“But why?” Sona’s voice rose in anguish. She caught at the material of Elias’s coat, fisting it in her hand. “Why did you not fight, Elias? You, who slew a Greater Demon—”

“Mother, don’t,” Alastair said. “He isn’t worth it—”

Cordelia could bear it no longer. Wrenching her hand free of James’s, she hurried out of the Ossuarium: away from the gray wax figure of her dead father, away from her sobbing mother.

Just past the stone square outside the Ossuarium was a narrow corridor. Cordelia turned down it, only to find herself confronted by the sight of a long, thin passage, twisting away into utter blackness. It was foreboding enough to stop her in her tracks. She slumped against one of the walls, the cold from the stone seeping through the wool of her coat.

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.”