Chapter 29 · The Face Behind the Gate

“Mother?”

Dorian said it like the word had cut his throat on the way out.

The woman above the blood gate smiled at him.

Not Sable’s old sharp smile. Not the thin little mouth Nessa had seen under the silver mask. This mouth was softer. Familiar, apparently. Her dark hair fell over one shoulder in a neat wave, untouched by the red light bleeding up through the floor.

Around her, dozens of people knelt in binding thread.

Mothers. Fathers. Two teenage boys. An old man with blood running from one ear. Every one of them had a red registry mark burned into the skin over their hearts.

The threads tied them all to the open circle in the center of the Registry floor.

And the circle was opening.

Nessa grabbed Dorian’s arm before he could take another step.

“Don’t.”

He didn’t look at her.

His face had gone gray under the blood and sweat. The wound in his side had soaked through the strip of shirt Jace had tied around him. Black veins crawled under the skin of his neck, moving slow and ugly toward his jaw.

“Let me go,” Dorian said.

“No.”

“That is my mother.”

“No, it isn’t.”