Anna and Christopher went up to the rooms that had been set aside for the use of Sophie and Gideon’s children. James was there, sitting on his window seat, reading. Lucie was sitting at the desk, scribbling away. Tom was throwing a knife at the opposite wall.

Christopher greeted everyone and immediately sat down in the corner with a book. Anna dropped down next to Lucie.

“How’s Cordelia?” she asked.

“Oh, she’s wonderful! I was just writing to her quickly before Thomas helps me go over my Persian lesson.” Lucie was always writing to her future parabatai, Cordelia Carstairs. Lucie was always writing. Lucie could write in a room full of people talking, screaming, singing. Anna was sure that Lucie could probably write in the middle of battle. Anna approved of this highly—it was very good to see two girls so devoted to each other, even platonically. Women should value other women, even if society often did not.

Ariadne came into her mind again.

“What’s wrong, Anna?” James said.

He was looking at her curiously. Anna loved all her cousins, but she had a very soft spot for James. He had been a somewhat awkward young boy, gentle and quiet and bookish. He had grown up into a young man Anna could see was extraordinarily handsome, like his father. He had a soft fall of the Herondale black hair; from his mother, he had inherited his demonic trait—his inhuman golden eyes. Anna had always thought they were rather pretty, though Christopher had told her that James had been teased relentlessly at the Academy because of them. It was the teasing that prompted Matthew to get the explosives and Christopher to arrange for a wing of the building to blow up.

It was honorable to defend your friends, your parabatai. Anna was proud of them for doing it. She would have done the same. James had been such a shy, delightful little boy—it made Anna furious to think that he had been mocked. He was older now, given a bit more to brooding and staring into the distance, but still kind under it all.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just … need a new book to read.”

“A most sensible request,” James said, swinging his long legs off his reading perch. “What sort of book? Fortunately, Aunt Sophie and Uncle Gideon have a respectable collection. Adventure? History? Romance? Poetry?”

All the younger set were fearfully bookish. Anna put it down to Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa’s influence. They seldom let one leave the Institute without a book they felt one simply must read.

Now that they were talking about this, perhaps this would be useful in talking to Ariadne. She was a fiendish reader, after all.

“I’m training with someone new,” Anna said. “Her name is Ariadne. She does quite a lot of reading, so—”

“Ah! Ariadne. That’s a name from mythology. We could start you on a course of that. Would you like to begin with The Golden Bough, by Frazer? There’s a new edition of three volumes. Unless you want to start with the basics. There’s always Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica….”