CITY OF GLASS

He bent down, his lips against her cheek, brushing it lightly—and still that light touch sent shivers through her nerves, shivers that made her whole body tremble. “If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he whispered. When she still said nothing, he brushed his mouth against the hollow of her temple. “Or now.” He traced the line of her cheekbone. “Or now.” His lips were against hers. “Or—”

But she had reached up and pulled him down to her, and the rest of his words were lost against her mouth. He kissed her gently, carefully, but it wasn’t gentleness she wanted, not now, not after all this time, and she knotted her fists in his shirt, pulling him harder against her. He groaned softly, low in his throat, and then his arms circled her, gathering her against him, and they rolled over on the grass, tangled together, still kissing. There were rocks digging into Clary’s back, and her shoulder ached where she’d fallen from the window, but she didn’t care. All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered.

Despite her coat, she could feel the heat of him burning through his clothes and hers. She tugged his jacket off, and then somehow his shirt was off too. Her fingers explored his body as his mouth explored hers: soft skin over lean muscle, scars like thin wires. She touched the star-shaped scar on his shoulder—it was smooth and flat, as if it were a part of his skin, not raised like his other scars. She supposed they were imperfections, these marks, but they didn’t feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war.

He fumbled with the buttons of her coat, his hands shaking. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jace’s hands unsteady before. “I’ll do it,” she said, and reached for the last button herself; as she raised herself up, something cold and metallic struck her collarbone, and she gasped in surprise.

“What is it?” Jace froze. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. It was this.” She touched the silver chain around his neck. On its end hung a small silver circle of metal. It had bumped against her when she’d leaned forward. She stared at it now.

That ring—the weather-beaten metal with its pattern of stars—she knew that ring.

The Morgenstern ring. It was the same ring that had gleamed on Valentine’s hand in the dream the angel had showed them. It had been his, and he had given it to Jace, as it had always been passed along, father to son.

“I’m sorry,” Jace said. He traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip, a dreamlike intensity in his gaze. “I forgot I was wearing the damn thing.”

Sudden cold flooded Clary’s veins. “Jace,” she said, in a low voice. “Jace, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t wear the ring?”

“No, don’t—don’t touch me. Stop for a second.”

His face went still. Questions had chased away the dreamlike confusion in his eyes, but he said nothing, just withdrew his hand.

“Jace,” she said again. “Why? Why now?”

His lips parted in surprise. She could see a dark line where he had bitten his bottom lip, or maybe she had bitten it. “Why what now?”

“You said there was nothing between us. That if we—if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel, we’d be hurting everyone we care about.”

“I told you. I was lying.” His eyes softened. “You think I don’t want to—?”

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not stupid; I know that you do. But when you said that now you finally understand why you feel this way about me, what did you mean?”

Not that she didn’t know, she thought, but she had to ask, had to hear him say it.

Jace caught her wrists and drew her hands up to his face, lacing his fingers through hers. “You remember what I said to you at the Penhallows’ house?” he asked. “That you never think about what you do before you do it, and that’s why you wreck everything you touch?”

“No, I’d forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.”

He barely seemed to notice the sarcasm in her voice. “I wasn’t talking about you, Clary. I was talking about me. That’s what I’m like.” He turned his face slightly and her fingers slid along his cheek. “At least now I know why. I know what’s wrong with me. And maybe—maybe that’s why I need you so much. Because if Valentine made me a monster, then I suppose he made you a sort of angel. And Lucifer loved God, didn’t he? So says Milton, anyway.”

Clary sucked in her breath. “I am not an angel. And you don’t even know that that’s what Valentine used Ithuriel’s blood for—maybe Valentine just wanted it for himself—”

“He said the blood was for ‘me and mine,’” Jace said quietly. “It explains why you can do what you can do, Clary. The Seelie Queen said we were both experiments. Not just me.”

“I’m not an angel, Jace,” she repeated. “I don’t return library books. I steal illegal music off the Internet. I lie to my mom. I am completely ordinary.”

“Not to me.” He looked down at her. His face hovered against a background of stars. There was nothing of his usual arrogance in his expression—she had never seen him look so unguarded, but even that unguardedness was mixed with a self-hatred that ran as deep as a wound. “Clary, I—”