Matthew had also seemed happy as he’d danced, Anna thought, making her way down the hall to the games room. Hopefully he was coming out of the years-long funk he’d been in—she had been worried. The Merry Thieves were like little brothers to her, and Matthew had always been her companion in scrapes and adventures.

The games room was in shadow. Anna liked it here: it was an unfussy room, without ribbons or rosettes or gilt. The chess set her father had given Will gleamed in the moonlight streaming through the window. It spilled like pale fire over the polished floor and the young woman standing in the middle of the room.

Ariadne Bridgestock.

Ariadne was the second thing that had been nagging at Anna all night. A dozen times now, she had wanted to ask Ariadne if she was well, if she had recovered, and a dozen times she had held herself back. If beauty were a measure of wellness, Ariadne would be the healthiest person at the party. Her dark hair gleamed, her soft brown skin looked like silk, and her lips were full and red. The first lips Anna had ever kissed. The first she had loved.

“I am sorry,” Anna said, with a slight, formal bow. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

She turned to go, but Ariadne hastened across the room to her, holding out a hand. “Anna, please. I want to talk to you.”

Anna paused, staring at the door. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. She cursed herself quietly; she should be long past feeling this way. So foolish. So young. I am Anna Lightwood, she told herself. Nothing touches me.

“I heard you,” Ariadne said softly.

Anna turned to stare at her. “What?”

“I heard you when you came to the infirmary,” Ariadne said, “and asked me not to die.”

Shocked, Anna said, “So—you heard about Charles’s betrayal from me?”

Ariadne waved that away, her slim gold bracelets chiming like bells. “It barely mattered to me at all. The only thing that mattered was the realization that you still have love in your heart for me.”

Anna put her hand to the pendant at her throat. Her mother had given it to her when she had been mourning Ariadne’s loss. The first and last time Anna had let anyone break her heart.

“I’ve realized that I was wrong,” said Ariadne.

“To become engaged to Charles?” Anna said. She remembered, two years ago, finding Charles at the Bridgestocks’ house when she had come with flowers in her hand for Ariadne. How the Bridgestocks had smiled when he kissed Ariadne’s hand, even as Anna was ushered out of the room. “There are better men, if marriage is what you insist on.”