Chain of Iron (The Last Hours, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

“Matthew has a habit of getting his heart broken. He seems to prefer a hopeless love.”

He was caught, suddenly, in a fierce hug from Matthew. Matthew’s hands were tight on the back of his shirt, Matthew’s cold cheek against his. “You went shadowy,” Matthew said, his voice low, “as if you were going to disappear, as if I’d wished you gone and you were vanishing—” James drew back enough to smooth Matthew’s hair away from his forehead. “Have you wished me gone?” he said teasingly. “No. Only I wish myself gone, sometimes,” Matthew said in a whisper, and it was that rarest of things where Matthew was concerned, an entirely true statement with no mockery or teasing or humor to be had. “Never wish that,” James said, and sat back enough to see the other two Merry Thieves, and their worried expressions. “I turned into a shadow?”

Anna had slipped away an hour or so after midnight with Lily, a vampire from Peking.

Oh. The feel of him—his hand was cool but slightly insubstantial, like the memory of a touch. And yet it sent sparks through her veins—she could almost see them, like fireflies in the dark.

“Layla,” Sona said. “Don’t fret. It is always difficult to face a change. When I married your father, I was terribly nervous. Yet all anyone talked about was how lucky I was, because he was the dashing hero who had slain the demon Yanluo. But my mother took me aside and told me, ‘He’s indeed very dashing, but you must not forget your own heroism.’ So all will be well. Only do not forget your own heroism.”

“You may fear what will happen if you speak your heart. You may wish to hide things because you fear hurting others. But secrets have a way of eating at relationships, Jamie. At love, at friendship—they undermine and destroy them until in the end you find you are bitterly alone with the secrets you kept.”

“Well, you know what they say,” said James. “All the best men are either married or Silent Brothers.”

Matthew had murmured to him—light, funny comments about the guests and a few harsh words for Mrs. Bridgestock’s hat—and James had thought how lucky he was, to have a parabatai who was always there for him. He could never truly fall with Matthew to hold him up.

Will and Tessa were both smiling. James thought there were tears in his mother’s eyes, but it was natural to cry at weddings. “Your parents asked him if he would play. He’s outside in the courtyard. He wouldn’t come in—said Silent Brothers had no place at weddings.” “I’m not sure that’s true,” James murmured, but he recognized it for what it was: a gift from the man who had always been like an uncle to him. The music rose, as exquisite as Cordelia, as pure and proud as the look on her face as she stepped up to join him at the altar.

Christopher had nicked a pear from a display and seemed disappointed to discover that it was made of wax.

“Is Christopher eating his wax pear?” she whispered back. “That can’t be healthy.”

“It’s my understanding,” Cordelia said, “that the question is never whether you know Magnus Bane. The question is always whether Magnus Bane knows you.”

Cordelia thought of Anna kneeling by Ariadne’s sickbed, murmuring softly, Please don’t die. She had never mentioned the moment to anyone. Anna, she felt, would not like her to do so.

“We have talked so much of travel,” James said. “I wanted to give you the world.”

“You mean is anyone a murderer?” Matthew turned her in a swift circle: the dozens of candles seemed to blur into a stream of light all around them. “I am.”

“You’re the one who loves France. You’re always talking about Paris,” she said. “And you’re devilishly charming—you know you are. You would have made a much better ambassador than Charles.”

“Freed yourself from the clutches of your parents, have you?” said Matthew, after a hesitation so brief, Cordelia wondered if she’d imagined it.

Anna set her glass of champagne down on a windowsill. “This is ridiculous,” she said, and Ariadne saw with surprise that her eyes were blazing. “Come on, then.”

Love is a prison, and I have no desire for shackles. They would clash with my outfit.”

Anna put her mouth to Ariadne’s ear. She spoke in a near whisper, her warm breath stirring the hair at Ariadne’s temples, her lips grazing Ariadne’s skin. “Because I will never love you,” Anna murmured. “I will never be with you. We have no future together. None. Do you still want me to kiss you anyway?”

She jumped down from the shelf, her shaking legs barely able to hold her. “Anna, we cannot just—” “Walk back into the party together? I agree. There will be talk,” Anna said. “I’ll go first; you follow some minutes later. And we should avoid each other for the rest of the evening, I’d say. Don’t look so worried, my dear. I’m quite sure nobody saw us.”

Charles flushed. It made his freckles stand out like angry dots. “Alastair,” he said. “Only a coward needs to be rescued by his little sister.” Alastair’s expressive eyebrows flickered. “And only an ass puts other people into situations in which they need to be rescued at all.”

Tessa and Will were there. Tessa was smiling up at Will as she tucked her hands into fur-lined gloves; he bent to brush her hair from her forehead. James cleared his throat loudly. Cordelia glanced up at him. “Otherwise they’d start kissing,” he said matter-of-factly. “Believe me, I know.”

Will made a whooping sound. As Cordelia stared in puzzlement, he leaped down the stairs and raced off, chasing the wheel-demon.

James grinned. “No. That demon and my father are old friends. Or rather, old enemies, but it amounts to the same thing. It likes to chase him around after parties.”

“It could have been a demon with very pointy talons,” Christopher argued, “or—it could have been a demon with a knife face.” He looked around eagerly. “Knife face?” Matthew echoed. “That’s your argument?” “Yes,” said Christopher stubbornly. “It could have some sort of facial protuberance. Maybe several. Like a long, pointy nose with a sharp edge.”

“I had what I assumed was a nightmare,” said James.

“No doubt,” said James, but Cordelia could tell from the look on his face that he had many doubts indeed.

Thomas sighed. Lucie could not help wondering if he, too, had noticed what she had noticed about Matthew. What everyone else seemed determined not to see or address. “Just take care of yourself.”

“You were meant to have more thorn-apple for me—don’t you remember?”

‘Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go—’ ” Lucie suddenly jumped as if stung and dropped her hands. Alarmed, Cordelia moved toward her, forgetting about the imaginary fire rings in her concern. “Lucie, is everything all right—?”

“Quelli sì che sono un petto su cui vorrei far scorrere le dita e delle spalle che mi piacerebbe mordere.”

Filomena looked surprised. “Thomas? Yes, but—” She looked from Lucie to Cordelia and shrugged.

“I said it because it was true.” Charlotte’s voice shook. “Matthew, you aren’t well. You are always drinking, and when you are not drinking, your hands are shaking. Neither condition is conducive to patrol.”

“He’s the demon that killed my brother Jonah and his wife, Wen Yu, but only after torturing their son, my nephew Jem, in front of them. Have you heard the story of how I came to kill Yanluo?”

He was obviously drunk, and Lucie preferred her own company to that of an inebriated Matthew, which hurt her heart and made her want to shake him and ask him why he couldn’t treat himself better. Why he couldn’t see himself the way her brother saw him. Why he was so determined to harm himself and harm James in the process.

“It’s almost a joke,” he said, and the bitterness in his voice surprised her. “A ghost falling in love with a living girl and pining away in a dusty attic while she lives her life. But I could survive that, Lucie. It would just be a tragedy for me.” A ghost falling in love. A small flame lit in Lucie’s chest. An ember, the beginning of a blaze. “It’s never a tragedy to love somebody.”

“Don’t go,” she whispered—but there were footsteps on the path coming toward them. Reaching out, Jesse plucked a gold comb from Lucie’s hair, closing his hand around it. His eyes burned like stars against the night. Lucie heard her uncle Gabriel’s voice, calling out her name, and then the rattle of the gate. Turning away, Jesse vanished, melting into the darkness like snow.

Hardly daring to look, Cordelia glanced up at James—and realized he was laughing so hard he seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Many jewels,” he gasped, “and a herd—a herd of stallions.”

“Daisy,” he said. “Have you ever been in love?” Cordelia sat up. “I have had—feelings for someone,” she allowed, finally. “Who?” he demanded, rather abruptly. Cordelia smiled at him with all the unconcern she could muster. “If you want the answer,” she said, “you’ll have to win a chess game.”

Suddenly James winced and put his hand to his head, as though in pain. Cordelia caught her breath. “Is something wrong?” The strangest look passed over James’s face—half surprise and half almost confusion, as though he were trying to remember something he’d forgotten.

James eyed him; there was always love in the way he looked at Matthew, but it was mixed now with worry. “Did you move out of your parents’ house, Math?”

James raised an eyebrow. “Thomas?” he said. Thomas turned sideways and slammed his shoulder into the door. It promptly collapsed.

“Let me do that,” Matthew said, pulling his right glove off with his teeth. He shoved it in his pocket and went to work on James’s Ulster coat, fingers slipping the leather circles through the buttonholes with practiced ease.

“No one need be alone to settle themselves,” said James quietly. “All I want for you, Math, is that you love yourself as much as I love you.”

James caught his breath. In that moment, he hated Elias Carstairs, hated him so much he wished he could strike him dead where he stood.

“Because,” Ariadne said, “when you want something very much, you are willing to accept the shadow of that thing. Even if it is just a shadow.”

The man blinked in anger, then confusion. His mouth opened, and a single word passed his lips just before the knife went into his chest: “You?”

“My father,” James said, and hesitated. “My father used to tell me that sometimes you cannot reconcile with someone else. Sometimes you have to find that reconciliation on your own. Someone who broke your heart is often not the person who can mend it.”

James stopped, leaned against the wall of a marble mausoleum, decorated with carvings of Egyptian sarcophagi. He put his face in his hands. He is a Prince of Hell. Who knows what he can do? I cannot live my life wondering, nor can I let myself be free if I am some kind of threat. I need to know. I must know.