Chain of Gold (52 page)

Then James and Cordelia hurtled out of the sky.

Cordelia fell first. She sprang into existence like a falling star, appearing between one moment and the next ten feet above the ground. She struck the earth hard, Cortana flying from her hand. James followed a moment later, his body limp. He hit the ground beside Cordelia and lay motionless.

“Get me up,” Matthew said, gripping Lucie's hand. As Jesse watched, Lucie helped Matthew to his feet. James and Cordelia were lying a few yards away; Lucie and Matthew ran to kneel down beside them.

Cordelia was already struggling to get up. She was filthy with sand and dirt. Her hair had come out of its fastenings and spilled down over her shoulders like fire. “James,” she gasped, her dark eyes wide with fear. “See to him, please, not me—the demon poison—”

Demon poison?
Cold all over, Lucie bent over her brother. He lay unmoving, his hands black with ichor, perfectly pale and still. His wild black hair was stiff with blood.

Cordelia tried to rise to her feet but screamed out in pain and collapsed back to her knees. Lucie, kneeling over James, looked at her with sudden panic. “Daisy—”

“It's nothing,” Cordelia said. “Please, there must be something we can do for James—” She drew in a shuddering breath. “He killed the Mandikhor. He destroyed it. He
can't
die. It's not fair.”

Matthew was kneeling by James's side, his stele already in his hand. Runes given by one's
parabatai
were always the most powerful: Matthew's hands were steady as he scrolled healing runes over James's hands, his wrists, the base of his throat.

They all froze, holding their breath. Cordelia, painfully, pulled herself closer, her scarlet hair hanging down to touch the green leaves on the ground. Her gaze was fixed on James.

The
iratzes
on his skin shimmered—and vanished.

“They won't work.” It was Jesse. The anger had left his face now; he stood near Cordelia, unseen by anyone but Lucie, and there was a terrible sorrow in his eyes. “He is too close to death.”

Matthew gasped. His hand flew to his chest: he pressed there, hard, as if a knife had gone into his heart and he was trying to stop the bleeding. His face was utterly white. “He's dying,” he said, his voice cracking. “I can feel it.”

Lucie caught at her brother's hands. They were cold in hers, unmoving. Tears spilled from her eyes, and onto his face, tracing tracks in the grime. “Please, Jamie,” she whispered. “Please don't
die. Please take another breath. For Mam and Papa. For me.”

“Give him mine,” said Jesse.

Lucie's head jerked up. She stared at Jesse. There was an odd look on his face: a strange, almost luminous resignation. “What do you mean?”

Cordelia stared. “Who are you talking to? Lucie?”

Jesse moved toward them. He knelt down, and the grass did not bend under the weight of his body. He drew the gold chain of his locket over his head and held it out to Lucie.

She remembered what he had said after the fight on Tower Bridge. That he would have given his last breath to her. That it would have had enough life force to empty her lungs of water if she had been drowning. As James was drowning in poison now.

“But what will happen to you?” she whispered. She was aware that Cordelia was staring at her; Matthew was doubled up in agony, his breaths coming in ragged gasps.

“Does it matter?” said Jesse. “This is his life. Not a shadow of a life. Not years of waiting in the dark.”

Lucie reached out her hand. It closed around the locket, and she felt it tumble into her palm, cool and solid. For a moment she hesitated—just for a moment, her eyes fixed on Jesse, kneeling in the grass.

Then she looked down at her brother. His lips were blue, his eyes sunken into his head. He was barely breathing. Carefully, as if she were holding a glass containing the last drop of water in the world, Lucie opened the little locket and pressed the curve of the metal against his lips.

There was a pause, enough time for a sigh.

Then her brother's chest lifted with Jesse Blackthorn's last breath. His eyes opened, bright gold, and from the four crescent wounds in his wrist, black fluid spilled—his body was ridding itself of the Mandikhor's poison.

Lucie's hand closed tightly around the locket, so tightly the edge of the metal cut into her palm. Cordelia cried out; Matthew lifted his head, the color returning to his face. He scrambled to James's side and pulled James into his lap.

James, slumped against Matthew's chest, struggled to focus. Lucie knew what he was seeing. A boy leaning over him: a boy with hair as black as his own, a boy with green eyes the color of hawthorn leaves, a boy who was already beginning to fade around the edges, like a figure seen in a cloud that disappears when the wind changes.

“Who are you?”
James whispered, his voice ragged.

But Jesse was already gone.

“What do you mean, ‘Who are you?' ” Matthew demanded. “I'm your
parabatai
, you nitwit.”

He was busy drawing healing runes on whatever parts of James he could reach, which Cordelia could only applaud. She had no idea what Lucie had done to heal her brother, but that was not what mattered now.

“I didn't mean you, Matthew,” James said. His eyes were closed, his dark lashes feathered against the tops of his cheekbones. “Obviously.”

Matthew ran a ringed hand through James's wild hair and smiled. “Are you going to tell us what happened yet? It isn't every day a fellow goes into a demon realm and then falls out of the sky. I'd think you'd want to share this experience with your friends.”

“Believe me when I say it is a long story,” said James. “I promise you we are in no danger now—”

“Did you really kill the Mandikhor?” asked Lucie.

“Yes,” said James, “and Cordelia destroyed the one who raised it.” He held out a hand, scarred with cuts and filthy with dirt.
“Daisy? Would you come here?” He smiled crookedly. “I would come to you, but I do not think I have the strength to walk.”

Cordelia tried to rise, but a hot white pain shot up her leg. She bit down on a whimper. “My leg is broken, I think. Very vexing, but I'm quite all right.”

“Oh!
Daisy!
Your leg!” Lucie leaped to her feet and raced over to Cordelia, dropping down and pressing her stele against Cordelia's arm. She began to draw an
iratze
. “I am the worst,” she moaned. “The most dreadful would-be
parabatai
who ever lived. Please forgive me, Daisy.”

As the healing rune took effect, Cordelia could feel the bone in her leg beginning to knit back together. It was not an entirely pleasant feeling. She gasped and said, “Lucie, it's nothing—I would have done it myself, but I dropped my stele in—in that other place.”

Lucie pushed Cordelia's hair out of her eyes and smiled at her. “There is no need ever to do it yourself,” she said. “Runes given to you by your
parabatai
are best.”

“Ghastly,” said Matthew. “Look at them, affirming their eternal bond of friendship. In public.”

“I would question your definition of ‘public,' ” said James. Lucie and Cordelia exchanged a smile: if James was capable of mocking Matthew, he was certainly on the mend. “This is a mostly deserted graveyard.”

“Hmmm,” said Matthew, in a surprisingly serious tone, his eyes narrowed. He rose to his feet, helping James to sit up against a tree. As Matthew paced to the edge of the clearing, James said:

“Luce. Let me talk to Cordelia for a moment.”

Lucie exchanged a glance with Cordelia, who nodded and stood up—it still hurt to put weight on her leg, but Lucie's
iratzes
had mostly done their job. Lucie went to join Matthew as Cordelia limped over to James and sank down beside him under the shadow of a cypress tree.

For a moment, as James's breaths had faded, Cordelia had seen life fork into two paths. One path in which James was dead—in which there was no meaning in the world, in which Lucie was heartbroken and Matthew destroyed, in which Thomas and Christopher were crushed and the Herondale family never smiled again. And a second path in which life continued as it was now—imperfect, confusing, but full of hope.

They were on the second path. That was what mattered—that James
was
breathing, that his lips were no longer blue, that he was looking at her with steady gold eyes. Despite the fact that her whole body ached, she found herself smiling.

“You saved my life,” he said. “Just as you saved my sister's all those years ago. We should have given you a more warrior-like nickname. Not Daisy, but Artemis, or Boadicea.”

She laughed softly. “I like Daisy.”

“So do I,” he said, and reached up to lightly brush back a strand of her hair. She felt her heart nearly stop. In a low voice, he said,
“ ‘And when her cheek the moon revealed, a thousand hearts were won: no pride, no shield, could check her power. Layla, she was called.'  ”

“Layla and Majnun,”
she whispered. “You—remember?”

“You read to me,” he said. “Perhaps, now all this is over, we could read it again, together?”

Reading together.
Never had Cordelia heard of anything so romantic. She started to nod, just as Matthew called out sharply:

“Someone's coming! I see witchlight.”

Cordelia turned to look. Lights had appeared between the trees: as they came nearer, she saw the glimmer of torchlight. She tried to rise, but the
iratzes
were already fading: her leg hurt too much. She sat back down.

“Oh, dear,” said Lucie. “The Silent Brothers aren't going to be at all pleased, are they? Nor the Enclave. We're probably going to be in awful trouble.”

“Maybe we could leg it,” suggested Matthew.

“I am not going anywhere,” said James. “I will remain here and take whatever punishment is given out. The rack, the iron maiden, death by spiders. Anything but getting up.”

“I don't think I
can
stand up,” said Cordelia apologetically.

“ ‘Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy,'  ”
Matthew intoned. “Coleridge.”

“Wordsworth,” James corrected.

The lights swung closer. A sharp voice cut through the clearing. A
familiar
voice. “What on earth is going on?”

Cordelia twisted around, trying not to move her leg. Alastair strode into the clearing. He looked disarmingly normal in an old tweed coat of her father's, as if he'd been out for a stroll. His unnaturally pale hair gleamed under the faint starlight. Beside him was Thomas, his hair mussed, carrying what looked like an apothecary's case.

“
Why
are you all on the ground?” said Thomas, and then waved his case in the air. “The antidote—it's ready—what's the quickest way to Christopher?”

There was a babble of voices. Matthew got to his feet and hugged Thomas hard, being careful not to knock the case out of his hand. “Let's go alert the Brothers,” he said, and began to pull his friend toward the path leading to the Silent City.

“You needn't come with me,” Thomas protested, amused.

“Just in case there's chanting,” Matthew said. “I don't think there will be, mind, but you never know.”

Alastair had been watching as Thomas and Matthew disappeared into the shadows between the trees. He shook his head, and turned his attention back to Cordelia.
“Biyâ,”
he said, bending down to swing her up in his arms. “Come along home.”

In surprise, she looped an arm around his neck. “But, Alastair. I can't leave my friends—”

“Layla,” Alastair said, in an unusually gentle voice. “They're not going to be alone. Thomas and I took care of sending a message to the Institute. Look.”

She looked, and saw that the broad path behind the tombs was full of the glow of witchlight torches borne by a crowd of Shadowhunters. She recognized a dozen familiar faces: Will Herondale, his torch casting bright illumination over his black-and-silver hair. Tessa, a sword in her hand, her brown hair loose over her shoulders. Gabriel, Cecily, and Anna Lightwood, Anna smiling, her hair as black as the gear she wore.

She heard Lucie give a short cry.
“Papa!”

Will broke into a run. He caught hold of his daughter and swept her into his arms. Tessa ran to James, dropping down to kneel beside him and fuss over his bruises and cuts. Gabriel and Cecily followed, and soon Lucie and James were surrounded, being embraced and scolded in equal measure.

Cordelia closed her eyes in relief. James and Lucie were all right. Everywhere Cordelia could hear chatter: Gabriel and Cecily were asking after Thomas, and the others were saying that he was being taken to the Silent City now, where the antidote would be administered. Someone else—one of the Rosewains—was saying that there was still a present danger, that the demons might attack again, whether there was an antidote or not.

“The Mandikhor has been defeated,” Cordelia said. “It will not return.”

“And how do you know that, young lady?” said George Penhallow.

“BECAUSE JAMES KILLED IT,” Cordelia said, as loudly as she could. “James killed the Mandikhor demon. I
saw
it die.”

At that point, several people crowded toward her; it was Will who blocked their way, his hand out, protesting that they should not be bothering an injured girl. Alastair took the opportunity to slip from
the clearing and into the shadows, still carrying Cordelia in his arms.

“I beg you not to get involved,
khahare azizam
,” said Alastair. “It will all be sorted out soon enough, but there's going to be a great deal of nonsense first. And you need to rest.”

“But they need to know it was James,” Cordelia said. It was oddly comfortable to be carried like this, with her head against her brother's shoulder. The way her father had carried her once, when she was very small. “They need to know what he did, because—because they do.”