CITY OF ASHES

He was packing the duffel with clothes when a knock sounded at the door. He went to it, expecting Alec or Isabelle.

It was Maryse. She wore a severe black dress and her hair was pulled back sharply from her face. She looked older than he remembered her. Two deep lines ran from the corners of her mouth to her jaw. Only her eyes had any color. “Jace,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“You can do what you like,” he said, returning to the bed. “It’s your house.” He grabbed up a handful of shirts and stuffed them into the duffel bag with possibly unnecessary force.

“Actually, it’s the Clave’s house,” said Maryse. “We’re only its guardians.”

Jace shoved books into the bag. “Whatever.”

“What are you doing?” If Jace hadn’t known better, he would have thought her voice wavered slightly.

“I’m packing,” he said. “It’s what people generally do when they’re moving out.”

She blanched. “Don’t leave,” she said. “If you want to stay—”

“I don’t want to stay. I don’t belong here.”

“Where will you go?”

“Luke’s,” he said, and saw her flinch. “For a while. After that, I don’t know. Maybe to Idris.”

“Is that where you think you belong?” There was an aching sadness in her voice.

Jace stopped packing for a moment and stared down at his bag. “I don’t know where I belong.”

“With your family.” Maryse took a tentative step forward. “With us.”

“You threw me out.” Jace heard the harshness in his own voice, and tried to soften it. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning to look at her. “About everything that’s happened. But you didn’t want me before, and I can’t imagine you want me now. Robert’s going to be sick awhile; you’ll be needing to take care of him. I’ll just be in the way.”

“In the way?” She sounded incredulous. “Robert wants to see you, Jace—”

“I doubt that.”

“What about Alec? Isabelle, Max—they need you. If you don’t believe me that I want you here—and I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t—you must know that they do. We’ve been through a bad time, Jace. Don’t hurt them more than they’re already hurt.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t blame you if you hate me.” Her voice was wavering. Jace swung around to stare at her in surprise. “But what I did—even throwing you out—treating you as I did, it was to protect you. And because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of me?”

She nodded.

“Well, that makes me feel much better.”

Maryse took a deep breath. “I thought you would break my heart like Valentine did,” she said. “You were the first thing I loved, you see, after him, that wasn’t my own blood. The first living creature. And you were just a child—”

“You thought I was someone else.”

“No. I’ve always known just who you are. Ever since the first time I saw you getting off the ship from Idris, when you were ten years old—you walked into my heart, just as my own children did when they were born.” She shook her head. “You can’t understand. You’ve never been a parent. You never love anything like you love your children. And nothing can make you angrier.”

“I did notice the angry part,” Jace said, after a pause.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Maryse said. “But if you’d stay for Isabelle and Alec and Max, I’d be so grateful—”

It was the wrong thing to say. “I don’t want your gratitude,” Jace said, and turned back to the duffel bag. There was nothing left to put in it. He tugged at the zipper.

“A la claire fontaine,” Maryse said, “m’en allent promener.”

He turned to look at her. “What?”

“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. Jamais je ne t’oublierai—it’s the old French ballad I used to sing to Alec and Isabelle. The one you asked me about.”

There was very little light in the room now, and in the dimness Maryse looked to him almost as she had when he was ten years old, as if she had not changed at all in the past seven years. She looked severe and worried, anxious—and hopeful. She looked like the only mother he’d ever known.

“You were wrong that I never sang it to you,” she said. “It’s just that you never heard me.”

Jace said nothing, but he reached out and yanked the zipper open on the duffel bag, letting his belongings spill out onto the bed.





EPILOGUE


“CLARY!” SIMON’S MOTHER BEAMED ALL OVER HER FACE AT the sight of the girl standing on her doorstep. “I haven’t seen you for ages. I was starting to worry you and Simon had had a fight.”