“I find that I am glad to hear that,” Matthew said. His eyes were very dark, the green just a rim around the pupil as he looked at her. “Glad that you are not hurt. And glad—”

“I am not hurt. It’s just that I don’t understand,” Cordelia said. Her voice seemed to echo off the walls. “James seems an entirely different person.”

Matthew’s mouth twisted in a bitter half smile. “He has been like this for years. Sometimes he is the James of my heart, the friend I have always loved. Sometimes he is behind a wall of glass and I cannot reach him no matter how I pound my fists against it.”

The Mask, Cordelia thought. So Matthew saw it too.

“You must find me ridiculous,” Matthew said. “Parabatai ought to be close, and in truth, I would not want to live in this world without James. Yet he tells me nothing of what he feels.”

“I do not find you ridiculous, and I wish you would not say such things,” Cordelia said. “Matthew, you may speak however badly of yourself as you like, but it does not make it true. You decide the truth about yourself. No one else. And the choice about what kind of person you will be is yours alone.”

Matthew stared at her—for once, it seemed, speechless.

Cordelia stalked over to the Portal. “Do you know what Blackthorn Manor looks like?”

Matthew seemed to snap back to reality. “Of course,” he said. “But it has been only ten minutes.”

“I do not see why we must do as he says,” said Cordelia. “Open the Portal, Matthew.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and finally the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. “You are quite bossy for a girl whose nickname is Daisy,” he said, and went over to the Portal. He placed his palm against the surface, and it shimmered like disturbed water. An image evolved slowly from the center: a great old stone pile of a manor house, set far back from a spreading green lawn. The lawn was overgrown, the black iron gates before the manor thick with twisting briars. They were thrown open, and through the gap Cordelia could see the blank stone face of the house, inset with a dozen windows.

As she stared, one of the windows went up in orange flames. Then another. The sky above the manor house turned a dark, foreboding red.

Matthew swore.

“He’s burning the house down, isn’t he?” said Cordelia.

“Bloody Herondales,” said Matthew, with a sort of epic despair. “I’ll go through—”

“Not alone, you won’t,” said Cordelia, and picking up the skirts of her blue frock, she leaped through the open Portal.