Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

A Chimera demon. It burst free of the Silent Brother’s body, hissing as it scuttled past Alastair—and was impaled immediately by Thomas’s sword. As it spasmed, Rosamund hopped over its dying body, her eyes shining.

“There you are!” she cried, as if wondering where Lucie, Cordelia, and Matthew were had been taking up all her spare time. “I was so surprised when none of you came through the York Gate! Have you really been hiding out in London this whole time? How frightfully exciting!”

Matthew sprang down from the memorial, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. “We’re looking for James.” She looked surprised. Matthew said, more slowly, “Have you seen James?”

“Well,” Rosamund said cautiously, “Piers said he’s gone into Westminster Abbey and apparently he’s trying to crown himself king of England. I really don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

“Rosamund!” It was Thomas. He was in gear, his sandy hair disheveled, a bruise rising on his cheek. “We need you by the door. The Watchers are clustering around Eugenia.” Rosamund gave a tiny shriek and, without another word, ran off. “Eugenia is fine,” Thomas said the moment Rosamund was out of earshot. “She won’t mind the help, I’m sure, but—you’re back!” He gazed back and forth between the three of them as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re all back! And you’re safe.” He grasped Matthew by the arm. “I thought we’d lost you, Math. We all thought we’d lost you.”

“What’s going on?” Lucie said, staring after Rosamund. “How did you get everyone here? I mean, not everyone, it’s rather an odd group, but still—”

“Grace and Jesse managed to make the fire-messages work,” Thomas said, looking anxiously back over his shoulder at the fighting. “They sent them to Idris—I gather this was the group in the Council Room at the time, so they got the messages first. They came in through the Iron Tombs, the same way the Watchers did. More are on the way. Shadowhunters, I mean, not Watchers.”

“What are they doing?” Matthew said. “It’s a strange manner of fighting they’ve chosen.”

“There’s only one way we’ve found to defeat the Watchers. There’s a symbol on the backs of their necks that binds the Chimera demon to them. You can’t see it with the hoods of their robes up. If you destroy it, the Chimera is forced out. So you have to try to get behind them—which isn’t easy.” Thomas thrust his hand out. “Here’s the symbol. I wanted to be able to show people what it looked like.”

Cordelia looked at the scrawl on his open palm. It resembled the sigil of Belial that she had come to know well, but with a kind of hook protruding from it.

To Cordelia’s surprise, Lucie’s eyes went wide. “I have to get to Jesse,” she said. “There’s something I must tell him.” She began to back away, drawing the axe from the belt at her waist.

“Lucie—” Cordelia began.

“I have to,” Lucie said, shaking her head almost blindly. “The rest of you, get to James—as fast as you possibly can—”

And she took off running, zigzagging through the edge of the crowded battle, heading for the gatehouse that stood at an angle to the cathedral entrance. Cordelia itched to go after her—but Lucie was right. The most pressing concern here was James. James, and Belial.

She turned back to Thomas. “Is James really inside the abbey?”

“Yes,” said Thomas. He hesitated. “You know it’s not James, though, right? I—encountered him.” He shuddered. “It’s Belial, using James’s body. To what end, right now, I cannot say.”

“We know it’s Belial,” said Matthew. “We have to get to him. All these Watchers, here—” He gestured at the battle. “They’re trying to keep us away from him, from the inside of the abbey. And specifically, they’re trying to keep Cordelia and Cortana away.”

“We’ve been trying to get inside,” Thomas said. “The Watchers won’t let us anywhere near the door.”

“There has to be another way in,” said Cordelia. “The cathedral is huge.”

Matthew nodded. “There are other ways. I know a few.” He straightened up. “We need to gather everyone—”

Thomas seemed to know exactly what Matthew meant by “everyone.” “First, we should get Cordelia away before one of the Watchers notices her,” he said.

“Cordelia and I will go,” said Matthew. “Tom, get the group together and meet us around the corner at Great College Street.”

Thomas looked at Matthew with a slightly curious expression. Then he nodded. “And then we’ll get to James?”

Cordelia put her hand on the hilt of Cortana. “And then we’ll get to James.”



* * *



For the third time, Ari put her foot on the Watcher’s chest and, in one clean move, slid her khanda out of its body. She tried to catch her breath. She hadn’t been able to get behind the Watcher yet, and she knew it would only get up again, but she appreciated the moment’s rest while she waited for it to recover. Before it could, though, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She whirled around, ready to strike—but it was Thomas, wearing an urgent expression. “Ari, quick—come with me.”

Ari didn’t ask questions. If Thomas looked this desperate, he had a reason for pulling her out of the battle. As they shoved their way through the thrashing, fighting crowd, he let her know—shouting in between ducking through skirmishes—that Cordelia and Matthew and Lucie had returned, and that there was a plan for getting into the cathedral. He didn’t explain further, but the relief that their friends were back—and that there was any sort of plan—was enough to keep Ari pushing forward.

More Shadowhunters arrived, pouring into the triangular courtyard just as Ari and Thomas were leaving, but she had no time to stop and see if there were any familiar faces. She and Thomas were already running down the street, headed around the side of the cathedral. There they found the others waiting: Alastair, Cordelia, Matthew, and Anna. Thomas immediately went up to Alastair—who was sporting quite a few bruises and cuts; there had been no time to stop for healing runes—and kissed him. Ari wanted to do the same to Anna, but decided to wait, given the ferocious light of battle in Anna’s eyes.

“But why?” Cordelia was saying. She looked more grimy than Ari had ever seen her—her boots were dusty, her gear scratched, and there was dust in her dark red hair. “Why on earth would Belial be in the abbey trying to crown himself king?”

“Indeed,” Anna said, “I would not have thought that would be his priority. But Piers managed to get a look inside. James—Belial—has the Coronation Chair up on the High Altar, and at least some of the crown jewels as well.”

“He also,” said Alastair, “appears to have an archbishop of Canterbury.”

“He’s kidnapped the archbishop of Canterbury?” Ari said, horrified. She wasn’t entirely sure what an archbishop did, but it certainly seemed outside the bounds of propriety to kidnap one.

“Worse.” Anna looked grim. “He’s raised one from the dead. The very, very dead. And is attempting to have him do the honors.”

“Will it make some kind of difference to his power?” Thomas asked. “Crowning himself? Does it solidify his hold over London?”

“It must,” Alastair said. “But most significantly, this may be our last chance to get Cordelia near enough to him to—”

“But she can’t mortally wound him,” Anna interrupted before Alastair could say it. “Not without killing James.”

There was an awful silence. “James told Matthew I had to get as close to him as I could,” Cordelia said. “And I trust him. If that’s what he wanted me to do—”

“James would be willing to sacrifice himself,” Thomas said in a low voice. “We all know that. But we can’t—we can’t lose another—”

Anna looked away.

To Ari’s surprise, it was Matthew who spoke. He stood with his back straight, and there was something very different about him. As if Edom had changed him—not just that he was thinner, and exhausted-looking, but as if the light in his eyes, always there, had changed in its quality. “He would not consider this a sacrifice,” he said. “He would not want to live with Belial possessing him. If there was no other way out, he would take death as a gift.”

“Matthew,” Cordelia said softly.

Anna’s eyes flashed. “You’re his parabatai, Math. Surely you can’t be arguing for his death.”

“I don’t want to,” Matthew said. “I know I might not survive it myself. But he asked me to be his voice when he no longer had one. And I cannot betray that promise.”

“Let me ask a question,” Alastair said. “Does anyone have a different solution? One in which Belial doesn’t murder everyone in London, and perhaps everyone in the world, and he stops possessing James, and James is never in danger? Because if so, speak up now.”

There was another awful silence.