City of Heavenly Fire

And yet he had not done them, not exactly. This person, the boy her mother was holding as if he were her penance, was not Sebastian, who had tormented and murdered and wrought destruction. She remembered what Luke had said to her, what felt like years ago: The Amatis that is serving Sebastian is no more my sister than the Jace who served Sebastian was the boy you loved. No more my sister than Sebastian is the son your mother ought to have had.

“Don’t,” he said, and half-closed his eyes. “I see you trying to puzzle it out, my sister. Whether I ought to be forgiven the way Luke would forgive his sister if the Infernal Cup released her now. But you see, she was his sister once. She was human once. I—” And he coughed, more blood appearing on his lips. “I never existed at all. Heavenly fire burns away that which is evil. Jace survived Glorious because he is good. There was enough of him left to live. But I was born to be all corruption. There is not enough left of me to survive. You see the ghost of someone who could have been, that is all.”

Jocelyn was crying, tears falling silently down her face as she sat very still. Her back was straight.

“I must tell you,” he whispered. “When I die—the Endarkened will rush at you. I won’t be able to hold them back.” His gaze flicked to Clary. “Where’s Jace?”

“I’m here,” Jace said. And he was, already up on the dais, his expression hard and puzzled and sad. Clary met his eyes. She knew how hard it must have been for him to play along with her, to let Sebastian think he had her, to let Clary risk herself at the last. And she knew how this must be for him, Jace who had wanted revenge so badly, to look at Jonathan and realize that the part of Sebastian that could have been—should have been—punished was gone. Here was another person, someone else entirely, someone who had never been given a chance to live, and now never would.

“Take my sword,” said Jonathan, his breath coming in gasps, indicating Phaesphoros, which had fallen some feet away. “Cut—cut it open.”

“Cut what open?” Jocelyn said in puzzlement, but Jace was already moving, bending to seize Phaesphoros, flipping himself down from the dais. He strode across the room, past the huddled Dark Shadowhunters, past the ring of runes, to where the Behemoth demon lay dead in its ichor.

“What is he doing?” Clary asked, though as Jace raised the sword and sliced cleanly down into the demon’s body, it seemed obvious. “How did he know . . .”

“He—knows me,” Jonathan breathed.

A tide of stinking demon guts poured across the floor; Jace’s expression twisted with disgust—and then surprise, and then realization. He bent down and, with his bare hand, picked up something lumpy, glistening with ichor—he held it up, and Clary recognized the Infernal Cup.

She looked over at Jonathan. His eyes were rolling back, shudders racking his body. “T-tell him,” he stuttered. “Tell him to throw it into the ring of runes.”

Clary lifted her head. “Throw it into the circle!” she cried to Jace, and Amatis whipped around.

“No!” she cried. “If the Cup is ruined, so shall we all be!” She spun toward the dais. “Lord Sebastian! Do not let your army be destroyed! We are loyal!”

Jace looked at Luke. Luke was gazing at his sister with an expression of ultimate sadness, a sadness as profound as death. Luke had lost his sister forever, and Clary had only just gotten back her brother, the brother who had been gone from her all her life, and still it was death on both sides.

Jonathan, half-supported against Jocelyn’s shoulder, looked at Amatis; his green eyes were like lights. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have made you.”

And he turned his face away.

Luke nodded, once, at Jace, and Jace flung the Cup as hard as he could into the circle of runes. It struck the ground and shattered into pieces.

Amatis gasped, and put her hand to her chest. For a moment—just a moment—she stared at Luke with a look of recognition in her eyes: a look of recognition, even love.

“Amatis,” he whispered.

Her body slumped to the ground. The other Endarkened followed, one by one, collapsing where they stood, until the room was full of corpses.

Luke turned away, too much pain in his eyes for Clary to be able to bear to look at him. She heard a cry—distant and harsh—and wondered for a moment if it was Luke, or even one of the others, horrified to see so many Nephilim fall, but the cry rose and rose and became a great shrieking howl that rattled the glass and swirled the dust outside the window that looked out on Edom. The sky turned a red the color of blood, and the cry went on, fading now, a gasping exhalation of sorrow as if the universe were weeping.

“Lilith,” Jonathan whispered. “She weeps for her dead children, the children of her blood. She weeps for them and for me.”