“Daisy,” he said, and his voice was thick, almost slurred. He must be horribly embarrassed, she thought. Perhaps this might even feel like infidelity to Grace. “There’s… something else we need to discuss. The matter of the second runes.”

Oh, Raziel. The second runes… the ones a bride and groom inscribed on each other’s skin in private. Was James suggesting that since her clothes were coming off anyway, they do it now?

“James,” she said, her throat dry. “I don’t have my stele with me—”

He paused. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have said his hands were shaking. “No, not now,” he interrupted, “but we will have to mark the runes sometime. If someone were to learn that we don’t have them…”

She could feel the first rune he had given her that day, burning on her arm. “We’ll just have to try,” she said, her teeth clenched, “not to get undressed in front of other people.”

“Very funny.” His fingers were moving again, sliding down her back. “I was thinking of Risa.” She heard him draw a breath in, sharply. He must have reached the last button, for the top of the dress crumpled like a wilted flower, sagging down to her waist. She stood frozen for a moment. All she was wearing on top now was her corset, and the thin chemise under it.

There was nothing in any etiquette book to cover this. Cordelia tugged the front of the dress up, holding it against her chest. The back of the dress slipped farther down, and she realized with horror that James could likely see where her hips flared beneath the corset, curving out from her nipped-in waist.

Her gaze fixed on the Oscar Wilde books propped next to Keats on the bookshelf. She thought of The Ballad of Reading Gaol: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” Cordelia wondered if it was possible to kill the thing you loved with embarrassment.

“Please go,” James said. His voice was nearly unrecognizable. What had she done?

“I really am—awfully sorry,” she said breathlessly, and fled. She had barely made it to her own bedroom when she heard the click of his door as it shut, and locked, behind her.

LONDON: 48 CURZON STREET

Huddled in the lee of a wall, he had watched them go in—James Herondale and his red-haired bride, the bearer of Cortana. They had climbed down from their carriage in Shadowhunter gold and splendor, both of them glimmering like precious trinkets in the fading light of the winter sun.