The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
—Amy Lowell, “A Fairy Tale”
Alastair did, in fact, get in touch with Cordelia, even sooner than she had imagined, through the straightforward mechanism of showing up at the Institute.
Will and Tessa had departed through the Portal in the crypt, and the general mood was downcast when the downstairs bell rang. Lucie had been the one to open the front door; she immediately went and got Cordelia, who found her brother in the entryway, stamping snow off his boots. He was carrying a small traveling trunk and wearing a long-suffering expression. “There’s a storm brewing,” he said, and indeed, Cordelia could see through the open front door that the sky had darkened, thunderclouds like great colliding blocks of smoke roiling across its surface. “This situation,” he said, “is utterly ridiculous.”
“I don’t disagree,” Cordelia said, closing the front door and turning to eye Alastair’s trunk, “but—have you come to stay?”
He stopped in the act of removing his coat. “Mâmân told me to stop pacing and join you here. Do you think—they won’t let me?” he said, with a sudden hesitation. “I suppose I should have asked—”
“Alastair, joon,” Cordelia said. “If you want to stay, you will stay. This is the Institute; they cannot turn you away, and I would not let them. It is only that…”
“That they’ve made Charles temporary Institute head?” Alastair said. “I know.” He glanced around, as if to make sure no one else was nearby to overhear him. “It’s why I came. I can’t leave Thomas alone in close quarters with Charles. There’s no telling how unpleasant Charles will decide to be to him, and Thomas is too good-natured to—” He stopped and glared. “Cease looking at me like that.”
“You should talk to Thomas—”
“Mikoshamet,” Alastair said, making a fearsome face that would have terrified Cordelia if she were still seven. “Where is everyone, then?”
“Gathering in the library,” Cordelia said. “James has something to tell everyone. Come—I’ll show you where the rooms are, and you can join me and the others once you’re settled in.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Cordelia said, her hand on James’s shoulder. “If Alastair’s there?”
James was sitting in a chair at the head of one of the long library tables. They were alone for now; everyone else was on their way. Everyone but Charles, of course. Charles had arrived just after Will and Tessa had gone, greeted no one, stalked up to Will’s office, and shut himself in there. At some point Cordelia had caught sight of Bridget bringing him some tea; even she had a puckered expression, as if she didn’t relish the task.
James laid his hand over hers. “He’s your brother. Family. I can’t imagine how he thinks I’ve treated you, at that. He should know.”
Matthew came in first. And if Cordelia had wondered whether the others would be able to tell something had changed in her relationship with James, she knew immediately that Matthew could and did. She doubted he knew exactly what, of course, but he sat down with a wary look, his shoulders curled in slightly, as if he were awaiting bad news.
We must find a chance to speak with him alone, she thought. We must. But it would not be before James told his story; it was too late for that. Everyone was arriving—Anna and Ari, Jesse and Lucie (who looked at James with immense worry, before sitting down at his right hand), Thomas and Christopher, and finally, Alastair, who Thomas clearly had not been expecting. Thomas sat down with a rather sudden thump (he was a bit too big for the library chairs, and his long legs stuck out at all angles) but otherwise restrained himself. Alastair sat beside him with studied nonchalance.
Cordelia tried to catch Christopher’s eye across the table. She was not entirely sure why he’d convinced Grace to confess to her, but she was endlessly grateful that he had. He smiled at her, but only in his ordinary, affable, lemon-tarts Christopher way, not in a manner that indicated he knew he’d done something special. She resolved to thank him as soon as she could.
“Well, do tell us what this is about, James,” said Matthew, once everyone was seated. “This feels like one of those scenes in a Wilkie Collins novel where the will gets read out, and then the lights go out and someone turns up dead.”
“Oh, I love those,” said Lucie. “Not,” she added hastily, “that I want anyone to turn up dead. James, what’s going on? Has something happened?”
James was very pale. He folded his hands together, intertwining his fingers tightly. “Something did happen,” he said, “though—not today. This is something that happened a long time ago. Something I only became aware of recently myself.”
And he told them. Speaking in a monotone, he told it all: from his first meeting with Grace at Blackthorn Manor in Idris, to her arrival in London, to the shattering of the bracelet, to the realization that his mind was being altered against his will. His voice was calm and steady, but Cordelia could hear the anger beneath it, like a river running beneath city streets.
Those present who already knew the story—Cordelia herself, Christopher, Jesse—remained expressionless, watching the reactions of the others. Cordelia, in particular, watched Matthew. This would change so much for him, she thought. Perhaps it would help. Raziel knew, she hoped it would help.
He grew more and more still as the story progressed, and more white around the mouth. Lucie looked sick. Thomas began to rock his chair back and forth violently until Alastair laid a hand over his. Anna’s eyes snapped like blue fire.
When James was done with the story, there was a long silence. Cordelia yearned to say something, to break the silence, but she knew she could not. James had feared the response of his friends, his family. It had to be one of them who spoke first.
It was Lucie. She had trembled as James spoke, and she burst out now, “Oh—Jamie—I am so sorry I ever worked with her, was kind to her—”
“It’s all right, Luce,” James said gently. “You didn’t know. Nobody knew, not even Jesse.”
Lucie looked shocked, as if the idea of Jesse having known had never occurred to her. She turned to him. “The last time you went to the Silent City,” she said, “you came back upset. Had she told you then?”
Jesse nodded. “It was the first I ever knew of any of it.” He looked as ashen as he had when Belial possessed him, Cordelia thought. The usual calm light had gone out of his eyes. “I have always loved Grace. Always taken care of her. She is my little sister. But when she told me—I walked out of the cell. I have not spoken to her since.”
Christopher cleared his throat. “What Grace did was unforgivable. But we must remember she was a child when she was given this task. And she was terrified of what her mother would do if she refused.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Thomas. His hazel eyes blazed with a rare fury. “If I murdered someone, and then said it was because I was afraid, would that make me not a murderer?”
“It isn’t murder, Thomas—”
“It’s just as bad,” said Matthew. He held one of the flasks Christopher had given him, but he was not drinking from it. He was running his fingers over the engravings, again and again. “She took the things about James that we know so well, his loving kindness, and his trust, and his idealism, and she turned them against him like knives. Like a faerie curse.”
James tried to catch Matthew’s eye—Cordelia could see it—but however horrified Matthew seemed to be on James’s behalf, he could not meet his parabatai’s gaze. He sat with his hand wrapped around the cheap flask as if it were a talisman.
“She stole his choices,” Ari said. She, too, looked sick. “I lived with her in my house and I never guessed that she had something like that on her conscience.”
“But James is all right,” Christopher said gently. “It’s come out all right in the end. Things usually do.”
“Because he fought back,” Matthew snapped. “Because he loved Cordelia enough to crack that foul bracelet in half.” Seeming a little surprised at his own outburst, he looked, finally, at James. “You really do love her,” he said. “Like you said.”
“Matthew,” said Lucie, looking scandalized.
But James only looked back at Matthew with a steady gaze. “I do,” he said. “I always have.”
“And Grace?” Thomas said softly.
“I hate her,” James said. Christopher flinched; Jesse looked away. “At least—she came to me, at the last, when she was fleeing her mother. Tried to seduce me one last time. She didn’t realize the bracelet was broken. It was strange to see her try this game that must have worked every time she’d attempted it in the past. It was as if I were standing outside myself, realizing that every time I’d encountered her before, I had lost myself. That my whole life had been a lie, and she had made it so. I told her I despised her, that I would never forgive her, that there was nothing she could do to make up for her crimes. She is in the Silent City now because I demanded she turn herself in.” He sounded a little wondering, as if surprised at his own capacity for anger, for revenge. “I put her there.” He looked at Jesse. “You knew that.”
“Yes.” Jesse sounded wearily despairing. “She told me. I do not blame you at all.”
Christopher said, “She did plenty of harm, and she knew the harm she was doing. She hates herself for it. I think all she wants is to live somewhere far away and never bother anyone again.”
“That power of hers is too dangerous for that,” Alastair said. “It is as if she owned a feral, poisonous snake, or an untamed tiger.”
“What if the Silent Brothers take that power from her?” said Christopher. “She will be defanged then.”
“Why are you defending her, Kit?” Anna said. She did not sound angry, only curious. “Is it because she will return to the Enclave eventually, and we must learn to live with her? Or simply because she likes science?”
“I suppose,” Christopher said, “I have always thought everyone deserves a second chance. We are each given only one life. We cannot get another one. We must live with the mistakes we have made.”
“True enough,” Alastair muttered.
“Nevertheless,” Thomas said, “we cannot forgive her.” Alastair flinched and Thomas added, “What I mean is that we cannot forgive her on James’s behalf. Only James can do that.”
“I’m still angry—very angry,” James said, “but I find I don’t want to be. I want to look forward, but my anger draws me backward. And”—he took a deep breath—“I know she will return to the Enclave at some point. I do not know how I am meant to treat her then. How I will stand seeing her.”
“You won’t have to,” said Jesse roughly. “There is Blackthorn money. It will come to her, now that my mother is imprisoned. We will get a house for Grace, somewhere in the countryside. I will only ask that she never go near you or anyone close to you again.”
“Just don’t abandon her entirely,” said Christopher. “Jesse—you are the only thing she lives for. The only one who was kind to her. Do not leave her alone in the dark.”
“Kit,” Anna said, with a regretful sort of love. “Your heart is too soft.”
“I am not saying these things because I am naive or foolish,” said Christopher. “Only because I do see things that are not in beakers and test tubes, you know. I see how hatred poisons the person who hates, not the person who is hated. If we treat Grace with the mercy she did not show James, and that was never shown to her, then what she did will have no power over us.” He looked at James. “You have been terribly strong,” he said, “enduring this, all alone, for so long. Let us help you leave anger and bitterness in the past. For if we don’t do that, if we are consumed by the need to pay Grace back for what she has done, then how are we any different from Tatiana?”
“Bloody Kit,” said Matthew. “When did you get to be so insightful? I thought you were only supposed to be good at putting the contents of one test tube into another test tube and saying, ‘Eureka!’ ”
“That is most of it,” Christopher agreed. They were in the drawing room, Matthew having had an inexplicable aversion to the idea of retreating to the games room after their long session in the library. In the end, nothing specific had been decided, exactly, but Thomas could tell James felt much better than he had. He had been able to smile with a lightness that Thomas had long ago thought gone with his first year at the Academy. Everyone had pledged unwavering support for anything James might choose to do, and of course undying secrecy. James would tell his family, he said, when they returned from Idris; he had not made up his mind about anything else, but he did not need to now. There was time to consider things.
“And let me say it is lovely, James,” Ari had said, as they were all standing up, “to see you so happy with Cordelia. A true case of real love winning out.”
James and Cordelia had both looked faintly embarrassed, if pleased, but Matthew had looked down at his hands on the table, and Thomas had exchanged a quick signal with Christopher. As the others in the library fell to discussing what could be done to clear the Herondales’ names, and again how Cordelia’s paladin connection could be severed, Matthew slipped from the room and Thomas and Christopher followed him. Christopher suggested whist, which Matthew agreed to, and Thomas suggested the games room, which Matthew did not.
And to Thomas’s great surprise, once they’d made themselves comfortable in the drawing room and Matthew had produced a pack of cards, Alastair had come in.
He had been carrying a thick leather-bound book, and rather than trying to join the game, he’d sat down on a sofa and immersed himself in it. Thomas had waited for Matthew to glare, or say something cutting, but he did neither.
Every once in a while, as they played, Matthew would take out the flask Christopher had given him and run his fingers over the engravings; it seemed a new nervous habit he had formed. Still, he did not drink from it.
When Thomas and Matthew had lost most of their money to Christopher, as was usual, there was a knock on the door, and James poked his head in. “Matthew,” he said, “could I speak to you for a moment?”
Matthew hesitated.
“Bad idea,” Alastair muttered under his breath, still staring at his book.
Matthew cast Alastair a look, then threw down his cards. “Well, I have lost all I can here,” he said. “I suppose I had better see what else there is left for me to lose in this world.”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” said Thomas, but Matthew was already on his feet, following James out into the hall.
Cordelia could tell James had been exhausted by explaining the story of the bracelet. Still, he had had to run the gauntlet of everyone’s well-meaning but difficult questions afterward: about his own feelings, then and now, about what would happen with Grace and Tatiana, about whether he was now remembering things he had forgotten before, small details or incidents. And there were apologies from everyone, of course, for not noticing, even though James explained over and over, patiently, that it was the bracelet’s magic that made people overlook it. Like a glamour that caused mundane eyes to slide past Downworlders, or Shadowhunters in their gear. They had all been enspelled, at least a little, he had said. They had all been affected.
Through all of this, Cordelia had tried to keep an eye on Matthew, but he had slipped early from the room, with Thomas and Christopher following, and Alastair snatching a book off a shelf before beating a retreat after them.
Once everyone had begun to drift off to various places in the Institute—several of them, along with Lucie, had gathered by the library windows to watch the progress of the storm—James went up to Cordelia and took her hand.
“Where do you think he is?” he said, and he did not have to explain which he they were speaking of. She curled her fingers around his, feeling immensely protective—of Matthew and of James in equal measure. If Matthew were angry, if he lashed out at James now that James had opened his heart and spilled his secrets, he could hurt him badly. But Matthew, having learned that what he believed about James when he had gone to Paris with Cordelia had been a lie, could be hurt just as severely.
“Christopher and Thomas will want to distract Matthew,” she said. “Matthew won’t want to go to the games room—I’ve an idea where they might be.”
She had turned out to be right. All four boys had been in the drawing room; Cordelia waited nervously in the hall with James as Matthew came out to meet them.
He emerged looking tousled, tired, and painfully sober. As if not drinking were like putting down protective armor. Only pride could armor him now—the pride that had kept him upright outside the Hell Ruelle, carefully cleaning his hands with a monogrammed handkerchief as if he had not just been sick in a gutter. Pride that kept his chin up, his eyes steady, as he looked from Cordelia to James and said, “It’s all right. I know what you’re going to say to me and there’s no need.”
Hurt flashed across James’s face, a sharp, shallow wound. Cordelia said, “It’s not all right, Matthew. None of this is the way we would want it to be. What Tatiana did—the effects of the bracelet didn’t just change James’s life. They changed mine. They changed yours. We’ve all made choices we wouldn’t have made, if we’d known the truth.”
“That may be true,” Matthew said. “But it doesn’t change where we are now.”
“It does,” said James. “You had every reason to believe I didn’t love Cordelia. You couldn’t possibly have known what I myself didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Matthew said, and there was a sharp blade in his voice. Cordelia felt a coldness in her chest. Matthew’s moods were mercurial. He could feel one way one moment, and another the next; still, she had never imagined a Matthew who did not think anything mattered.
“It does matter,” she said fiercely. “We love you. We know this is a terrible time for these revelations, for any of this—”
“Stop.” Matthew held his hands up. They shook slightly in the dim light of the hall. “As I listened to you, James, in the library, I could not help but think I have lived all this beside you. Noticing nothing and knowing nothing.”
“I explained,” James said. “The bracelet—”
“But I am your parabatai,” said Matthew, and Cordelia realized the blade in his voice was set against himself. “I was so much in my own misery that I never saw the truth. I knew it made little sense for you to love Grace. I know your heart, your sensibilities. There was nothing about her that would have won your affections in any sensible world, yet I let it pass by, dismissed it as a mystery of human behavior. The mistakes I made, the signs I missed—”
“Math,” James said, in despair. “None of this is your fault.”
But Matthew was shaking his head. “Don’t you see?” he said. “Cordelia told me already, at the party, that she loved you. And I thought, well, I can be disappointed, I can be angry, for some short time. I am allowed that. But now—how can I be either of those things? I cannot be disappointed that you have your life back, and your steadfast love. I cannot be angry when you have done nothing wrong. I cannot be angry at anyone but myself.”
And with that, he turned and walked back into the drawing room.
Christopher and Thomas pretended to play cards until Matthew returned to the room. At least Thomas was pretending. He wasn’t quite sure what Christopher was doing; he might have invented his own game without mentioning it to Thomas, and be contentedly playing along with its rules.
Alastair continued steadfastly reading his book, at least until Matthew stalked back into the room. Thomas’s heart sank—he guessed the conversation with James had not gone well. Matthew looked feverish: there was a high color in his cheeks, and his eyes were bright. “No more cards for me,” he announced. “I’m going to go confront Charles about being blackmailed.”
Alastair dropped his book with a thump. “I had a feeling you were going to do something like that.”
“So you didn’t just come in here to read a book about”—Matthew stared—“sixteenth-century warlock burnings? Ugh.”
“I did not,” said Alastair. “I chose it randomly from the shelves. What a pity so many books are filled with terrible things.”
“Why did you think I intended to confront my brother?”
Alastair began ticking off the reasons on his fingers. “Because Charles is here, because he’s shut himself up in the main office, because the other adults are gone, and because he can’t do a bolt since he’s supposed to look after the Institute.”
“Well, you are entirely—correct,” said Matthew, rather grudgingly. “You have outlined why it is an excellent plan.”
“Math,” said Thomas. “I’m not so sure it is—”
“I have outlined the positives,” interrupted Alastair. “There are also negatives. We are all stuck in this building with Charles, and he can make life unpleasant for us if you upset him, which you will.”
Matthew looked at all three of them in turn. It was a direct look, and also very sober, in both senses of the word. Not just serious—Thomas had seen Matthew serious many times, but there was something different about him now. As if he knew he were shouldering a burden of risk; as if he no longer believed consequences were something that happened to other people: not him, not his friends.
It jolted Thomas a little to realize that this Matthew, this newly considering person, was a different Matthew from the one he’d known for the past three years. Who have you been, he thought, and who are you becoming now?
“My brother is miserable,” Matthew said, “and when he is miserable, he makes life awful for other people. I want to tell him that I know, not only so that he’ll stop doing it, but also to take some of the burden away. For all our sakes.”
After a moment, Alastair nodded. “All right. I won’t stand in your way.”
“Well, thank goodness, as I was waiting desperately for your approval,” said Matthew, but there was no real malice in it.
In the end, it was decided Matthew would go, and Thomas would accompany him to keep the whole thing from descending into a family squabble. Charles had to understand that this was a serious matter, that not only Matthew knew about it, and that it could not be swept under the rug.
Thomas followed Matthew upstairs, dreading the awkwardness to come. Without knocking, Matthew burst open the double doors of Will’s office, where Charles appeared to be deep into a pile of ledger books on the desk.
He looked up blandly when they came in. “Thomas,” Charles said. “Matthew. Is anything the matter?”
“Charles,” Matthew said, with no further preamble, “you are being blackmailed to ensure your support of Bridgestock, and it must stop. You cannot fear Bridgestock so much that you are willing to sell out everyone who has ever cared for you. Even you cannot be so low.”
Charles sat back slowly in his chair. “I suppose I ought to expect this sort of fanciful accusation from you, Matthew,” he said. “But I’m surprised he got you to go along with it, Thomas.”
Thomas felt suddenly weary. Sick of the whole thing. He said, “He has proof, Charles.”
Something flickered in Charles’s eyes. “What sort of proof?”
“A letter Bridgestock wrote,” said Matthew.
“As usual,” Charles sighed, “you have jumped to a conclusion based on nothing but conjecture. May I ask how you came across such a note? Assuming you do have it, and it is from the Inquisitor—which is quite a wild accusation, by the way.”
“It is here,” Matthew said, drawing the letter from his inside jacket pocket and holding it up. “As to how we got hold of it, Ari found it. That is why she left home. The letter is clearly meant for you. There is absolutely no doubt as to what is going on.”
Charles’s face had gone sallow. “Then why did you not speak to me about this before?”
“The letter did not make it clear what he wanted you to do,” said Thomas. “After your performance at the meeting yesterday, we know. You spoke out against Will and Tessa, against your own family, because he threatened you, and you were too afraid to tell him no.”
Charles said, with a ghastly sort of smile, “And what do you think you can do to fix it?”
“Stiffen your spine,” said Matthew. “So Bridgestock plans to tell everyone you love men. So what? Some will understand; those who don’t are not worth your knowing.”
“You don’t understand.” Charles put his head in his hands. “If I want to do good in this world, if I want to rise to a position of authority in the Clave… I cannot—” He hesitated. “I cannot be like you, Matthew. You’ve no ambition, and so you can be whomever you want. You can dance with anyone you wish, man, woman, or other, at your salons and your clubs and your orgies.”
“You attend orgies?” Thomas said to Matthew.
“Don’t I wish,” murmured Matthew. “Charles, you’re a pillock, but you’ve always been a decent pillock. Don’t throw that away because of bloody Maurice Bridgestock.”
“And how, exactly,” said Charles, “are you proposing to help? If I reverse my opinion on the Herondales, it will only mean I am condemned with them.”
“We will vouch for you,” Thomas said. “We will testify that you are being blackmailed and that you were coerced into supporting Bridgestock.”
“There is no way to do that,” said Charles, “without revealing the blackmail letter and its contents. You understand he is not just threatening to tell people I love men, but that I love—that I loved Alastair. It is Alastair, too, whom I am protecting.”
The door burst open. Alastair stalked inside, his black eyes snapping. He looked furious, and also rather—in Thomas’s view—glorious. Proud and strong as the Persian kings of old. “Then stop,” he said to Charles. “I don’t need your protection, not where this is concerned. I’d rather everyone know than that you let a dozen good people be dragged down by lies, just because you fear Bridgestock.”
Charles’s face appeared to crumple. “None of you can possibly understand what it is like to hold on to this kind of secret—”
“We all understand,” Thomas said forcefully. “Myself as well. I’m like you, you idiot. I always have been. And Charles, you’re right, it isn’t as easy as it is for Matthew, who has never cared what anyone thought. Most of us do care. And the secret is your own business, and it is disgusting of Bridgestock to have used it against you like this. But neither can Will and Tessa, and all our parents, pay such a terrible price for his criminality.”
“They will be vindicated by the Mortal Sword,” Charles said hoarsely. “Then this will all be over.”
“Charles,” said Alastair. “Don’t you know how blackmail works? It’s never over. It’ll never be enough for Bridgestock. He’ll hold your secret over you for as long as he’s able. You think he won’t want other things in the future? That he’ll simply give up his leverage? He will bleed you dry.”
Charles looked back and forth between Alastair and Matthew, his expression anguished. Thomas felt for him; Charles was being a coward, but he knew well how difficult bravery could be in such a situation. “If we seek to bring down Bridgestock,” Thomas said, “will you help? Even if you cannot disclose the… the contents of the blackmail?”
Charles looked at them helplessly. “It would depend on what was being done, and what its consequences might be—” he began.
Matthew shook his head, his fair hair flying. “Charles, you are being a milksop and a blockhead. Let the record show that I tried. I tried, despite how little you deserve it.”
With that, he stalked out of the room.
Charles looked at Alastair, as if there was no one else in the room. No one else in the world. “Alastair, I… you know I can’t.”
“You can, Charles,” Alastair said tiredly. “And there are people in the world like us who don’t have what you do. A family that will never abandon you. Money. Safety. People who could lose their lives for confessing such a thing. All you will lose is prestige. And still you will not do the right thing.”
There seemed nothing more to say. Charles seemed visibly shrunken, but he was still shaking his head, as if denial could ward off the truth. Alastair turned on his heel and left; after a moment, Thomas followed.
He found himself alone in the corridor with Alastair. Matthew was already long gone. Alastair was leaning back against the wall, breathing hard. “Ahmag,” he snarled, which Thomas was fairly sure meant idiot; he was also fairly sure Alastair didn’t mean him.
“Alastair,” he said, meaning to say something vague and kind, something about how none of this was Alastair’s fault, but Alastair caught hold of Thomas and pulled him close, his fingers cupping the back of Thomas’s neck. His eyes were wide, black, feverish. “I need to get out of here,” he said. “Come for a carriage ride with me. I have to breathe.” He leaned his forehead against Thomas’s. “Come with me, please. I need you.”
“Daisy, you summoned a demon? All by yourself?” Lucie exclaimed. “How enterprising and brave and—also a terrible idea,” she added hastily, catching James’s dark expression. “A very bad idea. But also, enterprising.”
“Well, it was certainly interesting,” Cordelia said. She was perched on the edge of a table, nibbling the corner of a piece of shortbread. “I wouldn’t do it again, though. Unless I had to.”
“Which you will not,” James said. He gave Cordelia a mock-stern look, and she smiled at him, and the stern part of the look melted away. Now they were gazing soppily at each other.
Lucie could not help but be delighted. It was as if James had been going around with something missing, some small piece taken out of his soul, and now it was put back. He was not perfectly happy, of course; being in love did not mean one did not notice anything else going on in the world. She knew he was worried about Matthew—who was currently lounging in one of the window seats, reading a book and not eating—and about their parents; about Tatiana and Belial and what was happening in Idris. But now, at least, she thought, he could face these things with his whole self intact.
They were all gathered in the library, where Bridget had set out sandwiches, game pies, tea, and pastries for them, since, as she loudly complained, she did not have time to put together a real supper for so many people on short notice. (Besides, she had added, the brewing storm was giving her the worriments, and she could not concentrate enough to cook.)
Everyone except Thomas and Alastair—who had, according to Matthew, rather inexplicably gone on some sort of errand in an Institute carriage—had gathered around the food. Even Charles had turned up briefly, taken a game pie, and stormed out, leaving them to an inevitable discussion of Belial’s plans.
“Now that we know this whole dreadful bracelet business,” Anna said, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a table near a shelf holding books on sea demons, “surely it points toward Belial’s goals. Certainly breaking James’s heart and tormenting him was part of it,” she added, “but I do not believe it was a goal in itself. More of a treat to enjoy along the way.”
“Ugh.” Cordelia shuddered. “Well, clearly he sought to control James. He always has—he wishes James to collude with him. To offer up his body for possession. He no doubt hoped he could talk him into it using Grace.”
Christopher, holding a chicken sandwich as delicately as he might hold a beaker of acid, said, “It is a terrible story, but an encouraging one in a way. The bracelet was Belial’s will made manifest. But James matched Belial’s will with his own.”
James frowned. “I do not feel ready for a battle of wills with Belial,” he said. “Though I have wondered if my training with Jem has helped me to hold out against him.”
The courtyard below seemed to flash in colors of blue and scarlet as lightning speared through the clouds. And the clouds themselves—Lucie had never seen anything like them. Thick but jagged-edged, as though they had been drawn onto the darkening sky with a razor dipped in melted gunmetal. As they heaved and collided with each other, she felt her skin prickle, as if snapped by a dozen elastic bands.
“Are you all right?” It was Jesse, his look quizzical. He had been quiet since James had told his story. Lucie could understand why; though she had told him over and over that no one could possibly blame him, she knew he did not, could not, entirely believe her.
“I feel awful,” Lucie said. “James is my brother, yet I allied myself with Grace, even held secret meetings with her. I did not know what she had done, but I did know she’d hurt him. I knew she’d broken his heart. I just thought…”
Jesse said nothing, only leaned against the window, letting her gather her thoughts.
“I suppose I thought it wasn’t real heartbreak,” she said. “That he didn’t really love her. I always thought he’d come to his senses and realize he loved Daisy.”
“Well, in a way, that was true.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucie said. “She may not have broken his heart in the classic sense, but what she did was much worse. And yet—” She looked up at Jesse. “If I had not done what I did, I don’t know if I would have gotten you back.”
“Believe me.” Jesse’s voice was husky. “Where it comes to my sister, I too am torn.”
Thunder cracked again outside, loud enough to rattle the windows in their frames. The wind was tearing around the Institute, howling down the chimney. It was the sort of evening Lucie usually enjoyed, curled up in bed with a book while a storm raged. Now, she found it made her uneasy. Perhaps it was the unseasonable nature of the storm—when did snow ever come with thunder and lightning?
The door to the library slammed open. It was Charles, his red hair falling out of its usual cap of stiff pomade. He was pushing someone ahead of him, someone in a torn and wet dress, with straggling hair the color of milk.
Lucie saw James stiffen. “Grace,” he said.
Everyone went still, save Christopher, who rose to his feet, his expression hardening. “Charles, what on earth—?”
Charles’s face was twisted in a look of fury. “I found her creeping around the entrance to the Sanctuary,” he said. “She’s broken out of the Silent City, clearly.”
Did he know? Lucie wondered. Did he know what Grace had done to him, that she had enspelled him into proposing to her? James had said that his own memories of Grace’s past actions were coming back to him; perhaps Charles’s were too. He certainly seemed angry enough for it to be possible.
Lucie had always thought of Grace as cold and self-possessed, hard and shining as an icicle. But now she was cringing back—she looked awful; her hair was hanging in wet strings, there were scratches up and down her bare arms, and she was shivering violently. “Let me go, Charles—please, let me go—”
“Let you go?” said Charles incredulously. “You’re a prisoner. A criminal.”
“I hate saying this, but Charles is right,” said Matthew, who had put his book away. He, too, was on his feet. “We should contact the Silent City—”
“It’s gone,” Grace whispered. “It’s all gone.”
Lucie could not help but look at James. It was clear, when he had told them his story earlier, that he did not expect to encounter Grace again soon, if ever; now he looked frozen in place, staring at her as if she were a dream that had sprung to life, and not the nice kind of dream.
It was Cordelia who, placing a hand on James’s arm, said, “Grace, what do you mean? What’s gone?”
Grace was shivering so hard her teeth chattered. “The Silent City. It’s been taken—”
“Stop lying,” Charles interrupted. “Look here—”
Jesse snapped. “Charles, stop,” he said, stalking across the room. “Let go of her,” he added, and Charles, to everyone’s surprise, did exactly that, though with a look of reluctance. “Gracie,” Jesse said carefully, drawing off his jacket. He flung it over Grace’s thin shoulders; Jesse was hardly burly, but his jacket seemed to swallow up his sister. “How did you get out of the Silent City?”
Grace said nothing, only clutched Jesse’s jacket around her and trembled. There was a starkness in her eyes that frightened Lucie. She had seen that look before, in the eyes of ghosts whose last memories were of something dreadful, something terrifying.…
“She needs runes,” Jesse said. “Healing runes, warming runes. I don’t know how—”
“I’ll do it,” said Christopher. Ari and Anna rose to help him, and soon enough Grace was seated on a chair, with Christopher drawing on her left arm with his stele. She would not let go of Jesse’s jacket, but clutched it around herself with one hand.
“Grace,” James said. Some of the color had come back to his face. His voice was steady. “You need to tell us what’s happened. Why you’re here.”
“I hate to say this,” said Anna, “but ought she be restrained while we question her? She does have a very dangerous power.”
Grace pushed a handful of wet hair back from her face. “My power’s gone,” she said dully. “It was taken.”
“And why should we believe that?” said Charles, frowning.
“Because it’s true,” said Christopher. “She told you to let her go, Charles. And you didn’t.”
“He’s right,” Matthew said. “I’ve seen her use it before. Charles should have had to do whatever she asked.”
Charles looked puzzled. Lucie, too, was puzzled—when had Matthew seen Grace use her power? But there was no time to ask.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said Cordelia. “The Silent Brothers were supposed to take it away.”
“They didn’t,” said Grace. She began to shake wildly. “It was my mother. They brought her into the Silent City. I told them she would find me and she did—”
She lifted her hands, as if she could ward something off, something terrible and invisible. Christopher caught at her wrist as Jesse’s jacket slid to the floor. To Lucie’s surprise, his touch seemed to calm Grace. She leaned toward him—it seemed instinctive, unconscious—and said, “She ripped the power out of me. Not with her own hands. She had some kind of creature with her, some kind of demon.”
“This is nonsense,” Charles said. “Tatiana is safely locked in the Silent City, and this is some tale Grace has concocted to explain why she has escaped from prison.”
“I don’t think it’s nonsense,” Cordelia said sharply. “If she had truly escaped from the Silent City, this is the last place she’d come.”
“There’s one way to be sure,” James said. “Charles, we must reach the Silent City.”
There was a long silence. Then: “Fine,” Charles said. “I’ll summon the First Patrol. We’ll ride out to Highgate; see what’s going on. If anything at all,” he added, with a tinge of malice.
He left, slamming the library door behind him. Jesse had come to stand on the other side of Grace, opposite Christopher. He put his hand on his sister’s shoulder. Lucie could tell it was costing him an effort, to treat her as he always had. But Grace seemed to relax at the touch; she brushed quickly at her face, and Lucie realized she was crying.
“Grace,” Christopher said, “it’s all right. You’re safe here. Just tell us, slowly, what happened.”
“I told them,” Grace said in a singsong voice. “That she would always find me, my mother. She came to my cell. She had one of them with her. They look like Silent Brothers but they’re not. Its eyes were—open. They shone with an awful sort of light.”
James straightened up. “Its eyes were alight? Did they shine with a color?”
“Green,” Grace said. “An ugly sort of awful green. The Silent Brother, he put his hands on my face, and my mother told him to take away my power, to rip it out of me.”
“It hurt?” Jesse asked gently. Lucie could hear the pain in his voice. And the fear. A sense of dread was growing in him, as it was in her, Lucie guessed. As it was in all of them.
Grace nodded. “She was laughing. She said I didn’t matter anymore. That I was nothing now. An empty shell. She turned her back on me, so—I ran. I ran through the Silent City—it was full of those creatures.” Her voice rose, her words tripping over each other. “They looked like Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, but they weren’t. They had weapons, and those awful eyes. They were attacking the real Brothers. I saw Brother Enoch stab one of them with a longsword, but it didn’t fall down. It didn’t die. It should have died. Even a Silent Brother would have died from that. They’re not immortal.” She clutched her bare, frost-reddened hands together, and Lucie could not help remembering how glamorous she had once found Grace, how perfectly elegant. Her pale hair hung in wet snarls, and her feet, Lucie suddenly realized, were bare—bare and filthy and crusted with dried blood.
“The real Silent Brothers began to move up the stairs. Brother Enoch saw me, and he pulled me along with them. It was like being caught up in a flood. It carried me along. Enoch was trying to shield me. He kept saying I had to tell the Institute something—”
“What was it?” James said. “What did we need to know?”
Grace cringed back. She was afraid of James, Lucie realized suddenly. Because he had been angry at her, because he had sent her to the prisons of the Bone City? Lucie knew he would never have laid a hand on Grace. She recalled her father telling her once, There is no one on earth we recoil from more than those we have wronged. Perhaps that was what it was. Perhaps Grace had it within her to feel guilt.
“Grace,” Ari said. She spoke gently but firmly, like a nanny to a child. “What did Brother Enoch say?”
“He said that my mother must have found the key,” Grace whispered. “And taken it from the Citadel.” She swallowed. “He said they had come from the Path of the Dead. Then he pushed me through a door, and I fell out into the night. I was alone. I was in London, and I was alone in the graveyard.”
“What of the other Silent Brothers?” said Matthew. “Jem is in Idris, but Enoch, Shadrach—”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t get back into the City, couldn’t even see the door. I ran until I found the road. A hansom cab pulled over, asked if I was all right. He felt sorry for me, the driver. He brought me here—”
She was cut off by the sound of the Institute gate slamming open, a harsh, metallic thud. Lucie turned to the window, peering out through the half-frosted pane. “It’s Charles,” she said in relief, seeing the redheaded figure on horseback gallop through the gates. “He’s riding Balios out to Highgate.”
The gate closed behind him. The air was full of flying bits of small debris, snatched up by the wind: twigs and dead leaves and bits of old birds’ nests. Above, the clouds seemed to be heaving and surging like the surface of the sea.
“The key,” Anna said, frowning. “What does that mean, that Tatiana took the key from the Adamant Citadel?”
“My mother was looking for a key,” Jesse said grimly. “She and Belial. It was in her notes.”
Matthew said, “A key to the prisons of the Silent City, perhaps? Tatiana must have let herself out of her cell. And let these—these things in. These false Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters.”
“We know from what James saw in the mirror that Belial was trying to possess someone,” said Jesse. “That he was using Chimera demons. They must have possessed the Silent Brothers, and be acting on Belial’s orders—”
“Silent Brothers cannot be possessed,” said Cordelia. “They have the same protections we all do. If anything, theirs would be stronger.”
Still holding Grace’s wrist, Christopher said, “It sounds as if they were fighting with each other, isn’t that right, Grace? As if some of them were defending you and the City?”
Grace nodded. “Enoch was still himself. And the others that I recognized. The dark ones, the glowing ones—they were strangers. I’d never seen them before.”
“Really,” said James. “Were they dressed differently, as well? Try to remember, Grace. It’s important.”
Lucie gave him a hard look—James had clearly thought of something, but his look was inward. He was caught up in the net of his own thoughts, working through the problem before him as if he were unknotting a ball of string.
Grace looked at her feet. “Yes. Their robes were white, instead of parchment, and they had different runes on them.”
“White robes.” Lucie exchanged a look with James; she could feel her face growing hot with anxiety. “Burial garments.”
“The Iron Tombs,” said James. “That’s how Belial managed it. Most Silent Brothers would be protected from possession, but not the ones in the tombs. Their souls have left their bodies, and those bodies have been taken to rest under the volcanic plains, near the Adamant Citadel. They’re empty vessels.”
Anna cursed floridly. Ari said, “There is a key to the Tombs. I’ve seen drawings of it. It’s kept—oh, it’s kept in the Adamant Citadel—” She covered her mouth with her hand.
Jesse said numbly, “My mother must have stolen it. She would have unlocked the tombs for Belial, let him in. He would have brought the Chimeras there. Possessed the bodies of the Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers who were lying there, undefended. And once that was done, marched them to the Silent City to attack.”
“ ‘They wake,’ ” Cordelia whispered. “ ‘They rise.’ ‘They march.’ All those messages, they were telling us what step Belial was at in his plan. But we didn’t realize.”
“We’ve been outplayed,” James said quietly. “That business of Tatiana’s, appearing at the Christmas party, throwing out those accusations, even kidnapping Alexander—”
“It was too easy, capturing her,” Cordelia said. “She wanted to be arrested. She wanted to be thrown into the Silent City so she could do—whatever this is.”
“I don’t know if it’s what she wants, precisely,” said Jesse. “All of this is what Belial wants. He used her, as a pawn in his chess game. A piece he could move into the Silent City, a sort of Trojan horse, filled with his evil, his will—”
A massive thunderclap sounded. It shook the Institute: several lamps fell over, and the burning logs tumbled in the grate. Lucie gripped the windowsill as the others gasped—and saw, through the glass, that the Institute gate was open.
But it was far too soon for Charles to have returned from Highgate. She rose up on her tiptoes to look down.
And froze.
In the courtyard below stood Tatiana Blackthorn, a deadly scarecrow in a bloodstained dress. The wind whipped her stark-white hair around her face. Her arms were upraised, as if she meant to call down the lightning.
And she was not alone. Surrounding her in a half circle were just what Grace had described—Silent Brothers, in ice-white robes, their hoods pushed back to show their eyes, which shone with an acid-green fire.
Tatiana threw her head back, and black lightning crackled through the clouds. “Come out!” she called, in a voice that echoed like a massive bell tolling through the Institute, shaking the stone of its foundations. “Come out, Lightwoods! Come out, Carstairs! Come out, Fairchilds! Come out, Herondales! Come out and meet your fate!”