She woke just before noon. Someone had brought her a tea tray and left it next to her bed. She drank the now-cold tea. She took a cool bath and examined the wound on her arm. The healing runes Ariadne had drawn had done their work. The area was still red and angry, but she could cover it with a shawl. She dressed in her plainest, most severely cut gown—so funny now, to be dressed as a girl—and put a silk shawl over her shoulders, winding it carefully over the damaged arm. She went downstairs. Her mother sat in a sunny corner of the sitting room, little Alexander on her lap.

“There you are,” her mother said. “Are you ill?”

“No,” Anna said. “I was foolish. I stayed up quite late reading a book.”

“Now I know you are ill,” her mother said with a smile, which Anna returned.

“I need to take a walk in the sunshine. It is such a lovely day. I shall go see Lucie and James, I think, and discuss my book with them.”

Her mother gave her a curious look, but agreed.

Anna did not walk to the Herondale house. She turned instead toward Fitzrovia, stopping to buy a bunch of violets from an old woman selling them in the street. Her steps were light. The world was perfectly arranged, and all things and beings in it were worthy of love. Anna could have done anything in that moment—fought off a hundred demons at once, lifted a carriage over her head, danced on a wire. She passed along the pavements she had been on only hours before, back to her love.

At the house off Cavendish Square, Anna knocked once, then stood nervously on the step, looking up. Was Ariadne in her room? Would she look down?

The door was opened by the Bridgestocks’ unsmiling servant.

“The family is receiving guests at the moment, Miss Lightwood. Perhaps you would like to wait in the—”

At that moment, the reception-room door opened, and the Inquisitor walked out with a young man who had familiar features and red hair—Charles Fairchild, Matthew’s brother. Anna rarely saw Charles. He was always somewhere, usually Idris. He and the Inquisitor were mid-conversation.

“Oh,” Inquisitor Bridgestock said, seeing Anna. “Miss Lightwood. How fortuitous. Do you know Charles Fairchild?”

“Anna!” Charles said with a warm smile. “Yes, of course.”

“Charles will be the interim head of the Paris Institute,” the Inquisitor said.

“Oh,” Anna said. “Congratulations. Matthew didn’t tell me.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “I imagine he thinks of such things as political aspirations as crass and bourgeois. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Anna and Ariadne have been training together,” the Inquisitor explained.

“Ah,” Charles said. “Excellent. You must visit us in Paris sometime, Anna.”

“Oh,” Anna said, not knowing what “us” Charles was talking about. “Yes. Thank you. I shall.”