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He grinned “Never seen anyone so eager to get to lessons before,” he called as she darted down the hall

The training roo It took up almost an entire level, and both the east and the alls were clear glass You could see blue sea nearly everywhere you looked The curve of the coastline was visible fro out toward Hawaii

In the center of the highly polished wood floor stood the Blackthorn faaged in teaching knife-throwing to the twins Livvy was following instructions obligingly as she always did, but Ty was scowling and resistant

Julian, in his loose light training clothes, was lying on his back near the , talking to Mark, who had his head stuck in a book and was doing his best to ignore his younger half brother

“Don’t you think ‘Mark’ is kind of a weird na as Emma approached “I‘Put a Mark on me, Mark’?”

Mark lifted his blond head froer brother Julian was idly twirling a stele in his hand He held it like a paintbrush, so him about You were supposed to hold a stele like a stele, as if it were an extension of your hand, not an artist’s tool

Mark sighed theatrically At sixteen he was just enough their senior to find everything E or ridiculous “If it bothers you, you can call me by my full name,” he said

“Mark Antony Blackthorn?” Julian wrinkled his nose “It takes a long tiot attacked by a de your name, you’d be dead”

“In this situation are you savingahead of yourself, don’t you think, pipsqueak?”

“It could happen” Julian, not pleased to be called a pipsqueak, sat up His hair stuck out in wild tufts all over his head His older sister Helen was always attacking hiood He had the Blackthorn hair, like his father and most of his brothers and sisters—wildly wavy, the color of dark chocolate The family resemblance always fascinated Emma, who looked very little like either of her parents, unless you counted the fact that her father was blond

Helen had been in Idris for ed fa to Emma’s parents, which mostly meant they looked at each other in a soppy way Emma was determined that if she ever fell in love, she would not be soppy in that manner She understood that there was some airls, but she didn’t understand why, and the Blackthorns see presence, and kept Helen fro

Helen’s current absence did ht in the roo the east wall showed the shadoeep of the mountains that separated the sea from the San Fernando Valley—dry, dusty hills riddled with canyons, cacti, and thornbushes Sometimes the Shadowhunters went outside to train, and E hidden paths and secret waterfalls and the sleepy lizards that rested on rocks near the the lizards to crawl into his palm and sleep there as he stroked their heads with his thumb

“Watch out!”

Emma ducked as a wooden-tipped blade flew by her head and bounced off the , hitting Mark in the leg on the rebound He tossed his book down and stood up, scowling Mark was technically on secondary supervision, backing up Katerina, although he preferred reading to teaching

“Tiberius,” Mark said “Do not throw knives at me”

“It was an accident” Livvy moved to stand between her twin and Mark Tiberius was as dark as Mark was fair, the only one of the Blackthorns—other than Mark and Helen, who didn’t quite count, because of their Doorlder blood—not to have the brown hair and blue-green eyes that were the faray eyes the color of iron

“No, it wasn’t,” said Ty “I was ai at you”