In the mirrors, Sister Emilia saw the blades she could make. She saw how they were used in battle, how the ones who wielded them thanked the one who had made them. They blessed the name of Sister Emilia, and acolytes came to study with her, and they, too, blessed her name.

“No!” Sister Emilia said to her reflections. “I will be the greatest adamas worker the Adamant Citadel has ever seen, but it will not be because I accepted aid from you. It will be because of the work that I do with the aid of my sisters.”

“Nuts!” Belial said. “I don’t even know why I bother.”

Brother Zachariah said, Roland the Astonishing!

And before Sister Emilia could ask him what he meant by that, he was running out of the maze. She could hear him knocking over mirror after mirror with his staff, in too much of a hurry to find his way out as they had found their way in. Or maybe he knew that all the magic was bound up to make the center hard to find, and that smashing things on the way out would work just fine.

“A little slow on the draw, that one,” Belial said to Sister Emilia. “Anyhow, I ought to make tracks. See you around, girlie.”

“Wait!” Sister Emilia said. “I have an offer to make you.”

Because she could not stop thinking of what she had seen in Brother Zachariah’s mirrors. How much he longed to be with his parabatai and with the girl who must have been the warlock Tessa Herondale.

“Go on,” Belial said. “I’m listening.”

“I know that the things you offer us aren’t real,” Sister Emilia said. “But perhaps the illusion of a thing that we can’t have is better than nothing at all. I want you to give Brother Zachariah a vision. A few hours with the one he misses most.”

“He loves the warlock girl,” Belial said. “I could give her to him.”

“No!” Sister Emilia said. “Warlocks endure. I believe one day he will have his hours with Tessa Herondale even if he does not dare to hope for it. But his parabatai, Will Herondale, is old and frail and drawing near the end of his life. I want you to give them both a span of time. Both of them in a time and place where they can be young and happy and together.”

“And what will you give me in return?” Belial said.

“If I had agreed to your previous offer,” Sister Emilia said, “I think that my name would have lived on in infamy. And even if I was one day celebrated for my work, still every blade that I made would have been tainted by the idea that you had had some part in my successes. Every victory would have been poisoned.”

“You’re not as stupid as most Shadowhunters,” Belial said.