Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

He did not say that it was actually rather comforting to hear it again. It was a tale that had been told often to himself and Lucie, who had adored it when she was young—Will, following his heart, dashing to the rescue of their mother, who he did not yet know loved him, too.

James leaned his head against the carriage window. The scenery had turned dramatic—cliffs fell away to their left, and below was the uproar of pounding surf, waves of gunmetal ocean smashing against the rocks that reached knobbled fingers far out into the gray-blue sea. In the distance, he saw a church atop a promontory, silhouetted against the sky, its gray steeple seeming somehow terribly lonely, terribly far from everything.

His father’s voice was singsong in his ears, the words of the story as familiar as a lullaby. James could not help but think of Cordelia, reading to him from Ganjavi. Her favorite poem, about the doomed lovers Layla and Majnun. Her voice, soft as velvet. And when her cheek the moon revealed, a thousand hearts were won: no pride, no shield, could check her power. Layla, she was called.

Cordelia smiled at him over the table in the study. The chess game had been set out, and she held an ivory knight in her graceful hand. The light from the fire illuminated her hair, a halo of flame and gold. “Chess is a Persian game,” she told him. “Bia ba man bazi kon. Play with me, James.”

“Kheili khoshgeli,” he said. He found the words easily: they were the first thing he’d taught himself to say in Persian, though he had never said them to his wife before. You are so beautiful.

She blushed. Her lips trembled, red and full. Her eyes were so dark, they shimmered—they were black snakes, moving and darting, snapping at him with their teeth—

“James! Wake up!” Magnus’s hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. James came awake, retching dryly, his fist jammed into his stomach. He was in the carriage, though the sky outside had darkened. How much time had passed? He had been dreaming again. This time Cordelia had been dragged into his nightmares. He sank back against the cushioned seat, feeling sick to his stomach.

He glanced at his father. Will was looking at him with a rare stern expression, his eyes very blue. He said, “James, you must tell us what is wrong.”

“Nothing.” There was a bitter taste in James’s mouth. “I fell asleep—another dream—I told you, I’m worried about Lucie.”

“You were calling for Cordelia,” Will said. “I have never heard anyone sound as if they were in such pain. Jamie, you must talk to us.”

Magnus glanced between James and Will. His hand was on James’s shoulder, heavy with its weight of rings. He said, “You cried out another name too. And a word. One that makes me quite nervous.”

No, James thought. No. Out the window, the sun was setting, and the rolling farms tucked between the hills glowed dark red. “I’m sure it was nonsense.”

Magnus said, “You cried out the name Lilith.” He regarded James levelly. “There is much chatter in Downworld about the recent happenings in London. The story as I have been told it has never quite sat well with me. There are rumors, too, of the Mother of Demons. James, you don’t need to tell us what you know. But we will put it together, regardless.” He glanced at Will. “Well, I shall; I can’t promise anything for your father. He’s always been slow.”

“But I have never worn a Russian hat with fur earflaps,” said Will, “unlike some individuals currently present.”

“Mistakes have been made on all sides,” said Magnus. “James?”

“I do not own an earflap hat,” James said.

The two men glared at him.

“I can’t say it all now,” James said, and felt his heartbeat skip: for the first time he had admitted there was something to say. “Not if we’re going to find Lucie—”

Magnus shook his head. “It’s already dark, and starting to rain, and the way up Chapel Cliff to Peak Rock is said to be a precarious one. Safer to stop tonight and go tomorrow morning.”

Will nodded; it was clear he and Magnus had discussed their plans while James was asleep.

“Very well,” Magnus said. “We will stop at the next decent inn. I’ll book us a saloon room where we can talk privately. And James—whatever it is, we can sort it out.”

James doubted that very much, but it seemed pointless to say so. He watched the sun vanish through the window instead, reaching his hand into his pocket as he did so. Cordelia’s gloves, the pair he had taken from their house, were still there, the kidskin soft as flower petals. He closed his hand around one.



* * *



In a small white room near the ocean, Lucie Herondale was drifting in and out of sleep.

When she’d first awakened, here in the strange bed that smelled like old straw, she’d heard a voice—Jesse’s voice—and she had tried to call out, to let him know she was conscious. But before she could, exhaustion had swept over her like a cold gray wave. An exhaustion she had never felt before, or even imagined, deep as a knife wound. Her fingertip grip on alertness had slipped, tumbling her into the darkness of her own mind, where time swayed and lurched like a ship in a storm, and she could hardly tell whether she was awake or asleep.

In the moments of lucidity, she had pieced together only a few details. The room was small, painted the color of an eggshell; there was a single window through which she could see the ocean as its waves rolled in and out, a dark gunmetal gray tipped with white. She could hear the ocean too, she thought, but its distant roar often came mixed with much less pleasant noises, and she could not tell what of her perception was real.

There were two people who came into the room from time to time to check on her. One was Jesse. The other was Malcolm, a more diffident presence; she knew somehow that they were in his house, the one in Cornwall, with the Cornish sea pounding the rocks outside.

She hadn’t yet been able to speak to either of them; when she tried, it was as though her mind could form the words, but her body would not respond to its commands. She could not even twitch a finger to call attention to the fact that she was awake, and all her efforts only sent her back into the darkness.

The darkness was not only the interior of her mind. She had thought it was, at first—the familiar darkness that came before sleep brought the vivid colors of dreams. But this darkness was a place.

And in that place, she was not alone. Though it seemed an emptiness through which she drifted without purpose, she could sense the presence of others, not alive but not dead: bodiless, their souls whirling through the void but never meeting her or one another. They were unhappy, these souls. They did not understand what was happening to them. They kept up a constant wailing, a wordless cry of pain and sorrow that burrowed under her flesh.

She felt something brush against her cheek. It brought her back to her body. She was in the white bedroom again. The touch on her cheek was Jesse’s hand; she knew it without being able to open her eyes, or move to respond.

“She’s crying,” he said.

His voice. There was a depth to it, a texture it had not possessed when he had been a ghost.

“She might be having a nightmare.” Malcolm’s voice. “Jesse, she’s fine. She used up a great deal of her energy bringing you back. She needs to rest.”

“But don’t you see—it’s because she brought me back.” Jesse’s voice caught. “If she doesn’t heal… I could never forgive myself.”

“This gift of hers. This ability to reach through the veil that separates the living and the dead. She has had it all her life. It is not your fault; if it is anyone’s, it is Belial’s.” Malcolm sighed. “We know so little about the shadow realms beyond the end of everything. And she went quite far into them, to pull you back out. It is taking her some time to return.”

“But what if she’s trapped somewhere awful?” The light touch came again, Jesse’s hand cupping her face. Lucie wanted to turn her cheek into his palm so badly it hurt. “What if she needs me to pull her out, somehow?”

When Malcolm spoke again, his voice was more gentle. “It’s been two days. If by tomorrow she is not awake, I may attempt to reach her with magic. I will look into it, if, in the meantime, you stop standing over her, fretting. If you really want to make yourself useful, you can go into the village and bring back some things we need.…”

His voice wavered, fading into silence. Lucie was in the dark place again. She could hear Jesse, his voice a far-off whisper, barely audible. “Lucie, if you can hear me—I’m here. I’m taking care of you.”

I am here, she tried to say. I can hear you. But like the time before and the time before that, the words were swallowed up in shadow, and she fell back into the void.



* * *



“Who’s a pretty bird?” Ariadne Bridgestock said.

Winston the parrot narrowed his eyes at her. He offered no opinion on who might or might not be a pretty bird. His focus, she was sure, was on the handful of Brazil nuts in her hand.