Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,164

on Cordelia. That’s something you would do, not something I would do.”

“I see how it is. In school I had the power, and here you have the power to lord it over me. What’s your game? What do you want with my sister?”

“Your sister,” James said, speaking with a slow, deliberate coldness. “Your sister is the only thing keeping me from punching you in the face. Your sister loves you, Angel knows why, and you aren’t even the least bit grateful.”

Alastair’s voice was hoarse. “You have no idea what I’ve done for my sister. You have no idea about our family. You don’t know the first thing—”

He broke off and glowered.

It was as if a jolt went through Cordelia. She had always thought of their family as fairly ordinary, aside from their constant travel. What was Alastair hinting at? “James,” she said. The air was crackling with violence; it was only a matter of time before one of the boys took a swing at the other. “James, you’d better go.”

James turned to her. “Are you sure?” he said in a low voice. “I won’t leave you alone, Cordelia, not unless you wish me to.”

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered back. “Alastair’s bark is worse than his bite. I promise.”

He raised his hand, as if he meant to cup her cheek, or brush back a lock of her hair. She could feel the energy between them, even now, even with her brother three feet away and mad with rage. It felt like the sparks of a bonfire.

James dropped his hand, and with a last hard look at Alastair, strode from the room. Cordelia went immediately to the door, shut and locked it. She turned to face him.

“What did you mean?” she said. “By ‘you have no idea what I’ve done for my sister’?”

“Nothing,” Alastair said, picking up his gloves. “I meant nothing, Cordelia.”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “I can tell that there is something you’re not telling me, something that has to do with Father. All this time you have acted like my attempts to save him, to save us, are childish and silly. You haven’t stood up for him at all. What are you not telling me?”

Alastair squeezed his eyes shut. “Please stop asking.”

“I won’t,” Cordelia said. “You think Father did something wrong. Don’t you?”

The gloves Alastair had been holding fell to the floor. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Cordelia—”

“It does matter!” Cordelia said. “It matters when you hide things from me, you and Mâmân. I got a letter from the Consul. It said that they couldn’t try Father with the Mortal Sword because he didn’t remember a thing about the expedition. How could that be? What did he do—”

“He was drunk,” Alastair said. “The night of the expedition, he was drunk, so drunk he probably sent those poor bastards into a nest of vampires because he didn’t know enough not to. So drunk he doesn’t remember a thing. Because he’s always bloody drunk, Cordelia. The only one of us who didn’t know that is you.”

Cordelia sank down on the couch. She no longer felt her legs could hold her up. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

“Because I never wanted you to know!” Alastair burst out. “Because I wanted you to have a childhood, a thing I never had. I wanted you to be able to love and respect your father as I never could. Every time he made a mess, who do you think had to clean it up? Who told you Father was ill or sleeping when he was drunk? Who went out and fetched him when he passed out in a gin palace and smuggled him in through the back door? Who learned at ten years old to refill the brandy bottles with water each morning so no one would notice the levels had sunk—?”

He broke off, breathing hard.

“Alastair,” Cordelia whispered. It was all true, she knew. She could not help but recall Father lying day after day in a darkened room, her mother saying he was “sick.” Elias’s hands shaking. Wine ceasing to appear at the dinner table. Elias never eating. Cordelia coming across bottles of brandy in odd places: a hall closet, a trunk of linens. Alastair never acknowledging any of it, laughing it off, turning her attention in some other direction, always, so she did not dwell. So she would not have to.

“He will never win this trial,” said Alastair. He was trembling. “Even though the Mortal Sword is useless, he will indict