Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1)

by Cassandra Clare

Sometimes you have to stand back and let people do what they are good at, even if it seems like madness at the time.”

People always fussed over blond hair, like Matthew’s, as if it were special, but privately Thomas thought dark hair and eyes were much more striking.

His hand was warm and calloused against Thomas’s, and Thomas remembered the feel of Alastair’s fingers on the inside of his arm and tried not to change expression. They shook. Alastair had not asked Thomas about his friends or his family. Thomas hadn’t asked Alastair, either. For these days it had been as though nobody else existed in the entire world. “Well,” Thomas said. “Goodbye, Carstairs.” “Goodbye, Lightwood. Try not to get any taller. You’re starting to be off-putting in the other direction.” Thomas watched Alastair walk away and waited for him to turn around one last time, but Alastair never looked back as he turned the corner and disappeared.

I can tell their love story is going to pain me

Close, side by side, from morn till night, Kissing and dalliance their delight, Whilst thou from human solace flying With unrequited love art dying. —Nizami Ganjavi, Layla and Majnun

Remembering the pieces of art of this story at the Dallas Art Museum and some of the original manuscript!

There were times when he thought of her that he felt such pain that all his bones seemed strung on a single wire, and he imagined that if the wire was pulled taut, it would kill him. “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.”

How was it possible to feel such agony when someone’s name was mentioned, yet forget them in duress?

The largest demon rose up in front of James. Without a second’s hesitation, he plunged his seraph blade into the creature. Ichor splashed black against his hand, spattering the ground at his feet. The demon gurgled and seemed to crumple, its froglike legs giving out under it. James raised his blade to dispatch it, just as it looked up at him with its deadly black eyes. He saw himself reflected in those eyes as if they were mirrors. He saw his own black hair, his pale face, the gold of his pupils. He saw the same expression he had seen on the face of the Deumas in the alleyway near Fleet Street. Recognition. “Herondale boy,” the demon said, in a voice like the last hiss of dying fire in a grate. “I know you. I know all about you. The blood of demons burns in your veins. Why would you slay those who worship your mother’s father? Why destroy your own kind?” James froze. He could see several of the others twist to look over at him: Matthew looked furious, the others horrified. Lucie had her hand over her mouth. Alastair, who stood the closest to him, was staring with wide dark eyes. James exhaled a shuddering breath. “I am not your kind,” he said. “You do not know what you are.” Enough, James thought. This is enough. “If you worship my grandfather,” he said savagely, “then go, in his name. Not back to Chiswick House—back to the dimension you came from.” The demon hesitated, and as it did, all the other demons went still. Every figure at the riverside was turned toward James. “...

It was Christopher who broke the silence. “What just happened?” “Demons vanished,” said Matthew, dabbing blood from his face. “The leader seemed to feel it was an old friend of James’s grandfather.” “Oh, the demony grandfather?” said Christopher. “Yes, obviously the demony one, Christopher,” said James.

She jabbed a finger toward his chest. “You care, Herondale. That is your weakness.”

Beside Cordelia, Lucie produced her stele with a flourish. “Our first healing rune!” she announced, putting the tip of the stele to Cordelia’s wrist. “A historic moment for a pair of soon-to-be-famous parabatai.”

Lucie is so cute and such a great bestie!

“They went back to whatever dimension Cerberus demons hail from. In the name of my grandfather.” He sounded bitter. “How nice for you to be related to such an important sort of demon,” said Alastair dryly. “If it actually cared that James was related to an ‘important’ demon, it should have said something to me, too,” said Lucie. “I am his sister. I do not appreciate being overlooked.” James smiled—which, Cordelia suspected, had been Lucie’s aim. He had a perfectly lethal dimple that flashed when he smiled. Such things should be illegal.

OMG JAMES WITH A DIMPLE

Cordelia had thought a tattoo would be rather more like their Marks, but it reminded her of something else instead. It was ink, the way books and poems were made of ink, telling a permanent story.

Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus, Aur y byd na’i berlau mân: Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, Calon onest, calon lân. James and Lucie exchanged a worried look. If Will was singing, that meant he was in a sociable mood and would seize them the moment he saw them and begin reminiscing about Wales and ducks. “Perhaps,” said James in a whisper, “we should all swiftly exit and ascend to an upper chamber using a window and a grappling hook.” Tessa appeared in the doorway of the drawing room. At the sight of all five of them, she raised her eyebrows. Lucie and James exchanged a glance: too late for the grappling hook. Lucie stepped forward and slid an arm around her mother’s waist. “Sorry, Mam, we had a late picnic down by the river. Are we in trouble?” Tessa smiled. “You are all scamps, but I hope you enjoyed yourselves. We can discuss this later. Your father has a guest. Go in and introduce yourselves. I’ll just pop up to the infirmary and be back.”

“By the name of Lilith,” he drawled. “Hide the breakables. Hide the whole house. Christopher Lightwood is here.” “Christopher is often here,” said James. “The house remains mostly intact.” Will grinned. “Mr. Fell is here on a social call,” he said. “Isn’t that nice?” Will had tried to make clear that the Institute’s doors were open to Downworlders, but few had ever taken him up on that hospitality. Will and Henry talked often of Magnus Bane, but Bane had been in America Lucie’s whole life. “Mr. Fell expressed a keen interest in Welsh music, so I sang a few songs,” said Will. “Also, we had a few glasses of port. We’ve been enjoying ourselves.” “I have been here for hours,” said Ragnor, in a dolorous voice. “There have been many songs.” “I know you enjoyed them,” said Will. His eyes were sparkling. Far above them, Lucie heard an odd sound: as if something in the house had tipped over and crashed. Perhaps a lamp. “I do feel as if I have been to Wales and back,” said Ragnor.

“Will, bach,” she said in a low voice. “Come with me for a moment; I have something to ask you.” Will sprang to his feet with alacrity. He always did when Tessa was the one who called him away. 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.

“I do not entirely know how to treat you Herondales,” he admitted. “A warlock has never had a child before. I cannot help but wonder: What will you become?” He looked steadily at James, and then at Lucie. The fire crackled in the grate, but neither of them spoke. Lucie thought of the demon at the bridge, telling James it would honor his blood. Her blood. Ragnor shrugged. “So be it,” he said, and left.

She could hear her mother singing to herself in her bedroom; a long time ago, Alastair himself had often sung and played the piano. Once they had been a musical family. Once things had been very different. Tonight had reminded Cordelia of when she and her brother were children, and co-conspirators as isolated siblings often were. Of the time before Alastair went to school, and came back so very hard to reach.

“It seems to be the lot of the living to have tragedy visited upon them,” Jessamine mused.

“I wonder sometimes if it is easier to be brave when one is young, before one knows truly how much there is to lose.”

Books were about experiencing joy. This was the raw and awful stuff of life. It was much too terrible.

she had said she would need time, and he knew he must give her that. Still, the thought of her burned inside his stomach, as if he had swallowed a match tip.

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.

Copy and paste. Like father like son.

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.

AAAAGGGH I AM FUCKING SOBBING RIGHT NOW AND IT IS MIDNIGHT😩🥹😭 THIS IS WHY JEM CARSTAIRS IS MY HUBBY

Shadowhunters knew death. They accepted that death came: in battle, by knife or tooth or sword. But for a strange poison to steal away life while one slept, like a ghost or a thief, was not part of Shadowhunter life. It felt wrong, like a boot put on backward. Just as it felt to imagine losing her father to the injustice of the Clave.

She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine. —Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Witch-Wife”

“And where have you been?” Will demanded, as James clambered out of the carriage. The others leaped down behind him, the girls, being in gear, needing no help to dismount. “You stole our carriage.” James wished he could tell his father the truth, but that would be breaking their sworn promise to Ragnor. “It’s only the second-best carriage,” James protested. “Remember when Papa stole Uncle Gabriel’s carriage? It’s a proud family tradition,” said Lucie, as the group of them approached the Institute steps. “I did not raise you to be horse thieves and scallywags,” said Will. “And I recall very clearly that I told you—” “Thank you for letting them borrow the carriage to come and get me,” said Cordelia. Her eyes were wide, and she looked entirely innocent.

“As I have known Charles since he was born, I have a difficult time taking him seriously as an authority figure,” said Will thoughtfully. “I suppose if he says anything I don’t like, I can request that he be spanked.” “Oh, yes, please,” said Matthew. “It would do him a world of good.”

“You are a very attractive ghost,” said Matthew, tapping his ringed fingers against his chest. “I do hope Lucie and James have mentioned as much.” “They have not,” Jessamine noted. “Very remiss,” said Matthew, his eyes sparkling.

Cordelia did not want to go look for James. She’d seen the look on his face when Grace tumbled out of Charles’s carriage in the courtyard. The longing that had turned so quickly to fear for Grace; the quick unconscious way he’d touched the bracelet on his wrist. He hated Tatiana, she knew, and with good reason. But he would have done anything to protect her to spare Grace pain. She wondered what it would be like, to be loved like that. Even alongside her sadness, there was a strange admiration in her for the way that James loved Grace, the all-encompassingness of it.

“I am a Herondale. We love but once.” “That is only a story.” “Haven’t you heard?” James said bitterly. “All the stories are true.”

James threw open the doors and fled, vanishing beneath the arched gates that marked the entrance to the Institute, the words carved on them gleaming in the dull sunlight. We are dust and shadows.

Her voice was cold as she turned away from him. “You have no idea what terrible people are like.”

Grace Blackthorn☺️🔪

The rhythmic slap of the tidal river against the granite piers of the bridge was as familiar to James as a lullaby. Blackfriars was a special place in his family: it figured in quite a few of his parents’ stories. He usually found it comforting here. The river rolled on, regardless of the turmoil in the lives of the people who crossed the bridge or boated across the water. They could leave no real mark on the river, as their troubles left no real mark on time. Now it was not comforting. Now he did not feel as if he could breathe. The pain he felt was physical, as if sharp steel rods had been slid through his ribs, stopping his heart.

James couldn’t explain it—the choking feeling, the dizziness. He recalled his father saying that love was pain, but this felt other than pain. It felt as if he had been deprived of air almost to the point of death and now was gasping and choking on it, trying desperately to get enough into his lungs. He couldn’t find words, couldn’t do anything but lean over and put his head down on Matthew’s shoulder.

but 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.

“That it was probably better this happened sooner, and that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and all that. But it’s all rot, isn’t it?”

but faith alone was not love.

“We do not get to choose when in our lives we feel pain,” said Matthew. “It comes when it comes, and we try to remember, even though we cannot imagine a day when it will release its hold on us, that all pain fades. All misery passes. Humanity is drawn to light, not darkness.”

“Tell me, Matthew,” he said. “Tell me the name of the shadow that is always hanging over you. I can become a shadow. I could fight it for you.” Matthew squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. “Oh, Jamie,” he sighed. “What if I said there is no shadow?” “I would not believe you,” said James. “I know what I feel in my own heart.”

He called out for Cordelia, but she was gone, like the dream he’d known she was.

She turned, moving with the sword as if they danced together. Her light brown skin gleamed in the witchlight, sheened with sweat at her collarbones, her throat. Her hair had come free from its pins. It tumbled down her back like a waterfall of autumn leaves. Together she and Cortana were a poem written in fire and blood.

Christopher, who had seized a seraph blade from his belt, lowered it in relief. “Thank Raziel,” he said. “I thought it was a demon attacking.” Matthew gave Christopher a dark look. “Put that away,” he said. “I don’t fancy being stabbed; I am far too young and beautiful to die.”

It was always James, Cordelia thought as they drew up chairs. Always James keeping the group together, noticing when they needed each other.

“Sometimes grief and worry must take the form of action,” said Cordelia. “Sometimes it is unbearable to sit and wait.”

James flipped open the book Christopher had handed him and slid a pair of small gilt reading glasses onto his nose. Something in Cordelia’s chest tightened, as if she had snagged a small piece of her heart, like a piece of cloth on a thorn. She looked away from the sight of James and his adorable spectacles. She had to find someone else to feel this way about. Or someone to feel a different way about. Anything, so she could stop feeling like this.

“I appreciate the scientific rigor with which you’ve approached this project, Anna,” said Christopher, who had gotten jam on his sleeve. “Though I don’t think I could manage to collect that many names and also pursue science. Much too time-consuming.” Anna laughed. “How many names would you want to collect, then?” Christopher tilted his head, a brief frown of concentration crossing his face, and did not reply. “I would only want one,” said Thomas. Cordelia thought of the delicate tracery of the compass rose on Thomas’s arm, and wondered if he had any special person in mind. “Too late for me to only have one,” declared Matthew airily. “At least I can hope for several names in a carefully but enthusiastically selected list.” “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. There was a chorus of laughter and argument.

“What about you, Cordelia?” said Lucie. “One,” said Cordelia. “That’s everyone’s dream, isn’t it, really? Instead of many who give you little pieces of themselves—one who gives you everything.” Anna laughed. “Searching for the one is what leads to all the misery in this world,” she said. “Searching for many is what leads to all the fun.” Cordelia met James’s eyes, half by accident. She saw the worry in his—there had been something brittle in Anna’s laugh.

Anna shuddered. “Orange is not the color of seduction, Christopher. Orange is the color of despair, and pumpkins. Regardless, I have all the clothes I need. However”—she held up a finger, the nail clipped quite short—“the Hell Ruelle is not assembled every night. The next salon is tomorrow.” “Then we will go tomorrow,” said James. “We cannot possibly all go to the Hell Ruelle,” said Anna. “Hypatia wouldn’t like it if we all show up in a gaggle. A gaggle is not dignified.” “It makes sense for me to go,” said Matthew. “They know me there.” “I should go as well,” said James. “It is possible my shadow power might be useful. I have utilized it before to—to acquire certain things.” Everyone looked puzzled, but James’s expression was not one that suggested a request for clarification would be welcome. Anna smiled her slow, scotch-and-honey smile. “And Cordelia as well, of course,” she said. “A beautiful girl is always a distraction, and we will need to be very distracting indeed.” James and Matthew both glanced at Cordelia. I will not blush, she told herself fiercely. I will not. She had a suspicion she looked as if she might be choking.

In the darkening light, his eyes reminded her of the eyes of tigers she had seen in Rajasthan, golden and watchful.

“I suppose I worry we all tumble into our roles too easily—Christopher the scientist, Thomas the kind one, Matthew the libertine. And I—I don’t know what I am, exactly.” “You are the leader,” said Cordelia. He looked amused. “Am I?” “The four of you are tightly knit,” said Cordelia. “Anyone could see that. And none of you is so simple. Thomas is more than just kind, and Christopher more than beakers and test tubes, Matthew more than wit and waistcoats. Each of you follows his own star—but you are the thread that binds all four together. You are the one who sees what everyone needs, if anyone requires extra care from their friends, or even to be left alone. Some groups of friends drift apart, but you would never let that happen.” James’s amusement had gone. There was a little roughness in his voice when he said, “So I am the one who cares the most, is that it?” “You have a great power of caring in you,” Cordelia said, and for a moment, it was a relief to say those words, to say what she had always thought about James. Even when she had watched him loving Grace, and felt the pain of it, she had thought, too, of what it would mean to be loved by someone with such a capacity for loving. “It is your strength.” James looked away.