“His mother is a warlock,” Tatiana said. “She is the only warlock who is also a Shadowhunter to have ever lived, it seems. So she is doubly cursed.”

She seemed lost in thought for a moment. Grace remained silent.

Then Tatiana’s head snapped up and she again focused on her daughter. “Wait here,” she said sharply, and went out of the room and down the corridor. Grace supposed she was going to the cellars, where Grace was forbidden to go. She sank down on one of the chairs by the fire, wishing the sun would hurry up and set so she could see Jesse. Her mother was always kinder to her if Jesse was about.

It seemed that hardly any time had passed at all when Tatiana reappeared, rubbing her hands together with excitement. Grace rose, wary. “One of my patrons,” Tatiana said as she went around the desk, “has found a solution to your problem.”

“Your patrons?” Grace said.

“Yes,” said Tatiana, “a solution that will grant us even greater power over Herondale than you could wield over anyone else.”

From her pocket she produced a bracelet, a band of sleek silver. For a moment, it reflected a glare of candlelight into Grace’s eyes. Tatiana went on to explain her plan, the story she had crafted. Grace was to tell James the bracelet was an old heirloom of her birth parents, Tatiana said, and Grace felt a pang so deep within herself that, she was sure, no part of it was expressed on her face at all. Tatiana would hide the bracelet in a box in her study; next, Grace was to trick James into recovering the bracelet for her. “The moment he lays his willing hand upon it,” her mother was saying, “he will be lost, for it is so powerful that even to touch it is to be overcome by its magic.”

“Why make him retrieve the bracelet himself from the house?” Grace said, puzzled. “I’m sure he would simply accept it if I offered it to him as a gift.”

Tatiana smiled. “Grace, you must trust me. The adventure of getting the thing will stick the bracelet in his mind. He will care about it—because he loves you, of course, but also because of the story it carries in his mind.”

Grace knew there was no point resisting. There was never any point resisting. Her mother was all she had; there was nowhere else she could go. Even if she confessed everything to James, threw herself on the mercy of his infamously brutish parents, she would lose everything. Her home, her name, her brother. And her mother’s wrath would burn her to nothing.