CITY OF ASHES

“That’s atheists, jackass,” said Simon furiously. “There are no atheists in the trenches.”


“While this is all very amusing,” said the Queen coolly, leaning forward, “the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires.” The cruel delight in her face and voice had sharpened, and her words seemed to stab into Clary’s ears like needles. “Only that and nothing more.”

Simon looked as if she had hit him. Clary wanted to reach out to him, but she stood frozen to the spot, too horrified to move.

“Why are you doing this?” Jace demanded.

“I rather thought I was offering you a boon.”

Jace flushed, but said nothing. He avoided looking at Clary.

Simon said, “That’s ridiculous. They’re brother and sister.”

The Queen shrugged, a delicate twitch of her shoulders. “Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn’t desire his kiss, she won’t be free.”

Simon said something angrily, but Clary didn’t hear him: Her ears were buzzing, as if a swarm of angry bees were trapped inside her head. Simon whirled around, looking furious, and said, “You don’t have to do this, Clary, it’s a trick—”

“Not a trick,” said Jace. “A test.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, Simon,” said Isabelle, her voice edged. “But I’d like to get Clary out of here.”

“Like you’d kiss Alec,” Simon said, “just because the Queen of the Seelie Court asked you to?”

“Sure I would.” Isabelle sounded annoyed. “If the other option was being stuck in the Seelie Court forever? Who cares, anyway? It’s just a kiss.”

“That’s right.” It was Jace. Clary saw him, at the blurred edge of her vision, as he moved toward her and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. “It’s just a kiss,” he said, and though his tone was harsh, his hands were inexplicably gentle. She let him turn her, looked up at him. His eyes were very dark, perhaps because it was so dim down here in the Court, perhaps because of something else. She could see her reflection in each of his dilated pupils, a tiny image of herself inside his eyes. He said, “You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like.”

“I’ve never even been to England,” she said, but she shut her eyelids. She could feel the dank heaviness of her clothes, cold and itchy against her skin, and the cloying sweet air of the cave, colder yet, and the weight of Jace’s hands on her shoulders, the only things that were warm. And then he kissed her.

She felt the brush of his lips, light at first, and her own opened automatically beneath the pressure. Almost against her will she felt herself go fluid and pliant, stretching upward to twine her arms around his neck the way that a sunflower twists toward light. His arms slid around her, his hands knotting in her hair, and the kiss stopped being gentle and became fierce, all in a single moment like tinder flaring into a blaze. Clary heard a sound like a sigh rush through the Court, all around them, a wave of noise, but it meant nothing, was lost in the rush of her blood through her veins, the dizzying sense of weightlessness in her body.

Jace’s hands moved from her hair, slid down her spine; she felt the hard press of his palms against her shoulder blades—and then he pulled away, gently disengaging himself, drawing her hands away from his neck and stepping back. For a moment Clary thought she might fall; she felt as if something essential had been torn away from her, an arm or a leg, and she stared at Jace in blank astonishment—what did he feel, did he feel nothing? She didn’t think she could bear it if he felt nothing.

He looked back at her, and when she saw the look on his face, she saw his eyes at Renwick’s, when he had watched the Portal that separated him from his home shatter into a thousand irretrievable pieces. He held her gaze for a split second, then looked away from her, the muscles in his throat working. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “Was that good enough?” he called, turning to face the Queen and the courtiers behind her. “Did that entertain you?”

The Queen had a hand across her mouth, half-covering a smile. “We are quite entertained,” she said. “But not, I think, so much as the both of you.”

“I can only assume,” said Jace, “that mortal emotions amuse you because you have none of your own.”

The smile slipped from her mouth at that.

“Easy, Jace,” said Isabelle. She turned to Clary. “Can you leave now? Are you free?”

Clary went to the door and was not surprised to find no resistance barring her way. She stood with her hand among the vines and turned to Simon. He was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.

“We should go,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”