City of Lost Souls

We’ll tell you. Our plans. In his mind there was a him and Jace; there was no Jace and Clary.

“I don’t like keeping her in the dark,” Jace said.

“We’ll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?”

Jace gave him a look. “Two weeks ago you were dead.”

“Well, I wasn’t suggesting two weeks,” said Sebastian. “That would be insane.”

Jace’s mouth quirked up at the corner. He looked at Clary.

“I’m willing to wait for you to trust me,” she said, knowing it was the right, smart thing to say. Hating to say it. “However long it takes.”

“A week,” Jace said.

“A week,” agreed Sebastian. “And that means she stays here in the apartment. No communication with anyone. No unlocking the door for her, no going in and out.”

Jace leaned back. “What if I’m with her?”

Sebastian gave him a long look from under lowered eyelashes. His look was calculating. He was deciding what he was going to allow Jace to do, Clary realized. He was deciding how much leash to give his “brother.” “Fine,” he said at last, his voice rich with condescension. “If you’re with her.”

Clary looked down at her wineglass. She heard Jace reply in a mumur but couldn’t look at him. The idea of a Jace who was allowed to do things—Jace, who always did whatever he wanted—made her sick to her stomach. She wanted to get up and smash the wine bottle over Sebastian’s head, but she knew it was impossible. Cut one, and the other bleeds.

“How’s the wine?” It was Sebastian’s voice, an undercurrent of amusement plain in his tone.

She drained the glass, choking on the bitter flavor. “Delicious.”

Isabelle emerged in an alien landscape. A deep green plain swept out before her under a lowering gray-black sky. Isabelle pulled up the hood of her gear and peered out, fascinated. She had never seen such a great, overarching expanse of sky, or such a vast plain—it was shimmering, jewel-toned, the shade of moss. As Isabelle took a step forward, she realized it was moss, growing on and around the black rocks scattered across the coal-colored earth.

“It’s a volcanic plain,” Jocelyn said. She was standing beside Isabelle, and the wind was pulling red-gold strands of her hair out of its tightly pinned bun. She looked so much like Clary that it was eerie. “These were lava beds once. The whole area is probably volcanic to some degree. Working with adamas, the Sisters need incredible heat for their forges.”

“You’d think it would be a little warmer, then,” Isabelle muttered.

Jocelyn cast her a dry look, and started walking, in what seemed to Isabelle a randomly chosen direction. She scrambled to follow. “Sometimes you’re so much like your mother you astound me a little, Isabelle.”

“I take that as a compliment.” Isabelle narrowed her eyes. No one insulted her family.

“It wasn’t meant as an insult.”

Isabelle kept her eyes on the horizon, where the dark sky met the jewel-green ground. “How well did you know my parents?”

Jocelyn gave her a quick sideways look. “Well enough, when we were all in Idris together. I hadn’t seen them for years until recently.”

“Did you know them when they got married?”

The path Jocelyn was taking had begun to slant uphill, so her reply was slightly breathless. “Yes.”

“Were they… in love?”

Jocelyn stopped short and turned to look at Isabelle. “Isabelle, what is this about?”

“Love?” Isabelle suggested, after a moment’s pause.

“I don’t know why you’d think I’d be an expert on that.”

“Well, you managed to keep Luke hanging around for his whole life, basically, before you agreed to marry him. That’s impressive. I wish I had that kind of power over a guy.”

“You do,” said Jocelyn. “Have it, I mean. And it isn’t something to wish for.” She pushed her hands up through her hair, and Isabelle felt a little jolt. For all that Jocelyn looked like her daughter, her thin long hands, flexible and delicate, were Sebastian’s. Isabelle remembered slicing one of those hands off, in a valley in Idris, her whip cutting through skin and bone. “Your parents aren’t perfect, Isabelle, because no one’s perfect. They’re complicated people. And they just lost a child. So if this is about your father staying in Idris—”

“My father cheated on my mother,” Isabelle blurted out, and nearly covered her own mouth with her hand. She had kept this secret, kept it for years, and to say it out loud to Jocelyn seemed like a betrayal, despite everything.

Jocelyn’s face changed. It held sympathy now. “I know.”

Isabelle took a sharp breath. “Does everyone know?”

Jocelyn shook her head. “No. A few people. I was… in a privileged position to know. I can’t say more than that.”

“Who was it?” Isabelle demanded. “Who did he cheat on her with?”

“It was no one you know, Isabelle—”