Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Thomas stepped forward to clip Oscar’s leash back on. “Good boy,” he said, rubbing Oscar gently behind the ears. “You did exactly what you were meant to do.”


“Who would have thought Matthew Fairchild’s dog would be so well trained?” Alastair said. “I assumed Oscar lived a life of dissipated debauchery at the Hell Ruelle.”

“Matthew and James used to train Oscar together,” said Lucie. “They taught him all sorts of games and tricks, and—” Her eyes were bright. “Well. It worked. I hadn’t thought it would.”

Cordelia suspected none of them really had, not when they had come up with the idea in the desperate dead of night, with only hours to go before morning and departure. Yet they had all gone along with it, faithfully; in times like this, it seemed, faith was all one had.

“I feel so guilty,” Ari murmured. “My mother—what will she think when I don’t join her?”

“Eugenia will explain our plan to everyone,” Thomas said. “She promised she would.” He straightened up, staring toward the gate. “The Portal’s closing.”

They all watched, locked in place, as the view through the archway faded. Shadows crowded in, like black paint covering a canvas, erasing first the mountains, then the plains below them, and the distant images of the Shadowhunters who waited on the other side.

The Portal winked out of existence. The archway had gone back to being what it was: a gate that comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere. Their way out of London had vanished.

“Now what?” Grace whispered, staring at the darkness below the arch.

Cordelia took a deep breath. “Now we go back to the Institute.”



* * *



From the York Gate it was only a short walk back, but it had a very different, more dangerous feel than the trip there. Then they had been following Belial’s orders; now they were defying them and hoping they weren’t noticed.

Lucie felt like they were mice trapped in a basin, and somewhere above hovered a cat. She watched the mundanes move through the streets in their daze. It was not mercy, she knew, that had prevented Belial from killing everyone in the city, or expelling them as he had the Shadowhunters. It was that he wanted to rule over London—not an empty shell that had been London, not a ruin of London, but the city as he knew it, complete with bankers walking to work with newspapers under their arms, with women selling flowers outside churches, with tradesmen driving their carts to their next jobs.

When the eight of them had made their plan, after the terrible meeting yesterday, they’d agreed they would stay in the Institute. They were fairly sure that the Watchers, and any other of Belial’s demons who might be roaming the streets, would attack them on sight now, and it was easier to secure one house than many. Also, Lucie thought, it was too depressing for them to sleep in their empty houses, and Grace had nowhere else to go.

Even Oscar’s expression was grave as he trotted alongside Thomas. The silence weighed on Lucie. She had mostly spent the time since James and Matthew had been taken shut up in her room, often with Jesse’s company. He was—as she supposed ought not surprise her—excellent at providing silent and almost invisible support. He stayed with her quietly as she read her old stories and wondered what she had been thinking, how she could have been so carefree and playful. Sometimes Jesse held her on the bed, stroking his fingers gently through her hair; they were careful not to do much more than that. When alone, she stared at blank pages for hours, sometimes writing a line, then crossing it out in violent slashes of ink.

Christopher was dead. Lucie had reached out for him and felt nothing. She did not want to force it—she knew from experience that calling up spirits that were not already haunting the human world was a violent act, that they came reluctantly at best. Wherever they were, it was better than being a ghost.

James was gone, and Matthew with him. Were they still alive? Belial could only possess James while he lived, and surely if he’d succeeded in that, he would have already come back to taunt them about it. It was bizarre to see that the Merry Thieves, who had been the lifeblood of all her friends, who had been the central ring, strong as steel, to which everyone else could attach themselves securely, had been whittled down to only Thomas.

And now they were back at the Institute courtyard, which was empty and quiet, as it always was. There was no scar here, no sign of the dreadful things that had happened there such a short time ago. Lucie envisioned a plaque: HERE IS WHERE IT ALL BROKE APART. Matthew and James’s vanishing, Christopher’s death—they seemed both very close, a trauma still ongoing, and yet far away.

On the other hand, she thought, this courtyard had been torn up by Leviathan a couple of weeks ago, and there was no sign of that, either. Perhaps to be a Shadowhunter simply meant drawing runes over one’s scars, over and over.

Inside, all was just as silent and empty, an eerie change after the bustle that had filled the place for the last days. Their boots rang loudly against the stone floor and echoed off the walls. As they made their way up the central staircase, Jesse slid his gloved hand into hers.

“Did you notice Bridget leave?” he said in a low voice. “I swear I didn’t see her in the crowd.”

Lucie was startled. “No—I didn’t—but she must have, mustn’t she? Probably we were all too busy with Oscar to notice.”

“I suppose,” Jesse said, though with doubt in his voice.

They had reached the library. Lucie looked around at the results of the planning they’d done secretly in the last day and a half, working in short, feverish bursts whenever they could grab a moment. The table was piled with maps of London, the Silent City, the environs of the Adamant Citadel. There was also an empty chalkboard on wheels off to the side; Thomas had dug it out of some supply closet or other.

“At least we can write our plans down now,” Jesse said—they’d been avoiding doing so for fear of detection. “Assuming we all remember what they are.”

“Ari, would you write?” Anna said. “You have the best penmanship of all of us, I’m sure.”

“Not in chalk,” Ari protested, but she looked pleased anyway. She took up the chalk and gestured toward them expectantly.

Thomas looked around and, finding no one else wanted to start, cleared his throat. “First priority,” he said, “is securing the Institute. Board up the windows of any room we’re going to use, and no lights in any room we’re not using. We chain up the front doors. From now on we enter and exit only by the Sanctuary. With some luck we can keep Belial from knowing that any Shadowhunters stayed behind at all.”

“He’ll figure it out eventually,” Alastair said. “If we weren’t spotted by Watchers on our way back from the water gate already.”