Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

It was late, and Anna Lightwood was getting tired. Unfortunately, the party in her flat showed no signs of slowing. Nearly all her Shadowhunter friends were out of town for a variety of silly reasons, and she had taken the opportunity to invite over some of those Downworlders she wished to know better. Claude Kellington, the master of music at the Hell Ruelle, had a new composition to debut, and he wished to do so before an intimate audience. Anna’s flat, according to him, was the perfect spot.

Kellington’s new composition involved a lot of singing, never Claude’s strongest talent. Nor had Anna realized that it was a song cycle adapted from an epic poem also of his composition. The performance had now entered its fourth hour, and Anna’s guests, however well disposed toward the artist, had long ago become bored and drunk. Kellington, whose usual audience were the bored and drunk denizens of the Hell Ruelle, hadn’t even noticed; he also, Anna noted, had apparently never heard of the word “intermission.”

Now a vampire and werewolf whose names Anna did not recall were entangled passionately on her sofa, a positive step for Downworlder relations, at least. Someone in the corner by the china cabinet had gotten into the snuff. Even Percy the stuffed snake looked worn-out. Every now and again Anna took a discreet glance at her watch to note the hours ticking by, but she had no idea how to stop Kellington politely. Every time he paused for a moment she stood to interject, but he would only barrel right into the next movement.

Hyacinth, a pale blue faerie in the employ of Hypatia Vex, was here and had been sending suggestive glances in Anna’s direction all evening. She and Anna had a history, and Anna did not like to repeat a reckless debauch from her past; still, Kellington’s performance would have normally driven her into Hyacinth’s arms before the first hour was up. Instead she had been carefully avoiding the faerie girl’s gaze. Looking at Hyacinth only reminded Anna of the last words Ariadne had spoken to her. It is because of me that you have become what you are. Hard and bright as a diamond. Untouchable.

The same words repeated themselves in her mind every time she thought about romance these days. What had once interested her—the purr of petticoats falling to the ground, the whispering fall of loosened hair—no longer did, unless it was Ariadne’s hair. Ariadne’s petticoats.

She would forget, she told herself. She would make herself forget. She had thrown herself into distractions. This performance of Kellington’s, for instance. She had also held a life-drawing class with Percy as the subject, she had attended a number of shockingly dull vampire dances, and she had played cribbage with Hypatia until dawn. She missed Matthew more than she had thought possible. Surely he would have been able to distract her.

She was shaken from her reverie by a sudden knocking at the door. Startled, Anna rose. It was quite late for an unanticipated visitor. Perhaps—hopefully—a neighbor come to complain of the noise?

She threaded her way across the room and threw the door open. On the threshold, shivering with cold, stood Ariadne Bridgestock.

Her eyes were red, her cheeks blotchy. She’d been crying. Anna felt her stomach drop; whatever she might have rehearsed to say the next time she and Ariadne spoke disappeared from her mind instantly. Instead she felt a prickle of fear—what had happened? What was wrong?

“I’m sorry,” Ariadne said. “For bothering you.” Her chin was raised high, her eyes bright with defiance. “I know I shouldn’t have come. But I’ve nowhere else I can go.”

Wordlessly Anna stepped aside to let her into the flat. Ariadne came inside; she was carrying a small holdall, and the coat she wore was far too thin for the weather. Her hands were bare. Anna’s alarm ticked up a notch. Something was certainly wrong.

In that moment, though Ariadne had said nothing, Anna made a decision.

She strode over to the piano, which Kellington was playing fortissimo while singing something about a lonely wolf in the moonlight, and closed the fallboard on his hands. The music stopped abruptly, and Kellington looked up at her with a hurt expression. Anna ignored him. “Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” she said loudly, “but alas, pressing Nephilim business has arisen. I’m afraid I must ask you all to depart.”

“I’m only halfway through,” protested Kellington.

“Then we shall gather at some other time to hear the second half,” Anna lied, and in a few minutes she had managed to herd the dozen or so guests out of the flat. A few grumbled, but most only looked puzzled. As the door closed on the last of them a silence settled, the uncanny stillness that always followed the end of a party. Only Ariadne remained.

A few minutes later found Ariadne perched uneasily on Anna’s settee, her legs curled under her, her coat drying by the fire. She had stopped shivering once Anna had gotten some tea into her, but the look in her eyes was grim and faraway. Anna waited, lounging with a false casualness against the back of the settee.

As she sipped, Ariadne looked around the flat slowly, taking it in. Anna was puzzled by this until she realized with a start that Ariadne had never actually been here before. Anna had always arranged to meet her elsewhere.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Ariadne said.

Oh, thank the Angel, she’s going to bring it up herself, Anna thought. Anna had always welcomed those in distress to her flat—Eugenia, weeping over Augustus Pounceby; Matthew, full of sorrows he could not name; Christopher, fretting that his science would come to nothing in the end; Cordelia, desperately in love with James but too proud to admit it. She knew how to talk to the heartbroken; she knew it was always best not to push for information, and to wait for them to speak first.

But with Ariadne, things were different; Anna knew she could not have held back a moment longer from asking her what had happened. It mattered too much. That was the problem. With Ariadne, things had always mattered too much.

Ariadne began to speak—slowly, and then faster. She explained that earlier that day the Consul had come to seek news of her father, and that she had gone into his office afterward and found a file full of information about the Herondales and the Lightwoods, and all the times any of them had perhaps bent a small law, or caused a problem in the Enclave through an error. None of it, she said, rose to a level of significance such that the Inquisitor should take interest.

Anna did not, as she wanted to, immediately ask whether Ariadne had seen any entries about her specifically. Instead she only frowned and said, “Well, I don’t like the sound of that. What could he hope to accomplish by such a record?”