CITY OF GLASS

The circle of runes was giving off a faint heat, like a partly banked fire. Clary had to twist and struggle to reach her hand around to the stele jammed into her belt. The pain in her wrists spiked as her fingers closed around the handle; she pulled it free with a muffled gasp of relief.

She couldn’t separate her wrists, so she gripped the stele awkwardly in both hands. She pushed herself up with her elbows, staring down at the runes. She could feel the heat of them on her face; they had begun to shimmer like witchlight. Valentine had the Mortal Sword poised, ready to throw it; he was chanting the last words of the summoning spell. With a final burst of strength Clary drove the tip of the stele into the sand, not scraping aside the runes Valentine had drawn but tracing her own pattern over them, writing a new rune over the one that symbolized his name. It was such a small rune, she thought, such a small change—nothing like her immensely powerful Alliance rune, nothing like the Mark of Cain.

But it was all she could do. Spent, Clary rolled onto her side as Valentine drew his arm back and let the Mortal Sword fly.

Maellartach hurtled end over end, a black and silver blur that joined soundlessly with the black and silver lake. A great plume went up from the place where it splashed down: a flowering of platinum water. The plume rose higher and higher, a geyser of molten silver, like rain falling upward. There was a great crashing noise, the sound of shattering ice, a glacier breaking—and then the lake seemed to blow apart, silver water exploding upward like a reverse hailstorm.

And rising with the hailstorm came the Angel. Clary was not sure what she’d expected—something like Ithuriel, but Ithuriel had been diminished by many years of captivity and torment. This was an angel in the full force of his glory. As he rose from the water, her eyes began to burn as if she were staring into the sun.

Valentine’s hands had fallen to his sides. He was gazing upward with a rapt expression, a man watching his greatest dream become reality. “Raziel,” he breathed.

The Angel continued to rise, as if the lake were sinking away, revealing a great column of marble at its center. First his head emerged from the water, streaming hair like chains of silver and gold. Then shoulders, white as stone, and then a bare torso—and Clary saw that the Angel was Marked all over with runes just as the Nephilim were, although Raziel’s runes were golden and alive, moving across his white skin like sparks flying from a fire. Somehow, at the same time, the Angel was both enormous and no bigger than a man: Clary’s eyes hurt trying to take all of him in, and yet he was all that she could see. As he rose, wings burst from his back and opened wide across the lake, and they were gold too, and feathered, and set into each feather was a single golden staring eye.

It was beautiful, and also terrifying. Clary wanted to look away, but she wouldn’t. She would watch it all. She would watch it for Jace, because he couldn’t.

It’s just like all those pictures, she thought. The Angel rising from the lake, the Sword in one hand and the Cup in the other. Both were streaming water, but Raziel was dry as a bone, his wings undampened. His feet rested, white and bare, on the surface of the lake, stirring its waters into small ripples of movement. His face, beautiful and inhuman, gazed down at Valentine.

And then he spoke.

His voice was like a cry and a shout and like music, all at once. It contained no words, yet was totally comprehensible. The force of his breath nearly knocked Valentine backward; he dug the heels of his boots into the sand, his head tilted back as if he were walking against a gale. Clary felt the wind of the Angel’s breath pass over her: It was hot like air escaping from a furnace, and smelled of strange spices.

It has been a thousand years since I was last summoned to this place, Raziel said. Jonathan Shadowhunter called on me then, and begged me to mix my blood with the blood of mortal men in a Cup and create a race of warriors who would rid this earth of demonkind. I did all that he asked and told him I would do no more. Why do you summon me now, Nephilim?

Valentine’s voice was eager. “A thousand years have passed, Glorious One, but demonkind are still here.”

What is that to me? A thousand years for an angel pass between one blink of an eye and another.

“The Nephilim you created were a great race of men. For many years they valiantly battled to rid this plane of demon taint. But they have failed due to weakness and corruption in their ranks. I intend to return them to their former glory—”

Glory? The Angel sounded faintly curious, as if the word were strange to him. Glory belongs to God alone.