Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“Yes. But it was all rubbish in the end, wasn’t it? My father apparently doesn’t hold himself to his high-minded standards.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “It was the hypocrisy that was the last straw, I suppose.” She looked directly at Matthew, and as she spoke Anna felt, against her will, a surge of pride in Ariadne. “I told my mother that I would not marry whatever man they chose for me. That, in fact, I would not marry any man at all. That I did not love men, but women.”


Matthew wound a curl of his fair hair around his forefinger, a nervous gesture left over from childhood. “Did you know,” he said slowly, “that you were saying something she did not want to hear? Something you thought might cause her to cut you off? Even to—hate you?”

“I knew,” Ariadne said. “Yet I would do it again. I am sure my mother is mourning the daughter that she never had. But if she loves me—and I believe she does—I think she must love the reality of me.”

“What about your father?”

“He was in shock when he came back from Iceland,” Ariadne said. “I did not hear from him for nearly a day, and then it was a letter—clearly he knew I have been staying with Anna—saying that I could come home if I apologized to my mother and took back what I had said.”

“Which you will not do,” said Matthew.

“Which I will not do,” Ariadne agreed. Her smile was sad. “It may be hard for you to understand. Your parents are so remarkably kind.”

Matthew seemed to flinch. Anna thought with a pang of the time when the Fairchilds had been one of the closest families she knew, before Charles had grown so cold, before Matthew had become so sad.

“Well, they certainly aren’t blackmailing anyone,” Matthew said. “I noted something here in the letter: ‘Your family has benefited from the spoils of—giant ink blot—but it could all be lost if your house is not in order.’ What if it means ‘spoils’ quite literally?”

Ariadne frowned. “But it has been illegal to take spoils from Downworlders since the Accords were first signed.”

Anna shuddered. Spoils. It was an ugly word, an ugly concept. Spoils had been the practice of confiscating possessions from innocent Downworlders: common before the historic peace treaty between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that was now called the Accords. Common, and usually unpunished. Many old Shadowhunter families had enriched themselves that way.

“It may not refer to crimes being committed now. When the Accords were signed in 1872,” Anna said, “Shadowhunters were meant to return the spoils they had taken. But many did not. The Baybrooks and the Pouncebys, for instance. Their wealth came from spoils originally. Everyone knows it.”

“Which is dreadful,” Ariadne said, “but not an excuse for blackmail.”

“I doubt the blackmail springs from moral outrage,” said Matthew. “More convenience. He wishes to blackmail this person, and has found an excuse to do so.” He rubbed at his eyes. “It could be anyone he seeks to control. It could be Charles.”

Ariadne looked startled. “But my father and Charles have always been on good terms. Even after our engagement ended, they righted things quickly. Charles has always wanted to be just the sort of politician that my father is.”

“What do you think it is Charles has done that could render him vulnerable to blackmail?” Anna said.

Matthew shook his head. His hair, dry now, was beginning to fall into his eyes. “Nothing. Just an idea. I wondered if the spoils could be considered the spoils of political power, but I agree—let’s look into Baybrook and Pounceby first.” He turned to Ariadne. “Would you mind lending me the letter? I’ll confront Thoby—I know him best. And he has never been good at standing up to interrogation. Once he pilfered someone else’s food hamper at the Academy but folded like cheap paper under questioning.”

“Of course,” Ariadne said. “And I’m friendly with Eunice. I think she’ll be open to meeting with me, and she won’t even notice she’s being questioned. She’s too self-absorbed.”

Matthew rose to his feet, a soldier bracing for a return to the field. “I ought to go,” he said. “Oscar will be howling for my return.”

Anna walked him down to the front door. As Matthew opened it, he glanced up the stairs where Ariadne remained.

“She is brave,” he said. “Braver than either of us, I think.”

Anna laid a hand against his cheek. “My Matthew,” she said. “What is it you fear so much to tell your parents?”

Matthew closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I—I can’t, Anna. I do not want you to despise me.”

“I would never despise you,” Anna said. “We are all flawed creatures. As diamonds are flawed, each distinct imperfection makes us unique.”

“Perhaps I don’t wish to be unique,” Matthew said. “Perhaps I wish only to be happy and ordinary.”

“Matthew, darling, you are the least ordinary person I know—besides myself—and that is part of what makes you happy. You are a peacock, not a duck.”

“I see you have inherited the Herondale hatred of ducks from your mother,” said Matthew, with the faintest of smiles. He looked up at the sky, deep black, spangled with stars. “I cannot help but feel something terribly dark is coming. Even in Paris, we could not escape the warnings. It is not that I fear danger, or a battle. It is a greater shadow than that, casting itself across all of us. Across London.”

Anna frowned. “What do you mean?” she said, but Matthew, seeming to feel he had said too much, would not elaborate. He only straightened his jacket and set off, a slim figure making its way down Percy Street, unobserved by passersby.



* * *



“You could stay the night at the Institute, Daisy,” Lucie said as she, Jesse, Cordelia, and James made their way along Fleet Street. The streetlamps had been lit, each illuminating a circle of light where tiny flakes of snow swirled like swarms of icy gnats. The wind had picked up, and again blew flurries of ice in misty eddies around the four of them, which Jesse alone seemed to enjoy, his face upturned to the night as they walked. He had not been able to feel hot or cold for years, he had pointed out, and extremes of temperature still delighted him. Apparently he had once gotten close enough to the fireplace in the Institute drawing room to singe his jacket before Lucie pulled him away. “I mean, look at all this snow.”

“Perhaps,” Cordelia said. She cast a sideways glance at James, who had been quiet through the walk, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his coat. Pale flakes were caught in the darkness of his hair.

She did not finish the thought; they had reached the Institute. Once inside, they stomped the snow off their shoes in the entryway and hung their clothes up next to gear jackets and an assortment of weapons on pegs near the front door. James rang one of the servants’ bells—presumably to let Will and Tessa know they had returned—and said, “We should go to one of the bedrooms. For privacy.”

If they had been at Curzon Street, of course, there would be no need to worry about Will and Tessa overhearing them. But James had promised to stay at the Institute while Tatiana was at large, and anyway Cordelia didn’t think she could have faced Curzon Street.

“Yours,” said Lucie promptly. “Mine is a mess.”

James’s bedroom. Cordelia had not been in it often—she had a blurred memory of arriving to see James, a copy of Layla and Majnun in her hand, and finding him in his room with Grace. If only she had given up on him then—not let this farce play out as long as it had. She was silent as they passed through the chapel: it was unlighted now, stripped of decorations. Only a few weeks ago she and James had gotten married here, wreaths of pale flowers garlanding the pews, spilling into the aisle. She had walked on crushed petals as she approached the altar, so that they released their perfume in a cloud of cream and tuberose.

She glanced sideways at James, but he appeared lost in thought. Of course she could not expect him to feel about this place as she did. It would not be a knife to the heart for him.

James led them to his bedroom. It was much neater than it had been when James had lived here before—probably because it was mostly bare, other than the open trunk at the foot of the bed. In the trunk Cordelia recognized James’s clothes, brought from their house, and a few knickknacks—was that a flash of ivory? Before she could look more closely, James had kicked the trunk shut. He turned to Jesse. “Lock the door, would you?”

Jesse hesitated before turning to Cordelia, to her surprise. “Cordelia,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you from Lucie I feel as if I know you. But in truth—I’m nearly a stranger to you. If you’d prefer to speak to James and Lucie alone…”