Fullepub 
Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Summer had come late toLondon this year, Cordelia thought, and at Chiswick House it seemed to have come even later, as if the place possessed its own distinct climate. Despite the blue sky overhead, the gardens of the manor seemed cast into shadow; the trees were cloaked in green, but few flowers had bloomed in the overgrown gardens. Cordelia found herself reminded of the first time she’d seen the house: at night, in demon-haunted darkness, the wind itself seeming to whisper, Go, you are not wanted here.
Now, things were different. The manor itself had not changed, perhaps, but Cordelia had. She was not here only with Lucie, embarking on a clandestine mission, but rather surrounded by her friends, her family, her husband, and her parabatai. She would not have minded had it been snowing. In this group, she could not help but be content.
The ground had been hard, rocky, and difficult to dig out; it had taken them most of the morning—even trading turns with the shovels—to hollow out a rectangle in the ground that would fit Jesse’s old coffin, which was balanced precariously at the edge of the hole.
They had brought picnic baskets—though they did not intend to picnic here—and had made inroads into the ginger beer; everyone was a bit sweaty and dirty, and the boys had all stripped off their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves. James had done a great deal of the digging, which Cordelia had enjoyed watching. He consulted briefly with Matthew now, and, apparently having decided that the hole was big enough, he turned to the rest of the group: Lucie and Jesse, Thomas and Alastair, Anna and Ari, Matthew (and Oscar), Cordelia, and Grace.
“All right,” James said, leaning on his shovel like the gravedigger in Hamlet. “Who wants to start?”
They all looked at each other—a bit sheepishly, like children caught breaking a rule. (Well, not Anna. Anna never looked sheepish.) But it had been Matthew’s idea in the first place, so in the end all eyes fell upon Matthew, who had knelt down to ruffle Oscar’s head.
Matthew looked amused. “I see,” he said. “Very well. I shall show you how it’s done.”
Oscar barked as Matthew strode up to Jesse’s empty coffin, its lid thrown back. The trees cast the shadows of leaves across it, and across Matthew’s green waistcoat. His hair had grown long since the winter, almost touching his collar. He had been training hard and no longer looked too thin. There was a depth to his smile that had not been there when Cordelia had first come to London; it had not been there even when they had been in Paris together.
With a flourish, Matthew slid a bottle of brandy from inside his waistcoat. It was full, the dark amber liquid flashing gold in the sun. “Here,” he said, bending to lay it in the coffin. “I don’t think that anyone will be surprised by my choice.”
Cordelia doubted anyone was. When winter had turned into spring, they had all felt as if they were finally coming out of a long darkness into light. It was Anna who had first remarked that in summer, they would be scattering from London, separating each of them from the group who had been their support through the long months after January. James and Cordelia would be going on their honeymoon, Matthew on his voyage; Alastair and Thomas would be off helping Sona move back into Cirenworth (her desire to move to Tehran had rather miraculously evaporated after a months-long visit from her family following Zachary’s birth), and Anna and Ari would soon be in India. Life was resuming, however much they had all changed, and to mark the occasion Matthew had suggested this ceremony, in which each of them would bury a symbol of the past.
“It doesn’t need to be something terrible,” Matthew had said. “Just something you wish to let go of, or regard as part of your past, not your future.”
He had smiled a bit ruefully at Cordelia when he had said it. There had been a distance between them since January—not a distance of hostility or anger; but that closeness she had felt with him in Paris was gone, the sense of how well they understood one another. Paradoxically, Matthew had only grown closer to James, and to Thomas, and even Alastair. “You have to let his heart heal,” James had said. “That can only be managed with a bit of distance. It will resolve itself in time.”
A bit of distance.Only Matthew would be going a great distance, very soon, and for how long, Cordelia did not know.
Matthew rose, brushed off his hands, and sauntered over to throw a stick for Oscar. Oscar bounded across the grass, stopped, and sniffed the air suspiciously.
Squaring her shoulders, Ari came up to take Matthew’s place. She wore a simple rose-colored day dress, her hair pinned in a loose chignon. She held up a folded sheet of paper, slightly charred around the edges. “This is the letter my father wrote in his attempt to blackmail Charles,” she said. “To me, it symbolizes a standard he held me to, one to which he did not hold himself. This is what my father wanted me to be—a false image. Not who I am. Not who I hope he will someday learn to be.”
As she dropped it into the coffin beside the brandy bottle, her eyes were sad. Maurice Bridgestock was still in Idris, having been stripped of his role as Inquisitor. He would soon be traveling to Wrangel Island, a lonely place where he would take up the task of guarding wards. Mrs. Bridgestock had applied for a divorce, but far from seeming despondent, she appeared liberated by her new independence, and had welcomed Anna—and all of Ari’s friends—into her home. It was a warm and happy place to visit, but Cordelia could not blame Ari for regretting what had happened to her father, or wishing he had been a better man. It was a feeling she herself knew all too well.
Thomas was next. A paradox, was their Thomas—he bore the marks of the loss of Christopher more visibly than any of the rest of them, in lines beside his eyes that had not been there before and were unusual in someone so young. (Cordelia thought they gave him character.) But there was also a new peace to him. He had always seemed to be trying to make himself smaller in a body he found ungainly; now he was at ease, as if he at last saw himself the way Alastair saw him: tall and graceful and strong.
Like Ari, he held up a piece of paper, though this one was not slightly charred; rather, it was extremely charred. “I shall bury one of the very earliest attempts at fire-messages,” he said, “in which I may have penned some regrettable things.”
Alastair smiled. “I recall that one.”
Thomas let the paper fall. “It represents a time when I didn’t know what I wanted.” He looked at Alastair, the connection between them almost palpable. “But that is no longer the case.”
Alastair took the spot after Thomas; as they passed each other, their hands touched lightly. They were always touching—Alastair straightening Thomas’s tie, Thomas ruffling Alastair’s hair—much to Sona’s amusement. Cordelia found it quite sweet.
As Matthew had, Alastair held up a bottle, though this one was small, with a block-printed label. For a moment Cordelia wondered if it was alcohol—perhaps he was putting away thoughts of their father?—before she realized it was not that at all. It was an empty vial of hair dye. Alastair dropped it into the coffin with a wry smile. “A sign,” he said, “that I have discovered that my hair looks much better in its natural state.”
“Don’t rubbish blonds,” said Matthew, but he was smiling as Cordelia moved to take her brother’s place.
Alastair nodded encouragingly at her as she went to stand beside Jesse’s coffin. She looked out at her friends, feeling oddly as if she were onstage, though with a far friendlier audience than the Hell Ruelle. She sought Lucie’s smile, and then James’s, before taking a deep breath and reaching for the empty scabbard at her waist.
She drew it free, looking at it consideringly. It was truly a thing of loveliness. Steel like silver, inlaid with deeper gold, etched with runes and leaves, flowers and vines. The light that filtered through the branches above illuminated its beauty.
“I thought for a long time,” Cordelia said, turning the scabbard over in her hands, “about what to put behind me. I had thought it should be something to do with Lilith. But in the end I chose this. It is a lovely thing. And because it was beautiful, my father wanted to give it to me, and because of that, he was late to my wedding and drunk when he did arrive.” She took a deep breath, feeling Matthew’s eyes on her. “He never quite understood that I did not want pretty gifts. I wanted him. My father, beside me. And—I never spoke those words to him. I kept them secret in my heart.” She bent to lay the scabbard down; it lay sparkling among the odd assortment of items in the coffin. She said, “Had I told the truth to my father, it might not have changed things, but it would have changed my regrets. Had I told the truth to all of you about my plan to seek Wayland the Smith, I might have been spared a terrible mistake.” She rose to her feet. “What I am putting behind me is the keeping of secrets. Not every secret”—she smiled a little—“but the kind we keep because of shame, or some imagined failing that others will judge. Our failings are always more monstrous in our own eyes than any others’; in the eyes of those who love us, we are forgiven.”
Lucie clapped her hands loudly. “Now that you have a parabatai,” she said, “you will never need to keep secrets again! At least not from me,” she added. “You can keep secrets from the rest of these heathens here, if you like.”
There was a chorus of cheerful boos. “Lucie, dear,” said Anna. “Don’t give Cordelia terrible advice. We all want to hear what she has to say, no matter how scandalous. In fact, especially if it’s scandalous.” She grinned lazily.
“Anna,” Matthew said, in a mock-serious tone, “is it not your turn now? What will you be contributing?”
Anna sketched a wave on the air. “Nothing. I like everything I have and I approve of everything I’ve done.”
Even Alastair laughed at that, and Ari laid her head against Anna’s shoulder. Anna’s waistcoat had rose stripes to match Ari’s dress, Cordelia noticed—Anna had taken to matching bits of her outfits to what Ari was wearing, which for Anna was a commitment more serious than marriage runes.
“Well.” They all looked around at that; Grace rarely spoke, and it was always something of a surprise to hear her voice. “As someone who has many regrets, I will take the next turn. If there are no objections.”
No one said a word, and Grace walked quietly up to the coffin that had been her brother’s. In the past months, she had settled into a place among them, a part of their group as Jesse’s sister. It was undeniable that without her completion of Christopher’s research, it was unlikely they would have achieved a victory against Belial. And Christopher’s words—that if they forever blamed her for her past actions, they would be no better than Tatiana—had stayed with them all.
Even so, it had been an uneasy truce. Once James had told his parents the tale of the bracelet and the curse, they had been devastated. Cordelia had been there, had seen how acutely they felt James’s pain, more acutely than they would ever, she imagined, feel pain of their own. And they had carried the guilt of parents, that they should have seen, should have guessed, should have protected their son.
James had protested, explained: the very evil of the bracelet was that it prevented knowledge, protection, help. They were not at fault. Still, it was a wound, and Grace had moved quietly out of the Institute that day, and into the Consul’s house, where she was helping Henry reorganize his laboratory.
Jesse had worried—would it be awkward for her there, considering her history with Charles? But Grace had demurred: Charlotte and Henry knew everything, and she and Charles had achieved an understanding. Though Charles had been very angry indeed at first, he professed himself now grateful that Grace had disrupted his plans to marry Ari, which would have made them both miserable. He was in Idris now, working for the new Inquisitor, Kazuo Satō. (Charles sent back letters sometimes, usually to Matthew but sometimes to Ari, with news of her father. They would have made a ghastly married couple, Ari said, but as friends, they got on surprisingly well.)
Where it came to Grace, everyone’s eyes had been on James, who after all was the one to whom she had dealt the greatest hurt. To everyone’s surprise, his anger at her seemed to fade quickly with the death of Belial. One night, in bed with James, Cordelia had said, “I know it is not something we speak of very often, but everyone is looking to you when they try to decide how to manage with Grace. And you seem to have forgiven her.” She had rolled onto her side, looking at him curiously. “Have you?”
He had rolled onto his side too, so they faced each other. His eyes were lambent gold, the color of firelight, and they left heat behind where they traced the shape of her shoulder, the curve of her neck. She did not think she would ever stop wanting him, and he had shown no sign of feeling any differently about her. “I suppose we have not spoken about it because I rarely think of it,” he said. “Telling everyone was the difficult part. After that… Well, I do not know if it is forgiveness. But I find I cannot be angry at her when I have so much, and she has so little.”
“You don’t think you need to speak to her? Hear her apologize?” Cordelia had asked, and James had shaken his head.
“No. It is not something I need. As for her, she will always be marked by her childhood and the things she has done. What would punishment or apologies add to that?”’
The things she has done.Cordelia thought of James’s words as Grace held up two silver crescents. The shattered remains of the cursed bracelet. She looked over at James, her gray eyes level. She had a scar on her cheek now, not from the battle at Westminster, but from a beaker that had exploded in the Fairchilds’ laboratory.
James nodded at her, and Cordelia realized: there needed to be no more conversation than this to resolve what had happened between Grace and James. It was long over, and James’s past pain had been absorbed into who he was now: it was the memory of a needle that could no longer draw blood.
Grace dropped the broken bracelet into the coffin; the pieces rattled against something glass. She looked at them for a long moment before turning and walking away, her back straight, her fair hair lifted by the wind.
She went to Jesse’s side. He laid a hand on her shoulder before making his own way up to the coffin. Out of all of them, Cordelia thought, he had changed the most since January. He had still been pale and thin then, especially for a Shadowhunter, despite his determination to work and train, to learn the skills of strength and balance that had been instilled in most Shadowhunters from early childhood. Now, with the passage of months—months in which he had trained nearly every day with Matthew and James, until he could scramble up the ropes dangling from the training room ceiling without even breathing hard—he was lean and strong, his skin a shade darker from the sun, and Marked with new runes. All the fine clothes Anna had helped him choose had needed to be let out, and let out again, to accommodate the new shape of his body. He no longer looked like a boy who had grown up in shadow: he was nearly a man, and a strong and healthy one at that.
He held up a jagged bit of metal, bright in the sun—the broken hilt of the Blackthorn sword, Cordelia realized. The etched circle of thorns was still visible against the blackened cross guard. “I,” said Jesse steadily, “am letting go of the complicated history of my family. Of being a Blackthorn. There is, of course,” he added, “nothing inherently evil about any family. Every family has members who are good, and those who are less so. But the terrible things my mother did, she did after taking that name. She hung the Blackthorn sword on the wall above my coffin because it was so important to her that even in near death I be reminded always that I was her idea of a Blackthorn. So I’m burying what my mother thought it meant to be a Blackthorn; I am putting it behind me, and I will start again as a new sort of Blackthorn. The kind I choose to be.”
He laid the broken hilt among the other objects, and for a moment stood, looking at the coffin that had been his prison for so long. When he turned his back on it, it was with a determined air, and he strode over to join Lucie with his head held high.
And it was Lucie’s turn next. She squeezed Jesse’s hand before approaching the coffin. She had told Cordelia earlier what she was bringing—a drawing of a Pyxis, taken from the flat of the warlock Emmanuel Gast.
Cordelia knew Lucie still felt guilt over what had happened with Gast—indeed, over every time she had commanded the dead, though with Gast it had been worst. Lucie’s ability to see ghosts remained, but the power to command them had vanished along with Belial’s death. Lucie had confided to Cordelia that she was glad to be rid of it—she would never even be tempted to use it now.
She did not speak as she let the paper fall: Lucie, usually so full of words, seemed to have none to speak now. She watched it flutter its way down, her hands at her sides, only looking up when James came to join her beside the grave—no, Cordelia reminded herself, it was not a grave: this was a farewell of sorts, but not that kind.
Standing beside Lucie, James looked at Cordelia. Here, among the shadows, his eyes were the color of sunlight. Then he gazed around at the others, as slowly he drew his battered pistol from his belt. “I almost feel I should apologize to Christopher,” he said. “He spent so much time—and destroyed so many objects—trying to get this to work.” A rueful smile flitted across his face. “And yet, I am putting it behind me. Not because it no longer fires at my command, though that is true—but because it only ever worked for me because of Belial, and Belial is gone. The powers conferred upon me and upon Lucie due to him were never gifts—they were always burdens. They were a weight, a heavy one. A weight we both set aside with relief.” He glanced sideways at Lucie, who nodded, her eyes bright. “I like to think Christopher would have understood,” James said, and knelt to lay the gun flat in the coffin.
He expelled a deep breath, as someone might when, having walked a long and dusty road, they finally found a place to rest. He took the coffin lid in his hands and shut it with an audible click. As he rose to his feet, the whole group was silent; even Anna was no longer smiling, but looked thoughtful, her blue eyes grave.
“Well,” James said, “that’s everything.”
“Constantinople,” James said to Cordelia.
They were sitting on a yellow picnic blanket, flung across the green grass of Hyde Park. The Serpentine glittered silver in the distance; all around were their friends, setting down blankets and baskets; Matthew was rolling in the grass with Oscar, who was trying desperately to lick his face. At any moment, Cordelia knew, their families would arrive, but for this moment, it was just them.
Cordelia leaned back against James. She was sitting between his legs, her back to his chest. He was playing delicately with her hair; she supposed she ought to tell him that he would soon loosen all the pins and create a coiffure disaster, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind. “What about it?”
“It’s hard to believe that we’ll be there in a fortnight.” He wrapped his arms around her. “On our honeymoon.”
“Really? It all seems quite ordinary to me. Ho-hum.” Cordelia grinned at him over her shoulder. In truth, she could hardly believe any of it. She still woke up in the morning and pinched herself when she realized she was in the same bed as James. That they were married—now with their full sets of wedding runes, though she could not think about that without blushing.
They had turned the room that had once been James’s room into a planning room, in which, James had said grandly, gesturing about with a pencil behind his ear, they would plan adventures. They had traveled to Constantinople and Shanghai and Timbuktu already in their minds and imaginations; now they would go there in reality. They would see the world, together, and to that end they had pinned up maps and train timetables and the addresses of Institutes all over the world.
“But what will happen when you have children, with all this gallivanting?” Will had grumbled in mock despair, but James had only laughed and said they would take them along wherever they went, perhaps in specially designed luggage.
“You’re a cruel mistress, Daisy,” he said now, and kissed her. Cordelia shivered all over; Rosamund had once told her kissing Thoby was boring, but Cordelia could not imagine becoming bored with kissing James. She shifted closer to him on the blanket, as he brought up one hand to gently cup her face—
“Oi!” Alastair yelled over good-naturedly. “Stop kissing my sister!”
Cordelia drew back from James and laughed. She knew Alastair didn’t actually mind—he was at home now in their group of friends, at home enough to tease. Never again would he worry whether he was welcome at a meeting in the Devil Tavern, or at a party or late-night gathering at Anna’s. Attitudes toward her brother had changed, but even more than that, he had changed. It was as if he had been locked in a room, and Thomas had opened the door: Alastair now seemed to feel free to express the love and affection for his friends and family he had always tamped down and hidden away. He had truly astonished Sona and Cordelia with the attention he paid to his new baby brother. As long as Alastair was there, Zachary Arash never needed to fear being alone for a second: Alastair was always holding him, always tossing him into the air and catching him while he squealed. He rarely came home from a day out without a rattle or a toy to keep the baby entertained.
One night after dinner at Cornwall Gardens, Cordelia had passed the drawing room in her mother’s house and seen Alastair sitting on the sofa with the baby—a swaddled mass of blankets with two pink fists visible, waving as Alastair sang, in a low voice, a Persian melody Cordelia half remembered: You are the moon in the sky, and I am the star that circles around you.
It was a song their father had sung to them when they were very small. How things came full circle, Cordelia could not help but think, in the last ways one would expect.
“Bakewell tarts,” said Jesse. “Bridget’s outdone herself.”
He and Lucie were unpacking a picnic hamper the size of Buckingham Palace onto a blue-and-white-checked blanket that Lucie had laid upon the lawn under a cluster of sweet chestnut trees.
Bridget had outdone herself—every time Lucie thought the basket must be empty, Jesse brought out another treat: ham sandwiches, cold chicken and mayonnaise, meat pies, strawberries, Bakewell tarts and Eccles cakes, cheese and grapes, lemonade and ginger beer. Ever since Bridget had recovered from her injury at Westminster, she had been wildly active in the kitchen: in fact, she’d seemed to have more energy than ever. The gray threads had disappeared from her head; Will had remarked that it was as if she were aging backward. Even her songs had become more frequent, and more gruesome.
“I’m hiding a few. Otherwise Thomas will eat them all,” Jesse said, setting aside several of the Bakewell tarts. As he moved, a thick black Mark on his right forearm flashed. Home. It was a rarely used Mark, symbolic rather than practical, like the runes for grief and happiness.
He had gotten it the day he returned from Idris, after his trial by Mortal Sword. Though most of the Clave’s concerns about Will and Tessa’s loyalties had been put to rest by their testimonies—and the death of Belial—the question of Jesse, and Lucie’s actions in raising him, had remained an open one. The Clave had wanted to speak with them both, but Jesse had been insistent: he wanted to stand trial by Mortal Sword alone. He wanted it known that he was Tatiana’s son, and that she had kept him half-alive until Lucie had done what she’d done—that Lucie was innocent of necromancy. He no longer wished to pretend to be Jeremy Blackthorn. He wanted to be known as who he was, and face whatever consequences came.
After all, he said, a trial would reveal how hard he had fought against Belial, how he had never cooperated with him or any demon. Lucie knew he also hoped his testimony would help not only her but also Grace, and while Lucie had respected his wishes and not accompanied him to Alicante—she had spent the two days he was gone tearing out bits of her hair and writing a novella entitled Heroic Prince Jethro Defeats the Evil Council of Darkness—she suspected it had.
When Jesse had returned from Idris, his name had been cleared and so had Lucie’s. He was now officially Jesse Blackthorn, and there was a new resolve in him. To be part of the Enclave, to hold his head high among them—after all, many of them had seen him fight bravely at Westminster, even knew he had helped. He patrolled, attended meetings, accompanied Lucie to her parabatai ceremony with Cordelia. The Home Mark, which was permanent, had been given to him by Will, who had also presented him with the gift of a stele that had once belonged to Will’s father (and had now been modified to create fire-messages, as all current steles were). They were both gifts, Lucie thought, the rune and the stele—a sort of welcome combined, she hoped, with a promise.
“You can’t tease Thomas for always being hungry when you’re always hungry,” Lucie pointed out.
“Even hours of training a day—” Jesse began indignantly, then narrowed his eyes. “Luce. What’s wrong?”
“There. On the bench,” she whispered.
She was aware of him turning to look: a row of park benches had been set up along the edges of a low fence, not far from a stone statue of a boy with a dolphin. On one of the benches sat Malcolm Fade, wearing a cream-colored linen suit and a straw hat pulled low over his eyes. Despite the hat, Lucie could tell he was looking at her with a focused concentration.
Her stomach did a small flip. She had not seen Malcolm since the Christmas party at the Institute, and it seemed as if a lifetime had passed since.
He crooked a finger in her direction, as if to say, Come and speak to me.
She hesitated. “I ought to go talk to him.”
Jesse frowned. “I don’t like it. Let me come with you.”
Part of Lucie wished she could ask Jesse to accompany her. She could not really see Malcolm’s face, but she felt the intensity with which he was looking at her, and she was not sure it was entirely friendly. Yet a larger part of her knew that she was the one who had bound herself to Malcolm with a promise. A promise that had now gone long unaddressed.
She glanced around; no one else in their group seemed to have noticed the warlock. Matthew was lying in the grass, face turned up to the sun, while Thomas and Alastair played fetch with Oscar; James and Cordelia had eyes only for each other, and Anna and Ari were down by the riverbank, deep in conversation.
“It’ll be all right—you’ll be able to see me. If I need you, I’ll signal,” Lucie said, dropping a kiss on Jesse’s head as she rose to her feet. He was still frowning as she set off across the grass toward Malcolm.
As she drew closer to the High Warlock, she noticed how different he looked since she’d last seen him. He had always been well put together, his outfits carefully considered for fit and fashion, but he seemed a bit shabby around the edges now. There were holes in the sleeves of his white linen jacket, and what looked like bits of flowers and hay stuck to his boots.
She sat down gingerly on the park bench, not close to Malcolm, though not so far away as to insult him. She folded her hands in her lap and gazed out over the park. She could see her friends on their bright picnic blankets; Oscar a pale gold shadow darting back and forth. Jesse, watching her with serious eyes.
“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it,” Malcolm said. His voice was remote. “When I left London, the ground was covered in ice.”
“Indeed,” Lucie said carefully. “Malcolm, where have you been? I thought I would have seen you after the Westminster battle.” When he said nothing, she went on. “It’s been six months, and—”
That seemed to surprise him. “Six months, you say? I was in the green land of Faerie. For me it has been a matter of weeks.”
Lucie was astonished. She had not heard of warlocks traveling to Faerie often—if at all. But it did explain the grass and flowers on his boots. She could ask him why he’d gone, she supposed, but she sensed the question would not be welcome. Instead she said, “Malcolm, my power is gone. You must have guessed—since Belial died, I can no longer command the dead.” He said nothing. “I am sorry—”
“I had hoped,” he interrupted, “that perhaps your power might have started to return. Like an injury healing.” He still looked out over the grass in front of them, as though searching for something there and not finding it.
“No,” Lucie said. “It hasn’t come back. I don’t think it ever will. It was tied to my grandfather, and it died with his death.”
“Have you tried? Have you tried to use it?”
“I have,” Lucie said slowly. “Jessamine allowed me to attempt it. But it didn’t work, and—I’m glad of it. I am sorry if I cannot help you, but I am not sorry the power is gone. It would not have been a kindness to use it on Annabel. I understand you still grieve for her, but—”
Malcolm glanced at her and then away, so quickly that Lucie was only conscious of the flaring fury in his eyes, the twist of his mouth. He looked as if he would slap her if he could. “You understand nothing,” he hissed, “and like all Shadowhunters, when you make a promise to a Downworlder, you will inevitably break it.”
Shaken, Lucie said, “Could I not help you some other way? I could try to get some kind of restitution from the Clave, an apology for what was done to Annabel—”
“No.”He flung himself to his feet. “I will get my own restitution. The Nephilim have reached the end of their usefulness for me.” He looked past Lucie, then, at Jesse. Jesse with his black hair and green eyes, Jesse with his resemblance to the family portraits in Chiswick House. Was Malcolm thinking how much Jesse looked like Annabel, like all his ancestors? His face was without emotion—the fury had gone from it, leaving only a sort of calculating blankness. “I will not trust a Shadowhunter again,” he said, and without another glance at her, walked away.
She sat for a moment on the bench, unmoving. She could not help but blame herself. She should never have made foolish promises, should not have said she would use her power, even after what had happened to Gast. She had not meant to take advantage of Malcolm—she had meant to keep her end of the bargain, however she might have regretted making it. But she knew he would never believe that.
Jesse was on his feet when she returned to the picnic blanket. He caught her hand, his expression troubled. “I was about to come over there—”
“It’s all right,” Lucie said. “He’s upset with me. I did make him a promise and break it. I feel awful.”
Jesse shook his head. “There’s nothing you could have done. You did not know the power would be extinguished,” he said. “In the end, his anger is not at you. It is at what happened a long time ago. I only hope he can let go of it. Nothing can be done for Annabel now, and dwelling on the past will poison his future.”
“When did you get so wise?” she whispered, and Jesse drew her into the circle of his arms. For a moment they stayed as they were, reveling in each other’s closeness. It was a wonder to be able to hold Jesse, to touch him without awful darkness surrounding her, Lucie thought. And, more practically, it was rather nice to be in Jesse’s arms without her parents watching them like hawks. Though they lived together in the Institute, they were strictly forbidden from visiting each other’s rooms unless the doors were left open; no amount of complaining on Lucie’s part would budge Will. “I’m sure you and Mother got up to all sorts of scandalous things when you lived together in the Institute,” Lucie had said.
“Exactly,” Will replied darkly.
Tessa had laughed. “Maybe when you’re engaged, we can loosen the rules,” she said cheerfully.
It was not Jesse’s fault they were not engaged, Lucie thought now; she’d told him they could marry when she sold her first novel, and he seemed to think that was a fine timeline. She was working on it now: The Beautiful Cordelia and Secret Princess Lucie Defeat the Wicked Powers of Darkness.
Jesse had suggested she shorten the title. Lucie had said she would think about it. She was beginning to see the value in critique.
She let herself forget her sadness over Malcolm now, as she tipped her face back and smiled up at Jesse.
“You told me once you don’t believe in endings, happy or otherwise,” he said, his calloused hand gently cradling the back of her head. “Is that still true?”
“Of course,” she said. “We have so much yet ahead—good, bad, and everything else. I believe this is our happy middle. Don’t you?”
And he kissed her, which Lucie took confidently to mean that he agreed.
“I do not see,” Alastair said as Oscar deposited a stick at his feet, “why this hound here got a medal. None of the rest of us got a medal.”
“Well, it isn’t an official medal,” said Thomas, dropping to his knees in the grass to rub Oscar’s head and muddle his ears about. “You do know that.”
“The Consul presented it,” Alastair said, kneeling down as well. He caught at the little medallion attached to Oscar’s collar. It was etched with the words OSCAR WILDE, HERO DOG. Charlotte had presented it to Matthew, saying that as far as she was concerned, Oscar had done as much as any human to save London.
“Because the Consul is the mother of the dog’s owner,” pointed out Thomas, trying—and failing—to prevent Oscar from licking his face.
“Terrible favoritism,” Alastair said.
A year ago, perhaps Thomas would have thought Alastair was being serious; now he knew he was being ridiculous on purpose. He was quite a bit sillier than anyone gave him credit for. A year ago, Thomas would never have been able to picture Alastair down on his knees in the mud and grass with a dog. He would not have been able to picture Alastair smiling, much less smiling at him, and it would have been far beyond his wildest imaginings to picture what kissing Alastair would be like.
Now, he and Alastair would be helping Sona move, along with baby Zachary, to Cirenworth, and after that, Thomas would be joining Alastair to live at Cornwall Gardens. (Thomas still remembered Alastair asking him if he would like it if they lived together; Alastair had been clearly terrified that Thomas would say no, and Thomas had had to kiss him and kiss him until he was pushed up against a wall and breathless before he finally believed that Thomas’s answer was yes.)
Thomas had wondered if he’d be nervous about the move, but found he was only excited at the thought of a home with Alastair. (No matter how much Cordelia teased him that Alastair snored sometimes and left his dirty socks about.) He’d been nervous to tell his parents the truth about himself and his feelings for Alastair too. He’d chosen an ordinary night in February when they were all gathered in the drawing room: Sophie had been knitting something for Charlotte, Gideon had been looking over some papers for the Clave, and Eugenia had been reading Esme Hardcastle’s History of the Shadowhunters of London and screaming with laughter. Everything had been quite entirely ordinary until Thomas had stood up in front of the fireplace and cleared his throat loudly.
Everyone had looked at him, Sophie’s knitting needles arrested in mid-motion.
“I am in love with Alastair Carstairs,” Thomas had said loudly and slowly, so there could be no mistake, “and I am going to spend the rest of my life with him.”
There had been a momentary silence.
“I didn’t think you even liked Alastair,” Gideon had said, looking puzzled. “Not much, at least.”
Eugenia had tossed her book to the floor. Rising to her feet, she regarded her parents—the whole room, in fact, even the cat asleep by the window—with a magnificent righteousness. “If anyone here condemns Thomas for who he is or who he loves,” she had announced, “he and I will leave this house immediately. I will reside with him and renounce the rest of you as my family.”
Thomas was wondering in alarm how he would explain this business of Eugenia residing with him to Alastair, when Sophie put down her reading glasses with a click. “Eugenia,” she had said, “do not be ridiculous. No one here is going to condemn Thomas.”
Thomas had exhaled in relief. Eugenia had looked slightly deflated. “No?”
“No,” Gideon had said firmly.
Sophie looked at Thomas, her eyes full of affection. “Thomas, my darling, we love you and we want you to be happy. If Alastair makes you happy, then we are delighted. Although it would be nice if you introduced us,” she added pointedly. “Perhaps you could bring him to dinner?”
Eugenia might feel let down, but Thomas didn’t. He had always known his parents loved him, but knowing that they loved the whole truth of him felt like putting down something very heavy that he’d been carrying for a long time, without realizing the weight of it.
Alastair had indeed come to dinner and charmed them all, and it had led to many other dinners—delicious Persian dinners at the Carstairs’, and even dinner at the Bridgestocks’, with all the families gathered. Now that Maurice was gone, Flora had found a new delight in entertaining, and Thomas was pleased to see Anna so happy—so loving with Ari, and so free with her laughter and smiles, as she had not been since she was a child. In fact, he and Alastair would be looking after Winston the parrot while Ari, Flora, and Anna went to India to visit the places Ari had lived as a child and seek out her grandmother’s relatives, her aunts and uncles.
Alastair had already taught Winston some rude words in Persian and planned to continue his education in the same vein. Thomas had not bothered to try to stop him; he liked to think at this point he knew which battles were worth the trouble.
Oscar had rolled onto his back and was panting, his pink tongue lolling. Alastair scratched his stomach thoughtfully. “Do you think we should get Zachary a dog? He might like a dog.”
“I think we should get him a dog in six years,” said Thomas, “when he is at least able to say the word ‘dog,’ and perhaps feed and pet the creature. Otherwise it will not be his dog so much as your mother’s, and she already has a baby to look after.”
Alastair looked thoughtfully at Thomas. Thomas’s heart skipped, as it always did when he felt himself the sole object of Alastair’s attention. “I suppose it will fall to Zachary to carry on the family name,” he said. “Most likely, anyway.”
Thomas knew Anna and Ari were planning to adopt a child—there were always children needing adoption among Nephilim—but he had not thought about children for himself and Alastair, save as a hazy future question. For the moment, Zachary was enough. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Mind?” Alastair smiled, his teeth flashing white against his summer-darkened skin. “My Thomas,” he said, taking Thomas’s face between his long, delicate, beautiful hands, “I am perfectly happy with everything—exactly the way that it is.”
“James,” Anna said imperiously, “it is beyond the bounds of ungentlemanly behavior to passionately kiss your wife in public. Do stop, and come help me set up the croquet.”
James glanced up lazily. Cordelia’s hair had come down as predicted, and he still had his fingers looped in the long crimson strands of it. “I haven’t the faintest idea how to play croquet,” he said.
“I only know what I’ve read in Alice in Wonderland,” said Cordelia.
“Ah,” said James. “Flamingos, then, and—hedgehogs?”
Anna put her hands on her hips. “We have croquet balls, mallets, and hoops. We will have to improvise from there. My apologies, Cordelia, but…”
Cordelia knew better than to try to dissuade Anna when she was set on something. She waved as James was dragged away to where Ari was trying to catch a runaway painted ball, and Grace was holding a croquet hoop with a puzzled expression.
A gleam of gold down by the river’s edge caught her eye. Matthew had gone to the bank of the Serpentine and was watching the slow run of the water under the pale June sunlight. He had his hands behind his back; Cordelia could not see his expression, but she knew Matthew well enough to read his body language. She knew he was thinking of Christopher.
The thought was a pang; she rose to her feet and made her way across the cropped grass to where Matthew stood at the riverside. Ducks pecked impatiently among the rushes, and children’s toy boats bobbed brightly on the water. She could sense that Matthew knew she was there, beside him, though he did not speak. She wondered if looking at the river reminded him of Christopher, as it did James; James often spoke of dreams in which he saw Christopher standing on the other side of a wide riverbank, a great band of silver water before him, waiting patiently for his friends to join him one day.
“We will miss you, you know,” Cordelia said. “All of us will miss you very much.”
He bent down to pick up a smooth stone and eyed it, clearly considering skipping it across the water. “Even Alastair?”
“Even Alastair. Not that he will admit it.” She paused a moment, wanting very much to say something, not sure if she should. “It seems strange, for you to be leaving now, when it seems as if you have just found yourself. Please tell me that… your going away has nothing to do with me.”
“Daisy.” He turned to her in surprise. “I care about you still. I always will, in some part of my heart, and James knows that; but I am happy you are together. The last months have made me realize how very unhappy James has been, for so long, and his happiness is mine, too. You understand—you, too, have a parabatai.”
“I think it is how James bears that you are going away,” said Cordelia. “He knows you are not running away from something, but running toward some grand idea.” She smiled.
“Many grand ideas,” said Matthew, flipping the small rock between his fingers. It was an ordinary river stone, but bits of mica glittered inside it, like crystal. “When I was drinking, my world was so small. I could never go that far from another drink. Now my world is expansive again. I want to have adventures, to do mad, wonderful, colorful things. And now that I am free…”
Cordelia did not ask him what he was free of; she knew. Matthew had told his parents all the truth of what he had done years ago, and how his mother had suffered because of it—how they all had. He had brought James with him, and James had sat beside him as Matthew explained, leaving no detail spared. When he was done, he had been shaking with fear. Charlotte and Henry had looked stricken, and for a moment James had been terrified that he was going to be witness to the dissolution of their family.
Then Charlotte had taken Matthew by the hand.
“Thank the Angel you told us,” she said. “We always knew something had happened, but we did not know what. Not only did we lose that child, but we lost another child—you. You grew further and further away from us, and we could not get you back.”
“You forgive me, then?” Matthew had whispered.
“We know you meant no harm,” Henry had said. “You did not mean to hurt your mother—you believed a terrible story, and made a terrible mistake.”
“But it was a mistake,” Charlotte had said firmly. “It does not change our love for you one iota. And it is truly a gift that you are telling us now”—she had exchanged a look with Henry that James had described as “treacly”—“because we have something to share with you, as well. Matthew, I am going to have another baby.”
Matthew had goggled. It had, James had said at the time, been a day of many revelations.
“You’re not leaving because of the baby, are you?” Cordelia said now, mischievously.
“Babies,” Matthew reminded her darkly. “According to the Silent Brothers, it will be twins.” He grinned. “And no, I rather fancy the idea of little sisters or brothers. By the time I return from my voyage, they will be nearly a year old and have begun to have some personality. An excellent time to teach them that their big brother Matthew is the finest and most upstanding person they will ever know.”
“Ah,” said Cordelia. “You intend to suborn them.”
“Entirely.” Matthew looked down at her; the wind off the river blew his fair hair across his eyes. “When you first came to London,” he said, “all I could think was that I disliked your brother, and I expected you would be like him. But you won me over quite quickly—you were kind and brave, and so many other things I aspired to be.” He took her hand, though there was nothing romantic about the gesture; he pressed the smooth river stone into her palm and closed her fingers over it. “I don’t think I realized—until you sent the Merry Thieves to me at my lowest point—how much I would need someone in my life who would see the truth of me and offer me kindness, even though I had not asked for it. Even when I felt I did not deserve it. And when I travel the seas with Oscar, every time I set eyes upon a new land, I will think of you and of that kindness. I will always carry it with me, and the knowledge that it is the gifts we did not have the strength to ask for that matter the most.”
Cordelia sighed. “There is a terrible selfish part of me that wants you to stay here in London, but I suppose we cannot keep you to ourselves when the rest of the world is pining away for you to brighten it up.”
Matthew grinned. “Flattery. As you know, it always works on me.”
And as Cordelia held the smooth little stone tightly in her hand, she realized that the distance she had felt between them seemed to have fallen away. Though he might be on the other side of the world for a year, they would not be far apart in spirit.
There was a rustle; it was James, his dark hair wildly untidy, coming toward them across the grass. He held a stack of charred paper in his hand. “I have just,” he said, by way of greeting, “received a seventh fire-message from my father.” He shuffled through the pages. “In this one, he says they are running late and they are ten minutes away. In this one, they are nine minutes away. In this one, they are eight minutes away. In this one…”
“They are seven minutes away?” Matthew guessed.
James shook his head. “No, in this one he wants to know if we have enough mustard.”
“What would he have done if we didn’t?” Cordelia wondered.
“The Angel only knows,” James said. “He certainly won’t be happy about all these ducks.” He grinned at Matthew, who looked back at him in that way he had that seemed to convey everything about how he loved James: that their friendship was both very silly and terribly serious all at once. One joked during the day and risked one’s life at night; that was the way of being a Shadowhunter, Cordelia thought.
James squinted into the distance. “Math, I think your family’s here.”
And indeed, it seemed, the others were beginning to arrive at long last. Charlotte was coming toward them along a park path, pushing Henry’s Bath chair.
“Duty calls,” Matthew said, and started off toward his parents. Oscar left Thomas and Alastair to join him, running along at his heels and barking a welcome.
James smiled at Cordelia—that lovely, lazy smile that always made her feel as if delightful sparks were running along her spine. She moved closer to him, dropping the stone Matthew had given her into her pocket. For a moment they stood looking at the park together in companionable silence.
“I see the croquet game is going well,” Cordelia noted. In fact, Anna, Ari, and Grace seemed to have created a bizarre tower of hoops and mallets that did not resemble any croquet court she had ever seen. They were all standing back and looking at it: Anna seemed delighted, Ari and Grace puzzled. “I didn’t know Grace was going to bury the bracelet,” she said. “At the manor. Did she speak to you about it?”
James nodded, gold eyes thoughtful. “She asked if it was all right if she buried it, and I said yes. It is, after all, her own regret she is burying.”
“And your sorrow,” said Cordelia softly.
He looked down at her. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheekbone, and a grass stain on his collar. And yet when she looked at him, he seemed more beautiful to her than he ever had when she had thought of him as distant and untouchably perfect. “I have no sorrow,” he said. He took her hand, locking his fingers with hers. “Life is a long chain of events, of decisions and choices,” he said. “When I fell in love with you, I was changed. Belial could not alter that. Nothing could alter that. And everything that happened after, everything he tried to do through the bracelet, only strengthened what I felt for you and brought us closer to one another. It was because of him and his meddling that we married in the first place. I loved you already, but being married to you only made me fall more inescapably in love; I had never been so happy as I was every moment we were together, and it was that love that led me to shatter the bracelet, and realize that indeed I had a will that could contest Belial’s.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, his touch gentle, his eyes locked on hers. “So no, I do not feel sorrow, for all I went through brought me to where we are now. To you. We have been in the crucible, and come out as gold.”
Cordelia went up on her toes and kissed him quickly on the lips. He raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?” he said. “I thought that was a very romantic speech. I expected a more passionate response, or perhaps for you to start spelling out my name in daisy chains on the riverbank—”
“It was a romantic speech,” Cordelia said, “and believe me, I will have much to say about it later.” She smiled at him in the particular way that always made his eyes blaze up like fire. “But our families have just arrived, so unless you wish to passionately embrace in front of your parents, we will have to save that for later, when we are home.”
James turned and saw that she was indeed telling the truth: everyone had arrived at once, and were coming toward the picnic spot, waving—Will and Tessa, laughing alongside Magnus Bane, Sona pushing Zachary Arash in a pram and chatting to Flora Bridgestock, Gabriel and Cecily holding Alexander by the hand, Gideon and Sophie pausing to chat with Charlotte, Henry, and Matthew. Thomas, Lucie, and Alastair had already started across the green lawn toward their families. Jesse hung back to assist Grace with the pile of croquet implements, which had toppled over; Anna and Ari were laughing too hard to move, leaning against each other as croquet balls rolled everywhere.
“When we are home?” said James softly. “Here we are, with all those we love, and those who love us. We are home.”
Alastair had plucked his little brother from the pram; with Zachary seated in the crook of one arm, he waved at Cordelia. Matthew, in conversation with Eugenia, smiled, and Lucie made a beckoning gesture in James and Cordelia’s direction, as if to say: What are you waiting for? Come here.
Cordelia’s heart was too full for speech. Without a word, she caught hold of her husband’s hand.
Side by side with James, Cordelia ran.
