Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

With a flourish, Matthew slid a bottle of brandy from inside his waistcoat. It was full, the dark amber liquid flashing gold in the sun. “Here,” he said, bending to lay it in the coffin. “I don’t think that anyone will be surprised by my choice.”


Cordelia doubted anyone was. When winter had turned into spring, they had all felt as if they were finally coming out of a long darkness into light. It was Anna who had first remarked that in summer, they would be scattering from London, separating each of them from the group who had been their support through the long months after January. James and Cordelia would be going on their honeymoon, Matthew on his voyage; Alastair and Thomas would be off helping Sona move back into Cirenworth (her desire to move to Tehran had rather miraculously evaporated after a months-long visit from her family following Zachary’s birth), and Anna and Ari would soon be in India. Life was resuming, however much they had all changed, and to mark the occasion Matthew had suggested this ceremony, in which each of them would bury a symbol of the past.

“It doesn’t need to be something terrible,” Matthew had said. “Just something you wish to let go of, or regard as part of your past, not your future.”

He had smiled a bit ruefully at Cordelia when he had said it. There had been a distance between them since January—not a distance of hostility or anger; but that closeness she had felt with him in Paris was gone, the sense of how well they understood one another. Paradoxically, Matthew had only grown closer to James, and to Thomas, and even Alastair. “You have to let his heart heal,” James had said. “That can only be managed with a bit of distance. It will resolve itself in time.”

A bit of distance. Only Matthew would be going a great distance, very soon, and for how long, Cordelia did not know.

Matthew rose, brushed off his hands, and sauntered over to throw a stick for Oscar. Oscar bounded across the grass, stopped, and sniffed the air suspiciously.

Squaring her shoulders, Ari came up to take Matthew’s place. She wore a simple rose-colored day dress, her hair pinned in a loose chignon. She held up a folded sheet of paper, slightly charred around the edges. “This is the letter my father wrote in his attempt to blackmail Charles,” she said. “To me, it symbolizes a standard he held me to, one to which he did not hold himself. This is what my father wanted me to be—a false image. Not who I am. Not who I hope he will someday learn to be.”

As she dropped it into the coffin beside the brandy bottle, her eyes were sad. Maurice Bridgestock was still in Idris, having been stripped of his role as Inquisitor. He would soon be traveling to Wrangel Island, a lonely place where he would take up the task of guarding wards. Mrs. Bridgestock had applied for a divorce, but far from seeming despondent, she appeared liberated by her new independence, and had welcomed Anna—and all of Ari’s friends—into her home. It was a warm and happy place to visit, but Cordelia could not blame Ari for regretting what had happened to her father, or wishing he had been a better man. It was a feeling she herself knew all too well.

Thomas was next. A paradox, was their Thomas—he bore the marks of the loss of Christopher more visibly than any of the rest of them, in lines beside his eyes that had not been there before and were unusual in someone so young. (Cordelia thought they gave him character.) But there was also a new peace to him. He had always seemed to be trying to make himself smaller in a body he found ungainly; now he was at ease, as if he at last saw himself the way Alastair saw him: tall and graceful and strong.

Like Ari, he held up a piece of paper, though this one was not slightly charred; rather, it was extremely charred. “I shall bury one of the very earliest attempts at fire-messages,” he said, “in which I may have penned some regrettable things.”

Alastair smiled. “I recall that one.”

Thomas let the paper fall. “It represents a time when I didn’t know what I wanted.” He looked at Alastair, the connection between them almost palpable. “But that is no longer the case.”

Alastair took the spot after Thomas; as they passed each other, their hands touched lightly. They were always touching—Alastair straightening Thomas’s tie, Thomas ruffling Alastair’s hair—much to Sona’s amusement. Cordelia found it quite sweet.

As Matthew had, Alastair held up a bottle, though this one was small, with a block-printed label. For a moment Cordelia wondered if it was alcohol—perhaps he was putting away thoughts of their father?—before she realized it was not that at all. It was an empty vial of hair dye. Alastair dropped it into the coffin with a wry smile. “A sign,” he said, “that I have discovered that my hair looks much better in its natural state.”

“Don’t rubbish blonds,” said Matthew, but he was smiling as Cordelia moved to take her brother’s place.

Alastair nodded encouragingly at her as she went to stand beside Jesse’s coffin. She looked out at her friends, feeling oddly as if she were onstage, though with a far friendlier audience than the Hell Ruelle. She sought Lucie’s smile, and then James’s, before taking a deep breath and reaching for the empty scabbard at her waist.

She drew it free, looking at it consideringly. It was truly a thing of loveliness. Steel like silver, inlaid with deeper gold, etched with runes and leaves, flowers and vines. The light that filtered through the branches above illuminated its beauty.

“I thought for a long time,” Cordelia said, turning the scabbard over in her hands, “about what to put behind me. I had thought it should be something to do with Lilith. But in the end I chose this. It is a lovely thing. And because it was beautiful, my father wanted to give it to me, and because of that, he was late to my wedding and drunk when he did arrive.” She took a deep breath, feeling Matthew’s eyes on her. “He never quite understood that I did not want pretty gifts. I wanted him. My father, beside me. And—I never spoke those words to him. I kept them secret in my heart.” She bent to lay the scabbard down; it lay sparkling among the odd assortment of items in the coffin. She said, “Had I told the truth to my father, it might not have changed things, but it would have changed my regrets. Had I told the truth to all of you about my plan to seek Wayland the Smith, I might have been spared a terrible mistake.” She rose to her feet. “What I am putting behind me is the keeping of secrets. Not every secret”—she smiled a little—“but the kind we keep because of shame, or some imagined failing that others will judge. Our failings are always more monstrous in our own eyes than any others’; in the eyes of those who love us, we are forgiven.”

Lucie clapped her hands loudly. “Now that you have a parabatai,” she said, “you will never need to keep secrets again! At least not from me,” she added. “You can keep secrets from the rest of these heathens here, if you like.”

There was a chorus of cheerful boos. “Lucie, dear,” said Anna. “Don’t give Cordelia terrible advice. We all want to hear what she has to say, no matter how scandalous. In fact, especially if it’s scandalous.” She grinned lazily.

“Anna,” Matthew said, in a mock-serious tone, “is it not your turn now? What will you be contributing?”

Anna sketched a wave on the air. “Nothing. I like everything I have and I approve of everything I’ve done.”

Even Alastair laughed at that, and Ari laid her head against Anna’s shoulder. Anna’s waistcoat had rose stripes to match Ari’s dress, Cordelia noticed—Anna had taken to matching bits of her outfits to what Ari was wearing, which for Anna was a commitment more serious than marriage runes.

“Well.” They all looked around at that; Grace rarely spoke, and it was always something of a surprise to hear her voice. “As someone who has many regrets, I will take the next turn. If there are no objections.”

No one said a word, and Grace walked quietly up to the coffin that had been her brother’s. In the past months, she had settled into a place among them, a part of their group as Jesse’s sister. It was undeniable that without her completion of Christopher’s research, it was unlikely they would have achieved a victory against Belial. And Christopher’s words—that if they forever blamed her for her past actions, they would be no better than Tatiana—had stayed with them all.

Even so, it had been an uneasy truce. Once James had told his parents the tale of the bracelet and the curse, they had been devastated. Cordelia had been there, had seen how acutely they felt James’s pain, more acutely than they would ever, she imagined, feel pain of their own. And they had carried the guilt of parents, that they should have seen, should have guessed, should have protected their son.