More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Will did not question himself. No, James was nothing like Will Herondale.
Cordelia had not been Mrs. Cordelia Herondale very long.
“Kheili khoshgeli,” he said. He found the words easily: they were the first thing he’d taught himself to say in Persian, though he had never said them to his wife before. You are so beautiful.
“You were calling for Cordelia,” Will said. “I have never heard anyone sound as if they were in such pain. Jamie, you must talk to us.”
James, you don’t need to tell us what you know. But we will put it together, regardless.” He glanced at Will. “Well, I shall; I can’t promise anything for your father. He’s always been slow.”
“Lucie, if you can hear me—I’m here. I’m taking care of you.”
“I will wait,” Malcolm said again, speaking perhaps more to himself than to her. “I will wait as long as it takes.”
That night James slept like the dead, and if his father rose in the middle of the night to check on him as if he were a small boy, if Will sat beside him on his bed and sang to him in rusty Welsh, James did not remember it when he woke up.
The faerie in the glass shrugged and revealed the tiny book he was holding. A small pair of spectacles sat on his nose. “One must make a living,” he said in a distinctly German accent, and went back to reading.
With each bite he closed his eyes; he even licked spilled cider from his finger with a look that made Lucie’s insides feel muddled.
She could feel the racing beat of his heart as he rocked her against him, hear the deep groan low in his throat. He was shaking, whispering against her mouth that she felt perfectly perfect, perfectly alive, saying her name: “Lucie, Lucie.”
Like the visions, or dreams, she’d had in her half-consciousness in bed. It felt like it did when she had raised him, like she was losing herself, like she was losing anything that connected her to the real world at all.
Her brother. Her father. And Magnus Bane.
“I am somewhat insulted,” Magnus said, “that you went to Malcolm Fade to seek his advice on what to do about Jesse, and did not come to me. Usually I am the warlock you annoy first, and I consider that a proud tradition.”
“Mine is a complicated story, and people do not want to hear complicated stories. They want simple stories, in which people are either good or evil, and no one good ever makes a mistake, and no one evil ever repents.”
He understood now why poets damned their hearts, their capacity for desolation and want. Nothing in the false enchantment of love he had felt for Grace had come near this. His mind had told him that his heart was broken, but he had not felt it, not felt all the jagged pieces of shattered hope, like shards of glass inside his chest. He thought of Dante: There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.
Cordelia laughing, dancing with him, her intent gaze as she held an ivory chess piece in her hand, the way she had looked on their wedding day, all in gold—all these memories tormented him. He feared he would hurt her if he begged her to understand what had truly happened, that he had never loved Grace. He feared even more not trying, condemning himself to a life utterly without her.
How were the people he loved the most in the world the ones he seemed to know the least?
A figure stood at the edge of the cliffs, where the stone was rimed with ice. The figure was tall, slender; he wore a white cloak—no, not white. The color of bone or parchment, with runes inked at the hem and sleeves. Jem.
“Cordelia is in Paris. I would like to tell her first, before anyone else knows. I owe her that. She was—more affected than anyone else but myself.”
You love as your father loves: wholly, without conditions or hesitancy. To use that as a weapon is blasphemy.
you will not forget me, my family. Cordelia. That means a great deal. That you will not forget.” Jem brushed James’s hair from his forehead, a light benediction. Never, he said, and then, in between one crash of a wave and another, he was gone, melting into the shadows.
Dear Alastair, why are you so stupid I brush my teeth don’t tell anyone —Thomas
No wonder Cordelia doesn’t want you.
“About Cordelia. And Matthew. That they went to Paris together. He seemed to think you didn’t mind, but I—” She turned to look at him. “Do you mind?” “Desperately,” James said. “More than I ever thought I would mind about anything.”
Believe me, I am well acquainted with the self-sacrificing nature of Herondale men.
“Still,” Lucie said. “Paris is a romantic place. I’d get myself over there and tell Cordelia what you really feel, posthaste.” To make her point, she punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t dawdle.”
“We are not here just to forget,” Matthew said, “but also to remember that there are good and beautiful things in this world, always. And mistakes do not take them from us; nothing takes them from us. They are eternal.”
“Don’t.” The agony in his voice made her look up. “Don’t talk about hurting yourself. What wounds you wounds me. I love you, Daisy, I—”
“I don’t care about scandal,” Matthew said, “as should be obvious from every single thing I do. But I have my limits for… myself.” His voice shook. “Do you think I have not wanted to kiss you? I have wanted to kiss you every moment of every day. I have held myself back. I always will, unless…” There was a hunger in his voice. A desperation. “Unless you tell me I need no longer do so.”
I didn’t think it was real. It was real. The most real thing in my life.” He looked directly at Cordelia. “I wish to repair the broken things. To put them back together. I wish—”
I thought I might try getting myself drunk on this stuff, thinking it would keep my courage up, but it does taste like the vilest poison. I could only manage a mouthful. How you can stand it, Math, I’ve no idea.”
He wanted to close his eyes against the pain-pleasure of it—his body, it seemed, was too foolish to know when he wasn’t precisely welcome. It was reacting as if he’d been starving and had just had a plate of the most delicious food placed in front of him.
She turned to face him. Her dress had slipped partway off one shoulder, baring the skin, a soft gold-brown against the crimson of her dress. It had a sheen like satin, and a softness he recalled with an almost painful sensation of wanting. How had he lived with her, in the same house, for weeks, and not kissed her, touched her, every day? He would die for that chance again.
“And now you have decided you feel nothing for her, but you do want me. How am I to imagine that you mean what you say? Tell me. Tell me something that would make me feel this is real.”
More than anything else, he wanted to pull her toward him, to crush his mouth to hers, to show her with lips and hands what words were inadequate to prove. He had fought Belial, he thought, had twice faced down a Prince of Hell, yet this was the hardest thing he had ever done: to nod, to back away from Cordelia, to leave her without another question or another word. He did it anyway.
It was one lie too many, she thought; now she was truly broken beyond repair. She’d been lied to over and over again, by everybody she cared about. Her family had lied about her father’s drinking. James had lied—about Grace, about her, about the very premise of their marriage. Lucie, who was supposed to be her closest friend, who she knew better than anyone, had kept her relationship with Jesse Blackthorn hidden, and had fled London without a word or a warning to Cordelia.
“Because what it looks like is that the moment Cordelia left you, you decided you couldn’t bear being left. I suppose no one ever has, have they? Everyone’s always loved you.” He said it with a flat matter-of-factness that was startling. “Except perhaps Grace. Perhaps that’s why you wanted her in the first place. I don’t think she’s capable of loving anyone.”
She felt a hollow sadness at her center. It was not distant from the sadness she felt over James—here she was, so close to someone she loved, and yet she felt a million miles away.
Lucie has been in love with Jesse all this time, and I never knew, Cordelia thought. Now they are more firmly together, and that will only bring her closer to Grace. Perhaps Grace will be her sister-in-law someday, and meanwhile I cannot even be her parabatai. I will lose Lucie to Grace, just as I lost James to her.
“Not now,” Cordelia said as she walked away from the group of them. “It seems there is much I did not know. Forgive me, if I require some time to consider the nature of my own ignorance.”
“That house is our home,” he said in the same quiet tone. “Our home. It isn’t anything to me without you in it.”
“Come home. It doesn’t mean you forgive me. I’ll apologize a hundred times, a thousand times. We can play chess. Sit in front of the fire. We can talk. About Paris, about Matthew, Lucie, anything you want. We’ve always been able to talk—”
“Mathew,” James said quietly. “I am in love with Cordelia, and she is my wife. You must understand, I will do whatever I can to mend things between us.”
“I knew that once you lived together, once you spent all your time with her, you would come to love her too. And besides—when you find you’re in love with your best friend’s wife, you don’t tell anyone. You drown yourself in drink, alone in London or in Paris, until either it kills you or the feelings go away.”
James thought, I could never hate you, for all my hate is reserved for myself. I have none left over for anyone else.
“That’s not really an answer,” said Alastair. “I don’t really like James,” he added, “but on the other hand, I also don’t like Matthew very much. So you see, I am torn.”
Cordelia could only look at him silently. She could not bring herself to tell him how she felt it all slipping away from her: James, Matthew, Lucie. Her purpose as a Shadowhunter, the wielder of Cortana. What would it be like for her, to lose all that, and her family too, and still remain in London? “Maybe not,” she said finally. “Maybe they are more similar than you think.”
“Because,” Thomas said, rather wretchedly, “the first boy I ever—the one I still—” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with Alastair. Alastair Carstairs.”
“How much love people have denied themselves through the ages because they believed they did not deserve it. As if the waste of love is not the greater tragedy.”
