Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“The ONE WHO WENT MISSING!” Albert yowled. “From the Adamant Citadel!”


Jesse froze as if his blood had turned to ice. Out of the corner of his eye, James saw Lucie blanch. Will was suddenly all attention, hunched over the receiver of the telephone. “Albert,” he said. “Say that again. You found which missing woman?”

“Titania Greenthorpe!” shouted Albert.

“Do you mean Tatiana Blackthorn, Albert?”

“Whatever her name is!” Albert said. “She can’t answer to it herself, you see!”

“What?” said Will. “What do you mean?”

“We found her out on the moors!” Albert said. “One of us, I mean, not myself! It was young Polkinghorn found her!”

“On the moors?” said Will.

“On Bodmin Moor!” Albert said. “During patrol! She was out like a light when we found her! Still hasn’t woken up! Injured pretty badly, I daresay!”

It must be very strange, James thought, a little dazed, to patrol empty moors, rather than city streets full of mundanes. Albert was still shouting: “We thought she was dead at first, truth be told! She’d been slashed up pretty badly! Didn’t even want to put iratzes on her! Not sure she could take it!”

“Where is she now?” Will said.

“Sanctuary,” said Albert, calming down slightly. “Thought that was best.”

Will nodded, though of course Pangborn couldn’t see him. “It is. Keep her there, Albert.” Tessa was frantically miming drawing on her arm. Will added, “Don’t put any runes on her, though. We don’t know how much demonic magic there might be in her.”

“Amazing what young people get up to today, eh, Will?” Pangborn said. “You know what I mean! The young people! Running wild!”

“I’m one year older than Tatiana,” Will pointed out.

“Why, you’re but a boy!” Albert shouted. “Look, I’ve no idea how you do things in London, but I prefer not to harbor criminals in the Sanctuary of my Institute! Is anyone going to come get this woman?”

“Yes,” Will said. “The Silent Brothers will be on their way shortly, to examine her. Keep her in the Sanctuary until then. No runes, and minimal contact. Stay away from her if you can.”

“Give her what in a can?” Albert shouted, but Will was already hanging up. Without another word, he bent to kiss Tessa, who looked as astonished as everyone else, and walked out of the room.

To contact Jem, of course; James did not have to wonder. He knew his father.

There was a silence. Jesse sat like a statue, his face white, staring at the opposite wall. At last Tessa said, “Perhaps she broke with Belial. She may have—resisted him, or disagreed with him, and he abandoned her.”

“It would be very unlike her to do that,” said Jesse, and there was bitterness in his voice. James could not help but think it would also be very unlike Belial to do that: If Tatiana turned against him, surely he would kill her without a second thought?

“There’s always hope for people, Jesse,” Tessa said. “No one is a lost cause, not even your mother.”

Jesse looked at her, bemused, and James thought, Jesse has never had a kind motherly figure in his life. He’d never known a mother who gave him hope, rather than despair or fear. Now he pushed his chair away from the table and stood up with a small bow. “I think I’d better be alone for a little while,” he said, his voice calm. “I will need to tell Grace this news when I see her tomorrow. But I do very much appreciate the dinner. And the kind words,” he added, and departed.

Lucie said, “Should I go after him, do you think?”

“Not right this moment,” Tessa said. “Sometimes people just need to be by themselves. Poor Tatiana,” she added, to James’s surprise. “I can’t help but wonder if Belial simply took what he wanted from her, all these years, and when he was done, left her to die.”

James wondered if Tessa would still think “poor Tatiana” if she knew what Tatiana had wrought on her own son through Grace. What would she think of how James felt now—the acid burn of bitterness in his throat, the terrible sense of near pleasure in Tatiana’s suffering, which shamed him even as he felt it?

He grabbed for his empty wrist with his hand and held it. No matter how much he wished, he could not tell his parents about the bracelet. His mother always thought the best of everyone, and looking at her face, full of compassionate concern for a loathsome woman who had only ever wished her ill, he could not bring himself to ruin that.





13 ANGELS ALONE




Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage:

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

—Richard Lovelace, “To Althea, from Prison”



Cordelia squinted at the page in the fading candlelight.

She was tucked up in her bed in Cornwall Gardens, under the eaves, reading some of the paladin books Christopher had given her. The soft thump of snowdrifts against the roof made the room feel cozier, but it still didn’t feel like home. Rather like a room in the house of a kind relative that one was visiting.

Cordelia was not unaware that she hadn’t entirely unpacked—not her clothes from Paris, and not the things James had sent over to her from Curzon Street. She was living in a sort of limbo, not quite here or there, a space where she did not yet have to make a firm decision.

She wondered a bit about the baby, soon to be born. Not too soon, she hoped. Not while she, its big sister, was undecided about every aspect of her life—and worse, while she was cursed to be a demon’s paladin. She turned back to her book—in the combined light of the fire and the taper on her nightstand, she could just make out the words.

The words were not encouraging. Most paladins wanted to be paladins and would never seek to break the bond with their masters. There was much a paladin could do that seemed appealing: fight harder, jump higher, survive wounds that would kill another. She had even found an account of a paladin who had stabbed his friend due to a case of mistaken identity, but was then able to magically heal him with his “paladin’s blade,” all of which seemed unlikely—what did that even mean, healed him with his blade? But it was only an anecdote, sandwiched between another one in which a single paladin had defeated an advancing army, and yet another in which two parabatai had become paladins together.

Thump, went the snow at her window. It almost sounded like a bird hitting the glass. She couldn’t help but remember when Matthew had tumbled through her window in orange spats, bearing alarming insights. This may be a false marriage, he’d said, but you’re truly in love with James.