Chain of Iron

“I was hoping we could go to your flat.”

Anna said nothing, only watched the smoke ring come apart in pieces on the air. She was like starlight, Ariadne thought: it seemed warm and radiant and near, but was in truth uncountable miles away. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I have an assignation tonight.”

Ariadne supposed she ought to have known. Anna had been clear: nothing in her life, about her life, would change for Ariadne’s sake. Still, she felt a dull hurt, as if she had been struck with an unsharpened blade. “Today,” she said, “when we were in the courtyard—when we were first attacked—you pushed me behind you.”

Anna’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Did I?”

And Ariadne knew: Anna remembered. She herself had relived the moment a dozen times since it had happened. Anna had been unguarded in that instant, the fear on her face real as she thrust Ariadne out of the way and turned to face Leviathan, whip in hand.

“You know you did,” Ariadne said. “You would protect me with your life, then, but you will not forgive me. I know I asked you earlier—”

Anna sighed. “I am not angry at you, nor trying to punish you. But I am happy with who I am. I do not desire a change.”

“Maybe you are not angry with me,” Ariadne said. Dampness had gathered on her eyelashes; she blinked it away. “But I am angry with myself. I cannot forgive myself. I had you—I had love—and I turned from it out of fear. And perhaps it was foolish of me to think I could pick it up again, that it would be waiting for me, but you—” Her voice shook. “I fear it is because of me that you have become what you are. Hard and bright as a diamond. Untouchable.”

The cheroot burned, disregarded, in Anna’s hand. “What an unkind characterization,” she said lightly. “I cannot say I agree.”

“I could have managed with you not loving me, but you do not even want me to love you. And that I cannot bear.” Ariadne laced her cold hands together. “Do not ask me to come to the Whispering Room again.”

Anna shrugged. “As you wish,” she said. “I had better go—as you know, I do not like to keep a lady waiting.”

Ariadne did not stay to watch Anna leave; she did not think she could endure it, so she did not see Anna walk only a short distance before sinking down onto the front steps of a neighboring house. Flicking the half-burned cheroot into the snow, Anna put her head into her hands and shook violently, dry-eyed and silent, unable to catch her breath.

* * *

Lucie had waited what felt like hours upon hours for the household to fall into silence. With Gabriel injured and in the infirmary, Cecily and Alexander had remained at the Institute. Lucie had spent much of dinner playing with Alexander, letting him walk on the table and feeding him biscuits. In times of crisis, she had found, busying oneself with the care of children meant no one troubled you with questions.

Eventually she had retired to her room. She had heard Christopher come home, and voices in the library, but she had already wedged a chair against her door and was busy packing. She wasn’t at all sure what one was supposed to wear to visit a warlock’s house in Cornwall and engage in necromantic rituals. Eventually she decided on a few warm wool dresses, her axe, five seraph blades, a gear jacket, and a bathing costume. One never knew, and Cornwall was the seaside.

She left a note propped against her vanity table, took her packed valise, and crept out of her bedroom. Making her way through the halls of the Institute, she found them dark and silent. Good—everyone was asleep. She slipped downstairs and into the Sanctuary without a sound.

The room was a blaze of light. Every taper had been lit, filling the space with wavering illumination. In its center Jesse’s body had been laid on a muslin-covered bier, surrounded by a circle of white candles, each in a single long holder. Around the bier were scattered squares of parchment, each inscribed with a rune: most were of mourning, though a few represented honor and courage in combat.

The Silent Brothers had done their work well. Lucie was glad the Sanctuary had been kept sealed, save for them. She did not like the idea of strangers gawking at Jesse’s body. He would be a curiosity to them, and she could not bear that.

Lucie set her valise down and approached Jesse slowly. He had been arranged with the Blackthorn sword on his chest, his hands folded atop the cross guard. A white silk blindfold was bound over his eyes. The sight made her stomach turn cold; he looked dead, as he never had to her before in his coffin at Chiswick House. His skin was the shade of porcelain; his lashes lay long and dark against his colorless cheeks. A beautiful faerie prince, she thought, felled like Snow White, neither alive nor dead….

Lucie took a deep breath. Before Malcolm came, she wanted to be sure. She believed—she had told herself it had to be true—that Jesse had cast out Belial entirely. Surely there was not still a piece of the Prince of Hell in him. Malcolm had not asked—perhaps it had not occurred to him—but she could not imagine he would countenance trying to bring Jesse back if doing so would offer Belial a foothold in the world.

She laid her hand on Jesse’s chest. It was cold and stiff beneath her touch. If he were to touch me, I would feel so warm to him—scalding, even.

She closed her eyes and reached. As she had done once before, she sought Jesse’s soul among the mist and shadow behind her eyelids. For a moment there was blankness. Her heart tripped, stuttered—what if he was gone, gone forever—and then there was light around her, inside her.

But there was not the sense of wrongness she had felt before, when she had told him to live. Instead of shadowy monsters, she saw a dusty parlor—she was inside it, kneeling on a window seat, looking over the garden wall at a neighboring building: Herondale Manor. In the pane of the window, she could see Jesse’s face reflected, small and pale. She was inside his memories, she realized, looking around the room in wonder. Cobwebs were already forming in the corners, the wallpaper beginning to peel….

She was whirled away to another scene, and another—the decrepit corridors of Blackthorn Manor; a memory of Tatiana Blackthorn, face twisted into a rare smile. She was standing in the open front door of the manor. Lucie could see the briar-covered gates in the distance. There was a small girl standing behind Tatiana, cowering away as though terrified to enter the house. Her gray eyes were wide and frightened.

Then Jesse and Grace were laughing together, climbing the overgrown trees that grew on the grounds of Blackthorn Manor. Grace had a smudge of dirt on her face, and her hem was torn, and she looked happier than Lucie had ever seen her look. But then the memory shifted abruptly. She—Jesse—was in the same cobwebbed parlor, dressed in formal gear that was a little too large, and one of the Silent Brothers was approaching, stele in hand. Tatiana hovered by the doorway, twisting her hands together. Lucie wanted to shout, to reach out to demand that they stop, that the Voyance rune would be Jesse’s death sentence—but then the scene shifted again. She was in Brocelind Forest, the trees bathed in moonlight. Jesse was walking the moss-covered paths, and this was Jesse as Lucie knew him—as a ghost.

Then she was in the ballroom of the Institute, and now she could see herself—her blue lace dress that matched her eyes, the curls escaping from her bandeau, and she realized with a shock that through Jesse’s eyes she looked different than she imagined herself. Graceful, desirable. Beautiful. Her eyes were bluer than she knew them to be, her lips fuller and redder, her lashes long and secretive. She looked like a woman who was capable, adult, who had intrigues and secrets of her own.