Chain of Iron (The Last Hours, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

“Why,” he said, “are you not even wearing a hat?” “And cover up this hair?” Matthew indicated his golden locks with a flourish. “Would you blot out the sun?”

“Oh, Matthew, you know it’s a fake wedding,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what I do. James won’t care.”

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

goodness can be a blade sharp enough to cut, you know, just as much as evil intent.”

“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.

“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.”

that just as it was a torment to love, it might be a torment to be loved. To be loved, and to know it was not real.

The sound of a violin, audible even through the thick stone walls. The guests looked about them, startled. James looked at Matthew. “Jem?” Matthew nodded and indicated James’s parents: 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.

To love one another is to come as close as we ever can to being angels ourselves.”

He had not been gentle in the Whispering Room. Not gentle with his hands on her body and his lips on hers. That had been the James she wanted, her one glimpse at the James she could not have.

But she knew now, looking at his face—the curves of his mouth, the arch of his eyelashes, sweeping down to hide his thoughts—that she would not walk away at the end of this year unscathed. She was agreeing to have her heart broken.

“For love is strong as death,” said Matthew, placing the second stele in James’s hand. His tone was uncharacteristically somber. “And jealousy cruel as the grave.”

“We’ve come this far,” he whispered. “Don’t back out on me now.”

Cordelia caught Will’s eye as he beamed at his son, and felt her smile slip. Of all those who believed the fiction of her marriage to James, betraying Tessa and Will was the most difficult to bear.

“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.”

“But you had best be good to her,” James said, still in an even, calm tone. “Because my hospitality lasts exactly as long as Cordelia finds your presence pleasing.”

“I have tried to apologize, and to change,” Alastair said, and even through the door Cordelia could hear his voice shake. “How can I make amends for my past when no one will let me?”

Alastair touched Cordelia’s cheek. “Agar oun ba to mehraboon nabood, bargard khooneh va motmaen bash man kari mikonam ke az ghalat kardene khodesh pashimoon besheh.” If he ever hurts you, come home, and I will make him regret it. It was Alastair’s way of telling her he would miss her. Cordelia hid a smile.

“But don’t let her start bringing her books over here or she’ll fill up the shelves I’ve left for you.”

But he had left space for her. And the things he had picked out—the dictionary, the miniatures, the chess set—were thoughtful, beautiful. No wonder she had hardly seen James for the past few months. It must have taken him an incredible amount of time to create such a lovely space. It was perfect, everything she would have dreamed of and chosen for herself.

“Daisy,” he said, and his voice was thick, almost slurred. He must be horribly embarrassed, she thought. Perhaps this might even feel like infidelity to Grace. “There’s… something else we need to discuss. The matter of the second runes.”

“Please go,” James said. His voice was nearly unrecognizable. What had she done? “I really am—awfully sorry,” she said breathlessly, and fled. She had barely made it to her own bedroom when she heard the click of his door as it shut, and locked, behind her.

Sometimes Cordelia wondered if her unrequited love was a sort of third member of their household, present even when she was not—haunting James’s steps, wrapping ghostly arms about him as he tied his tie before the mirror, curling up insubstantially beside him as he slept. But if he felt any such thing, he certainly gave no sign.

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

James mimed a whistle. “Indeed. Much to be said on that topic, but for the moment—” He turned to Cordelia. “Mrs. Herondale, would you do me the honor of dancing the first waltz with me?” Cordelia looked at him in surprise. “But husbands aren’t supposed to—I mean, they don’t dance with their wives.” “Well, this one does,” said James, and whirled her away across the floor.

not the jealousy

She had made one decision for herself, Annabel, and for it she lost everything. Grace wondered, then, whether her mother had intended a somewhat different lesson than the one she’d given.

The worst part was that she could sympathize. She knew what it was like to be near to the person you loved yet feel as if you were a million miles away.

Will was looking at Tessa, his blue eyes wide. “Can I?” Tessa smiled indulgently, as if Will had asked for a second helping of cake. “Oh, go ahead.” Will made a whooping sound. As Cordelia stared in puzzlement, he leaped down the stairs and raced off, chasing the wheel-demon. James and Tessa were both smiling. “Should we help him?” Cordelia asked, utterly bewildered.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “When I am with you, I imagine that my heart is beating, though it has not beaten for seven years. You give me so much, and I can give you nothing at all.”

It was the same thought he had in the study at night, watching the light of the fire pass through Cordelia’s unbound red hair, listening to her laugh, seeing the graceful movements of her hands in the warm lamplight. How do I live in this moment forever, and not let it go?

I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.

Sona clapped her hands together in delight. “Have you been learning Persian, James? How wonderful!” “It was a wedding surprise for Cordelia,” said James.

One of the things that makes all this”—he gestured, as if to encompass the whole living situation at Cornwall Gardens—“livable for me is knowing that you aren’t here, having to endure his moods and his demands and his very selective amnesia.” He smiled.

“Lucie. You were wrong in what you said—but only when you claimed you are not like Princess Lucinda. Not brave or resourceful or clever. You are a thousand times those things. You are better than any imagined heroine. You are my heroine.”

snow. “You have to understand that I always, always assumed that you could never feel anything for me. And that is why I thought that it was safe that I felt the way I did about you.”

“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.”

He stroked his free hand down the side of her cheek. “Command me, Lucie,” he said roughly. “I am asking you: command me to dance with you. Show me this waltz from Peru.”

“Dance with me, Jesse Blackthorn,” she said. “I command you.”

I want to know more about you, Daisy.”

Cordelia set the book aside. “Probably because Lucie doesn’t know what happens after the kissing bit.” “Quite a lot,” said James absently, and suddenly the room seemed slightly too warm.

His gaze traveled over her, from her eyes to her lips, to her throat and down, like a hand tracing the curves and hollows of her body. “Daisy,” he said. “Have you ever been in love?”

He had never seen a girl in this state of undress at any point in his life, and certainly never imagined what one would feel like in his arms. She felt perfect.

He wanted to go over and put his head in Cordelia’s lap. He imagined her stroking his hair, and pushed the image away: he already owed her an apology for earlier that morning.

“Daisy,” he said. “Constantinople.”

Cordelia froze. She could hear Filomena’s eerie voice in her mind. “She spoke about how I stabbed Belial.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “She wanted to know why, if I did that, I couldn’t help her. She asked why I didn’t save her.”

“She cannot hold a candle to Daisy,” Matthew said, then looked utterly horrified. “My apologies—it is absolutely none of my business. I ought to get back to my flat, before I cause any more trouble.”

“All I want for you, Math, is that you love yourself as much as I love you.”

“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.”

“That love is complicated,” said Cordelia. “That it lies beside anger and hatred, because only those we truly love can truly disappoint us.”