And she was there that night to see him die.
3 BITTER AND SWEET
Ah well, well, well, I may be beguiled
By some coquettish deceit.
Yet, if she were not a cheat,
If Maud were all that she seem’d,
And her smile were all that I dream’d,
Then the world were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Maud”
You don’t have to marry a man who doesn’t love you.
The faerie’s voice echoed in Cordelia’s mind as she turned to face the mirror in her bedroom. She appeared almost a ghost to herself, despite the vivid gold of her wedding dress—a floating spirit, tethered to this reality by a thin ribbon. She wasn’t the one about to marry a man who didn’t love her. This day couldn’t be the last time she’d stand in this bedroom, rise from sleeping under the same roof as her mother and brother, look out her window on the row houses of South Kensington, pale in the winter sun. Her life couldn’t be about to change that much at just seventeen.
“Dokhtare zibaye man. My beautiful daughter,” said her mother, wrapping her arms around Cordelia from behind in an awkward hug, careful of her pregnant belly. Cordelia regarded them both in the mirror: the similar shapes of their hands, their mouths. She wore a gold necklace that had been part of her mother’s own dowry. Her skin was a few shades lighter than her mother’s, but their eyes were the same black. And when had she gotten taller than Sona?
Sona clucked. A lock of hair had escaped the jeweled golden bandeau that encircled Cordelia’s head; she moved to smooth it back in place. “Layla, azizam. You seem worried.”
Cordelia exhaled slowly. She couldn’t even imagine Sona’s reaction if she told her the truth. “It is just quite a big change, Maman. To move out of this house—and not back to Cirenworth, but to quite a strange house—”
“Layla,” Sona said. “Don’t fret. It is always difficult to face a change. When I married your father, I was terribly nervous. Yet all anyone talked about was how lucky I was, because he was the dashing hero who had slain the demon Yanluo. But my mother took me aside and told me, ‘He’s indeed very dashing, but you must not forget your own heroism.’ So all will be well. Only do not forget your own heroism.”
The words gave Cordelia a start. Sona rarely mentioned her family, except as an ideal of heroism—a family whose lineage stretched far back among the Shadowhunters of Persia. Cordelia knew that her grandparents were no longer living—they had died before her birth—but there were aunts and uncles and cousins in Tehran. Sona barely spoke of them, and hadn’t invited them to James and Cordelia’s wedding, saying it would be rude to expect them to travel so far and that they did not trust Portals.
It was as though when she’d married Elias, she’d separated herself from her old life completely, and now Risa was the closest thing she had to her Persian family. And Sona’s isolation was not the only matter that troubled Cordelia. Elias, after all, had not been a dashing hero in many years. What did Sona think of that? What did she think of her heroism, put aside to raise her children and wander always, never settling down, because of her husband’s “health”？
“Sona khanoom!” Risa suddenly appeared in the doorway. “He has come,” she went on, casting an urgent glance over her shoulder. “Just now—with no warning at all—”
“Alastair! Cordelia!” a familiar voice bellowed up from downstairs. “Sona, my love!”
Sona paled and laid a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Elias?”
“It’s baba?” Cordelia picked up the heavy skirts of her dress and rushed out into the hall. Risa was already headed downstairs, her expression stormy. Elias passed her without a glance, racing to the top of the steps with a smile on his face, a hand on the newel post.
Cordelia came to a dead stop. A wave of joy had gone over her when she heard her father’s voice, but now—now she couldn’t move as her mother hurried past her to embrace Elias. Cordelia felt oddly far away, as her father embraced and kissed her mother, then stood back to lay a hand on her rounded stomach.
Sona dipped her head, speaking softly and rapidly to Elias. Though he was smiling, he looked exhausted, deep grooves lining his face, gray stubble in patches on his jaw. His suit was threadbare, as if he’d been wearing it every day since he was taken away.
He put his arms out. “Cordelia,” he said.
She broke out of her paralysis. A moment later she was in her father’s embrace, and the familiar feel of him, the rough scrape of his stubble as he kissed her forehead, soothed her despite everything. “Baba,” she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. He looked so old. “Where have you been? We’ve been so worried.”