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“I’ve always been raised to be a model Shadowhunter,” Ariadne said softly. “I’m the daughter of the Inquisitor. It is my father’s job to hold all the Nephilim to the impossibly high standard of Raziel’s Law, and he holds his family to no less a standard. I was raised to be an obedient daughter, in training to become an obedient wife. I would do what they said, marry who they wanted—”
“Charles, for instance,” Matthew said.
“Yes. But it was all rubbish in the end, wasn’t it? My father apparently doesn’t hold himself to his high-minded standards.” She shook her head and looked out the window. “It was the hypocrisy that was the last straw, I suppose.” She looked directly at Matthew, and as she spoke Anna felt, against her will, a surge of pride in Ariadne. “I told my mother that I would not marry whatever man they chose for me. That, in fact, I would not marry any man at all. That I did not love men, but women.”
Matthew wound a curl of his fair hair around his forefinger, a nervous gesture left over from childhood. “Did you know,” he said slowly, “that you were saying something she did not want to hear? Something you thought might cause her to cut you off? Even to—hate you?”
“I knew,” Ariadne said. “Yet I would do it again. I am sure my mother is mourning the daughter that she never had. But if she loves me—and I believe she does—I think she must love the reality of me.”
“What about your father?”
“He was in shock when he came back from Iceland,” Ariadne said. “I did not hear from him for nearly a day, and then it was a letter—clearly he knew I have been staying with Anna—saying that I could come home if I apologized to my mother and took back what I had said.”
“Which you will not do,” said Matthew.
“Which I will not do,” Ariadne agreed. Her smile was sad. “It may be hard for you to understand. Your parents are so remarkably kind.”
Matthew seemed to flinch. Anna thought with a pang of the time when the Fairchilds had been one of the closest families she knew, before Charles had grown so cold, before Matthew had become so sad.
“Well, they certainly aren’t blackmailing anyone,” Matthew said. “I noted something here in the letter: ‘Your family has benefited from the spoils of—giant ink blot—but it could all be lost if your house is not in order.’ What if it means ‘spoils’ quite literally?”
Ariadne frowned. “But it has been illegal to take spoils from Downworlders since the Accords were first signed.”
Anna shuddered. Spoils. It was an ugly word, an ugly concept. Spoils had been the practice of confiscating possessions from innocent Downworlders: common before the historic peace treaty between Downworlders and Shadowhunters that was now called the Accords. Common, and usually unpunished. Many old Shadowhunter families had enriched themselves that way.
“It may not refer to crimes being committed now. When the Accords were signed in 1872,” Anna said, “Shadowhunters were meant to return the spoils they had taken. But many did not. The Baybrooks and the Pouncebys, for instance. Their wealth came from spoils originally. Everyone knows it.”
“Which is dreadful,” Ariadne said, “but not an excuse for blackmail.”
“I doubt the blackmail springs from moral outrage,” said Matthew. “More convenience. He wishes to blackmail this person, and has found an excuse to do so.” He rubbed at his eyes. “It could be anyone he seeks to control. It could be Charles.”
Ariadne looked startled. “But my father and Charles have always been on good terms. Even after our engagement ended, they righted things quickly. Charles has always wanted to be just the sort of politician that my father is.”
“What do you think it is Charles has done that could render him vulnerable to blackmail?” Anna said.
Matthew shook his head. His hair, dry now, was beginning to fall into his eyes. “Nothing. Just an idea. I wondered if the spoils could be considered the spoils of political power, but I agree—let’s look into Baybrook and Pounceby first.” He turned to Ariadne. “Would you mind lending me the letter? I’ll confront Thoby—I know him best. And he has never been good at standing up to interrogation. Once he pilfered someone else’s food hamper at the Academy but folded like cheap paper under questioning.”
“Of course,” Ariadne said. “And I’m friendly with Eunice. I think she’ll be open to meeting with me, and she won’t even notice she’s being questioned. She’s too self-absorbed.”
Matthew rose to his feet, a soldier bracing for a return to the field. “I ought to go,” he said. “Oscar will be howling for my return.”
Anna walked him down to the front door. As Matthew opened it, he glanced up the stairs where Ariadne remained.
“She is brave,” he said. “Braver than either of us, I think.”
Anna laid a hand against his cheek. “My Matthew,” she said. “What is it you fear so much to tell your parents?”
Matthew closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I—I can’t, Anna. I do not want you to despise me.”
“I would never despise you,” Anna said. “We are all flawed creatures. As diamonds are flawed, each distinct imperfection makes us unique.”
“Perhaps I don’t wish to be unique,” Matthew said. “Perhaps I wish only to be happy and ordinary.”
“Matthew, darling, you are the least ordinary person I know—besides myself—and that is part of what makes you happy. You are a peacock, not a duck.”
“I see you have inherited the Herondale hatred of ducks from your mother,” said Matthew, with the faintest of smiles. He looked up at the sky, deep black, spangled with stars. “I cannot help but feel something terribly dark is coming. Even in Paris, we could not escape the warnings. It is not that I fear danger, or a battle. It is a greater shadow than that, casting itself across all of us. Across London.”
Anna frowned. “What do you mean?” she said, but Matthew, seeming to feel he had said too much, would not elaborate. He only straightened his jacket and set off, a slim figure making its way down Percy Street, unobserved by passersby.
