Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

James had protested, explained: the very evil of the bracelet was that it prevented knowledge, protection, help. They were not at fault. Still, it was a wound, and Grace had moved quietly out of the Institute that day, and into the Consul’s house, where she was helping Henry reorganize his laboratory.

Jesse had worried—would it be awkward for her there, considering her history with Charles? But Grace had demurred: Charlotte and Henry knew everything, and she and Charles had achieved an understanding. Though Charles had been very angry indeed at first, he professed himself now grateful that Grace had disrupted his plans to marry Ari, which would have made them both miserable. He was in Idris now, working for the new Inquisitor, Kazuo Satō. (Charles sent back letters sometimes, usually to Matthew but sometimes to Ari, with news of her father. They would have made a ghastly married couple, Ari said, but as friends, they got on surprisingly well.)

Where it came to Grace, everyone’s eyes had been on James, who after all was the one to whom she had dealt the greatest hurt. To everyone’s surprise, his anger at her seemed to fade quickly with the death of Belial. One night, in bed with James, Cordelia had said, “I know it is not something we speak of very often, but everyone is looking to you when they try to decide how to manage with Grace. And you seem to have forgiven her.” She had rolled onto her side, looking at him curiously. “Have you?”

He had rolled onto his side too, so they faced each other. His eyes were lambent gold, the color of firelight, and they left heat behind where they traced the shape of her shoulder, the curve of her neck. She did not think she would ever stop wanting him, and he had shown no sign of feeling any differently about her. “I suppose we have not spoken about it because I rarely think of it,” he said. “Telling everyone was the difficult part. After that… Well, I do not know if it is forgiveness. But I find I cannot be angry at her when I have so much, and she has so little.”

“You don’t think you need to speak to her? Hear her apologize?” Cordelia had asked, and James had shaken his head.

“No. It is not something I need. As for her, she will always be marked by her childhood and the things she has done. What would punishment or apologies add to that?”’

The things she has done. Cordelia thought of James’s words as Grace held up two silver crescents. The shattered remains of the cursed bracelet. She looked over at James, her gray eyes level. She had a scar on her cheek now, not from the battle at Westminster, but from a beaker that had exploded in the Fairchilds’ laboratory.

James nodded at her, and Cordelia realized: there needed to be no more conversation than this to resolve what had happened between Grace and James. It was long over, and James’s past pain had been absorbed into who he was now: it was the memory of a needle that could no longer draw blood.

Grace dropped the broken bracelet into the coffin; the pieces rattled against something glass. She looked at them for a long moment before turning and walking away, her back straight, her fair hair lifted by the wind.

She went to Jesse’s side. He laid a hand on her shoulder before making his own way up to the coffin. Out of all of them, Cordelia thought, he had changed the most since January. He had still been pale and thin then, especially for a Shadowhunter, despite his determination to work and train, to learn the skills of strength and balance that had been instilled in most Shadowhunters from early childhood. Now, with the passage of months—months in which he had trained nearly every day with Matthew and James, until he could scramble up the ropes dangling from the training room ceiling without even breathing hard—he was lean and strong, his skin a shade darker from the sun, and Marked with new runes. All the fine clothes Anna had helped him choose had needed to be let out, and let out again, to accommodate the new shape of his body. He no longer looked like a boy who had grown up in shadow: he was nearly a man, and a strong and healthy one at that.

He held up a jagged bit of metal, bright in the sun—the broken hilt of the Blackthorn sword, Cordelia realized. The etched circle of thorns was still visible against the blackened cross guard. “I,” said Jesse steadily, “am letting go of the complicated history of my family. Of being a Blackthorn. There is, of course,” he added, “nothing inherently evil about any family. Every family has members who are good, and those who are less so. But the terrible things my mother did, she did after taking that name. She hung the Blackthorn sword on the wall above my coffin because it was so important to her that even in near death I be reminded always that I was her idea of a Blackthorn. So I’m burying what my mother thought it meant to be a Blackthorn; I am putting it behind me, and I will start again as a new sort of Blackthorn. The kind I choose to be.”

He laid the broken hilt among the other objects, and for a moment stood, looking at the coffin that had been his prison for so long. When he turned his back on it, it was with a determined air, and he strode over to join Lucie with his head held high.

And it was Lucie’s turn next. She squeezed Jesse’s hand before approaching the coffin. She had told Cordelia earlier what she was bringing—a drawing of a Pyxis, taken from the flat of the warlock Emmanuel Gast.

Cordelia knew Lucie still felt guilt over what had happened with Gast—indeed, over every time she had commanded the dead, though with Gast it had been worst. Lucie’s ability to see ghosts remained, but the power to command them had vanished along with Belial’s death. Lucie had confided to Cordelia that she was glad to be rid of it—she would never even be tempted to use it now.

She did not speak as she let the paper fall: Lucie, usually so full of words, seemed to have none to speak now. She watched it flutter its way down, her hands at her sides, only looking up when James came to join her beside the grave—no, Cordelia reminded herself, it was not a grave: this was a farewell of sorts, but not that kind.

Standing beside Lucie, James looked at Cordelia. Here, among the shadows, his eyes were the color of sunlight. Then he gazed around at the others, as slowly he drew his battered pistol from his belt. “I almost feel I should apologize to Christopher,” he said. “He spent so much time—and destroyed so many objects—trying to get this to work.” A rueful smile flitted across his face. “And yet, I am putting it behind me. Not because it no longer fires at my command, though that is true—but because it only ever worked for me because of Belial, and Belial is gone. The powers conferred upon me and upon Lucie due to him were never gifts—they were always burdens. They were a weight, a heavy one. A weight we both set aside with relief.” He glanced sideways at Lucie, who nodded, her eyes bright. “I like to think Christopher would have understood,” James said, and knelt to lay the gun flat in the coffin.

He expelled a deep breath, as someone might when, having walked a long and dusty road, they finally found a place to rest. He took the coffin lid in his hands and shut it with an audible click. As he rose to his feet, the whole group was silent; even Anna was no longer smiling, but looked thoughtful, her blue eyes grave.

“Well,” James said, “that’s everything.”



* * *



“Constantinople,” James said to Cordelia.

They were sitting on a yellow picnic blanket, flung across the green grass of Hyde Park. The Serpentine glittered silver in the distance; all around were their friends, setting down blankets and baskets; Matthew was rolling in the grass with Oscar, who was trying desperately to lick his face. At any moment, Cordelia knew, their families would arrive, but for this moment, it was just them.

Cordelia leaned back against James. She was sitting between his legs, her back to his chest. He was playing delicately with her hair; she supposed she ought to tell him that he would soon loosen all the pins and create a coiffure disaster, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind. “What about it?”

“It’s hard to believe that we’ll be there in a fortnight.” He wrapped his arms around her. “On our honeymoon.”

“Really? It all seems quite ordinary to me. Ho-hum.” Cordelia grinned at him over her shoulder. In truth, she could hardly believe any of it. She still woke up in the morning and pinched herself when she realized she was in the same bed as James. That they were married—now with their full sets of wedding runes, though she could not think about that without blushing.