Chain of Gold

“Seems Tatiana wants to bring her out in society.” Thomas looked puzzled. “I suppose you’ve met her, in Idris? Doesn’t your house there adjoin Blackthorn Manor?”

James nodded mechanically. He could feel the weight of the bracelet around his right wrist, though he had worn it now for so many years that usually he was unconscious of its presence. “I usually see her every summer,” he said. “Not this summer, of course.”

Not this summer. He hadn’t been able to argue with his parents when they’d said the Herondale family would be spending this summer in London. Hadn’t been able to mention the reason he wanted to return to Idris. After all, as far as they were aware, he barely even knew Grace. The sickness, the horror that gripped him at the thought that he would not see her for another year was nothing he could explain.

It was a secret he had carried since he was thirteen. In his mind, he could see the tall gates rising before Blackthorn Manor, and his own hands in front of him—a child’s hands, without scars, cutting industriously away at the thorny vines. He could see the Long Hall in the manor, and the curtains blowing across the windows, and hear music. He could see Grace in her ivory dress.

Matthew was watching him with thoughtful green eyes that were no longer dancing. Matthew, alone of all James’s friends, knew that there was a connection between James and Grace Blackthorn.

“London is being positively swarmed by new arrivals,” Matthew remarked. “The Carstairs family will be with us soon, won’t they?”

James nodded. “Lucie is wild with excitement to see Cordelia.”

Matthew poured more wine into his glass. “Can’t blame them for being tired of rusticating in Devon—what’s that house of theirs called? Cirenworth? I gather they arrive in a day or two—”

Thomas upset his drink. James’s drink and Christopher’s test tube went with it. Thomas was still growing accustomed to occupying so much space in the world, and he sometimes proved clumsy.

“All of the Carstairs family are coming, did you say?” said Thomas.

“Not Elias Carstairs,” said Matthew. Elias was Cordelia’s father. “But Cordelia, and of course…” He trailed off meaningfully.

“Oh, bloody hell,” said Christopher. “Alastair Carstairs.” He looked vaguely ill. “I’m not remembering incorrectly? He’s an awful pill?”

“ ‘Awful pill’ seems a kind way of putting it,” said James. Thomas was mopping up his drink; James looked at him with concern. Thomas had been a shy, small boy at school, and Alastair a rotten bully. “We can avoid Alastair, Tom. There’s no reason for us to spend time with him, and I can’t imagine he’ll be yearning for our society either.”

Thomas spluttered, but not in response to what James had said. The contents of Christopher’s spilled test tube had turned a violent puce and begun to eat through the table. They all leaped up to grab for Polly’s dish towels. Thomas hurled a pitcher of water at the table, which drenched Christopher, and Matthew doubled over laughing.

“I say,” said Christopher, mopping wet hair out of his eyes. “I do think that worked, Tom. The acid has been neutralized.”

Thomas was shaking his head. “Someone should neutralize you, you mopstick—”

Matthew collapsed in hysterics.

In the midst of the chaos, James could not help feeling very far away from it all. For so many years, in so many hundreds of secret letters between London and Idris, he and Grace had sworn to each other that one day they would be together; that one day when they were adults, they would marry, whether their parents wished it or not, and live together in London. It had always been their dream.

So why hadn’t she told him she was coming?

* * *

“Oh, look! The Royal Albert Hall!” Cordelia cried, pressing her nose against the window of the carriage. It was a brilliant day, bright sunlight streaming down over London, making the sparkling white row houses of South Kensington glow like rows of ivory soldiers in an expensive chess set. “London really does have marvelous architecture.”

“A shrewd observation,” drawled her older brother, Alastair, who was ostentatiously reading a book on sums in the corner of the carriage, as if to announce that he couldn’t be bothered to glance out the window. “I’m sure no one has ever commented on London’s buildings before.”

Cordelia glared at him, but he didn’t look up. Couldn’t he tell she was just trying to raise everyone’s spirits? Their mother, Sona, was leaning exhaustedly against the side of the carriage, violet hollows under her eyes, her normally radiant brown skin sallow. Cordelia had been worried about her for weeks now, ever since the news about Father had come to Devon from Idris. “The point, Alastair, is that now we’re here to live, not visit. We’ll meet people, we can entertain visitors, we needn’t stay in the Institute—even though I would like to be near Lucie—”

“And James,” said Alastair, without looking up from his book.

Cordelia gritted her teeth.

“Children.” Cordelia’s mother glanced at them reprovingly. Alastair looked resentful—he was one month shy of his nineteenth birthday and, in his mind at least, certainly not a child. “This is serious business. As you well know, we are not in London to amuse ourselves. We are in London on behalf of our family.”

Cordelia exchanged a less hostile look with her brother. She knew he was worried about Sona too, though he never would have admitted it. She wondered for the millionth time how much he knew about the situation with Father. She knew both that it was more than she did, and that he would never speak to her of it.

She felt a little thump of excitement as their carriage pulled up at 102 Cornwall Gardens, one of a row of grand white Victorian houses with the number painted in austere black on the rightmost pillar. There were several figures standing atop the front steps, beneath the portico. Cordelia instantly recognized Lucie Herondale, a little taller now than she had been the last time Cordelia had seen her. Her light brown hair was caught up under her hat, and her pale blue jacket and skirt matched her eyes.

Beside her stood two figures. One was Lucie’s mother, Tessa Herondale, the famous—among Shadowhunters, at any rate—wife of Will Herondale, who ran the London Institute. She looked only a little older than her daughter. Tessa was immortal, a warlock and a shape-shifter, and she did not age.

Next to Tessa was James.

Cordelia remembered, once, when she’d been a small girl, reaching to pet a swan in the pond by her house. The bird had launched itself at her, barreling into her midsection and knocking her down. For several minutes she had lain on the grass, choking and trying to get her breath back, terrified she’d never suck air into her lungs again.

She supposed it was not the most romantic thing in the world to say that every time she saw James Herondale she felt as if she’d been attacked by a waterfowl, but it was true.

He was beautiful, so beautiful that she forgot to breathe when she looked at him. He had wild, tumbled black hair that looked as if it would be soft to touch, and his long, dark lashes fringed eyes the color of honey or amber. Now that he was seventeen, he had grown out of his gawky younger self and was sleek and lovely all over, perfectly put together, like a marvelous bit of architecture.

“Oof!” Her feet hit the ground and she nearly stumbled. Somehow she’d wrenched the carriage door open and was now standing on the pavement—well, wobbling really, as she struggled to keep her balance on legs that had gone to sleep after hours of disuse.

James was there instantly, his hand on her arm, steadying her. “Daisy?” he said. “Are you all right?”

His nickname for her. He hadn’t forgotten.

“Just clumsy.” She looked around ruefully. “I was hoping for a more gracious arrival.”

“Nothing to worry about.” He smiled, and her heart turned over. “The pavements of South Kensington are vicious. I’ve been attacked by them more than once myself.”

Make a clever response, she told herself. Say something witty.

But he had already turned away, inclining his head toward Alastair. James and Alastair had not liked each other at school, Cordelia knew, though her mother did not. Sona thought Alastair had been very popular.

“I see you’re here, Alastair.” James’s voice was curiously flat. “And you look—”

He eyed Alastair’s bright yellow-white hair with some astonishment. Cordelia waited for him to continue, with great hope that he would say you look like a turnip, but he didn’t.

“You look well,” he finished.

The boys looked at each other in silence as Lucie raced down the steps and threw her arms around Cordelia. “I am so very, very delighted to see you!” she said, in her breathless way. For Lucie, everything was always very, very, very something, be it beautiful or exciting or horrid. “Darling Cordelia, we shall have so much fun—”

“Lucie, Cordelia and her family have come to London so that you and Cordelia can train together,” said Tessa in her gentle voice. “It will be a great deal of work and responsibility.”

Cordelia glanced down at her shoes. Tessa was being kind in repeating the story that the Carstairs had come to London in a hurry because of Cordelia and Lucie needing to be parabatai, but that wasn’t the truth.

“Well, you must remember being sixteen yourself, Mrs. Herondale,” said Sona. “Young girls adore dances and dresses. I certainly did when I was their age, and I imagine you did as well.”

Cordelia knew this was entirely not true about her mother but kept her mouth shut. Tessa arched her eyebrows. “I do recall attending a vampire frolic once. And some sort of party at Benedict Lightwood’s house, before he got demon pox and turned into a worm, of course—”

“Mother!” Lucie said, scandalized.

“Well, he did turn into a worm,” said James. “Really more of a vicious, giant serpent. It was entirely one of the most interesting parts of history class.”