Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

In the courtyard below stood Tatiana Blackthorn, a deadly scarecrow in a bloodstained dress. The wind whipped her stark-white hair around her face. Her arms were upraised, as if she meant to call down the lightning.

And she was not alone. Surrounding her in a half circle were just what Grace had described—Silent Brothers, in ice-white robes, their hoods pushed back to show their eyes, which shone with an acid-green fire.

Tatiana threw her head back, and black lightning crackled through the clouds. “Come out!” she called, in a voice that echoed like a massive bell tolling through the Institute, shaking the stone of its foundations. “Come out, Lightwoods! Come out, Carstairs! Come out, Fairchilds! Come out, Herondales! Come out and meet your fate!”





25 VEXED WITH TEMPEST




Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night

Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms

Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky;

Save on that side which from the wall of Heaven,

Though distant far, some small reflection gains

Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest loud.

—John Milton, Paradise Lost



“Laanati,” Alastair muttered. Damn it. He was staring out the window of the carriage, which he had been doing ever since he and Thomas had clattered out of the courtyard. Thomas had heard him tell Davies, the driver, “Just keep going around the streets, I don’t much care where,” and Davies seemed to have taken the directive to heart. Thomas, who had lived in London all his life, had absolutely no idea where they currently were.

It had been cold in the carriage at first, and both of them had snatched up blankets from a folded pile. After which Thomas had waited expectantly for Alastair to begin a conversation—after all, why would Alastair have requested his company if he didn’t have something to say?—but Alastair had only slumped back against his seat, occasionally muttering a curse in Persian.

“Look,” Thomas said finally, trying not to let disappointment gnaw at him. “We ought to go back to the Institute. The others will worry—”

“I imagine they will worry that I kidnapped you,” said Alastair.

Thunder cracked overhead like a whip. The wind was blowing hard enough to rock the carriage on its wheels. Dry brown leaves and flakes of icy snow were swept into small tornadoes, scraping the glass of the windows, rattling down the deserted streets. Even in the carriage, the air felt heavy and pressurized.

“Are you upset because of Charles?” Thomas asked. He worried the question was too blunt, but Alastair was so silent anyway. There seemed nothing to lose.

“That is a part of it,” Alastair said. The light coming into the carriage through the window was tinged with red, as if there was fire burning in the storm clouds above. “When I first met Charles, I would look at him and see who I wished to be. Someone confident, who knew his path, his future. I realize now it was a sham. That he feels utterly powerless. He is so overwhelmed with fear and shame that he believes he has no choices.” His hand made a fist in his lap. “And I fear that I am doing the same.”

Thomas could see row houses outside the window, and London plane trees laden with snow. The wind was a soft howl, the lampposts lining the street tinged with a smoky glow. “Are you saying that you’re afraid of what people would think if they knew your true feelings about—”

“About you?” Alastair said. His dark eyes were somber. “No.”

Of course not. Of course he doesn’t mean you.

“No,” Alastair went on. “I have presented this move to Tehran to myself, to you, to my sister, as a chance for a fresh start. They were words my father always spoke, every time we left a place we had made a home and set out for somewhere new. ‘A fresh start.’” His voice was bitter. “It was never the truth. We were moving to get away from the problems my father had created—from his debts, his drinking. As if he could outrun them. And I—” His eyes were haunted. “I never wanted to be like him, I fought so hard not to be like him. And yet I find myself planning to run away. To do what he would do. Because I’m afraid.”

Thomas kicked the blanket off his lap. The carriage rocked under his feet as he moved to sit on the opposite bench beside Alastair. He wanted to put his hand over Alastair’s but held back. “I have never thought of you as afraid,” he said, “but there is no shame in it. What are you afraid of?”

“Change, I suppose,” Alastair said, a little desperately. Outside, the branches of trees whipped back and forth in the wind. Thomas could hear a dull roaring sound—thunder, he guessed, though it was oddly muffled. “I know that I must change myself. But I don’t know how to do it. There is no instruction manual for becoming a better person. I fear that if I remain in London, I will only continue hurting the people I’ve hurt before—”

“But you have changed,” Thomas said. “Without being instructed on how to do so. The person you were when we were at school wouldn’t have rushed to help me when I got arrested. Wouldn’t have followed me in the first place, to make sure I was safe. The person you used to be wouldn’t have looked after Matthew. Wouldn’t be reading book after book about paladins to try to help his sister.” Thomas’s hands were shaking. It felt like a terrible risk, saying these things to Alastair. As if he were stripping away protective gear, leaving himself vulnerable. He swallowed and said, “I wouldn’t feel the way I do about you if you were the same person now that you were last year.”

Alastair looked at him. He said, his voice husky, “I thought you liked me last year.”

Thomas stared at him. And, unexpectedly, Alastair started to smile. “I was teasing you,” he said. “Thomas, you—”

Thomas kissed him. He caught Alastair by the lapel of his coat, and then he was kissing Alastair, and both their mouths were cold and then not cold at all. Alastair arched up against him as the carriage lurched, his hands twining in Thomas’s hair. He pulled Thomas against him, hard and then harder.

Thomas’s pulse beat hotly in every part of his body. Alastair pressed his mouth against his, his lips finding ways to tease and explore, and then their mouths were open, their tongues sliding against each other, and the carriage lurched hard, throwing them both to the floor.

Neither of them cared. They had landed on Thomas’s discarded blanket. Thomas tore at Alastair’s coat, yanking the buttons free. He wanted to feel Alastair, feel the shape of him, not just crumpled wool under his hands. Alastair was on top of him; behind Alastair he could see the sky through the windows. It was riven by storm, the clouds slashed through with a bloody channel of fire.