Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

James knew what he meant. It was something of a bond, this peculiar connection: both of them had had their lives warped and twisted by Belial and Tatiana. Both bore the scars. He almost felt as if he should shake Jesse’s hand; it seemed the manly sort of thing to do, to seal the agreement that they were to be friends from this moment on. Of course, if it had been Matthew, he would not have cared at all about manly agreements—Matthew would simply have hugged James or wrestled him to the ground or tickled him until he was breathless.


But Jesse was not Matthew. No one was. Matthew had brought anarchic joy into James’s life, like light into a dark place. With Matthew, James felt the unspeakable happiness that came from being with one’s parabatai, a happiness that transcended all other things. Without Matthew… the image of Chiswick House came unbidden into his mind, with its smashed mirrors and stopped clocks. The symbol of sadness frozen in time, never-ending.

Stop, James told himself. Focus on the present. On what you can do for Jesse.

“Come with me, tomorrow,” he said, rather suddenly, and saw Jesse raise an eyebrow. “I won’t tell you where—you’ll have to trust me—but I think you will find it rewarding.”

Jesse laughed. “All right,” he said. “I trust you, then.” He frowned down at his own hands. “And I believe you were right. I am freezing. My fingers are turning quite blue.”

They scrambled back through the trapdoor and made their way through the attic, which James suspected had not changed much since his parents had been young. Jesse returned to his room, and James to his, only to discover that Bridget had slid a slightly crumpled envelope halfway under his door. It seemed that while he had been on the roof, Neddy had come to the Institute with a message for him.

A message from Cordelia.



* * *



It turned out that Anna’s plan, which Ariadne had assumed involved a complex series of maneuvers that would somehow produce Winston the parrot, consisted of them using an Open rune to get into the Bridgestocks’ house through a back entrance and commencing a lightning raid on the home Ariadne had lived in since she’d moved to London.

She found she rather enjoyed it. She led Anna immediately to the conservatory, where Winston’s gold cage usually held pride of place. Her stomach swooped when she saw that it was not there. What if her parents, in their anger at her, had sold Winston or given him away?

“He’s likely just in another room,” Anna whispered. They had both been whispering since they entered the house, though Ariadne knew it was empty and the servants, in their quarters downstairs, would be unlikely to hear anything. And they were both wearing Soundless runes. Still, there was something about the dark house that invited whispering.

They searched through the ground floor, Anna shining her witchlight rune-stone into every corner. Having found nothing, they moved upstairs, creeping along the carpeted floors to Ariadne’s bedroom.

Ariadne noticed several things the moment she stepped into her former room. First was Winston, perched in his cage, which had been placed on her desk. A small dish of nuts and seeds sat beside it. Winston flapped his wings happily at the sight of her.

“There you are,” Anna said, glancing over at Ariadne, who was relieved, but… The second thing she’d noticed was the state of her bedroom. She had expected it to be stripped down, removed of everything that might remind her parents of her. Instead everything was in its place, pin straight. The jewelry she had not taken with her was in an open velvet box on the dresser, along with her cosmetics and comb. The remainder of her clothes hung pressed in the wardrobe. Her bed was neatly made.

They are keeping up appearances, she realized. For themselves, not for anyone else. They are keeping up the fiction that I might return at any moment. She could imagine the scenario they envisioned—Ariadne fleeing back to Cavendish Square, the tears of regret on her cheeks, her mother fussing over her as she told them of the wide world and its cruelties, of the beliefs she’d entertained that she knew now were wrong. Why, she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever come to think that she loved—

“Pretty bird,” called Winston hopefully.

“Oh, Winston,” Ariadne murmured, and passed a shelled peanut through the bars of his cage. “Never fear, I hadn’t forgotten you. You’re coming with us.” She looked around; ah, here was her purple afghan, folded at the foot of the bed. She picked it up to unfold it.

Winston glanced over at Anna, who had flung herself on Ariadne’s bed and was watching their reunion with amusement. “Anna,” he said.

“That’s right,” Ariadne said, pleased. Usually when Winston looked at people he said, “Brazil nut?”

“Trouble,” said Winston, now gazing askance at Anna. “Anna. Trouble.”

“Winston,” Ariadne said, and now she could see that Anna was trying hard not to laugh, “that is a very rude thing to say. She is helping me rescue you so we can be together again. It’s her flat we’re taking you to, so you had best behave yourself.”

“Ariaaaadne,” Winston said in an almost frighteningly perfect imitation of her mother calling for her. “Pretty bird? Brazil nut?”

Ariadne rolled her eyes and tossed the afghan over his cage. “Bird,” Winston said thoughtfully from beneath it, and then fell silent.

She shook her head ruefully as she turned back to Anna, and then stopped as she realized that Anna’s expression had lost its mischief. She seemed quietly serious now, as if lost in thought.

“What is it?” Ariadne said.

Anna was quiet a moment, and then said, “I was only wondering—do you still want to be called Ariadne? It’s the name that your… well, you know, Maurice and Flora gave you. And you were also Kamala. Which is quite a lovely name. Not that Ariadne is not also a lovely name.” Her mouth quirked again. “It ought to be your choice, I think. What you wish to be called.”

Ariadne was touched, and a little startled. It was something she herself had been considering, but she would not have expected Anna to have thought of it. “It is a good question,” she said, leaning against the dresser. “Both names were given to me. As names are, of course; they represent a sort of gift, but also, I think, a set of expectations. My first family thought I would be one sort of girl, but I am not that girl. My second also had expectations of who I would be, and I am not that girl either. Yet those names are still a part of who I am. I think I would like to be named something new, that binds the two together. I thought,” she said shyly, “Arati. It was my first grandmother’s name. She always said it referred to divine fire, or to praising the Angel with a lamp in hand. It makes me think of being a light in darkness. And that is something I would like to be. I would ask to be called Ari,” she added, “for that honors the name I have had for the past twelve years.”

“Ari,” Anna said. She was leaning back on her hands, looking up at Ariadne, her blue eyes very intent. Her collar was loose, her dark curls just touching the back of her neck. The line of her body was graceful, her back slightly arched, the curves of her small, high breasts just visible beneath her shirt. “Well. That name should not be hard to remember, given that I’ve been calling you by it for quite some time. Ari,” she said again, and the sound was different than it had been before—a caress.

A future seemed to open before Ari in that moment. A more honest future, one in which she was who she wished to be. Right now she knew she was crossing a sort of bridge, from her old life to the new one, and Anna was in that in-between place with her. A place of transformation, where there was no commitment, no vows or promises, only an understanding that everything was changing.

She sank down on the bed beside Anna, who turned to her, a question in her eyes. Ari reached out and stroked her hand along the curve of Anna’s cheekbone. She had always loved the contrasts of Anna’s face: her sharp, angular bones, her lush red mouth.

The blue of Anna’s eyes darkened as Ari traced the line of her jaw, then her throat, coming to rest on the top button of her shirt. Ari leaned forward and kissed Anna’s neck—kissed her fluttering pulse point, daringly licked the hollow at the base of her throat. She thought Anna tasted of tea, dark and bittersweet.

Anna caught at Ari’s waist, her hips, pulled her closer. Said, her breath uneven, “Ari, should we—?”

“It need not mean anything,” Ari whispered. “It need only be because we want to. Nothing more.”

Anna seemed almost to flinch—and then her hands buried themselves in Ari’s hair, her mouth finding Ari’s, nipping at her lower lip, their tongues curling together. Ari had always let Anna take the lead before, but now they sank onto the bed together, Ari undoing Anna’s shirt, her hands smoothing across soft, pale skin, the rise and fall of slim curves, Anna gasping into her mouth.

Anna’s arms rose to twine about her, and everything else—Ari’s parents, her future in the Enclave, her imaginary flat—was forgotten in the tide of fire that swept across her skin as she luxuriated in the touch and feel of Anna, of Anna’s clever hands, of the pleasure given and received between them, as strong and shining and delicate as flame.





17 LAMP OF NIGHT




Deep in her eyes the lamp of night