Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,67

a helmet and mask that formed a leering skull. It stopped him short, and he stood staring at it until it came to him what it must be: one of Axel Mortmain’s famous clockwork creatures, an empty shell that had once housed a demon. The very monsters that his own parents had defeated when they were only barely older than he was now.

Grace had told him that Tatiana had left the house untouched all these years, but that was not entirely true: she had installed this mechanical creature’s corpse in its gallery. Why? What did it mean to her? Was it admiration of Mortmain, who had nearly destroyed the Shadowhunters?

James hated to turn his back on the thing, but he moved on, and quickly found the door to Tatiana’s study. The room was piled with boxes and crates, stacks of yellowed pages and decaying books. On the wall was a portrait of a boy, about the same age as James, shining green eyes dominating his gaunt face. James knew who it must be, though he had never seen him: Jesse Blackthorn.

There was a metal box set on the low wrought-iron table below the portrait of the dead boy, carved all over with the winding vines that the Blackthorns used to decorate seemingly everything. The lock was built into the lid, presenting a simple keyhole in the smooth surface.

Without looking directly at the box, he lowered his hand to its lid; he felt his body flash into and out of shadow in irregular jerks and for an awful moment saw that other land, the blighted place of twisted trees.

James thrust his ethereal hand through the lid into the box, closed it around a cold serpent of metal, and withdrew it. It was Grace’s mother’s bracelet, just as she had described.

He fled from the room, from the manor itself. The moonlight through the dusty windows of the hallways wavered and writhed like a mass of silver snakes.

Out of the manor grounds and nearly home, James became aware that he remained a shadow. He stopped where he was, a nondescript stretch of road lined on both sides with dense trees and foliage, neither Blackthorn nor Herondale home visible. The sky was dark, the moon a bright sliver. Gray shimmered at the edge of his vision as he closed his eyes and willed himself to become solid again.

Nothing happened.

He was not, at the moment, a being who breathed, but he felt himself breathe anyway, hard and shaky. When he had become a shadow during his scalding fever, it had only been for moments. It had not been much longer at Shadowhunter Academy. But he had not made the change on purpose, either time.

Oddly, his mind turned to Cordelia, to her voice reaching through the fever, through the shadows. He fell to his knees, his hands making no mark in the dirt of the road. He closed his eyes. Let me come back. Let me come back.

Do not leave me alone in these shadows.

He felt a jolt, as if he had fallen and hit the ground hard: his eyes flew open. He was no longer a shadow. He staggered to his feet, gasping in the cold, clear air. The gray had gone from the edge of his vision.

“Well,” he said out loud to nobody, “never again. That’s easily done. Never again.”

* * *

The next night Grace was waiting for him under the shade of a yew tree, just inside the entrance to Brocelind Forest. Without a word he placed the bracelet in her hand.

She turned it thoughtfully over and over between her pale fingers, and he saw the moonlight strike across the engraving laid within the curve of metal.

LOYAULTÉ ME LIE. James knew the meaning. It had been the maxim of a long-dead king of England. Loyalty Binds Me.

“It was the motto of the Cartwrights,” Grace said, her voice very soft. “I was Grace Cartwright once.” A smile touched her lips, faint as winter moonlight. “As I waited for you, I realized how foolish I had been to ask for this. I can’t wear it without my mother seeing. I do not even dare keep it in my room lest she find it.” Grace turned to him. “Would you wear it?” she asked. “As my friend. As my only real friend, truly. Then when I see you, I will be reminded of who I am.”

“Of course,” he said, his heart breaking for her. “Of course I will.”

“Hold out your arm,” she whispered, barely loud enough