Clary felt Jace’s shoulders tense, the way they had in the park when he’d been showing her how to fight. She felt something at her throat, like a stinging kiss, cold and hot at once, and felt a warm trickle of liquid spill down onto her collarbone. Simon’s eyes widened.
He had cut her. He had actually done it. She thought of Jace crouched on the floor of the bedroom at the Institute, his pain clear in every line of his body. I dream that you come into my room. And then I hurt you. I cut you or strangle or stab you, and you die, looking up at me with those green eyes of yours while your life bleeds away between my hands.
She had not believed him. Not really. He was Jace. He would never hurt her. She looked down and saw the blood staining the neckline of her dress. It looked like red paint.
“You see now,” said the woman. “He does what I tell him. Don’t blame him for it. He is completely within my power. For weeks I have crept through his head, seeing his dreams, learning his fears and wants, his guilts and desires. In a dream he accepted my Mark, and that Mark has been burning through him ever since—through his skin, down into his soul. Now his soul is in my hands, to shape or direct as I see fit. He will do whatever I say.”
Clary remembered what the Silent Brothers had said. When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters. When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as an unlocked door—open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence.
I did this, Clary thought. I brought him back, and I wanted it kept secret. If we had only told someone what had happened, maybe the ritual could have been done in time to keep Lilith out of his head. She felt sick with self-loathing. Behind her Jace was silent, as still as a statue, his arms around her and the knife still at her throat. She could feel it against her skin when she took a breath to speak, keeping her voice even with an effort. “I understand that you control Jace,” she said. “I don’t understand why. Surely there are other, easier ways to threaten me.”
Lilith sighed as if the whole business had grown tedious. “I need you,” she said, with exaggerated patience, “to get Simon to do what I want, which is give me his blood. And I need Jace not just because I needed a way to get you here, but as a counterweight. All things in magic must balance, Clarissa.” She pointed at the rough black circle drawn on the tiles, and then at Jace. “He was the first. The first to be brought back, the first soul restored to this world in the name of Light. Therefore he must be present for me to successfully restore the second, in the name of the Dark. Do you understand now, silly girl? We are all needed here. Simon to die. Jace to live. Jonathan to return. And you, Valentine’s daughter, to be the catalyst for it all.”
The demon woman’s voice had dropped to a low chant. With a shock of surprise Clary realized that she now knew where she had heard it before. She saw her father, standing inside a pentagram, a black-haired woman with tentacles for eyes kneeling at his feet. The woman said, The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. But it will burn out his humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood.
“I know,” Clary said through stiff lips. “I know who you are. I saw you cut your wrist and drip blood into a cup for my father. The angel Ithuriel showed it to me in a vision.”
Simon’s eyes darted back and forth between Clary and the woman, whose dark eyes held a hint of surprise. Clary guessed she didn’t surprise easily. “I saw my father summon you. I know what he called you. My Lady of Edom. You’re a Greater Demon. You gave your blood to make my brother what he is. You turned him into a—a horrible thing. If it weren’t for you—”
“Yes. All that is true. I gave my blood to Valentine Morgenstern, and he put it in his baby boy, and this is the result.” The woman placed her hand gently, almost as a caress, against the glass surface of Sebastian’s coffin. There was the oddest smile on her face. “You might almost say that, in a way, I am Jonathan’s mother.”
“I told you that address didn’t mean anything,” Alec said.
Isabelle ignored him. The moment they had stepped through the doors of the building, the ruby pendant around her neck had pulsed, faintly, like the beat of a distant heart. That meant demonic presence. Under other circumstances she would have expected her brother to sense the weirdness of the place just like she did, but he was clearly too sunk in gloom about Magnus to concentrate.
“Get your witchlight,” she said to him. “I left mine at home.”
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)