Matthew’s hands closed into fists. “How dare she—”
Tatiana seemed to tower over the crowd. “Deny it, boy!” she shouted at James. “Your grandfather was a demon.”
Cordelia tried not to look at any of the Merry Thieves, or Lucie, either. Surely Tatiana couldn’t know about Belial? Surely she was only repeating what the whole Clave was already aware of—that Tessa was a warlock, and therefore, James had demon blood.
James kicked his chair back and stood, turning to face the room. Behind him, Will and Tessa stood stunned; Tessa was gripping Will’s shoulder, as if entreating him not to move. “I will not deny it,” he said, in a voice that dripped contempt. “Everyone knows it. It is true, it has always been true, and no one here has tried to hide it.”
“Don’t you see?” Tatiana raged. “He conspired with the enemy! I have been collecting evidence of his plots—”
“Then where is that evidence?” demanded Will. He was flushed with anger. “Damn it, Tatiana—”
“It was in my house,” she hissed. “In my house in Idris, I gathered it all, but then this boy, this demon’s spawn, burned my house to the ground! Why else would he do that, save to protect his secret?”
Cordelia felt as if her heart had stopped. She dared not look at any of the others—not Lucie, or Matthew, or Thomas. She could not even look at James.
“Tatiana,” Gabriel Lightwood said, rising to his feet, and Cordelia thought, Of course, he is her brother. “Tatiana, this makes no sense. Why have we heard nothing about this fire if it transpired? In fact, how do you know about it?”
Tatiana’s face twisted with rage. “You’ve never believed in me, Gabriel. Even when we were children, you didn’t believe anything I said. You know as well as I do that there is a Portal between Blackthorn Manor and Chiswick House. I went through this morning to get some papers and found the manor a smoldering heap of ash!”
It was Gideon’s turn to rise up. Recent grief had cut deep lines into his face; the look he turned on his sister was flinty. “That bloody house was a firetrap because you refused to look after it. It was going to burn down eventually. It is very ill done for you to try to drag James into this, very ill done!”
“Enough! All of you!” shouted Bridgestock. He had moved to the lectern, and his voice echoed loudly through the room. “James Herondale, is there any truth to what Mrs. Blackthorn says?”
“Of course there isn’t—” Will began.
Tatiana’s voice rose to a scream. “He told Grace he did it. Ask her what James said!”
“Oh God,” whispered Matthew. His hands gripped the arms of his chair, his fingers white. Lucie had dropped her pen and notebook: her hands were shaking.
Grace began to get to her feet. Her eyes were cast down. Someone in the crowd shouted that a trial by the Mortal Sword would clear things up; Tessa was still clutching Will, but looked sick to her stomach.
Cordelia chanced a look at James. He was the color of old ashes, his eyes blazing, his head thrown back. He would not defend himself, she thought. He would never explain.
And then there was Grace. What if Grace intended to tell the truth? Charles would throw her over just as he had done to Ariadne. He had no loyalty. She would be easy prey for her mother, then. She had so very much to lose.
“The fact is,” Grace began, in a voice barely above a whisper, “the—the truth is that James—”
Cordelia bolted to her feet. “The truth is that James Herondale did not burn down Blackthorn Manor last night,” she said, in a voice so loud she thought they could probably hear her on Fleet Street. “James cannot have been in Idris. He was with me. In my bedroom. All night.”
The gasp of shock that went around the room would almost have been satisfying, under other circumstances. Sona slumped against Alastair, burying her head in his chest. Heads whipped around; curious eyes fixed on Cordelia. Her heart beat like a trip-hammer. Anna gazed at her with a dumbfounded look. Will and Tessa seemed thunderstruck.
Matthew put his face in his hands.
Bridgestock was staring at Cordelia in amazement. “Are you quite sure about this, Miss Carstairs?”
Cordelia lifted her chin. She knew that she was compromised now, in the eyes of all the Enclave. More than compromised, she was ruined. She would never be married. She would be lucky if she was received at parties. Shadowhunters were less strict than mundanes about such matters, but a young woman who spent the night alone with a young man, in her bedroom no less, was not marriage material.
“Obviously, I am sure,” she said. “Which aspect do you think I am confused about?”
Bridgestock flushed. Rosamund Wentworth looked as if today had turned out to be her birthday. Cordelia did not dare glance at James.
Tatiana was spluttering. “Grace, tell them—”
In a clear voice, Grace said, “I’m sure Cordelia is correct. James must be innocent.”
Tatiana screamed. It was a horrible sound, as if she had been stabbed. “No!” she wailed. “If it wasn’t James, it was one of you!” She stabbed her finger at the crowd, identifying the Thieves. “Matthew Fairchild, Thomas Lightwood, Christopher Lightwood! One of them, one of them is responsible, I know it!”
Murmurs of speculation swept through the crowd. Bridgestock was calling out for order. As the chaos mounted, the front doors of the Sanctuary opened, and Charlotte Fairchild, the Consul, marched into the room.
She was a small woman, her dark brown hair gathered into a simple knot. There was gray at her temples. She wore a high-necked white blouse and a dark skirt; everything about her was neat and small, from her boots to her gold-rimmed spectacles. “I’m sorry to arrive late,” she said, in the practiced tone of someone used to pitching her voice loudly to be heard over a room full of men. “I was planning to be here earlier, but I was required to remain in Idris in order to investigate a fire that claimed Blackthorn Manor last night.”
“I told you! I told you they did it!” Tatiana cried.
Charlotte pressed her lips together. “Mrs. Blackthorn, I spent several hours with a group of Alicante guards, picking through the wreckage of your home. There were many items present that were associated with and imbued with necromantic magic and demonic magic, both of which are forbidden to Shadowhunters.”
Tatiana’s face folded up like old paper. “I had to have those things!” she wailed, in a voice like a broken child’s. “I had to use those things, I had to have them, for Jesse—my son died and none of you would help me! He died, and none of you would help me bring him back!” She gazed around the room with wet, hateful eyes. “Grace, why won’t you help me?” she shrieked, and crumpled to the floor.
Grace picked her way across the room to Tatiana. She laid a hand on her adoptive mother’s shoulder, but her face was stony. Cordelia could see no sympathy in it for Tatiana’s plight.
“I can confirm what Charlotte says.” It was Magnus Bane, who had gotten gracefully to his feet. “In January Mrs. Blackthorn attempted to hire me to help bring her son back from the dead. I declined, but saw much evidence of her dedication to the study of the necromantic arts. What many would call black magic. I should have said something then, but my heart was wrung with pity. Many wish to bring back their beloved dead. Few ever get very far.” He sighed. “When such objects fall into the hands of the untutored, it can be dangerous. Certainly that explains the tragic and entirely accidental fire that destroyed Mrs. Blackthorn’s manor house.”
There were yet more exclamations among the crowd. “Laying it on a bit thick, isn’t he?” Lucie murmured.
“Hardly matters—as long as the Clave believes it,” Matthew said.
Will inclined his head to Magnus; Cordelia had the feeling that there was a friendship there that went back a long way. Amid the uproar, Charlotte gestured at Inquisitor Bridgestock to take Tatiana into custody.
A hand fell on Cordelia’s shoulder. She looked up and saw James. Everything inside her chest seemed to tighten up, as if her heart were contracting. He was p
ale, two spots of color burning on his cheeks.
“Cordelia,” he said. “I need to talk to you. Right now.”
* * *
James slammed the door of the drawing room shut behind him and spun to face Cordelia. His hair actually seemed to have exploded, she thought, with a sort of bleak amusement. It was sticking out darkly in all directions.
“You cannot do this to yourself, Daisy,” he said, with a cold desperation. “You must take it back.”
“There is no taking it back,” she said, as James paced in front of the fireplace. There was no fire lit, but the room was not chilly: outside the sun shone brightly, and the world went about its business on a bright London day.
“Cordelia,” James said. “You will be ruined.”
“I know that.” A cold calm had descended upon her. “That is why I said what I said, James. I needed to be believed, and no one would believe that I would say such a terrible thing about myself unless it was true.”
He stopped pacing. The look he bent on her was agonized, as if he were being pierced by a thousand small daggers. “Is this because I saved your life?” he whispered.
“You mean last night? At the manor?”
He nodded.
“Oh, James.” She felt suddenly very weary. “No. It was not that. Do you think I could sit by and watch myself acclaimed a hero while you were made a villain? I don’t care what they think of my honor. I know you, and your friends, and what you would do for each other. I am also your friend, and I know what I think honor is. Let me do this.”
“Daisy,” he said, and she realized with a sort of shock that the Mask was off—his expression was starkly vulnerable. “I can’t bear it. To have your life ruined by this? Let’s go back now and tell them I did it—I burned down the house—and you were lying to shield me.”
Cordelia set her hand against a chair, upholstered in pale blue and the back carved with crossed swords, to hold herself steady.
“Nobody will believe it,” she said, dropping each word into the silence between them like stones into a pond. She saw him flinch. “When it comes to a woman’s reputation, if she is suspected, she is guilty. That is the way the world works. I knew they would believe I was guilty, and now, no matter what we say, they’ll never believe I was innocent. It’s done, James. It doesn’t matter so very much. I needn’t stay in London. I can go back to the country.”
As she spoke, she knew that was how it must be. She was not Anna, able to live a wild bohemian lifestyle with her family’s support. She must go back to Cirenworth, where she talked to mirrors for companionship. She would drown slowly in loneliness, and there would be no dream of London to live on: no Devil Tavern, no battling demons alongside Lucie, no laughing late into the night with the Thieves.
James’s eyes blazed. “Absolutely not,” he said. “And let Lucie’s heart be broken because she’s lost her parabatai? Let you live a secluded life of disgrace? I will not accept that.”
“I cannot regret my choice,” Cordelia said softly. “I would do the same again. And there is nothing either of us can do about it now, James.”
He could not make the world fair, any more than she could. It was only in stories that heroes were rewarded; in real life, acts of heroism went unrewarded, or were punished, and the world turned on as it always had.
He might be angry, but he was safe. She wasn’t sorry.
“I can ask one last thing of you,” he said. “One last sacrifice for me.”
Since it might be the last time she ever saw him, Cordelia let her eyes linger on James’s face. The curve of his mouth, the arch of his high cheekbones, the long lashes that shadowed his pale gold eyes. That faint mark of the white star on his neck, just where his dark hair nearly touched his collar. “What?” Cordelia said. “If it is in my power, I will do it.”
He took a step toward her. She could see that his hands were shaking slightly. A moment later he was kneeling on the rug in front of her, his head tipped back, his eyes fixed on her face. She realized what he was about to do and lifted her hands to protest, but it was already too late.
“Daisy,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
The world seemed to stop. She thought of the clocks in Blackthorn Manor, all frozen at twenty to nine. She thought of the thousand times she had imagined James saying these words, but never under these circumstances. Never like this.
“James,” she said. “You don’t love me.”
He rose to his feet. He was no longer kneeling, and she was glad for it, but he was still close to her—so close to her she could have reached out and set her palm against his chest.
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
She knew that. Hearing him say it still felt like a blow, unexpected and shocking, like the moment when you were stabbed. The surprise was how much it hurt.
Distantly, she could still hear him talking.
“Not in that way, and you don’t love me that way either,” James continued.
Oh, James. So brilliantly clever and so blind.
“But we are friends, aren’t we?” he said. “You are one of the best friends I’ve ever had. I will not leave you in trouble alone.”
“You love Grace,” Cordelia whispered. “Don’t you?”
She saw him flinch then. It was her turn to hurt him. They were only talking, but it was as if their words were blades.
“Grace is marrying someone else,” James said. “I am perfectly free to marry you.” He caught her hand, and she let him: she felt dizzy, as if she were clinging to the mast of a storm-tossed ship.
“I also do not want a situation in which my husband is unfaithful to me,” Cordelia said. “I will not marry you and turn some blind eye to whatever you do, James. I would rather be alone and scorned, and you would rather be free—”
“Daisy,” James said. “I would never, ever do that to you. When I make a promise, I keep it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re proposing—”
“A year,” he said rapidly. “Give me a year to make things right. Let us be married and live together as friends. We are exceptionally compatible, Daisy. It might well be a great deal of fun. I promise I will be better breakfast-table company than Alastair.”
Cordelia blinked. “A mariage blanc?” she said slowly. “White marriages” usually took place when one partner needed to marry to claim an inheritance, or to protect a woman against a dangerous situation in her home. There were other reasons too. Charles was seeking something very like this with Grace, she thought; it was hard to miss the irony.
“Divorce is far more accepted among Shadowhunters than among mundanes,” said James. “In a year, you may divorce me for any reason you like. Claim I cannot give you children. Say anything you want about how we are not compatible and I will go along with it. Then you will be a desirable divorcée with your honor intact. You could marry again.”
The relief and hope in his eyes were agony to see. And yet—
Cordelia could not say she did not want it. If they were married, they would live together. They would have their own house. An untold level of intimacy. They would go to sleep in the same place and wake in the same place. It would be a life lived in the guise of everything she had ever desired.
“But what about our friends?” she whispered. “We cannot hide the truth from them for a year. Besides, they know I was lying. They know you burned down the manor.”
“We will tell them the truth,” said James. “They will keep our secret. They may even find it a great prank on the Clave. And they’ll be delighted to have a whole house to disport themselves in. We shall have to guard our china.”
“Lucie as well,” Cordelia said. “I cannot lie to my parabatai.”
“Of course,” James said, beginning to smile. “Our friends love us and will keep our secrets. Are we agreed? Or shall I go back on my knees?”
“No!” Cordelia said sharply. “Do not go on your knees, James. I will marry you, but don’t go on your knees.”
“Yes,” she said. “Only a year.”
He drew off the Herondale ring, with its pattern of soaring birds. She held out her hand, and James slid it onto her finger without hesitation. Cordelia watched as he did it, watched the fall of his long lashes against his cheek, like black ink against a white page.
Love will find you.
Love had found her years ago, and now, and every day since she had first seen James in London. You don’t love me, he’d said to her. He had no idea. He never would.
The door opened. Cordelia started, and Will came through the door, his face like thunder. Tessa followed him, more sedately, and Sona came after her. All wore expressions of grim fury. Well, perhaps not Tessa—she looked more worried, Cordelia thought, and more resigned.
“Tatiana has been taken into custody by Bridgestock and the Consul,” Will announced, his blue eyes icy. “Under other circumstances, this would be a great relief, considering her false accusations against you, James.”
James held up a hand. “Father, I understand why you are angry, but—”
“James.” Will snapped the word like a whip. There was more than anger in his eyes, though—there was a deep hurt that made Cordelia want to cringe. She could only imagine the pain James was feeling. “I can’t express how disappointed Tessa and I are in you. We have taught you better than this, both in how you treat women, and in how you own up to your mistakes.”
“Oh, Layla,” Sona said. Her gaze was bleak. “Che kar kardi?”
What have you done?
“Enough!” James moved protectively in front of Cordelia, but Cordelia stepped forward to stand next to him. They should face trouble side by side. If their agreement meant nothing else, it should mean that.
“Father,” said James. “Mother. Mrs. Carstairs. I will hear anything you have to say, and apologize for all that I have done wrong, but first let me present to you my promised wife.”
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