CITY OF ASHES

“Ruined by your upbringing,” Valentine said. “Your mother was always a stubborn woman. It was one of the things I loved about her in the beginning. I thought she would stand by her ideals.”


It was strange, Clary thought with a detached sort of horror, that when she had seen her father before at Renwick’s, his considerable personal charisma had been on display for Jace’s benefit. Now he wasn’t bothering, and without the surface patina of charm, he seemed—empty. Like a hollow statue, eyes cut out to show only darkness inside.

“Tell me, Clarissa—did your mother ever talk about me?”

“She told me my father was dead.” Don’t say anything else, she warned herself, but she was sure he could read the rest of the words in her eyes. And I wish she had been telling the truth.

“And she never told you you were different? Special?”

Clary swallowed, and the tip of the blade cut a little deeper. More blood trickled down her chest. “She never told me I was a Shadowhunter.”

“Do you know why,” Valentine said, looking down the length of the Sword at her, “your mother left me?”

Tears burned the back of Clary’s throat. She made a choking noise. “You mean there was only one reason?”

“She told me,” he went on, as if Clary hadn’t spoken, “that I had turned her first child into a monster. She left me before I could do the same to her second. You. But she was too late.”

The cold at her throat, in her limbs, was so intense that she was beyond shivering. It was as if the Sword was turning her to ice. “She’d never say that,” Clary whispered. “Jace isn’t a monster. Neither am I.”

“I wasn’t talking about—”

The trapdoor over their heads slammed open and two shadowy figures dropped from the hole, landing just behind Valentine. The first, Clary saw with a bright shock of relief, was Jace, falling through the air like an arrow shot from a bow, sure of its target. He hit the floor with an assured lightness. He was clutching a bloodstained steel strut in one hand, its end broken off to a wicked point.

The second figure landed beside Jace with the same lightness if not the same grace. Clary saw the outline of a slender boy with dark hair and thought, Alec. It was only when he straightened and she recognized the familiar face that she realized who it was.

She forgot the Sword, the cold, the pain in her throat, forgot everything. “Simon!”

Simon looked across the room at her. Their eyes met for just a moment and Clary hoped he could read in her face her full and overwhelming relief. The tears that had been threatening came, and spilled down her face. She didn’t move to wipe them away.

Valentine turned his head to look behind him, and his mouth sagged in the first expression of honest surprise Clary had ever seen on his face. He whirled to face Jace and Simon.

The moment the point of the Sword left Clary’s throat, the ice drained from her, taking all her strength with it. She sank to her knees, shivering uncontrollably. When she raised her hands to wipe the tears away from her face, she saw that the tips of her fingers were white with the beginnings of frostbite.

Jace stared at her in horror, then at his father. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” Valentine said, regaining control of himself. “Yet.”

To Clary’s surprise, Jace paled, as if his father’s words had shocked him.

“I’m the one who should be asking you what you’ve done, Jonathan,” Valentine said, and though he spoke to Jace, his eyes were on Simon. “Why is it still alive? Revenants can regenerate, but not with such little blood in them.”

“You mean me?” Simon demanded. Clary stared. Simon sounded different. He didn’t sound like a kid smarting off to an adult; he sounded like someone who felt like he could face Valentine Morgenstern on equal footing. Like someone who deserved to face him on equal footing. “Oh, that’s right, you left me for dead. Well, dead-er.”

“Shut up.” Jace shot a glare at Simon; his eyes were very dark. “Let me answer this.” He turned to his father. “I let Simon drink my blood,” he said. “So he wouldn’t die.”

Valentine’s already severe face settled into harder lines, as if the bones were pushing out through the skin. “You willingly let a vampire drink your blood?”

Jace seemed to hesitate for a moment—he glanced over at Simon, who was staring fixedly at Valentine with a look of intense hatred. Then he said, carefully, “Yes.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done, Jonathan,” said Valentine in a terrible voice. “No idea.”

“I saved a life,” said Jace. “One you tried to take. I know that much.”

“Not a human life,” said Valentine. “You resurrected a monster that will only kill to feed again. His kind are always hungry—”