Cordelia had not expected such frankness. “What do you mean?”

“I suppose I question if he knows what he feels,” said Matthew. “I suppose I worry that he will hurt you.”

“He is your parabatai,” said Cordelia. “Why should you care if he hurts me?”

Matthew tipped his head back to look at the darkening evening sky. His lashes were several shades darker than his blond hair. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I find that I do care.”

Cordelia wished they were discussing anything else. “Don’t worry. Alastair gave me the same warning about James just yesterday. I have been well told.”

Matthew’s jaw tightened. “I always said that the day I would be in charity with Alastair Carstairs would be the day I burn in Hell.”

“Was he really so horrible to James at school?” said Cordelia.

Matthew turned to her, and the look on his face startled her. It was the purest fury. “It was more than that—”

James appeared out of the shadows, his black hair disarrayed, and beckoned to them. “I’ve found the entrance. We ought to go quickly.”

They proceeded to the cemetery and passed through the tall gates. Dark cypress trees soared overhead, their overlapping leaves blocking out the last of the evening light. In their shadow rose elaborate monuments to the dead. Great mausoleums and Egyptian obelisks towered beside broken granite columns, symbolizing life cut short. Headstones were carved into hourglasses with wings, Greek urns, and beautiful women with streaming hair. And everywhere, of course, there were stone angels: chubby and sentimental-looking, sweet-faced as children. How little mundanes understood about angels, Cordelia thought, picking her way along the twig-strewn path after James. How much they did not understand what was terrifying about their power.

James turned off one of the gray avenues then, and they found themselves in an open space that seemed deep in the woods, leaves clustered so thickly above them that the waning light was tinged with green. In the center of the clearing was a statue of an angel, but this was no cherub. It was the marble figure of a beautiful man of great height. Scaled armor had been carved on his body. He held a sword in one outstretched hand, etched with the words QUIS UT DEUS, and his head was thrown back as if he were crying out to heaven.

James stepped forward, raising one hand—the one that bore the Herondale ring with its pattern of birds. “Quis ut Deus?” he said. “ ‘Who is like God?’ the Angel asks. The answer is ‘No one. No one is like God.’ ”

The stone angel’s eyes opened, absolutely black, apertures into a great and silent dark. Then, with a grinding of stone, the angel slid aside, revealing a great empty pit in the earth and stairs leading downward.