Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,163

me,” she said. “Or treat me as though I am being entirely unselfish.”

James raised his winging black eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I have my own reasons for involving myself in the search for a cure. Of course I want to help those who are sick, but I also cannot help believing that if I were able to do such a service to the Clave as aiding in ending this demonic disease, surely they would grant my father leniency in his trial.”

“I wouldn’t call that selfish,” said James. “What you are talking about is undertaking to do good for the sake of your father and your family.”

Cordelia smiled weakly. “Well, I’m sure you’ll add that to the list of my many qualities when you are helping me find a husband.”

James did not smile back. “Daisy,” he said. “I cannot—I do not think that I—” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps, after what happened in the Whispering Room, I am not the right person to find you a husband. I can’t imagine you would trust me to—”

“I do trust you.” Cordelia spoke through numb lips. “I entirely understand. You did not take liberties, James. It was a pretense. It was false, I know—”

“False?” he echoed.

Despite the heat, Cordelia shivered as James rose to his feet. The firelight flickered through his hair, edging the black locks with scarlet, as if he wore a crown of flames.

“I kissed you because I wanted to,” he said. “Because I’d never wanted anything so much.”

Cordelia felt herself go scarlet.

“I am no longer bound to Grace,” he went on. “Yet for so many years I loved her. I know—I remember—that I did. That love ruled my life.”

Cordelia’s fingers tightened on her dressing gown.

“I wonder sometimes now if it was a dream,” James said. “I idealized her, I suppose, as children do. Perhaps it was a child’s dream of what love should and must be. I believed love was pain, and when I bled, I bled for her.”

“It need not be pain,” Cordelia whispered. “But James, if you love Grace—”

“I don’t know,” James said, turning away from the fire. His eyes were dark, as they had been in the Whispering Room, and desperate. “How can I have loved her so much, and feel what I feel now, for—” He broke off. “Maybe I am not who I thought I was.”

“James—” The pain in his voice was too much. She started to rise to her feet.

“No.” He shook his head, voice rough. “Don’t. If you come close to me, Daisy, I will want—”

The library door flew open. Cordelia looked up, expecting to see her mother.

But it was Alastair, fully dressed for the outside in boots and an Inverness cape. He slammed the door behind him and turned to face them both, his gaze raking Cordelia and then James.

“My mother said you were both in here,” he said in the drawl that meant he was out of his mind with rage. Cordelia’s heart sank. The last time she had seen Alastair, he had been furious. He seemed still furious. She wondered if he had ever stopped being furious, or if he had been in a temper all day. “I didn’t credit it at first, but now I see it is true.” His black gaze snapped to James. “She may feel that it is permissible to leave you alone with my sister, but I don’t. You brought her home in the dead of night, injured and looking like a drowned rat.”

James crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes were golden slits. “Actually, Matthew brought her back. I’ve only just arrived.”

Alastair shrugged off his heavy coat and threw it angrily over the arm of a chair. “I thought you had better sense, Herondale, than to put yourself in a position to compromise my sister.”

“He brought back Cortana,” Cordelia protested.

“Your mother welcomed me into this room,” said James, his expression like ice. “Hers is the authority here, not yours.”

“My mother doesn’t understand—” Alastair broke off. He was yanking at the gloves on his hands with shaking fingers, and Cordelia realized with a shock that Alastair was far more upset than she’d realized. “I know you hate me for how I treated you in school, and rightfully so,” Alastair said, fixing James with a level gaze. “But however much you hate me, do not take it out on my sister.”

Cordelia saw a flicker of surprise in James’s eyes. “Alastair, you made my life a living hell at the Academy. But I’d never take it out