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But his cry was unheeded. As Cordelia stared in dazed shock, Belial was lifted into the air—he was writhing, struggling, his deep cries like thunder rolling—and carried thrashing into the sky.
The barrier that had been holding Cordelia back from the altar vanished. She raced up the crimson-slicked steps and flung herself down beside James.
He lay on his back, in a spreading pool of his own blood, his face very white. Her hand flew to his throat, her fingers pressing hard. She gasped.
He had a pulse.
Jesse slid to the ground, still holding Lucie. It had all happened suddenly: one moment he had been kissing her, her hand warm and familiar on the back of his neck.
The next, she had stiffened as if shot—and gone limp, a dead weight in his arms. He kept hold of her now, her head against his shoulder, his back pressed to the interior wall of the archway. She was alive, at least. Her breathing was shallow, and her pulse beat rapidly in her throat. Dust streaked her pale face. She felt fragile in his arms, light-boned as a bird.
“Luce,” he whispered. With his free hand, he fumbled for his stele—one of the instruments Grace had adjusted so that fire-messages could be written with it—and scrawled a healing rune on Lucie’s arm.
Nothing happened. The rune did not fade, but neither did Lucie’s eyes open. Her blue eyes, that had haunted him as he walked the dark streets of London alone, a ghost who could not speak or be spoken to, who could not feel warmth or cold or pain. Lucie had brought feeling back into his existence: she had touched him and brought him to life. I would give it all up, he thought, staring desperately into her face, just to make you all right.
“Jesse.” It was Grace, slipping into the darkness of the archway. “I’m—oh! Is she all right?”
“I don’t know.” Jesse looked up at his sister; it was strange to see her in gear, her white-blond hair twisted in a tight knot behind her head. “I don’t…”
“Let me take her.” Grace knelt down and held out her arms for Lucie. “I’m out of explosives. I’ll watch Lucie; you’d better hold off any Watchers.” There was something officious, almost doctorlike, in Grace’s attitude; it reminded Jesse of Christopher, and he found himself gently easing Lucie over, so that she leaned against Grace, who took out her stele. “It’s all right,” she said, starting to draw another iratze on Lucie’s arm. “I’ll look after her.”
Leaving Lucie was the last thing Jesse wanted to do, but Grace was right—without her explosives, the Watchers would find them here soon enough. He scrambled upright and caught up the Blackthorn sword.
The thick stone walls of the archway had muffled some of the noise of battle. It exploded into Jesse’s ears the moment he stepped into the courtyard. The clang of weapons, the mixture of shouts and howls of pain and grief. Among the chaos of the fighting, he thought he glimpsed Will Herondale, and Tessa with him, battling Watchers, though he could not be sure—had they arrived in the last wave of Shadowhunters? Or was he seeing things? He could tell there were bodies on the ground: mostly Nephilim, a few Watchers. They were too hard to kill, he thought with a wave of despair.
He thought suddenly of Oscar. They had left Oscar at the Institute, safely locked in, though his howls of disappointment at being left behind had followed them to the gates. If they all died here, Jesse thought, who would take care of Oscar? Who would set him free?
Stop it, he told himself. He knew his thoughts were scattering with exhaustion and panic over Lucie. He had to focus on the battle in front of him, on the Watchers; one of them was turning toward him, an Iron Sister with a blank, unwavering stare—
Who went rigid, her eyes rolling back. As Jesse watched, sword in hand, she crumpled, her back arching even as the rest of her sprawled on the bloodstained ground. Her mouth gaped open, and a Chimera began to crawl out, pulling itself free with its feelers.
Someone shouted hoarsely. Jesse tore his gaze away from the fallen Watcher and realized—it was happening everywhere. One by one, the Watchers were toppling. One by one, the Chimera demons were emerging from their bodies, crawling and slithering and hissing, clearly furious to be so unceremoniously evicted from their hosts.
In the surge of the melee, Jesse could hear Shadowhunters shouting with joy—he saw the silver flash of seraph blades as the Nephilim attacked the Chimera demons; the stench of ichor was sour on the air. As the last Watcher fell, Jesse realized something else—a knot of the Chimera demons had gathered together and were headed straight for the gatehouse.
Lucie, he thought. He knew this was her doing: she had gone into the darkness, had called on the souls of the wandering Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers whose earthly forms had been possessed. And, it was clear, they had heard her. They had pushed back, tearing the Chimera demons out of their bodies, hurling them free to be slain by swords and seraph blades.
As the slavering Chimeras drew closer, Jesse saw the fury in their burning green eyes and thought: They know. That Lucie was to blame, that she had done this to them—he raised his sword, knowing that even though the Chimeras were relatively easy to defeat, he could not hope to dispatch a dozen of them at once—
“Throw me the sword, Blackthorn!”
Jesse wrenched his gaze away from the Chimeras—and stared in amazement. Halfway up the War Memorial was Bridget, wearing a flowered dress and an apron, her red curls flying, her face blazing with fury.
“I knew it!” Jesse yelled, “I knew you were still in London! But how? How did you escape Belial’s enchantment?”
“No one tells me what to do!” Bridget shouted back. “The sword!”
So he threw the sword. It hurtled toward Bridget, who caught it out of the air and flung herself from the memorial, falling like a dropped anchor directly atop the Chimeras. As she began to hack at them viciously, Jesse snatched a seraph blade from his belt, whispered, “Hamiel,” and joined the battle alongside Bridget, slicing through a Chimera demon’s torso with a feeling of vicious relief.
And then the sky above them tore in half.
His pulse was faint, but it was there, a rapid tap against her fingertips. James was alive.
Cordelia felt as if she’d swallowed fire. Her whole body came to life; she half lunged over James, catching up Cortana. With her free hand, she took hold of the hem of James’s blood-wet shirt, and pulled it up: there, on the left side of his chest, was the slash of the wound he had dealt himself, raw and scarlet-edged.
She raised Cortana. Behind her, she heard footsteps—she glanced over her shoulder to see Matthew, Alastair, and Thomas approaching. She shook her head to say stay back, and they stopped a few yards away, their expressions horrified and uncertain as, with great care, Cordelia lowered her sword and laid its engraved blade along James’s torso, the flat of it covering his wound, the hilt toward his hands. Let him be the effigy atop the tomb of a knight, she thought; let him be that warrior. He had wrought his will, and it had been more powerful than a Prince of Hell’s.
There was a long moment of stillness as James lay unmoving, Cortana’s golden blade gleaming against his bare, blood-slicked skin. Cordelia cupped his cold cheek in her hand, feeling the brush of his lashes against her palm.
