“Dokhtare zibaye man. My beautiful daughter,” said her mother, wrapping her arms around Cordelia from behind in an awkward hug, careful of her pregnant belly. Cordelia regarded them both in the mirror: the similar shapes of their hands, their mouths. She wore a gold necklace that had been part of her mother’s own dowry. Her skin was a few shades lighter than her mother’s, but their eyes were the same black. And when had she gotten taller than Sona?

Sona clucked. A lock of hair had escaped the jeweled golden bandeau that encircled Cordelia’s head; she moved to smooth it back in place. “Layla, azizam. You seem worried.”

Cordelia exhaled slowly. She couldn’t even imagine Sona’s reaction if she told her the truth. “It is just quite a big change, Mâmân. To move out of this house—and not back to Cirenworth, but to quite a strange house—”

“Layla,” Sona said. “Don’t fret. It is always difficult to face a change. When I married your father, I was terribly nervous. Yet all anyone talked about was how lucky I was, because he was the dashing hero who had slain the demon Yanluo. But my mother took me aside and told me, ‘He’s indeed very dashing, but you must not forget your own heroism.’ So all will be well. Only do not forget your own heroism.”

The words gave Cordelia a start. Sona rarely mentioned her family, except as an ideal of heroism—a family whose lineage stretched far back among the Shadowhunters of Persia. Cordelia knew that her grandparents were no longer living—they had died before her birth—but there were aunts and uncles and cousins in Tehran. Sona barely spoke of them, and hadn’t invited them to James and Cordelia’s wedding, saying it would be rude to expect them to travel so far and that they did not trust Portals.

It was as though when she’d married Elias, she’d separated herself from her old life completely, and now Risa was the closest thing she had to her Persian family. And Sona’s isolation was not the only matter that troubled Cordelia. Elias, after all, had not been a dashing hero in many years. What did Sona think of that? What did she think of her heroism, put aside to raise her children and wander always, never settling down, because of her husband’s “health”?

“Sona khanoom!” Risa suddenly appeared in the doorway. “He has come,” she went on, casting an urgent glance over her shoulder. “Just now—with no warning at all—”

“Alastair! Cordelia!” a familiar voice bellowed up from downstairs. “Sona, my love!”

Sona paled and laid a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Elias?”