The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (252 page)

The door shut. The room was in darkness again. She could see Jace only as a shape that moved slowly toward her bed, until he was standing over her, and she couldn’t help remembering another night when he had come to her room while she slept.
Jace standing by the head of her bed, still wearing his white mourning clothes, and there was nothing light or sarcastic or distant in the way he was looking down at her. “I’ve been wandering around all night—I couldn’t sleep—and I kept finding myself walking here. To you.”

He was only an outline now, an outline with bright hair that shone in the faint light that filtered from beneath the door. “Clary,” he whispered. There was a thump, and she realized he had fallen to his knees by the side of her bed. She didn’t move, but her body tightened. His voice was a whisper. “Clary, it’s me. It’s
me
.”

Her eyelids fluttered open, wide, and their gazes met. She was staring at Jace. Kneeling beside her bed, his eyes were level with hers. He wore a long dark woolen coat, buttoned all the way to the throat, where she could see black Marks—Soundless, Agility, Accuracy—like a sort of necklace against his skin. His eyes were very gold and very wide, and as if she could see through them, she saw
Jace
—her Jace. The Jace who had lifted her in his arms when she was dying of Ravener poison; the Jace who had watched her hold Simon against the rising daylight over the East River; the Jace who had told her about a little boy and the falcon his father had killed. The Jace she loved.

Her heart seemed to stop altogether. She couldn’t even gasp.

His eyes were full of urgency and pain. “Please,” he murmured. “Please believe me.”

She believed him. They carried the same blood, loved the same way; this was
her
Jace, as much as her hands were her own hands, her heart her own heart. But—
“How?”

“Clary, shh—”

She began to struggle into a sitting position, but he reached out and pushed her back against the bed by her shoulders. “We can’t talk now. I have to go.”

She grabbed for his sleeve, felt him wince.
“Don’t leave me.”

He dropped his head for just a moment; when he looked up again, his eyes were dry but the expression in them silenced her. “Wait a few moments after I go,” he whispered. “Then slip out and up to my room. Sebastian can’t know we’re together. Not tonight.” He dragged himself to his feet, his eyes pleading. “Don’t let him hear you.”

She sat up. “Your stele. Leave me your stele.”

Doubt flickered in his eyes; she held his gaze steadily, then put her hand out. After a moment he reached into his pocket and took out the dully glowing implement; he laid it in her palm. For a moment their skin touched, and she shuddered—just a brush of the hand from this Jace was almost as powerful as all the kissing and tearing at each other they had done in the club the other night. She knew he felt it too, for he jerked his hand away and began to back toward the door. She could hear his breath, ragged and swift. He fumbled behind himself for the knob and let himself out, his eyes on her face until the very last moment, when the door closed between them with a decided
click
.

Clary sat in the darkness, stunned. Her blood felt as if it had
thickened in her veins and her heart was having to work double time to keep beating.
Jace. My Jace.

Her hand tightened on the stele. Something about it, its cold hardness, seemed to focus and sharpen her thoughts. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a tank top and pajama shorts; there were goose bumps on her arms, but not because it was cold. She set the tip of the stele to her inner arm and drew it slowly down the skin, watching as a Soundless rune spiraled across her pale, blue-veined skin.

She opened the door just a crack. Sebastian was gone, off to sleep most likely. There was music playing faintly from the television set—something classical, the sort of piano music Jace liked. She wondered if Sebastian appreciated music, or any sort of art. It seemed such a
human
capacity.

Despite her concern about where he’d gone, her feet were carrying her toward the passage that led to the kitchen—and then she was through the living room and dashing up the glass steps, her feet making no noise as she reached the top and sprinted down the hall to Jace’s room. Then she was jerking open the door and sliding inside, the door clicking shut behind her.

The windows were open, and through them she could see rooftops and a curving slice of moon, a perfect Paris night. Jace’s witchlight rune-stone sat on the nightstand beside his bed. It glowed with a dull energy that cast further illumination through the room. It was enough light for Clary to see Jace, standing between the two long windows. He had shrugged off the long black coat, which lay in a crumpled heap at his feet. She realized immediately why he had not taken it off when he’d come into the house, why he had kept it buttoned all the way to his throat. Because beneath it he wore only a gray button-down
shirt, and jeans—and they were sticky and soaked with blood. Parts of the shirt were in ribbons, as if they had been slashed with a very sharp blade. His left sleeve was rolled up, and there was a white bandage wrapped around his forearm—he must have just done it—already darkening at the edges with blood. His feet were bare, his shoes kicked off, and the floor where he stood was splattered with blood, like scarlet tears. She set the stele down on his bedside table with a click.

“Jace,” she said softly.

It suddenly seemed insane that there was this much space between them, that she was standing across the room from Jace, and that they weren’t touching. She started toward him, but he held up a hand to ward her off.

“Don’t.” His voice cracked. Then his fingers went to the buttons on his shirt, undoing them, one by one. He shrugged the bloodstained garment off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground.

Clary stared. Lilith’s rune was still in place, over his heart, but instead of shimmering red-silver it looked as if the hot tip of a poker had been dragged across the skin, charring it. She put her hand up to her own chest involuntarily, her fingers splaying over her heart. She could feel its beating, hard and fast. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh,” Jace said flatly. “This won’t last, Clary. Me being myself again, I mean. Only as long as this hasn’t healed.”

“I—I wondered,” Clary stammered. “Before—while you were sleeping—I thought about cutting the rune like I did when we fought Lilith. But I was afraid Sebastian would feel it.”

“He would have.” Jace’s golden eyes were as flat as his voice. “He didn’t feel this because it was made with a
pugio
—a dagger
seethed in angel blood. They’re incredibly rare; I’ve never even seen one in real life before.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The blade turned to hot ash after it touched me, but it did the damage it needed to do.”

“You were in a fight. Was it a demon? Why didn’t Sebastian go with—”

“Clary.” Jace’s voice was barely a whisper. “This—it’ll take longer than an ordinary cut to heal… but not forever. And then I’ll be
him
again.”

“How much time? Before you go back to the way you were?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I wanted—I
needed
to be with you, like this, like myself, for as long as I could.” He held out a hand to her stiffly, as if unsure of its reception. “Do you think you could—”

She was already running across the room to him. She threw her arms around his neck. He caught her and swung her up, burying his face in the crook of her neck. She breathed him in like air. He smelled of blood and sweat and ashes and Marks.

“It’s you,” she whispered. “It’s really you.”

He drew back to look at her. With his free hand he traced her cheekbone gently. She had missed that, his gentleness. It was one of the things that had made her fall in love with him in the first place—realizing that this scarred, sarcastic boy was gentle with the things he loved.

“I missed you,” she said. “I missed you so much.”

He closed his eyes as if the words hurt. She put her hand to his cheek. He leaned his head into her palm, his hair tickling her knuckles, and she realized his face was wet too.

The boy never cried again.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. She kissed his cheek with the
same tenderness he had showed her. She tasted salt—blood and tears. He still hadn’t spoken, but she could feel the wild beat of his heart against her chest. His arms were tight around her, as if he never meant to let go. She kissed his cheekbone, his jaw, and finally his mouth, a light press of lips on lips.

There was none of the frenzy there had been in the nightclub. It was a kiss meant to give solace, to say everything there was no time to say. He kissed her back, hesitant at first, then with greater urgency, his hand stealing up into her hair, winding the tresses between his fingers. Their kisses deepened slowly, softly, the intensity growing between them as it always did, like a blaze that started with a single match and flared into wildfire.

She knew how strong he was, but she still felt a shock as he carried her to the bed and laid her down gently among the scattered pillows, sliding his body over hers, one smooth gesture that reminded her what all those Marks on his body were
for
. Strength. Grace. Lightness of touch. She breathed his breath as they kissed, each kiss drawn out now, lingering, exploratory. Her hands drifted over him, his shoulders, the muscles of his arms, his back. His bare skin felt like hot silk under her palms.

When his hands found the hem of her tank top, she stretched her arms out, arching her back, wanting every barrier between them gone. The moment it was off, she pulled him back against her, their kisses fiercer now, as if they were struggling to reach some hidden place inside each other. She wouldn’t have thought they could get any closer, but somehow as they kissed, they wound themselves into each other like intricate thread, each kiss hungrier, deeper than the last.

Their hands moved quickly over each other, and then more slowly, uncovering and unhurried. She dug her fingers into his
shoulders when he kissed her throat, her collarbones, the star-shaped mark on her shoulder. She grazed his scar too, with the backs of her knuckles, and kissed the wounded Mark Lilith had made on his chest. She felt him shudder, wanting her, and she knew she was on the very brink of where there was no going back, and she didn’t care. She knew what it was like to lose him now. She knew the black empty days that came after. And she knew that if she lost him again, she wanted this to remember. To hold on to. That she had been as close to him once as you could be to another person. She locked her ankles around the small of his back, and he groaned against her mouth, a soft, low, helpless sound. His fingers dug into her hips.

“Clary.” He pulled away. He was shaking. “I can’t… If we don’t stop now, we won’t be able to.”

“Don’t you want to?” She looked up at him in surprise. He was flushed, tousled, his fair hair a darker gold where sweat had pasted it to his forehead and temples. She could feel his heart stuttering inside his chest.

“Yes, it’s just I’ve never—”

“You haven’t?” She was surprised. “Done this before?”

He took a deep breath. “I have.” His eyes searched her face, as if he were looking for judgment, disapprobation, even disgust. Clary looked back at him evenly. It was what she had assumed, anyway. “But not when it mattered.” He touched her cheek with his fingers, feather-light. “I don’t even know how…”

Clary laughed softly. “I think it’s just been established that you do.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He caught her hand and brought it to his face. “I want you,” he said, “more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. But I…” He swallowed. “Name of
the Angel. I’m going to kick myself for this later.”

“Don’t say you’re trying to protect me,” she said fiercely. “Because I—”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m not being self-sacrificing. I’m… jealous.”

“You’re—jealous? Of who?”

“Myself.” His face twisted. “I hate the thought of him being with you.
Him.
That other me. The one Sebastian controls.”

She felt her face start to burn. “At the club… last night…”

He dropped his head to her shoulder. A little bewildered, she stroked his back, feeling the scratches where her fingernails had torn his skin at the nightclub. The specific memory made her blush even harder. So did the knowledge that he could have gotten rid of the scratches with an
iratze
if he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t. “I remember
everything
about last night,” he said. “And it makes me crazy, because it was me but it wasn’t. When we’re together, I want it to be the real you. The real me.”

“Isn’t that what we are now?”

“Yes.” He raised his head, kissed her mouth. “But for how long? I could turn back into
him
any minute. I couldn’t do that to you. To us.” His voice was bitter. “I don’t even know how you can stand it, being around this
thing
that isn’t me—”

“Even if you go back to being that in five minutes,” she said, “it would have been worth it, just to be with you like this again. Not to have it end on that rooftop. Because this is you, and even that other you—there’s pieces of the real you in there. It’s like I’m looking through a blurred window at you, but it’s
not
the real you. And at least I know now.”

“What do you mean?” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “What do you mean at least you know?”

She took a deep breath. “Jace, when we were first together, like really
together
, you were so happy for that first month. And everything we did together was funny and fun and amazing. And then it was like it just started draining out of you, all that happiness. You didn’t want to be with me or look at me—”

“I was afraid I was going to
hurt
you. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“You didn’t smile or laugh or joke. And I’m not blaming you. Lilith was creeping into your mind, controlling you. Changing you. But you have to remember—I know how stupid this sounds—I never had a boyfriend before. I thought maybe it was normal. That maybe you were just getting tired of me.”