Chain of Gold

Anna paused, staring at the door. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. She cursed herself quietly; she should be long past feeling this way. So foolish. So young. I am Anna Lightwood, she told herself. Nothing touches me.

“I heard you,” Ariadne said softly.

Anna turned to stare at her. “What?”

“I heard you when you came to the infirmary,” Ariadne said, “and asked me not to die.”

Shocked, Anna said, “So—you heard about Charles’s betrayal from me?”

Ariadne waved that away, her slim gold bracelets chiming like bells. “It barely mattered to me at all. The only thing that mattered was the realization that you still have love in your heart for me.”

Anna put her hand to the pendant at her throat. Her mother had given it to her when she had been mourning Ariadne’s loss. The first and last time Anna had let anyone break her heart.

“I’ve realized that I was wrong,” said Ariadne.

“To become engaged to Charles?” Anna said. She remembered, two years ago, finding Charles at the Bridgestocks’ house when she had come with flowers in her hand for Ariadne. How the Bridgestocks had smiled when he kissed Ariadne’s hand, even as Anna was ushered out of the room. “There are better men, if marriage is what you insist on.”

“No,” said Ariadne. “I was wrong about myself and you. Wrong about what I wanted.” She clasped her hands together. “What I said years ago, some of it is still true. I do not wish to hurt my parents. I do want to have children. But none of that matters if I do not have love in my life.” She smiled wistfully. “You have made quite a name for yourself, Anna, as someone who does not believe in love.”

Anna spoke coldly. “Indeed. I think that romantic love is the cause of all the pain and suffering in this world.”

The silk of Ariadne’s dress rustled as she moved. A moment later she was beside Anna, leaning up on her toes to brush her lips against Anna’s cheek. When she drew back, her dark eyes were shining. “I know you are strong-willed, Anna Lightwood, but I am just as strong-willed. I will change your mind. I will win you back.”

She gathered her skirts and strode from the room, the scent of her orange-blossom perfume lingering behind her like smoke on the air.

* * *

“You don’t mind dancing with an old man like myself?” Will said, expertly turning Cordelia about the floor.

She smiled. Will did not have the air of an old man about him—there was something of a boy’s mischief in the way he smiled. Strange that neither Jem nor Tessa had aged since the Clockwork War, yet both seemed older and more serious than Will Herondale did. “Not at all,” she said. “For many years, when we were growing up, both Alastair and I wished we saw more of you and Mrs. Herondale. We thought of you as an aunt and uncle of sorts.”

“Now that you will be so close, and we will in truth be family, many opportunities present themselves,” said Will. “A celebration party, perhaps, when your father comes home.”

Cordelia blanched. She was sure her father would want nothing of the kind; he would want to forget he had ever been away, because he would not wish to remember why.

Will ducked his head to look at her more closely. “Or we can always arrange nothing, if you prefer. Nothing is my favorite thing to arrange. It takes so little effort.”

Cordelia smiled wanly.

Will sighed. “I joke around a great deal,” he said. “It is one way in which I manage life in a complex world. But I sense you are not entirely happy about your father coming home.”

“It is, as you say, complex,” said Cordelia. She was faintly aware that the other dancers were looking at them, probably wondering what they were discussing so intently.

“I loved my father when I was a child,” said Will. “I thought he was the best man I’d ever known. Then when I discovered he had squandered all our money at the gaming tables, I thought he was the worst man I’d ever known. Now that I am myself a father, I know that he was simply a man.”

Cordelia looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said. She wanted to tell Will Herondale that she appreciated his honesty. She wondered how much he knew, or guessed, about her father: surely there were rumors. She wished she could be honest in return about her marriage to James. Surely Will must have noticed that James had hardly spoken to her tonight—at this, their engagement party?

“Daisy?”

Cordelia and Will stopped dancing; she saw with surprise that James had come up to them on the parquet dance floor. The jet and ivory of evening wear perfectly suited his sort of looks, she thought, already a beauty of contrasts, black and white and gold.

“Daisy?” he said, again, shyly, and Cordelia barely noticed Will step away from her. She only saw James’s outstretched hand. “Would you like to dance?”

* * *

They looked remarkably happy, Lucie thought. She would not have found it odd, save that she knew the truth: still, James and Cordelia were good friends. As she watched, Cordelia laughed at something James said, and he reached to tuck a loose bit of hair back under her bandeau. Perhaps the Merry Thieves had been right—perhaps the two of them, her best friend and her brother, would find a way to make it all a sort of frolic?

“What are you thinking, Luce?” said Thomas, who was leaning against the wall of the ballroom, tie loosened. He had nobly danced several dances with Esme Hardcastle before retreating to the safety of the corner near the refreshments table. Matthew had joined him there, as had Lucie. “You’re gazing very thoughtfully at Jamie and Cordelia.”

“I was thinking she makes him a better dancer,” said Lucie.

Matthew cocked his head to the side. “By the Angel,” he said. “Marriage. Did you know James asked me to be his suggenes?”

In Shadowhunter marriage ceremonies, your suggenes was the one who escorted you down the aisle. You could pick anyone in your life—mother, father, brother, best friend. “Well, that’s not odd,” Lucie said. “Parabatai almost always pick each other.”

“It does make one feel very grown-up,” said Matthew. He was drinking from the flask in his hand, which to Lucie was not a good sign. Usually at parties where spirits were provided, Matthew would be seen with a wineglass in hand. If he were getting his “drain of pale” from his flask, he must be very determined indeed to be as drunk as possible. His eyes were glittering too, rather dangerously. Perhaps he was angry at Charles? Angry at his parents for accepting Charles’s marriage to Grace so easily? Though how could they know? Lucie wondered, glancing at Henry and Charlotte where they sat at a table at the far end of the room. Henry’s Bath chair stood sentry against the wall and the Consul and her husband leaned together, talking softly, their hands entwined. “Although,” he added, his eyes narrowing as he gazed past Thomas, “not grown-up enough to put up with that.”

Lucie looked over and saw Alastair Carstairs moving through the crowd toward them. His shoulders were slightly hunched, and his once-again dark hair made him look like a different person.

“Be polite to him, Matthew,” said Thomas, straightening. “He was a great help to me when I needed to make the antidote.”

“Has anyone tried the lemon tarts?” said Alastair lightly, as he arrived among their group. “You have an excellent cook, Lucie.”

Lucie blinked. Matthew set his jaw. “Do not try to make small talk, Alastair,” he said. “It gives me a headache.”

“Matthew,” said Thomas severely. “Do you need to go sit down?”

Matthew shoved his flask back into his jacket with shaking hands. “I do not,” he said. “I need Carstairs to leave us alone. Tonight is difficult enough—”

There was no chance for Lucie to ask why tonight might be difficult, for Alastair had already cut in. He seemed half-annoyed and half-abashed, his voice even but tense. “Can we not put our schooldays behind us?” he said. “If I admit I was a cad, is that enough? How can I apologize?”

“You cannot,” said Matthew, his voice very strange, and they all looked at him. Lucie had the odd sense she was watching someone balanced on a knife’s edge; Matthew seemed all sharp angles in that moment, as if he were made of daggers beneath the skin. “Do not think you are our friend now, or welcome among us, regardless of all that has happened.”

Thomas frowned. “Matthew,” he said, his usually gentle voice remonstrative, “that was the past. It is time for us to be adults and forget childish slights.”

“Thomas, you are kind,” said Matthew. “Too kind, and you wish to forget. But I am not kind, and I cannot help but remember.”

The light had gone from Alastair’s eyes. Yet he did not, to Lucie’s surprise, look angry. He looked almost resigned. “Let him say what he wants to say, Thomas.”

“You have no right to talk to Thomas in that familiar way,” said Matthew. “I never told this to you, Thomas. I couldn’t bear to. But better that you know the truth than that you allow this snake to befriend you.”

“Matthew—” Thomas began impatiently.

“Do you know what he used to say at school?” Matthew said. “That my mother and your father were lovers. That I was your father’s bastard. He told me that Henry was only half a man and couldn’t father children, and therefore Gideon had stepped into the breach. He said that your mother was so hideously ugly because of her scarred face that no one could blame your father for looking elsewhere. And that you were a sickly, ugly little thing because you had inherited her weakness of constitution—because she had been a mundane, but not just a mundane. A servant and a whore.”

Matthew stopped on a sort of gasp, as if even he could not quite believe what he had just said. Thomas stood stock-still, the color draining from his face. Alastair had not moved either. It was Lucie who said, to her own surprise, “He was the source of that awful rumor? Alastair?”

“Not—not the source,” Alastair said, his voice sounding as if he were forcing it through a tight throat. “And I did not say all of those things to Matthew—”