Sometimes, she thought, she wished she could pray, as other Nephilim did, to Raziel, but she had never learned quite how. Her parents had not been observant of the religion that bound all Shadowhunters together: the worship of the angel who had made them who they were, who had committed them to a destiny as harsh as beauty, as unforgiving as goodness itself. To remember that you worshipped Raziel was to remember that you were separate, for good or ill, from those you were sworn to protect. That even in a crowd, you might be alone.

“Daisy?” It was James, having made his way almost silently into the corridor. He leaned against the opposite wall, his eyes fixed on her.

“You didn’t have to follow me.” Her voice was a whisper, echoing down the hall. The ceiling above them rose into shadow: it could have been a foot above their heads, or a thousand feet.

“I’m here because of you,” he said. Her eyes flicked up to him: he was a poem in black and white in the shadows, his hair like streaks of dark paint across the pale canvas of his skin. “And I want to be here. Because of you.”

She took a shuddering breath. “It’s just—I’ve been angry at him since he came back from the Basilias.” If she were truthful with herself, she had been angry with him since she had first learned the truth from Alastair. “I never welcomed him home. Never accepted him. Now that he’s dead, I’ve lost the chance to reconcile with him, to forgive him, to understand him.”

“My father,” James said, and hesitated. “My father used to tell me that sometimes you cannot reconcile with someone else. Sometimes you have to find that reconciliation on your own. Someone who broke your heart is often not the person who can mend it.”

Someone who broke your heart. Cordelia thought of her father. They would never have a good moment between them again. If only she had let him walk her down the aisle. Lucie would have understood. If only she had given him a chance.

She should have stopped him from running out of her house last night. The awful truth was that she’d been glad to see him go, and worried, not on his behalf, but on James’s. All she’d been able to think was that somehow, her father had humiliated her again. What did Father do to James? What had he said? James had insisted steadfastly it had been nothing, but he had looked sick to his stomach and had gone to bed early.

“Did you see it?” she whispered.

It was so quiet she could hear the scrape of James’s jacket against the stone wall as he moved. “See what?”

“Did you dream it? Him dying?”

James put a hand up to cover his eyes. “Yes.”

“It was the same killer?” Her voice sounded tiny and dry. “The same murderer, the same hate?”

“Yes. But Daisy—”