Chapter 13: Angels Alone

13ANGELS ALONE

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage:

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

—Richard Lovelace, “To Althea, from Prison”

Cordelia squinted at the pagein the fading candlelight.

She was tucked up in her bed in Cornwall Gardens, under the eaves, reading some of the paladin books Christopher had given her. The soft thump of snowdrifts against the roof made the room feel cozier, but it still didn’t feel like home. Rather like a room in the house of a kind relative that one was visiting.

Cordelia was not unaware that she hadn’t entirely unpacked—not her clothes from Paris, and not the things James had sent over to her from Curzon Street. She was living in a sort of limbo, not quite here or there, a space where she did not yet have to make a firm decision.

She wondered a bit about the baby, soon to be born. Not too soon, she hoped. Not while she, its big sister, was undecided about every aspect of her life—and worse, while she was cursed to be a demon’s paladin. She turned back to her book—in the combined light of the fire and the taper on her nightstand, she could just make out the words.

The words were not encouraging. Most paladins wanted to be paladins and would never seek to break the bond with their masters. There was much a paladin could do that seemed appealing: fight harder, jump higher, survive wounds that would kill another. She had even found an account of a paladin who had stabbed his friend due to a case of mistaken identity, but was then able to magically heal him with his “paladin’s blade,” all of which seemed unlikely—what did that even mean, healed him with his blade? But it was only an anecdote, sandwiched between another one in which a single paladin had defeated an advancing army, and yet another in which two parabatai had become paladins together.

Thump,went the snow at her window. It almost sounded like a bird hitting the glass. She couldn’t help but remember when Matthew had tumbled through her window in orange spats, bearing alarming insights. This may be a false marriage, he’d said, but you’re truly in love with James.

She thought of James, and what he’d said that night, about following her to Waterloo; the thought that he’d been on the train platform was nearly too much to bear—

Thump.This time louder, more insistent. Thump, thump, thump, and the window came open, along with a puff of white snow. Cordelia bolted up in bed, dropping her book, about to shout for Alastair, when she realized that the person clambering through her window, all snowy boots and undone brown hair, was Lucie.

She sat back down on her bed, speechless, as Lucie shut the window behind her and hurried over to the fire. She wore a heavy cloak over gear, and her hair had come out of its fastenings and was halfway down her back, threaded with strings of ice.

“Lucie,” Cordelia said, finding her voice, “you must be freezing. What on earth are you doing coming through the window? Risa would have let you up—you could have used the front door—”

“I didn’t want to,” Lucie said crossly. She was holding out her hands to the fire, letting the heat turn the white tips of her fingers back to pink.

“Well, come here, then,” Cordelia said. “I can’t wield a weapon, but I can still manage a stele. You could use a Heat rune—”

Lucie whirled around. Her hair flew dramatically as she said, “Things cannot go on as they have been.”

Cordelia was fairly sure she knew what Lucie meant. Still, she said, “What do you mean?”

“When you married James,” Lucie said, “I thought it would bring us closer together. But it has driven us further apart.”

“Lucie.” Cordelia clasped her hands in her lap. She felt underdressed—Lucie was in gear, and here she was in a nightgown with a slightly ragged hem and her hair in plaits. “The distance between us—it’s not James’s fault. It’s not the fault of our marriage—”

“You don’t think so? Cordelia, he’s breaking his heart over you. He’s so miserable—”

“Well, I suppose it could cause discord,” Cordelia said coldly, “if you take a side. I know you adore your brother. I also know you’re aware that he’s been in love with Grace Blackthorn until last week. And this is exactly the kind of conversation we should not be having. I don’t want to hurt James, but I don’t want to be hurt myself, either, and James only feels guilty—”

“It’s not just guilt,” Lucie protested. “I know the difference—”

“Did you know the difference when you chose to secretly befriend Grace behind my back, and never tell me about it at all?”

It was most likely the harshest thing Cordelia had ever said to her best friend. Lucie looked shocked.

“I did it to save Jesse,” Lucie said in a whisper.

“I know what it’s like to be in love,” said Cordelia. “You think I wouldn’t have understood? You didn’t trust me.”

“What I was doing,” Lucie fumbled, “it was so forbidden, so dreadful, I didn’t want to pull you into any of the trouble I’d be in if I was found out.”

“Nonsense,” Cordelia said. “You wanted to do what you were doing and not have me fuss at you about Grace.” Some part of her seemed to have detached itself and was watching in horror as she struck at Lucie with words like knives, intended to slice and cut. Part of her felt a sort of desperate relief that as much as she had been hurt, she no longer had to hold it in—she could say: You hurt me. You never thought about me at all, and that hurts the most.

“Parabatai are supposed to tell each other everything,” Cordelia said. “When I was in the worst trouble of my life, finding I was sworn to Lilith, I told you.”

“No, you didn’t,” said Lucie. “I found out when you did. You couldn’t have hidden it.”

“I told you the whole story—”

“Oh, really?” Lucie’s blue eyes filled with tears. Cordelia had hardly ever seen her cry, but she was crying now, and yet she sounded furious. “We’re supposed to tell each other everything? Well, I have a few questions for you about the fact that the moment my brother came looking for me in Cornwall, you ran off to Paris with his best friend! You never said anything to me about Matthew—”

“That,” said Cordelia in a voice as cold as the snow outside, “is not exactly the order of events as they took place. And your brother is not blameless, but I will leave it to him to tell you how that night unfolded.”

“I don’t know what you think he did,” said Lucie, dashing her tears away with her hands. “But I know how he looks. Like he wants to die without you. And you expect me to believe you ran off with Matthew in a purely friendly way, and nothing romantic passed between you?”

“And you would blame me if it did?” Cordelia felt a white fire of rage and pain blaze up under her ribs, nearly choking off her breath. “Do you know what it’s like to be in a marriage that’s a lie, where you’re the only person who feels anything? James never felt a thing for me—he never looked at me the way Matthew has—he was too busy looking at Grace, your new best friend. Why don’t you ask him if he kissed Grace while we were married? Better, why don’t you ask him how many times he kissed Grace while we were married?”

“You’re still married.” Lucie was shaking her head. “And—I don’t believe you.”

“Then you’re calling me a liar. And perhaps that is the distance between us. It is the same as the distance between myself and James. It has a name: Grace Blackthorn.”

“I didn’t know how much my working with her would hurt you,” Lucie said. “I doubt James knew either. You never let on that you felt anything for him. You—you’re so proud, Cordelia.”

Cordelia raised her chin. “Maybe I am. What does it matter? We aren’t going to be parabatai after all, so we don’t need to know each other’s secrets. That’s not in our future.”

Lucie caught her breath. “You don’t know that. Or are you saying you don’t want to be parabatai with me, even if you break your bond with Lilith?”

“Oh, Lucie,” Cordelia said in despair. “It’s like you don’t live in the real world. You live in a world of stories. The beautiful Cordelia, who can do anything she likes. But in the real world, we don’t get everything we want. Maybe—we shouldn’t.”

In that moment, Cordelia saw Lucie’s heart break. Her whole face crumpled, and she turned away, as if she could hide her reaction from Cordelia, but it was in every line of her shaking shoulders, her arms wrapping around herself as if she could hold in the hurt.

“Luce.” Cordelia’s voice shook. “I didn’t—”

But Lucie had darted to the window. She threw it open and practically hurled herself outside. Cordelia cried out and jumped to her feet, racing to follow her—Lucie should not be climbing about on icy rooftops, not in the state she was in—but when she reached the window, she saw only darkness outside, and the swirling snow.

---

Lucie had cried enough on her way back to the Institute that when she had finally crept back inside, and upstairs to her room, she found her hair frozen to her cheeks by crystalline tracks of salt.

She had cleaned herself up as best she could, put on a clean nightgown, and sat down at her desk. Her tears were spent; she felt only an awful hollowness, a terrible missing of Cordelia and a knowledge of her own guilt. She had concealed her relationship—friendship, whatever it was—with Grace; she had concealed Jesse’s whole existence.

But.Cordelia had hidden things too. How she felt about James, for one thing—which normally wouldn’t have been Lucie’s business, but now, she felt, very much was. She loved her brother. Every time Cordelia turned away from him, and the anguish on his face was clear, Lucie wanted to jump up and down and scream.

In the past, she would have poured out her feelings with her pen, but since Jesse’s return she hadn’t been able to write a word. And now it was worse: she kept hearing Cordelia’s voice in her head. It’s like you don’t live in the real world. You live in a world of stories. As if that were a terrible thing.

She slumped back in her chair. “I don’t know what to do,” she said aloud, to no one. “I just don’t.”

“You could command the dead to solve your problems,” said a familiar, waspish voice. Jessamine, the Institute’s resident ghost, was seated atop Lucie’s wardrobe, her long skirts trailing off into indistinct translucence. “It’s what you always do, isn’t it?”

Lucie sighed. “I’ve already apologized to you, Jessamine.” This was true. When Lucie had first returned to her room after getting back from Cornwall, she had delivered an extensive and sincere apology for having controlled the dead against their will. There had been quite a lot of rustling, and she was sure Jessamine had heard her.

Jessamine folded her transparent arms. “Your power is much too dangerous, Lucie. Even in the hands of someone sensible, it would cause trouble, and you are the least sensible person I know.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know I have no plans to use it again.”

“Not good enough.” Jessamine shook her head. “It is one thing to plan not to use your power again, but that’s the problem with power, isn’t it? There’s always some reason to make an exception, just this once. No, you must get rid of it.”

Lucie opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again before she spoke. Jessamine was, she thought with an uncomfortable pang, probably right.

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said truthfully.

Jessamine turned up her nose and began to make a dramatic exit through the wall. “Wait,” said Lucie. “If I said to you, ‘They wake,’ would that mean anything to you?”

“Of course not.” Jessamine sniffed. “What do I know about anyone waking? What kind of fool question is that?”

Lucie doused her witchlight, stood up, and reached for her dressing gown. “I’ve had enough of this,” she said. “I’m going to see Jesse.”

“You can’t!” Scandalized, Jessamine followed Lucie out of the room and down the hall. “This is disgraceful!” she cried, doing somersaults near the ceiling. “A young lady should never see a young gentleman in his bedroom, alone!”

Crossly, Lucie said, “From what I hear from my parents, you snuck out repeatedly to see a single gentleman when you were an unmarried girl, at night. And he turned out to be my evil uncle. Which is certainly not going to happen with Jesse.”

Jessamine gasped. She gasped again when Jesse’s door opened, and he stepped out into the hall, apparently alerted by the ruckus. He wore only trousers and a shirt with the sleeves pulled up, putting a great deal of his admirable forearms on display.

“You were a ghost,” Jessamine said, sounding a little amazed, though Lucie was sure she’d already been aware of Jesse’s return. Still, it must be very odd for Jessamine to see him standing directly in front of her, so entirely alive.

“People change,” said Jesse mildly.

Jessamine, apparently realizing that Lucie meant to carry out her scandalous plan of entering Jesse’s room, gave a squawk and vanished.

Jesse had been holding the door open; Lucie ducked under his arm and immediately realized she hadn’t been in here, not since the moment Jesse had picked the room out, alongside her and her whole family.

It was still spare, as there had not been much time to decorate it—a standard Institute bedroom, with a wardrobe, a desk, a bookshelf, and a four-poster bed. Little bits of Jesse were visible, though. The jacket he had worn at dinner, hung over a chair back. The books on his nightstand. The Blackthorn sword, which had been retrieved from the Sanctuary, was propped against the wall. Lucie’s gold hair comb that he’d purloined on the night of Anna’s party, what felt like so long ago, had pride of place atop the dresser.

She sank down onto his bed as he went to bolt the door. Of course he did—he always seemed to sense when Lucie needed to be alone, or alone together with him, in order to feel safe. “What’s wrong?” he asked, turning back to her.

“I had an awful fight with Cordelia.”

Jesse was silent. She wondered if—compared to everything else—her problem sounded silly. He stayed by the door, clearly anxious—she supposed it was the first time she’d ever been in his room alone with him, and she’d given him no warning.

She had expected that when she and Jesse returned to the Institute, to live there together, they would be in and out of each other’s bedrooms all the time. But Jesse had been relentlessly, scrupulously polite, bidding her goodbye every evening, and never coming to knock on her door. She’d seen more of him at night when he was a ghost.

She sat up straight, realizing as well that she was wearing only a nightgown of white batiste, with a transparent lace dressing gown. The sleeves of the nightgown were loose and tended to slip down her shoulders. She looked at Jesse. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

He exhaled. “I’m glad you’re here. And you look…” His gaze lingered on her. Heat sparked in her chest. “But I keep thinking about…”

“Yes?”

“Your parents,” he said apologetically. “I would not want them to think I was taking advantage of their hospitality. Their very extreme kindness.”

Of course. Her lovely, caring, pesky family. She had already seen the way that Jesse was brightening under the attention from Will and Tessa, becoming more himself. Jesse had never experienced a family where people were fond of each other and loved each other; now that he was in such an environment, he had become paralyzed by the fear of ruining it. And while she could recognize that this was good for Jesse, it did mean that he did everything in his power to assure Will—even when Will wasn’t there—that his attentions toward Lucie were honorable. Which she didn’t entirely want them to be.

“My parents,” she said, “got up to the most scandalous stuff you can imagine when they were our age. Believe me when I say they will not reject you out of hand if they find out I came to you for sympathy and sat on the end of your bed.”

He still looked worried. Lucie wound a strand of her hair around a finger and looked at him with her largest eyes. Turning a little to the side, she let one of her sleeves slip down her shoulder.

Jesse made an incoherent sort of noise. A moment later he sank down on the bed beside her, though not too close. Still, a small victory.

“Luce,” he said. His voice was warm and rich and kind. “What happened with you and Cordelia?”

She told him quickly: everything from her visit to Cordelia to her silent ride home in a hansom cab after nearly falling off the Carstairs’ roof. “It’s like she never wanted to be parabatai at all,” Lucie finished. “There’s nothing more important to me in all the world, and she’s just—throwing it away.”

“It might be easier,” Jesse said, “to behave as if she wants to throw it away than to acknowledge that it’s being taken from her against her will.”

“But if she wanted it—if she wanted to be my parabatai—”

“She can’t, Lucie. As long as she’s the paladin of Lilith, she cannot be your parabatai. So, like you, she shares the loss of the parabatai bond, but unlike you, she knows it’s her fault.”

“If she cared,” Lucie said, knowing she was being stubborn, “she would fight for it. It’s like she’s saying we were never special to each other. We were just ordinary friends. Not like—not like I thought.”

Jesse stroked her hair back from her face, his fingers gentle. Careful. “My Lucie,” he breathed. “You know it’s the people who we love the most who can hurt us the most.”

“I know she is upset.” Lucie pressed her cheek into his hand. They had moved closer to each other, somehow; she was almost in his lap. “I know she feels I kept secrets from her, and I did. But she kept secrets from me. It’s hard to explain, but when someone is your parabatai, or nearly, and you feel distant from them, it is like a piece has been cut out of your heart.” She bit her lip. “I don’t mean to be dramatic.”

“It’s not dramatic.” As if mesmerized, Jesse trailed his fingers along her cheek, to her lips. He touched her mouth with his fingertips, and she saw his eyes darken. “That’s how I feel when I am away from you.”

She lifted her hand to the ribbon that held her dressing gown closed. Her eyes fixed on Jesse, she drew slowly on the ribbon until it came undone, until the dressing gown slipped down her shoulders and fell to the bed, a pool of lace and satin. She was only in her nightgown now, her skin flooded with goose bumps, all her thoughts a silent whisper: I want to forget. Take it all away, all the pain, all the loss.

It was as if he could hear her. Jesse cupped her face in his hands and brought her mouth to his—carefully, reverently, as if he were drinking from the Mortal Cup. Their lips touched lightly at first, and then with increasing pressure, he kissed her over and over as his breathing sped up, his heart racing. She could feel it against her, his live and beating heart, and it made her want to feel even more.

She threw decorum to the winds. She opened her mouth to his, traced his bottom lip with a pointed tongue, caught at the front of his shirt, her body arching into his until he melted into her. Until she was sure no fear of her parents, no misguided sense of duty, was going to tear him away.

She sank back against his pillows and he rose over her. The look on his face was wondering, hungry. She was trembling: she could not imagine what this flood of sensation was like for him, who had felt so little for so long. “Can I touch you?” she whispered.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes. Please.”

She ran her hands over him, his arms and shoulders, the wiry length of his torso. The heat of him, feverish under her touch. He shivered and kissed her throat, making her gasp like a heroine in a novel. She was beginning to understand why heroines in novels did the things they did. It was all rather worth it for experiences like this.

“My turn,” he said, stilling her hands. “Let me touch you. Tell me to stop”—he kissed the corner of her mouth—“if you want me to.”

His fingers, long and pale and clever, traced the lines of her face, over her mouth, down her throat, danced along her collarbones, cupped her bare shoulders. The green of his eyes had burned away to black. He shaped her body under his hands, over the slight curves of her breasts, the dip of her waist, until his hands were bunched in the fabric at her hips.

“I dreamed of this,” he said. “Of being able to touch you. Really touch you. I could always only half feel you—and I imagined what it would be like—I tortured myself with it—”

“It is it like what you thought?” Lucie whispered.

“I think it might break me,” he said, and stretched out above her. “You might break me, Lucie,” and he drove his mouth against hers, hot and demanding. Parting her lips with his, his tongue stroking along hers, making her arch up against him in her desperation to feel his heartbeat close to hers.

“Oh God,” he whispered against her mouth, and she thought, Of course, he’s never learned to call out to the Angel, like we do. “Oh God, Lucie,” and she wanted to fall apart in pieces so that he could fit more closely with her, wanted to break so she could be joined back together with him.

And then the darkness came down. That same darkness she had felt before, the feeling of losing her footing, of falling away from the world. An uncontrolled descent, her stomach dropping, her struggle to surface through a sea of utter darkness. All around her were voices wailing in despair, ragged shadows reaching out to her, crying out because they had been lost, somehow exiled and wandering. Something had been taken from them, something precious. She seemed to see the gleam of a familiar shape, but it had been wrenched out of recognition—

“Lucie! Lucie!” She sat up, gasping, her heart pounding. She was on Jesse’s bed, and he was kneeling over her, his face white with fear. “Lucie, what happened? Please tell me I didn’t hurt you—”

“No,” she whispered. “It wasn’t you—not anything you did—”

“It has to be,” Jesse said, a sudden wrench of self-loathing in his voice. “Because I’m unnatural, because I was dead—”

She caught at his hand. She knew she was probably crushing his fingers, but she couldn’t help it. “No,” she said again, in a stronger voice. “It’s something in me. I can feel it.” She looked at him anxiously. “When I kiss you, I hear—” She shook her head. “Voices crying out. They seem to be telling me of something terrible, something awful that is happening far away, perhaps in another world.” Her eyes burned. “Somewhere beyond where I, or anyone, should be able to see.”

“Malcolm told me that you walked in shadow when you raised me,” Jesse said softly. “It is possible, I suppose, that some of that shadow still clings to you. But it cannot only be you. I lived very close to the edge of death for a long time, and you have always been able to cross that border. It has to be the two of us combined, somehow. Something amplified when we touch.”

“Then I had better contact Malcolm.” Lucie felt unutterably weary. She had so hoped that part of her life was behind her—bargains with warlocks, desperate conversations about Jesse, the shadow of death touching everything she did or was. “He may know if there’s some way to make it go away.” She flung her head back fiercely. “Because I am not letting you go. Not now.”

“No.” Jesse pressed his lips to her hair. “I do not think I could bear to be let go by you, Lucie Herondale. I think I would follow you, even if you ordered me away. I am alive because of you, but not only because you commanded me to live. I am alive because my life has you in it.”

Lucie’s eyes burned, but tears seemed pointless. Useless. Instead she kissed Jesse—quickly, on the cheek—and let him wrap her in her dressing gown, his arms lingering around her, before she crept back out into the corridor.

She barely recalled returning to her room. It was nearly dark, the fire burning low in the grate. Still, there was some dim moonlight coming through the panes of her windows. It was enough. Sitting down at her desk, she took up her pen and began to write.