Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,225

had been amused when he’d heard about the engagement. He thought he recalled James having muttered about some other girl to him the first time they’d met, but Romeo himself had once thought himself in love with a girl named Rosalind. It was clear from the way James and Cordelia looked at each other that this was a love match. It was also clear why Matthew was standing where he was—from this vantage point, there was a perfect view of James and Cordelia, his dark head bent over her fiery one, their faces close together.

Magnus cleared his throat. “I see why my waistcoats cannot hold your attention, Fairchild. I’ve been where you are. Wanting what you can’t have will only rip your heart apart.”

Matthew spoke in a low voice. “It would be one thing if James loved her. I would go into the quiet dark like Jem did and never speak of her again. But he doesn’t love her.”

“What?” Magnus was unpleasantly startled.

“This is a false marriage,” said Matthew. “It’s only for a year.”

Magnus tucked the information away as a mystery to be solved: it did not go along with what he knew of the Herondales, father or son. “And yet,” Magnus said, “during that year, they are man and wife.”

Matthew looked up, his green eyes flashing. “And during that year, I will do nothing. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I think,” said Magnus, very slowly, “that you are a person who is incredibly sad, although I don’t know why. And I think that, as an immortal, I can tell you that a great deal can happen in a year.”

Matthew did not reply. He was watching Cordelia and James. Everyone in the room was. They were dancing close together, and Magnus would have cheerfully bet a thousand pounds that they were in love.

A bet, it seemed, he would have lost. And yet.

Oh, dear, Magnus thought. I may need to linger in London a bit longer.

Perhaps I should send for my cat.

* * *

It was as if no time had passed since Cordelia’s first ball in London, and yet everything had changed.

She felt a million miles from the anxious girl who had come to London desperate to make friends and allies, who had seen in every face a stranger. Now she had friends—a richness of friends: she could see Anna, at the entrance to the ballroom, speaking cheerfully to Christopher. There was Thomas, seated with his sister, and Matthew, beside Magnus Bane. And Lucie, her Lucie, who would one day stand with her in the blazing circles of the parabatai ceremony.

“Daisy,” said James, with a smile. It was a real smile, though she could not quite tell if he was happy or sad or something in between. “What are you thinking?”

One thing had not changed: her heart still beat too fast when she danced with James.

“I was thinking,” she said, “it must be strange to you, that Belial’s realm was destroyed.”

One dark eyebrow flicked upward, a flourish of ink across a page. “What do you mean?”

“It was a place only you could see,” she said. “That only you could go. Now it is gone. It is like an enemy that you have known a long time. Even if you hated it, it must be strange to think of never seeing it again.”

“No one else has understood that.” James was looking at her with a gentle, puzzling tenderness, the Mask entirely gone now. He drew her closer to him. “We must think of this as an adventure, Daisy.”

She could feel his heart beat against her own. “Think of what as an adventure?”

“Being married,” James said fiercely. “I know you gave up a great deal for me, and I never want you to regret it. We will live together as the best of friends. I will help you train for your parabatai ceremony. I will defend and support you, always. You need never be lonely. I will always be there.”

His lips brushed her cheek.

“Remember how well we did in the Whispering Room,” James whispered, and she shivered at the feeling of his warm breath against her skin. “We fooled them all.”

We fooled them. So it had been as she feared, despite what he had said—and perhaps believed—at the time: it had been real to her, but not to him. A strange and bitter pleasure.

“I suppose,” James said, “I am saying that I know this is an odd experience—but I hope you can be at least a little bit happy, Daisy.”

His