City of Lost Souls

“… gratitude for your loyalty, even over these last difficult years, and grateful for your belief in our father, and now in his sons. And his daughter.”


A murmur ran around the square. Sebastian shoved Clary forward, and they moved through the shadows, and then climbed up onto the stone behind Jace. Jace saw them and inclined his head before turning back to the crowd; he was smiling. “You are the ones who will be saved,” he said. “A thousand years ago the Angel gave us his blood, to make us special, to make us warriors. But it was not enough. A thousand years have passed, and still we hide in the shadows. We protect mundanes we do not love from forces of which they remain ignorant, and an ancient, ossified Law prevents us from revealing ourselves as their saviors. We die in our hundreds, unthanked, unmourned but by our own kind, and without recourse to the Angel who created us.” He moved closer to the edge of the rock platform. The Shadowhunters before it were standing in a half-circle. His hair looked like pale fire. “Yes. I dare to say it. The Angel who created us will not aid us, and we are alone. More alone even than the mundanes, for as one of their great scientists once said, they are like children playing with pebbles on the seashore, while all around them the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered. But we know the truth. We are the saviors of this earth, and we should be ruling it.”

Jace was a good speaker, Clary thought with a sort of pain at her heart, in the same way that Valentine had been. She and Sebastian were behind him now, facing the plain and the crowd on it; she could feel the stares of the gathered Shadowhunters on both of them.

“Yes. Ruling it.” He smiled, a lovely easy smile, full of charm, edged with darkness. “Raziel is cruel and indifferent to our sufferings. It is time to turn from him. Turn to Lilith, Great Mother, who will give us power without punishment, leadership without the Law. Our birthright is power. It is time to claim it.”

He looked sideways with a smile as Sebastian moved forward. “And now I’ll let you hear the rest of it from Jonathan, whose dream this is,” said Jace smoothly, and he retreated, letting Sebastian slide easily into his place. He took another step back, and now he was beside Clary, his hand reaching down to twine with hers.

“Good speech,” she muttered. Sebastian was speaking; she ignored him, focusing on Jace. “Very convincing.”

“You think? I was going to start off ‘Friends, Romans, evildoers…’ but I didn’t think they’d see the humor.”

“You think they’re evildoers?”

He shrugged. “The Clave would.” He looked away from Sebastian, down at her. “You look beautiful,” he said, but his voice was oddly flat. “What happened?”

She was caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

He opened his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a white shirt. It was stained at the side and the sleeve with red. She noticed he was careful to turn away from the crowd as he showed her the blood. “I feel what he feels,” he said. “Or did you forget? I had to iratze myself without anyone noticing. It felt like someone was slicing my skin with a razor blade.”

Clary met his gaze. There was no point lying, was there? There was no going back, literally or figuratively. “Sebastian and I had a fight.”

His eyes searched her face. “Well,” he said, letting his jacket fall closed, “I hope you’ve worked it out, whatever it was.”

“Jace… ,” she began, but he had given his attention to Sebastian now. His profile was cold and clear in the moonlight, like a silhouette cut out of dark paper. In front of them Sebastian, who had set down his crossbow, raised his arms. “Are you with me?” he cried.

A murmur ran around the square, and Clary tensed. One of the group of Nephilim, an older man, threw his hood back and scowled. “Your father made us many promises. None were fulfilled. Why should we trust you?”

“Because I will bring you the fulfillment of my promises now. Tonight,” Sebastian said, and from his tunic he drew the imitation Mortal Cup. It glowed softly white under the moon.

The murmuring was louder now. Under its cover Jace said, “I hope this goes smoothly. I feel like I didn’t sleep last night at all.”

He was facing the crowd and the pentagram, a look of keen interest on his face. His face was delicately angular in the witchlight. She could see the scar on his cheek, the hollows at his temples, the lovely shape of his mouth. I won’t remember this, he had said. When I’m back—like I was, under his control, I won’t remember being myself. And it was true. He had forgotten every detail. Somehow, though she had known it, had seen him forget, the pain of the reality was acute.

Sebastian stepped down off the rock and moved toward the pentagram. At the edge of it he began to chant. “Abyssum invoco. Lilith invoco. Mater mea, invoco.”