Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Thunder cracked again outside, loud enough to rattle the windows in their frames. The wind was tearing around the Institute, howling down the chimney. It was the sort of evening Lucie usually enjoyed, curled up in bed with a book while a storm raged. Now, she found it made her uneasy. Perhaps it was the unseasonable nature of the storm—when did snow ever come with thunder and lightning?

The door to the library slammed open. It was Charles, his red hair falling out of its usual cap of stiff pomade. He was pushing someone ahead of him, someone in a torn and wet dress, with straggling hair the color of milk.

Lucie saw James stiffen. “Grace,” he said.

Everyone went still, save Christopher, who rose to his feet, his expression hardening. “Charles, what on earth—?”

Charles’s face was twisted in a look of fury. “I found her creeping around the entrance to the Sanctuary,” he said. “She’s broken out of the Silent City, clearly.”

Did he know? Lucie wondered. Did he know what Grace had done to him, that she had enspelled him into proposing to her? James had said that his own memories of Grace’s past actions were coming back to him; perhaps Charles’s were too. He certainly seemed angry enough for it to be possible.

Lucie had always thought of Grace as cold and self-possessed, hard and shining as an icicle. But now she was cringing back—she looked awful; her hair was hanging in wet strings, there were scratches up and down her bare arms, and she was shivering violently. “Let me go, Charles—please, let me go—”

“Let you go?” said Charles incredulously. “You’re a prisoner. A criminal.”

“I hate saying this, but Charles is right,” said Matthew, who had put his book away. He, too, was on his feet. “We should contact the Silent City—”

“It’s gone,” Grace whispered. “It’s all gone.”

Lucie could not help but look at James. It was clear, when he had told them his story earlier, that he did not expect to encounter Grace again soon, if ever; now he looked frozen in place, staring at her as if she were a dream that had sprung to life, and not the nice kind of dream.

It was Cordelia who, placing a hand on James’s arm, said, “Grace, what do you mean? What’s gone?”

Grace was shivering so hard her teeth chattered. “The Silent City. It’s been taken—”

“Stop lying,” Charles interrupted. “Look here—”

Jesse snapped. “Charles, stop,” he said, stalking across the room. “Let go of her,” he added, and Charles, to everyone’s surprise, did exactly that, though with a look of reluctance. “Gracie,” Jesse said carefully, drawing off his jacket. He flung it over Grace’s thin shoulders; Jesse was hardly burly, but his jacket seemed to swallow up his sister. “How did you get out of the Silent City?”

Grace said nothing, only clutched Jesse’s jacket around her and trembled. There was a starkness in her eyes that frightened Lucie. She had seen that look before, in the eyes of ghosts whose last memories were of something dreadful, something terrifying.…

“She needs runes,” Jesse said. “Healing runes, warming runes. I don’t know how—”

“I’ll do it,” said Christopher. Ari and Anna rose to help him, and soon enough Grace was seated on a chair, with Christopher drawing on her left arm with his stele. She would not let go of Jesse’s jacket, but clutched it around herself with one hand.

“Grace,” James said. Some of the color had come back to his face. His voice was steady. “You need to tell us what’s happened. Why you’re here.”

“I hate to say this,” said Anna, “but ought she be restrained while we question her? She does have a very dangerous power.”

Grace pushed a handful of wet hair back from her face. “My power’s gone,” she said dully. “It was taken.”

“And why should we believe that?” said Charles, frowning.

“Because it’s true,” said Christopher. “She told you to let her go, Charles. And you didn’t.”

“He’s right,” Matthew said. “I’ve seen her use it before. Charles should have had to do whatever she asked.”

Charles looked puzzled. Lucie, too, was puzzled—when had Matthew seen Grace use her power? But there was no time to ask.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said Cordelia. “The Silent Brothers were supposed to take it away.”

“They didn’t,” said Grace. She began to shake wildly. “It was my mother. They brought her into the Silent City. I told them she would find me and she did—”

She lifted her hands, as if she could ward something off, something terrible and invisible. Christopher caught at her wrist as Jesse’s jacket slid to the floor. To Lucie’s surprise, his touch seemed to calm Grace. She leaned toward him—it seemed instinctive, unconscious—and said, “She ripped the power out of me. Not with her own hands. She had some kind of creature with her, some kind of demon.”

“This is nonsense,” Charles said. “Tatiana is safely locked in the Silent City, and this is some tale Grace has concocted to explain why she has escaped from prison.”

“I don’t think it’s nonsense,” Cordelia said sharply. “If she had truly escaped from the Silent City, this is the last place she’d come.”

“There’s one way to be sure,” James said. “Charles, we must reach the Silent City.”

There was a long silence. Then: “Fine,” Charles said. “I’ll summon the First Patrol. We’ll ride out to Highgate; see what’s going on. If anything at all,” he added, with a tinge of malice.

He left, slamming the library door behind him. Jesse had come to stand on the other side of Grace, opposite Christopher. He put his hand on his sister’s shoulder. Lucie could tell it was costing him an effort, to treat her as he always had. But Grace seemed to relax at the touch; she brushed quickly at her face, and Lucie realized she was crying.

“Grace,” Christopher said, “it’s all right. You’re safe here. Just tell us, slowly, what happened.”

“I told them,” Grace said in a singsong voice. “That she would always find me, my mother. She came to my cell. She had one of them with her. They look like Silent Brothers but they’re not. Its eyes were—open. They shone with an awful sort of light.”

James straightened up. “Its eyes were alight? Did they shine with a color?”

“Green,” Grace said. “An ugly sort of awful green. The Silent Brother, he put his hands on my face, and my mother told him to take away my power, to rip it out of me.”