City of Heavenly Fire

The other wolves were still pounding the earth with their feet. Some of them were openly weeping, but none moved forward as Rufus sat up on Bat, one hand pressing him flat to the grass, the other raised, the razors of his fingers gleaming. He moved in for the killing blow—


“Stop.” Maia’s voice rang out through the park. The other wolves looked up in shock. Rufus grinned.

“Hey, little girl,” he said.

Maia didn’t move. She was in the middle of the circle. Somehow she had pushed past the line of wolves without them noticing. She wore cords and a denim jacket, her hair pulled tightly back. Her expression was severe, almost blank.

“I want to issue a challenge,” she said.

“Maia,” Leila said. “You know the law! ‘When ye fight with a wolf of the pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the pack be diminished by war.’ You cannot interrupt the battle.”

“Rufus is about to deliver the death blow,” Maia said unemotionally. “Do you really feel like I need to wait that five minutes before I issue my challenge? I will, if Rufus is too scared to fight me with Bat still breathing—”

Rufus leaped off Bat’s limp body with a roar, and advanced on Maia. Leila’s voice rose in panic:

“Maia, get out of there! Once there’s first blood, we can’t stop the fight—”

Rufus lunged at Maia. His claws tore the edge of her jacket; Maia dropped to her knees and rolled, then came up onto her knees, her claws extended. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage, sending wave after wave of icy-hot blood through her veins. She could feel the sting of the cut on her shoulder. First blood.

The werewolves began to stamp the earth again, though this time they weren’t silent. There was muttering and gasping in the ranks. Maia did her best to block it out, ignore it. She saw Rufus step toward her. He was a shadow, outlined by moonlight, and in that moment she saw not just him but also Sebastian, looming over her on the beach, a cold prince carved out of ice and blood.

Your boyfriend’s dead.

Her fist clenched against the ground. As Rufus threw himself at her, razor claws extended, she rose and flung her handful of dirt and grass into his face.

He staggered back, choking and blinded. Maia stepped forward and slammed her boot down on his foot; she felt the small bones shatter, heard him scream; in that moment, when he was distracted, she jammed her claws into his eyes.

A scream ripped from his throat, quickly cut off. He slumped backward, collapsing onto the grass with a loud crash that made her think of a tree falling. She looked down at her hand. It was covered in blood and smears of liquid: brain matter and vitreous humor.

She dropped to her knees and threw up in the grass. Her claws slid back in, and she wiped her hands on the ground, over and over, as her stomach spasmed. She felt a hand on her back and looked up to see Leila leaning over her. “Maia,” she said softly, but her voice was drowned out by the pack chanting the name of their new leader: “Maia, Maia, Maia.”

Leila’s eyes were dark and concerned. Maia rose to her feet, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket, and hurried across the grass to Bat. She bent down beside him and touched her hand to his cheek. “Bat?” she said.

With an effort he opened his eyes. There was blood on his mouth, but he was breathing steadily. Maia guessed he was already healing from Rufus’s blows. “I didn’t know you fought dirty,” he said with a half smile.

Maia thought of Sebastian and his glittering grin and the bodies on the beach. She thought of what Lily had told her. She thought of the Shadowhunters behind their wards, and of the fragility of the Accords and Council. It’s going to be a dirty war, she thought, but that wasn’t what she said out loud.

“I didn’t know your name was Bartholomew.” She picked up his hand, held it in her own bloody one. All around them the pack was still chanting. “Maia, Maia, Maia.”

He closed his eyes. “Everyone’s got their secrets.”



“It almost doesn’t seem to make a difference,” said Jace, curled into the window seat in his and Alec’s attic room. “It all feels like prison.”

“Do you think that’s a side effect of the fact that armed guards are standing all around the house?” Simon suggested. “I mean, just a thought.”

Jace shot him an irritable look. “What is it about mundanes and their overwhelming compulsion to state the obvious?” he asked. He leaned forward, staring through the panes of the window. Simon might have been exaggerating slightly, but only slightly. The dark figures standing at cardinal points surrounding the Inquisitor’s house might have been invisible to the untrained eye, but not to Jace’s.

“I’m not a mundane,” Simon said, an edge to his voice. “And what is it about Shadowhunters and their overwhelming compulsion to get themselves and everyone they care about killed?”

“Stop arguing.” Alec had been leaning against the wall, in classical thinking pose, with his chin propped on his hand. “The guards are there to protect us, not keep us in. Have some perspective.”

“Alec, you’ve known me for seven years,” said Jace. “When have I ever had perspective?”