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Placed before the altar was a heavy, high-backed oak armchair with legs carved to resemble gilded lions. With a sense of nausea, James remembered seeing it on display during a visit here, long ago. The Coronation Chair of England.
“Do you know,” Belial said, “that this chair has been used to crown the king of England for six hundred years?” James didn’t answer. “Well, did you?” Belial demanded.
“I wouldn’t think that six hundred years would impress a Prince of Hell,” James said. “Isn’t that but the blink of an eye for one who saw the world born?”
“You miss the point, as usual.” Belial sounded disappointed. “It’s not what six hundred years means to me. It’s what it means to mortals. It is the desecration of things held holy and significant by human souls which is so very delicious. By crowning myself here, I snatch hold of the soul of London. It shall never leave my grasp, once this is done.”
Belial ascended the steps—wincing, as the wounds in his side sent a stab of pain through James’s body—and flung himself into the chair. Its back was too high, the seat hard and uncomfortable, but James doubted that Belial cared.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Belial said in a singsong voice, as if he were teaching a history lesson to a small child. “The king of England can only be crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury.”
“That,” said James, “is not what I was thinking.”
Belial ignored this. “You would think there would be plenty of them here,” Belial said, “with all the crypts below us. But most of them are interred in Canterbury Cathedral. One has to go all the way back to the fourteenth century to find an archbishop buried here in Westminster. Right over there, in fact.” He gestured behind him, toward one of the transepts. “Which provides an excellent opportunity for you to witness the power I have gained. So much, just from being here, on Earth, in your body! Out there in the heavens, or deep in Hell, my power is a pinprick of light, a star among other stars. Here—it is a bonfire.”
As Belial said the word “bonfire,” a wave of what felt like heat tore through James. For a moment, he thought he was truly burning, that Belial had found some way to harness the fire of Hell to burn his soul away. Then he realized it was not fire at all, but power—the power Belial had spoken of, tearing through his veins, the vast and terrifying power that had been Belial’s goal, all this time.
A deafening scraping noise shattered the stillness of the cathedral. It sounded as if stone were being ripped apart like paper. It went on and on, shuddering and grinding. Belial curled James’s mouth into a pensive smile, as though he were listening to beautiful music.
The sound stopped abruptly with a crash, as if something massive had fallen to the ground. A wave of cold air blasted through the abbey, air that carried with it the stench of tombs and rot.
“What,” James whispered, “have you done?”
Belial chuckled, as around the nearest pillar came shuffling the corpse of a man, one bony hand wrapped around a carved ivory shepherd’s crook. Some flesh still clung to his bones, and some long, yellowing hairs to his skull, but he was far more skeleton than flesh. He wore robes that were tattered and stained, but horribly similar to the ceremonial white tunic and gold-embroidered chasuble that James had last seen in a newspaper photograph of King Edward’s coronation.
He reached the foot of the dais. The tomb stench hung on the air as his grinning mouth and hollow eyes turned toward Belial. He slowly inclined his skull in a gesture of obedience.
“Simon de Langham, the thirty-fifth archbishop of Canterbury,” Belial announced. “After the Norman conquest, of course.” James felt his own face stretch as Belial grinned down at the skeleton of de Langham. “And now, I believe, the ceremony can begin.”
Anna had felt such a rush of relief at seeing the Shadowhunters outside the doors of the Iron Tombs that she had come as close as she ever had in her life to fainting. The witchlight lanterns had become a pattern of swirling stars, the ground the tilting deck of a ship beneath her feet. Ari had taken hold of her arm, steadying her as the Shadowhunters approached.
“Haven’t eaten,” Anna had said gruffly. “It’s making me light-headed.”
Ari had just nodded. Lovely Ari, who understood Anna had nearly fainted with relief, but would never press her to admit it.
Her dazed state continued even as the Shadowhunters reached them, which was probably how, while Ari walked alongside her mother, Anna had allowed herself to be seized by Eugenia. Dressed in gear and looking thrilled by all the excitement, she chattered continuously for the entire trip back through the Silent City. Anna liked Eugenia and normally enjoyed her gossiping, but she was trying to concentrate on navigating them all back to London successfully. Anna suspected she was only hearing every other sentence, which was giving her a rather patchwork sense of Eugenia’s report on the situation in Idris.
There was a great deal about how angry the Council had been when they’d realized Anna and the others had remained behind in London, which did not bother Anna, and that both Aunt Tessa and Uncle Will had cried when they realized that James and Lucie were trapped in London, which did. Apparently Sona had comforted them, and told them her children were also still in London, but it was because only they could defeat Belial; it was their hour to be warriors, and the hour for their parents to be strong for them. Oh, and Sona had had her baby, it seemed—“Right during the speech about warriors?” Anna was puzzled, but Eugenia, exasperated, said no, it had been the next day, and unrelated to the speech.
Anna missed a great deal of detail after that, because they were emerging from the Path of the Dead, along the narrow corridor between CROSSKILL and RAVENSCROFT. As they passed the Pavilion of Truth, Eugenia was telling her about how Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa had been tested by the Mortal Sword and found innocent of complicity with Belial, but that Jesse’s true identity had been revealed, which had added intensity to the Inquisitor’s insistence that the Herondales believed they were a law unto themselves and must be punished. Anna gathered that there had been a great deal of shouting after that among the Council in Idris, but she’d returned to focusing on finding the way out.
They were almost to the Wood Street exit when Eugenia said, “… and you wouldn’t believe what Charles did! Right in the middle of the Council meeting! Poor Mrs. Bridgestock,” Eugenia added, shaking her head. “Everyone is certain the Inquisitor won’t keep his job, not after Charles’s confession.”
“Confession?” Anna said sharply, startling Eugenia. “What did he say?”
“It was so terribly awkward,” said Eugenia. “No one wanted to look at the Inquisitor—”
“Eugenia. Please attempt to locate the point. What did Charles say?”
“He stood up at the council meeting,” Eugenia said. “I think someone else was still talking but he just spoke over them. He said very loudly that the Inquisitor had engaged in blackmail. Of him! Of Charles! It was part of an attempt to take control of the London Institute.”
Anna gave Eugenia a sidelong glance. “Did it happen to be revealed… what it was Charles was being blackmailed about?”
“Oh, yes,” Eugenia said. “He fancies men. As if that ought to matter, but I suppose it does to some people.” She sighed. “Poor Charles. Matthew always was the braver of the two of them, though no one could see it.”
Anna was stunned. She glanced back over her shoulder at Ari, who had clearly overheard; she looked just as surprised as Anna felt. She supposed they had both given up on the idea that Charles might at some point do the right thing. And yet—didn’t Anna believe that she herself had become a better person in the last months? Wasn’t it possible to change?
Up ahead of them Anna saw a flagstone floor, a familiar set of stone stairs leading up. She began to quicken her steps, hurrying toward the exit—somehow they’d all have to crawl out of the narrow hole in the tree trunk—when a soft plouf sound startled her. A sheet of parchment paper had appeared in the air; it drifted down into her hands.
