever it was, it was Rupert’s. He had followed Kit’s hand as it picked up the ring, and now he was reaching out for it with a thin ghostly hand. He wrapped it around the ring, which did absolutely nothing since he’s a ghost – Kit just kind of held it there for him. Then his eyes closed (Rupert’s, I mean) and he got this expression on his face of relief and gratitude and peace, and he just…faded out, right there. Just slowly vanished and was gone. No more Rupert. On to hopefully not being reunited with his wife, since she was also his jailer for over a hundred years.

“He didn’t even say goodbye,” Emma said quietly.

“That’s for the best,” I said. “He was never supposed to be here at all.”

“Well, Rupert, if you can hear me,” said Emma, “it was nice being haunted by you.”

“Five stars,” said Kit solemnly, putting the ring back on the table. “Would be haunted again.”

And all the candles went out in the room at once. Which, if it was Rupert, was a nice touch. Though it may have just been a draft.

We all filed out of the room quietly. “It’s different,” Julian said. He was looking around at the hallway. “I can feel it already.”

I could feel it as well. There was a lightness that had not been there. A kind of pleasant hominess that a good house conveys and that had always been absent from Blackthorn Hall in the time I’ve known it. It’s hard to describe, but all at once it felt like Julian and Emma’s home, in a way it hadn’t before. I’ve always known it as a forbidding place, and then as a hideous ruin, but for the first time I thought, this was a place the Blackthorns could fill with joy.

And I’m certain they will.

See you very soon, my love. I shall kiss you until a toddler forces us apart to pay attention to him. So plan for a kiss of about 30-60 seconds, based on previous experience. But I wish, as always, that it could be endless.

Love,

Magnus

[jesxsa]

Livvy to Julian

Dear Julian,

You can see ghosts but you cannot see me. Not when I come to sit by you while you sleep. Not when I am in the movements of the shadows across the lawn, or the twitch of a curtain. You cannot hear me, even though I am speaking to you because I have things I need to tell you. 

I want to tell you about Ty.

He was there. We were there.

You don’t know we were there.

Kit knows.

Let me start over.

You like surprises, Ty says. Ty doesn’t like surprises, but you do.

He is learning Portals, how to open them, how to close them. You need a warlock. But Ty is learning and he is getting better. He wanted to come to see you and Ragnor said he would help.

We wanted to come to see you.

Ty warned Emma, but he told her not to tell you, so it would be a surprise.

So we came through together.

A ghost travels through a Portal just like a Shadowhunter. I didn’t know that. Isn’t that funny?

Well, I thought it was funny.

The Portal opened in the kitchen.

The kitchen looks nice. I am only a spirit caught between the world and the void but I think you chose an excellent shade for the walls. You have always been so good with color.

Other than the color, which was a surprise but not a bad one, there was another surprise in the kitchen. Kit.

Kit was in the kitchen. Wearing that jacket he likes, with the fuzzy collar. The sun came through the window and lit him up.

Everything in Ty froze. Even I almost froze. I’ve seen Kit, of course. I visit him sometimes. Still because I wasn’t expecting him, it hit me how different he looks from the way he did when he lived at the Institute with us. He looks older, and taller. More muscular. He moves like a Shadowhunter now. Graceful.

He’s beautiful.

I heard Ty take a breath like he never has before. Like he was gasping for air, like he’d been sucker-punched and he was trying to breathe and trying to breathe and he couldn’t.

He whispered, “That’s not how you clean a gun.”

Sorry, I should have said before. Kit was cleaning a gun. Why would there be a gun at your house? Blackthorn Hall is like a rock. You turn it over and so many things are underneath. This time a gun was underneath.

Kit went whiter than any ghost I’ve ever seen. He dropped the gun onto the counter. And he didn’t speak. I wonder if he was wondering what I was wondering. I was wondering how Ty knew how to clean a gun. Enough to tell someone they were doing it wrong.

Maybe he just didn’t know what to say, so he said that.

After that they looked at each other.

Time is not fast or slow where I am. And yet it was long enough for me to feel like the whole world was disappearing, like there was nothing else in it except Kit and Ty looking at each other.

Kit said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

He has never spoken to me like that. With such a cold voice. He had put his hands in his pockets and his shoulders were thrust forward, like he was being aggressive, but I could see his hands in his pockets, all knotted up. I wonder if Ty saw it too. Kit’s fingers, digging and digging into themselves.

But Ty wasn’t looking at Kit. He was looking past him at the window. I could hear birds, and quiet English sounds, and Ty breathing. He said, “How long do you think it will take you to forgive me?”

Kit looked at me. He looked a little betrayed, as if somehow I had known he would be here, had planned this. But I didn’t. “I don’t know,” he said.

“But not now,” Ty said in the smallest voice.

“No,” Kit said. “Not now.”

There was no more reason to stay then.

Maybe there was a reason. Maybe it was Kit’s hands crushing in on themselves, till I thought the bones would break like hearts.

But Ty couldn’t see that. Ty was in pain. I put myself next to him, wrapped myself around him, held him while we went back through the Portal. I was sad. I wanted to see you very much, Jules. But Ty needed me to be there with him.

If you dream this, maybe you will know we were there in your house. I am sorry we didn’t stay.

Julian, I don’t know what to do. Ty misses Kit more than he thought he could miss someone. He misses him as much now as he did the day he left. He loves him the same. I think he always will and it scares me.

Kit is used to not needing people, but Ty needs people. He is afraid to need people but that is only because he needs them so much. He is not going to stop needing Kit. I don’t know if Kit will always need Ty. But Ty will always need him.

Irene says hello. I am teaching her to play dead.

I love you.

Livvy

[jesxsa]

[jesxsa]

Kit to Ty

Ty,

I need someone to talk to and I don’t want it to be Julian or Emma. Or Jem or Tessa. So it’ll have to be you. Which means I can’t ever send this and you can’t ever read it. I’ll burn it in the garden when I’m done writing it so I’m not tempted to send it.

The gardens here are really excellent, by the way. I guess you know that since you’ve been here. There’s an old Georgian greenhouse, and a little pond with lilies and frogs and benches to watch them, and a walled garden, and it’s just very nice to walk around here with Mina. I never had a sister or brother before, you know that, but being with Mina makes me realize more about how you felt about Livvy. Still feel about Livvy I guess. I’m not saying I forgive you. Just maybe I understand more.

Blackthorn Hall is still being restored, of course, and there are faeries everywhere doing the restorations. They’re brownies, apparently, and even though they aren’t doing anything that interesting—weeding and carrying wheelbarrows of dirt and whatever—I can’t stop watching them. I have hardly seen any faeries at all since—well, since we were in that battle with them. I guess I didn’t realize how strictly I was being kept apart from them. Until now.

I should really stay away from them, because every time I get close enough for them to talk to me, they do something to freak me out. The head builder, this guy Round Tom— he’s not even that round, honestly — anyway the first time Round Tom saw me he did a little thing where he jumped in a circle and made some odd gestures in the air, and then bowed in my direction. I just turned around on my heel and walked off in the other direction like I had just remembered I forgot something.

And then General Winter, like Kieran’s General Winter, was there helping out—Julian says he’s there to keep all the workers in line since they are scared of General Winter but not Round Tom—and he knew I was the First Heir. Like the Riders did.

The Riders whose horses I made disappear. Or something. I don’t know if they ever came back. No one seems to know.

I tried to pretend I didn’t hear General Winter either but we were just out in the open and it would have been way too obvious. So when he addressed me as First Heir all I could think of to say was, “That’s me. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“If you’ve been told,” he said, “then it is true, since we do not lie.”

I wanted to say buddy, I worked at the Los Angeles Shadow Market for years. Faeries do all kinds of sketchy stuff. Instead I just said, “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do about it.”

 General Winter watched me with this thoughtful look on his face, and said, “You need do nothing about it, yet. Indeed, at this moment that might be the wisest course of action. For things are strange in Faerie.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“There are disturbances,” he said slowly. “Rumors swirl about the Seelie Court. And Mother Hawthorn walks again.”

BI could ask him what any of that meant, Round Tom came rushing over. “Cousins.” (I had forgotten faeries sometimes addressed each other like that, and it gave me a little shiver, like he was saying, you are one of us.) “I have found something. Please come with me.”

He led us around to one of the big plane trees. A little ways away from the trunk was a huge hole, and then on the other side of the tree were two sawhorses across which balanced a coffin.

At least I think it was a coffin. It was really busted up, half-rotted, cracked everywhere, caked in dirt. It was obviously the thing that had come out of the hole.

“A tomb?” said General Winter as we got closer, but Round Tom was shaking his head.

“We would not have disturbed a tomb,” said Round Tom. “But none lie buried here. Only magic, of a dark and powerful kind.” He stepped back. “Look inside.”

I came closer. There was indeed a bunch of random stuff inside the coffin. It looked like—well, you know how old Egyptian pharaohs were buried with all their belongings? It was like that, I assume for a Shadowhunter, except the belongings were a weird assortment. It was dirty and falling apart and mostly just junk—papers and little jars and bits of fabric and the hilt of a sword with no blade, that kind of thing.

“How old is it?” I said, and Round Tom reached it and fished out a liquor bottle. The label was pretty faded and ripped but it was a printed label, in a Victorian style. I wondered if Jem or Tessa would have any guess whose stuff it could be.

“You said there was magic here?” I said.

“Dark magic,” Round Tom said gravely. “Wild magic.”

“The curse?” said General Winter.

Round Tom’s expression cleared and he shrugged. “Perhaps not. It’s actually much less demonic in nature than the curse on the house. But emanating from the foot of an unremarkable tree it bore exploration. There are two items that might be of further interest.”

He cleared away some of the mess and revealed a scabbard. It was a very nice scabbard. Sorry, that doesn’t really capture it. A very very nice scabbard. It needed some cleaning up, but it was obviously beautiful and, I’m sure, valuable. It was steel but covered in gold inlay all over in the shape of leaves and birds. There were some runes on it, too, so it was definitely a Shadowhunter’s at some point.

“Nice,” I said.

“It is more than ‘nice,’” General Winter said. “It is clearly the work of Lady Melusine herself. See how it has not deteriorated at all?”

Round Tom looked important. “And yet it is the less interesting of the two pieces,” he said. With a great dramatic gesture that he had clearly practiced ahead of time, he pushed all of the junk to one side in the coffin, leaving—

“Is that…a gun?” I said.

“One of those mundane weapons, yes,” said Round Tom. He picked it up as though it might go off, though it was rusty and covered in dirt. It was a revolver. It didn’t look any different than revolvers from a million gangster movies, or Westerns—I guess if I were really sending this to Ty I would have to explain what a Western was.

Anyway the big difference was this gun was covered in etchings and runes and words and was obviously magic af. (Which means . . . oh, never mind what it means.)

“But Shadowhunters don’t use guns,” I said.

“They never have,” General Winter agreed. He picked up the gun with a surprising amount of familiarity, and sighted along it in the direction of a nearby tree. He tried to fire and it just clicked — the cylinder didn’t even turn.

“Rusted shut, probably,” said Tom. General Winter handed it to me to look at. I’m not good enough with runes to know any of the ones that were on it. I pointed it at the same tree, kind of as a joke, kind of just to feel how heavy it was, and pulled the trigger, and there was a huge BANG and a bunch of wood splinters exploded from the tree.

My arm kicked back from the force of the shot. And we all stared. My ears were buzzing, but I thought I heard Round Tom say something to General Winter. I’m pretty sure the words First Heir were in there.

Certainly when I looked at them again, at Round Tom and General Winter, their expressions were guarded. Closed.

“Perhaps we should take this item inside and see if the other Nephilim recognize anything about it,” General Winter said flatly.

 “I’m sure it just only works for Shadowhunters,” I told General Winter, but he just gave me kind of a troubled look and said nothing. “Anyway. I’ll bring it in.”

I could feel General Winter and Round Tom watching me as I ran across the lawn and into the house. Jem and Tessa were sitting on a couch in the drawing-room, watching Mina coloring with crayons on some butcher paper.

The moment I came in holding the gun both of them looked utterly shocked. Tessa got to her feet and moved between me and Mina. I told myself she was standing between the gun and Mina, but it still felt rotten.

“What—” said Jem, standing up, but he didn’t finish the sentence. He just stared at me, and the gun.

“Round Tom found it in the garden,” I said. “Is this a gun for Shadowhunters?” I could feel my voice getting tighter. “Shadowhunters don’t use guns.”

“Long ago, Christopher Lightwood tried to create a gun that Shadowhunters could fire,” said Tessa. She was still staring at the gun.

 “It was in a coffin,” I said. “With a bunch of other stuff. A broken sword, and a fancy scabbard.”

“I wondered what he did with it,” said Jem. He? Who was he?

Jem and Tessa exchanged a look.  “The gun belonged to my son James,” she said. I felt kind of sick. Tessa hardly ever talked about her children with Will. “He was the only one who could use it. It would not fire in anyone’s hands but his.”

“I fired it,” I said.

They both looked stunned, and not in a good way. 

“You are very special, Kit,” Jem said. “You are the First Heir. We don’t yet know the extent of how that power works in you.”

“Or perhaps it is just that he has faerie blood,” said Tessa.

I could have said that it definitely wasn’t just faerie blood because General Winter couldn’t use the gun and he doesn’t only have faerie blood, he has a full faerie body with faerie organs and everything. But I didn’t say anything. I just felt a weird feeling in my stomach. I said I would put the gun away and not use it, and Jem and Tessa seemed to feel that was the best thing I could do, and Mina piped up and said “Gun!” and then I felt like the worst person on earth.

So now it’s late and I’m up writing this letter to you that I am going to burn when I’m done, because I can’t sleep. Because I don’t want to be the only person in the world who can fire a magic gun. I don’t want General Winter to straighten up when I’m nearby like I outrank him. I don’t want any of this. I had five minutes where I got to think, oh neat, I found this cool-looking gun and I bet there’s a story behind it, I wonder if they’ll let me keep it or if it needs to go to a museum or something. And then I fired it and instantly—just another thing that’s weird about me.

Good night, Ty. I’ll never send this, and you’ll never read it.

Kit

[jesxsa]

tsc couples never had a bad track with proposals. 

“Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.” BANGER. “I never wanted you to think I didn’t love you. And even if you don’t want to marry me now, you deserve to have me ask you. Because I always, always wanted to marry you, and that’s the truth. I love you, Jace Herondale. I love you and I need you like light and air, like my chalk and my paint, like beautiful things in the world. In that prison full of thorns under the Unseelie Tower, I was all right because you were with me.” SLAPS. “My dear Miss Collins. Please forgive me for my untoward outburst. It is simply that I have such—such strong esteem—no, not esteem, adoration—for you that I feel as if it must blaze from me every moment of the day. Ever since I came to this house, I have been struck more forcibly each day by your beauty, your courage, and your nobility. It is an honor I could never deserve but most earnestly aspire to if you could only be mine—that is, if you would consent to be my wife.” EMOTIONALLY AND SONICALLY RICH. And don’t even get me STARTED on “And when one day people look back on me and what my life meant, I don’t want them to say, ‘Alec Lightwood fought in the Dark War’ or even ‘Alec Lightwood was Consul once.’ I want them to think, ‘Alec Lightwood loved one man so much he changed the world for him.’ ”

[jesxsa]

just found out that “wish you were here” in persian is ‘jāy-e shomā khālīst’ which means “your place is empty” and it felt like being stabbed in the heart 37 times

[jesxsa]

Get up girls we have another day of obsessing over fictional characters to cope with reality ahead of us

[jesxsa]

Ty to Julian

Hi Julian,

Don’t be mad.

I mean, not that you should be mad. I don’t think it would make sense for you to be mad, because you always say “wish you were here,” and soon I will be there. I heard from Ragnor that you just asked him to come to Blackthorn Hall, and I talked to him, and I’m going to be coming with him to London. 

There are lots of good reasons for me to come to London. For one thing, I am curious about what it is like to be in a house that is cursed. You always say that the most important thing is my schoolwork, and up-close experience with a cursed house will definitely help in that department. Which is another reason that you should not be mad.

Ragnor says he’s going to bring a ley-line map of London that he thinks can be used to discover likely locations where Tatiana put the objects that keep the curse in place. He also said he would show you how to read a ley-line map. I thought Ragnor was going to say something about how Shadowhunters ought to know these things already. I said that to him, in fact, but he said no, apparently the Spiral Labyrinth only standardized leyline mapping about fifty years ago and before that every warlock used some different method. I asked if he knew who had made the map and he said no, but maybe he would when he looked. Anyway, ley lines are also something I’ve been studying, so this will be an excellent chance for me to learn more. Another reason for you not to be mad.

I was just going to show up and surprise you but then I thought about it and I realized I wouldn’t like it very much if someone showed up and surprised me, so…I’m going to show up but warn you ahead of time. I also thought if I told you ahead of time, and you were mad, you could be mad before I get there and not after.

(I was going to bring Irene, too, but Anush said that would be more likely to make you mad than me just showing up on my own, especially since Irene eats curtains and it sounds like there are a lot of curtains on the upstairs floors. I really want you to meet Irene, though. She’s gotten big but she’s really well behaved. And I taught her to high-five! Next time I’ll bring her, when I’m not traveling with someone as grumpy as Ragnor.)

I also feel like it would be a good idea for me to check that the Ghost Sensor is working right. I want to take a look at it when I’m there. Anush and I have been working on Sensors some more, because there are a ton just lying around here. We’ve been experimenting with setting them to detect other kinds of supernatural things – we made a vampire Sensor and a werewolf Sensor, those were pretty easy. We’ve got a Fey Sensor that works on about one-third of the faeries we’ve tried it on; that one needs some improvements. I made an angel Sensor but I have no idea how I would ever test it. Anush says that so far it is functioning perfectly as it has correctly detected that there are no angels around.

Surprisingly, it’s much harder to make a Sensor detect something not supernatural. I tried to make one to detect gold and then one to detect bats. Neither of them really works. The only one that’s been a success is the lynx Sensor. As you can imagine, that one went off pretty much continuously for the three days we were testing it. We had to break it with a hammer to stop it. And by we, I mean eventually a bunch of people showed up at our room and demanded that we break it with a hammer.

That has nothing to do with why I’m coming with Ragnor to visit you, by the way! Nothing at all. I am just really looking forward to seeing you and Emma and the house, and I want to learn something about reading leyline maps. Okay, I’ll see you soon! Remember you said you wanted to see me! Don’t be mad!

Love

Ty

[jesxsa]

Tessa to Sophie

Dear Sophie,

My beloved Sophie, you will never read this. On the bottom shelf of the bookcases built into the far wall of my bedroom here in Cirenworth—Cirenworth! you say, but ah, I will explain—are my diaries, in all shapes and forms, from leatherbound quartos of heavy ivory pages to spiralbound ruled notebooks for children to use in school. There are gaps, sometimes of years, and a few that have been lost or damaged, or whose paper was never intended to last as long as I have lived. But each of them is written to someone—I never understood “Dear Diary,” as though Diary were a person I might want to know my thoughts. But you, of course, I do wish to know. And it has been many decades, Sophie, since I have started one of these diaries and addressed it to you. But today brings a fresh start in a new volume, a lovely little book of swirly Florentine paper, and so I address it to you:

Hello, Sophie Lightwood, née Collins, my first true friend in London. You have been gone so long. And yet it also seems only a moment; I turn and see your graceful figure as you hurry down the hall with a basket in your arms, or the way you smiled when you said you were allowed to speak to Will however rudely you liked (and he did deserve it at the time!) or the way you laughed with Gideon over scones.

So: Cirenworth. I live here with Jem now, you know. He is no longer a Silent Brother—well, that is not relevant to my entry today so I suggest you consult one of the earlier diaries to catch up and come back when you’re done. And we have just been visited by his cousin Emma Carstairs, and her paramour, Julian Blackthorn. (Don’t worry; the Blackthorns of his generation are quite kind and friendly!) She has been keeping a diary herself, to record their restoration of Blackthorn Hall in Chiswick, which has remained mostly unoccupied all this time and has fallen into ruin. (Well, further ruin, I suppose.) And, of course, that old pile of bricks has all kinds of magical problems that they’re having to sort out, although of course they were also eager to see us—Jem and I, and Mina and Kit.

Yes, I’m a mother again, Sophie, and that makes me miss you. How good it was to have you by my side in those early days. I remember one evening, when there was a gathering at the Institute—some sort of party, it doesn’t matter, but James was a baby and Thomas was a baby. Someone, maybe old Lysander Gladstone, was trying to engage us in conversation, and I remember we fell asleep against one another right there on the loveseat, and the babies too. When we woke up it turned out Lysander had been highly offended and Will had had to explain to him about babies and new mothers. And we both startled because the children were gone, but of course Will and Gideon had come and retrieved them and put them in the nursery, and let us nap together there.

I miss those moments with you.

Mina is only a toddler, and Jem’s daughter, and thank the Angel she has something of his temperament. It has been a long time since I had to chase a little one across the dining room floor, but she is sweet-natured and easygoing, most of the time. And we have an older son, Kit, who came to live with us after his father was killed. He is a distant relation in the Herondale line, but he does not feel distant at all. He completes our family in a way I could not have imagined, and in a way I’m sure he never expected. He is also a teenager, and he had his own life before he came to us, so between those truths he often keeps things to himself. And so—as one does with teenagers—I worry about him. He has friends—even a girlfriend, if I’m correct in my observations—and he loves Mina with a fierceness that often surprises even him. But there is a heaviness in the way he carries himself sometimes, a sadness that he won’t, or can’t, speak to us about. And maybe it is only that he’s faced so much loss so young, but I can’t help the feeling there’s something more.

I do want to tell you more about Kit, and where he came from—it’s all much more dramatic than you’re probably imagining—but it is late and I can talk to you about Kit anytime. I wish instead to digress and tell you about Julian and Emma’s visit.

They are pulling at the knots of a few mysteries regarding Blackthorn Hall—a curse on the house that dates back to guess who, Benedict Lightwood (I know, Sophie, who could have guessed). And a ghost, benign but faint and unidentified, probably trapped by the curse. There are a whole set of objects, it seems, connected to the curse, and the ghost told them to bring one of them here to Cirenworth—hence their visit, though as I say, I don’t think they minded an excuse to see Kit or Mina.

We were washing up after supper and Jem—you know how Jem is—said straightaway to them, well, let’s see these objects you found.

Julian fetched them from his bag and put them on the counter: a silver-plated whisky flask, quite tarnished, and a dagger, also quite banged up by time. Neither meant much to me at first—as you’ll know, both flasks and daggers are very common in London Shadowhunter homes, even today—but Jem recognized the weapon immediately.

He pointed at the inscription on it and read out, “I wanted so much to have a gleaming dagger, that each of my ribs became a dagger.”

Both Julian and Emma fairly goggled at him. (I also think they don’t realize that Jem does things like this precisely so people will goggle at him; he only pretends to be perfectly dramatic by nature.) “You know it?” said Julian, while at the same time Emma said, “You read Farsi?”

“I’d recognize it anywhere,” Jem said. “It belonged to my cousin, Alastair Carstairs, though it came to him from his mother’s family.”

“The ghost said to bring it here,” Emma said. “To bring it home.”

Jem picked up the flask, which turned out to have a monogram on it. “Oh my,” he said, his voice quiet, and showed me the initials.

My poor dear Matthew. He came into my mind immediately, with his laughing eyes and his bright smile. Julian said they’d already figured out it was his. But that was very strange, I pointed out, because if Benedict was responsible for the curse, he was dead almost ten years before Matthew was even born. Julian started to say it didn’t make sense to them either, and was part of the mystery still. But then there was a sudden loud clicking, which turned out to be the Sensor they had with them that their brother Ty modified for ghosts. (Ty is a whole other fascinating topic, Sophie, but he will have to wait for another day.) They—I mean Shadowhunters in general, not just Julian and Emma—are still using Henry’s demon Sensor invention all these years later!

The Sensor led us to the library. Emma seemed dubious.

“Come on,” she said to the Sensor. “I’m sure the Cirenworth library has been haunted for years.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Jem said. “Although there are houses in the English countryside where if you brought that thing inside it would howl like a police siren. Cirenworth has been well-maintained continually and the owners have always been very thorough about ghosts.”

Using a Sensor to find a ghost is not quite like using it to find a demon. You can tell you’ve found a demon because, you know—the demon is standing there. With ghosts it’s much more a game of “hotter” and “colder,” and eventually we all agreed the clicking was loudest in front of one particular shelf. We took the books down from that shelf and lay them on the table and checked them with the Sensor, and the winner was a quarto book bound in leather. Nothing on the spine, but a quite beautiful compass rose etched into the front.

We opened it, and when I saw the inside, I gasped. And I knew I would be writing this new diary of mine, to you. You would know it yourself—cramped, neat handwriting, with a strong leftward slant, and entirely in Spanish. It was your son’s journal, of course. Thomas’s. My heart! My memories raced back to you holding him, such a small child (who grew to be such a tall broad-chested man!).

Emma was looking through it. This was the first she’d heard of Thomas, perhaps (there are still Lightwoods around, never fear, but they live in New York), so of course she didn’t have the sentimental reaction Jem and I did. “The problem, of course,” she said, “is that my Spanish is terrible.”

So then Julian of course teased her a little, because Emma’s best friend Cristina is from Mexico City. Emma said that was the problem, whenever she needed to read or say anything in Spanish Cristina could just help her.

“Do we need it translated?” Julian said. “We don’t know that it has anything to do with the curse or the ghost. The flask was just a flask as far as we know, right?”

Jem was shaking his head, though. He put the flask and dagger down next to the book and gave them a look. “I don’t know if you realize it, but these three objects all come from the same era. The owners of all three were the same generation and almost the same age. They were all friends.”

And then I could see all of them in my mind—Thomas, Matthew, Alastair, but also Christopher and Cordelia and my own James and Lucie. It was all so long ago, but I could call up their faces as though it were yesterday. As I can call up yours, Sophie. I looked at Jem and I could tell he was thinking the same thing, but all he said to Julian and Emma was, “It can’t be a coincidence. But Benedict Lightwood never knew any of them, he’d been dead for years by then. Are you sure he’s the one responsible for the curse?”

Emma said they were fairly sure—that they’d been reading a diary they’d found in the house that spelled it out. Whose? Oh, Sophie, you have already guessed. Tatiana Blackthorn’s.

“She was about our age, I think,” Julian said. “Maybe a little younger. He told her about the curse and the objects.”

I think Emma saw the expression in my face and Jem’s. “Did they…” She touched the flask, the dagger, the book, one after the other. “Matthew, Alastair, Thomas, did they know Tatiana Blackthorn?”

“She knew them,” Jem said darkly.

“She hated them,” I explained. “She hated all our families—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Fairchilds. And the other Lightwoods. She became…rather more and more unpleasant as time went on. More and more obsessed, I might say, with harming us.”

Julian had been looking into the distance. Now he suddenly turned to take in the objects on the table. “She changed the enchantment,” he said. “She replaced some of the objects. Maybe all of them.”

Clever Julian! We all knew at once it was the likely answer.

“Why, though?” said Emma. “Maybe some of the things Benedict used were lost.”

When Jem spoke, his voice was harder than I’m used to hearing it. “I don’t know how she comes across in her journal. When she was younger she was more mild. But in Tatiana’s heart was a terrible, grasping desire for power. For control. There need not have been anything wrong with Benedict’s curse, for Tatiana to have wanted to make it hers.”

He was right, my dear Sophie, and his words filled my heart with dread. Tatiana cannot hurt Julian and Emma. She is long gone. But she reaches out from the years past to bring her evil even to today. Whomever this ghost is at Blackthorn Hall, I pray, at least, that it is no one that we loved.

[jesxsa]

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

[jesxsa]

Friendly reminder

That, although it played some role, Patroclus didn’t die protecting the army, or the soldiers or his fellow Greeks. Patroclus died protecting Achilles’ name. That’s why he was desperate. He wouldn’t be able to see the man loved, the man he had devoted his life to, suffer.

“He fought to save you, and your darling reputation. Because he could not bare to see you suffer!”

Patroclus goal was to protect the only thing that Achilles would leave behind, the name he was destroying without realizing it himself.

“I would save him from himself.”