“Take good care of my boy,” Will said to Cordelia, looking as if he wanted to ruffle her hair but was stumped by the sheer number of flowers and seed pearls in it.

Alastair touched Cordelia’s cheek. “Agar oun ba to mehraboon nabood, bargard khooneh va motmaen bash man kari mikonam ke az ghalat kardene khodesh pashimoon besheh.”

If he ever hurts you, come home, and I will make him regret it.

It was Alastair’s way of telling her he would miss her. Cordelia hid a smile.

As they left the Institute, everything felt echoing, vast, and strange to Cordelia, as if she were dreaming. In the entryway, James paused at the door, pretending to busy himself with pulling on his gloves while he took a lingering look at the grooves worn in the stone floor by hundreds of years of visitors, the staircase with its wooden banister smoothed by countless hands. It felt peculiar enough to Cordelia to leave her house in South Kensington forever, though she had lived there only four months. How much stranger it must be for James to be leaving behind the only home he’d ever known.

“Are you going to tell me where our new house is?” she asked, hoping to distract him. “Or is it still a secret?”

He glanced over at her and she was relieved to see there was a spark of wicked humor in his golden eyes. “I’ve kept the secret this long. Might as well keep it an hour longer.”

“Well, it had better be quite spectacular, James Herondale,” she said with mock sternness as they descended the icy steps. The last of the sun was a faint yellow band in the east, the city having descended into the quiet of a winter evening.

Bridget had had their carriage sent around: a gift from Tessa and Will along with the new house. It was a sturdy brougham with extra fold-down seats for when they traveled with friends. The coachman, inherited from the Institute, tipped his hat to them. Hitched to the carriage was a horse called Xanthos, which had been Will’s when he was young; he had a sweet, speckled white face and an even temperament. Xanthos was to belong to James and Cordelia from now on, and when Lucie married, his brother Balios would be hers.

Probably due to Cordelia’s habit of feeding Xanthos carrots, Will had deemed him to be the horse with the best opinion of Cordelia, and she’d merely nodded and asked James later whether his father had been joking.

“It’s often difficult to say,” James had said. “Sometimes he’s just pulling your leg, but then sometimes it’s mysterious Welsh business. I think where horses are concerned, it’s probably the latter.”