CITY OF GLASS

“And Jace doesn’t have demon blood in him? He’s not—cursed?”


“Cursed?” Jocelyn looked surprised. “No, he doesn’t have demon blood. Clary, Valentine experimented on Jace when he was a baby with the same blood he used on me, on you. Angel blood. Jace isn’t cursed. The opposite, if anything. All Shadowhunters have some of the Angel’s blood in them—you two just have a bit more.”

Clary’s mind whirled. She tried to imagine Valentine raising two children at the same time, one part demon, one part angel. One shadow boy, and one light. Loving them both, perhaps, as much as Valentine could love anything. Jace had never known about Jonathan, but what had the other boy known about him? His complementary part, his opposite? Had he hated the thought of him? Yearned to meet him? Been indifferent? They had both been so alone. And one of them was her brother—her real, full-blooded brother. “Do you think he’s still the same? Jonathan, I mean? Do you think he could have gotten … better?”

“I don’t think so,” Jocelyn said gently.

“But what makes you so sure?” Clary spun to look at her mother, suddenly eager. “I mean, maybe he’s changed. It’s been years. Maybe—”

“Valentine told me he had spent years teaching Jonathan how to appear pleasant, even charming. He wanted him to be a spy, and you can’t be a spy if you terrify everyone you meet. Jonathan even learned a certain ability to cast slight glamours, to convince people he was likable and trustworthy.” Jocelyn sighed. “I’m telling you this so you won’t feel bad that you were taken in. Clary, you’ve met Jonathan. He just never told you his real name, because he was posing as someone else. Sebastian Verlac.”

Clary stared at her mother. But he’s the Penhallows’ cousin, part of her mind insisted, but of course Sebastian had never been who he’d claimed he was; everything he’d said had been a lie. She thought of the way she’d felt the first time she’d seen him, as if she were recognizing someone she’d known all her life, someone as intimately familiar to her as her own self. She had never felt that way about Jace. “Sebastian’s my brother?”

Jocelyn’s fine-boned face was drawn, her hands laced together. Her fingertips were white, as if she was pressing them too hard against one another. “I spoke to Luke for a long time today about everything that’s happened in Alicante since you arrived. He told me about the demon towers, and his suspicion that Sebastian had destroyed the wards, though he had no idea how. I realized then who Sebastian really was.”

“You mean because he lied about being Sebastian Verlac? And because he’s a spy for Valentine?”

“Those two things, yes,” said Jocelyn, “but it actually wasn’t until Luke said that you’d told him Sebastian dyed his hair that I guessed. And I could be wrong, but a boy just a little older than you, fair-haired and dark-eyed, with no apparent parents, utterly loyal to Valentine—I couldn’t help but think he must be Jonathan. And there’s more than that. Valentine was always trying to find a way to bring the wards down, always determined that there was a way to do it. Experimenting on Jonathan with demon blood—he said it was to make him stronger, a better fighter, but there was more to it than that—”

Clary stared. “What do you mean, more to it?”

“It was his way of bringing down the wards,” Jocelyn said. “You can’t bring a demon into Alicante, but you need demons’ blood to take down the wards. Jonathan has demon blood; it’s in his veins. And his being a Shadowhunter means he’s granted automatic entrance to the city whenever he wants to get in, no matter what. He used his own blood to take the wards down, I’m sure of it.”

Clary thought of Sebastian standing across from her in the grass near the ruins of the Fairchild manor. The way his dark hair had blown across his face. The way he’d held her wrists, his nails digging into her skin. The way he’d said it was impossible that Valentine had ever loved Jace. She’d thought it was because he hated Valentine. But it wasn’t, she realized. He’d been … jealous.

She thought of the dark prince of her drawings, the one who had looked so much like Sebastian. She had dismissed the resemblance as coincidence, a trick of imagination, but now she wondered if it was the tie of their shared blood that had driven her to give the unhappy hero of her story her brother’s face. She tried to visualize the prince again, but the image seemed to shatter and dissolve before her eyes, like ash blown away on the wind. She could only see Sebastian now, the red light of the burning city reflected in his eyes.