Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“I didn’t want her to win,” Grace said. “Mama. She had taken so much from me. I wanted her defeated. I hope it was goodness; I worry it was only stubbornness. We are both stubborn, you and I.”


“Is that a good thing?” Jesse said. “Maybe being stubborn will get us all killed.”

“Or maybe it will make the difference between winning and losing,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s just what we need right now. To not give up. To never give up. To fight all the way to the end.”



* * *



By the time the sun set, Matthew was shaking uncontrollably. It didn’t seem to matter if he was wrapped in his own coat and James’s, too; his teeth chattered together so hard that he’d gashed open his lower lip. Gasping that the taste of the blood nauseated him, he crawled some distance away and was sick, throwing up apples and water and, James worried, the last of Christopher’s sedative.

How much worse might this be, he wondered grimly, if Matthew had not already started to cut down his alcohol intake. He had been suffering before they’d come to Edom. James could only hope that what he had already paid in pain would reduce the cost to him now.

The moon rose in the sky, an eerie gray-white—and then a second moon, and a third. The courtyard was illuminated as brightly as it had been during the day, though the shadows between the dead trees were deeper. James went to get water, and he watched the reflection of the three moons tremble on the surface of the stone bowl.

He thought of his parents, far away in Alicante, in the shadow of the true Gard. They must have learned by now what had happened to London. To him. Someone would carry the news to them. Not Lucie—she would never agree to leave London to its fate.

When he returned to the wall, Matthew was resting his back against it, shivering. James tried to hand him the cup of water, but Matthew was shaking too hard to take it; James held the cup to his lips, encouraging him to drink until it was empty.

“I don’t want to be sick again,” Matthew said hoarsely, but James only shook his head.

“Better than dying of thirst,” he said, setting the cup down. “Come here.”

He pulled Matthew roughly toward him, Matthew’s back to his chest, and wrapped his arms around his parabatai. He had thought Matthew might protest, but he seemed beyond that: he only sagged back, an alarmingly light weight against him.

“This is good,” he said tiredly. “You’re better than a coat.”

James rested his chin on Matthew’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

He felt Matthew tense. “Sorry for what?”

“All of it,” James said. “Paris. The fight we had at the Shadow Market. When you told me that if I didn’t love Cordelia, I should let someone else love her. I was too blind to see what you meant.”

“You were,” Matthew said, with some difficulty, “under a spell. You said yourself, it blinded you—”

“Don’t,” James said. “Don’t excuse it. What you said, back at the Institute, about not being able to be angry with me—I’d rather you were. Even if you won’t blame me for anything I did under the bracelet’s control, what about after it was broken? I ought to have thought more about your feelings—”

“And I ought not to have run off to Paris with Cordelia,” said Matthew.

“I know how I must have seemed to you,” James said quietly. “Feckless, flighty, pointlessly cruel to Cordelia, and oblivious to all of it. In the name of an infatuation that made no sense to anyone but me.”

“It was still selfish. I thought… I told myself you didn’t love her. And that I loved her, loved being with her, because—”

“Because she is who she is,” James said.

“But also because she never knew me, as you did, before I drank. Not really. I had feelings for Lucie once, you know, but I could see in her eyes when she looked at me that she was waiting for me to go back to my old self. The Matthew I was before I ever picked up a bottle. Cordelia only knew me after I changed.” Matthew hugged his arms around his knees. “The truth is, I do not know the person I will be when I am entirely sober. I do not know if I will even like that person myself, assuming I survive to meet him.”

James wished he could see the expression on Matthew’s face. “Math. The drinking has not—did not—make you more witty, more charming, more worthy of love. What it did was make you forget. That is all.”

Matthew sounded as if he had forgotten to breathe. “Forget what?”

“Whatever it is you are so angry at yourself about,” said James. “And no, before you ask—Cordelia has told me nothing. I think you shared your secret with her; I think that is part of what has made you long for her. We so desperately want to be with those who know the truth of us. Our secrets.”

“You guessed all this?” Matthew said, sounding a little amazed.

“When I am not under a spell, I am surprisingly insightful,” James said dryly. “And you are the other half of my soul, my parabatai; how could I not guess?” He took a deep breath. “I cannot demand that you tell me anything; I have kept enough from you. Only… if you want to tell me, I swear I will listen.”

There was a long silence. Then Matthew sat up a little straighter and said, “Bloody convincing Herondales.” He tipped his head back, staring up at the strange triple moon. “All right. I’ll tell you what happened.”



* * *



“It’s never been my favorite city,” said Alastair, “but I have to say, I did much prefer London in its previous state.”

It was midday, though one could hardly tell, and Alastair and Thomas were hunting for Watchers in Bayswater.

It had started off as more of a reconnaissance mission. Follow the Watchers without being seen, Anna had said; find out where they congregated, and if possible, how they might be harmed or killed.

It had been hours now. They had seen several Watchers and tried following them, creeping through the streets after them as they wandered, but that didn’t bring them any closer to figuring out how to defeat them, since everyone in the city—mundanes, Downworlders, even animals—gave the Watchers a wide berth. There was no way of discovering what they could do in a fight, or how they could be stopped, just by watching at a distance.