City of Fallen Angels

“Long story.” He grinned up at her. “So? You want to practice flips?”


Clary sighed. Practicing flips involved flinging herself off the beam into empty space, and using the flexible cord to hold her while she pushed off the walls and flipped herself over and under, teaching herself to whirl, kick, and duck without worrying about hard floors and bruises. She’d seen Jace do it, and he looked like a falling angel while he did, flying through the air, whirling and spinning with beautiful, balletic grace. She, on the other hand, curled up like a potato bug as soon as the floor approached, and the fact that she intellectually knew she wasn’t going to hit it didn’t seem to make any difference.

She was starting to wonder if it didn’t matter that she’d been born a Shadowhunter; maybe it was too late for her to be made into one, or at least a fully functional one. Or maybe the gift that made her and Jace what they were had been somehow distributed unequally between them, so he had gotten all the physical grace, and she had gotten—well, not a lot of it.

“Come on, Clary,” Jace said. “Jump.” She closed her eyes and jumped. For a moment she felt herself hang suspended, free of everything. Then gravity took over, and she plunged toward the floor. Instinctively she pulled her arms and legs in, keeping her eyes squeezed shut. The cord pulled taut and she rebounded, flying back up before falling again. As her velocity slowed, she opened her eyes and found herself dangling at the end of the cord, about five feet above Jace. He was grinning.

“Nice,” he said. “As graceful as a falling snowflake.”

“Was I screaming?” she asked, genuinely curious. “You know, on the way down.”

He nodded. “Thankfully no one’s home, or they would have assumed I was murdering you.”

“Ha. You can’t even reach me.” She kicked out a leg and spun lazily in midair.

Jace’s eyes glinted. “Want to bet?”

Clary knew that expression. “No,” she said quickly. “Whatever you’re going to do—”

But he’d already done it. When Jace moved fast, his individual movements were almost invisible. She saw his hand go to his belt, and then something flashed in the air. She heard the sound of parting fabric as the cord above her head was sheared through. Released, she fell freely, too surprised to scream—directly into Jace’s arms. The force knocked him backward, and they sprawled together onto one of the padded floor mats, Clary on top of him. He grinned up at her.

“Now,” he said, “that was much better. You didn’t scream at all.”

“I didn’t get the chance.” She was breathless, and not just from the impact of the fall. Being sprawled on top of Jace, feeling his body against hers, made her hands shake and her heart beat faster. She had thought maybe her physical reaction to him—their reactions to each other—would fade with familiarity, but that hadn’t happened. If anything, it had gotten worse the more time she’d spent with him—or better, she supposed, depending on how you thought about it.

He was looking up at her with dark golden eyes; she wondered if their color had intensified since his encounter with Raziel, the Angel, by the shores of Lake Lyn in Idris. She couldn’t ask anyone: Though everyone knew that Valentine had summoned the Angel, and that the Angel had healed Jace from injuries Valentine had inflicted on him, no one but Clary and Jace knew that Valentine had done more than just injure his adopted son. He had stabbed Jace through the heart as part of the summoning ceremony—stabbed him, and held him while he died. At Clary’s wish Raziel had brought Jace back from death. The enormity of it still shocked Clary, and, she suspected, Jace as well. They had agreed never to tell anyone that Jace had actually died, even for a brief time. It was their secret.

He reached up and pushed her hair back from her face. “I’m joking,” he said. “You’re not so bad. You’ll get there. You should have seen Alec do flips at first. I think he kicked himself in the head once.”

“Sure,” said Clary. “But he was probably eleven.” She eyed him. “I suppose you’ve always been amazing at this stuff.”

“I was born amazing.” He stroked her cheek with the tips of his fingers, lightly but enough to make her shiver. She said nothing; he was joking, but in a sense it was true. Jace had been born to be what he was. “How long can you stay tonight?”

She smiled a little. “Are we done with training?”

“I’d like to think that we’re done with the part of the evening where it’s absolutely required. Although there are a few things I’d like to practice.…” He reached up to pull her down, but at that moment the door opened, and Isabelle came stalking in, the high heels of her boots clicking on the polished hardwood floor.