Chapter Text
“Really, Daisy,” James says. “I don't need you to guard me like a King’s daughter. If anything, I ought to be the one to walk you home.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “James, please. I have been assigned to protect you and I am going to do so.”
James looked sharply away. The wind blew his thick black hair into his face, hiding it, but Cordelia could have sworn his ears were pink.
“James?” Cordelia said, mildly surprised. Surely he couldn’t . . . not when she had been so certain . . .
“It’s nothing,” James said, his face still away from her. He reached up, rubbing at his collarbone through the fabric of shirt and waistcoat. He had a bracelet on his wrist, thin and silver, that looked oddly like one of those fadsy mundane engagement handcuffs . . .
James shook his head again and finally looked at her, with a wan little smile. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Can I ask you something?” Matthew rolls the edge of his glass of brandy absently along the table.
“That depends,” says Gerda. “What are you asking?”
“If you’re a warlock, then how come you know fae-speake so well? I have witnessed you use it now on a number of occasions this evening.”
Gerda’s unnatural eyes shadow, but she hides it quickly. “I lived in Annwyn for a time, that’s all.”
“I heard something awful happened there, in the Unseelie Court, that it was . . . decimated, somehow. But all the faeries have gone to ground and anyone else who knows anything has clammed right up.”
“It was both of them,” says Gerda. “The Seelie Court and the Unseelie. It was very much like Babel, or the hypothetical Atlantis. They grew too bold, and they built a weapon they could not control, and it destroyed them.”
Matthew stares, reeling. “You mean to say there aren’t faerie courts anymore?”
“There are, but different ones now. The King and Queen are quite missing in action. Someone else has claimed the Unseelie Throne, I don’t know who. And what was the Seelie Court is now a bunch of scattered territories. Celithe and Nerissa are battling it out for control with each other and with the Fomorian Queen. It’s all a mess, really.”
“So what was it? What were they building that destroyed them?”
Gerda’s hands shake and she sets her brandy down with a clatter. “I don’t know,” she says. “I truly don’t know.”
Cordelia fell into bed too wild-minded to sleep, and lay on her back staring at the ceiling for a very long time, thinking of demons and shadows and conspiracies and Gerda and James.
When she slept, she dreamed that she and Gerda stood in a hall full of mirrors and Gerda had covered her face and no matter what Cordelia did she couldn’t get Gerda to look up, to pull her hands away. Then she dreamed of James, and that dream she tried not to think about too much in the light of day.
To her surprise, Cordelia woke the next morning to find an invitation to tea with Anna Lightwood had been delivered with the mail.
Getting out the door with maternal approval proved a struggle, one that required Alastair’s help of all things. Finally, Cordelia managed to get them both into a carriage and rattling away down the street to SoHo.
“Cordelia,” says Alastair. “I did some reading last night. About that name they called you. Paladin.”
Cordelia sucks in a breath. “And what did you find?”
“There wasn't too much of any use in the family library, but what there was suggests that paladins are an ancient tradition: there hasn't been one since the 1600s. The last one is believed to have died in 1699, and his patron was of demonic origin.”
Cordelia winces.
“I intend to go to the library at the Institute,” Alastair says, “to research further, taking advantage of the fact that I am out with you. If you have perhaps any inclination of whom your patron might be . . .”
“She is a faerie lady,” Cordelia lies. “But when she appeared to me, I thought it was a dream.”
Usually, when Christopher Lightwood came to visit the Fairchilds’ house in Grosvenor Square, it was to visit Henry and work in the laboratory. Today, however, Matthew had called them for a briefing meeting of the Merry Thieves, to discuss the events of the day before.
Christopher knew little of the events after James went missing, other than that Matthew and Cordelia had gone to look for him, and Cordelia had dropped James off quite late in the night. On the whole, there seemed to be more questions than answers.
The day had dawned sunny and warm, with a faint, crisp breeze. Christopher followed the townhouse’s wooden-floored hallways to the back door, where he came upon Thomas, bending down to ruffle Oscar’s ears.
“Hullo, Thomas,” Christopher said. “Shall we go out, then?”
Thomas grinned at him. “Yes we shall.”
The house gives way to sunlight as they step outside, Oscar running ahead of them to tackle a laughing Matthew into the grass, barking joyously. James waits with them, seated in the grass with his legs stuck out in front of him, leaning back in his hands.
“James!” Christopher calls. “What happened last night? Where’d you disappear to?”
“There you go, James,” Matthew says. “Now you don’t have to tell tue story more than once.”
“Yes,” Thomas demands, “what happened to you last night? You just vanished, you know. Matthew was about to rip the Institute apart brick by brick to see if you’d fallen into the crypt when Cordelia showed up at the Institute.”
“Cordelia came to the Institute looking for me?” James looks surprised, Christopher can’t imagine why.
“She came to the Institute looking for me, actually,” Matthew says, “for unrelated reasons.” Now that: that is surprising. “But we roped her into searching for you.”
“Now where did you go?” Christopher asks. “You still haven’t told us.”
“Well,” says James, “I wound out at the Shadow Market. I had been walking in shadow for some time, and I think the Market’s wards must have forced me back out. A warlock found me wandering lost, and led me to James and Cordelia, who took me home.”
“Which warlock?” Christopher asks.
“She said her name was Gerda.”
Christopher frowns. He knows Gerda, she's an accomplished potioneer and runs a small press: a bit of a Downworld Colman-Smith. He has to wonder just what it was that led James to her.