He released her hand as if she had struck him. There was confusion in his eyes, and visible hurt as well. “I am not—”

“Yes, you are. You think I can’t recognize it?”

Matthew’s mouth hardened into a narrow line. “Drink makes me amusing.”

“It does not amuse me to watch you hurt yourself,” she said. “You are like a brother to me, Math—”

He flinched. “Am I? No one else has such complaints about what I do, or my desire for fortification.”

“Many are afraid to mention it,” said Lucie. “Others, like my brother and my parents, do not see what they do not want to see. But I see, and I am worried.”

His lip curled at the corner. “Worried about me? I’m flattered.”

“I am worried,” said Lucie, “that you will get my brother killed.”

Matthew did not move. He remained as still as if he had been turned to stone by the Gorgon in the old stories. The Gorgon was a demon, Lucie’s father had told her, though in those days there were no Shadowhunters. Instead gods and demigods had walked on the earth, and miracles had showered down from the heavens like leaves from a tree in autumn. But there was no miracle here. Only the fact that she might as well have stabbed Matthew in the heart.

“You are his parabatai,” said Lucie, her voice shaking slightly. “He trusts you—to be at his back in battle, to be his shield and sword, and if you are not yourself—”

Matthew stood up, nearly upending the chair. His eyes were dark with fury. “If it were anyone else but you, Lucie, saying these things to me—”

“Then what?” Lucie also rose to her feet. She barely reached Matthew’s shoulder, but she glared at him anyway. She had always given as good as she got in the soup ladle battles of their childhood. “What would you do?”

He slammed his way out of her room without replying.

In the end, James brought Grace to the drawing room.

It was quiet in there, and deserted: there was a fire on, and he helped her into a chair close to it, bending to draw off her gloves. He wanted to kiss her bare hands—so vulnerable, so familiar from their days and nights in the woods—but he stepped back and left her alone to warm herself by the flames. It was not a cold day, but shock could make one shiver down to one’s bones.

The light from the flames danced over the William Morris wallpaper and the deep colors of the Axminster rugs that covered the wooden floor. At last Grace rose to her feet and began to pace up and down in front of the fire. She had pulled the last pins from her hair, and it streamed over her shoulders like icy water.