She saw immediately why James had called Matthew to him first. The statue surmounted a now-dry bronze fountain; slumped behind the fountain was the body of a Shadowhunter—a man in gear, with dark red hair. Not far away, an object glittered on the pathway, as if it had fallen or been tossed aside. The pithos.

Nearing the fountain, Matthew froze. He had gone an awful color, like chalk.

“Charles,” he whispered.

He seemed unable to move. Cordelia caught hold of his hand and half dragged him to where James was kneeling by the body—no, not a body, she realized with relief. Charles was alive, if barely. James had rolled him onto his back, and his blood-soaked chest rose and fell unevenly.

James had his stele out and was frantically drawing iratzes on Charles’s skin, where a torn and bloody sleeve exposed his forearm. Cordelia heard Matthew suck in a ragged breath. He was staring intently at the runes, and Cordelia knew why: when a wound was fatal, iratzes would not hold their place on skin. They would vanish, overwhelmed by a level of damage they could not heal.

“They’re staying,” she whispered, though she knew it was not a guarantee. She squeezed Matthew’s hand hard. “Go—Matthew, you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”

With a stiff nod, Matthew drew away and fell to his knees beside James. He laid his hand, long and slender, glittering with his signet ring, on his brother’s cheek. “Charles,” he said breathlessly. “Hang on, Charlie. We’ll get you help. We’ll—”

He broke off and sat motionless, one hand on his brother’s face, the other arrested in the motion of reaching for his stele. The slow rise and fall of Charles’s shallow breathing seemed to have stopped as well. They were frozen, like statues. Cordelia looked wildly at James, who was staring around them in amazement. The park was utterly silent, utterly still. Where were the sounds of birds—city starlings and sparrows? The sounds of London awakening: the cries of costermongers, the tread of pedestrians on their way to work? The rustle of leaves in the wind? The world felt still and frozen, as if pressed under glass.

But James—James could move too. Pocketing the pithos, he rose to his feet, seeking out Cordelia with his gaze. His golden eyes were burning. “Cordelia,” he said. “Turn around.”