Matthew’s hands closed on the edge of his chair. His knuckles were white. He looked older than he had a mere two nights ago.
Matthew, said Brother Zachariah, and walled off his brothers in his head as well as he might.
“Yes?”
Rely upon a Silent Brother for silence, said Jem. I will not tell anybody about the Shadow Market, or any bargains you may have made there.
Matthew swallowed. Jem thought he might be about to be thanked, but Jem had not done this for thanks.
I will not tell anybody, he said, But you should. A secret too long kept can kill a soul by inches. I watched a secret almost destroy a man once, the finest man ever made. Such a secret is like keeping treasure in a tomb. Little by little, poison eats away at the gold. By the time the door is opened, there may be nothing left but dust.
Brother Zachariah stared into the young face that had been so bright. He waited and hoped to see that face lit again.
“All this about the Shadow Market,” Matthew faltered.
Yes? said Jem.
The boy flung back his golden head.
“I’m sorry,” said Matthew coldly. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Zachariah’s heart fell.
So be it, he said. James and Lucie are waiting for you in the library. Let them give you whatever comfort they can.
Matthew stood from his chair, moving as if he had grown suddenly old over the course of a day. Sometimes the distance Silent Brothers possessed moved them to dispassionate observation, and too far from pity.
It would be a long time, Brother Zachariah knew, before there could be any comfort for Matthew Fairchild.
The library in Matthew’s house was a far smaller and less loved and lived-in room than the library in the London Institute, but tonight there was a fire burning and Herondales waiting within. Matthew stumbled into the room as if he were walking in from midwinter cold, his limbs too chilled to move.
As one, as if they had only been waiting for his coming, James and Lucie looked up at him. They were pressed together on a sofa at the hearth. By firelight, Lucie’s eyes were as eerie as James’s, her eyes a paler and more fiercely burning blue than her father’s. It was as though James’s gold was the corona of a flame and Lucie’s blue its burning heart.
They were a strange pair, these two Herondales, thorned mysterious plants in the hothouse of the Nephilim. Matthew could not have loved either of them more dearly.
Lucie leaped to her feet and ran to him with her hands outstretched. Matthew shuddered away. He realized, with dull pain, that he did not feel worthy of being touched by her.
Lucie glanced at him sharply, then nodded. She always saw a lot, their Luce.
“I will leave you two together,” she said decisively. “Take as long as ever you may.”
She reached out her hand to touch his, and Matthew shrank away from her again. This time he saw that it hurt, but Lucie only murmured his name and withdrew.
He could not tell Lucie this, and see her disgust of him, but he and James were bound. Perhaps James would try to understand.
Matthew advanced, every step a terrible effort, toward the fire. Once he was near enough, James reached out and clasped Matthew’s wrist, drawing Matthew close to the sofa. He laid Matthew’s hand over James’s heart, and covered it with his own. Matthew looked down into James’s fire-gold eyes.
“Mathew,” said Jamie, pronouncing his name in the Welsh way and with the Welsh lilt that let Matthew know he meant it as an endearment. “I am so sorry. What can I do?”
He felt he could not live on with this massive stone of a secret crushing his chest. If he was ever going to tell anyone, he should tell his parabatai.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I was talking about Alastair Carstairs yesterday. What I meant to tell you was that he insulted my mother. He said—”
“I understand,” said James. “You do not have to tell me.”
Matthew drew in a small shaky breath. He wondered if James really could understand.
“I know the kind of thing they say about Aunt Charlotte,” said James with quiet fierceness. “They say similar things about my mother. You remember that man Augustus Pounceby, last year? He waited until we were alone to cast slurs upon my mother’s good name.” A small grim smile curved James’s mouth. “So I threw him in the river.”
Aunt Tessa had been so glad to have a Shadowhunter visitor, Matthew remembered numbly. She displayed Shadowhunter family coats of arms on her walls to welcome any traveler to the London Institute.
“You never told me,” said Matthew.
Jamie was telling him now. Tom had told him that whatever Alastair said was nonsense. If Matthew had asked his father about what Alastair had said, his father could have told him about Great-Aunt Matty, and they might even have laughed about how absurd it was to think some stupid malicious boy could ever make them doubt their family.
Jamie’s mouth crooked down a little. “Oh, well. I know you have to hear a lot about me and my unfortunate antecedents already. I do not want you to think I am an unbearable nuisance and you got a bad bargain with your parabatai.”
“Jamie,” Matthew said on a wounded breath, as if he had been hit.
“I know it must feel wretched to remember anything hurtful that worm Carstairs said about your mother,” James plunged on. “Especially when she is—she is unwell. The very next time we see him, we will punch him in the head. What do you say to that, Mathew? Let’s do it together.”
Matthew’s father and his mother and his brother and his parabatai had all been trying not to burden him, while Matthew pranced on thinking he was no end of a fine fellow and dealing remarkably by himself. James would not have done what Matthew had. Nor would Christopher or Thomas. They were loyal. They were honorable. When someone had insulted Jamie’s mother, Jamie had thrown him in the river.
Matthew pressed his palm against James’s linen shirt, over the steady beat of his loyal heart. Then Matthew clenched his hand into a fist.
He could not tell him. He could never do it.
“All right, old chap,” said Matthew. “We will do it together. Do you think I could have a moment alone, though?”
James hesitated, then drew back.
“Is that what you want?”
“It is,” said Matthew, who had never wanted to be alone in his life, and never wanted to be alone less than in this moment.
James hesitated again, but he respected Matthew’s wishes. He bowed his head and went out, Matthew assumed to rejoin his sister. They were both good and pure. They should be together, and comfort each other. They deserved comfort as he did not.
After James was gone, Matthew could not keep standing. He fell to his hands and knees in front of the fire.
There was a statue above the fire showing Jonathan Shadowhunter, the first Shadowhunter, praying for the world to be washed clean of evil. Behind him was the Angel Raziel flying to gift him with strength to defeat the forces of darkness. The first Shadowhunter could not see him yet, but he was standing firm, because he had faith.
Matthew turned his face away from the light. He crawled, as his father had crawled across another floor at the beginning of this endless day, until he was in the darkest and farthest corner of the room. He had not believed. He laid his cheek against the cold floor and refused to let himself weep again. He knew he could not be forgiven.
It was long past time for Brother Zachariah to return to the City of Bones. Tessa stood with him in the hall, and touched his hand before he went.
The sweetest woman God ever made, he had heard Henry say earlier. Jem loved Charlotte, but he had his own image of the sweetest this world could offer.
She was always his anchor in cold seas, her warm hand, her steadfast eyes, and it was as if a flame leaped between them and a mad hope. For a moment Jem was as he had been. It seemed possible to be together in sorrow, united as family and friends were, to sleep under the Institute roof and go down in the morning to breakfast, sad but safe in the warmth of a shared hearth and human hearts.
He thought: Yes, ask me to stay.
Good-bye, Tessa, he said.