City of Heavenly Fire

She had hesitated when he was a baby. She had held him in her arms and known there was something wrong with him, something irreparably damaged, but hadn’t been able to act on her knowledge. She had believed in some small corner of her heart that he could still be saved.

The door rattled, and she around about, sliding the barrette back into her hair. It was Clary’s barrette, something she had picked off her daughter’s desk when she’d needed to keep her hair out of the paint. She hadn’t returned it because it reminded her of her daughter, but it seemed wrong to even think of Clary here, in front of her other child, though she missed her, missed her so much that it hurt.

The door opened and Sebastian stepped through.

He wore a white knit shirt, and she was reminded again of his father. Valentine had liked to wear white. It had made him appear paler, his hair whiter, just that little bit more inhuman, and it did the same for Sebastian. His eyes looked like black paint dripped onto a white canvas. He smiled at her.

“Mother,” he said.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here, Jonathan?”

He shook his head, still with the same smile on his face, and drew a dagger from his belt. It was narrow, with a thin blade like an awl. “If you call me that again,” he said, “I will put your eyes out with this.”

She swallowed. Oh, my baby. She remembered holding him, cold and still in her arms, not like a normal child at all. He hadn’t cried. Not once. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I came to ask you a question.” He glanced around the room, his expression bored. “And to show you something. Come. Walk with me.”

She joined him as he left the room, with a mixture of reluctance and relief. She hated her cell, and surely it would be better to see more of the place where she was being kept? The size of it, the exits?

The corridor outside the room was stone, big blocks of limestone slotted together with concrete. The floor was smooth, worn down by footsteps. Yet there was a dusty feel to the place, as if no one had been in it for decades, even centuries.

There were doors set into the walls at random intervals. Jocelyn felt her heart begin to pound. Luke could be behind any of those doors. She wanted to dash at them, jerk them open, but the dagger was still in Sebastian’s hand, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he knew that better than she did.

The corridor began to curve around, and Sebastian spoke. “What,” he said, “if I did tell you I loved you?”

Jocelyn clasped her hands loosely in front of her. “I suppose,” she said carefully, “that I would say that you could no more love me than I could love you.”

They had reached a set of double doors. They paused in front of them. “Aren’t you supposed to pretend, at least?”

Jocelyn said, “Could you? Part of you is me, you know. The demon’s blood changed you, but did you really think that everything in you otherwise comes from Valentine?”

Without answering, Sebastian shouldered the doors open and stepped inside. After a moment Jocelyn followed—and stopped in her tracks.

The room was huge and semicircular. A marble floor stretched out to a platform built of stone and wood rising against the western wall. In the center of the platform sat two thrones. There was no other word for them—massive ivory chairs overlaid with gold; each had a rounded back and six steps leading down from it. An enormous window, glass reflecting nothing but blackness, hung behind each throne. Something about the room was oddly familiar, but Jocelyn couldn’t have said exactly what.

Sebastian bounded up onto the platform and beckoned her to follow him. Jocelyn moved slowly up the few steps to join her son, who stood in front of the two thrones with a look of gloating triumph on his face. She had seen the same look on his father’s face, when he’d gazed down at the Mortal Cup. “?‘He will be great,’?” Sebastian intoned, “?‘and he will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Devil will give him the throne of his father. And he will reign over Hell forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’?”

“I don’t understand,” Jocelyn said, and her voice came out bleak and dead even to her own ears. “You want to rule this world? Some dead world of demons and destruction? You want to give orders to corpses?”

Sebastian laughed. He had Valentine’s laugh: harsh and musical. “Oh, no,” he said. “You misunderstand me entirely.” He made a quick gesture with his fingers, something she had seen Valentine do when he had taught himself magic, and suddenly the two great windows behind the thrones were no longer blank.

One showed a blasted landscape: withered trees and scorched earth, vile winged creatures circling in front of a broken moon. A barren plateau of rocks spread out before the windows. It was populated by dark figures, each standing a little distance from the next, and Jocelyn realized that they were the Endarkened, keeping watch.