Chain of Iron

“Perhaps a kernel of it, but you know as well as I do that Jessamine loves to exaggerate,” Will said, reaching for a jacket. “I’ll just go talk to Lucie and be back before you know it.”

29



A BROKEN MIRROR



And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass

In every fragment multiplies; and makes

A thousand images of one that was,

The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;

And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,

Living in shatter’d guise, and still, and cold,

And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,

Yet withers on till all without is old,

Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.

—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Cordelia ran.

She ran through Mayfair, along the wide streets, among the rich and wealthy houses with warm golden light spilling from their windows. She hadn’t bothered to glamour herself, and the few passersby on the streets stared openly at the running girl with no coat. Not that she cared.

She had no destination in mind. She had taken nothing with her from the Curzon Street house save what was in her pockets: a few coins, a handkerchief, her stele. She had bolted out the back door without a single thought for anything but getting away. The ground was icy and she was wearing only silk slippers; she could feel her toes freezing. It was strange to be fleeing without Cortana, but she had done what she needed to do with the blade earlier that day. She had hated to do it, but there had been no choice.

Her feet skidded on a patch of ice, and she caught at a lamppost, leaning against it to steady herself. She could still see them in her mind’s eye. James, and wrapped around him, her hands locked behind his neck, Grace Blackthorn.

They had not been kissing. But in some ways, the ease of their intimacy was worse. As she watched, Grace lifted her face to James’s; her arms tightened around him and her body pressed against his. They were lovely together. His hair so dark and hers so fair, both of them strong and slender, both of them achingly beautiful. They looked as if they belonged together in a way Cordelia was sure she and James never could.

Unwelcome thoughts came thick and fast: James laughing with her over a game of chess, saying, Touch me—do what you want—anything, the way he’d recited the words of their marriage vows to her in Mount Street Gardens. All the tiny little bits of nothing that she had gathered up and stored away, fragments of hope that formed a mirror of dreams through which she saw a life with James spread out before her.

She had been lying to herself. She saw that now.

I had to tell you, darling, Grace had said, and every word was a new spike in Cordelia’s heart. I am going to end it with Charles. I cannot bear it anymore, James. I will not marry him. There never was anyone for me but you.

Cordelia had known she shouldn’t be listening—she should back away, give them their privacy, hide herself upstairs, where she could shield herself in not knowing. But she couldn’t make her legs move. Frozen in place, she’d watched helplessly. Watched the blade rising, hovering over her life, her dreams, her carefully kept illusions. The blow about to land.

James had exhaled with relief. Thank God, he’d said.

The blade came down, shattering her dream-mirror into pieces. Leaving them to fall away in glittering, once-beautiful shards, abandoned now to tumble through the darkness into the whirlpool of her shame and horror. Even finding out she was Lilith’s paladin had not been as terrible as this. Lilith’s scorn she could stand, and her friends had stood by her.

But James must despise her, she thought. She’d found herself backing away blindly down the hallway, her hand against the wall to steady herself. What a fool he must think her. Oh, he had affection for her, of that she was sure enough, but he must have guessed her feelings. No doubt he pitied her for them.

She had to get away.

She had slipped silently down the back stairs, passing the ground floor, making her way to the kitchen. It was full of warm yellow light. She could remember James taking her through the house on their wedding night, pointing out each painting, each piece of furniture, with love and pride. He should never have spoken like that, she thought. Like she had a future in this house, as its mistress. One day Grace would be in charge of all this; she and James would share a bedroom, and Cordelia’s room would be turned into a nursery for their certain-to-be-beautiful babies. Perhaps they would have dark hair and gray eyes, or blond hair and golden eyes.

She had stared around almost blindly, seeing the patterned china that had been given to her and James as a wedding present by Gabriel and Cecily, the samovar that had been her mother’s, the silver cup her grandmother had brought with her to Tehran from Erivan. Gifts of love and pride given in the expectation of a happy marriage. She could not bear to look at any of it anymore. She could not be in that house one more moment.

She had fled, into the garden and the darkness, and the streets beyond.

She could still hear James’s voice in her ears. I do not feel about you at all as I feel about Grace. What had she expected? She had woven a tissue of denial out of James’s kindness, his kisses, his desire for her. It had probably only ever been his desire for Grace, subsumed into the only form of expression he could allow it. She had only ever been a substitute. They’d never even given each other their second wedding runes.

She began to shiver—now that she was no longer running, the cold had begun to make itself acutely known to her. She pushed away from the lamppost, making her way through the snow and slush, her arms wrapped around herself. She could not stay out in the night, she knew. She would freeze to death. She could not go to Anna—how could she make Anna understand without making herself sound a fool and James a villain? She could not go to Cornwall Gardens and face the shame and horror of admitting that her marriage was over. She could not go to Lucie at the Institute, because that would mean Will and Tessa and again, another admission that her wedded union to their son was a sham. Not to mention the new knowledge that somehow, Lucie and Grace were acquainted. She supposed she could not blame Lucie, not really, but it was more than she could bear hearing about.

Only when she was passing by the doorman in front of the brick edifice of the Coburg Hotel did she realize that her feet were bringing her to Grosvenor Square.

But Matthew no longer lives in Grosvenor Square.

Her pace slowed. Had she been looking for Matthew without realizing it? To be fair, Grosvenor Square was smack in the middle of Mayfair. She might have wound up here by accident. But her feet had, without her noticing, brought her directly this way, and it did make sense. Who else could she go to but Matthew? Who else lived alone, away from the prying eyes of parents? More importantly, who else knew the truth?

This may be a false marriage, but you’re in love with James.

She glanced once at the Consul’s house and walked on, passing through Grosvenor Square and continuing until she reached Oxford Street. She looked up and down its length. Normally it was jammed with people and carriages, noisy with vendors selling from carts and the swarming activity of the busy department stores. Even at this hour it was not empty, but she had no trouble flagging down a hansom cab.

It was a short drive to the place where Matthew lived. Whitby Mansions was a wedding cake of a building, an edifice of pink stone that rose in turrets and spires like dollops of icing. Matthew had probably taken the flat without even looking at it, Cordelia thought as she stepped out of the cab.