Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“She is brave,” he said. “Braver than either of us, I think.”


Anna laid a hand against his cheek. “My Matthew,” she said. “What is it you fear so much to tell your parents?”

Matthew closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I—I can’t, Anna. I do not want you to despise me.”

“I would never despise you,” Anna said. “We are all flawed creatures. As diamonds are flawed, each distinct imperfection makes us unique.”

“Perhaps I don’t wish to be unique,” Matthew said. “Perhaps I wish only to be happy and ordinary.”

“Matthew, darling, you are the least ordinary person I know—besides myself—and that is part of what makes you happy. You are a peacock, not a duck.”

“I see you have inherited the Herondale hatred of ducks from your mother,” said Matthew, with the faintest of smiles. He looked up at the sky, deep black, spangled with stars. “I cannot help but feel something terribly dark is coming. Even in Paris, we could not escape the warnings. It is not that I fear danger, or a battle. It is a greater shadow than that, casting itself across all of us. Across London.”

Anna frowned. “What do you mean?” she said, but Matthew, seeming to feel he had said too much, would not elaborate. He only straightened his jacket and set off, a slim figure making its way down Percy Street, unobserved by passersby.



* * *



“You could stay the night at the Institute, Daisy,” Lucie said as she, Jesse, Cordelia, and James made their way along Fleet Street. The streetlamps had been lit, each illuminating a circle of light where tiny flakes of snow swirled like swarms of icy gnats. The wind had picked up, and again blew flurries of ice in misty eddies around the four of them, which Jesse alone seemed to enjoy, his face upturned to the night as they walked. He had not been able to feel hot or cold for years, he had pointed out, and extremes of temperature still delighted him. Apparently he had once gotten close enough to the fireplace in the Institute drawing room to singe his jacket before Lucie pulled him away. “I mean, look at all this snow.”

“Perhaps,” Cordelia said. She cast a sideways glance at James, who had been quiet through the walk, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his coat. Pale flakes were caught in the darkness of his hair.

She did not finish the thought; they had reached the Institute. Once inside, they stomped the snow off their shoes in the entryway and hung their clothes up next to gear jackets and an assortment of weapons on pegs near the front door. James rang one of the servants’ bells—presumably to let Will and Tessa know they had returned—and said, “We should go to one of the bedrooms. For privacy.”

If they had been at Curzon Street, of course, there would be no need to worry about Will and Tessa overhearing them. But James had promised to stay at the Institute while Tatiana was at large, and anyway Cordelia didn’t think she could have faced Curzon Street.

“Yours,” said Lucie promptly. “Mine is a mess.”

James’s bedroom. Cordelia had not been in it often—she had a blurred memory of arriving to see James, a copy of Layla and Majnun in her hand, and finding him in his room with Grace. If only she had given up on him then—not let this farce play out as long as it had. She was silent as they passed through the chapel: it was unlighted now, stripped of decorations. Only a few weeks ago she and James had gotten married here, wreaths of pale flowers garlanding the pews, spilling into the aisle. She had walked on crushed petals as she approached the altar, so that they released their perfume in a cloud of cream and tuberose.

She glanced sideways at James, but he appeared lost in thought. Of course she could not expect him to feel about this place as she did. It would not be a knife to the heart for him.

James led them to his bedroom. It was much neater than it had been when James had lived here before—probably because it was mostly bare, other than the open trunk at the foot of the bed. In the trunk Cordelia recognized James’s clothes, brought from their house, and a few knickknacks—was that a flash of ivory? Before she could look more closely, James had kicked the trunk shut. He turned to Jesse. “Lock the door, would you?”

Jesse hesitated before turning to Cordelia, to her surprise. “Cordelia,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you from Lucie I feel as if I know you. But in truth—I’m nearly a stranger to you. If you’d prefer to speak to James and Lucie alone…”

“No.” Cordelia slipped off her gloves, tucking them into her pockets. She looked from Lucie’s worried face to James’s set one, and back to Jesse. “We have all been touched by Belial in some way or another,” she said. “Lucie and James, because they share his blood. You, because of the monstrous way he controlled you. And I, because I bear Cortana. He fears and hates us all. You are as much a part of this as any of us.”

Jesse met her gaze. She could certainly see why Lucie had been drawn to him, Cordelia thought. He was attractive, but that was not all of it; there was an intensity to him, a focus, as if everything he saw, he carefully considered. It made one wish to be considered by him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll lock the door.”

They settled themselves somewhat awkwardly around the room: James on the trunk, Cordelia in the chair, Lucie on James’s bed, and Jesse sitting atop the windowsill, his back against the cold glass. Everyone looked expectantly at Cordelia.

“It was what you said about your dream,” she explained. “That you heard Belial say, ‘They wake.’?”

“I’ve no idea what he meant,” said James. “But Grandfather does like a puzzle. Whether it has a solution or not.”

“Ugh,” said Lucie. “Don’t call him Grandfather. It makes it sound as if he carried us piggyback when we were children.”

“I’m sure he would have,” said James, “as long as he was piggybacking us up a volcano to sacrifice us to Lucifer.”

“He’d never sacrifice you,” Lucie said tartly. “He needs you.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “I think,” he said, “Cordelia was trying to tell us something?”

James turned his eyes on her, though Cordelia noticed they slid away, as if he could not bear to look directly at her. “Daisy?”

“Yes,” she said, and told them quickly about the Cabaret de l’Enfer, Madame Dorothea, and the words that had come, in theory, from her father. “?‘They wake,’?” she said, and shivered. “And I might have thought it was nonsense, except that when we were attacked by Lilith, she repeated the same words. I’m not sure she even knew what they meant,” Cordelia added. “She said, ‘Belial has not stopped his planning. I, too, have heard the whispers on the wind. They wake.’?”