Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“Oh, look, we’re here,” said Alastair brightly, and threw the door of the carriage open, leaping from it before it had quite stopped rolling.

“Alastair!” Cordelia hopped down after her brother, who seemed none the worse for his plunge and was already paying the driver.

She looked up at the house. She was fond of it—fond of the calm white front, the shiny black 102 painted on the rightmost pillar, fond of the quiet, leafy London street. But it was not home, she thought, as she followed Alastair up the front path to the door. This was her mother’s house—a refuge, but not home. Home was Curzon Street.

Cordelia suspected Risa had been peering out a window, as she appeared immediately to whisk the front door open and usher them inside. She pointed accusingly at Cordelia’s trunk, which sat in the middle of the entryway.

“It just appeared,” she complained, fanning herself with a dish towel. “One moment not there, then poof! It gave me quite a turn, I tell you. Tekan khordam.”

“Sorry, Risa dear,” said Cordelia. “I’m sure Magnus didn’t mean for it to startle you.”

Risa muttered as Alastair lifted the trunk and began heaving it up the stairs. “What did you buy in Paris?” he complained. “A Frenchman?”

“Be quiet, he’s asleep,” said Cordelia. “He speaks no English, but he can sing ‘Frère Jacques’ and he makes excellent crêpes suzette.”

Alastair snorted. “Risa, are you going to help me with this?”

“No,” Risa said. “I am going to take Layla to khanoom Sona. She will be much happier once she has seen her daughter.”

Cordelia slipped out of her coat and waved a guilty goodbye to Alastair before following Risa down the corridor to her mother’s bedroom. Risa put a finger to her lips before glancing in; a moment later, she was ushering Cordelia into the dimly lit space and closing the door behind her.

Cordelia blinked, her eyes adjusting to the faint light of the fire and the bedside lamp. Sona lay in bed, propped up in a sitting position against a mountain of colorful pillows, a book in her hands. Her belly looked rounder than when Cordelia had seen her only a week before, and her face was sallow and tired, although she smiled at Cordelia brightly.

Cordelia felt a terrible rush of guilt. “M?m?n,” she cried, and hurried to the bed to carefully embrace her mother.

“Welcome back,” her mother said, brushing her hand through Cordelia’s hair.

“I’m sorry, M?m?n. I oughtn’t to have gone—”

“Don’t fret.” Sona set her book down. “I told you that the most important thing was to do what would make you happy. So you went to Paris. What’s the great harm?” Her dark eyes searched Cordelia’s face. “I used to think that it was most important to endure, to stay strong. But unhappiness, over time… it poisons your life.”

Cordelia sat down in the chair by the bed and took her mother’s hand. “Was it really so terrible, with Baba?”

“I had you and Alastair,” Sona said, “and that always made me happy. As for your father… I can only mourn the life we never had, that we could have had, if he—if things had been different. But you cannot fix someone, Cordelia,” she added. “In the end, if they can be fixed at all, they must do the repairs themselves.”

She sighed and looked at the flames dancing on the hearth.

“When I brought us to London,” Sona went on, “it was to save our family. To save your father. And we did. You did. And I will always be proud of you for that.” She smiled wistfully. “But what brought us here is over. I think perhaps it’s time we consider leaving London.”

“Return to Cirenworth?” Cirenworth was their country house in Devon, now closed up and uninhabited, with sheets over the furniture and blackout curtains at the windows. It was odd to think of going back there.

“No, Layla, to Tehran,” Sona said. “I’ve been estranged from my aunts and cousins there for too long. And since your father is gone…”

Cordelia could only stare. Tehran, where her mother had been born; Tehran, whose language and history she knew as she knew her own hands, but a place she had no memory of living, whose customs she was not wholly familiar with.

“Tehran?” Cordelia echoed. “I—but we live here.” She was nearly too shocked to speak. “And we could not go now. The Enclave needs us—”

“You have done enough for the Enclave,” said her mother. “You can be a powerful Shadowhunter in Persia, too, if that is what you desire. Such are needed everywhere.” Spoken like a true parent, Cordelia thought. “Layla, I am not saying you must come to Tehran. You have a husband here; of course it would be reasonable for you to remain.”

Cordelia sensed that her mother was treading lightly, delicately, around the topic of her marriage. She wondered dismally what her mother thought had gone wrong between her and James. Or perhaps she only sensed some sort of trouble? She was offering Cordelia an escape, either way.

“Alastair has already said he will come,” Sona said. “Risa, too, of course. With the new baby, I will require both their help.”

“Alastair said he will go?” Cordelia was astonished. “To Tehran? And take care of the baby?” She tried to imagine Alastair burping a baby and sweepingly failed.

“There is no need to repeat everything I say, Layla. And you need not decide this moment.” Sona patted her belly; her eyes were closing in tiredness. “I’m in no state to move thousands of miles away tonight. First I must bring this one into the world. Then you can decide what it is you want.”

She closed her eyes. Cordelia kissed her mother’s forehead and went out into the hall, where she found Alastair lurking in the corridor. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You knew about all this? You agreed to move to Tehran without saying a word to me?”

“Well, you were in Paris. Besides, I thought M?m?n should tell you, not me.” Cordelia could not see his expression in the darkness of the corridor. “I don’t have anything to stay here for—not really. Perhaps you do, but our situations are different.”

Cordelia could only look at him silently. She could not bring herself to tell him how she felt it all slipping away from her: James, Matthew, Lucie. Her purpose as a Shadowhunter, the wielder of Cortana. What would it be like for her, to lose all that, and her family too, and still remain in London?

“Maybe not,” she said finally. “Maybe they are more similar than you think.”



* * *



The moment the Consul’s carriage vanished, James set off for Curzon Street, the cold wind like a knife that cut through his coat.

It was fully two miles’ walk between the Institute and his house, but James wanted the time to himself. London swirled around him, in all its vivid life. Fleet Street itself, with its journalists and barristers and businessmen, on to Leicester Square, where hundreds were queuing outside the Alhambra Theatre for tickets to the winter ballet. Tourists raised glasses to each other in the glowing windows of the brasserie of the Hotel de l’Europe. By the time he reached Piccadilly Circus it was growing dark, and the lights around the statue of Eros were haloed in clouds of dancing snowflakes. The traffic was so busy it had come to a standstill; a raging sea of Christmas shoppers poured past him from Regent Street, laden with brown-paper parcels. A red-faced man who was carrying a giant stuffed giraffe and had clearly been to Hamleys bumped right into him, seemed about to say something rude, then saw his expression and backed away hastily.

James had not glamoured himself, as his winter clothes covered his runes. He could hardly blame the man for rushing off, though; when he caught glimpses of his reflection in the shopwindows as he passed, he saw a young man with a white, stony face who looked as if he had just received some kind of terrible news.

The house on Curzon Street felt as if it had been abandoned for months, rather than days. James kicked the ice and snow off his boots in the entryway, where the bright wallpaper reminded him of the first time he’d brought Cordelia here. So pretty, she’d said. Who chose it?

And he’d felt a moment of pride when he told her he’d been the one to pick it out. Pride that he’d chosen something she liked.

He moved through the rooms, turning up the gas lamps, through the dining room and past the study, where he and Cordelia had played so many games of chess.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flicker of light. Still in his coat, he headed downstairs to the kitchen, where he was utterly unprepared to be greeted by a bloodcurdling scream.

A moment later he had a dagger in his hand and was facing off with Effie over the kitchen counter. She was wielding a wooden spoon like a gladiator, her gray pompadour trembling.

“Cor,” she said, relaxing as she recognized him. “I wasn’t expecting you back.”