Chain of Iron
Tatiana smiled. “I want you to bring the boy, James, under your spell.”
That was even more puzzling. “What do you want me to ask of him?” What could her mother possibly want with James Herondale?
“Nothing,” said Tatiana, looking shrewd. “Nothing yet. Simply make him love you. It will amuse me.”
After all her mother’s curses and fussing over the family, Grace half expected something monstrous to come loping over the horizon with the name Herondale. James turned out to be an entirely normal boy, however, much more friendly and easy than the boors she’d met in Paris, and not too bad to look at either. And though she knew it was only in service of her mother’s orders, she was starved for company, and James seemed to welcome hers. It was nice to have someone to talk to who was not a ghost. Soon they were chatting every evening, and she could tell that James was shirking on his briar-cutting duties in order to extend the number of days he would be needed at Blackthorn Manor.
Was it her power? She wasn’t exactly sure. She had asked nothing more of James than that he visit her, and he was willing, but she thought he might have done so without any ensorcelling at all. He must also be lonely, with no friends nearby, and he had a kind soul.
At one point she said, casually, “Will I see you here tomorrow night?” It was the sort of question she’d asked a dozen times before.
James frowned. “No,” he said. “I am summoned to a reading tomorrow night, of the latest installment of my sister’s ongoing masterpiece about Cruel Prince James.”
“Oh?” said Grace, not entirely sure what this meant.
“Evidently,” James said, his mouth quirking on one side, “in this chapter the Cruel Prince James tries to keep the Princess Lucie from her true love, the Duke Arnoldo, but he falls into a pig bog. Riveting stuff.”
Grace pouted—an expression she hadn’t used with James before, but she had much practice from her time in Paris. “But I’d so like to see you,” she said in sorrowful tones. She leaned toward him. “Come see me tomorrow night anyway. Tell your family my mother has threatened you, and you have to work or risk her wrath.”
James laughed. “Tempting as that may be—I’m so sorry, Grace, but I really must be there, or Lucie will fashion me into a large hat. I’ll see you the day after next, I promise.”
Grace waited until the very end of the summer to speak to her mother about the situation. James and his family had already left for London. It was so strange to think of them as the same Herondales her mother railed against; to go by James’s descriptions, they seemed to resemble Tatiana’s sworn enemies not at all. She had been fairly certain what was happening for a few weeks, but she had decided to give it the season. “My power wasn’t working on James.”
Tatiana’s eyebrows went up. “Is he not fond of you?”
“He is fond of me, I think,” Grace said. “But sometimes I’ve made requests—unreasonable requests, things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, to see if I could make him. And I can’t.”
Her mother had a sour look. “The crowned heads of Europe come at your beck and call,” she said, “but the son of a Welsh mud farmer eludes your grasp.”
“I have been trying, Mama,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s because he’s a Shadowhunter. Maybe they have more resistance to the magic.”
Tatiana didn’t say anything further then, but a few weeks later she abruptly announced that they were departing for Alicante in an hour, and Grace should ready herself to go out.
13
THE WINTRY WIND
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
—William Butler Yeats, “The Withering of the Boughs”
Once Alastair was gone, the room seemed terribly quiet. Cordelia glanced at the door—she was used to falling asleep with James but a few feet away. Now he was miles away, and likely going to bed assuming she was furious with him.
James. She had grown accustomed to seeing him first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. It still felt very strange to undress in the bathroom knowing he was just a few feet away, but … Now she was alone. Not alone—her brother was down the hall, her mother asleep downstairs—but she missed James.
Cordelia sighed. She wasn’t going to get to sleep anytime soon, whatever Alastair had said. She was about to find a book to pass the time, when her window flew suddenly open with a crash, and someone hurtled through the gap, landing on the floor next to her bed in a hectic tumble of freezing-cold air, blond curls, and bright orange spats.
“Matthew?”
He had landed awkwardly on the floor. He sat up, rubbing his elbow and cursing softly. “That was the first decent thing Alastair ever did in his life. And to think I was here to see it. Well, spy on it, technically.”
“Go and close the window,” Cordelia said, “or I will throw the teapot at you. What are you doing here?”
“Visiting,” he said, dusting himself off and going to close the window. “What does it look like?”
“Most people use the front door,” Cordelia said. “What did you mean about Alastair?”
“Cortana. I’m talking about Alastair refusing your ridiculous offer. I agree with him, by the way: that sword can’t un-choose you and it has no reason to do so. Probably it’s broken.”
“It’s a mythical sword. It can’t be broken.” Cordelia tugged her covers up; it felt very odd indeed to be sitting in front of Matthew in her nightgown. “Were you really out there listening?”
“Yes, and you might have been quicker about sending your brother off. I was freezing.”
Matthew’s utter lack of repentance made it impossible to be angry at him. Cordelia hid a smile—her first smile of the day. “And why, pray tell?”
“When I heard what happened, I went to pay my respects at Curzon Street, but neither of you were there—”
“James wasn’t at home?”
“I suspect he was having a wander. He likes to walk about when he feels troubled—apparently Uncle Will used to do the same thing,” said Matthew. “I guessed you might be here, but I was afraid if I knocked on the door, your family wouldn’t let me see you, not at this hour.”
She looked at him, puzzled. “You could have waited until tomorrow.”
He sat down on the end of her bed. It was most improper, Cordelia thought, but then again, she was a married woman. As Anna had said, she was free to do as she liked, even to let young men in orange spats sit on the end of her bed. “I don’t think I could have,” he said, avoiding her gaze by prodding gently at her coverlet. “There was something I needed to tell you.”
“What?”
Very quickly, he said, “I know what it is to be in pain, and not to be able to seek comfort from the one you love the most, nor to be able to share that pain with anyone you know.”
“What do you mean?”
He raised his head. His eyes were very green in the dim light. “I mean,” he said, “this may be a false marriage, but you’re truly in love with James.”
Cordelia stared at him, horrified. His hair was madly tousled, damp with melting snow. The cold had whipped sharp color into his cheeks, and his eyes were bright with—nervousness? Could Matthew actually be nervous?