Lord of Shadows
Lord of Shadows is a young adult urban fantasy novel by Cassandra Clare. It is the second book in The Dark Artifices, which is chronologically the fourth series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. The book is set in the Los Angeles area in 2012. The titles from each chapter are derived from the poem Dreamland by Edgar Allan Poe.
Plot
This novel begins with Kit in the institute attempting to steal some of the Shadowhunter items to sell at the market, as he is planning to run away. However, Jace Herondale enters and they talk about being the only Herondales left and Jace convinces Kit not to run away as the institute is a safe place for him to be.Meanwhile, Emma, Julian, Mark and Cristina are at the pier where they encounter some sea demons. Julian is acting off towards Emma and Mark due to their relationship but he still saves them during a demon fight on the ferris wheel.
When they get back to the institute, Jace and Clary tell the Blackthorns that they need Malcolm's dead body but they have no idea where it is. They also use this opportunity to ask Mark about the land of Faerie as they believe that Sebastian, one of the villains from The Mortal Instruments, has left a weapon with the Faerie queen.
In a private conversation between Clary and Emma, Clary reveals that Jace proposed to her but she turned him down as she has been having dreams of her death recently. Clary tells Emma that if she dies, she has to tell everyone that she knew and that she wasn't afraid.
Julian has to go to the shadow market to get some medicine for Uncle Arthur, as Malcolm Fade can no longer provide it. He decides to bring Kit along due to his knowledge of the market. During this trip, Kit tells Julian that he believes Ty is autistic, but Julian has never heard of autism before. However, their trip to the shadow market is cut short as they are kicked out by Barnabas Hale for being Shadowhunters. This upsets Kit as the shadow market is the only place where he has ever felt accepted.
Meanwhile, the rest of the LA institute are searching Malcolm's house for any clues. Whilst there, they find a demon tentacle as well as a faerie glove with the symbol of the Unseelie King on it which proves that they were working together.
When they get back to the institute, the Centurions from the Scholomance walk in as they have now been made a part of the investigation. It is here that we meet Zara, Diego's fiancé which shocks everyone as him and Cristina have become a couple again recently.
After meeting the Centurions, Kit tries again to run away as he feels like no one notices him in the Institute. However, he is stopped by Ty who convinces him to stay. Ty then tells Kit and Livvy that he is very wary of the Centurions, especially Zara so he wants to them to investigate to see what they are hiding.
Jace and Clary then decide to leave the LA institute and go searching for the Faerie weapon, but before they leave, Jace gives Kit the Herondale ring to show that he is an official member of their family.
Meanwhile, in a private conversation Mark confesses to Emma that he is in love with Cristina but she doesn't know what to do with this information. Her and Julian end up having a conversation on the stairs of the institute which leads to them kissing. They are however then interrupted by Gwyn, the leader of the Wild Hunt. He pleads for Mark to save Kieran who has been sentenced to death by the Unseelie King for murdering Iarlath. It is during this conversation that Gwyn confesses that he likes Diana and provides her with an acorn that she can use to call on him whenever she wants.
Everyone tells Mark not to go save Kieran as he betrayed them but Mark feels a sense of loyalty towards Kieran so he decides to go save him. Julian, Emma and Cristina all follow him. On the road to Faerie, they are stopped by a phouka who guards the gate to the entrance to Faerie. The phouka takes each person aside separately to pay a toll and tells them that they will find something they want in Faerie. Julian is told that he will learn how to the break the parabatai bond, Cristina is told that she will find a way to end the Cold Peace, Emma is told that she will see the face of a dead loved one and Mark is told that he will once again ride with the Wild Hunt.
Once they get into Faerie, they learn that some magic has been done to their land so that none of their runes or angelic weapons work so they are left defenceless. They decide to set up camp but Cristina hears a revel occurring and decides to go. Mark follows her and they end up dancing together. At this revel, Cristina drinks a Faerie drink, a ribbon is tied to Mark and Cristina's hands and they end up kissing. Cristina also accidentally reveals to Mark that Julian is in love with Emma.
Meanwhile, Julian wanders away from the camp as he sees Emma in the woods. They end up kissing but it is revealed that he is actually kissing a shape shifting Faerie who is showing him who he most desires. Emma sees all of this happening and believes that he is kissing a beautiful Faerie girl. This leads her to believe that Julian has finally moved on from her.
When the group finally reconvene, they manage to find Kieran who is being held captive by the Unseelie King. Julian demands a trial by combat to win Kieran and the King agrees. He chooses Emma to fight his own warrior, who when he takes off his mask has the face of her father. This leads to Emma hesitating to kill him and they just about escape.
Meanwhile, in the mundane world, Ty, Livvy, and Kit all follow Zara to a cave where they see her tell Manuel, a fellow Centurion, about how she wants to take over the LA institute and wreak havoc on all of the Downworlders. Whilst Ty, Livvy and Kit are walking back to the institute, Kit and Livvy end up kissing but neither of them find it pleasurable.
When they get back to the institute, they go up to Arthur's office to tell him what they have just learned but they quickly discover that he is not a sane man. Diana then walks in and takes them to her office to explain the situation with Arthur and Julian truly running the institute. However, their conversation is cut short as a hoard of sea demons attack the institute, being led by Malcolm Fade. Malcolm shows the severed head of Jon Cartwright, one of the Centurions, and says that they have a day to give him Blackthorn blood or he will come back and attack again. Diana freaks out upon hearing this and portals all of the Blackthorn children to the London institute.
Back in Faerie, the group are rescued by Nene, Mark's aunt. She takes the group to the Seelie court to rest. This is where they discover that due to his torture, Kieran has several memories missing so he does not remember betraying Mark. He believes that he is still with Mark.
The Seelie Queen then takes Julian aside and uses her scrying glass to show Julian a vision of Arthur sacrificing himself to Malcolm, by giving him his Blackthorn blood so that the others may survive. Using Arthur's blood, Malcolm is able to raise Annabel but rather than being happy, she is angry that Malcolm has raised her. She kills him and runs off with the Black Volume.
The Seelie Queen wants the Black Volume so she tells Julian that if he brings her the Black Volume and helps her fight against the Unseelie King, she will help him break the parabatai bond. She also tells him that the only way to break his parabatai bond with Emma is to break all of the parabatai bonds.
The group then all reconvene in front of the Seelie Court where the Queen asks them all for their help in overthrowing the Unseelie King. She asks for Kieran to act as the Queen's messenger and asks him to be the Clave's representative for the Fae. In order to do this, Kieran has to swear his fealty to one of the Shadowhunters and he chooses Cristina, shocking everyone. Mark then decides that in order to keep Kieran happy and to make sure that he testifies against his father in front of the Clave, he has to keep pretending that they are together. Therefore, Emma and Mark stage a fake break-up and they all fly away from Faerie on Wild Hunt horses.
They are reunited with their siblings on the roof of the London institute where Gwyn, the head of the Wild Hunt, officially asks Diana on a date and she agrees.
Later on, inside the institute, Kit agrees to get the sight rune on his hand from Ty as his first rune. This allows Kit to be the only one to see the ghost of Jessamine, a character from The Infernal Devices as only Herondales can see ghosts. Jessamine informs Kit of Malcolm's previous address in London.
Julian, Emma and Cristina then all set out to go to his old house but as they are leaving, Cristina's wrists start to bleed. They quickly realise that is due to the ribbon that was tied on her during the Faerie revel which has acted as a binding spell between her and Mark. This means that the further she goes away from Mark, the more it will hurt them both. Therefore, she is forced to stay at the institute.
Julian and Emma go alone to his house and find Annabel's sketchbooks and Malcolm's journals. Through this, they quickly put together the full story between Malcolm and Annabel as he was raised by the Blackthorns. He was treated horribly by everyone in the family except for Annabel and they eventually fell in love.
Meanwhile, Diana has gone to Idris to talk to Jia Penhallow, the Consul. She wants to find a way to save the institute from Zara taking over so she tells Jia that Zara has been lying to everyone by claiming that she killed Malcolm. Jia asks Diana to head the institute but she says she cannot, for reasons we learn later on.
Whilst in Idris, Gwyn arrives to take Diana on their date, which turns out to be a picnic on the roof. However, in the distance, Diana notices a scorched piece of land on the edge of Idris where Shadowhunter powers no longer work.
Back at the institute, Dru is upset in her room at the fact that she is constantly being left behind. But whilst she's in her room, she hears a noises and finds Jaime Rosales, Diego's brother, hiding. Jaime says that he wants to talk to Cristina but he has to hide for the time being. Even though he won't tell her why, Dru agrees to help him.
Meanwhile, Ty, Livvy and Kit go off alone to investigate Blackthorn Hall to find more clues. There they find a crystal with Annabel's memories inside of them. Kit convinces the other two to go to the Shadow Market as he believes that they will find someone there who can extract the memories. A warlock named Shade agrees to help and they learn that Annabel was tortured by the Clave for the location of the Black Volume. She was also told that Malcolm had abandoned her as he disappeared from the cell they were holding her in.
After extracting the memories, they are attacked by demons at the market. Livvy gets poisoned by a demon but Magnus Bane shows up in time and saves them. When he drops them off back at the institute, he tells Ty that Livvy would heal quicker if she had a parabatai. This upsets Ty as Livvy has been asking Ty to be her parabatai for years but he keeps refusing.
Emma and Julian are still at Malcolm's house at this point but when Emma leaves, Annabel turns up to talk to Julian. He tries to convince her to give him the Black Volume as he only wants it to fight the Unseelie King and he doesn't want it for evil but she says that she refuses to give it to him because the Unseelie King is the reason Malcolm tried to raise her. Just as Emma is about to enter, Annabel disappears.
Julian and Emma then try to force some information out of the piskies that they captured who inform them that Annabel is hiding in a church. When they get to the church, they quickly realise that it is a trap. Annabel left a note at the church that said that by chasing after her when she specifically told him not to, Julian has failed her test. A demon then appears which they fight. However, in order to defeat it, they draw a rune together that ends up burning down the whole stone church, which should not have happened. This shows how strong their parabatai bond is getting and how dangerous it can be.
Meanwhile, back at the institute, Mark and Cristina are dancing in the ballroom when Kieran walks in and joins them. They all dance happily together.
Ty and Kit both decide to go to the Cornwall institute so that Ty can leave a letter for Annabel.
Later that night, Cristina follows Kieran who meets his brother Adaon so that he can ask him to take over the throne when the Unseelie King dies. However, Kieran's other brother, Erec, has also followed them and tries to kill Cristina. Kieran tries to save her and ends up murdering Erec instead. Before Erec dies, he reveals that the Unseelie King has sent the Seven Riders of Mannon after them in order to retrieve the Black Volume.
Whilst Kit, Ty and Livvy are out in London, they are attacked by half of the riders but then they are saved by Diana and Gwyn. Emma and Julian are attacked by the other riders at Malcolm's house but Emma manages to kill one of them using her sword, Cortana. The riders haven't been killed in centuries so upon seeing one of their comrades die, they run away.
Emma and Julian end up sleeping together back in Malcolm's house and Emma tells him about the parabatai curse. Julian then confesses that the Seelie Queen told them that the Black Volume has instructions about how to break the parabatai bond but in order to break theirs, they would have to break all of the parabatai bonds. Emma makes Julian promise that they will never do it. Magnus then walks into the house to find Emma and Julian in bed together. He tells them that the kids were attacked and brings them back to the institute.
Back at the institute, Dru takes Cristina to meet Jaime who fills her in about the Diego and Zara engagement. He confesses that the engagement is fake and that Zara's family have an heirloom that allows people to enter Faerie undetected that only a Rosales can work, hence why they want her to marry Diego. Diego told Jaime to steal the heirloom so he ran off with it. This means that Diego's engagement is ongoing until they find it. He then gives Cristina a letter from Diego and leaves.
Dru gets sad that Jaime has left her as it means she's gone back to being invisible. She finds a backpack in her room that Jaime left behind and touches something that transports her to Faerie. Here she meets a boy called Ash who is wearing a crown. He asks her if his mother sent her and if she is worried about him but Dru then gets sucked back to the institute.
Gwyn and Diana have a heart to heart in her Idris apartment as she is bandaging him up after their fight with the riders. She admits that she is actually trans and used to be called David. She used mundane medicine in order to transition which is forbidden among Shadowhunters. She confesses that this is the reason why she can't run the LA institute as she is afraid of being discovered.
Back at the institute, Kieran and Cristina summon a projection of Adaon but they end up talking to the Unseelie King instead. He tells Kieran that he wants the Black Volume as his first child was taken and murdered because of it. He then threatens to kill Kieran if he testifies to the Clave. He tries to show Kieran that the Shadowhunters are manipulating him by giving him his memories back. Kieran then remembers about his break up with Mark and he feels like he has been betrayed.
Julian and Magnus then have a talk about the parabatai curse and decide that exile is probably the best option as it will slow down the curse. Magnus suggests they talk to Robert Lightwood, the Inquisitor as he might allow them to set their own terms. They decide that it would be better for Emma to be exiled to Mexico so she can stay with Cristina and Julian can still look after the children.
Ty also tells Kit that he doesn't want to go to the Scholomance anymore as he wants to stay with his family.
Magnus manages to break Mark and Cristina's bond but tells them they have to spend hours apart in order for it to work. This makes both of them miserable. However, Cristina convinces Kieran to forgive Mark so they both end up forgiving each other for the past.
Meanwhile, in Idris, Diana takes Jia to the blight in the forest and Jia reveals that Aline, her daughter, and her fiancé Helen have found similar spots across the globe.
At the institute, the riders show up and they engage in a battle with the Shadowhunters until Annabel appears with the Black Volume. The riders get scared away by Annabel as she reveals that she knows the Unseelie King's true name, which can be used to defeat him. Annabel then reveals to the Shadowhunters that she only came due to Ty's letter and she agrees to speak to Julian alone.
Julian asks Annabel to testify in front of the council in Idris and she agrees but with a few conditions: Magnus Bane stays with her the whole time, along with Julian and that she gets to keep Blackthorn Hall. Julian agrees but manages to take some photos of the Black Volume secretly during this conversation.
The whole group then portal to Idris, where Julian and Emma go talk to Robert. He agrees to allow Emma to be exiled to Mexico.
After this conversation, they all assemble in the council hall and the Blackthorns are reunited with their other sister, Helen. Meanwhile, Annabel, Magnus, Kieran and Kit are in a separate office. However, Magnus collapses so they have to send for Alec. Annabel then begins to panic as she realises that she won't have Magnus with her during her testimony. Kit, Alex and Kieran realise that all of the warlocks are falling ill but no one knows why. Diego then comes to take Kieran to the Scholomance so that he will be safe as it is what Cristina asked him to do. Kieran agrees to go.
In the council hall, Annabel gets up and tells everyone her story. Zara starts to get irritated and riles the crowd up who then keep calling Annabel a liar. Julian tells everyone that Zara is irritated because Annabel is the one who actually killed Malcolm so Zara has been lying the whole time.
The crowd demand that Annabel testifies via the Mortal Sword which makes Annabel anxious because of her previous torture via the Mortal Sword. She starts to get more anxious and ends up stabbing Robert Lightwood in the chest, killing him.
Emma then engages in a fight with Annabel, and Cortana ends up shattering the Mortal Sword. Livvy rushes up to give Julian a weapon to fight Annabel but she ends up getting stabbed in the chest by Annabel. Ty collapses across the hall seeing this happen and Kit goes to comfort him. Julian reaches Livvy and tries to save her but she is already dead.
Emma is filled with rage about Livvy's death and goes to kill Annabel but she disappears in a dark smoke and all Emma sees is the Unseelie King's symbol.
Characters
- Emma Carstairs - a 17 year old Shadowhunter that has lived most of her life in the Los Angeles Institute with the Blackthorn family. She has brown eyes, long, pale blond hair, and pale skin, with many scars, including a deep scar up her right arm. Emma is a passionate and hardworking Shadowhunter and sometimes considered the best of her generation.
- Julian "Jules" Blackthorn - another 17 year old Shadowhunter who has lived his entire life at the Los Angeles Institute. He lives there alongside his siblings and Emma Carstairs, his best friend and parabatai. Julian has dark brown messy hair and startling blue-green eyes. He is described as tall and slender, lanky, with high cheekbones. As an artist, he is usually seen untidy or splattered with paint. His main concern is for his younger siblings, as they are all orphans and he feels responsible for them.
- Mark Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter residing at the Los Angeles Institute and is one of the many Blackthorn children. He was a former Hunter who rode with the Wild Hunt. He and his older sister, Helen, have the same faerie mother and are part-faerie. He is 21 years old and is described as being tall, thin, with broad shoulders and the signature blue-green eyes of the Blackthorns. However, since Mark became part of the Wild Hunt; his right eye has since turned gold. Like Helen, he also has pointed ears and curly white-gold hair.
- Tiberius "Ty" Nero Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter from the Los Angeles Institute. He is 15 years old as of 2012. Tiberius, unlike most of his siblings, has black hair and gray eyes, as opposed to the family's trademark brown hair and blue-green eyes. Ty is autistic and thinks and acts differently from his siblings; however Shadowhunters do not know about or understand autism.
- Livia "Livvy" Blackthorn - the twin sister of Tiberius Blackthorn, as well as the sister of Jules, Dru, and Tavvy, and the half-sister of Helen and Mark. She lives at the Los Angeles Institute with her siblings, under the guardianship of their uncle, Arthur. She is 15 years old as of 2012. Livia, like her other siblings, has the Blackthorn brown hair and blue-green eyes. Livvy was born with gray eyes like her twin, Tiberius, though hers had changed to blue-green since.
- Drusilla "Dru" Blackthorn - a 13-year-old Shadowhunter from the Blackthorn family who lives at the Los Angeles Institute. She has the Blackthorns' signature dark brown hair and blue-green eyes. She is quite tall for her age. Her body has since already gone through puberty early, showing off her curves to the point where Dru, at thirteen, has been mistaken for seventeen or eighteen years old by mundane boys. This has made her very self-conscious about her body because unlike most Shadowhunters who are wiry or muscular, she is round-bodied and doesn't fit into the gear designed for girls in her age group. Drusilla is quite shy.
- Octavian "Tavvy" Blackthorn - a Shadowhunter of the Blackthorn family and is the youngest in their family. He resides in the Los Angeles Institute. He is 7 years old as of 2012. Tavvy shares the Blackthorn family's dark brown hair and blue-green eyes. According to Jules, he is quite small and thin for his age. He likes paints because they soothe him.
- Cristina "Tina" Mendoza-Rosales - a Shadowhunter from Mexico who came to the Los Angeles Institute and became fast friends with the Institute ward Emma Carstairs. She is 18 years old as of 2012. She has dark brown eyes and long, black hair. Cristina is a generally wise, composed, and gentle person. She is principled and thoughtful, strong and unwavering in her loyalty and morals.
- Diego Rocío Rosales - one of the youngest Centurions to ever graduate from the Scholomance. He is 19 years old as of 2012. Diego has thick, dark hair. He is often referred to by the other characters as "Perfect Diego".
- Diana Wrayburn - a Shadowhunter who used to run a weapons shop called Diana's Arrow in Alicante. After the Dark War, Diana volunteered to be stationed at Los Angeles to become the tutor of the Blackthorn children. Diana has black hair and dark skin. On her cheek is a tattoo of a silver koi fish.
- Arthur Blackthorn - the current head of the Los Angeles Institute and the uncle of the Blackthorn children Mark, Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, and Octavian. Arthur resembles his brother, Andrew Blackthorn, albeit smaller and paler. He has a slight figure, a round face, brown hair, and the trademark Blackthorn blue-green eyes. He also wears spectacles.
- Malcolm Fade - a very powerful warlock and the High Warlock of Los Angeles. Malcolm is a tall man with an angular face, white hair, and purple eyes. He is strangely attractive. He has the appearance of a twenty-seven-year-old man.
- Annabel Callisto Blackthorn- Malcolm Fade's former lover from centuries before. She was walled up alive in a tomb by her family when they found out that she was in love with Malcolm. Her death was hidden from Malcolm but he eventually found out through Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Annabel Lee". Diving into a wild obsession by the loss of her, Malcolm found a spell and raised her from the dead centuries after. She, however, was driven insane by her awakening from the dead. She killed Malcolm and later on ran off with the Black Volume of the Dead, a spellbook formerly crucial to Malcolm's plans which contained dangerous spells capable of destroying the world.
- Kieran - a faerie and a member of the Wild Hunt. He is one of the Unseelie King's many children and is thus considered a prince of the Unseelie Court. Kieran is said to be beautiful—inhumanly so—and fierce. He has high cheekbones and wide spaced eyes, the left black and the right a deep silver. He is pale and his body is lithe and graceful. As a prince of Faerie, Kieran wears battered white gauntlets. His thick hair changes color—specifically colors of the sea, due in part to his nixie heritage—depending on his mood, though he could also change them at will.
- Johnny Rook - a mysterious figure who ran a booth at the Los Angeles Shadow Market. He is described as having blond graying hair and blue eyes. Johnny rarely showed affection, but when he did, it was only for his son, Kit.
- Christopher "Kit" Rook - a Shadowhunter who was raised as a mundane, previously unaware of his heritage. He was born Christopher Jonathan Herondale and is the son of the man who called himself Johnny Rook. He and Johnny are descendants of the notorious Tobias Herondale and his lost line. He is described as having blond hair and blue eyes.
- Magnus Bane - The High Warlock of Brooklyn. Being over four centuries old, his life has since intertwined with several Shadowhunters and Downworlders over the centuries, but being a warlock still appears to be nineteen years old. Magnus has brown skin, is very tall, with a long and lean body. His main warlock mark is his yellow-green "cat-like eyes" with vertical pupils.. He is also noted to have a somewhat Asian appearance, due to the curve of his eyes. He has dark black hair. He wears all kinds of make-up, such as glitter around his eyes, lipstick, and nail polish. He likes to flaunt his beauty by often dressing in flamboyant and glitzy ensembles. He arrived at the Los Angeles Institute to investigate a flare of necromantic magic.
- Theresa "Tessa" Gray - an American warlock; half-Shadowhunter, half-Eidolon demon. She moved to London in 1878 and her life has since been entangled in the lives of the Nephilim. Tessa has wavy brown hair, steely gray-blue eyes, an oval face, and a slender body. She is around 5'9. While she used to think herself average, several of her friends have called her not conventionally beautiful, but kindly attractive. Being immortal, Tessa appears to be a young woman in her early twenties.
- James "Jem" Carstairs - an inactive Shadowhunter and a former Silent Brother. Once an orphan living in the London Institute in the 1870s, along with his parabatai, Will Herondale, he is now a mortal who is over a hundred years old, cured of his illness. Jem's hair is dark brown, almost black, with only a single silver streak remaining, and his eyes are dark brown with gold flecks. Due to his stagnancy as a Silent Brother, Jem maintained his youthful appearance, looking like someone in his early twenties, though his wisdom and experiences in his long life as a Silent Brother reflects in his eyes.
- Gwyn ap Nudd - AKA Gwyn the Hunter, is a faerie and the leader of the Wild Hunt. He has heterochromia iridum; one of his eyes is black, and the other is a very pale blue. He is also described as a big, broad man with a beard, wide eyes, broad cheekbones, and wicked eyebrows. He shows great interest in Diana Wrayburn and even took her on a picnic in Brocelind Forest.
- Ash - is a 13 year old faerie that Drusilla Blackthorn meets in 2012 when she accidentally touched the Rosales family heirloom and was sucked into Faerie. Drusilla finds Ash in a room with walls decorated all over with symbols like a hawk, a throne and a broken crown. Ash seems to be very demanding, being aware of his high rank and using it to command people around. On the other side, he seems to be very easy to surprise and is very much curious about the things happening around him. He has short, white-blond hair, green eyes and appears to be around the age of 13. His face is typically sharp for a faerie and he wears rich clothes made of silk and velvet, combined with heavy boots. There is also a little, pale metal band around his head, seeming like a crown.
- Nene - is a faerie healer of the Seelie Court, and is the sister of Lady Nerissa. She is also a handmaiden for the Seelie Queen. She is described to as a gentle and kind faerie with pale blond hair bound back with ropes of flowers. In 2012, Nene helped Mark, Julian Blackthorn, Emma Carstairs, and Cristina Rosales rescue Kieran from his father, the Unseelie King. She shot burning arrows into the sky to cover their escape, and opened a door to the Seelie Court for them.
Reception
It was a Publishers Weekly 2017 bestseller.