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?”

“I believe that decadence is a valuable perspective that should always be considered.”

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

James would have been happy to slip upstairs to their private rooms, as he had so many times before, and simply relax with his oldest friends. Matthew, however, had immediately climbed onto a chair, demanded the entire pub’s attention by clanging his stele against the metal chandelier, and cried out, “Friends! This evening my parabatai, James Jeremiah Jehoshaphat Herondale, celebrates his last night as a single man!”

“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,

“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.”

Oddly, the thought of Daisy strengthened him: he forgot sometimes, it was Daisy he was marrying, Daisy with her light laugh, her gentle, familiar touch, her surprising strength. It was not some stranger.

“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.

<3

“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.”

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

“People are dull. Gossiping about them is never dull. Look—there’s

“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.

“Princess Lucinda would have told you she loved you, a long time before now.” “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t confuse what you feel with the stories you’re writing. You do not love me. It is not possible.” Lucie wanted to stamp her foot on the floor but restrained herself. “I know what I feel,” she snapped. “You cannot dictate such things, nor tell me what is possible!” “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.” He caught up a handful of papers from her desk. “I told myself you felt nothing for me, any more than you would feel for—for a portrait, or a photograph of someone who had once lived and breathed. If I told myself lies, then this is my fault.

For that matter, it could have been Alastair.” “Matthew,” Cordelia said furiously. “Must we keep bringing up my brother? Alastair may be many things, but he is not a murderer.” “I just like to blame him for things,” Matthew said a bit sheepishly.

“And you should not have said I thought of you as a joke, or of your situation that way,” she said. “All I want is to help you. To repair this.” “To repair death?” he said softly. “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.”

“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.”

“It’s never a tragedy to love somebody.” “I think Romeo and Juliet would disagree with you on that.” His voice shook. “And don’t you see? If—if you loved me back, then that is not just a tragedy for one of us; it’s a tragedy for both of us. For there can be no future in it.”

She couldn’t stop looking at Jesse. He was so beautiful, so awfully, terribly beautiful, like a marble carving of an angel—but no carving had such dark, tumbling hair, such secretive eyes. He held her tight against him as they danced, and for the first time she felt his body close to hers, the shape of him, the strength in his arms, the lean hardness of his chest beneath his too-thin shirt.

“That’s why I want to hear it,” James said, with a disarming straightforwardness. “I want to know what she thinks makes you happy. Makes you laugh. I want to know more about you, Daisy.”

We cannot know all things.” “I, for instance,” said Matthew, “know very little.”

“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.”

He touched her hair again, smoothing his hand down the strands. “I feel lucky to see you like this,” he said, his voice low. “With your hair loose. As if I were your husband.”

“Death is a jealous mistress,” Lucie whispered. “She fights to keep you.” “I am not hers,” he said. “I am yours for as long as I can be.”

I know Elias’s death has been a shock, Thomas had written. But brush your hair. Risa said you looked as if you’d been electrocuted.

Matthew looked offended. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m a diabolically excellent flirt. I’ve learned from the best.” Cordelia couldn’t help but smile. “Anna?” “And Oscar Wilde. The playwright, that is, not my retriever.”

“I shall never understand my brother,” Lucie said, without thinking. “Why on earth does he love you?”

No wonder she seemed to know so very little about love.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “And before we go into the drawing room, I wished to apologize. What I said about your father in the Ossuarium was unforgivable, and my sending him away was something I will always regret—”

He exchanged a long look with James. It said all the things Matthew would never say in front of all these people, no matter how he cared for them: it said that he loved James, that he would be here all night, if James needed him, that he believed in James as he believed in himself.

He remembered Cordelia dancing, all fire. He remembered the moments after that, in the Whispering Room. He could say to her that she hardly needed any teaching from him; she knew how to kiss. But his mind was consumed with the thought of this man, some man she would marry in future, who would kiss her and expect things from her— James hated him already. He felt dizzy with it—with rage toward someone he did not know, and with how near she was to him. “Get on top of me,” he said, his voice barely recognizable to his own ears. It was her turn to look surprised. “What—?” “I am tied to the bed,” he said. “I cannot get up and kiss you, so I will have to sit here and kiss you. Which means I need you”—he held out his free arm, his gaze never leaving hers—“closer.”

Her grip on him tightened immediately; she exhaled against his mouth, surprised. He swallowed her gasp, parting her lips with his tongue, until her mouth was hot and open under his. He teased the corner of her mouth with butterfly kisses, sucked and licked at her bottom lip as she gripped his shoulders harder. She was trembling, but she had asked him to teach her and he intended to be complete.

She was his wife, and she was adorable, incredibly desirable. He had never wanted anyone like this. Half out of his mind, he moved his lips across her jaw, down to her throat. He could feel the beat of her pulse, inhale the scent of her hair, jasmine and rose water. He kissed his way down, teeth grazing her collarbone; his lips grazed the hollow of her throat— She drew away swiftly, scrambling off him, her face pink, her hair tumbling freely down her back. “That was very instructive,” she said, her calm voice at odds with her flushed face and rumpled dress. “Thank you, James.”

“I should remind you,” said James, “that yesterday, I thought I was a secret killer, and you told me that was ludicrous. And now I’m telling you that you, out of all of us, are least likely to be a secret killer.” “I, on the other hand, am the most likely to be a secret killer,” said Matthew, throwing himself into one of the chairs. “I wear peculiar clothes. I come and go as I please and do mysterious, illicit things in the night. None of the rest of you are like that at all. Well, Christopher might kill someone, but he wouldn’t mean to. It would be an accident resulting from an experiment gone horribly wrong.”

These are my brothers, he thought, all around me; I would do anything for them.

It was Matthew who broke the silence. “We all warned him, Anna, but Thomas is a bloody-minded stubborn bastard. Though quite tiny when he was young, and really,” he added, “rather adorable, like a guinea pig or a mouse.”

proof that you belong here, with the living.” He inclined his head toward her. “Command me to kiss you,” he whispered urgently. “Tell me to do it. Please.” She looked up at him, her hands clasped, shivering. “Kiss me.” He dipped his head. A cascade of sparks danced across her skin: he feathered kisses across her cheek before seeking her mouth. Lucie inhaled sharply as he captured her lips, his arms drawing her against him.

“If I must fade,” he said, “I would like to fade remembering this as my last waking dream.” “Don’t go,” she whispered. “Hold on, for me. We are so close.” He touched her cheek. “Only promise me one thing,” he said. “If I do go, give us a happy ending, will you? In your book?” “I don’t believe in endings,” she said, but he only smiled at her, and faded slowly from view.

Alastair looked at him matter-of-factly. “Well, one of us has a close-knit group of friends, and the other one has no friends at all. So you tell me.”

“I suppose I hated you because you were happy. Because you had each other—friends you could like and admire—and I had nothing like that. You had parents who loved each other. But none of that excuses the way I behaved. And I do not expect to be forgiven.”

When we were younger—James had this shirt, just an ordinary shirt, you know, and Mam threw it away because he’d outgrown it and he was so furious and went to fetch it from the rubbish. It was the shirt he was wearing when Matthew asked him to be parabatai. He wouldn’t get rid of it.” Cordelia hesitated. “Sometimes,” she said, “it is not enough for others to love you. I do not think Matthew loves himself very well.”

In a strangled voice, he said, “Cordelia—” Her breath went out of her in a gasp as he caught her in a hard embrace. Despite the cold night, his shirt was damp with sweat. His arms around her were strong and solid; she could feel the swift hammering of his heart. He pressed his cheek against hers, chanting her name, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. “I’m all right,” she said quickly. “It got on my dress, is all, but I’m perfectly all right, James—”

“I am nothing like you, Thomas,” said Alastair, “because you are one of the better people I have ever known. You have a kind nature and a heart like some knight out of legend. Brave and proud and true and strong. All of it.” He smiled bitterly. “And all the time you have known me, I have been a terrible person. So, you see. We are nothing at all alike.”

And there were hands on his shoulders, and they were hers, Cordelia’s, and she said, in a voice of absolute determination: “He is not yours. He is mine. He is mine.”

“Magnus seemed so sure—” “Well, I tried. I thought of this house, the study, tried to picture every piece of it. Nothing worked. I might as well have been trapped in quicksand.” He set the stele down. “Until I thought of you.” “Of me?” Cordelia said, a little blankly, as James rose to his feet. Now she was looking up at him, at his serious eyes, his thick lashes, the grim turn to the corners of his mouth. “I thought of you,” he said again, “and it was as if you were there, with me. I saw your face. Your hair…” He wound a finger through a dangling curl beside her face. She could feel the warmth from his hand against her cheek. “And I was no longer afraid. I knew I would be able to come home, because of you. That you would lead me back. You are my constant star, Daisy.”

“You don’t say things you don’t mean, Daisy—” “Fine.” She jerked her chin up, away from his hand, her mouth trembling as she said, “I meant it, then—you belong to me and not to him—you will never belong to him, James—” The breath went out of her in a gasp as his arms circled her and he lifted her off her feet. Cordelia knew she was no delicate little doll like Lucie, but James swept her up as if she weighed no more than a parasol. Her hands came down on his shoulders just as he clamped his mouth over hers, stopping her words, her breath, with one explosive kiss. Blood sang in her ears. His mouth was hot and open over hers; she parted her lips as his tongue swept inside, stroking, caressing. She pressed against him, fingers digging into his skin, wanting more, running her own tongue over his lips, the soft inside of his mouth. He tasted like honey. They sank to the floor, James still holding her; he let her down gently onto the carpet, arching over her, his expression drunk and dizzy. “Daisy,” he whispered. “Daisy, my Daisy.”

Will gave Thomas a hard look and, after a moment, said intently, “Is Gideon aware that he still owes me twenty pounds?” “Yes,” said Thomas, without being able to stop himself, “but he is pretending not to remember.”

“Daisy,” she heard James say; she felt his stele brush over her arm, the faint sting and then the numbness of healing runes being applied. “Daisy, my love, I’m so sorry—”