City of Lost Souls

“So you remember.” She almost whispered it.

His fingertips touched hers, and she almost jumped. Both of them held their breath while he touched her; she didn’t move, watching as his shoulders slowly relaxed and the anxious look left his face. “I remember everything,” he said. “I remember the boat in Venice. The club in Prague. That night in Paris, when I was myself.”

She felt the blood rush up under her skin, making her face burn.

“In some ways, we’ve been through something no one else can ever understand but the two of us,” he said. “And it made me realize. We are always and absolutely better together.” He raised his face to hers. He was pale, and fire flickered in his eyes. “I am going to kill Sebastian,” he said. “I am going to kill him for what he did to me, and what he did to you, and what he did to Max. I am going to kill him because of what he has done, and what he will do. The Clave wants him dead, and they will hunt him. But I want my hand to be the one that cuts him down.”

She reached out then, and put her hand on his cheek. He shuddered, and half-closed his eyes. She had expected his skin to be warm, but it was cool to the touch. “And what if I’m the one who kills him?”

“My heart is your heart,” he said. “My hands are your hands.”

His eyes were the color of honey and slid as slowly as honey over her body as he looked her up and down as if for the first time since she’d come into the room, from her windblown hair to her booted feet, and back again. When their gaze met again, Clary’s mouth was dry.

“Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?”

Clary nodded.

“I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realized then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.”

Clary licked her dry lips. “Well, you did,” she said. “Kiss me, I mean.”

He reached up and took a curl of her hair between his fingers. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his soap and skin and hair. “Not enough,” he said, letting her hair slip through his fingers. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough.”

He bent his head. She couldn’t help tilting her own face up. Her mind was full of the memory of Paris, holding on to him as if it would be the last time she ever held him, and it almost had been. The way he had tasted, felt, breathed. She could hear him breathing now. His eyelashes tickled her cheek. Their lips were millimeters apart and then not apart at all, they brushed lightly and then with firmer pressure; they leaned in to each other—

And Clary felt a spark—not painful, more like a fillip of mild static electricity—pass between them. Jace drew quickly away. He was flushed. “We may need to work on that.”

Clary’s mind was still whirling. “Okay.”

He was staring straight ahead, still breathing hard. “I have something I want to give you.”

“I gathered that.”

At that he jerked his gaze back to hers and—almost reluctantly—grinned. “Not that.” He reached down into the collar of his shirt and drew out the Morgenstern ring on its chain. He pulled it over his head and, leaning forward, dropped it lightly into her hand. It was warm from his skin. “Alec got it back from Magnus for me. Will you wear it again?”

Her hand closed around it. “Always.”

His grin softened to a smile, and, daring, she put her head on his shoulder. She felt his breath catch, but he didn’t move. At first he sat still, but slowly the tension drained from his body and they leaned together. It wasn’t hot and heavy, but it was companionable and sweet.

He cleared his throat. “You know this means that what we did—what we almost did in Paris—”

“Going to the Eiffel Tower?”

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You never let me off the hook for a single minute, do you? Never mind. It’s one of the things I love about you. Anyway, that other thing we almost did in Paris—that’s probably off the table for a while. Unless you want that whole baby-I’m-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal.”

“No kissing?”

“Well, kissing, probably. But as for the rest of it…”

She brushed her cheek lightly against his. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”