Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

He had been carrying a thick leather-bound book, and rather than trying to join the game, he’d sat down on a sofa and immersed himself in it. Thomas had waited for Matthew to glare, or say something cutting, but he did neither.

Every once in a while, as they played, Matthew would take out the flask Christopher had given him and run his fingers over the engravings; it seemed a new nervous habit he had formed. Still, he did not drink from it.

When Thomas and Matthew had lost most of their money to Christopher, as was usual, there was a knock on the door, and James poked his head in. “Matthew,” he said, “could I speak to you for a moment?”

Matthew hesitated.

“Bad idea,” Alastair muttered under his breath, still staring at his book.

Matthew cast Alastair a look, then threw down his cards. “Well, I have lost all I can here,” he said. “I suppose I had better see what else there is left for me to lose in this world.”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” said Thomas, but Matthew was already on his feet, following James out into the hall.



* * *



Cordelia could tell James had been exhausted by explaining the story of the bracelet. Still, he had had to run the gauntlet of everyone’s well-meaning but difficult questions afterward: about his own feelings, then and now, about what would happen with Grace and Tatiana, about whether he was now remembering things he had forgotten before, small details or incidents. And there were apologies from everyone, of course, for not noticing, even though James explained over and over, patiently, that it was the bracelet’s magic that made people overlook it. Like a glamour that caused mundane eyes to slide past Downworlders, or Shadowhunters in their gear. They had all been enspelled, at least a little, he had said. They had all been affected.

Through all of this, Cordelia had tried to keep an eye on Matthew, but he had slipped early from the room, with Thomas and Christopher following, and Alastair snatching a book off a shelf before beating a retreat after them.

Once everyone had begun to drift off to various places in the Institute—several of them, along with Lucie, had gathered by the library windows to watch the progress of the storm—James went up to Cordelia and took her hand.

“Where do you think he is?” he said, and he did not have to explain which he they were speaking of. She curled her fingers around his, feeling immensely protective—of Matthew and of James in equal measure. If Matthew were angry, if he lashed out at James now that James had opened his heart and spilled his secrets, he could hurt him badly. But Matthew, having learned that what he believed about James when he had gone to Paris with Cordelia had been a lie, could be hurt just as severely.

“Christopher and Thomas will want to distract Matthew,” she said. “Matthew won’t want to go to the games room—I’ve an idea where they might be.”

She had turned out to be right. All four boys had been in the drawing room; Cordelia waited nervously in the hall with James as Matthew came out to meet them.

He emerged looking tousled, tired, and painfully sober. As if not drinking were like putting down protective armor. Only pride could armor him now—the pride that had kept him upright outside the Hell Ruelle, carefully cleaning his hands with a monogrammed handkerchief as if he had not just been sick in a gutter. Pride that kept his chin up, his eyes steady, as he looked from Cordelia to James and said, “It’s all right. I know what you’re going to say to me and there’s no need.”

Hurt flashed across James’s face, a sharp, shallow wound. Cordelia said, “It’s not all right, Matthew. None of this is the way we would want it to be. What Tatiana did—the effects of the bracelet didn’t just change James’s life. They changed mine. They changed yours. We’ve all made choices we wouldn’t have made, if we’d known the truth.”

“That may be true,” Matthew said. “But it doesn’t change where we are now.”

“It does,” said James. “You had every reason to believe I didn’t love Cordelia. You couldn’t possibly have known what I myself didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Matthew said, and there was a sharp blade in his voice. Cordelia felt a coldness in her chest. Matthew’s moods were mercurial. He could feel one way one moment, and another the next; still, she had never imagined a Matthew who did not think anything mattered.

“It does matter,” she said fiercely. “We love you. We know this is a terrible time for these revelations, for any of this—”

“Stop.” Matthew held his hands up. They shook slightly in the dim light of the hall. “As I listened to you, James, in the library, I could not help but think I have lived all this beside you. Noticing nothing and knowing nothing.”

“I explained,” James said. “The bracelet—”

“But I am your parabatai,” said Matthew, and Cordelia realized the blade in his voice was set against himself. “I was so much in my own misery that I never saw the truth. I knew it made little sense for you to love Grace. I know your heart, your sensibilities. There was nothing about her that would have won your affections in any sensible world, yet I let it pass by, dismissed it as a mystery of human behavior. The mistakes I made, the signs I missed—”

“Math,” James said, in despair. “None of this is your fault.”

But Matthew was shaking his head. “Don’t you see?” he said. “Cordelia told me already, at the party, that she loved you. And I thought, well, I can be disappointed, I can be angry, for some short time. I am allowed that. But now—how can I be either of those things? I cannot be disappointed that you have your life back, and your steadfast love. I cannot be angry when you have done nothing wrong. I cannot be angry at anyone but myself.”

And with that, he turned and walked back into the drawing room.



* * *



Christopher and Thomas pretended to play cards until Matthew returned to the room. At least Thomas was pretending. He wasn’t quite sure what Christopher was doing; he might have invented his own game without mentioning it to Thomas, and be contentedly playing along with its rules.

Alastair continued steadfastly reading his book, at least until Matthew stalked back into the room. Thomas’s heart sank—he guessed the conversation with James had not gone well. Matthew looked feverish: there was a high color in his cheeks, and his eyes were bright. “No more cards for me,” he announced. “I’m going to go confront Charles about being blackmailed.”

Alastair dropped his book with a thump. “I had a feeling you were going to do something like that.”

“So you didn’t just come in here to read a book about”—Matthew stared—“sixteenth-century warlock burnings? Ugh.”

“I did not,” said Alastair. “I chose it randomly from the shelves. What a pity so many books are filled with terrible things.”