City of Fallen Angels

“It means,” he said, “that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.”


She drew her hand out of his, aware as she did that he was watching her through half-lidded eyes. She locked both hands around the back of his neck, leaned forward, and touched his lips with hers—not a kiss this time, just a brush of lips against each other. It was enough; she felt his pulse speed up, and he leaned forward, trying to capture her mouth with his, but she shook her head, shaking her hair around them like a curtain that would hide them from the eyes of everyone else in the park. “If you’re tired, we could go back to the Institute,” she said in a half whisper. “Take a nap. We haven’t slept together in the same bed since—since Idris.”

Their gazes locked, and she knew he was remembering the same thing she was. The pale light filtering in through the window of Amatis’s small spare bedroom, the desperation in his voice. I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life. That whole night, lying side by side, only their hands touching. They had touched much more since that night, but had never spent the night together. He knew she was offering him more than a nap in one of the Institute’s unused bedrooms, too. She was sure he could see it in her eyes—even if she herself wasn’t exactly sure how much she was offering. But it didn’t matter. Jace would never ask her for anything she didn’t want to give.

“I want to.” The heat she saw in his eyes, the ragged edge to his voice, told her he wasn’t lying. “But—we can’t.” He took her wrists firmly, and drew them down, holding their hands between them, making a barrier.

Clary’s eyes widened. “Why not?”

He took a deep breath. “We came here to train, and we should train. If we just spend all the time we’re supposed to be training making out instead, they’ll quit letting me help train you at all.”

“Aren’t they supposed to be hiring someone else to train me full-time anyway?”

“Yes,” he said, getting up and pulling her to her feet along with him, “and I’m worried that if you get into the habit of making out with your instructors, you’ll wind up making out with him, too.”

“Don’t be sexist. They could find me a female instructor.”

“In that case you have my permission to make out with her, as long as I can watch.”

“Nice.” Clary grinned, bending down to fold up the blanket they’d brought to sit on. “You’re just worried they’ll hire a male instructor and he’ll be hotter than you.”

Jace’s eyebrows went up. “Hotter than me?”

“It could happen,” Clary said. “You know, theoretically.”

“Theoretically the planet could suddenly crack in half, leaving me on one side and you on the other side, forever and tragically parted, but I’m not worried about that, either. Some things,” Jace said, with his customary crooked smile, “are just too unlikely to dwell upon.”

He held out his hand; she took it, and together they crossed the meadow, heading for a copse of trees at the edge of the East Meadow that only Shadowhunters seemed to know about. Clary suspected it was glamoured, since she and Jace trained there fairly often and no one had ever interrupted them there except Isabelle or Maryse.

Central Park in autumn was a riot of color. The trees lining the meadow had put on their brightest colors and circled the green in blazing gold, red, copper, and russet orange. It was a beautiful day to take a romantic walk through the park and kiss on one of the stone bridges. But that wasn’t going to happen. Obviously, as far as Jace was concerned, the park was an outside extension of the Institute’s training room, and they were there to run Clary through various exercises involving terrain navigation, escape and evasion techniques, and killing things with her bare hands.