I swore I would not keep you guys waiting a year for the next installment, so here it is! This is going to be a dark one, people. You have been warned. I will post trigger warnings in the chapter notes where appropriate so please make sure to check them before you read each chapter if you know you have triggers.

Trigger Warnings for the prologue: human sacrifice/murder, specifically murder of a young person, mercy-killing, physical abuse.

On a related note, I'm on the market for a beta again! I'm looking for someone in a European timezone with regular internet access and knowledge of canon (you have to have read at least books 1-5 of TMI!), preferably somebody who loves world-building and discussing/building/developing ideas and plots. I need a soundboard for ideas and plotting more than I need someone to check my grammar, but also someone who will tell me when my prose is getting too purple or convoluted!

If you're interested, drop me a message saying why you're interested and why you think you'd be a good beta at my tumblr, siavahdainthemoon, or send a pm to my account on fanfic dot net. Anon messages on tumblr (but not ff dot net) are fine so long as you provide an email address so I can message you back privately. And don't forget to mention three of your favourite books!

Now, on with the fic! ARE YOU EXCITED? I AM EXCITED.

Prologue
Sacrifice

To any mundanes passing by, the abandoned hospital of the Brooklyn Naval Yard was a miracle of architecture—because it really shouldn't have been standing. Peeling paint and rotten boards were just barely visible beneath the riotous vines and overgrowth, and if anyone had stopped to peer through the doors just barely clinging to their hinges, they would have glimpsed a kingdom of dust and dirt, scattered with dead leaves and puddles of stagnant water, foul with the scent of animal urine. That it had not yet been demolished was surely some clerical oversight; that it had not collapsed under the weight of its own disrepair was nothing short of a minor miracle.

If they had possessed some glimmer of the Sight, however, they would have seen something very different.

Stripped of the glamour of dust and dirt, the entrance hall gleamed beneath a chandelier of witchlight and crystal, the white marble floor reflecting the light like a mirror. Far from containing the remains of a hospital's reception, the hall featured a curved double staircase leading to the upper floors, carpeted in white and pale grey, framed by a railing of gracefully wrought silver. A fine table stood between the two staircases, bearing up a flower arrangement of hydrangeas, phalaenopsis orchids, and calla lilies.

A young man stood by the table, staring sightlessly at the flowers. The light of the chandelier pulled a blue gleam from his dark hair, like that of a raven's wing. In his voyance-Marked hand he twirled a slender stem of forget-me-not, idly, as if he had forgotten it.

A scream tore through the house, a thin, keening wail.

The young man sighed, set the forget-me-nots down on the table, and entered the door beneath the left-hand stair.

Witchlight torches illuminated the spiral staircase down into the darkness beneath the house. Another scream, more piercing than the last, echoed off the stone before he reached the subterranean floor. A mundane would not have been able to hear, beneath the scream, another voice chanting; a mundane would not have recognised, nor understood, the demonic language being spoken.

"Ajarbex naintenor mrzkes dorzekst…"

The young man pushed open another door.

The room revealed was stone, but for a wide circle of bare earth in the middle of the floor. The centrepiece was an elaborate edifice of silver and adamas, a low table of woven metal and crystal raised just inches from the ground. At another time, in another place, it would have been a beautiful object—but now it was a thing of horror, awash with the blood of the young warlock bound to it, the source of the screams. The teenaged Downworlder struggled like a moth pinned to a corkboard, his wings—black and ribbed, the wings of a bat—staked down by silver spikes into the dirt, his wrists charred and smoking with the Infernal runes Marked there to bind his magic. His screams dissolved into hoarse, choking sobs as the door opened, as he tried unsuccessfully to curl away from the pain.

Ignoring both his victim and the new arrival, the 'priest' of this macabre ritual continued to chant, the long spill of his hair shining the same silver as the sword in his rune-Marked hands. Its blade dripped the warlock's blood back onto the boy's ruined chest.

"Ssnakris zesth jednesk naitensk…"

Careful not to disturb the elaborate sigils painted and etched into the floor—a twisted amalgamation of Celestial and Infernal Marks, all of them shimmering in the corner of the eye, seeming to shift and quiver like repelling magnets but chained in place as surely as the warlock—the dark-haired young man crossed the room and took up position in the corner. His face was impassive, remained impassive as blue flames caught where the warlock's blood met the earth, as the runes around the room began to burn.

"Morozon jhaided, extrinza…"

"Please," the warlock begged, catching sight of him, seeing him through the glaze of tears and agony, "please help me!"

The young Shadowhunter watched, but said nothing and did not move, even as the boy broke down into helpless, despairing sobbing again. Regardless of their real age few warlocks looked older than twenty-five, but since the ritual called for a child this one must actually be as young as he looked—somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, only a touch younger than his one-man audience. He was almost certainly the newest and best-loved treasure of the Spiral Court, who cherished their children above all things, even more than did the fey. He had probably never felt any serious pain before tonight, and now it was the last thing he would ever know.

There was no help to give. He would not live long enough to see the sky even if the dark-haired Shadowhunter answered the plea in his eyes and rescued him from this. His injuries were too great.

It was almost over.

The chant reached its crescendo, every word ringing with triumph. The young Shadowhunter met the despairing agony in the child's eyes and did not look away, did not flinch as the room exploded with azure fire, a detonation of searing, electrifying power from the very heart of the world. He bore still, silent witness as Valentine's long seraph blade directed the flames to coalesce, gathering them together in a summer-sky firestorm; watched without quailing as the sword came down and drove through the boy's broken torso into the blood-soaked earth beneath the altar, as the whirlwind of fire plunged down after it and the teenager ripped himself to pieces around one final scream, his blood staining the flames first crimson and then darkest black. It went on and on, that scream, on and on until the roar of the fires drowned it out, the sound of a thousand storms tearing the boy's body apart between them, jet flames spilling out of his mouth and eyes and from beneath his fingernails, ribs cracking and wrists breaking like toys with the violence of his frenzied convulsions, a channel for forces that could not be channelled—

Until the room was drowned in ebony, no blue remaining to mitigate the dark horror of the shadow-lit sacrifice, the un-light shining black nightmares on the spilled blood and the boy's pain-struck eyes and Valentine's exultant face—

And abruptly was gone. The flames vanished, snuffed out like a capped candle; without warning there was only the light of the witchlight lamps, the hellish scene replaced by bare stone walls and a circle of bloodstained dirt, the runes on the floor reduced to ashy scorch-marks.

The young Shadowhunter was kneeling beside the altar, and the warlock boy was dead.

The sudden silence rang.

"Get up," Valentine ordered. His voice was cold as Sheol.

Smoothly, the young man rose, leaving his dagger where it lay sheathed in the warlock's heart. His face was cool and composed as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

The blow Valentine struck him sent him sprawling to the bloody floor, the sound of it a whipcrack lingering on the still air.

"Every moment of his pain strengthened the spell," Valentine said. "Your interference cost me that strength. When you have cleaned up this mess, you will pay it back to me, and perhaps next time, you will remember its price." There was blood on his face, where a piece of his broken blade had flown and cut him; it was almost black against his skin. "The spell was already complete; you only kept it from being as strong as it might have been. What did you hope to gain?"

The young man said nothing. His cheek was already beginning to bruise.

"Bring me the whip," Valentine said, "when you are done." He left the room without a backwards glance for either boy, the dead or the silent.

Only when the door was closed did the dark-haired Shadowhunter push himself upright. For a moment he held himself still, listening for the older man's heartbeat, making sure Valentine was truly gone and not waiting in the corridor outside. When he was certain, he went to stand beside the body of the teenager, dropping to one knee beside it.

Carefully, with the air of someone performing a foreign ritual, he closed the boy's eyes. "Ave atque vale," he whispered; hail and farewell, the Shadowhunter valediction to the honoured dead. The ancient Latin words sounded strange from his lips, unfamiliar; a platitude he had never mouthed before.

He paused, letting the words hang like snowflakes in the air; cold, and useless, and all too brief. And then they were gone, and he rose to fetch what cleaning supplies he would need to scrub the blood from the floor, and from his hands.

NOTES

In the language of flowers, forget-me-nots symbolise true love and memories.

Sheol is a Hebrew name for Hell, or possibly one of several Hells.