Grace shuddered. “You want Jesse back, but only obedient to you.”
“You can’t understand,” said Tatiana. “You’re only a girl—stupid and foolish. Don’t you see what will happen? The Herondale girl will bring him back, and turn him against us. They’ll teach him to hate us, to hate everything he came from. Don’t you understand? This is what they were always going to do. Take Jesse away from his family. That is why you must go and get him back.”
“Get him—back?” Grace stared. “You mean try to kidnap him? Steal his body from a warlock and—Mother, no. I can’t do that. My power doesn’t even work on Malcolm.”
“But it would work on Jesse,” Tatiana said.
There was an awful silence. It was like the silence that had filled the room after Jesse died. “I don’t,” Grace said at last, “understand what you mean, Mother.”
“Let them bring him back,” Tatiana drawled. “Let them do the difficult work. Then convince him his place is with you—with us. When that is done, return with him, to me. I will furnish you both with instructions. It will all be very simple. Simple enough even for you.”
“I don’t—” Grace shook her head. She felt physically sick. “I don’t understand what you’re suggesting.”
Tatiana’s face hardened. “Must I spell it out for you? You only have one power, Grace, one thing that makes you special. Seduce him,” she said. “Compel him. Make him believe he loves you above everything else in the world. Make him yours, as you were never able to make James Herondale yours.”
Nausea rose in the pit of Grace’s stomach. Her pulse was racing and her chest was tight. “Jesse is my brother.”
“Nonsense,” Tatiana said. “You share no blood. You are barely even my daughter. We are partners, you and I. Partners in a common cause.”
“I won’t,” Grace whispered. Had she ever said no to her mother before so plainly? It didn’t matter. There was no world in which she could do what Tatiana asked, no world in which she could make filthy and horrible the only pure love she had ever known.
Tatiana’s eyes burned. “Oh, you will do this,” she hissed. “You must. The strength is all on my side, not yours. You have no choice, Grace Blackthorn.”
No choice. It was at that moment that Grace realized something she had never realized before. That her mother had cursed her with power over men, but not women—never women—not because she did not believe women had influence, but because she could not bear the thought that Grace might ever have power over her.
With her blood screaming in her ears, Grace took three steps forward, until she was inches from the vanity, inches from her mother’s grinning face. She picked up a heavy silver hairbrush and looked into Tatiana’s furious eyes.
With a cry, she hurled the brush at the mirror as hard as she could. The glass shattered, Tatiana’s image splintering into sparkling shards. Sobbing, Grace ran from the room.
* * *
As James closed the door behind Thomas and the others, he exhaled a long breath. It was a cold, clear night, with no hint of snow. The moon burned like the solitary light at the top of a watchtower, and the shadows cast by lampposts and carriages were stark and black against the icy white ground.
James wondered if he would sleep tonight without fear of nightmares. He felt gritty with exhaustion, his throat and eyes dry, but there was a bright wire of excitement that ran underneath his tiredness. For the first time today, he was about to be alone with Cordelia.
He closed the front door and went back to the drawing room. The fire was burning low. Cordelia was still on the sofa; she had raised her arms to readjust the combs in her hair. He watched silently from the doorway as a few unruly red locks spilled over her hands: the fire turned their edges to blood and gold. It was beautiful, but so was the upraised curve of her arms, the turn of her wrists, the shape of her capable hands. So was everything about her.
“Daisy,” he said.
She slid the last comb into place and turned to look at him. There was an incredible sadness in her eyes. For a moment, he felt as if he were seeing the girl she had been, every time her father had let her down, every time she had been lonely, disappointed—all the pain she’d borne silently, without tears.
He ought to have been there for her. He would be now, he told himself, striding across the room. He sat down beside her, reaching for her hands. They were small in his, and freezing cold. “You’re cold—”