Her mother was in the sitting room with a tea tray, baby Alex in a basket by her side. Her father sat opposite, engaged in reading the newspaper.
Anna stepped into the room.
Both her parents looked up. She saw them take in her new clothes, as well as her short hair. She stood in the doorway, bracing herself for whatever response was coming.
A long moment passed.
“I told you the blue waistcoat was the one,” Gabriel said to Cecily. “It brings out her eyes.”
“I did not disagree,” said Cecily, rocking the baby. “I just said she would also look very well in red.”
Anna began to smile.
“Much better than your brother’s clothes,” Gabriel said. “He does dreadful things to them with sulfur and acids.”
Cecily examined Anna’s shorn locks.
“Very sensible,” she said. “Hair can be cumbersome in battle. I like it very much.” She rose to her feet. “Come sit,” she added. “Stay with your brother and father a moment. There is something I meant to fetch for you.”
As her mother left the room, Anna felt her limbs go tingly as she sat down on the settee. She reached down to Alex. He had just woken up and was looking all around the room, taking in all the wonders anew in the way that babies do whenever they awake and find that the world is still there, to be understood in all of its myriad complexities.
“I understand how you feel,” she said to her brother.
He smiled a toothless smile at her and reached up a chubby hand. She extended her own, and he grabbed her finger.
Her mother returned only a few minutes later with a small blue box.
“You know,” Cecily said, sitting down and refilling her teacup, “my parents did not want me to be a Shadowhunter. They had fled the Clave. And your Uncle Will . . .”
“I know,” Anna said. Gabriel gazed fondly at his wife.
“But I was a Shadowhunter. I knew it then, when I was fifteen. I knew it was in my blood. Foolish people say so many things. But we know who we are, inside.”
She set the blue box on the table and pushed it toward Anna.
“If you will accept it,” her mother said.
Inside the box was a necklace with a glimmering red gem. Latin words were etched onto the back.
“For your protection,” she said. “You know what it does.”
“It senses demons,” Anna said, astonished. Her mother wore it nearly every time she went out to fight, though that was rarer now that Alexander had come along.
“It cannot protect your heart, but it can protect the rest of you,” Cecily said. “It is an heirloom. It should be yours.”
Anna fought back the tears that sought to fill her eyes.
She took up the necklace and clasped it about her throat. She stood up and gazed at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. A handsome reflection gazed back at her. The necklace felt right, just as her short hair did. I do not have to be only one thing, Anna thought. I can choose what suits me when it suits me. The trousers and jacket do not make me a man, and the necklace does not make me a woman. They are only what makes me feel beautiful and powerful in this moment. I am exactly as I choose to be. I am a Shadowhunter who wears gorgeous suits and a legendary pendant.
She looked at her mother’s reflection in the glass. “You were right,” she said. “The red does suit me.”
Gabriel chuckled softly, but Cecily only smiled.
“I have always known you, my love,” Cecily said. “You are the gem of my heart. My firstborn. My Anna.”
Anna thought of all the pain of the day again—the wound that had ripped her chest open and exposed her heart. But now it was as if her mother had drawn a rune over it and closed it. The scar was there, but she was whole.
It was like being Marked all over again, defining who she was. This was Anna Lightwood.