Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,192

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.