Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Even so, it had been an uneasy truce. Once James had told his parents the tale of the bracelet and the curse, they had been devastated. Cordelia had been there, had seen how acutely they felt James’s pain, more acutely than they would ever, she imagined, feel pain of their own. And they had carried the guilt of parents, that they should have seen, should have guessed, should have protected their son.

James had protested, explained: the very evil of the bracelet was that it prevented knowledge, protection, help. They were not at fault. Still, it was a wound, and Grace had moved quietly out of the Institute that day, and into the Consul’s house, where she was helping Henry reorganize his laboratory.

Jesse had worried—would it be awkward for her there, considering her history with Charles? But Grace had demurred: Charlotte and Henry knew everything, and she and Charles had achieved an understanding. Though Charles had been very angry indeed at first, he professed himself now grateful that Grace had disrupted his plans to marry Ari, which would have made them both miserable. He was in Idris now, working for the new Inquisitor, Kazuo Satō. (Charles sent back letters sometimes, usually to Matthew but sometimes to Ari, with news of her father. They would have made a ghastly married couple, Ari said, but as friends, they got on surprisingly well.)

Where it came to Grace, everyone’s eyes had been on James, who after all was the one to whom she had dealt the greatest hurt. To everyone’s surprise, his anger at her seemed to fade quickly with the death of Belial. One night, in bed with James, Cordelia had said, “I know it is not something we speak of very often, but everyone is looking to you when they try to decide how to manage with Grace. And you seem to have forgiven her.” She had rolled onto her side, looking at him curiously. “Have you?”

He had rolled onto his side too, so they faced each other. His eyes were lambent gold, the color of firelight, and they left heat behind where they traced the shape of her shoulder, the curve of her neck. She did not think she would ever stop wanting him, and he had shown no sign of feeling any differently about her. “I suppose we have not spoken about it because I rarely think of it,” he said. “Telling everyone was the difficult part. After that… Well, I do not know if it is forgiveness. But I find I cannot be angry at her when I have so much, and she has so little.”

“You don’t think you need to speak to her? Hear her apologize?” Cordelia had asked, and James had shaken his head.

“No. It is not something I need. As for her, she will always be marked by her childhood and the things she has done. What would punishment or apologies add to that?”’

The things she has done. Cordelia thought of James’s words as Grace held up two silver crescents. The shattered remains of the cursed bracelet. She looked over at James, her gray eyes level. She had a scar on her cheek now, not from the battle at Westminster, but from a beaker that had exploded in the Fairchilds’ laboratory.

James nodded at her, and Cordelia realized: there needed to be no more conversation than this to resolve what had happened between Grace and James. It was long over, and James’s past pain had been absorbed into who he was now: it was the memory of a needle that could no longer draw blood.

Grace dropped the broken bracelet into the coffin; the pieces rattled against something glass. She looked at them for a long moment before turning and walking away, her back straight, her fair hair lifted by the wind.

She went to Jesse’s side. He laid a hand on her shoulder before making his own way up to the coffin. Out of all of them, Cordelia thought, he had changed the most since January. He had still been pale and thin then, especially for a Shadowhunter, despite his determination to work and train, to learn the skills of strength and balance that had been instilled in most Shadowhunters from early childhood. Now, with the passage of months—months in which he had trained nearly every day with Matthew and James, until he could scramble up the ropes dangling from the training room ceiling without even breathing hard—he was lean and strong, his skin a shade darker from the sun, and Marked with new runes. All the fine clothes Anna had helped him choose had needed to be let out, and let out again, to accommodate the new shape of his body. He no longer looked like a boy who had grown up in shadow: he was nearly a man, and a strong and healthy one at that.

He held up a jagged bit of metal, bright in the sun—the broken hilt of the Blackthorn sword, Cordelia realized. The etched circle of thorns was still visible against the blackened cross guard. “I,” said Jesse steadily, “am letting go of the complicated history of my family. Of being a Blackthorn. There is, of course,” he added, “nothing inherently evil about any family. Every family has members who are good, and those who are less so. But the terrible things my mother did, she did after taking that name. She hung the Blackthorn sword on the wall above my coffin because it was so important to her that even in near death I be reminded always that I was her idea of a Blackthorn. So I’m burying what my mother thought it meant to be a Blackthorn; I am putting it behind me, and I will start again as a new sort of Blackthorn. The kind I choose to be.”

He laid the broken hilt among the other objects, and for a moment stood, looking at the coffin that had been his prison for so long. When he turned his back on it, it was with a determined air, and he strode over to join Lucie with his head held high.

And it was Lucie’s turn next. She squeezed Jesse’s hand before approaching the coffin. She had told Cordelia earlier what she was bringing—a drawing of a Pyxis, taken from the flat of the warlock Emmanuel Gast.

Cordelia knew Lucie still felt guilt over what had happened with Gast—indeed, over every time she had commanded the dead, though with Gast it had been worst. Lucie’s ability to see ghosts remained, but the power to command them had vanished along with Belial’s death. Lucie had confided to Cordelia that she was glad to be rid of it—she would never even be tempted to use it now.