Cast Long Shadows (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #2)(14)

Matthew, said Brother Zachariah, and walled off his brothers in his head as well as he might.

“Yes?”

Rely upon a Silent Brother for silence, said Jem. I will not tell anybody about the Shadow Market, or any bargains you may have made there.

Matthew swallowed. Jem thought he might be about to be thanked, but Jem had not done this for thanks.

I will not tell anybody, he said, But you should. A secret too long kept can kill a soul by inches. I watched a secret almost destroy a man once, the finest man ever made. Such a secret is like keeping treasure in a tomb. Little by little, poison eats away at the gold. By the time the door is opened, there may be nothing left but dust.

Brother Zachariah stared into the young face that had been so bright. He waited and hoped to see that face lit again.

“All this about the Shadow Market,” Matthew faltered.

Yes? said Jem.

The boy flung back his golden head.

“I’m sorry,” said Matthew coldly. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

Zachariah’s heart fell.

So be it, he said. James and Lucie are waiting for you in the library. Let them give you whatever comfort they can.

Matthew stood from his chair, moving as if he had grown suddenly old over the course of a day. Sometimes the distance Silent Brothers possessed moved them to dispassionate observation, and too far from pity.

It would be a long time, Brother Zachariah knew, before there could be any comfort for Matthew Fairchild.





The library in Matthew’s house was a far smaller and less loved and lived-in room than the library in the London Institute, but tonight there was a fire burning and Herondales waiting within. Matthew stumbled into the room as if he were walking in from midwinter cold, his limbs too chilled to move.

As one, as if they had only been waiting for his coming, James and Lucie looked up at him. They were pressed together on a sofa at the hearth. By firelight, Lucie’s eyes were as eerie as James’s, her eyes a paler and more fiercely burning blue than her father’s. It was as though James’s gold was the corona of a flame and Lucie’s blue its burning heart.

They were a strange pair, these two Herondales, thorned mysterious plants in the hothouse of the Nephilim. Matthew could not have loved either of them more dearly.

Lucie leaped to her feet and ran to him with her hands outstretched. Matthew shuddered away. He realized, with dull pain, that he did not feel worthy of being touched by her.

Lucie glanced at him sharply, then nodded. She always saw a lot, their Luce.

“I will leave you two together,” she said decisively. “Take as long as ever you may.”

She reached out her hand to touch his, and Matthew shrank away from her again. This time he saw that it hurt, but Lucie only murmured his name and withdrew.

He could not tell Lucie this, and see her disgust of him, but he and James were bound. Perhaps James would try to understand.

Matthew advanced, every step a terrible effort, toward the fire. Once he was near enough, James reached out and clasped Matthew’s wrist, drawing Matthew close to the sofa. He laid Matthew’s hand over James’s heart, and covered it with his own. Matthew looked down into James’s fire-gold eyes.

“Mathew,” said Jamie, pronouncing his name in the Welsh way and with the Welsh lilt that let Matthew know he meant it as an endearment. “I am so sorry. What can I do?”

He felt he could not live on with this massive stone of a secret crushing his chest. If he was ever going to tell anyone, he should tell his parabatai.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I was talking about Alastair Carstairs yesterday. What I meant to tell you was that he insulted my mother. He said—”

“I understand,” said James. “You do not have to tell me.”

Matthew drew in a small shaky breath. He wondered if James really could understand.

“I know the kind of thing they say about Aunt Charlotte,” said James with quiet fierceness. “They say similar things about my mother. You remember that man Augustus Pounceby, last year? He waited until we were alone to cast slurs upon my mother’s good name.” A small grim smile curved James’s mouth. “So I threw him in the river.”

Aunt Tessa had been so glad to have a Shadowhunter visitor, Matthew remembered numbly. She displayed Shadowhunter family coats of arms on her walls to welcome any traveler to the London Institute.

“You never told me,” said Matthew.

Jamie was telling him now. Tom had told him that whatever Alastair said was nonsense. If Matthew had asked his father about what Alastair had said, his father could have told him about Great-Aunt Matty, and they might even have laughed about how absurd it was to think some stupid malicious boy could ever make them doubt their family.

Jamie’s mouth crooked down a little. “Oh, well. I know you have to hear a lot about me and my unfortunate antecedents already. I do not want you to think I am an unbearable nuisance and you got a bad bargain with your parabatai.”

“Jamie,” Matthew said on a wounded breath, as if he had been hit.

“I know it must feel wretched to remember anything hurtful that worm Carstairs said about your mother,” James plunged on. “Especially when she is—she is unwell. The very next time we see him, we will punch him in the head. What do you say to that, Mathew? Let’s do it together.”