Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1)

by Cassandra Clare

His dark hair was mussed, and in the slightly blurred mirror, he looked no different to Tessa than he had when he was seventeen.

“It makes me want to paint a portrait of you. I’d call it Gentleman, Dissipated.” “You can’t paint a line, Tess,” he said, and came over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“Much less capture my glorious handsomeness, which, I hardly need to point out, has only grown with age.”

She didn’t disagree—he was as handsome as ever, his eyes still the same startling blue—but there w...

She knew why he worried. For them, there had been war, and loss. Tessa’s brother, Nate. Thomas Tanner. Agatha Grant. Jessamine Lovelace, their friend, who now guarded the London Institute in ghostly form. And Jem, who they had both lost and kept.

“You are not old,” she said fiercely. “Even when you are eighty, you will be my beautiful Will.” She kissed him. He made a pleased, startled noise, and his arms came up about her. “My Tess,” he said. “My lovely wife.”

“There are others who deserve happiness who have not gotten it.” “I know.” A sob caught in her throat; they were both talking about the same person, and she did not know if the tears she held back were for him or for Will and herself. “I know.”

“I am trying to think of the best way to do it. What I did—leaving you on the dance floor—was unforgivable. I am trying to think of a reason you ought to forgive me anyway, because if you did not, it would break my heart.”

“There are those close to me I would give up my life for,” he said. “You know that.”

Jem’s violin had pride of place—a Stradivarius carved of mellow wood, it rested in an open case atop a high table. James had seen his father come into this room just to touch the violin sometimes, a faraway look in his eyes. He wondered if he would do the same with Matthew’s belongings if one day, he lost his parabatai.

Will smiled at his wife—James’s parents always looked at each other with such love, it was nearly painful to see—before

The truth was that when he thought of Cordelia marrying someone else, it felt like being kicked in the heart.

He smiled, that rare lovely smile that cut through the Mask and lit up his face.

“She had better love him back,” said Matthew. “He deserves it.”

“We don’t always love people who deserve it,” said Thomas quietly. “Maybe not,” said Matthew. “But often we don’t love those who don’t deserve it, and very right, too.”

Would you like to be a muse?” “No,” said Cordelia. “I would like to be a hero.”

“Spot of writer’s block, Lulu?”

Were you not one, after you became parabatai with Uncle Jem?” “A better Shadowhunter and a better man,” said Will. “All the best of me, I learned from Jem and your mother. All I want for you and Cordelia is to have what I had, a friendship that shall shape all your days. And never to be parted.”

“You’re just lucky I didn’t tell him you were here,” she said. “He would have believed me. And if he thought there was a boy in his daughter’s room, he would have figured out how to tear him limb from limb, even if he couldn’t see him.”

“Fy nghariad bach. It means ‘my darling’ in Welsh. ‘My little darling.’ ”

“Let me tell you something, Jesse Blackthorn. Your mother may have reason to be resentful of Shadowhunters, but if her ridiculous demons hurt my brother, I will have no pity. I shall beat her to death with her own stupid hat.”

“How much is love meant to hurt?” he had asked his father once. “Oh, terribly,” his father had said with a smile. “But we suffer for love because love is worth it.”

“Ah, Magnus Bane,” said Matthew. “My personal hero.”

“Indeed, you once described him as ‘Oscar Wilde if he had magic powers,’ ” said James.

Lucie knew the love her parents shared was an extraordinary one. It was the kind of love she tried to capture in the pages of her own writing, but she could never find the right words.

“But do not forget, Alastair, that whatever I do, it is with the thought of you ever in my mind.”

“We were all very brave then,” said Tessa. “I wonder sometimes if it is easier to be brave when one is young, before one knows truly how much there is to lose.”

James knew that under the songs and jokes, the careful deflection, his father was a man who felt things deeply. He himself was like his father in that way: they both loved intensely, and could be intensely hurt.

If you saw humanity as I can see it, Uncle Jem said. There is very little brightness and warmth in the world for me. There are only four flames, in the whole world, that burn fiercely enough for me to feel something like the person I was. Your mother, your father, Lucie, and you. You love, and tremble, and burn. Do not let those who cannot see the truth tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

“I am a Herondale. We love but once.”

Blackfriars was a special place in his family: it figured in quite a few of his parents’ stories. He usually found it comforting here.

there was something about the comfort of your parabatai—no one else could give it to you, not mother or sister or father or lover. It was a transcendence of all that.

“Daisy, I’m so sorry. This is something that your friends should be helping you with, and I am one of them.”

“Nobody’s ever tried to seduce me at all,” Lucie announced in a brooding fashion. “There’s no need to look at me like that, James. I wouldn’t say yes, but I could immortalize the experience in my novel.” “It would be a very short novel, before we got hold of the blackguard and killed him,” said James.

“About Matthew.” James set the poker down. “Luce. You know that Matthew has feelings for you, and you don’t return those feelings.”

Will sat down beside his wife and pulled her into his lap. “I am going to kiss your mother now,” he announced. “Flee if you will, children. If not, we could play Ludo when the romance is over.” “The romance is never over,” said James glumly. Tessa laughed and put up her face to be kissed.

He was very handsome, Cordelia thought; she didn’t know why she didn’t respond to him as she did to James. But then, she didn’t respond to anyone as she did to James.

He was aware of Matthew standing beside him, swearing under his breath. He didn’t blame him—he knew how his parabatai felt: that somehow they had thrown Cordelia to the wolves of the Hell Ruelle.

It was beautiful—she was beautiful, but it was not a distant beauty. It was a beauty that lived and breathed and reached out with its hands to crush James’s chest and make him breathless.

Beside James, Matthew sucked in his breath. James glanced quickly at his parabatai. Matthew—Matthew looked as he did sometimes when he thought no one was watching him. There was a haunted loneliness in that look, a desire almost beyond comprehension for something even Matthew himself did not understand. His gaze was fixed on Cordelia. But then, everyone in the room was looking at her as her body bent backward and her hair swept from side to side, an arc of fire.

Matthew was looking at her with wide eyes. “Bloody hell,” he said admiringly, as soon as she came into range. He looked far more serious than he usually did. “What was that?”

“Where did you learn to dance like that?” he said abruptly.

Beauty could tear at your heart like teeth, she thought, but she did not love James because he was beautiful: he was beautiful to her because she loved him.

“Daisy… my Daisy…”

“I wish I knew more Persian,” said James. He sank into one of the armchairs. “I would like to thank you in it, Daisy, for saving my life and risking your own. And for helping us as you have, especially when no one you know is ill. You could all have fled back to Paris or Cirenworth the moment this started.”

“Daisy,” he said. “I cannot—I do not think that I—” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps, after what happened in the Whispering Room, I am not the right person to find you a husband. I can’t imagine you would trust me to—” “I do trust you.” Cordelia spoke through numb lips. “I entirely understand. You did not take liberties, James. It was a pretense. It was false, I know—” “False?” he echoed. Despite the heat, Cordelia shivered as James rose to his feet. The firelight flickered through his hair, edging the black locks with scarlet, as if he wore a crown of flames.

“I kissed you because I wanted to,” he said. “Because I’d never wanted anything so much.”

“Your sister is the only thing keeping me from punching you in the face. Your sister loves you, Angel knows why, and you aren’t even the least bit grateful.”

when I saw him with you in the Whispering Room, I was not happy.” Cordelia had not expected such frankness. “What do you mean?” “I suppose I question if he knows what he feels,” said Matthew. “I suppose I worry that he will hurt you.” “He is your parabatai,” said Cordelia. “Why should you care if he hurts me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I find that I do care.”