City of Heavenly Fire

Clary rose slowly to her feet. She looked down. Her mother was kneeling, holding Jonathan’s body sprawled across her lap.

“Mom,” Clary whispered, but Jocelyn didn’t look up. A moment later someone brushed by Clary: It was Luke. He gave her hand a squeeze, and then knelt down by Jocelyn, his hand gentle on her shoulder.

Clary turned away; she couldn’t bear it anymore. The sadness felt like a crushing weight. She heard Jonathan’s voice in her head as she descended the stairs: I’ve never felt so light.

She moved forward through the corpses and ichor on the floor, numb and heavy with the knowledge of her failure. After everything she had done, there was still no way to save them. They were waiting for her: Jace and Simon and Isabelle, and Alec and Magnus. Magnus looked ill and pale and very, very tired.

“Sebastian’s dead,” she said, and they all looked at her, with their tired, dirty faces, as if they were too exhausted and drained to feel anything at the news, even relief. Jace stepped forward and took her hands, lifted them and kissed them quickly; she closed her eyes, feeling as if just a fraction of warmth and light had been returned to her.

“Warrior hands,” he said quietly, and let her go. She stared down at her fingers, trying to see what he saw. Her hands were just her hands, small and callused, stained with dirt and blood.

“Jace was telling us,” said Simon. “What you did, with the Morgenstern sword. That you were faking Sebastian out the whole time.”

“Not there at the end,” she said. “Not when he turned back into Jonathan.”

“I wish you’d told us,” Isabelle said. “About your plan.”

“I’m sorry,” Clary whispered. “I was afraid it wouldn’t work. That you’d just be disappointed. I thought it was better—not to hope too much.”

“Hope is all that keeps us going sometimes, biscuit,” said Magnus, though he didn’t sound resentful.

“I needed him to believe it,” Clary said. “So I needed you to believe it too. He had to see your reactions and think he’d won.”

“Jace knew,” Alec said, looking up at her; he didn’t sound angry either, just dazed.

“And I never looked at her from the time she got up onto the throne to the time she stabbed that bastard in the heart,” Jace said. “I couldn’t. Handing over that bracelet to him, I—” He broke off. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called him a bastard. Sebastian was, but Jonathan isn’t, wasn’t, the same person—and your mother—”

“It is like she lost a child twice,” said Magnus. “I can think of few worse things.”

“How about being trapped in a demon realm with no way to get out?” Isabelle said. “Clary, we need to get back to Idris. I hate to ask, but did Seb—did Jonathan say anything about how to unseal the borders?”

Clary swallowed. “He said it wasn’t possible. That they’re closed forever.”

“So we’re trapped here,” Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked. “Forever? That can’t be. There must be a spell—Magnus—”

“He wasn’t lying,” Magnus said. “There’s no way for us to reopen the paths from here to Idris.”

There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been resting on Magnus, said, “No way for us?”

“That’s what I said,” Magnus replied. “There’s no way to open the borders.”

“No,” said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. “You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might be someone who could.”

Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all. His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and he looked both very young and very, very old. His face was a young man’s face, but his eyes had seen centuries pass, and never had Clary been more aware of it. “There are worse things than death,” Magnus said.

“Maybe you should let us be the judge of that,” said Alec, and Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said, “Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson. It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn.”

“But you’re alive,” said Clary. “You lived through the lesson.”

Magnus smiled an awful smile. “It wouldn’t be much of a lesson if I hadn’t,” he said. “But I was duly warned. Playing dice with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours—”

“We’ll die here anyway,” said Jace. “It’s a rigged game. Let us take our chances.”

“I agree,” Isabelle said, and the others chimed in their agreement as well. Magnus looked toward the dais, where Luke and Jocelyn still knelt, and sighed.