Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

With a slamming lurch, the carriage struck hard against something. Thomas heard the wheels scream, the whinny of the horses as the whole thing tilted to the side. A clap of thunder, loud as the crack of a whip, sounded overhead as the carriage came to a grinding halt.

Alastair was already sitting up, buttoning his shirt. “Bloody hell,” he said. “What was that?”

“We must have hit something.” Thomas did his best to put his clothes back as they had been, though half his buttons were torn. “You’re all right?”

“Yes.” Alastair looked at Thomas, then leaned over and kissed him, hard, on the mouth. A second later he was throwing the carriage door open and leaping out.

Thomas heard him hit the ground, heard him suck in his breath. There was a bitter smell on the air, he thought as he clambered after Alastair, like charcoal. “Bloody hell,” Alastair said. “What is all this?”

A moment later, Thomas was leaping out of the carriage after him.



* * *



“Well,” Matthew said as Tatiana’s shriek faded on the air, “I think we can all agree that that’s one invitation we should turn down.” He looked around the room at the others, all of whom seemed stunned, even Anna. “We should at least wait until Charles gets back with the First Patrol.”

“I never thought I’d hear you say we should wait for Charles,” said Anna, who was already drawing a seraph blade from her belt.

“Tatiana’s a madwoman,” said Matthew. “There’s no telling what she’ll do.”

“She’ll break the doors down,” Jesse said. “Those things with her—they’re Shadowhunters. Demons in Shadowhunter skin. They can come inside the Institute.”

“Jesse’s right,” said Grace, who had begun to shake again. “Mama’s only making it an invitation now because it amuses her to force you to do what she wants.”

“So if we don’t go down there,” said Cordelia, “she and her demon companions will burst in here.”

“Then we’ll all go,” James said, “and hold her off at the front door. The Sanctuary’s locked; there’s no other way in.” He turned to the others, who were busy laying hands on whatever weapons they had. Most had a seraph blade or two; Ari had her khanda, Jesse the Blackthorn sword. “I think Jesse and I should go outside and confront her in the yard. The rest of you remain at the entryway, as defense. Keep the false Silent Brothers from trying to creep around and get inside. I’ll try to keep her talking, at least until Charles and the First Patrol return—”

“Jesse isn’t trained, though,” Matthew said, buckling on his weapons belt. “Let me go outside with you. She demanded a Fairchild, didn’t she?”

James said, “Jesse’s the one of us she’s least likely to hurt. The only one who might give her pause.”

“I should confront Tatiana,” Cordelia said.

James turned to face her. She had her chin up, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on his. “I am a paladin. She should fear me. She should fear Lilith.”

“But she won’t know that unless you start fighting,” Lucie protested. “Unless Lilith is summoned. And I can’t imagine summoning Lilith will make the situation better.”

“There may be a point where it can’t make it worse,” Cordelia said quietly. “I promise—I won’t lift a weapon unless there’s no other choice. But I want to go out there.”

James wanted to shake his head, wanted to protest that Cordelia should stay inside, stay safe. But he knew that was a kind of protection Cordelia would never accept. He could ask her to remain inside, and perhaps she would do it because he had requested it, but it would be asking her to be someone other than who she was.

“Come out!” Tatiana shrilled, and Lucie felt the shriek in her bones. “Come out, Herondales! Come out, Carstairs! Come out, Lightwoods! I will not ask again!”

“I’m going outside,” Cordelia said firmly, and there was no chance for James to protest anyway; they were all headed downstairs, all save Grace, who watched them go, her face blank and sad, as if she had exhausted even her capacity to be afraid.



* * *



Tatiana had not moved from her place in the center of the courtyard. As James walked out the front door of the Institute, followed by Cordelia and Jesse, he saw her standing below them, near the foot of the steps. She faced the Institute, grinning, surrounded by demons and shadow.

The sky overhead was a boiling mass of dark gray clouds, laced with black and scarlet. The moon was visible only as a dim and flickering lamp behind a frost of reddish-white, casting the courtyard of the Institute into a bloody light.

Tatiana’s white hair streamed around her like smoke. It was as if she had brought storm and darkness with her, as if she had ridden the forked lightning that crackled through the clouds. On either side of her stood three Silent Brothers, in the white robes Grace had described. The runes that edged the cuffs and plackets were runes of Quietude and Death; Grace would not have recognized them as such, but James did. Each held a staff, as the Silent Brothers usually did, but their staffs crackled with a dark energy, and each wooden tip had been sharpened to a wicked point. They flanked Tatiana like foot soldiers flanking a general.

James held his pistol firmly in his right hand. Cordelia had taken up a place on his left; Jesse stood at his right. The others were inside the entryway, waiting with weapons in hand.

“Tatiana Blackthorn,” James said. “What do you want?”

He felt strangely calm. He had faced Tatiana before, when she had surrendered to him at the Lightwoods’, but she had been lying and pretending then. Perhaps she intended to lie and pretend again, but now he expected it. Now there was a metallic taste in his mouth, and a hot wire of rage running through his veins. He had been angry at Grace for some time, and still was, but in truth, it was Tatiana who had been the architect of his misery. Grace had only ever been the blade in her hand.

She narrowed her eyes, looking at him. It was clear she’d thought he would be shocked at her appearance, and she was taken aback by his calm. “Grace,” she hissed. “My traitor daughter came before me, did she not? She told you I had taken the Silent City. That stupid child. I should have ordered my Watchers to kill her when the chance presented itself, but… my heart is too soft.”

Jesse made a noise in the back of his throat. Tatiana was clearly quite out of her mind at this point, he thought. She had been bitter and falling apart for as long as he had known of her, and then Belial came along, like the spider in the children’s rhyme, and offered her power. The power to have the revenge she had only ever dreamed of. She was a shell scraped clean now, her humanity gone, hollowed out by hatred and revenge.

“I want one thing from each of you,” she said, her gaze moving restlessly between the three Shadowhunters ranged on the steps. “One thing, or my Watchers”—she gestured at the white-clad figures on either side of her—“will be turned loose upon you.” She turned to Cordelia with a sneer. “From you—Cortana. The sword of Wayland the Smith.”

“Certainly not,” said Cordelia. Her head was held high; she looked at Tatiana as if Tatiana was a bug spitted on a needle. “I am Cortana’s rightful bearer. The sword chose me; you have no right to it.”

Tatiana smiled as if she had expected, and even welcomed, such an answer. She turned to Jesse. “From you, my son,” she said, “I wish for you to drop your ruse. You need not pretend you are one of the Nephilim any longer. Abandon these traitors. Join me. There will be a New London soon, and we will rule it. Your father will be raised, and we will be a family again.”

A New London? James turned to Jesse, worried—but Jesse’s face was like stone. The Blackthorn sword gleamed in his hand as he raised it, holding it across his body. “I’d rather be dead than join with you, Mother,” he said, “and since I’ve been dead already, I can say that with great confidence.”

“Belial can give you worse than death,” Tatiana murmured. There was an odd light in her eyes, as if she were contemplating the joys of Hell. “You will reconsider, child.”

She turned to James.

“And you, James Herondale,” she said. “You who consider yourself a leader. Give yourself up to Belial willingly. He has given me his word, and I pass it on to you, that he will spare those you love, and let them live, if only you come willingly to him. Even the Carstairs girl he will allow to live; he will gift her to you. She left you once, but she will never be able to leave you again. She will have no choice but to remain at your side.”