Chain of Iron

He reached into his pocket, his hand closing around the broken pieces of bracelet. A moment later he had flung them on the floor. They clanged as they dropped, looking rather pitiful against the carpet—two tarnished half-moons of bent metal. “‘Loyalty binds me,’” he said mockingly. “At least, it did.”

Grace’s whole body tensed. He could see the calculation in her eyes—she had come hoping the enchantment of the bracelet would still work. That she would be able to charm him. Realizing the truth, now, she was considering her options. “How did it break?”

“It happened while I was kissing Cordelia,” he said, and saw her wince a little, as if the words were distasteful. Good. She could consider her options all she liked—he had no intention of being cooperative or friendly.

She narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were kissing me—in this room.”

“Shut up,” James said dispassionately. “I am not an idiot, though I suppose I might as well have been, for some years now. I ought to just call for the Silent Brothers. They can determine what should be done with you. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain yourself.”

“You’re curious.” He could see her determining the price of his questions, her answers. It filled him with rage. He knew he ought to summon the Clave, the Brothers, but his need for the truth overrode everything else. She would tell him what he only half guessed at now—what he dreaded, and needed, to know.

“Not curious enough to put up with you toying with me,” said James. “Did you know what the bracelet did? Have you always known?”

Her lips parted in surprise. “How do you—”

“Did it just make me think I loved you, or did it do more than that?” James said, and saw by her expression that his question had hit its target. There was no pleasure in having guessed correctly; he felt physically sick. “What did it do to me?”

“There is no point shouting,” she said, rather primly. “I’ll tell you all of it—God knows there’s no point protecting anyone now.” She gazed past him, at the dark window. “After Jesse died, my mother took me into Brocelind at night.”

“This,” he said, “had better be relevant.”

“It is. There was someone there—a man in a cloak, I couldn’t see his face—who gave me what my mother called a ‘gift.’ The ability to make men do as I said and feel what I wished them to feel. When I use the power, men give me what I want—from a glass of wine to a kiss to a marriage proposal.” She shifted her gaze to him. “But oh, the irony. It didn’t work on you. I tried everything. You resisted all of it. My mother was furious, never more so than when you came back from Cirenworth to Idris and I told her you had fallen in love with Cordelia.”

“I was fourteen—”

“Old enough for puppy love,” said Grace, without sentiment. “All you would talk about was Cordelia. How she talked, how she walked, how she read to you when you were ill. The color of her eyes, her hair. My mother was desperate. She went to him, the one from the forest. He gave her the bracelet. It would counteract the effect of your demonic grandfather’s blood in your veins, she said. And it did. From the moment you put it on, you forgot Cordelia. You believed that you loved me.”

James could hear his heartbeat, thudding in his ears. He remembered Cordelia, in the study, trying to get him to remember the summer he had scalding fever—the hurt in her eyes when he did not seem to recall it.

He had already loved her then.

“But the bracelet was not perfect,” said Grace. “The spell that bound you to me weakened when we were distant. Each summer, in Idris, its power would be refreshed, and you would love me again, and forget everything else. But then, this past summer, you did not come to Idris, and the spell began to truly falter.”

James remembered how unhappy he’d been that they were not going to Herondale Manor over the summer, because his parents insisted on remaining in London to help the Carstairs. Memories had tormented him then: the walk up the road to Blackthorn Manor under the leafy branches of the hawthorn trees; long conversations with Grace at the iron gates; the cool water she brought him in china cups she’d pinched from the kitchen.

But none of it had been real: he had been longing for a drug, a fever-dream. Grace had manipulated him since they were children. James felt his body respond as it did in the face of any threat, his muscles tightening with coiled rage.

“So that is why you came to London?” he spat. “To tighten my leash? Grace, why? I know your mother is mad, twisted by grief and spite. But why would she go to these elaborate lengths to make me think I loved you?”

“Don’t you see?” Grace cried, and James thought it was the first time he’d ever heard her burst out with any sort of real emotion. “Because of him. Belial. Everything was because of him. He wanted to control you, and she wanted you in pain, so they both got what they wanted.”

James felt as if he could barely catch his breath. “Belial,” he echoed. “He was the one in the forest? He gave you this … curse?”

“He called it a gift,” Grace said, in a small voice.

It only made James more furious. “How long have you known that I was Belial’s grandson? Did you know even before I did?”

She shook her head. “I found out when I took the bracelet from you four months ago. It was Belial who sent a demon to threaten me, to command me to put the bracelet back on.”

James remembered, suddenly, what he could not remember before—the words Grace had said to him the night Blackthorn Manor had burned. The day she’d placed the bracelet back on his wrist. It had to be you. My mother made me her blade, to cut every barrier raised against her. But your blood, his blood, is a barrier I cannot cut. I cannot bind you without his chain.

“‘I cannot bind you without his chain,’” he said. “That’s what you said to me. You couldn’t control me without his chain—the bracelet.” He began to pace back and forth in front of the door. Grace watched him—she seemed unafraid in the manner of someone to whom the worst has already happened, leaving nothing left for them to dread. “So why did you break it off with me, four months ago? How was that part of Belial’s plan? He must have wanted to use you to convince me to give myself up to him. To let him possess me. When I saw him in Belphegor’s realm, he was furious that the bracelet was not on my wrist.”

“It wasn’t part of his plan,” said Grace, with an odd flash of pride. “My mother had fallen ill—she was not there to stop me. I know you will not believe me, James, but I always thought of you as a friend. My only friend. As the years went past, I hated using the bracelet on you. You were the only person other than Jesse who was ever kind to me, and I was hurting you.”

“So you—you meant to set me free? You cannot expect me to believe that.”

“Well, it is true,” Grace said, with a flicker of temper. “It is why I went to Charles—I thought him powerful enough to withstand my mother’s wrath when her health was recovered. I knew she would be furious I had taken back my power over you. But I was sick to death of it.” She looked away. “I was wrong. The threat of Charles, of the Consul—it did not matter. I did not realize how powerful my mother’s allies were until it was too late.”