Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,221

recovered, and a dozen times she had held herself back. If beauty were a measure of wellness, Ariadne would be the healthiest person at the party. Her dark hair gleamed, her soft brown skin looked like silk, and her lips were full and red. The first lips Anna had ever kissed. The first she had loved.

“I am sorry,” Anna said, with a slight, formal bow. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

She turned to go, but Ariadne hastened across the room to her, holding out a hand. “Anna, please. I want to talk to you.”

Anna paused, staring at the door. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. She cursed herself quietly; she should be long past feeling this way. So foolish. So young. I am Anna Lightwood, she told herself. Nothing touches me.

“I heard you,” Ariadne said softly.

Anna turned to stare at her. “What?”

“I heard you when you came to the infirmary,” Ariadne said, “and asked me not to die.”

Shocked, Anna said, “So—you heard about Charles’s betrayal from me?”

Ariadne waved that away, her slim gold bracelets chiming like bells. “It barely mattered to me at all. The only thing that mattered was the realization that you still have love in your heart for me.”

Anna put her hand to the pendant at her throat. Her mother had given it to her when she had been mourning Ariadne’s loss. The first and last time Anna had let anyone break her heart.

“I’ve realized that I was wrong,” said Ariadne.

“To become engaged to Charles?” Anna said. She remembered, two years ago, finding Charles at the Bridgestocks’ house when she had come with flowers in her hand for Ariadne. How the Bridgestocks had smiled when he kissed Ariadne’s hand, even as Anna was ushered out of the room. “There are better men, if marriage is what you insist on.”

“No,” said Ariadne. “I was wrong about myself and you. Wrong about what I wanted.” She clasped her hands together. “What I said years ago, some of it is still true. I do not wish to hurt my parents. I do want to have children. But none of that matters if I do not have love in my life.” She smiled wistfully. “You have made quite a name for yourself, Anna, as someone who does not believe in love.”

Anna spoke coldly. “Indeed. I think that romantic love is the cause of all the pain and suffering in this world.”

The silk of Ariadne’s dress rustled as she moved. A moment later she was beside Anna, leaning up on her toes to brush her lips against Anna’s cheek. When she drew back, her dark eyes were shining. “I know you are strong-willed, Anna Lightwood, but I am just as strong-willed. I will change your mind. I will win you back.”

She gathered her skirts and strode from the room, the scent of her orange-blossom perfume lingering behind her like smoke on the air.

* * *

“You don’t mind dancing with an old man like myself?” Will said, expertly turning Cordelia about the floor.

She smiled. Will did not have the air of an old man about him—there was something of a boy’s mischief in the way he smiled. Strange that neither Jem nor Tessa had aged since the Clockwork War, yet both seemed older and more serious than Will Herondale did. “Not at all,” she said. “For many years, when we were growing up, both Alastair and I wished we saw more of you and Mrs. Herondale. We thought of you as an aunt and uncle of sorts.”

“Now that you will be so close, and we will in truth be family, many opportunities present themselves,” said Will. “A celebration party, perhaps, when your father comes home.”

Cordelia blanched. She was sure her father would want nothing of the kind; he would want to forget he had ever been away, because he would not wish to remember why.

Will ducked his head to look at her more closely. “Or we can always arrange nothing, if you prefer. Nothing is my favorite thing to arrange. It takes so little effort.”

Cordelia smiled wanly.

Will sighed. “I joke around a great deal,” he said. “It is one way in which I manage life in a complex world. But I sense you are not entirely happy about your father coming home.”

“It is, as you say, complex,” said Cordelia. She was faintly aware that the other dancers were looking at them, probably wondering what they were discussing so intently.

“I loved my father when I was a child,” said Will. “I thought he