Chapter Text
This was why he despised legwork, Mycroft Holmes mused to himself as he finished the demon with a thrust of his sword to its chest. The moment he pulled the weapon free, the demon exploded in a shower of sparks and vanished, sent back to whatever hellish dimension it had come from. Even so, the warpage of his blade served as evidence of its attack, and Mycroft cursed the acidic properties of demon ichor as he threw the now-useless weapon to the side.
Though his body was littered with wounds as it always was after such a fight, the most severe of which was a large burn that snaked around his arm from where he’d been grabbed by one of the creature’s tentacles, he paid them no mind. He’d felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, after all, and that always took precedence. Pulling it out, he saw an email from Anthea, reminding him of his appointment with Monsieur Verlac, the French ambassador’s assistant. It was in half an hour, which gave him more than enough time to clean up and study the rest of the contents of the email. Stowing his phone back in his pocket, Mycroft drew a quick iratze on the skin of his arm. It was hardly enough, but it would have to do.
As he walked back to his office, Mycroft could feel the stinging of the rest of his wounds, but he pushed the pain aside. Instead, he focussed on the meeting that he had coming up. Monsieur Verlac was an illusive man, he’d found, one who had no digital trail to speak of. That the ambassador of France had hired him, much less chosen him as a representative, was more than just confusing; it was cause for concern. What did the French have to hide?
Mycroft’s phone buzzed again, and he pulled it out to see that Sherlock was calling him. “Hello?” he answered, careful to keep any traces of pain out of his voice. “Is your case going successfully?”
“If it was, I wouldn’t be calling you,” Sherlock pointed out, his voice cutting through the air between them. There was a strange tension in the sharpness of his brother’s voice that caused a flutter of something unwelcome to tighten his chest, though Mycroft dismissed it as easily as the pain from the demon’s claws. “I’d be out celebrating. With John.” Though jealousy felt like poison clawing at his heart, the pain was so familiar at this point that he was easily able to ignore it.
“Then what is the problem?” Mycroft asked, the words coming out colder than he’d intended.
“Is there a Mr. Dumas in the Queen’s employ?” Sherlock inquired, as though he couldn’t decide whether he wanted Mycroft’s help or to prove that he didn’t need it.
“Why do you want to know?” Mycroft responded. “What has he done?” Mycroft had never fully trusted Dumas, whose sharp features and sharper gaze repelled all but the most polite conversationalists, but that didn’t mean he’d expected him to be involved in a boy’s murder.
“So there is,” Sherlock murmured, more to himself than to Mycroft. He gave no sign of having heard Mycroft’s question, even when it was repeated. Though Mycroft had seen how aggravated Sherlock’s mundane flatmate got when Sherlock was so lost in his mind palace that the outside world all but ceased to exist for him, he didn’t understand the sentiment or share it. “He isn’t mundane, is he?”
“A warlock,” Mycroft informed him with a frown. It wasn’t that he despised Downworlders, or even that he just distrusted them. To do either of those things would be pure hypocrisy considering his own Seelie heritage and the fact that he’d placed his brother’s life and livelihood in the hands of a werewolf. It was more that he knew the sorts of things a warlock could do with a child’s blood if they didn’t mind breaking the Law, and none of them were good.
“I thought so,” Sherlock remarked. “He isn’t responsible for the child’s death, but-”
“But he did benefit from it,” Mycroft finished for him.
“Precisely,” Sherlock agreed. “I simply need to know how.”
“He won’t tell you,” Mycroft pointed out, trying to figure out the best way to make Dumas reveal what he’d used the boy’s blood for. He knew, of course, that had he and Sherlock denied the heritage that made them both warriors, Dumas might be more willing to trust Sherlock. Then again, had they done that, Sherlock would likely not have taken this case. “Nor would he tell Dr. Watson.”
“John,” Sherlock corrected him sharply, though his tone carried an edge Mycroft knew all too well—a mixture of irritation and something less easily defined. “He might not be your friend, but he is mine. I’d much prefer it if you called him by his first name.” Sherlock would never say that he was only asking because Dr. Watson wanted him to, but they both knew it to be true.
“He might be more forthcoming with Anthea, however,” Mycroft thought aloud, his voice as cool as ever, though the thought of Sherlock’s ‘friendship’ with Watson—no, John—still left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. While Sherlock might be willing to let past transgressions slide, Mycroft knew he would never be able to forget sight of torn stitches on his brother’s back, and forgiveness came far less easily to him.
“Why?” Sherlock asked. “Anthea is connected to you, just as John is connected to me.”
“Not in a way that is quite so obvious,” Mycroft countered, that familiar poison clawing at his heart once more as he thought of all of the newspapers that had asked when Sherlock planned on proposing. “Not in a way the whole world knows, especially not if she disguises herself.”
“I could disguise myself,” Sherlock retorted, the words sharp and daring, as if he could one-up Mycroft even in a matter as trivial as this.
By this time, Mycroft had reached his office at the Whitehall Palace, and he used the time that he spent unlocking the door to take a silent breath, pushing down the familiar ache of Sherlock declining his offer for assistance. “I know you could, brother mine,” he replied at last, the words colder than he intended, as if the ache of Sherlock’s stubbornness had settled like lead in his chest. He had seen it before—his brother’s refusal to accept help, even when it was offered in the best interest of both of them. But Sherlock would never change. He was Sherlock, after all. The universe didn’t bend to his will, no matter how often he tried to make it do so. “But not in such a way that your runes would simply disappear. They are-”
“Permanent?” Sherlock supplied, clearly sensing from the length of the pause that followed, that Mycroft wasn’t going to finish the statement.
Mycroft was no longer paying attention to him, though. His heart was pounding in his chest perhaps more than it should have been as he stared at the pale-haired boy who had invaded his office, but, little as he involved himself directly with the current affairs of the Shadow World, he kept a close enough eye on them to know enough to be afraid. It was a flaw, he knew—letting his emotions slip like that—but he refused to let any trace of vulnerability show. Not now. Not ever again. “I have to go,” he told Sherlock in a cold, barely civil tone that he had never before used with his brother. “So you’re the illusive Sebastian Verlac,” he greeted the boy in front of him in the same tone.
“You don’t seem very surprised,” Sebastian noted, cocking his head to the side as he studied Mycroft through eyes that were blacker than a starless night sky. “Or very afraid.”
“Should I be?” Mycroft inquired, though he already knew the answer. Limited as his official contact with the Clave was, he had enough informants to know the story of the Morgenstern boy well, especially of the recent attacks that Valentine’s son had led against Institutes around the world and the death and destruction that had inevitably followed each one. Even so, he tried his best to summon that foolish courage that Dr. Watson had exhibited the first time they had met, silently admitting to himself as he did so that it was perhaps the only trait of the Sighted mundane that was worth admiring. “You cannot hurt or Turn me. Not without questions being asked by people you do not want to answer to.”
“You think I care what a few mundanes think?” Morgenstern asked.
“Perhaps not,” Mycroft conceded. “But you should.”
“Why?” Morgenstern sneered, with a flicker of doubt in his eyes that was almost imperceptible. The boy was a finely crafted instrument of terror, but even he had his insecurities. His mask only cracked when he spoke of his allegiance to the Seelie Queen, his voice gaining a hint of hunger. “Because one of them’s the Queen? I have far more powerful people than her on my side.”
“I’m sure you do,” Mycroft agreed. “Not everyone who works for the Queen is a mundane, however. She has in her employ some of the most well-respected and powerful members of the Downworld of London.”
“Like who?” Morgenstern scoffed. “Malcolm Fade, who can barely remember his own name most of the time? If you think I should worry about people like him, don’t. I have the protection of the Seelie Queen herself, and it was she who gave me the gift I came here to collect. Do you want to know what it is?” His voice dropped to a near-whisper at the last question, as if he were revealing a secret only to those who had the misfortune of being in his presence. Mycroft gave the boy a pointedly careless shrug, his gaze unfocused, almost bored. He had seen enough threats, heard enough promises, to be unshaken, and he knew he would be told regardless of anything he said.
“You.” The word struck with the force of a blow, reverberating through Mycroft in a way that made his chest feel as though it had been hollowed out. The floor seemed to disappear beneath his feet, and for a moment, there was nothing—no ground, no sense of direction, just the terrifying weightlessness of freefall. His heart lurched, and the wind, rushing past him with violent speed, stole the air from his lungs. He couldn't even scream, couldn't even make a sound as he plummeted deeper into the abyss that seemed to stretch out endlessly.
🪽🪽
Sherlock stared at his phone, still processing the abrupt end to the conversation. For the first time in over two decades, it wasn’t him hanging up, wasn’t him cutting the line. It was Mycroft. And something about that made Sherlock’s stomach twist, a cold, hollow feeling that sank deeper with every passing second. For all the control he had over his world, all the order he imposed on chaos, his older brother had just given him a reminder that Sherlock didn’t truly understand him, didn’t know what made Mycroft break. And that terrified him.
He kept replaying Mycroft’s words, words that, civil though they had been, had been spoken in a tone that had felt like a slap to the face and still made his cheeks burn whenever he thought about it. Mycroft’s love, and the care with which he had treated Sherlock because of it, had always been the one constant of the detective’s life, regardless of whether he was living in Sussex or the London Institute. He’d come to rely upon it to the point that, when he’d realized he’d fallen for the one person no Law would allow him to have, he’d taken for granted the idea that he didn’t need to earn the brotherly affection that Mycroft did show him. Now, when he realized at last that he did, he was left with no idea where to start.
“What did Mycroft say about Dumas?” John asked, jolting Sherlock back to the present.
“Not much,” Sherlock admitted, stretching the truth only a little as he explained. He might feel guilty about the lie later, but not now., not when his fingers itched for the familiar sensation of a case, a distraction, something to focus on other than the gnawing anxiety twisting in his gut. He didn’t wait for John’s usual comments or even an invitation. The last thing he wanted was to talk about this, something he still couldn’t make sense of himself. The only thing that mattered now was finding answers—answers that didn’t involve the mess of emotions he couldn’t quite untangle. Not yet. He needed a diversion. And a case was always the best cure for what ailed him. “He did confirm that Dumas works for the Queen, but he refused to say anything more on an open line. If I want more information, I have to talk to him in person.”
He grabbed his coat and scarf and pulled them on without thinking, a rush of motion that was almost mechanical. His thoughts, though, were scattered, still tumbling over the conversation with Mycroft, unable to settle. Mycroft’s last words hung in the air, unanswered, and Sherlock couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more he should have said, something he should have understood. But now wasn’t the time. The street was calling to him, and there were questions that needed answering. At least they wouldn’t make him feel—anything.
Moments later, the cabbie stopped at the Whitehall Palace, and Sherlock got out of the car, pausing for barely long enough to toss the driver a fifty-pound note before almost running down the path to the palace doors. Inside, a security guard was waiting. He didn’t bother to ask if Sherlock had an appointment, though. They both knew he didn’t.
After going down a flight of stairs and taking a few turns down carpeted corridors that Sherlock knew as well as he knew his own flat, Sherlock came to Mycroft’s office. The sight of the open metal door was enough to stop Sherlock’s feet in their tracks, an unpleasant shiver going down his spine. Mycroft had always been a man who valued privacy; it was one of the things Sherlock appreciated most about his brother in fact, the way he always knew what not to say and when not to press. He was also a man of control and order, something that his office embodied. The door being ajar wasn’t an invitation—it was a warning. A door left open like that suggested a breach, a crack in the meticulous facade Mycroft had so carefully built. Sherlock’s mind raced as he stepped closer, his instincts flaring with suspicion. Mycroft was never unguarded. Not like this.
With his heart in his throat, Sherlock entered the office. The first thing he saw inside was the letter, a splash of white against the dark background of the otherwise bare desk. Covered as it was in spidery writing, Sherlock knew that it was nothing his brother could have left behind. Though it was addressed to the Queen, Sherlock read it, hoping for information.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. The letter seemed to be mostly about what Sebastian was attempting to do and the importance of Mycroft Holmes to his plans. There was, however, a mention of how Mycroft had been “given” to Sebastian. The phrase twisted something in Sherlock’s chest—something far darker than simple confusion. Mycroft wasn’t an object. He wasn’t anyone’s to give or take. And the mere thought that someone might think otherwise, made Sherlock’s blood run cold. Still, it was a clue, the only clue in the entire Angel-forsaken letter. After all, only one being in all the worlds would be so arrogant as to think that Mycroft’s blood made him belong to her despite the runes on his arms.
Sherlock dropped the letter onto the desk, not caring where it landed. With swift, practiced movements, he drew several Speed runes onto his arms, followed by a glamour rune that would let him pass unseen through London’s streets. Then he tore out of the palace and sprinted towards St. James’ park. He reached it in minutes, much faster than any taxi, and he wasted no time in going through the permanent Portal that led from the park to the Seelie Realm.
On the other side of the Portal, Sherlock found himself in a dense forest, and the instant change from the brightness of the London sunlight to the dimness of the Faerie sun filtered through the thick covering of leaves was enough for him to reach for his seraph blade. Pulling it out from inside his coat, he lit it with a quiet, “Gabriel.” Even with the glow of the adamas, though, the thick shadows swallowed up the forest around him, leaving him barely able to see a few feet in front of him.
Using the seraph blade as a torch, it seemed to take Sherlock only minutes to find the road, a dirt path that looked as though it hadn’t been used for decades. Despite his instant misgivings at the sight, Sherlock had no choice but to follow it, hacking at the overgrown foliage with his blade to give himself space to walk. Time twisted in the forest. It could have been seconds. It could have been hours. When Sherlock finally broke through the last of the tangled underbrush, he found himself at the edge of the Seelie Queen’s chambers.
He stayed back, peering into the naturally grand space from within the coverage of the forest. Inside, the Seelie Queen was reclining on a sofa the color of fertile soil, dark and rich and pulsing faintly with veins of rootlight beneath the surface. Her posture was one of clear self-satisfaction as she spoke to the image of Sebastian Morgenstern, unwittingly confirming Sherlock’s suspicions as she did. The sight of the Seelie Queen’s clear assurance that she was taking the winning side made Sherlock’s grip on his seraph blade tighten to the point of pain, but he somehow managed to hold himself back until she had finished her conversation.
It was only then that Sherlock stepped from the shadows, crossing the chamber in a blur and pressing the cold, runed blade of his seraph sword to her throat before she even had time to draw breath.. “Where is Mycroft?” he demanded.
The Lady blinked confused emerald eyes up at him, a confusion that Sherlock recognized instantly as feigned. “Who?”
“Mycroft Holmes,” Sherlock clarified, a growl underscoring his voice at the Seelie Queen’s clear deflection. “The man you stole from his home, his work, his people.” From me, he added silently, but he knew better than to say so aloud.
“His people are here,” the Seelie Queen corrected him smoothly, “and it is here that he will come after the war.”
Sherlock pressed the sharp edge of his blade closer to the Seelie Queen’s pale throat. “But where. Is he. Now? ” he growled, not noticing, in his anger, the thin stream of red that flowed out from under his seraph blade to pool at the Lady’s collar. She did not seem to pay it any mind either as she stared up at him through impassive eyes.
“Edom,” a man’s voice said from behind him. Sherlock didn’t turn to see who it was, but the Seelie Queen’s gaze flickered to a point over his shoulder and lit with clear recognition. “It’s where they all are, isn’t it? The Downworld representatives and Clary’s mother.”
“It is,” the Seelie Queen confirmed. “Edom is likely where Sebastian has taken your beloved as well,” she told Sherlock, who let the seraph blade fall from her throat as he took a horrified step back.
He knew what Edom was, of course. One could not do what he did, work for and against the people that he did, without knowing far more about the dimensions of Hell than most Nephilim bothered to learn. Though accurate descriptions of Edom were all but nonexistent in Nephilim literature, Sherlock’s mind was far too easily able to supply him with images of Mycroft, broken and bleeding and surrounded by hordes of laughing demons—Asmodeus, perhaps even Lilith herself, watching with delight. The rune on his chest burned as much as the backs of his eyes as he forced himself to think past the nightmarish images, focussing instead on what he actually knew. “There’s a path,” he whispered to himself, recalling the story a sprite had told him long ago in exchange for his saving her life. He met the unbothered gaze of the Seelie Queen. “There’s a path that leads from your court to Edom,” he said louder. “Isn’t there? Where is it?”
“There is,” the Seelie Queen confirmed, wiping away the blood that continued to drip from the wound on her throat with a careless gesture, “and I can do much better than simply tell you where it is. I can take you there myself.” She stood and walked to the entrance of her chambers, where Sherlock could see that it wasn’t just one Shadowhunter man who had joined him here. There were four Nephilim standing in the doorway, along with a Daylighter who’d been Turned at seventeen, all of whom were watching the Seelie Queen with narrowed eyes. She passed without so much as looking at them, knowing full well that they would follow. They did.
The Seelie Queen led them silently down a dark road littered with fallen leaves and the petals of dying flowers, her back so straight that she might’ve convinced an onlooker she didn’t have Sherlock’s blade pressed between her shoulder blades. Behind him, Sherlock could hear one of the boys murmuring about this being too easy, but he couldn’t quite make out the response of the girl he was speaking to. It didn’t matter in the end, though. Too easy or not, he had to get to Edom. To Mycroft .
Sherlock wasn’t sure how long they had been walking before they came to the place where the road separated. Here in the Land Under the Hill, time twisted strangely—it could’ve been seconds, or hours, or days. Four different paths stretched away from where they stood now, one leading back the way they had come and three others rolling out in front of them. Directly in the middle was a path paved in what looked like clear glass, wide and smooth. To the left was a road bracketed by the greenest of leaves and brightest of flowers, while the road to the right was narrow and winding, with an entrance framed in thorn bushes and barbed wire. Peering down it as far as he could see, Sherlock thought he could catch a glimpse of a starless night sky.
“Can you guess which road to take?” the Seelie Queen asked, gazing at them with raised coppery eyebrows.
“These are the Three Roads,” the black-haired Shadowhunter boy retorted with a scoff - arrogant, like he thought naming them was enough. “And we’re Nephilim. Of course, we know the right path.”
Catching sight of a flicker of displeasure in the Daylighter’s dark gaze, Sherlock hurried to explain. “The Fair Folk are secretive by nature,” he told the vampire, noting as he spoke that even the red-haired Shadowhunter seemed to be unfamiliar with what he was saying. “So it’s not often that stories about them make their way to mundane ears, but sometimes they do.” Sherlock knelt, brushing a gloved hand over the barbed path’s edge. “The story of Thomas the Rhymer is one of those that has somehow become part of mundane mythology. In it, the Seelie Queen kidnapped Thomas and brought him to the Seelie Realm”-the Seelie Queen scoffed, but neither Sherlock nor any of the others paid any attention to it-”leading him to the Three Roads and telling him that one of the roads led to Heaven, another led further into Faerieland, and the last to Hell. ‘And see ye not that narrow road, so thick beset with thorns and briars? That is the path of righteousness, though after it but few inquires.’ ” Sherlock gestured to the path outlined in thorns and barbed wire. “That’s the path to Heaven, if you’d rather take it.”
“Hardly Heaven,” the Seelie Queen corrected him dryly. “It just leads back to the mundane world, but I suppose your people find it heavenly enough.”
“So that’s how Sebastian tricked us at the Adamant Citadel,” the blond-haired Shadowhunter concluded, his hand tightening on the hilt of his blade. Sherlock blinked. He’d never heard about an attack on the Adamant Citadel, and, though he knew full well how loose his ties to the Shadow World were, learning about the attack now was enough to make him wonder just how long he’d been in the Seelie Realm. “He only took the absolute fewest Endarkened that he could, and he had the rest wait here for a signal.” The swordsman glared at the Seelie Queen. “A lot of good people are dead because of you, Lady.”
“Mortals die,” she reminded him, with no trace of remorse in her voice. “It’s what makes them mortal.” A shiver went down Sherlock’s spine. Those words echoed too closely—unintentionally, eerily—something a warlock had told him long ago. One with hair like crow feathers.
Turning back to the Three Roads so no one could see his face, Sherlock studied the paths before him with more attention than was truly warranted. At last, he pointed to the widest path. “That’s the path to Edom,” he concluded. “That’s the one I need.”
“We need,” the blond Shadowhunter corrected him, but Sherlock didn’t so much as look at him. His gaze was locked on the glasslike stones of the path before him, and he could almost imagine that he could see to the end of it, to wherever his brother lay. Maybe it was because of that that he didn’t notice his slip when he responded to the Daylighter’s musing that he’d always heard that the path was paved with good intentions by murmuring “Or secret loves” a little too loudly. He didn’t notice the look the red-haired Shadowhunter shot him either.
“Step onto the path and find out,” the Seelie Queen suggested.
“How do we know you won’t tell Sebastian where we’ve gone?” the blond Shadowhunter asked, drawing his own sword and aiming it at the Seelie Queen’s heart. The Seelie Queen’s expression didn’t shift, but her eyes sparkled like firelight on ice—mocking, perhaps even intrigued. It was only then that Sherlock realized that he’d lowered his own blade at some point since they’d reached the Three Roads.
He didn’t raise it again, not even as he suggested, “We could kill her.” Not rage, not vengeance—just a calculation. Still, the suggestion earned him the same horrified looks that he would have received had he actually run her through. The only one of his companions that didn’t seem to judge him for finding a perfectly logical solution was the blond Shadowhunter, whose shoulders straightened and whose grip on his sword tightened as he glared down at the Seelie Queen.
The red-haired Shadowhunter’s gaze flickered between Sherlock and the boy whose sword was aimed at the Seelie Queen’s heart, her gaze softening when it landed on the latter in a way that left no doubt as to their relationship. Sherlock noticed, filed it away. Love, of the declared kind, still baffled him. “Or we could make her swear an oath,” she argued. “Jace, didn’t you say Seelies had to keep their vows?”
“Good memory.” Jace Lightwood shot his girlfriend a quick, fond grin before turning back to the Seelie Queen with a glare that was no less fierce for the break in expression. “Okay then, Lady. You have two choices. Swear to us that neither you nor anyone in your Court will tell Sebastian about us coming here and where we’ve gone or I’ll run you through, eternal wars be damned.”
“I swear,” the Seelie Queen replied, her emerald eyes never leaving Jace’s as she spoke. “I swear that neither I nor any member of my Court will, in word or deed, tell Sebastian that you came here.” Sherlock stiffened. Not at the vow itself, but at its wording—different from what Jace had demanded, just enough to matter. “That you came here,” not “where you’ve gone.” A loophole, exquisitely chosen. And irreversible now. The Seelie Queen had already made the oath that she felt was required of her. A second would be an insult—or worse, a challenge.
The Lady’s eyes glinted in triumph as Jace lowered his sword and stepped back, but Sherlock didn’t give her a chance to wallow in it before stepping forward to take the blond boy’s place. “I know you think we’ll die in Edom,” he told her, meeting her smug gaze with an icy look of his own, “and perhaps some of us will. But you forget that we are Nephilim, that angelic blood runs through each of our veins, even those of the Daylighter. We will not pass from this life easily, and we will not do so without ensuring that you rue the day you chose to come for the ones we love.” He let the words hang in the air, daring her to comment, to mock. She didn’t. “This is the oath that I swear to you.”
It was then that, for the first time since Sherlock had pressed a blade to her throat, the Seelie Queen’s mask fell. Her eyes flashed—no longer a courtier’s gleam but wildfire rage, ancient and sharp enough to wound. Sherlock didn’t waste time appreciating it, though. He turned on his heel and ran down the path to Hell.