The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (266 page)

She halted again, and this time the silence stretched out between them, longer and longer, a thread pulled impossibly tight.

“You can talk now,” she blurted finally. “In fact, it would be really great if you did.”

Jace was looking at her incredulously. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You came here to apologize to
me
?”

She was taken aback. “Of course I did.”

“Clary,” he said. “You saved my life.”

“I stabbed you. With a
massive
sword. You caught on
fire
.”

His lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. “Okay,” he said. “So maybe our problems aren’t like other couples’.” He lifted a hand as if he meant to touch her face, then put it down hastily. “I heard you, you know,” he said more softly. “Telling me I wasn’t dead. Asking me to open my eyes.”

They looked at each other in silence for what was probably moments but felt like hours to Clary. It was so good to see him like this, completely himself, that it almost erased the fear that this was all going to go horribly wrong in the next few minutes. Finally Jace spoke.

“Why do you think I fell in love with you?”

It was the last thing she would have expected him to say. “I don’t—That’s not a fair thing to ask.”

“Seems fair to me,” he said. “Do you think I don’t know you, Clary? The girl who walked into a hotel full of vampires because her best friend was there and needed saving? Who made a Portal and transported herself to Idris because she hated the idea of being left out of the action?”

“You yelled at me for that—”

“I was yelling at myself,” he said. “There are ways in which we’re so alike. We’re reckless. We don’t think before we act. We’ll do anything for the people we love. And I never thought how scary that was for the people who loved
me
until I saw it in
you and it terrified me. How could I protect you if you wouldn’t let me?” He leaned forward. “That, by the way, is a rhetorical question.”

“Good. Because I don’t need protecting.”

“I knew you’d say that. But the thing is, sometimes you do. And sometimes I do. We’re meant to protect each other, but not from
everything
. Not from the truth. That’s what it means to love someone but let them be themselves.”

Clary looked down at her hands. She wanted to reach out and touch him so badly. It was like visiting someone in jail, where you could see them so clearly and so close, but there was unbreakable glass separating you.

“I fell in love with you,” he said, “because you were one of the bravest people I’d ever known. So how could I ask you to stop being brave just because I loved you?” He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up in loops and curls that Clary ached to smooth down. “You came for me,” he said. “You saved me when almost everyone else had given up, and even the people who hadn’t given up didn’t know what to do. You think I don’t know what you went through?” His eyes darkened. “How do you imagine I could possibly be angry with you?”

“Then, why haven’t you wanted to see me?”

“Because…” Jace exhaled. “Okay, fair point, but there’s something you don’t know. The sword you used, the one Raziel gave to Simon…”

“Glorious,” said Clary. “The Archangel Michael’s sword. It was destroyed.”

“Not destroyed. It went back where it came from once the heavenly fire consumed it.” Jace smiled faintly. “Otherwise our Angel would have had some serious explaining to do once
Michael found out his buddy Raziel had lent out his favorite sword to a bunch of careless humans. But I digress. The sword… the way it burned… that was no ordinary fire.”

“I guessed that.” Clary wished Jace would hold out his arm and draw her against him. But he seemed to want to keep space between them, so she stayed where she was. It felt like an ache in her body, to be this close to him and not be able to touch him.

“I wish you hadn’t worn that sweater,” Jace muttered.

“What?” She glanced down. “I thought you liked this sweater.”

“I do,” he said, and shook his head. “Never mind. That fire—it was Heaven’s fire. The burning bush, the fire and brimstone, the pillar of fire that went before the children of Israel—that’s the fire we’re talking about. ‘For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.’ That’s the fire that burned away what Lilith had done to me.” He reached for the hem of his shirt and drew it up. Clary sucked in her breath, for above his heart, on the smooth skin of his chest, there was no more Mark—and only a healed white scar where the sword had gone in.

She reached her hand out, wanting to touch him, but he drew back, shaking his head. She felt the hurt expression flash across her face before she could hide it as he rolled his shirt back down. “Clary,” he said. “That fire—it’s still inside me.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath and held his hands out, palms down. She looked at them, slim and familiar, the Voyance rune on his right hand faded with white scars layered over it. As they both watched, his hands began to shake slightly—and then, under
Clary’s incredulous eyes, to turn transparent. Like the blade of Glorious when it had begun to burn, his skin seemed to turn to glass, glass that trapped within it a gold that moved and darkened and
burned
. She could see the outline of his skeleton through the transparency of his skin, golden bones connected by tendons of fire.

She heard him inhale sharply. He looked up then, and met her eyes with his. His eyes were gold. They had always been gold, but she could swear that now that gold lived and burned as well. He was breathing hard, and there was sweat shining on his cheeks and collarbones.

“You’re right,” Clary said. “Our problems really aren’t like other people’s problems.”

Jace stared at her incredulously. Slowly he closed his hands into fists, and the fire vanished, leaving only his ordinary, familiar, unharmed hands behind. Half-choking on a laugh, he said, “
That’s
what you have to say?”

“No. I have a lot more to say.
What’s
going on? Are your hands weapons now? Are you the Human Torch? What on earth—”

“I don’t know what the human torch is, but—All right, look, the Silent Brothers have told me that I carry the heavenly fire inside me now. Inside my veins. In my soul. When I first woke up, I felt like I was breathing in fire. Alec and Isabelle thought it was just a temporary effect of the sword, but when it didn’t go away and the Silent Brothers were called in, Brother Zachariah said he didn’t know how temporary it would be. And I burned him—he was touching my hand when he said it, and I felt a jolt of energy go through me.”

“A bad burn?”

“No. Minor. But still—”

“That’s why you won’t touch me,” Clary realized aloud. “You’re afraid you’ll burn me.”

He nodded. “No one’s ever seen anything like this, Clary. Not before. Not ever. The sword didn’t kill me. But it left this—this piece of something deadly inside me. Something so powerful it would probably kill an ordinary human, maybe even an ordinary Shadowhunter.” He took a deep breath. “The Silent Brothers are working on how I might control it, or get rid of it. But as you might imagine, I’m not their first priority.”

“Because Sebastian is. You heard I destroyed that apartment. I know he has other ways of getting around, but…”

“That’s my girl. But he has backups. Other hiding places. I don’t know what they are. He never told me.” He leaned forward, close enough that she could see the changing colors in his eyes. “Since I woke up, the Silent Brothers have been with me practically every minute. They had to perform the ceremony on me again, the one that gets performed on Shadowhunters when they’re born to keep them safe. And then they went into my mind. Searching, trying to pull out any snippet of information about Sebastian, anything I might know and not remember I knew. But—” Jace shook his head in frustration. “There just isn’t anything. I knew his plans through the ceremony at the Burren. Beyond that, I have no idea what he’s going to do next. Where he might strike. They do know he’s been working with demons, so they’re shoring up the wards, especially around Idris. But I feel like there’s one useful thing we might have gotten out of all this—some secret knowledge on my part—and we don’t even have that.”

“But if you did know anything, Jace, he would just change his plans,” Clary objected. “He knows he lost you. You two were
tied together. I heard him scream when I stabbed you.” She shivered. “It was this horrible lost sound. He really did care about you in some strange way, I think. And even though the whole thing was awful, both of us got something out of it that might turn out to be useful.”

“Which is… ?”

“We understand him. I mean, as much as anyone can ever understand him. And that’s not something he can erase with a change of plans.”

Jace nodded slowly. “You know who else I feel like I understand now? My father.”

“Valen—no,” Clary said, watching his expression. “You mean Stephen.”

“I’ve been looking at his letters. The things in the box Amatis gave me. He wrote a letter to me, you know, that he meant me to read after he died. He told me to be a better man than he was.”

“You are,” Clary said. “In those moments in the apartment when you were
you
, you cared about doing the right thing more than you cared about your own life.”

“I know,” Jace said, glancing down at his scarred knuckles. “That’s the strange thing. I
know
. I had so much doubt about myself, always, but now I know the difference. Between myself and Sebastian. Between myself and Valentine. Even the difference between the two of them. Valentine honestly believed he was doing the right thing. He hated demons. But to Sebastian, the creature he thinks of as his mother is one. He would happily rule a race of dark Shadowhunters who did the bidding of demons, while the ordinary humans of this world were slaughtered for the demons’ pleasure. Valentine still believed it
was the mandate of Shadowhunters to protect human beings; Sebastian thinks they’re cockroaches. And he doesn’t want to protect anyone. He only wants what he wants at the moment he wants it. And the only real thing he ever feels is annoyance when he’s thwarted.”

Clary wondered. She had seen Sebastian looking at Jace, even at herself, and knew there was some part of him as echoingly lonely as the blackest void of space. Loneliness drove him as much as a desire for power—loneliness and a need to be loved without any corresponding understanding that love was something you earned. But all she said was, “Well, let’s get with the thwarting, then.”

A smile ghosted across his face. “You know I want to beg you to stay out of this, right? It’s going to be a vicious battle. More vicious than I think the Clave even begins to understand.”

“But you’re not going to do that,” Clary said. “Because that would make you an idiot.”

“You mean because we need your rune powers?”

“Well, that, and—Did you not listen to anything you just said? That whole business about protecting each other?”

“I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here.”

“So what do
you
think it meant?”

“I’m not sure,” Jace admitted, “but I know I look damn good delivering it.”

“God, I forgot how annoying the un-possessed you is,” Clary muttered. “Need I remind you that you said that you have to accept you can’t protect me from everything? The only way that we can protect each other is if we
are together
. If we face things together. If we trust each other.” She looked him
directly in the eye. “I shouldn’t have stopped you from going to the Clave by calling for Sebastian. I should respect the decisions you make. And you should respect mine. Because we’re going to be together a long time, and that’s the only way it’s going to work.”

His hand inched toward her on the blanket. “Being under Sebastian’s influence,” he said, hoarsely. “It seems like a bad dream to me, now. That insane place—those closets of clothes for your mother—”

“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.”