Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“My mother is going to move to Tehran with the baby,” Alastair said, “and I cannot let her go alone. If I don’t accompany her, Cordelia will volunteer, but Cordelia needs to stay here. She is the one with friends, a future parabatai, and a husband here. All I have is you.”


Thomas straightened up. His heart felt as if it had frozen in his chest. “And I am not enough?”

“You can’t be my only reason to stay,” Alastair whispered. “I can’t expect you to carry that weight. It isn’t fair to you.”

“I wish,” Thomas said, surprised at the coldness in his own voice, “that you would stop telling me what the best thing for me is. You tell me over and over that there are all these reasons why you think my loving you would be bad for me.”

Alastair’s chest was rising and falling quickly. “I didn’t say anything about love.”

“Well, I did,” Thomas said. “You came here; you even said it was because you hoped to talk to me. You’re the one chasing me around, telling me to leave you alone.”

“Don’t you see? It’s because I am a wretched, selfish person, Thomas. It’s not good for you to see me, for us to meet, but I want to see you. I want to see you every damned moment of every day, and so I spent the night standing outside this ugly pink building in hopes of seeing you, and now that I have seen you, I am reminded of all the reasons this is a bad idea. Believe me,” he said, with a bitter laugh, “if I were a better person, I would have just sent you a note.”

“The only reason you’ve given me that this is a bad idea,” said Thomas stubbornly, “is because you believe yourself to be a wretched and selfish person.”

“Isn’t that enough?” Alastair said, in an agonized voice. “You’re the only person who thinks I’m not, and if we were in a relationship, I would disappoint you, and you would stop being the one person who thinks well of me.”

“Don’t go to Tehran,” said Thomas. “I don’t want you to go.”

They stared at each other, and for a moment Thomas thought he saw something he knew to be an impossibility—the bright glint of tears in Alastair’s eyes. I cannot get through to him, he thought miserably. If only I had Matthew’s charm, or James’s gift with words, perhaps I could make him understand.

“Alastair,” he said softly, and then Oscar whimpered, moving restlessly beside Thomas’s leg. A precursor, Thomas knew, to the retriever setting up a mournful howl.

“He’s missing Matthew,” Thomas said. “I’d better get him back. I’ll tell Matthew you stopped by,” he added, but Alastair, twisting the material of his scarf in one hand, only shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said, and after a moment, Thomas shrugged and headed back inside.



* * *



Cordelia had done enough planning; she was ready to act. Still, she had to wait for sunset. She knew she should be reading the books on paladins and bonding magic Christopher had given her, but she could not concentrate.

It was always like that when she’d come up with a plan; as the hour of action grew near, her thoughts went around in a whirl, stopping intermittently to concentrate on this or that aspect of her scheme. First go here, then there; this is what I will tell Alastair; here is how I will return without being noticed.

Enough. She visited with her mother, until Sona fell asleep; she bothered Risa in the kitchen while she was making khoresh-e fesenjoon, and she even went to see what Alastair was doing, which turned out to be reading in the armchair in his bedroom. He looked up when Cordelia came in. “Oh no,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not coming to demand I participate in some harebrained scheme your friends have come up with. Kachalam kardan.” They drive me crazy.

“Not at all,” Cordelia said, and thought she saw a flicker of disappointment on her brother’s face. There was a time, not long ago, when Alastair would never have tolerated his sister invading his room, and she would never have thought to seek out his advice. They had both guarded their privacy so carefully; she was glad that some of that had fallen away. “I just wanted to see you.”

Alastair closed his book, marking his place with a slim finger. “What is it, moosh?” Which meant mouse; it was something he hadn’t called Cordelia since she was quite small. He looked tired; there were shadows under his eyes, and a slump to his shoulders that wounded Cordelia’s heart. “If you’re wondering about Matthew, all his friends did stop by his flat yesterday. In fact, they spent the night.”

Cordelia exhaled a deep breath of relief. “Really? James, too? I’m so glad.”

“Yes.” He looked at her soberly. “Do you think Matthew will be angry at you? For telling them?”

“I don’t know,” Cordelia admitted. “But I would do the same again. He needed them. He wasn’t willing to be desperate or sick in front of me. But in front of them, I think he knows it is not weakness, or shameful. I hope so.”

“I hope so as well.” Alastair looked over at the wall where his daggers were displayed; one was missing, which was odd. Alastair was particular about his things. “The disease he has, that our father had—it is a disease of shame, as well as of addiction and need. Shame poisons you. It makes you unable to accept help, for you do not believe that you deserve it.”

“I think that is true about many things,” Cordelia said softly. “Turning away love because one believes one does not deserve it, for instance.”

Alastair looked at her beadily. “You are simply not going to stop bothering me about Thomas, are you?”

“I just don’t understand it,” Cordelia said. “Ariadne is living with Anna—surely it would not be the end of the world if you and Thomas were to love each other?”

“Ask M?m?n,” said Alastair grimly.

Cordelia had to admit she’d no idea how her mother would react to finding out that Alastair’s romantic love was for men.

“Our deepest illusions, and the most fragile, are the ones we hold on to about our friends and families. Thomas believes our families would be happy as long as we were happy; I look at the Bridgestocks and know that is not always the case. Thomas believes his friends would accept me with open arms; I believe they would sooner abandon him. And what a terrible situation that would be for him. I could not allow it.”

“That,” Cordelia said, “is beautifully noble. And also very stupid. And you are not the one who is going to allow Thomas to do anything; he has the feelings he has, and they are his business.”

“Thomas could have anyone,” said Alastair, with a righteously moping air. “He could choose better than me.”

“I am not sure we choose who we love,” said Cordelia, turning toward the door. “I rather think love is something like a book written just for us, a sort of holy text it is given to us to interpret.” She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “And you are refusing to read yours.”

“Oh?” said Alastair. “What does yours say?” Cordelia glared at him, and he relented, waving a hand in apology. “Are you off somewhere, Layla?”

“Just to Curzon Street,” Cordelia said. “Most of my clothes are still there—I need to fetch something I can wear to the Christmas party tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe they’re still holding that,” Alastair said, opening his book. “Just—be back before full dark, all right?”

Cordelia only nodded before slipping out the door. Of course she had no intention of returning before nightfall—her plan required her to be out after the sun set. But a nod wasn’t precisely a lie, now, was it?



* * *



Letty Nance had been employed by the Cornwall Institute since she was twelve years old. The Sight ran in her family, which to her parents, who had both worked for the Cornwall Institute before her, had always been an honor. To Letty it seemed a cruel joke that the Lord had chosen to allow her to see that the world contained magic, but not to allow her to be part of it.

She had thought the Institute would be an exciting, wonderful kind of place to work. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Over the years she had come to understand that not all Nephilim were like the ancient Albert Pangborn, too cranky to be kind to the help, and too cheap to even keep the wards up around the Institute properly. Local piskies were always wandering onto the property, and about the only contact with real magic she had most weeks was chasing them out of the garden with a rake while they yelled filthy oaths at her.