“I had thought we might name her Matilda,” Father said in a slow, sad voice. “I had a Great-Aunt Matilda. She was very old when I was still a young rip, and the other boys used to tease me. She would give me books and tell me that I was smarter than any of them. She had splendid buttery-white wavy hair, but it was gold when she was a girl. When you were born, you already had the dearest fair lovelocks. I called her Aunt Matty. I never told you, because I thought you might not like to be named for a lady. You already have a great deal to endure with your foolish father, and those who cavil at your mother and your parabatai. You bear it all so gracefully.”

Matthew’s father touched his hair with a gentle, loving hand. Matthew wished he would pick up a blade and cut Matthew’s throat.

“I wish you could have known your great-great-aunt. She was very like you. She was the sweetest woman God ever made,” said Father. “Save your mother.”

Brother Zachariah glided in then, a shadow amid all the other shadows crowding that room, to summon Matthew’s father to his mother’s bedside.

Matthew was left alone.

He stared in the gathering darkness at his mother’s overturned chair, the dropped scone and its trail of crumbs going nowhere, the greasy remnants of breakfast over the disarranged table. He, Matthew, was always dragging his friends and family to art galleries, always anxious to dance through life, always prattling of truth and beauty like a fool. He had run headlong into a Shadow Market and blithely trusted a Downworlder, because Downworlders seemed exciting, because she had called Shadowhunters brutal and Matthew had agreed, believing he knew better than they. It was not the faerie woman’s fault, or Alastair’s, or the fault of any other soul. He was the one who had chosen to distrust his mother. He had fed his mother poison with his own hands. He was not a fool. He was a villain.

Matthew bowed the fair head that had been passed to him through his father, from his father’s best-loved relative. He sat in that dark room and wept.

Brother Zachariah descended the stairs after a long battle with death, to tell Matthew Fairchild that his mother would live.

James and Lucie had come with Tessa and waited in the hall all this long day. Lucie’s hands were chilled when she clung to Jem.

She asked, “Aunt Charlotte, is she safe?”

Yes, my darlings, said Jem. Yes.

“Thank the Angel,” breathed James. “Matthew’s heart would break. All our hearts would.”

Brother Zachariah was not so sure of Matthew’s heart, after the mischief Matthew had wrought, but he wanted to offer James and Lucie what comfort he could.

Go to the library. There is a fire lit. I will send Matthew to you.