Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

Lights appeared at the end of the hall. Dru could hear high, sweet voices in the distance. Their chatter was like the chatter of birds. Faeries.

She moved blindly in the other direction, and nearly fell backward when the wall gave way behind her and became a curtain of fabric. She stumbled through and found herself in a large stone room.

The walls were squares of green marble, veined with thick black lines. Some of the squares were carved with golden patterns--a hawk, a throne, a crown divided into two pieces. There were weapons in the room, ranged around on the surfaces of different tables--swords and daggers of copper and bronze, hooks and spikes and maces of all sorts of metal except iron.

There was also a boy in the room. A boy her age, maybe thirteen. He had turned around when she came in, and now he stared at her in astonishment.

"How dare you come into this room?" His voice was sharp, imperious.

He wore rich clothing, silk and velvet, heavy leather boots. His hair was white-blond, the color of witchlight. It was cut short, and a pale band of metal encircled it at his brow.

"I didn't mean to." Dru swallowed. "I just want to get out of here," she said. "That's all I want."

His green eyes burned. "Who are you?" He took a step forward, snatching a dagger up off the table beside him. "Are you a Shadowhunter?"

Dru raised her chin and stared back at him. "Who are you?" she demanded. "And why are you so rude?"

To her surprise, he smiled, and there was something familiar about it. "I'm called Ash," he said. "Did my mother send you?" He sounded hopeful. "Is she worried about me?"

"Drusilla!" said a voice. "Dru! Dru!"

Dru looked around in confusion: Where was the voice coming from? The walls of the room were starting to darken, to melt and merge. The boy in the rich clothes with his sharp faerie's face looked at her in confusion, raising his dagger, as more holes began to open around her: in the walls, in the floor. She shrieked as the ground gave way beneath her and she fell into darkness.

The whirling air caught her again, the cold spinning almost-Portal, and then she slammed back to reality on the floor of her bedroom. She was alone. She gasped and choked, trying to pull herself to her knees. Her heart felt as if it was going to rip its way out of her chest.

Her mind spun--the terror of being underground, the terror of not knowing if she'd ever return home, the terror of an alien place--and yet the images slipped away from her, as if she were trying to hold on to water or wind. Where was I? What happened?

She raised herself to her knees, feeling sick and nauseated. She blinked away the dizziness--there were green eyes in the back of her vision, green eyes--and saw that Jaime's duffel bag was gone. Her window was propped open, the floor damp below the window. He must have come in and out while she was . . . gone. But where had she been? She didn't remember.

"Dru!" The voice came again. Mark's voice. And another impatient knock on her door. "Dru, didn't you hear me? Emma and Jules are back."

*

"There," Diana said, checking the bandage on Gwyn's arm one last time. "I wish I could give you an iratze, but . . ."

She let her voice trail off, feeling silly. She was the one who had insisted they go to her rooms in Alicante so she could bandage his wound, and Gwyn had been quiet ever since.

He had slapped his horse's flank after they'd climbed from it into her window, sending it soaring into the sky.

She'd wondered as he looked around her room, his bicolored eyes taking in all the visible traces of her life--the used coffee mugs, the pajamas thrown into a corner, the ink-stained desk--whether she'd made the right decision bringing him here. She had let so few people into her personal space for so many years, showing only what she wanted to show, controlling access to her inner self so carefully. She had never thought the first man she allowed into her room in Idris would be an odd and beautiful faerie, but she knew when he winced violently as he sat down on her bed that she had made the right call.

She'd gritted her teeth in sympathetic pain as he started to peel away his barklike armor. Her father had always kept extra bandages in the bathroom; when she returned from her trip there, gauze in hand, she found Gwyn shirtless and grumpy-looking on her rumpled blanket, his brown hair almost the same color as her wooden walls. His skin was several shades paler, smooth and taut over bones that were just a shade alien.

"I do not need to be ministered to," he said. "I have always bandaged my own wounds."

Diana didn't answer, just set about making a field dressing. Sitting behind him as she worked, she realized it was the closest she'd ever been to him. She'd thought his skin would feel like bark, like his armor, but it didn't: It felt like leather, the very softest kind that was used to make scabbards for delicate blades.

"We all have wounds that are sometimes better cared for by someone else," she said, setting the box of bandages aside.

"And what of your wounds?" he said.

"I wasn't injured." She got to her feet, ostensibly to prove to him that she was fine, walking and breathing. Part of it was also to put some distance between them. Her heart was skipping beats in a way she didn't trust.

"You know that is not what I meant," he said. "I see how you care for those children. Why do you not just offer to head the Los Angeles Institute? You would make a better leader than Arthur Blackthorn ever did."

Diana swallowed, though her mouth was dry. "Does it matter?"

"It matters in that I wish to know you," he said. "I would kiss you, but you draw away from me; I would know your heart, but you hide it in shadow. Is it that you do not like or want me? Because in that case I will not trouble you."

There was no intention to cause guilt in his voice, only a plain statement of fact.

If he had made a more emotional plea, perhaps she would not have responded. As it was, she found herself crossing the room, picking up a book from the shelf by the bed. "If you think there's something I'm hiding, then I suppose you're right," she said. "But I doubt it's what you think." She raised her chin, thinking of her namesake, goddess and warrior, who had nothing to apologize for. "It's nothing I did wrong. I'm not ashamed; I've no reason to be. But the Clave--" She sighed. "Here. Take this."

Gwyn took the book from her, solemn-faced. "This is a book of law," he said.

She nodded. "The laws of investiture. It details the ceremonies by which Shadowhunters take on new positions: how one is sworn in as Consul, or Inquisitor, or the head of an Institute." She leaned over him, opening the book to a well-examined page. "Here. When you're sworn in as the head of an Institute, you must hold the Mortal Sword and answer the Inquisitor's questions. The questions are law. They never change."

Gwyn nodded. "Which of the questions is it," he said, "that you do not want to answer?"

"Pretend you are the Inquisitor," Diana said, as if he hadn't spoken. "Ask the questions, and I will answer as if I'm holding the Sword, entirely truthfully."

Gwyn nodded. His eyes were dark with curiosity and something else as he began to read aloud. "Are you a Shadowhunter?"

"Yes," said Diana.

"Were you born a Shadowhunter, or did you Ascend?"

"I was born a Shadowhunter."

"What is your family name?"

"Wrayburn."

"And what was the name you were given at birth?" asked Gwyn.

"David," said Diana. "David Laurence Wrayburn."

Gwyn looked puzzled. "I do not understand."

"I am a woman," said Diana. "I always have been. I always knew I was a girl, whatever the Silent Brothers told my parents, whatever

the contradiction of my body. My sister, Aria, knew too. She said she'd known it from the moment I could talk. But my parents--" She broke off. "They weren't unkind, but they didn't know the options. They told me I should live as myself at home, but in public, be David. Be the boy I knew I wasn't. Stay under the radar of the Clave.

"I knew that would be living a lie. Still, it was a secret the four of us kept. Yet with every year my crushing despair grew. I withdrew from interaction with other Shadowhunters our age. At every moment, waking and sleeping, I felt anxious and uncomfortable. And I feared I would never be happy. Then I turned eighteen. My sister was nineteen. We went to Thailand together to study at the Bangkok Institute. I met Catarina Loss there."

"Catarina Loss," said Gwyn. "She knows. That you are--that you were--" He frowned. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to say it. That you were named David by your parents?"

"She knows," Diana said. "She didn't know at the time. In Thailand, I lived as the woman I am. I dressed as myself. Aria introduced me as her sister. I was happy. For the first time I felt free, and I chose a name for myself that embraced that freedom. My father's weapons shop had always been called Diana's Arrow, after the goddess of the hunt, who was proud and free. I named myself Diana. I am Diana." She took a ragged breath. "And then my sister and I went out to explore an island where it was rumored there were Thotsakan demons. It turned out not to be demons at all, but revenants--hungry ghosts. Dozens of them. We fought them, but we were both injured. Catarina rescued us. Rescued me. When I woke up in a small house not far away, Catarina was caring for us. I knew she had seen my injuries--that she had seen my body. I knew she knew . . ."

"Diana," said Gwyn in his deep voice, and stretched out a hand. But Diana shook her head.

"Don't," she said. "Or I won't be able to get through it." Her eyes were burning with unshed tears. "I pulled the rags of my clothes around my body. I screamed for my sister. But she was dead, had died while Catarina ministered to her. I broke down completely then. I had lost everything. My life was destroyed. That's what I thought." A tear slipped down her face. "Catarina nursed me back to health and sanity. I was in that cottage with her for weeks. And she talked to me. She gave me words, which I'd never had, as a gift. It was the first time I heard the word 'transgender.' I broke into tears. I had never realized before how much you can take from someone by not allowing them the words they need to describe themselves. How can you know there are other people like you, when you've never had a name to call yourself? I know there must have been other transgender Shadowhunters, that they must have existed in the past and exist now. But I have no way to search for them and it would be dangerous to ask." A flicker of anger at the old injustice sharpened her voice. "Then Catarina told me of transitioning. That I could live as myself, the way I needed to and be acknowledged as who I am. I knew it was what I wanted.