Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“They didn’t want to let me see you at first,” Jesse said, smiling. He’d pulled the corridor chair up to the cell door, as close as he could get, and Grace had dragged her desk chair over to the other side. She sat holding Jesse’s fingers as he told her everything that had happened since he had left London with Lucie and Malcolm, up until this very moment. As he spoke, she marveled at how ordinary and alive he felt. “But I refused to have my protection spells done unless they let me see you at the same time. I mean, it would hardly make sense if I came to the Silent City and didn’t see you, wouldn’t it?”

“Sometimes I wonder if anything makes sense,” said Grace. “But—I am so glad you’re here. And glad Lucie did what she did.”

“I’ll thank her for you.” He smiled a little at the thought of Lucie, that besotted smile that Grace had often seen on the faces of her own suitors. She had to push away a small pang. So often her mother had told her that if Jesse ever fell in love, he would have no further time for his mother and sister. But her mother had been wrong about so many things. And it wasn’t as if the clock could be turned back, either, and undo what he felt. And he seemed happy. She would not want to undo it if she could.

“And you’re both safe,” Grace said. “The Clave doesn’t suspect Lucie of—anything?”

“Grace,” Jesse said. “Don’t worry.”

But she couldn’t help it. The Clave was unlikely to understand, or care about understanding, the distinction between necromancy and what Lucie had done. Jesse would need to pretend to be this obscure Blackthorn cousin, and she would need to pretend that too, for now. Maybe forever. It would still be worth it.

“Last night,” Jesse said, “Mother was recaptured. She was found on Bodmin Moor. I assume Belial tired of her and abandoned her.” His lip curled. “It was bound to happen. She was looking for loyalty from a demon.”

“Recaptured?” Grace was almost too stunned to speak. “So—will they take her to Idris? Try her by the Mortal Sword?”

Jesse nodded. “You know what that means, don’t you? You don’t have to stay here, Gracie. It was brave of you to bring yourself to the Silent Brothers, to see if Mother had done anything to you like she did to me, but surely they would have discovered it by now if she had? And I’m sure it felt safer here, as well,” he added, lowering his voice, “but if you come back to the Institute with me—”

“But you are Jeremy Blackthorn now,” said Grace, her mind whirling. “Surely you are not meant to even know me.”

“Within the walls of the Institute, I am still Jesse,” he said. “Still your brother. And I want you with me. You’ll be safe there—”

“I’ll be whispered about,” said Grace. “Tatiana’s daughter. Everyone in the Enclave will stare.”

“You cannot spend the rest of your life in the Silent City because you are worried about vicious gossip,” said Jesse. “I know there are things Mother forced you to do that you’re ashamed of, but people will understand—”

Grace felt as if her heart had begun to pound in her stomach. Her mind was full of a hot, twisting horror. To go to the Institute—to see James every day, James who had looked at her as if she were the worst monster he had ever seen—James, who she had wronged beyond belief. And there were Cordelia, Charles, Matthew… and Lucie…

Perhaps they did not know the truth yet. It seemed James was keeping the secret. But they would know soon enough.

“I can’t,” Grace said. “I need to stay here.”

“Grace, I too bear the marks of the terrible things our mother forced me to do. Quite literally. But this is Lucie’s family. They will understand—”

“No,” Grace said. “They won’t.”

Jesse’s intelligent green eyes narrowed. “Did the Silent Brothers find something?” he said quietly. “Did she do something to you—?”

Grace hesitated. She could lie to him, she thought. She could hide the truth just a little bit longer. But Jesse was the most important person in her life. She needed him to know who she really was. All of it. If he did not understand not just what she had gone through, but what she had done, he would never really know her.

“It’s worse than that,” she said.

And she told him. All of it, sparing no details, from the forest to the bracelet to Charles to James’s demand that she be arrested. She spared him only one thing: her mother’s last request of her, that she use her power to seduce Jesse, too, and bend him to Belial’s will.

As she spoke, Jesse sat back slowly in his chair, withdrawing his hand from hers. Shivering, she clenched her fists in her lap, as her voice finally trailed off. The story was done. She felt as if she had cut her wrists in front of her brother, and poison had poured out instead of blood.

“You,” Jesse said, and cleared his throat. He was shaking—she could see it, though he had jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat. “You did those things to James? And others, too, Matthew and Charles and—Christopher?”

“Not Christopher,” Grace said. “I never used my power on him.”

“Really.” There was a coldness in Jesse’s voice she had never heard before. “Lucie said you had grown friendly with him; I don’t see how else that could have happened. How could you, Grace? How could you have done all that?”

“How could I not?” she whispered. “Mother told me it was a great gift. She said I was a weapon in her hand, that if I only did what she said, together we would bring you back—”

“Don’t use me as an excuse,” Jesse snapped.

“I felt I had no choice.”

“But you did,” he said. “You had a choice.”

“I know that now.” She tried to look into his eyes, but he would not meet her gaze. “I wasn’t strong enough. I am trying to be strong enough now. That is why I’m here. And why I won’t leave. I told James the truth—”

“But you haven’t told anyone else. Lucie is unaware of this. And Cordelia—what you’ve done to their marriage, Grace—”

James hasn’t told her? Grace thought in surprise, but she was barely able to feel it. She was numb, as if a limb had been severed and she was in the first shock of the wound. “I can’t tell anyone,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s a secret. The Silent Brothers wish to keep it hidden so they can use the information to deceive our mother as to what they know—”

“I don’t believe you,” Jesse said flatly. “You are trying to make me a party to your deception. I won’t have it.”

Grace shook her head wearily. “Ask James,” she said. “He will tell you just what I have. Talk to him before you speak with anyone else—he has a right—”

Jesse stood up, knocking over his chair. It clattered to the stone floor. “You are the last person,” he said, “to lecture me about James’s rights.” He snatched the witchlight torch off the wall. His eyes glittered in its light—surely those were not tears?

“I must go,” he said. “I feel sick.”

And without another word, he was gone, taking the light with him.



* * *



Thomas would have preferred going to Chiswick House to helping Christopher in the Institute library, fond as he was of Kit. He had a mad curiosity about the abandoned place that had once belonged to his family, of course, but also he felt that James and Matthew both needed his emotional support more than Christopher did. (Christopher seemed sanguine as always.) Though he did sometimes wonder if he were providing the strong, silent emotional support that he intended, or if he were merely staring fixedly at his friends in an alarming manner that they probably discussed when he was not there.

In the end, the deciding factor was—as it often seemed to be these days—Alastair. He had come straight over to Christopher after the Devil Tavern gathering and said, “I’ll help you in the library with research, if you like.”

Christopher’s eyebrows had gone up, but he’d only said, “You read Persian, don’t you?”

“And Sanskrit,” Alastair said. “Urdu, some Malay, Tamil, Greek, and a bit of Coptic. If that would be useful.”

Christopher looked as if someone had given him a box of kittens with bows on. “Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll meet in the library tomorrow morning.” His eyes darted over to Thomas, who tried to school his expression into complete blankness. “Thomas, are you still on for joining me, as well?”