Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“No,” James said quietly. “It feels to me as if telling them would be like reliving every moment of what happened. They would have questions, and pity, and I could bear neither.”


There was a long silence. Jesse looked at the face of the moon, visible through a break in the clouds. “Belial used my hands to kill people. To kill Shadowhunters. I tell myself over and over there was nothing I could have done, but I still believe somehow, in my heart, I could have stopped it.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” said James. “You were being controlled.”

“Yes,” Jesse said, and James heard his own words again, echoed back to him. You were being controlled. “Do you pity me?”

“No,” James said. “At least—it isn’t pity. I feel anger that you were wronged. Sorry for the hurt caused to you. Admiration for the way in which you have faced it.”

“Do not think so little of your friends,” said Jesse, “and of Cordelia, as to imagine they will feel differently than that.” He looked down at his hands. “I know they will be angry,” he said. “With Grace. I am furious at her. Sickened by what she did. And still…”

“Still she is your sister. No one would blame you if… you forgave her.”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “For so many years, she was the only person in my life who loved me. She was my little sister. I felt as if I had been born to protect her.” He gave the faintest of smiles. “You must know what I mean.”

James thought of all the scrapes Lucie had gotten into over the years, the many times he’d had to rescue her from tree-climbing adventures gone too far, overturned rowboats, and warlike ducks, and nodded.

“But how can I forgive Grace for doing to you what Belial did to me?” Jesse said wretchedly. “And when Lucie finds out—she adores you, you know. She has always said she could not have asked for a better brother. She will want to kill Grace, and will not thank me for standing in her way.”

“The Clave’s laws against murder will stand in her way,” said James, finding that despite everything, he could smile. “Lucie is tempestuous, but she has sense. She will know that you would never have approved of what Grace did.”

Jesse looked out toward the silver ribbon of the Thames. “I had hoped we would be friends, you and I,” he said. “I had imagined us training together, perhaps. I had not imagined this. And yet…”

James knew what he meant. It was something of a bond, this peculiar connection: both of them had had their lives warped and twisted by Belial and Tatiana. Both bore the scars. He almost felt as if he should shake Jesse’s hand; it seemed the manly sort of thing to do, to seal the agreement that they were to be friends from this moment on. Of course, if it had been Matthew, he would not have cared at all about manly agreements—Matthew would simply have hugged James or wrestled him to the ground or tickled him until he was breathless.

But Jesse was not Matthew. No one was. Matthew had brought anarchic joy into James’s life, like light into a dark place. With Matthew, James felt the unspeakable happiness that came from being with one’s parabatai, a happiness that transcended all other things. Without Matthew… the image of Chiswick House came unbidden into his mind, with its smashed mirrors and stopped clocks. The symbol of sadness frozen in time, never-ending.

Stop, James told himself. Focus on the present. On what you can do for Jesse.

“Come with me, tomorrow,” he said, rather suddenly, and saw Jesse raise an eyebrow. “I won’t tell you where—you’ll have to trust me—but I think you will find it rewarding.”

Jesse laughed. “All right,” he said. “I trust you, then.” He frowned down at his own hands. “And I believe you were right. I am freezing. My fingers are turning quite blue.”

They scrambled back through the trapdoor and made their way through the attic, which James suspected had not changed much since his parents had been young. Jesse returned to his room, and James to his, only to discover that Bridget had slid a slightly crumpled envelope halfway under his door. It seemed that while he had been on the roof, Neddy had come to the Institute with a message for him.

A message from Cordelia.



* * *



It turned out that Anna’s plan, which Ariadne had assumed involved a complex series of maneuvers that would somehow produce Winston the parrot, consisted of them using an Open rune to get into the Bridgestocks’ house through a back entrance and commencing a lightning raid on the home Ariadne had lived in since she’d moved to London.

She found she rather enjoyed it. She led Anna immediately to the conservatory, where Winston’s gold cage usually held pride of place. Her stomach swooped when she saw that it was not there. What if her parents, in their anger at her, had sold Winston or given him away?

“He’s likely just in another room,” Anna whispered. They had both been whispering since they entered the house, though Ariadne knew it was empty and the servants, in their quarters downstairs, would be unlikely to hear anything. And they were both wearing Soundless runes. Still, there was something about the dark house that invited whispering.

They searched through the ground floor, Anna shining her witchlight rune-stone into every corner. Having found nothing, they moved upstairs, creeping along the carpeted floors to Ariadne’s bedroom.

Ariadne noticed several things the moment she stepped into her former room. First was Winston, perched in his cage, which had been placed on her desk. A small dish of nuts and seeds sat beside it. Winston flapped his wings happily at the sight of her.

“There you are,” Anna said, glancing over at Ariadne, who was relieved, but… The second thing she’d noticed was the state of her bedroom. She had expected it to be stripped down, removed of everything that might remind her parents of her. Instead everything was in its place, pin straight. The jewelry she had not taken with her was in an open velvet box on the dresser, along with her cosmetics and comb. The remainder of her clothes hung pressed in the wardrobe. Her bed was neatly made.

They are keeping up appearances, she realized. For themselves, not for anyone else. They are keeping up the fiction that I might return at any moment. She could imagine the scenario they envisioned—Ariadne fleeing back to Cavendish Square, the tears of regret on her cheeks, her mother fussing over her as she told them of the wide world and its cruelties, of the beliefs she’d entertained that she knew now were wrong. Why, she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever come to think that she loved—

“Pretty bird,” called Winston hopefully.

“Oh, Winston,” Ariadne murmured, and passed a shelled peanut through the bars of his cage. “Never fear, I hadn’t forgotten you. You’re coming with us.” She looked around; ah, here was her purple afghan, folded at the foot of the bed. She picked it up to unfold it.