Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare Read Free Book Online

better if you did, so that we can complete our parabatai training.”
    â€œLucie, you are making me dizzy!” Cordelia said, and cast a worried look over her shoulder. Had James heard any of what they had said? No, it didn’t seem so: he was still wandering along, reading.
    A betraying hope swelled in her heart, and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine being engaged to James, being welcomed into Lucie’s family. Lucie, her sister in the eyes of the law now, carrying a sheaf of flowers at her wedding. Their friends—they would certainly have friends—exclaiming, Oh, you two make a perfect couple—
    She frowned suddenly. “Why does Matthew not approve of me?” she asked, and then cleared her throat. “I mean, if I was the girl they were talking about, which I am sure I was not.”
    Lucie waved her hand airily. “He did not think the girl in question cared for James. But as we have already ascertained, you can fall in love with him quite easily, if you put a bit of effort into it. Matthew is overly protective of Jamie, but he is nothing to fear. He may not like many people, but he’s very kind to the ones he does like.”
    Cordelia thought of Matthew, James’s parabatai . Matthew had hardly left James’s side since they had both been in school in Idris, and she had met him now and then at social events. Matthew was all gold hair and smiles, but she suspected there might be a lion under the kitty cat if hurting James was involved.
    But she would never hurt James. She loved him. She had loved him all her life.
    And tomorrow she would get the chance to tell him so. She had no doubt that would give her the confidence to approach the Consul and present her father’s case for leniency, perhaps with James by her side.
    Cordelia raised her chin. Yes, after the ball tomorrow, her life would be very different.

D AYS P AST : I DRIS , 1899
    Every year for as long as James could remember, he and his family had gone to Idris to spend the summer at Herondale Manor. It was a large edifice of golden-yellow stone, its gardens sloping down to the enchanted green space of Brocelind Forest, a high wall separating it from the manor of the Blackthorn family next door.
    James and Lucie would spend the days playing on the outskirts of the dark forest, swimming and fishing in the nearby river, and riding horses over the green fields. Sometimes they would try to peep over the wall of the Blackthorn house, but the walls were choked with thorny vines. Razor-tipped briars wrapped around the gates as if Blackthorn Manor had been long abandoned and overgrown, and though they knew that Tatiana Blackthorn lived there, they had only seen her carriage going in and out from a distance, the doors and windows firmly shut.
    James had once asked his parents why they never socialized with the woman who lived next door, especially since Tatiana was related to James’s uncles, Gideon and Gabriel Lightwood. Tessa explained diplomatically that there had been bad blood betweentheir families since Tatiana’s father had been cursed and they’d been unable to save him. Her father and her husband had died that day, and her son, Jesse, had died in the years since. She blamed Will and her brothers for her losses. “People become locked in bitterness sometimes,” Tessa said, “and they wish to find someone, anyone, to blame for their grief. It is a shame, for Will and your uncles would have helped her if they could.”
    James had not given much more thought to Tatiana: a strange woman who hated his father unreasonably was not someone he wished to know. Then, the summer James turned thirteen years old, a message came from London to tell Will that Edmund and Linette Herondale, James’s grandparents, had died of influenza.
    If Will had not been so distracted by his loss, perhaps things would have gone differently.
    But he was, and they didn’t.
    The night after they learned of