Grace waited until the very end of the summer to speak to her mother about the situation. James and his family had already left for London. It was so strange to think of them as the same Herondales her mother railed against; to go by James’s descriptions, they seemed to resemble Tatiana’s sworn enemies not at all. She had been fairly certain what was happening for a few weeks, but she had decided to give it the season. “My power wasn’t working on James.”

Tatiana’s eyebrows went up. “Is he not fond of you?”

“He is fond of me, I think,” Grace said. “But sometimes I’ve made requests—unreasonable requests, things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, to see if I could make him. And I can’t.”

Her mother had a sour look. “The crowned heads of Europe come at your beck and call,” she said, “but the son of a Welsh mud farmer eludes your grasp.”

“I have been trying, Mama,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s because he’s a Shadowhunter. Maybe they have more resistance to the magic.”

Tatiana didn’t say anything further then, but a few weeks later she abruptly announced that they were departing for Alicante in an hour, and Grace should ready herself to go out.

13 THE WINTRY WIND

No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;

The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

—William Butler Yeats, “The Withering of the Boughs”

Once Alastair was gone, the room seemed terribly quiet. Cordelia glanced at the door—she was used to falling asleep with James but a few feet away. Now he was miles away, and likely going to bed assuming she was furious with him.

James. She had grown accustomed to seeing him first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. It still felt very strange to undress in the bathroom knowing he was just a few feet away, but… Now she was alone. Not alone—her brother was down the hall, her mother asleep downstairs—but she missed James.

Cordelia sighed. She wasn’t going to get to sleep anytime soon, whatever Alastair had said. She was about to find a book to pass the time, when her window flew suddenly open with a crash, and someone hurtled through the gap, landing on the floor next to her bed in a hectic tumble of freezing-cold air, blond curls, and bright orange spats.

“Matthew?”

He had landed awkwardly on the floor. He sat up, rubbing his elbow and cursing softly. “That was the first decent thing Alastair ever did in his life. And to think I was here to see it. Well, spy on it, technically.”

“Go and close the window,” Cordelia said, “or I will throw the teapot at you. What are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” he said, dusting himself off and going to close the window. “What does it look like?”