Clare, Cassandra - The Dark Artifices 02 - Lord of Shadows by Clare Cassandra

Author:Clare, Cassandra [Clare, Cassandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2017-05-23T07:00:00+00:00

18

MEMORIES OF THE PAST

Jia Penhallow was seated behind the desk in the Consul’s office, illuminated by the rays of the sun over Alicante. The spires of the demon towers glittered outside the window: red, gold, and orange, like shards of bloody glass.

She had the same warmth in her face Diana remembered, but she looked as if much more time had passed since the Dark War than five years. There was white in her black hair, which was pinned up elegantly on top of her head.

“It’s good to see you, Diana,” she said, inclining her head toward the chair opposite her desk. “We’ve all been very curious about your mysterious news.”

“I imagine.” Diana sat down. “But I was hoping what I had to say would stay between the two of us.”

Jia didn’t look surprised. Not that she would show it if she was. “I see. I’d wondered if you’d come about the Los Angeles Institute head position. I assumed you’d want to take over now that Arthur Blackthorn is dead.” Her graceful hands fluttered as she shuffled and stacked papers, slotted pens into their holders. “It was very brave of him to approach the convergence alone. I was sorry to hear he was slain.”

Diana nodded. For reasons none of them knew, Arthur’s body had been found near the destroyed convergence site, covered in blood from his cut throat and in stains of ichor that Julian told her grimly were Malcolm’s blood. There was no reason to contradict the official assumption that he had waged a solo assault on the convergence and been killed by Malcolm’s demons.

At least Arthur would be remembered as brave, though it gave her a pang that he had been burned and buried without his nieces and nephews there to mourn him. That in fact, no one in the wider world would know he had sacrificed himself for his family. Livvy had said to her that she hoped they would be able to have a remembrance ceremony for him when they all went to Idris. Diana hoped so too.

Jia didn’t seem nonplussed by Diana’s silence. “Patrick remembers Arthur from when they were boys,” she said, “though I’m afraid I never knew him. How are the children coping?”

The children? How did you explain that the Blackthorns’ second father had been their older brother since he was twelve years old? That Julian and Emma and Mark weren’t children at all, really, having suffered enough for most adults’ entire lifetimes? That Arthur Blackthorn had never, really, run the Institute, and the whole idea that he needed to be replaced was like an elaborate and terrible joke?

“The children are devastated,” Diana said. “Their family has been fragmented, as you know. What they want is to return to Los Angeles, their home.”

“But they cannot return while there is no one to head the Institute. Which is why I thought you—”

“I don’t want it to be me,” Diana said. “I’m not here to ask for that job. But neither do I want it to go to Zara Dearborn and her father.

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