City of Fallen Angels

Isabelle flushed. “I…”

“Jace?” It was Alec, his tone commanding. He had given Clary and Simon an astonished look, but then his attention went, as it always did, to Jace. He might not be in love with Jace anymore, if he ever really had been, but they were still parabatai, and Jace was always first on his mind in any battle. “What are you doing here? And for the Angel’s sake, what happened to you?”

Jace stared at Alec, almost as if he didn’t know him. He looked like someone in a nightmare, examining a new landscape not because it was surprising or dramatic but to prepare himself for whatever horrors it might reveal. “Stele,” he said finally, in a cracking voice. “Do you have your stele?”

Alec reached for his belt, looking baffled. “Of course.” He held the stele out to Jace. “If you need an iratze—”

“Not for me,” Jace said, still in the same odd, cracked voice. “Her.” He pointed at Clary. “She needs it more than I do.” His eyes met Alec’s, gold and blue. “Please, Alec,” he said, the harshness gone from his voice as suddenly as it had come. “Help her for me.”

He turned and walked away, toward the far side of the room, where the glass doors were. He stood, staring through them—at the garden outside or his own reflection, Clary couldn’t tell.

Alec looked after Jace for a moment, then came toward Clary and Simon, stele in hand. He indicated that Simon should lower Clary to the floor, which he did gently, letting her brace her back against the wall. He stepped back as Alec knelt down over her. She could see the confusion in Alec’s face, and his look of surprise as he saw how bad the cuts across her arm and abdomen were. “Who did this to you?”

“I—” Clary looked helplessly toward Jace, who still had his back to them. She could see his reflection in the glass doors, his face a white smudge, darkened here and there with bruises. The front of his shirt was dark with blood. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Why didn’t you summon us?” Isabelle demanded, her voice thin with betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming here? Why didn’t you send a fire-message, or anything? You know we would have come if you needed us.”

“There wasn’t time,” Simon said. “And I didn’t know Clary and Jace were going to be here. I thought I was the only one. It didn’t seem right to drag you into my problems.”

“D-drag me into your problems?” Isabelle sputtered. “You—,” she began—and then to everyone’s surprise, clearly including her own, she flung herself at Simon, wrapping her arms around his neck. He staggered backward, unprepared for the assault, but he recovered quickly enough. His arms went around her, nearly snagging on the dangling whip, and he held her tightly, her dark head just under his chin. Clary couldn’t quite tell—Isabelle was speaking too softly—but it sounded like she was swearing at Simon under her breath.

Alec’s eyebrows went up, but he made no comment as he bent over Clary, blocking her view of Isabelle and Simon. He touched the stele to her skin, and she jumped at the stinging pain. “I know it hurts,” he said in a low voice. “I think you hit your head. Magnus ought to look at you. What about Jace? How badly is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.” Clary shook her head. “He won’t let me near him.”

Alec put his hand under her chin, turning her face from side to side, and sketched a second light iratze on the side of her throat, just under her jawline. “What did he do that he thinks was so terrible?”

She flicked her eyes up toward him. “What makes you think he did anything?”

Alec let go of her chin. “Because I know him. And the way he punishes himself. Not letting you near him is punishing himself, not punishing you.”

“He doesn’t want me near him,” Clary said, hearing the rebelliousness in her own voice and hating herself for being petty.

“You’re all he ever wants,” said Alec in a surprisingly gentle tone, and he sat back on his heels, pushing his long dark hair out of his eyes. There was something different about him these days, Clary thought, a surety about himself he hadn’t had when she had first met him, something that allowed him to be generous with others as he had never been generous with himself before. “How did you two wind up here, anyway? We didn’t even notice you leave the party with Simon—”

“They didn’t,” said Simon. He and Isabelle had detached themselves, but still stood close to each other, side by side. “I came here alone. Well, not exactly alone. I was—summoned.”

Clary nodded. “It’s true. We didn’t leave the party with him. When Jace brought me here, I had no idea Simon was going to be here too.”

“Jace brought you here?” Isabelle said, amazed. “Jace, if you knew about Lilith and the Church of Talto, you should have said something.”