Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“Really?” Cordelia was bewildered. “What kind of dreadful thing? It can’t be that bad.”


“It is,” Lucie wailed, and reached for her rucksack. As she rummaged in it, she said tearfully, “I stopped writing The Beautiful Cordelia. I was too angry—”

“That’s all right—”

“No, you don’t understand.” Lucie pulled a small notebook out of her pack. “I started writing a new book. The Wicked Queen Cordelia.”

“And you brought it with you?” Cordelia was astonished. “To Edom?”

“Of course,” said Lucie. “You can’t just leave an unfinished manuscript behind. What if I had an idea?”

“Well,” said Cordelia. “I mean. Clearly.”

Lucie thrust the notebook toward her. “I can’t hide it from you,” she said, looking woebegone. “I wrote such terrible things.”

“Perhaps I oughtn’t read it then,” Cordelia said, with some trepidation, but the look on Lucie’s face made her flip the notebook open hastily. Oh, dear, she thought, and began to read.

The wicked Queen Cordelia tossed her long, easily managed scarlet hair. She wore a gown of gold and silver thread, and a massive diamond necklace that rested atop her large and treacherous bosoms. “Oh, foolish Princess Lucie,” she said. “Did you think that your brother, Cruel Prince James, would be able to help you? I have had him executed.”

“What?” Princess Lucie gasped, for even though he could be cruel, he was still her brother. “But after everything I have done for you?”

“It is true,” said the wicked queen, “that I have everything that I have ever wanted. I am adored by all the people in the land, and I have countless suitors”—she indicated the long line of handsome men that stretched through the throne room, some on their knees—“my magical sword has been judged the best and most beautiful sword by the International Council of Sword Experts, and last week I wrote a thousand-page novel for which I have already received a handsome advance from a publisher in London. Indeed, you have helped me achieve all these things. But I have no further use for you.”

“But you said we would always be friends!” protested Secret Princess Lucie. “That we would be princesses together!”

“I have decided that rather than being princesses together, it is preferable that I be a queen and you be a prisoner in my deepest dungeon, below the castle moat. You, Sir Jethro, take her away!”

“You will pay for this!” cried Secret Princess Lucie, but she knew in her heart that the wicked Queen Cordelia had won.



Cordelia made a muffled noise. Lucie, her eyes huge, clasped her hands together. “I am so dreadfully sorry,” she said. “It was utterly wrong of me to think any of those things, much less write them down—”

Cordelia clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. A giggle burst from her, and then another. Her shoulders shaking uncontrollably, she hiccuped, “Oh, Lucie—I have never—read anything so funny—”

“Really?” Lucie looked amazed.

“I do have to ask something,” Cordelia said, tapping the page with her finger. “Why are my, er, the Wicked Queen’s bosoms so enormous?”

“Well they are,” Lucie explained. “Not like me. I look like a little boy. I always wanted to have a figure like yours, Daisy.”

“And I,” said Cordelia, “always wanted to be dainty and delicate like you, Luce.” She started to giggle again. “The International Council of Sword Experts?”

“I’m sure they exist,” Lucie said, starting to smile. “And if they don’t, they ought to.” She held her hand out. “I suppose you might as well give it back now.”

Cordelia whipped the notebook away. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “I am simply dying to find out what happens to Princess Lucie in the dungeon. Should I read aloud? Will there be another mention of my bosoms?”

“Several,” Lucie admitted, and for the first time in many long centuries, under the harsh glow of three moons, the sound of simple human laughter drifted across the plains of Edom.



* * *



Thomas came back to himself slowly. He was lying on a crisp, white-sheeted bed, and the familiar scent of herbs and carbolic hung in the air. The infirmary of the Institute—he knew it well, and for a disconnected, dreamlike moment, he wondered: Is my leg broken?

But that had been years ago. He’d been a child, still small and even a bit sickly, and had fallen out of an apple tree. He and James had played cards every night in the Institute infirmary while he’d healed. It seemed like a distant dream now, of a more innocent time, when the horrors of the present would have been unimaginable, and the loss of James and Matthew more unimaginable still.

They’re not dead, he reminded himself, starting to turn over, the blankets rustling around his feet. Then he heard it. A deep, steady voice, rising and falling—Alastair Carstairs, reading aloud. He was sitting beside Thomas’s bed, his eyes fixed on a leather-bound volume in his hands. Thomas closed his eyes, the better to savor the sound of Alastair reading.

“I have often thought of you,” said Estella.

“Have you?”

“Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.”

“You have always held your place in my heart,” I answered.



The book snapped shut. “This is dull,” Alastair said, sounding weary. “And I doubt you are appreciating it, Thomas, since you are asleep. But my sister has always insisted that there is nothing better for the ill than being read to.”

I’m not ill, Thomas thought, but he kept his eyes closed.

“Perhaps I ought to tell you what’s happened today since you’ve been laid up here,” Alastair continued. “Anna and Ari found the entrance to the Silent City. I know because they sent Matthew’s blasted hound back with a note to let us know. And speaking of notes, Grace and Jesse managed to get Christopher’s project to work. They’re in the library now, sending dozens of the things to Alicante. We can only hope they arrive—it’s one thing sending them within London, and another trying to break through the barriers around the city.” He sighed. “Remember the one you sent me? The one that was mostly nonsense? I spent hours trying to piece it together, you know. I was desperate to know what you wanted to say to me.”