Within its imprisoning star the angel sat silent as a marble statue, unmoving, its wings folded. Its eyes expressed nothing beyond a terrible silent sorrow.
Valentine’s mouth twisted. “Very well. Keep your silence. I will have my chance.” Valentine lifted the blade. “I have the Mortal Cup, Ithuriel, and soon I shall have the Sword—but without the Mirror I cannot begin the summoning. The Mirror is all I need. Tell me where it is. Tell me where it is, Ithuriel, and I will let you die.”
The scene broke apart in fragments, and as her vision faded, Clary caught glimpses of images now familiar to her from her own nightmares—angels with wings both white and black; sheets of mirrored water, gold and blood; and Jace, turning away from her, always turning away. Clary reached out for him, and for the first time the angel’s voice spoke in her head in words that she could understand.
These are not the first dreams I have ever showed you.
The image of a rune burst behind her eyes, like fireworks—not a rune she had ever seen before; it was as strong, simple, and straightforward as a tied knot. It was gone in a breath as well, and as it vanished, the angel’s singing ceased. Clary was back in her own body, reeling on her feet in the filthy and reeking room. The angel was silent, frozen, wings folded, a grieving effigy.
Clary let out her breath in a sob. “Ithuriel.” She reached her hands out to the angel, knowing she couldn’t pass the runes, her heart aching. For years the angel had been down here, sitting silent and alone in the blackness, chained and starving but unable to die….
Jace was beside her. She could see from his stricken face that he’d seen everything she had. He looked down at the seraph blade in his hand and then back at the angel. Its blind face was turned toward them in silent supplication.
Jace took a step forward, and then another. His eyes were fixed on the angel, and it was as if, Clary thought, there were some silent communication passing between them, some speech she couldn’t hear. Jace’s eyes were bright as gold disks, full of reflected light.
“Ithuriel,” he whispered.
The blade in his hand blazed up like a torch. Its glow was blinding. The angel raised its face, as if the light were visible to its blind eyes. It reached out its hands, the chains that bound its wrists rattling like harsh music.
Jace turned to her. “Clary,” he said. “The runes.”
The runes. For a moment she stared at him, puzzled, but his eyes urged her onward. She handed Jace the witchlight, took his stele from her pocket, and knelt down by the scrawled runes. They looked as if they’d been gouged into the stone with something sharp.
She glanced up at Jace. His expression startled her, the blaze in his eyes—they were full of faith in her, of confidence in her abilities. With the tip of the stele she traced several lines into the floor, changing the runes of binding to runes of release, imprisonment to openness. They flared up as she traced them, as if she were dragging a match tip across sulphur.
Done, she rose to her feet. The runes shimmered before her. Abruptly Jace moved to stand beside her. The witchlight stone was gone, the only illumination coming from the seraph blade that he’d named for the angel, blazing in his hand. He stretched it out, and this time his hand passed through the barrier of the runes as if there were nothing there.
The angel reached its hands up and took the blade from him. It shut its blind eyes, and Clary thought for a moment that it smiled. It turned the blade in its grasp until the sharp tip rested just below its breastbone. Clary gave a little gasp and moved forward, but Jace grabbed her arm, his grip like iron, and yanked her backward—just as the angel drove the blade home.
The angel’s head fell back, its hands dropping from the hilt, which protruded from just where its heart would be—if angels had hearts; Clary didn’t know. Flames burst from the wound, spreading outward from the blade. The angel’s body shimmered into white flame, the chains on its wrists burning scarlet, like iron left too long in a fire. Clary thought of medieval paintings of saints consumed in the blaze of holy ecstasy—and the angel’s wings flew wide and white before they, too, caught and blazed up, a lattice of shimmering fire.
Clary could no longer watch. She turned and buried her face in Jace’s shoulder. His arm came around her, his grip tight and hard. “It’s all right,” he said into her hair, “it’s all right,” but the air was full of smoke and the ground felt like it was rocking under her feet. It was only when Jace stumbled that she realized it wasn’t shock: The ground was moving. She let go of Jace and staggered; the stones underfoot were grinding together, and a thin rain of dirt was sifting down from the ceiling. The angel was a pillar of smoke; the runes around it glowed painfully bright. Clary stared at them, decoding their meaning, and then looked wildly at Jace. “The manor—it was tied to Ithuriel. If the angel dies, the manor—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. He had already seized her hand and was running for the stairs, pulling her along after him. The stairs themselves were surging and buckling; Clary fell, banging her knee painfully on a step, but Jace’s grip on her arm didn’t loosen. She raced on, ignoring the pain in her leg, her lungs full of choking dust.
They reached the top of the steps and exploded out into the library. Behind them Clary could hear the soft roar as the rest of the stairs collapsed. It wasn’t much better here; the room was shuddering, books tumbling from their shelves. A statue lay where it had tipped over, in a pile of jagged shards. Jace let go of Clary’s hand, seized up a chair, and, before she could ask him what he meant to do, threw it at the stained-glass window.
It sailed through in a waterfall of broken glass. Jace turned and held his hand out to her. Behind him, through the jagged frame that remained, she could see a moonlight-saturated stretch of grass and a line of treetops in the distance. They seemed a long way down. I can’t jump that far, she thought, and was about to shake her head at Jace when she saw his eyes widen, his mouth shaping a warning. One of the heavy marble busts that lined the higher shelves had slid free and was falling toward her; she ducked out of its way, and it hit the floor inches from where she’d been standing, leaving a sizeable dent in the floor.
A second later Jace’s arms were around her and he was lifting her off her feet. She was too surprised to struggle as he carried her over to the broken window and dumped her unceremoniously out of it.
She hit a grassy rise just below the window and tumbled down its steep incline, gaining speed until she fetched up against a hillock with enough force to knock the breath out of her. She sat up, shaking grass out of her hair. A second later Jace came to a stop next to her; unlike her, he rolled immediately into a crouch, staring up the hill at the manor house.
Clary turned to look where he was looking, but he’d already grabbed her, shoving her down into the depression between the two hills. Later she’d find dark bruises on her upper arms where he’d held her; now she just gasped in surprise as he knocked her down and rolled on top of her, shielding her with his body as a huge roar went up. It sounded like the earth shattering apart, like a volcano erupting. A blast of white dust shot into the sky. Clary heard a sharp pattering noise all around her. For a bewildered moment she thought it had started to rain—then she realized it was rubble and dirt and broken glass: the detritus of the shattered manor being flung down around them like deadly hail.
Jace pressed her harder into the ground, his body flat against hers, his heartbeat nearly as loud in her ears as the sound of the manor’s subsiding ruins.
The roar of the collapse faded slowly, like smoke dissipating into the air. It was replaced by the loud chirruping of startled birds; Clary could see them over Jace’s shoulder, circling curiously against the dark sky.
“Jace,” she said softly. “I think I dropped your stele somewhere.”
He drew back slightly, propping himself on his elbows, and looked down at her. Even in the darkness she could see herself reflected in his eyes; his face was streaked with soot and dirt, the collar of his shirt torn. “That’s all right. As long as you’re not hurt.”
“I’m fine.” Without thinking, she reached up, her fingers brushing lightly through his hair. She felt him tense, his eyes darkening.
“There was grass in your hair,” she said. Her mouth was dry; adrenaline sang through her veins. Everything that had just happened—the angel, the shattering manor—seemed less real than what she saw in Jace’s eyes.
“You shouldn’t touch me,” he said.
Her hand froze where it was, her palm against his cheek. “Why not?”
“You know why,” he said, and shifted away from her, rolling onto his back. “You saw what I saw, didn’t you? The past, the angel. Our parents.”
It was the first time, she thought, that he’d called them that. Our parents. She turned onto her side, wanting to reach out to him but not sure if she should. He was staring blindly up at the sky. “I saw.”
“You know what I am.” The words breathed out in an anguished whisper. “I’m part demon, Clary. Part demon. You understood that much, didn’t you?” His eyes bored into her like drills. “You saw what Valentine was trying to do. He used demon blood—used it on me before I was even born. I’m part monster. Part everything I’ve tried so hard to burn out, to destroy.”
Clary pushed away the memory of Valentine’s voice saying, She told me that I had turned her first child into a monster. “But warlocks are part demon. Like Magnus. It doesn’t make them evil—”
“Not part Greater Demon. You heard what the demon woman said.”
It will burn out his humanity, as poison burns the life from the blood. Clary’s voice trembled. “It’s not true. It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense—”
“But it does.” There was a furious desperation in Jace’s expression. She could see the gleam of the silver chain around his bare throat, lit to a white flare by the starlight. “It explains everything.”
“You mean it explains why you’re such an amazing Shadowhunter? Why you’re loyal and fearless and honest and everything demons aren’t?”
“It explains,” he said, evenly, “why I feel the way I do about you.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent for a long moment, staring at her across the tiny space that separated them. She could feel him, even though he wasn’t touching her, as if he still lay with his body against hers. “You’re my sister,” he said finally. “My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you”—he laughed soundlessly and without any humor—“to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”
Clary’s breath caught. “You said you just wanted to be my brother from now on.”
“I lied,” he said. “Demons lie, Clary. You know, there are some kinds of wounds you can get when you’re a Shadowhunter—internal injuries from demon poison. You don’t even know what’s wrong with you, but you’re bleeding to death slowly inside. That’s what it’s like, just being your brother.”
“But Aline—”
“I had to try. And I did.” His voice was lifeless. “But God knows, I don’t want anyone but you. I don’t even want to want anyone but you.” He reached out, trailed his fingers lightly through her hair, fingertips brushing her cheek. “Now at least I know why.”
Clary’s voice had sunk to a whisper. “I don’t want anyone but you, either.”
She was rewarded by the catch in his breathing. Slowly he drew himself up onto his elbows. Now he was looking down at her, and his expression had changed—there was a look on his face she’d never seen before, a sleepy, almost deadly light in his eyes. He let his fingers trail down her cheek to her lips, outlining the shape of her mouth with the tip of a finger. “You should probably,” he said, “tell me not to do this.”
She said nothing. She didn’t want to tell him to stop. She was tired of saying no to Jace—of never letting herself feel what her whole heart wanted her to feel. Whatever the cost.
He bent down, his lips against her cheek, brushing it lightly—and still that light touch sent shivers through her nerves, shivers that made her whole body tremble. “If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he whispered. When she still said nothing, he brushed his mouth against the hollow of her temple. “Or now.” He traced the line of her cheekbone. “Or now.” His lips were against hers. “Or—”
But she had reached up and pulled him down to her, and the rest of his words were lost against her mouth. He kissed her gently, carefully, but it wasn’t gentleness she wanted, not now, not after all this time, and she knotted her fists in his shirt, pulling him harder against her. He groaned softly, low in his throat, and then his arms circled her, gathering her against him, and they rolled over on the grass, tangled together, still kissing. There were rocks digging into Clary’s back, and her shoulder ached where she’d fallen from the window, but she didn’t care. All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered.
Despite her coat, she could feel the heat of him burning through his clothes and hers. She tugged his jacket off, and then somehow his shirt was off too. Her fingers explored his body as his mouth explored hers: soft skin over lean muscle, scars like thin wires. She touched the star-shaped scar on his shoulder—it was smooth and flat, as if it were a part of his skin, not raised like his other scars. She supposed they were imperfections, these marks, but they didn’t feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war.
He fumbled with the buttons of her coat, his hands shaking. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jace’s hands unsteady before. “I’ll do it,” she said, and reached for the last button herself; as she raised herself up, something cold and metallic struck her collarbone, and she gasped in surprise.
“What is it?” Jace froze. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. It was this.” She touched the silver chain around his neck. On its end hung a small silver circle of metal. It had bumped against her when she’d leaned forward. She stared at it now.
That ring—the weather-beaten metal with its pattern of stars—she knew that ring.
The Morgenstern ring. It was the same ring that had gleamed on Valentine’s hand in the dream the angel had showed them. It had been his, and he had given it to Jace, as it had always been passed along, father to son.
“I’m sorry,” Jace said. He traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip, a dreamlike intensity in his gaze. “I forgot I was wearing the damn thing.”
Sudden cold flooded Clary’s veins. “Jace,” she said, in a low voice. “Jace, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t wear the ring?”
“No, don’t—don’t touch me. Stop for a second.”
His face went still. Questions had chased away the dreamlike confusion in his eyes, but he said nothing, just withdrew his hand.
“Jace,” she said again. “Why? Why now?”
His lips parted in surprise. She could see a dark line where he had bitten his bottom lip, or maybe she had bitten it. “Why what now?”