Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  Malcolm had been at the Institute for roughly a fortnight when Annabel Blackthorn came down with scalding fever.

  “You. Warlock.” Mrs. Blackthorn’s fingers wrapped around his wrist so tightly he was sure to have bruises the next day. “Look at me.”

  He did, eyes reluctantly — the cabinet’s contents haunted him, when would they grow tired of him? when would he be the one cut up into spoils and put on display? — flicking from the cabinet to the Shadowhunter.

  While usually described as a woman in the middle of every room, in control of every crowd, Adelaide Blackthorn seemed uncharacteristically ruffled. Lips puckered, eyes creased, curling brown hair escaping the cover of her askew hat and tumbling down her cheeks and neck, the buttons on her dress either going unbuttoned or being done in the wrong holes: she’d evidently gotten the Mundane servants to dress her quickly, quicker than what was normal or proper. Something was wrong.

  Adrenaline spiked through his veins like liquid fire. “I did not do it! Whatever it was”—he jerked back, trying desperately to break her grip—he wanted to live! eight years wasn’t enough!—and failing spectacularly, shoes leaving scuffs on the floor someone would have to clean later—“I did not do it!”

  She considered him for a moment, and then she struck him, the wounds from her sharpened nails drawing blood.

  “Be quiet, and listen, you demonic son of whore.”

  He stilled, blood dripping onto his collar, onto the floor, onto the carpet. Rust on mahogany, rust on dyed sheep’s wool, rust past his lips, on his tongue, down his throat, choking him until he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

  Malcolm swallowed.

  Malcolm blinked the tears of pain and fear out of his eyes.

  Malcolm made himself small and ready to be useful — ready to be used.

  “Yes?” Then, after a pause that he worried went on for just a bit too long. “Ma’am? What can I help you with?” His tone was measured and controlled, cheerful and polite, and not at all angry about being chastised, about being struck so hard could taste his own blood. He had hastily put on a mask that Adelaide didn’t seem to notice.

  “Isn’t everything just so much better when you’re well-behaved? When you don’t make me have to punish you?” She awkwardly patted the cheek she hadn’t ruined, and turned, pulling him behind her as she moved down the corridor.

  “Annabel’s contracted scalding fever. I need you to make yourself useful”—did they scream? he wondered, as the Shadowhunters held them down and peeled their skin off layer by layer? as they bled them dry? pried off scales with knives? pulled teeth out of gums with pliers? Had they screamed? Would he?—“and tend to her while I’m gone. Ezekiel and Jerome haven’t caught it, so I’m taking them to visit the Elkhallow’s. Mr. Blackthorn and Abner are still going to be here in the Institute, so you’ll still need to mind your behavior. I’ve given Abner express instructions to whip you if you cause mischief.” He didn’t have need of them, he’d already developed a routine of making Malcolm’s life as miserable as possible in as many small ways as possible.

  She stopped in front of a door that looked like all of the others, and let go of his arm, deep purple bruises coloring where her hand had circled around his wrist like a shackle.

  “Here. This is her room.” On closer examination Malcolm saw that delicate, tiny vines and flowers were painted up the side of the handle, paint slowly wearing away from age and use of the brass door knob.

  “Behave, dog.” A rustle of skirts, a repetitive clicking pattern of boot heels against wood, and Mrs. Adelaide Blackthorn was gone.

  Malcolm balled his hand into a fist, and paused, hand hovering in the air, weariness and uncertainty a weight around his neck like the trailing end of a noose. He wanted to fold. He wanted to crumble into himself. He wanted to flee. He wanted to hide.

  But he couldn’t do any of that, so he didn’t do anything except what he was told to do.

  He knocked on the door.

  A serving girl opened it.

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  Her eyes—brown with green flecks, damp forest soil broken by the growing shoots of undergrowth—widened in surprise as she took the sight of him standing in front of her in, lips parting slightly as she exhaled a soft but firm line of words, blood rushing to her cheeks before she could even finished the sentence.

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He tried not to mind.

  “‘Wh’t ‘er you doin’ ‘ere?” She stood in the doorway like she had been born to do it, and always had, a chess piece carved from mottled sea-stone, a sentry guard cloaked in the grackle’s wing habit of a house maid. She was quite a few years older than him, fourteen, or fifteen, maybe, but she was small, compact, perhaps he could — but, no, on further thought, that wouldn’t do it all — built like a fisherman’s wife, and almost certainly bred from seafaring stock, strong of stance and broad of shoulder, with thick, greyish skin and an even thicker sense of justice and superstition, he might have been able to overpower her, particularly if he used his magic, but Malcolm didn’t like his odds. And besides, he didn’t particularly want to hurt her.

  If he did, wasn’t he exactly what she thought he was? What the Nephilim thought he was?

  He rubbed his wrist, trying to take some of the color and swelling down, face carefully blank at the accusatory look she was trying and failing to keep out of her eyes. The taste of blood was fading, but his face still ached.

  “Mrs. Blackthorn said I was to help.” The mask was firmly on now, even if Malcolm had tied it on with shaking fingers. There was nothing but gentle politeness in his tone, nothing to betray his true feelings, his true thoughts. He was the model of useful—ready, and willing, to be used.

  Before the maid could open her mouth to retort a third voice rang out, the origin in the darkened room behind her and the partially-open door: high and clear, dark and smooth, in both parts equal measure smoke and silk, somehow lyrical despite the sickness sawing at the throat.

  It was Annabel’s voice.

  “Let him in, Madeline. Can’t do much worse than already happened.”

  Malcolm thought he would gladly stand outside of her door for the rest of his life, if he could just hear her speak once more. It was like music, her voice, and he didn’t have the words for it yet, but it quieted the aching part of his soul.

  Madeline flattened her lips together into a bloodless slash, but opened the door fully and obediently moved out of the way, letting him in.

  If she noticed how his eyes flared as he moved from the hallway into the bedroom, pupils reflecting the scant light shining through the drawn curtains in the same way as that of a rabid cat or a white-fotted fox or any other manner of wild, feral animal, Madeline didn’t say anything, choosing instead to close the door. She wore a key on a thin cotton string around her neck, but she didn’t lock it, perhaps she had forgotten.

  The bedrooms of the Cornwall Institute were apparently all the same, whether you were the daughter of the Institute head or the bastard son of demon who had been bought for a pound and six pence: all cold, all grey, all stone, all beautiful, and all impersonal, as it trying to imprint the idea upon its residents that none of this was permanent, that everything was temporary, that they were nothing and nobody, dust and shadows, but the next brick in the wall, the next soldier in the line, because they could die tomorrow and nothing would change, nothing would ever change, because the war wasn’t over, the war would never be over, not even in death, their bones to be ground into dust and used to ward the City of Glass — all of them that was, Malcolm realized as he moved to the center of the room, Madeline shadowing him on heavy, striking footsteps, except Annabel’s.

  The mural stretched across every inch of the available space, paint even behind the bed and the dresser and the vanity, a swirling, living tapestry of color and light and scent and sound that was vaguely reminiscent of something Malcolm couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  A faerie woman, lovingly fashioned, emerged from the surface of a lake, a sword held aloft in a pearly-white hand, a golden chalice in the other. She was beautiful enough to be a part of either of the courts that ruled the fey, but something about her body—scales, gills, teeth—and bearing told Malcolm otherwise. She was far older, and far more powerful, and gave her gift only to the few who were brave enough and strong enough to reach her — if the sun-bleached bones scattered about the shoreline were any indication.

  Arthur’s Lady of the Lake, if he had to hedge a guess.

  “She’s alive,” Malcolm said, feeling nearly delirious. It was beautiful. When was the last time he had looked at something truly beautiful? “If I reached out and touched her, I swear she would breathe.”

  “Might feel like I’m dying, but not dead yet.” Annabel Blackthorn was laid out on her made bed with her feet bare and her face covered by a wet washcloth.

  “I meant your art, my Lady. It’s beautiful.”

  “Not a’lady.” Malcolm took her hand without thinking about the potential consequences — Madeline shifting her weight — and flinched back at the heat ruminating from her entire body. Annabel was burning up, but just to be sure, he lifted the back of her hand, an open eye scrawled across the back, to his mouth and brushed his lips across her skin.

  The taste of his blood was gone, the taste of her sweat had taken its place, hot and salty, worming its way past his lips to settle on his tongue and mind — would her tears taste the same? would her blood? was this what being a vampire felt like? was this why the Nephilim cut Downworlders into pieces? — as he dropped her hand and turned to Madeline, fear cracking through the mask for the first time.

  What if he couldn’t save her? What would be done to him then?

  Would his eyes float in a jar in the cabinet a hallway down? Or would the Blackthorns take his hair, white as snow, white as spilled sugar, white as black parchment, with pieces of his scalp still attached?

  “Go! Draw a bath!” Madeline looked mutiness, but she turned on her heels and raced over to the wall farthest from them and—of course Annabel had a private washroom, he merely forgotten it, what with the door being so covered in paint—yanked a door open, before disappearing inside.

  “I’ll — I’ll —” He turned back to Annabel, who lay flat on her back so still, she might have been a corpse, and, without even knowing what he was saying, said, “I’ll undress her.”

Chapter Text

  Before he could stop her, Annabel swung herself upwards into a sitting position, and grabbed at one of the four posts of her bed to steady her swaying frame.

  “Mister Fade.” Her eyes cut through him, chips of polished tourmaline fringed by lashes as thick and dark as pine needles.

  Trapped in her gaze, he wondered if this was how sinners felt kneeling at the feet of God: great and terrible, loved and despised.

  “Miss Blackthorn.”

  She was examining him in the half-light with a more critical expression, brows furrowed at the centers.

  “Finally got into your head that I’m not a lady, have you?”

  Suddenly finding a letter-opener tossed haphazardly on a side table very worthy of his attention, Malcolm stayed silent.

  “Am I right in assuming my mother did that to you?”

  Seeing his opening, Malcolm lept on the opportunity like a cat on a mouse. “Yes, but, ma’am, your mother told me to—”

  “To all the hells with what my mother said! You are not going to undress me.”

  “Whyever not?” Malcolm cried, feeling exasperated, “I’m trying to save your life!” Purple sparks were beginning to flare between his outstretched fingers.

  “Scalding fever doesn’t kill people.” Annabel said, delight on her face at the sight of his magic, even if it was overshadowed by her anger, “all it will do is make me suffer.” Face flushed, sides heaving for breath — could he somehow give her his with magic? would she take it? is that what Mrs. Blackthorn would want? — air soaked with the tang of sweat, eyes glazing over to look like a pair of marbles by the minute, it was abundantly clear that it was already causing her suffering.

  “Well, than, I’m trying to spare your suffering. Why won’t you let me help you? Don’t you want to take a bath?” She had to, she was burning alive. If Malcolm had to knock her over the head to get her to do it he would, but he rather hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “It wouldn’t be proper. And I don’t care much for propriety, but this is—”

  Wincing suddenly, she ground her teeth together with a harsh, grating sound. Hand tightening on the bedpost, her knuckles went bloodless white.

  He was sitting beside her on the bed, his hand hesitantly placed on her shoulder, before he even had time to properly realize that he had moved.

  He thought she’d push him away.

  She didn’t.

  “Why won’t you let me help you?” He asked again, voice dropping into a softer sound.

  “Well, Mister Fade, I only met you a week ago—”

  Two weeks, but he didn’t correct her.

  “—during tea time, the only things you know about me are my name and that I like to take my tea with cream and sugar. You hardly know me at all, it would not be right for you to undress me.”

  Wordlessly, Annabel picked up the washcloth from where it had fallen into her lap and started to dab at the cuts on his face.

  (She was gentle with him. Gentler than her family and their servants had ever been.

  He told himself to ignore it.)

  “And as I have already said, I do not care much for propriety”—her breathing was evening out, and her color was returning to a more normal shade, but she was still burning from the inside out as if holy fire were caught in her veins—“but Madeleine does. She will tell Mother and Father”—he tried to ignore how soft her skin was when she drew her thumb across his bottom lip—“if I let you undress me, and they will punish me, and I do not want to be punished.”

  He caught her wrist, fingers encircling the place where her pulse beat out a soft, fragile melody that was familiar in the way that forgotten dreams always were, and forced her hand to lower, the cloth falling between them on the blankets.

  “Have you considered,” he began, her pulse beneath his fingers, their breath on the each other’s faces, “a compromise, my Lady?”