“I never told you,” Catarina replied, looking down. “I should have. It’s just … it was so long ago now. But it was a wonderful period in my life. For a time, there was no chaos. There was no fighting. We were a family. I did only one thing to connect him to his secret heritage—I gave him a necklace in the shape of a heron. I couldn’t allow his Shadowhunter lineage to be blotted out completely. But, of course, he grew up. He had a family of his own. And his family had their own families. I stayed the same and gradually faded out of their lives. It is what we immortals must do. One of his descendants was a boy named Roland. He became a magician, and he was famous in Downworld. I tried to warn him away from using magic, but he wouldn’t listen. We had a terrible fight and parted badly. I tried to find him, but he was gone. I’ve never been able to find any trace of him. I drove him away when I tried to save him.”

No, Jem said. That is not why he ran away. He married a woman who was a fugitive. Roland went into hiding to protect her.

Catarina looked up at him.

“What?” she said.

I was in America a short while ago with an Iron Sister, he said, to retrieve some adamas. While there, we encountered a Shadow Market connected to a carnival. It was run by a Greater Demon. We confronted him, and he told us that there were Herondales lost in the world and that they were in danger and that they were very close by. He said that they were hiding from an enemy neither mortal nor demon. Also at this market, I saw a faerie woman with a mortal man. They had a child. The man was called Roland.

Tessa was stunned by the rush of information coming from all sides, but she was caught by the thought of a man throwing away his whole life to run with the woman he loved, giving everything he had to shield her and counting it as nothing. That sounded like a Herondale.

“He was alive?” Catarina said. “Roland? At a carnival?”

When I realized what was happening, I tried to track him down, but I was unable to find him. Please know that it was not you he was running from. The Greater Demon told me that they were being chased and that they were in great danger. Now I know that to be true. The faerie who came to me tonight—he meant to kill me. The forces looking for the Herondales are neither mortal nor demon—they are fey, and the fey mean to keep something secret.

“So … I did not chase him away?” Catarina said. “All this time … Roland …”