CITY OF BONES

Clary ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on her father’s cold black ones. “You murdered your wife’s parents, not in battle but in cold blood,” she said. “And I bet you murdered Michael Wayland and his little boy, too. Threw their bones in with my grandparents’ so that my mother would think you and Jace were dead. Put your necklace around Michael Wayland’s neck before you burned him so everyone would think those bones were yours. After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave—you didn’t care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you? Slaughtering old people and children in cold blood, that’s monstrous.”


Another spasm of rage contorted Valentine’s features. “That’s enough !” Valentine roared, raising the black-star sword again, and Clary heard the truth of who he was in his voice, the rage that had propelled him all his life. The unending seething rage. “Jonathan! Drag your sister out of my way, or by the Angel, I’ll knock her down to kill the monster she’s protecting!”

For the briefest moment Jace hesitated. Then he raised his head. “Certainly, Father,” he said, and crossed the room to Clary. Before she could throw up her hands to ward him off, he had caught her up roughly by the arm. He yanked her to her feet, pulling her away from Luke.

“Jace,” she whispered, appalled.

“Don’t,” he said. His fingers dug painfully into her arms. He smelled of wine and metal and sweat. “Don’t talk to me.”

“But—”

“I said, don’t talk.” He shook her, hard. She stumbled, regained her footing, and looked up to see Valentine standing, gloating over Luke’s crumpled body. He reached out a fastidious booted toe and shoved Luke, who made a choking sound.

“Leave him alone!” Clary shouted, trying to yank herself out of Jace’s grasp. It was useless—he was much too strong.

“Stop it,” he hissed in her ear. “You’ll just make it worse for yourself. It’s better if you don’t look.”

“Like you do?” she hissed back. “Shutting your eyes and pretending something’s not happening doesn’t make it not true, Jace. You ought to know better—”

“Clary, stop.” His tone almost brought her up short. He sounded desperate.

Valentine was chuckling. “If only I had thought,” he said, “to bring with me a blade of real silver, I could have dispatched you in the true manner of your kind, Lucian.”

Luke snarled something Clary couldn’t hear. She hoped it was rude. She tried to twist away from Jace. Her feet slipped and he caught her, yanking her back with agonizing force. He had his arms around her, she thought, but not the way she had once hoped, not as she had ever imagined.

“At least let me get up,” said Luke. “Let me die on my feet.”

Valentine looked at him along the length of the blade, and shrugged. “You can die on your back or on your knees,” he said. “But only a man deserves to die standing, and you are not a man.”

“NO!” Clary shouted as, not looking at her, Luke began to pull himself painfully into a kneeling position.

“Why do you have to make it worse for yourself?” Jace demanded in a low, tense whisper. “I told you not to look.”

She was panting with exertion and pain. “Why do you have to lie to yourself?”

“I’m not lying!” His grip on her tightened savagely, though she hadn’t tried to pull away. “I just want what’s good in my life—my father—my family—I can’t lose it all again.”

Luke was kneeling upright now. Valentine had raised the bloodstained sword. Luke’s eyes were closed, and he was murmuring something: words, a prayer, Clary didn’t know. She twisted in Jace’s arms, wrenching around so that she could look up into his face. His lips were drawn thin, his jaw set, but his eyes—

The fragile armor was breaking. It needed only a last push from her. She struggled for the words.

“You have a family,” she said. “Family, those are just the people who love you. Like the Lightwoods love you. Alec, Isabelle—” Her voice cracked. “Luke is my family, and you’re going to make me watch him die just like you thought you watched your father die when you were ten years old? Is this what you want, Jace? Is this the kind of man you want to be? Like—”

She broke off, suddenly terrified that she had gone too far.

“Like my father,” he said.

His voice was icy, distant, flat as the blade of a knife.

I’ve lost him, she thought despairingly.

“Get down,” he said, and pushed her, hard. She stumbled, fell to the ground, rolled onto one knee. Kneeling upright, she saw Valentine raise his sword high over his head. The glow from the chandelier overhead exploding off the blade sent brilliant points of light stabbing into her eyes. “Luke!” she shrieked.

The blade slammed home—into the floor. Luke was no longer there. Jace, having moved faster than Clary would have thought possible even for a Shadowhunter, had knocked him out of the way, sending him sprawling to the side. Jace stood facing his father over the quivering hilt of the sword, his face white, but his gaze steady.

“I think you should leave,” Jace said.

Valentine stared incredulously at his son. “What did you say?”

Luke had pulled himself into a sitting position. Fresh blood stained his shirt. He stared as Jace reached out a hand and gently, almost disinterestedly, caressed the hilt of the sword that had been driven into the floor. “I think you heard me, Father.”