“Let’s say you defeat the evil faeries and you convince the Shadowhunters you’re of no use to them. What if everyone just stops looking for you, and for Christopher, and it’s finally safe to be together. How will you find us?”

She laughs, even in her despair. He has always been able to make her laugh. This time, though, he doesn’t see the joke. “That’s never going to happen,” she says gently. “You can’t even risk hoping for that to happen.”

“Then let’s go to the Clave, all of us. Let’s throw ourselves on their mercy, ask for their protection. You know they’d give it to you.”

This cuts her laughter off abruptly. The Shadowhunters are without mercy. Who knows that better than she? She squeezes his hands, tight enough to hurt. She is very strong. “Never,” she says. “Never forget that the Shadowhunters are as grave a threat to Christopher as anyone else. Never forget what they were willing to do to my ancestor—to one of their own. They will not get their hands on him. Promise me.”

“I swear. But only if you promise too.”

There is no other way. He won’t do what she asks, won’t disappear forever, unless she leaves one thin thread between them. One hope.

“The place you first told me who you really are,” he says. “The first place you trusted me with yourself. If you need help, you go there. Help will find you. I will find you.”

“It’s too dangerous—”

“You don’t need to know where we are. You don’t need to find us. I’ll never go looking for you, I promise. And Christopher will be safe. But you, Rosemary—” His voice catches on her name, as if he knows how rarely he will allow himself to voice it again. “If you need me, I will find you.”

They don’t say good-bye. Between them, there can be no such thing as good-bye. Only a kiss that should last forever. Only a closed door, a silence, a void. Rosemary sinks to the ground, hugs her knees, prays to a god she does not believe in that she will have enough strength never to let herself be found.

“I know how to find him,” Tessa said, already pulling herself out of the Change. It was, again, harder than it should have been. An unfamiliar friction holding the Rosemary shape in place.

Except it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, was it? Something tickled the back of her mind, a memory just out of grasp. Tessa reached, almost had it—but it skittered away, gone.