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I never told you, because I thought you might not like to be named for a lady. You already have a great deal to endure with your foolish father, and those who cavil at your mother and your parabatai. You bear it all so gracefully.”
He had fed his mother poison with his own hands. He was not a fool. He was a villain.
When he went into the breakfast room, he found Matthew, who had been all gold and laughter, cowering in his chair as if he could not bear what was to come.
James had known his parabatai’s heart better than Jem. There had been a time when Will was a boy everybody assumed the worst of, with good reason, except for Jem.
I watched a secret almost destroy a man once, the finest man ever made. Such a secret is like keeping treasure in a tomb. Little by little, poison eats away at the gold. By the time the door is opened, there may be nothing left but dust.
“I’m sorry,” said Matthew coldly. “I do not know what you are talking about.” Zachariah’s heart fell.
Sometimes the distance Silent Brothers possessed moved them to dispassionate observation, and too far from pity. It would be a long time, Brother Zachariah knew, before there could be any comfort for Matthew Fairchild.
It was as though James’s gold was the corona of a flame and Lucie’s blue its burning heart.
They were a strange pair, these two Herondales, thorned mysterious plants in the hothouse of the Nephilim. Matthew could not have loved either of them more dearly.
He realized, with dull pain, that he did not feel worthy of being touched by her.
She always saw a lot, their Luce.
He could not tell Lucie this, and see her disgust of him, but he and James were bound. Perhaps James would try to understand.
He laid Matthew’s hand over James’s heart, and covered it with his own. Matthew looked down into James’s fire-gold eyes. “Mathew,” said Jamie, pronouncing his name in the Welsh way and with the Welsh lilt that let Matthew know he meant it as an endearment. “I am so sorry. What can I do?” He felt he could not live on with this massive stone of a secret crushing his chest. If he was ever going to tell anyone, he should tell his parabatai.
He wondered if James really could understand.
