“You followed me on patrol because you were worried about me,” said Thomas. “You do realize—because you were there—that might have been why Belial didn’t attack me? He always went after Shadowhunters who were alone. But you were with me, even if I didn’t know it.”

“That’s just guesswork.” A vein pulsed in Alastair’s throat. “Tom, you patrolled alone at night because you like things that are dangerous and unhealthy for you. I won’t be one of those things.”

He began to turn away. Thomas reached out to catch at him, and the feel of Alastair’s shoulder under his fingers almost undid him. He had touched him, like this, in the Sanctuary: had rested his hands on Alastair’s shoulders, letting Alastair bear up his weight as they kissed.

“Don’t,” Alastair said, not looking at him. “It isn’t possible. It won’t ever be.”

He pulled away, hurrying to rejoin Jem. Thomas stood looking after them as they vanished down the hall. Somehow, he kept expecting Alastair to turn and look back at him, even once. But Alastair never did.

You are being a fool, Malcolm Fade told himself.

It was the same thing he’d been telling himself for the past few days; it made no more difference now. The sun was bright overhead as he crossed the Institute courtyard. A wind had picked up, scattering flurries of snow, white and glittering in the sunshine. He wondered how long it would take for the Shadowhunters to put their broken Institute back together. Less time than one might expect, he guessed. They were surprisingly resourceful, Nephilim, and stubborn in a way warlocks were not. There was little point being stubborn when you lived forever. You learned to bend rather than break.

He thought he had bent, all those years ago when he had first lost Annabel. She has become an Iron Sister, he had been told. You will never see her again. It is her choice.

He had walked the world since that moment bent and twisted into a new shape: the shape of a man who had lost the only thing that mattered in his life and had to learn to live without it. Food tasted flat; the wind and sun visited him differently; the sound of his heartbeat was always audible in his ears, a broken metronome. This was his life now—it had been for more than nine decades—and he had come to accept it.

Until Lucie and Grace had appeared in his life. In learning that Annabel was dead, he had realized how much he’d resigned himself to never seeing her again. Though it ran counter to sense, learning of her death had brought with it the hope that there was a chance of somehow—after all this time—being able to save her.