CITY OF ASHES

“No, I’m just a very naughty boy. I do all sorts of bad things. I kick kittens. I make rude gestures at nuns.”


“Don’t joke. This is serious stuff.” Alec’s eyes were somber. “What the hell were you thinking, going to see Valentine? I mean, seriously, what was going through your head?”

A number of smart remarks occurred to Jace, but he found he didn’t want to make any of them. He was too tired. “I was thinking that he’s my father.”

Alec looked as if he were mentally counting to ten to maintain his patience. “Jace—”

“What if it was your father? What would you do?”

“My father? My father would never do the things that Valentine—”

Jace’s head jerked up. “Your father did do those things! He was in the Circle along with my father! Your mother, too! Our parents were all the same. The only difference is that yours got caught and punished, and mine didn’t!”

Alec’s face tightened. But “The only difference?” was all he said.

Jace looked down at his hands. The burning cuffs weren’t meant to be left on so long. The skin underneath them was dotted with beads of blood.

“I just meant,” Alec said, “that I don’t see how you could want to see him, not after what’s he’s done in general, but after what he did to you.”

Jace said nothing.

“All those years,” Alec said. “He let you think he was dead. Maybe you don’t remember what it was like when you were ten years old, but I do. Nobody who loved you could do—could do anything like that.”

Thin lines of blood were making their way down Jace’s hands, like red string unraveling. “Valentine told me,” he said quietly, “that if I supported him against the Clave, if I did that, he’d make sure no one I cared about was hurt. Not you or Isabelle or Max. Not Clary. Not your parents. He said—”

“No one would be hurt?” Alec echoed derisively. “You mean he wouldn’t hurt them himself. Nice.”

“I saw what he can do, Alec. The kind of demonic force he can summon. If he brings his demon army against the Clave, there will be a war. And people get hurt in wars. They die in wars.” He hesitated. “If you had the chance to save everyone you loved—”

“But what kind of chance is it? What’s Valentine’s word even worth?”

“If he swears on the Angel that he’ll do something, he’ll do it. I know him.”

“If you support him against the Clave.”

Jace nodded.

“He must have been pretty pissed when you said no,” Alec observed.

Jace looked up from his bleeding wrists and stared. “What?”

“I said—”

“I know what you said. What makes you think I said no?”

“Well, you did. Didn’t you?”

Very slowly, Jace nodded.

“I know you,” Alec said, with supreme confidence, and stood up. “You told the Inquisitor about Valentine and his plans, didn’t you? And she didn’t care?”

“I wouldn’t say she didn’t care. More like she didn’t really believe me. She’s got a plan she thinks will take care of Valentine. The only problem is, her plan sucks.”

Alec nodded. “You can fill me in on that later. First things first: We have to figure out how to get you out of here.”

“What?” Disbelief made Jace feel slightly dizzy. “I thought you came down right on the side of go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. ‘The Law is the Law, Isabelle.’ What was all that you were spouting?”

Alec looked astonished. “You can’t have thought I meant that. I just wanted the Inquisitor to trust me so she wouldn’t be watching me all the time like she’s watching Izzy and Max. She knows they’re on your side.”

“And you? Are you on my side?” Jace could hear the roughness in his own question and was almost overwhelmed by how much the answer meant to him.

“I’m with you,” Alec said, “always. Why do you even have to ask? I may respect the Law, but what the Inquisitor has been doing to you has nothing to do with the Law. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but the hatred she has for you is personal. It has nothing to do with the Clave.”

“I bait her,” said Jace. “I can’t help it. Vicious bureaucrats get under my skin.”

Alec shook his head. “It’s not that either. It’s an old hate. I can feel it.”

Jace was about to answer when the cathedral bells began to ring. This close to the roof, the sound was echoingly loud. He glanced up—he still half-expected to see Hugo flying among the wooden rafters in his slow, thoughtful circles. The raven had always liked it up there between the rafters and the arched stone ceiling. At the time Jace had thought the bird liked to dig his claws into the soft wood; now he realized the rafters had lent him an excellent vantage point for spying.