All about them the sky bloomed with brilliant lights. He could no longer see Cordelia. The lights formed into shapes and patterns—he had seen them before, the scrawls on the paper in Gast’s flat. The knowledge of what they were tickled at the edge of his brain. He called out for Cordelia, but she was gone, like the dream he’d known she was.

When James woke in the morning, he was lying in his own bed. He was fully dressed, though someone had taken off his jacket and shoes and set them on a chair. In a velvet wing-backed chair nearby Matthew was dozing, his cheek propped on his hand.

Matthew always looked quite different when he was asleep. The constant motion that was such a distraction when he was awake vanished, and he became one of those paintings he loved: a Frederic Leighton, perhaps. Leighton was famous for painting children in their innocence, and when Matthew slept, he looked as if sorrow had never touched him.

As if he knew he was being watched, he stirred and sat up, focusing on James. “You’re awake.” He began to grin. “How’s your head? Ringing like a bell?”

James sat up slowly. He had been with Matthew on many mornings when his parabatai was complaining of a bad head, or aches and misery and the need to swallow a glass of raw egg and pepper before he could face the day. But James felt nothing like that. Nothing hurt or ached. “No, but—how do I look?”

“Ghastly,” Matthew reported happily. “Like you saw the ghost of Old Mol and your hair’s still sticking up.”

James stared down at his own hands, turning them over. His bare wrist still looked odd, the bracelet’s absence like a glaring wound. But there was no actual pain, either physical or mental.

“On the other hand,” Matthew said, his eyes diabolically alight, “I can’t say your parents were too pleased when I carried you in last night.…”

James bolted out of bed. His clothes were as rumpled as if he’d slept under a bridge. “You carried me? My parents were here?”

“They had indeed come back from their meeting with my brother,” said Matthew, “who was, apparently, very boring, which I could have told them.”

“MATTHEW,” James said.

Matthew held his hands up innocently. “I said nothing to them, but apparently Charles told them of his engagement to Grace at the meeting, and they deduced you were trying to drown your sorrows. I told them that you’d only had a sip of gin and they decried you as a lightweight.”