Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Lucie had cried enough on her way back to the Institute that when she had finally crept back inside, and upstairs to her room, she found her hair frozen to her cheeks by crystalline tracks of salt.

She had cleaned herself up as best she could, put on a clean nightgown, and sat down at her desk. Her tears were spent; she felt only an awful hollowness, a terrible missing of Cordelia and a knowledge of her own guilt. She had concealed her relationship—friendship, whatever it was—with Grace; she had concealed Jesse’s whole existence.

But. Cordelia had hidden things too. How she felt about James, for one thing—which normally wouldn’t have been Lucie’s business, but now, she felt, very much was. She loved her brother. Every time Cordelia turned away from him, and the anguish on his face was clear, Lucie wanted to jump up and down and scream.

In the past, she would have poured out her feelings with her pen, but since Jesse’s return she hadn’t been able to write a word. And now it was worse: she kept hearing Cordelia’s voice in her head. It’s like you don’t live in the real world. You live in a world of stories. As if that were a terrible thing.

She slumped back in her chair. “I don’t know what to do,” she said aloud, to no one. “I just don’t.”

“You could command the dead to solve your problems,” said a familiar, waspish voice. Jessamine, the Institute’s resident ghost, was seated atop Lucie’s wardrobe, her long skirts trailing off into indistinct translucence. “It’s what you always do, isn’t it?”

Lucie sighed. “I’ve already apologized to you, Jessamine.” This was true. When Lucie had first returned to her room after getting back from Cornwall, she had delivered an extensive and sincere apology for having controlled the dead against their will. There had been quite a lot of rustling, and she was sure Jessamine had heard her.

Jessamine folded her transparent arms. “Your power is much too dangerous, Lucie. Even in the hands of someone sensible, it would cause trouble, and you are the least sensible person I know.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know I have no plans to use it again.”

“Not good enough.” Jessamine shook her head. “It is one thing to plan not to use your power again, but that’s the problem with power, isn’t it? There’s always some reason to make an exception, just this once. No, you must get rid of it.”

Lucie opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again before she spoke. Jessamine was, she thought with an uncomfortable pang, probably right.

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said truthfully.

Jessamine turned up her nose and began to make a dramatic exit through the wall. “Wait,” said Lucie. “If I said to you, ‘They wake,’ would that mean anything to you?”

“Of course not.” Jessamine sniffed. “What do I know about anyone waking? What kind of fool question is that?”

Lucie doused her witchlight, stood up, and reached for her dressing gown. “I’ve had enough of this,” she said. “I’m going to see Jesse.”

“You can’t!” Scandalized, Jessamine followed Lucie out of the room and down the hall. “This is disgraceful!” she cried, doing somersaults near the ceiling. “A young lady should never see a young gentleman in his bedroom, alone!”

Crossly, Lucie said, “From what I hear from my parents, you snuck out repeatedly to see a single gentleman when you were an unmarried girl, at night. And he turned out to be my evil uncle. Which is certainly not going to happen with Jesse.”

Jessamine gasped. She gasped again when Jesse’s door opened, and he stepped out into the hall, apparently alerted by the ruckus. He wore only trousers and a shirt with the sleeves pulled up, putting a great deal of his admirable forearms on display.

“You were a ghost,” Jessamine said, sounding a little amazed, though Lucie was sure she’d already been aware of Jesse’s return. Still, it must be very odd for Jessamine to see him standing directly in front of her, so entirely alive.

“People change,” said Jesse mildly.

Jessamine, apparently realizing that Lucie meant to carry out her scandalous plan of entering Jesse’s room, gave a squawk and vanished.

Jesse had been holding the door open; Lucie ducked under his arm and immediately realized she hadn’t been in here, not since the moment Jesse had picked the room out, alongside her and her whole family.

It was still spare, as there had not been much time to decorate it—a standard Institute bedroom, with a wardrobe, a desk, a bookshelf, and a four-poster bed. Little bits of Jesse were visible, though. The jacket he had worn at dinner, hung over a chair back. The books on his nightstand. The Blackthorn sword, which had been retrieved from the Sanctuary, was propped against the wall. Lucie’s gold hair comb that he’d purloined on the night of Anna’s party, what felt like so long ago, had pride of place atop the dresser.

She sank down onto his bed as he went to bolt the door. Of course he did—he always seemed to sense when Lucie needed to be alone, or alone together with him, in order to feel safe. “What’s wrong?” he asked, turning back to her.

“I had an awful fight with Cordelia.”

Jesse was silent. She wondered if—compared to everything else—her problem sounded silly. He stayed by the door, clearly anxious—she supposed it was the first time she’d ever been in his room alone with him, and she’d given him no warning.

She had expected that when she and Jesse returned to the Institute, to live there together, they would be in and out of each other’s bedrooms all the time. But Jesse had been relentlessly, scrupulously polite, bidding her goodbye every evening, and never coming to knock on her door. She’d seen more of him at night when he was a ghost.

She sat up straight, realizing as well that she was wearing only a nightgown of white batiste, with a transparent lace dressing gown. The sleeves of the nightgown were loose and tended to slip down her shoulders. She looked at Jesse. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

He exhaled. “I’m glad you’re here. And you look…” His gaze lingered on her. Heat sparked in her chest. “But I keep thinking about…”

“Yes?”

“Your parents,” he said apologetically. “I would not want them to think I was taking advantage of their hospitality. Their very extreme kindness.”

Of course. Her lovely, caring, pesky family. She had already seen the way that Jesse was brightening under the attention from Will and Tessa, becoming more himself. Jesse had never experienced a family where people were fond of each other and loved each other; now that he was in such an environment, he had become paralyzed by the fear of ruining it. And while she could recognize that this was good for Jesse, it did mean that he did everything in his power to assure Will—even when Will wasn’t there—that his attentions toward Lucie were honorable. Which she didn’t entirely want them to be.