Chain of Iron

Cordelia watched him cross the room to Jem. As the two spoke, Jem glanced over toward her. She could not see his face at this distance, but she heard his voice in her head: Would you join us? I have missed you, Cordelia. There is much for us all to say to each other.

Cordelia felt an ache in her heart. Since Elias’s death she had wanted nothing more than to talk to Jem, to ask him for his recollections of her father, his advice for her family. But he was a Silent Brother—they could read thoughts, guess emotions. If he looked in her head now, he’d learn the truth about Lilith, and she couldn’t bear that.

She shook her head, very slightly. Not now. Go on without me.

He seemed disappointed as he laid a hand on Alastair’s shoulder, and together the two of them left the room, passing Thomas in the doorway. Thomas looked after them with an odd expression—surprise? Anger? Perhaps he was still trying to make sense of Alastair’s behavior the day before.

“Matthew,” she said. “That was—”

“Don’t be angry.” He had taken his hands out of his pockets, and she realized why he’d hidden them in the first place. They were shaking violently. He reached inside his waistcoat and removed his dented flask.

She wanted to close her eyes. Her father’s hands had shaken, sometimes every morning. Less often at night. She understood why now. She understood more than she had ever wanted to understand—about her father, and about Matthew, too.

“I’m not angry,” she said. “I was going to say it was kind.”

“To Charles? Possibly,” he said, and took a drink. The muscles moved in his throat as he swallowed. She remembered her mother saying of Elias, he was so beautiful. But drinking was a sickness that ate away at beautiful things. “I don’t think he and Alastair are well-suited, though.”

“No,” Cordelia agreed. “Though are you liking Charles any better now?”

Matthew sucked a drop of brandy off his thumb and smiled crookedly. “Because he nearly died? No. I suppose it was a reminder, though—I don’t like Charles, but I love him. I can’t help it. Odd how that works, isn’t it?”

 

“Alastair!”

Thomas had seen Alastair and Jem leave the library together, and slipped out after them. They made an odd pair of cousins, he thought: Alastair in his torn, dusty clothes, Jem in his neat parchment robes. No one would easily guess that they were family. They were silent as they walked, but Thomas knew that hardly meant they were not conversing.

“Alastair!” he called, again, and Alastair turned, a look of surprise crossing his face. Alastair said something to his cousin, then beckoned to Thomas as Jem moved some distance away, offering them a semblance of privacy.

Alastair looked at Thomas inquiringly. Thomas, who had realized almost immediately that he had no idea what to say, shifted from one foot to another. “You’re all right?” he said eventually. “I didn’t get to ask you, after the fight.”

He hadn’t. When the battle with Leviathan had ended, he’d been swept away by Anna and Christopher, by his parents, by the arrival of James and the others. None of whom would have thought Thomas would have any reason to want to remain near Alastair.

“I’m fine,” Alastair said. “I’m going to see Charles in the infirmary. Apparently, he asked for me.”

“Oh.” Thomas felt as if he’d missed a step on a staircase. The stumble, the disorientation. He caught his breath.

“I owe this,” Alastair said. His gaze was dark and steady. “Do you remember what you said in the Sanctuary? That we should pretend that nothing in the past happened, and Paris was the first time we met?”

Thomas nodded. His stomach felt as if it had been tied in knots of ice.

“We cannot pretend forever,” said Alastair. “Eventually the truth must be faced. All of your friends hate me, Thomas, and with good reason.”

Matthew, Thomas thought. He’d seen his friend approach Alastair and Cordelia with a determined expression, and he’d wondered what it was about. He couldn’t be angry at Matthew, either. Math was looking out for his brother, which was entirely understandable.

“No apology will make up for what I’ve done in the past,” Alastair continued. “And to make you choose between me and your friends would only make it worse. So I will make the choice. Go back to the library. They’re waiting for you.”

“You followed me on patrol because you were worried about me,” said Thomas. “You do realize—because you were there—that might have been why Belial didn’t attack me? He always went after Shadowhunters who were alone. But you were with me, even if I didn’t know it.”

“That’s just guesswork.” A vein pulsed in Alastair’s throat. “Tom, you patrolled alone at night because you like things that are dangerous and unhealthy for you. I won’t be one of those things.”

He began to turn away. Thomas reached out to catch at him, and the feel of Alastair’s shoulder under his fingers almost undid him. He had touched him, like this, in the Sanctuary: had rested his hands on Alastair’s shoulders, letting Alastair bear up his weight as they kissed.

“Don’t,” Alastair said, not looking at him. “It isn’t possible. It won’t ever be.”

He pulled away, hurrying to rejoin Jem. Thomas stood looking after them as they vanished down the hall. Somehow, he kept expecting Alastair to turn and look back at him, even once. But Alastair never did.

 

You are being a fool, Malcolm Fade told himself.

It was the same thing he’d been telling himself for the past few days; it made no more difference now. The sun was bright overhead as he crossed the Institute courtyard. A wind had picked up, scattering flurries of snow, white and glittering in the sunshine. He wondered how long it would take for the Shadowhunters to put their broken Institute back together. Less time than one might expect, he guessed. They were surprisingly resourceful, Nephilim, and stubborn in a way warlocks were not. There was little point being stubborn when you lived forever. You learned to bend rather than break.

He thought he had bent, all those years ago when he had first lost Annabel. She has become an Iron Sister, he had been told. You will never see her again. It is her choice.

He had walked the world since that moment bent and twisted into a new shape: the shape of a man who had lost the only thing that mattered in his life and had to learn to live without it. Food tasted flat; the wind and sun visited him differently; the sound of his heartbeat was always audible in his ears, a broken metronome. This was his life now—it had been for more than nine decades—and he had come to accept it.

Until Lucie and Grace had appeared in his life. In learning that Annabel was dead, he had realized how much he’d resigned himself to never seeing her again. Though it ran counter to sense, learning of her death had brought with it the hope that there was a chance of somehow—after all this time—being able to save her.

He could see her, in his mind’s eye, in her plain calico dress, the ribbons of her bonnet streaming in the wind. May Day in Padstow—so long ago now—but he could remember the girls with flowers in their hands, and the blue of the water. Her dark brown hair. Annabel.

You are being a fool, he told himself again. He drew his overcoat around him as he reached the gates of the courtyard. There was someone there, leaning against the iron railings. Not a Shadowhunter—a tall man dressed in green and black, an emerald stickpin gleaming at his lapel.