He smiled a toothless smile at her and reached up a chubby hand. She extended her own, and he grabbed her finger.

Her mother returned only a few minutes later with a small blue box.

“You know,” Cecily said, sitting down and refilling her teacup, “my parents did not want me to be a Shadowhunter. They had fled the Clave. And your uncle Will …”

“I know,” Anna said. Gabriel gazed fondly at his wife.

“But I was a Shadowhunter. I knew it then, when I was fifteen. I knew it was in my blood. Foolish people say so many things. But we know who we are, inside.”

She set the blue box on the table and pushed it toward Anna.

“If you will accept it,” her mother said.

Inside the box was a necklace with a glimmering red gem. Latin words were etched onto the back.

“For your protection,” she said. “You know what it does.”

“It senses demons,” Anna said, astonished. Her mother wore it nearly every time she went out to fight, though that was rarer now that Alexander had come along.

“It cannot protect your heart, but it can protect the rest of you,” Cecily said. “It is an heirloom. It should be yours.”

Anna fought back the tears that sought to fill her eyes.

She took up the necklace and clasped it about her throat. She stood up and gazed at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. A handsome reflection gazed back at her. The necklace felt right, just as her short hair did. I do not have to be only one thing, Anna thought. I can choose what suits me when it suits me. The trousers and jacket do not make me a man, and the necklace does not make me a woman. They are only what makes me feel beautiful and powerful in this moment. I am exactly as I choose to be. I am a Shadowhunter who wears gorgeous suits and a legendary pendant.

She looked at her mother’s reflection in the glass. “You were right,” she said. “The red does suit me.”

Gabriel chuckled softly, but Cecily only smiled.

“I have always known you, my love,” Cecily said. “You are the gem of my heart. My firstborn. My Anna.”

Anna thought of all the pain of the day again—the wound that had ripped her chest open and exposed her heart. But now it was as if her mother had drawn a rune over it and closed it. The scar was there, but she was whole.

It was like being Marked all over again, defining who she was. This was Anna Lightwood.

Learn About Loss

By Cassandra Clare and Kelly Link

Chattanooga, 1936