Cordelia did not want to go look for James. She’d seen the look on his face when Grace tumbled out of Charles’s carriage in the courtyard. The longing that had turned so quickly to fear for Grace; the quick unconscious way he’d touched the bracelet on his wrist. He hated Tatiana, she knew, and with good reason. But he would have done anything to protect her to spare Grace pain.

She wondered what it would be like, to be loved like that. Even alongside her sadness, there was a strange admiration in her for the way that James loved Grace, the all-encompassingness of it.

That didn’t mean she wanted to barge in on James and his lady love. But Lucie had asked, and Cordelia could see no reason to refuse. She smiled weakly. “I’m not sure I’m meant to leave you alone with a man,” she said. “Seems scandalous.”

Lucie chuckled. “Matthew’s not a man. We used to hit each other with soup ladles as children.”

Cordelia rather expected Matthew to laugh too, but instead he looked away, suddenly occupied with a spot of dirt on his sleeve. With a silent sigh, Cordelia ruffled Lucie’s hair and went out into the corridor.

She was still learning her way around the Institute. The symbols for Shadowhunter families were everywhere and as Cordelia passed them, witchlight touched the shapes of wings and the curves of towers. Cordelia found a set of stone steps and headed down it, only to jump in surprise as Anna Lightwood stepped out from beneath a marble frieze of an angel poised over a green hill. The dragon of Wales was pictured in the background.

Anna was in trousers and a jacket of sharp French tailoring. Her blue eyes were the exact color of Will’s, darker than Lucie’s: they matched her waistcoat, and the lapis head of her walking stick.

“Have you seen James?” Cordelia demanded without preamble.

“No,” said Anna shortly. “No clue as to his whereabouts, I’m afraid.”

Cordelia frowned, not because of James, but because of Anna’s expression. “Anna? What’s wrong?”

Anna scowled. “I had come here to horsewhip Charles, but it appears that he is elsewhere.”

“Charles Fairchild?” Cordelia echoed blankly. “I believe he’s at home—he called a gathering at his house for high-ranking Enclave members. You could go horsewhip him there, but it would make for a very strange meeting.”