“I’m not used to you loving me,” he said.
There was a meekness to his words that she didn’t associate with Luke, and she stared at him for a moment before she said, “Luke. Lie back down, please.”
As a sort of compromise he leaned further back against the pillows. He was breathing hard. Jocelyn darted to the nightstand, poured him a glass of water, and, returning, thrust it into his hand. “Drink it,” she said. “Please.”
Luke took the glass, his blue eyes following her as she sat back down in the chair beside his bed, from which she had barely moved for so many hours that she was surprised she and the chair hadn’t become one. “You know what I was thinking about?” she asked. “Just before you woke up?”
He took a sip of the water. “You looked very far away.”
“I was thinking about the day I married Valentine.”
Luke lowered the glass. “The worst day of my life.”
“Worse than the day you got bitten?” she asked, folding her legs up under her.
“Worse.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know how you felt. I wish I had. I think things would have been different.”
He looked at her incredulously. “How?”
“I wouldn’t have married Valentine,” she said. “Not if I’d known.”
“You would—”
“I wouldn’t,” she said sharply. “I was too stupid to realize how you felt, but I was also too stupid to realize how I felt. I’ve always loved you. Even if I didn’t know it.” She leaned forward and kissed him gently, not wanting to hurt him; then she put her cheek against his. “Promise me you won’t put yourself in danger. Promise.”
She felt his free hand in her hair. “I promise.”
She leaned back, partly satisfied. “I wish I could go back in time. Fix everything. Marry the right guy.”
“But then we wouldn’t have Clary,” he reminded her. She loved the way he said “we,” so casually, as if there were no doubt at all in his mind that Clary was his daughter.
“If you’d been there more while she was growing up…” Jocelyn sighed. “I just feel like I did everything wrong. I was so focused on protecting her that I think I protected her too much. She rushes headlong into danger without thinking. When we were growing up, we saw our friends die in battle. She never has. And I wouldn’t want that for her, but sometimes I worry that she doesn’t believe she can die.”
“Jocelyn.” Luke’s voice was soft. “You raised her to be a good person. Someone with values, who believes in good and evil and strives to be good. Like you always have. You can’t raise a child to believe the opposite of what you do. I don’t think she doesn’t believe she can die. I think, just like you always did, she believes there are things worth dying for.”
Clary crept after Sebastian through a network of narrow streets, keeping to the shadows close beside the buildings. They were no longer in Prague—that much was immediately clear. The roads were dark, the sky above was the hollow blue of very early morning, and the signs hung above the shops and stores she passed were all in French. As were the street signs: RUE DE LA SEINE, RUE JACOB, RUE DE L’ABBAYE.
As they moved through the city, people passed her like ghosts. The occasional car rumbled by, trucks backed up to stores, making early-morning deliveries. The air smelled like river water and trash. She was fairly sure where they were already, but then a turn and an alley took them to a wide avenue, and a signpost loomed up out of the misty darkness. Arrows pointed in different directions, showing the way to the Bastille, to Notre Dame, and to the Latin Quarter.
Paris, Clary thought, slipping behind a parked car as Sebastian crossed the street. We’re in Paris.
It was ironic. She’d always wanted to go to Paris with someone who knew the city. Had always wanted to walk its streets, to see the river, to paint the buildings. She’d never imagined this. Never imagined creeping after Sebastian, across the Boulevard Saint Germain, past a bright yellow bureau de poste, up an avenue where the bars were closed but the gutters were full of beer bottles and cigarette butts, and down a narrow street lined with houses. Sebastian stopped before one, and Clary froze as well, flat against a wall.
She watched as he raised a hand and punched a code into a box set beside the door, her eyes following the movements of his fingers. There was a click; the door opened and he slipped through. The moment it closed, she darted after him, pausing to key in the same code—X235—and waiting to hear the soft sound that meant the door was unlocked. When the sound came, she wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or surprised. It shouldn’t be this easy.
A moment later she stood inside a courtyard. It was square, surrounded on all sides by ordinary-looking buildings. Three staircases were viewable through open doors. Sebastian, however, had disappeared.
City of Lost Souls
Cassandra Clare's books
- City of Ruins
- Invincible (A Centennial City Novel)
- City of Fae
- City of Heavenly Fire
- CITY OF GLASS
- City of Fallen Angels
- CITY OF BONES
- CITY OF ASHES
- City of Lost Souls
- Velocity
- Ascendancy of the Last
- Blood of Aenarion
- Broods Of Fenrir
- Burden of the Soul
- Caradoc of the North Wind
- Cause of Death: Unnatural
- Dark of the Moon
- Demons of Bourbon Street
- Edge of Dawn
- Eye of the Oracle
- Freak of Nature
- Heart of the Demon
- Lady of Devices
- Lance of Earth and Sky
- Last of the Wilds
- Legacy of Blood
- Legend of Witchtrot Road
- Lord of the Wolfyn
- Of Gods and Elves
- Of Wings and Wolves
- Prince of Spies
- Professor Gargoyle
- Promise of Blood
- Secrets of the Fire Sea
- Shadows of the Redwood
- Sin of Fury
- Sins of the Father
- Smugglers of Gor
- Sword of Caledor
- Sword of Darkness
- Talisman of El
- Threads of Desire (Spellcraft)
- Tricks of the Trade
- Visions of Magic
- Visions of Skyfire
- Well of the Damned
- Wings of Tavea
- Wings of the Wicked
- A Bridge of Years
- Chronicles of Raan
- Dawn of Swords(The Breaking World)
- A Draw of Kings
- Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity)
- Lord of the Hunt
- Master of War
- Mistfall(Book One of the Mistfall Series)
- The Gates of Byzantium
- The House of Yeel
- The Oath of the Vayuputras: Shiva Trilogy 3
- The Republic of Thieves #1
- The Republic of Thieves #2
- Edge of Dawn
- A Quest of Heroes
- Mistress of the Empire
- Servant of the Empire
- Gates of Rapture
- Reaper (End of Days)
- This Side of the Grave
- Magician's Gambit (Book Three of The Belgariad)
- Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files
- Murder of Crows
- The Queen of the Tearling
- A Tale of Two Castles
- Mark of the Demon
- Sins of the Demon
- Blood of the Demon
- The Other Side of Midnight
- Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7)
- Cold Burn of Magic
- Of Noble Family
- Wrath of a Mad God ( The Darkwar, Book 3)
- King of Foxes
- Daughter of the Empire
- Mistress of the Empire
- Krondor : Tear of the Gods (Riftwar Legacy Book 3)
- Shards of a Broken Crown (Serpentwar Book 4)
- Rise of a Merchant Prince
- End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3)
- Servant of the Empire
- Talon of the Silver Hawk
- Shadow of a Dark Queen
- The Cost of All Things
- The Wicked (A Novella of the Elder Races)
- Night's Honor (A Novel of the Elder Races Book 7)
- Born of Silence
- Born of Shadows
- Sins of the Night
- Kiss of the Night (Dark Hunter Series – Book 7)
- Born Of The Night (The League Series Book 1)