City of Heavenly Fire

“Sometimes,” Robert said, “you choose whom you want to be with when you’re too young, and you change, and they don’t change with you.”


Alec took in a slow breath; his veins were suddenly sizzling with anger. “If that’s meant to be a dig at me and Magnus, you can shove it,” he said. “You gave up your right to have any jurisdiction over me and my relationships when you made it clear that as far as you were concerned, a gay Shadowhunter wasn’t really a Shadowhunter.” He set his glass down on a nearby speaker. “I’m not interested—”

“Alec.” Something about Robert’s voice made Alec turn; he didn’t sound angry, just . . . broken. “I did, I said—unforgivable things. I know that,” he said. “But I have always been proud of you, and I am no less proud now.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“When I was your age, younger, I had a parabatai,” said Robert.

“Yes, Michael Wayland,” said Alec, not caring that he sounded bitter, not caring about the look on his father’s face. “I know. It’s why you took Jace in. I always thought you two must not have been particularly close. You didn’t seem to miss him much, or mind that he was dead.”

“I didn’t believe he was dead,” said Robert. “I know that must seem hard to imagine; our bond had been severed by the sentence of exile passed down by the Clave, but even before that, we had grown apart. There was a time, though, when we were close, the best of friends; there was a time when he told me that he loved me.”

Something about the weight his father put on the words brought Alec up short. “Michael Wayland was in love with you?”

“I was—not kind to him about it,” said Robert. “I told him never to say those words to me again. I was afraid, and I left him alone with his thoughts and feelings and fears, and we were never close again as we had been. I took Jace in to make up, in some small measure, for what I had done, but I know there is no making up for it.” He looked at Alec, and his dark blue eyes were steady. “You think that I am ashamed of you, but I am ashamed of myself. I look at you, and I see the mirror of my own unkindness to someone who never deserved it. We find in our children our own selves again, who might be made better than we are. Alec, you are so much a better man than I ever was, or will be.”

Alec stood frozen. He remembered his dream in the demon lands, his father telling everyone how brave he was, what a good Shadowhunter and warrior, but he had never imagined his father telling him that he was a good man.

It was a much better thing, somehow.

Robert was looking at him with the lines of strain plain around his eyes and mouth. Alec couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever told anyone else about Michael, and what it had cost him to say it just now.

He touched his father’s arm lightly, the first time he had willingly touched him in months, and then dropped his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me the truth.”

It wasn’t forgiveness, not exactly, but it was a start.



The grass was damp from the chill of the oncoming night; Clary could feel the cold soaking through her sandals as she made her way back toward the tent with Jace and Magnus. Clary could see the rows of tables being set up, china and silverware flashing. Everyone had pitched in to help out, even the people she usually thought of as almost unassailable in their reserve: Kadir, Jia, Maryse.

Music was coming from the tent. Bat was lounging up at the DJ station, but someone was playing jazz piano. She could see Alec standing with his father, talking intently, and then the crowd parted and she saw a blur of other familiar faces: Maia and Aline chatting, and Isabelle standing near Simon, looking awkward—

Simon.

Clary came up short. Her heart skipped a beat, and then another; she felt hot and cold all over, as if she were about to faint. It couldn’t be Simon; it had to be someone else. Some other skinny boy with messy brown hair and glasses, but he was wearing the same faded shirt she’d seen him in that morning, and his hair was still too long and in his face, and he was smiling at her a little uncertainly across the crowd and it was Simon and it was Simon and it was Simon.

She didn’t even remember starting to run, but suddenly Magnus’s hand was on her shoulder, a grip like iron holding her back. “Be careful,” he said. “He doesn’t remember everything. I could give him a few memories, not much. The rest will have to wait, but, Clary—remember that he doesn’t remember. Don’t expect everything.”