Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

And since Tatiana had escaped from the Adamant Citadel, it had been worse. Where do you think your mother might have gone? Do you know if your mother had a hiding place? Is she with the demon Belial?

There was no response Grace could give, nothing in her mind save that she didn’t know, that her mother had never considered her worthy of confiding in. That she wished more than anyone else that her mother could be caught and punished, penned up somewhere safe where she could never hurt anyone again.

After each interrogation, which left Grace as limp as a rag, Brother Zachariah would escort her back to her cell. He would sit, silently, on a chair outside the barred door, until Grace was no longer huddled on her bed, shuddering. When she could breathe again, he would go—leaving her alone, as she preferred.

Alone, to think about magical equations and chemical weights, about mathematics that bent the laws of physics, and charts that seemed to hover above her bed as she waited for sleep, traced against the stone walls in brilliant lines.

She was at her desk, struggling with a particularly stubborn calculation, when Brother Zachariah appeared at her door. He moved soundlessly through the City, but for her benefit tended to knock at the bars to warn her he was there before startling her by speaking.

You have a visitor, Grace.

She sat up, nearly dropping the pen. Quickly inventoried what she was wearing—a plain ivory dress, her hair tied back with a ribbon. Presentable enough. Grace said, “Is it Christopher?”

There was a momentary pause. Zachariah said, It is your brother, Grace. It is Jesse. He came here from the London Institute.

Grace found that she was cold all over, despite the shawl. It cannot be, she thought. I have been so careful not to ask.… Not about Lucie, and not about—

“Jesse?” she breathed. “Please—oh, please, bring him here.”

Zachariah hesitated, then was gone. Grace rose shakily to her feet. Jesse. He had been real to her, and only her, for such a long time. Now Jesse was alive, someone who had been in the London Institute, someone who could travel from there to here.

Witchlight danced along the walls, illuminating her cell. A moment later, following the light, came Jesse.

Grace caught at the edge of her desk to keep herself from falling. She had hoped that Lucie had brought him back. She’d had faith. But to see him like this—just as he’d been the day before his awful runing ceremony, young and tall and healthy and smiling…

She stared at him as he came over to the door, settling the witchlight torch he carried into a holder on the wall. He was the same, and yet different—she did not remember such curious eyes or such a wry, thoughtful turn to his mouth.

He put his left hand through the bars of the door. A hand marked with a wide black Voyance rune. “Grace,” he said. “Grace. It’s me. It worked.”

Grace Blackthorn did not cry, or at least, she did not truly cry. This was one of the earliest lessons her mother had imparted to her. “The tears of a woman,” she’d said, “are one of the few sources of her power. They should not be freely shed any more than a warrior should throw his sword into a river. If you are to shed tears, you should know, from the first, your purpose in doing so.”

So when she tasted salt in her mouth now, it surprised her. It had been so long. She caught her brother’s hand and held it tightly, and when he said, “Grace, it will all be all right, Grace,” she let herself believe it.



* * *



It was nice, Ariadne couldn’t help but notice, coming up the steps of Anna’s building to her flat door, taking Anna’s key from her beaded bag, letting herself into a cozy, charming space that smelled of leather and roses. Don’t get used to it, she reminded herself as she came into the building’s entryway from the cold. That way lay only madness. She knew well enough by now the danger of allowing herself to fall into another fantasy about a life with Anna. She was returning from looking for her own flat, after all, and that was what was best for both of them.

Finding a suitable flat in central London was turning out to be harder than finding a Naga demon hiding in a drainpipe. Nothing affordable was livable, and nothing livable was affordable. She received the same stipend as any other Shadowhunter, but since she’d been living with her parents, she’d given it all to them for house expenses; she had nothing saved up.

As for the flats she could afford—if she sold her jewelry—they were uniformly awful. There was the flat in the cellar of a house whose owner announced breezily that he would frequently be passing through the parlor in the nude and did not expect to have to knock or make himself known beforehand. There was the one full of rats—which were, the landlady informed her, pets. The others she saw were all mold and mildew, broken faucets and cracked plaster. Worse, whatever mundanes thought of a woman Ariadne’s age—and complexion—looking for her own flat, it was not complimentary, and most had no qualms about making that clear.

“I shall have to go to Whitechapel,” she murmured to herself as she went up the stairs. “I shall find a band of knife-wielding gangsters and join them in order to make some money. Perhaps I shall rise to the top and become a criminal mastermind.”

She plastered a bright smile on her face and pushed the door of the flat open. Inside, she found Anna gazing at her half-cleared bookshelf, books piled on all nearby surfaces. She was balanced on a dangerously tilting chair, wearing a loose white shirt and a silk waistcoat with gold buttons. “I’m arranging them by color,” she said, gesturing at the books. “What do you think, darling?”

“How will you find anything?” Ariadne said, knowing better than to be affected by that casual darling; Anna called everyone that. “Or do you remember the colors of all your books?”

“Of course I do,” said Anna, hopping down from her chair. Her black hair was flyaway and mussed, her pin-striped trousers clinging to her hips—they had clearly been tailored for her slim curves. Ariadne sighed inwardly. “Doesn’t everyone?” Anna peered more closely at Ariadne. “What’s wrong? How goes the flat hunt?”

Half of Ariadne wanted to spill all her troubles at Anna’s feet. If nothing else, they could have had a laugh about the naked landlord in Holborn. But she had promised she’d be out of Anna’s flat as soon as was possible; surely Anna was looking forward to having it back?

“It went very well,” she said, going to hang up her coat. Can’t I just stay here? she did not say. “I found a lovely little place in Pimlico.”

“Splendid!” Anna shelved a green book with a loud thunk, a bit more forcefully than Ariadne would have expected. “When will they let you have it?”

“Oh,” said Ariadne, “the first of the month. New year, new start, as they say.”

“Do they say that?” Anna asked. “Anyway, what’s it like?”

“It’s very nice,” Ariadne said, aware she was digging herself in ever deeper but now unable to stop. “It has a light, airy feel and, er, decorative sconces.” So now she had to find not only a flat in Pimlico in the next ten days, it had to be “light” and “airy.” With “decorative sconces.” She wasn’t even sure she knew what sconces were. “Winston will love it.”

“Winston!” said Anna. “Why didn’t we retrieve him when we went to your parents’ house?”

Ariadne sighed. “I tried, but there wasn’t any chance. I do feel awful. As if I’ve abandoned him. He won’t understand at all.”

“Well, he’s yours,” said Anna. “Winston was a gift, wasn’t he? You have every right to take that parrot back.”

Ariadne sighed and sat down on the settee. “My parents’ letter said they’ve changed the locks. I can’t even get into the house. At least Mother is fond of Winston. She’ll take good care of him.”

“That is terribly unfair to Winston. He will be missing you. Parrots become very attached to their owners, and they can live more than a hundred years, I’ve heard.”

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you were such a defender of the feelings of birds.”

“Parrots are very sensitive,” Anna said. “It’s not all pirates and biscuits. I know we’re meeting the others at Chiswick this afternoon, but I also happen to know your parents will be at the Consul’s tonight. Which provides a perfect opportunity to liberate Winston so that he may join you in your new life.”

“Did you just come up with this idea on the spot?” Ariadne said, amused.

“Not at all,” Anna said, tossing a volume of Byron’s poetry into the air. “I’ve given it at least two or three hours of consideration over the past few days. And I have devised a plan.”



* * *