This time she didn’t fight. What would happen even if she escaped? She couldn’t just leave him here. Jace was still there, she thought, trapped somewhere behind those blank eyes, maybe screaming for her. She had to stay with him. Had to know what was happening. She let him pick her up and carry her into the elevator.
“The Silent Brothers will notice you left,” she said, as the buttons for floor after floor lit up while the elevator rose. “They’ll alert the Clave. They’ll come looking—”
“I need not fear the Brothers. I wasn’t a prisoner; they weren’t expecting me to want to leave. They won’t notice I’m gone until they wake up tomorrow morning.”
“What if they wake up earlier than that?”
“Oh,” he said, with a cold certainly, “they won’t. It’s much more likely the other partygoers at the Ironworks will notice you’re missing. But what can they do about it? They’ll have no idea where you went, and Tracking to this building is blocked.” He stroked her hair back from her face, and she went still. “You’re just going to have to trust me. No one’s coming for you.”
He didn’t bring the knife out until they left the elevator, and then he said, “I would never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” even as he flicked her hair back with the tip of the blade and pressed the edge to her throat. The icy air hit her bare shoulders and arms as soon as they were out on the roof. Jace’s hands were warm where he touched her, and she could feel the heat of him through her thin dress, but it didn’t warm her, not inside. Inside she was filled with jagged slivers of ice.
She grew colder still when she saw Simon, looking at her with his huge dark eyes. His face looked scrubbed blank with shock, like a white piece of paper. He was looking at her, and Jace behind her, as if he were seeing something fundamentally wrong, a person with their face turned inside-out, a map of the world with all the land gone and nothing left but ocean.
She barely looked at the woman beside him, with her dark hair and her thin, cruel face. Clary’s gaze had gone immediately to the transparent coffin on its pedestal of stone. It seemed to glow from within, as if lit by a milky inner light. The water that Jonathan was floating in was probably not water but some other, less natural liquid. Normal Clary, she thought dispassionately, would have screamed at the sight of her brother, floating still and dead-looking and totally unmoving in what looked like Snow White’s glass coffin. But frozen Clary just stared with a remote and distant shock.
Lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony. Well, some of that was true. When she had met Sebastian, his hair had been black, but it was white-silver now, floating around his head like albino seaweed. The same color as his father’s hair. Their father’s hair. His skin was so pale it looked as if it could be made up of luminous crystals. But his lips were colorless too, as were the lids of his eyes.
“Thank you, Jace,” the woman that Jace had called Lady Lilith said. “Nicely done, and very prompt. I thought I was going to have difficulties with you at first, but it appears I worried for nothing.”
Clary stared. Though the woman did not look familiar, her voice was familiar. She had heard that voice before. But where? She tried to pull away from Jace, but his grip on her only tightened. The edge of the knife kissed her throat. An accident, she told herself. Jace—even this Jace—would never hurt her.
“You,” she said to Lilith between her teeth. “What have you done to Jace?”
“Valentine’s daughter speaks.” The dark-haired woman smiled. “Simon? Would you like to explain?”
Simon looked like he was going to throw up. “I have no idea.” He sounded as if he were choking. “Believe me, you two were the last thing I expected to see.”
“The Silent Brothers said that a demon was responsible for what’s been happening with Jace,” Clary said, and saw Simon look more baffled than ever. The woman, though, just watched her with eyes like flat obsidian circles. “That demon was you, wasn’t it? But why Jace? What do you want from us?”
“‘Us’?” Lilith pealed with laughter. “As if you mattered in this, my girl. Why you? Because you are a means to an end. Because I needed both these boys, and both of them love you. Because Jace Herondale is the one person you trust more than anyone else in the world. And you are someone the Daylighter loves enough to give up his own life for. Perhaps you cannot be harmed,” she said, turning to Simon. “But she can be. Are you so stubborn that you will sit back and watch Jace cut her throat rather than give up your blood?”
Simon, looking like death itself, shook his head slowly, but before he could speak, Clary said, “Simon, no! Don’t do it, whatever it is. Jace wouldn’t hurt me.”
The woman’s fathomless eyes turned to Jace. She smiled. “Cut her,” she said. “Just a little.”
City of Fallen Angels
CASSANDRA CLARE's books
- City of Ruins
- Invincible (A Centennial City Novel)
- City of Fae
- City of Lost Souls
- City of Heavenly Fire
- CITY OF GLASS
- CITY OF BONES
- CITY OF ASHES
- City of Lost Souls
- Velocity
- Ascendancy of the Last
- Blood of Aenarion
- Broods Of Fenrir
- Burden of the Soul
- Caradoc of the North Wind
- Cause of Death: Unnatural
- Dark of the Moon
- Demons of Bourbon Street
- Edge of Dawn
- Eye of the Oracle
- Freak of Nature
- Heart of the Demon
- Lady of Devices
- Lance of Earth and Sky
- Last of the Wilds
- Legacy of Blood
- Legend of Witchtrot Road
- Lord of the Wolfyn
- Of Gods and Elves
- Of Wings and Wolves
- Prince of Spies
- Professor Gargoyle
- Promise of Blood
- Secrets of the Fire Sea
- Shadows of the Redwood
- Sin of Fury
- Sins of the Father
- Smugglers of Gor
- Sword of Caledor
- Sword of Darkness
- Talisman of El
- Threads of Desire (Spellcraft)
- Tricks of the Trade
- Visions of Magic
- Visions of Skyfire
- Well of the Damned
- Wings of Tavea
- Wings of the Wicked
- A Bridge of Years
- Chronicles of Raan
- Dawn of Swords(The Breaking World)
- A Draw of Kings
- Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity)
- Lord of the Hunt
- Master of War
- Mistfall(Book One of the Mistfall Series)
- The Gates of Byzantium
- The House of Yeel
- The Oath of the Vayuputras: Shiva Trilogy 3
- The Republic of Thieves #1
- The Republic of Thieves #2
- Edge of Dawn
- A Quest of Heroes
- Mistress of the Empire
- Servant of the Empire
- Gates of Rapture
- Reaper (End of Days)
- This Side of the Grave
- Magician's Gambit (Book Three of The Belgariad)
- Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files
- Murder of Crows
- The Queen of the Tearling
- A Tale of Two Castles
- Mark of the Demon
- Sins of the Demon
- Blood of the Demon
- The Other Side of Midnight
- Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7)
- Cold Burn of Magic
- Of Noble Family
- Wrath of a Mad God ( The Darkwar, Book 3)
- King of Foxes
- Daughter of the Empire
- Mistress of the Empire
- Krondor : Tear of the Gods (Riftwar Legacy Book 3)
- Shards of a Broken Crown (Serpentwar Book 4)
- Rise of a Merchant Prince
- End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3)
- Servant of the Empire
- Talon of the Silver Hawk
- Shadow of a Dark Queen
- The Cost of All Things
- The Wicked (A Novella of the Elder Races)
- Night's Honor (A Novel of the Elder Races Book 7)
- Born of Silence
- Born of Shadows
- Sins of the Night
- Kiss of the Night (Dark Hunter Series – Book 7)
- Born Of The Night (The League Series Book 1)