Prologue
Even being stood in front of the full moon, like some goddess of rotund fertility would not pull the children out of Annabel Blackthorn.
They, encased in their cradle of motherly warmth, suspected the cold and unrelenting fate that awaited them.
But when the day came, Annabel cried with relief as she watched the first swaddled girl taken from her. She only saw her first daughter for a second, less than a second, but she felt a kind of love that tore her heart from her chest. Each snuffle and mewling cry was a call to motherhood which Annabel was forbidden to answer.
Then, seven minutes later, pain hit her so hard that she could hardly breath.
"Please, I can't do it again, cut me open," she begged.
But the Healer ignored her pleas. Annabel saw black spots and heard a whisper of Malcolm's voice in her ear until the second daughter slipped into the world.
Sweat covered, gasping, Annabel shivered as her father entered the room.
"What have you done with them?" she summoned her whittled strength enough to demand, "don't hurt them."
"They are abomination to the Shadowhunter kind," he scowled down at the pathetic mess of a daughter before him.
"They are newborn, they know not what they are…"
"If had known those things were growing inside of you I'd have killed you myself," he growled in reply.
At his heartless words a pain ripped through her worse than childbirth.
"Please, let me see them," she begged, "let me name them."
Annabel felt her arm being torn from the bedcovers, and her vision blurred as the man she had loved first of all carved a rune into her wrist. Sleep now.
"The first is Magna, the second…" she murmured, "is Alina."
The last thing she saw was her fathers cruel face, a face of undiluted disgust.
"Tell Malcolm…" she whispered.
Her father only fulfilled one of those requests before he locked his daughter in her watery tomb.
Magna and Alina.
They know not what they are.
They know not who they are.
But, by the angel, the Iron Twins intend to find out.
