Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

It does, said Zachariah. I believe that the Clave failed you. You are a Shadowhunter, Grace, born to a Shadowhunter family, and abandoned to terrible circumstances. It is unfair to you that the Clave left you there for so long, without intervention or even investigation.

Grace could not bear his pity; it felt like tiny needle marks against her skin. “You should not be kind to me, or try to understand,” she snapped. “I used demonic power to enchant James and make him believe he was in love with me. I caused him terrible pain.”

Zachariah regarded her without speaking, his face eerily still.

Grace wanted to hit him. “Don’t you think I deserve punishment? Mustn’t there be a reckoning? A balancing of things? An eye for an eye?”

That is your mother’s thinking about the world. Not mine.

“But the other Silent Brothers. The Enclave. Everyone in London—they will want to see me punished.”

They do not know, said Brother Zachariah. For the first time, Grace saw a sort of hesitation in him. What you have done at your mother’s behest remains known only to us, and to James.

“But—why?” It made no sense; surely James would tell his friends, and soon enough everyone would know. “Why would you protect me?”

We seek to question your mother; the job of that will be easier if she believes you are still on her side, your powers still unknown to us.

Grace sat back on the bed. “You want answers from my mother because you believe I am the puppet, and she the puppet master, the puller of strings. But the true puppet master is Belial. She is obedient to him. When she acts, it is at his behest. He is the one to fear.”

There was a long silence. Then, a gentle voice inside her head. Are you afraid, Grace?

“Not for myself,” she said. “I have already lost everything I had to lose. But for others, yes. I am very afraid indeed.”



* * *



Lucie followed Malcolm into the house and waited while the warlock divested himself of his traveling coat and walking stick in the entryway. He led her into the parlor she’d passed through earlier, with its high ceiling, and with a snap of his fingers set a roaring fire in the grate. It occurred to Lucie that not only could Malcolm acquire firewood without Jesse needing to chop it for him, he could probably keep fires going with no wood whatsoever.

Not that she minded watching Jesse chop wood. And he seemed to be enjoying it, so it was beneficial for the both of them.

Malcolm gestured her toward an overstuffed settee into which Lucie thought she might sink so far she would be unable to get up again. She perched on its arm. The room was quite cozy, actually: not at all what she would have associated with Malcolm Fade. Satinwood furniture, worn to a soft patina, upholstered with tapestry and velvet fabric—no effort had been made to match the pieces, though they all looked comfortable. A rug embroidered with pineapples covered the floor, and various portraits of people Lucie did not recognize hung upon the walls.

Malcolm remained standing, and Lucie assumed he would now lecture her about Jesse, or interrogate her regarding what she had done to him. Instead he said, “You might have noticed that although I have not been unconscious for several days after an act of unpracticed sorcery, I am looking somewhat the worse for wear.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Lucie said, though she had. “You look, er, quite polished and put-together.”

Malcolm waved this off. “I am not fishing for compliments. I mean to explain that these last days, while you have been sleeping off the effects of the magic you performed, I have been taking the opportunity of being back in Cornwall to continue my investigations into Annabel Blackthorn.”

Lucie felt a nervous fizzle in her stomach. Annabel Blackthorn. The woman Malcolm had loved, a hundred years ago, and who Malcolm had long believed had left him to join the Iron Sisters. In truth, her family had murdered her rather than allow her to marry a warlock. Lucie flinched, remembering the look on Malcolm’s face when Grace had told him the truth of Annabel’s fate.

Warlocks did not age, yet Malcolm seemed somehow older than he had a short time ago. The lines of strain about his mouth and eyes were pronounced. “I know that we agreed you would call up her spirit,” he said. “That you would allow me to speak to her again.”

It seemed odd to Lucie that warlocks could not, themselves, call up those dead who no longer haunted the world, but had passed into a place of peace. That the terrible power in her blood allowed her to do something even Magnus Bane, or Malcolm Fade, could not. But there it was—she had given Malcolm her word, though the hungry look in his eyes made her shiver a little.

“I did not know what would happen when you raised Jesse,” Malcolm said. “For him to have come back as he has—with breath and life, perfectly healthy, perfectly cognizant—is more miracle than magic.” He took a ragged breath. “Annabel’s death was no less unjust, no less monstrous, than what happened to Jesse. She deserves to live again no less than he. Of that I am certain.”

Lucie did not bring up the detail that Jesse’s body had been preserved by Belial in a strange half-living state, and Annabel’s surely hadn’t. Instead she said anxiously, “I gave you my word, Malcolm, that I would call up her spirit. Let you commune with her ghost. But no more than that. She cannot be… brought back. You know that.”

Malcolm seemed barely to hear this. He threw himself down into a nearby chair. “If indeed miracles are possible,” he said, “though I have never believed in them—I know of demons and angels, but have put my faith in science and magic only—”

He broke off, though it was too late for Lucie’s unease. It was vibrating at a high tempo now, like a plucked string. “Not every spirit wishes to return,” she whispered. “Some of the dead are at peace.”

“Annabel will not be at peace,” said Malcolm. His purple eyes looked like bruises in his pale face. “Not without me.”

“Mr. Fade—” Lucie’s voice shook.

For the first time, Malcolm seemed to notice her anxiety. He sat up straight, forcing a smile. “Lucie. I understand that you barely survived raising Jesse, and that you are significantly weakened. It will hardly do any of us any good if calling up Annabel sends you back into unconsciousness. We must wait for you to be stronger.” He gazed at the fire as though he could read something in the dance of its flames. “I have waited a hundred years. Time is not the same for me as it is for a mortal, especially one as young as you are. I will wait another hundred years, if I must.”

“Well,” said Lucie, trying to keep her voice light, “I hardly think I will need that long.”

“I will wait,” Malcolm said again, speaking perhaps more to himself than to her. “I will wait as long as it takes.”





3 THE SLOW DARK HOURS




But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

—Christina Rossetti, “Up-Hill”



James estimated that he’d been talking for about a month.

Magnus, who seemed able to detect comfortable coaching inns from a distance, had found them one on the road to Polperro. Once Balios and Xanthos had been safely stabled, Will had booked the three of them a private dining room on the inn’s ground floor, where they could eat and talk in private.

Not that James had eaten much. The room was nice enough—old-fashioned, with dark wallpaper and worn rugs, a wide oak table in the center—and the food seemed decent. But once he’d started talking about the events of the past few weeks, he’d found it hard to stop; after all the secrets and lies, the truth poured out of him like water from a jug. Even then, he’d had to remain careful to keep the secrets that weren’t his to tell: he said nothing of the pledge Cordelia had accidentally made to Lilith, only spoke of Lilith impersonating Magnus to trick them.

“I know I ought to beg your forgiveness,” James said, when his voice had run dry. “I should have told you all of this, but—”

“But you were not the only one affected,” said Will. He looked tense, the lines beside his eyes unusually prominent. “And so you kept your mouth shut to protect your friends and your family. I am not entirely an idiot, James. I do understand how these things work.”

Magnus uncapped a decanter of port and poured a thimbleful into Will’s and James’s glasses. “I am worried. Belial should not have been able to return to our world after the blow Cordelia dealt him with Cortana. But he did return, through a plan he must have put in place years ago, back when Jesse Blackthorn was only a baby—”