Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

Charlotte and Gideon took their leave among further reassurances. When Ariadne heard the door latch shut, she came down the stairs. Her mother, who had been standing motionless in the entryway, started when she saw her. Ariadne did her best to give the impression that she had only just arrived.

“I heard voices,” she said. “Was that the Consul who just left?”

Her mother nodded vaguely, lost in thought. “And Gideon Lightwood. They wanted to know if we’d had a message from your father. And here I hoped they had come to say they’d heard from him.”

“It’s all right, Mama.” Ariadne took her mother’s hands in her own. “You know how Father is. He’s going to be careful and take his time, and learn all he can.”

“Oh, I know. But—it was his idea to send Tatiana to the Adamant Citadel in the first place. If something’s gone wrong—”

“It was an act of mercy,” Ariadne said firmly. “Not locking her up in the Silent City, where she would no doubt have gone madder than she already was.”

“But we did not know then what we know now,” her mother said. “If Tatiana Blackthorn had something to do with Leviathan attacking the Institute… that is not the act of a madwoman deserving pity. It is war on the Nephilim. It is the act of a dangerous adversary, in league with the greatest of evils.”

“She was in the Adamant Citadel when Leviathan attacked,” Ariadne pointed out. “How could she be responsible without the Iron Sisters knowing? Don’t fret, Mama,” she added. “It will all be well.”

Her mother sighed. “Ari,” she said, “you’ve grown up to be such a lovely girl. I will miss you so, when some fine man chooses you, and you go off to be married.”

Ariadne made a noncommittal noise.

“Oh, I know, it was a terrible experience with that Charles,” her mother said. “You’ll find a better man in time.”

She took a breath and set her shoulders, and not for the first time, Ariadne was reminded that her mother was a Shadowhunter like any other, and confronting hardships was part of her job. “By the Angel,” she said, in a new, brisk tone, “life goes on, and we cannot stand in the foyer and fret all day. I have much to attend to… the Inquisitor’s wife must hold down the household while the master is away, and all that.…”

Ariadne murmured her assent and kissed her mother on the cheek before going back up the stairs. Halfway down the corridor, she passed the door to her father’s study, which stood ajar. She pushed the door open slightly and peered inside.

The study had been left in an alarming shambles. If Ariadne had hoped that looking inside Maurice Bridgestock’s study would make her feel closer to her father, she was disappointed—it made her feel more worried instead. Her father was fastidious and organized, and proud of it. He did not tolerate mess. She knew he had left in haste, but the state of the room brought home how panicked he must have been.

Almost without thinking, she found herself straightening up: pushing the chair back under the desk, freeing the curtains where they’d become folded over a lampshade, taking the teacups out into the hallway where the housekeeper would find them. Ashes lay cold in front of the grate; she picked up the small brass broom to whisk them back into the fireplace—

And paused.

Something white gleamed among the ashes in the fireplace grate. She could recognize her father’s neat copperplate handwriting on a stack of charred paper. She leaned closer—whatever kind of notes had her father felt he needed to destroy before he left London?

She took the papers out of the fireplace, flicked the ash from them, and began to read. As she did, she felt a piercing dryness in her throat, as if she were near choking.

Scribbled across the top of the first page were the words Herondale/Lightwood.

It was an obvious transgression to read further, but the name Lightwood burned its letters into her eyes; she could not turn aside from it. If there was some sort of trouble facing Anna’s family, how could she refuse to know it?

The pages were labeled with years: 1896, 1892, 1900. She flipped through the sheets and felt a cold finger creep up the back of her neck.

In her father’s hand were not accounts of money spent or earned, but descriptions of events. Events involving Herondales and Lightwoods.

No, not events. Mistakes. Errors. Sins. It was a record of any doing of the Herondales and Lightwoods that had caused what her father considered problems; anything that could be characterized as irresponsible or ill-considered was noted here.

12/3/01: G2.L absent from Council meeting without explanation. CF angry.

6/9/98: WW in Waterloo say WH/TH refused meeting, causing them to disrupt Market.

8/1/95: Head of Oslo Institute refuses to meet with TH, citing her Heritage.



Ariadne felt sick. Most of the deeds noted seemed petty, small, or hearsay; the report that the head of the Oslo Institute would not meet with Tessa Herondale, one of the kindest ladies Ariadne had ever known, was revolting. The head of the Oslo Institute should have been reprimanded; instead, the event was recorded here as if it had been the Herondales’ fault.

What was this? What was her father thinking?

At the bottom of the stack was something else. A sheet of creamy-white stationery. Not notes, but a letter. Ariadne lifted the missive away from the rest of the stack, her eyes scanning the lines in disbelief.

“Ariadne?”

Quickly, Ariadne shoved the letter into the bodice of her dress, before rising to face her mother. Standing in the doorway, Flora was frowning, her eyes narrowed. When she spoke, it was with none of the warmth she’d had in their conversation downstairs. “Ariadne—what are you doing?”





2 GREY SEA




Grey rocks, and greyer sea,

And surf along the shore—

And in my heart a name

My lips shall speak no more.

—Charles G. D. Roberts, “Grey Rocks, and Greyer Sea”



When Lucie woke up at last, it was to the sound of waves and a bright, wintry sunlight as sharp as the sheer edge of glass. She sat upright so quickly her head spun. She was determined not to go back to sleep again, not to fall unconscious, not to return to that dark, empty place full of voices and noise.

She threw off the striped afghan she’d been sleeping under and swung her legs out of bed. Her first try at standing was unsuccessful; her legs buckled, and she tumbled back onto the bed. The second time she used one of the bedposts to pull herself upright. This worked slightly better, and for a few moments she swayed back and forth like an old sea captain unused to land.