The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (345 page)

“It meant saving Idris,” said Jia. “I am sorry. We needed the two of you, and I . . .” She sounded as if she were choking out
the words. “I would have fulfilled the promise if I could. If there were any way—if it could be done—I would see it done.”

“Then you owe us,” Emma said, planting her feet firmly in front of the Consul’s desk. “You owe us a broken promise. So you have to do
this
now.”

“Do what?” Jia looked bewildered.

“I won’t be moved to Idris. I won’t. I belong in Los Angeles.”

Emma felt Jules freeze up behind her. “Of course they’re not moving you to Idris,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

Emma pointed an accusing finger at Jia. “She said it.”

“Absolutely not,” Julian said. “Emma lives in L.A.; it’s her
home
. She can stay at the Institute. That’s what Shadowhunters
do
. The Institute is supposed to be a refuge.”

“Your uncle will be running the Institute,” said Jia. “It’s up to him.”

“What did he say?” Julian demanded, and behind those four words were a wealth of feeling. When Julian loved people, he loved them forever; when he hated them, he hated them forever. Emma had the feeling the question of whether he was going to hate his uncle forever hung in the balance at exactly this moment.

“He said he would take her in,” Jia said. “But really, I think there’s a place for Emma at the Shadowhunter Academy here in Idris. She’s exceptionally talented, she’d be surrounded by the best instructors, there are many other students there who’ve suffered losses and could help her with her grief—”

Her grief.
Emma’s mind suddenly swam through images: the photos of her parents’ bodies on the beach, covered in markings. The Clave’s clear lack of interest in what had happened to them. Her father bending to kiss her before he walked off to
the car where her mother waited. Their laughter on the wind.

“
I’ve
suffered losses,” Julian said through clenched teeth. “I can help her.”

“You’re twelve,” said Jia, as if that answered everything.

“I won’t be always!” Julian shouted. “Emma and I, we’ve known each other all our lives. She’s like—she’s like—”

“We’re going to be
parabatai
,” said Emma suddenly, before Julian could say that she was like his sister. For some reason she didn’t want to hear that.

Everyone’s eyes snapped wide open, including Julian’s.

“Julian asked me, and I said yes,” she said. “We’re twelve; we’re old enough to make the decision.”

Luke’s eyes sparked as he looked at her. “You can’t split up
parabatai
,” he said. “It’s against the Clave’s Law.”

“We need to be able to train together,” Emma said. “To take the examinations together, to do the ritual together—”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Jia. “Very well. Your uncle doesn’t mind, Julian, if Emma lives in the Institute, and the institution of
parabatai
trumps all other considerations.” She looked from Emma to Julian, whose eyes were shining. He looked happy, actually happy, for the first time in so long that Emma nearly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile like that. “You’re sure?” the Consul added. “Becoming
parabatai
is serious business, nothing to be undertaken lightly. It’s a commitment. You’ll have to look out for each other, protect each other, care for the other one more than you care for yourself.”

“We already do,” said Julian confidently. It took Emma a moment more to speak. She was still seeing her parents in her head. Los Angeles held the answers to what had happened to
them. Answers she needed. If no one ever avenged their deaths, it would be as if they had never lived at all.

And it wasn’t as if she didn’t want to be Jules’s
parabatai
. The thought of a whole life spent without ever being separated from him, a promise that she would never be alone, trumped the voice in the back of her head that whispered:
Wait . . .

She nodded firmly. “Absolutely,” she said. “We’re absolutely sure.”

Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when Clary had first been there. It had a stark grandeur in the late winter, so close to Christmas: The mountains rose in the distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lacelike patterns against the bright sky.

They rode without haste, Wayfarer treading lightly along the path, Clary behind Jace, her arms clasped around his torso. Sometimes he would slow the horse to point out the manor houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his shoulders tense as they passed one whose ivy-covered stones nearly melded with the forest around it. It had clearly been burned to the ground and rebuilt. “Blackthorn manor,” he said. “Which means that around this bend in the road is . . .” He paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and then Jace reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante—Clary could see the demon towers in the distance—while the other curled down toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by
a low wall. “Herondale manor,” Jace finished.

The wind picked up; icy, it ruffled Jace’s hair. Clary had her hood up, but he was bareheaded and bare-handed, having said he hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the reins in his hands. “Did you want to go and look at it?” she asked.

His breath came out in a white cloud. “I’m not sure.”

She pressed closer to him, shivering. “Are you worried about missing the Council meeting?” She had been, though they were returning to New York tomorrow and there had been no other time she could think of to secretly lay her brother’s ashes to rest; it was Jace who had suggested taking the horse from the stables and riding to Lake Lyn when nearly everyone else in Alicante was sure to be in the Accords Hall. Jace understood what it meant to her to bury the idea of her brother, though it would have been hard to explain to almost anyone else.

He shook his head. “We’re too young to vote. Besides, I think they can manage without us.” He frowned. “We’d have to break in,” he said. “The Consul told me that as long as I want to call myself Jace Lightwood, I’ve got no legal right to the Herondale properties. I don’t even have a Herondale ring. One doesn’t exist. The Iron Sisters would have to craft a new one. In fact, when I turn eighteen, I’ll lose the right to the name entirely.”

Clary sat still, holding on to his waist lightly. There were times when he wanted to be prompted and asked questions, and times when he didn’t; this was one of the latter. He would get there on his own. She held him and breathed quietly until he suddenly tensed under her hold and dug his heels into Wayfarer’s sides.

The horse headed down the path toward the manor house at a trot. The low gates—decorated with an iron motif of flying birds—were open, and the path opened out into a circular gravel drive, in the center of which was a stone fountain, now dry. Jace drew up in front of the wide steps that led up to the front door, and stared up at the blank windows.

“This is where I was born,” he said. “This is where my mother died, and Valentine cut me out of her body. And Hodge took me and hid me, so no one would know. It was winter then, too.”

“Jace . . .” She splayed her hands over his chest, feeling his heart beat under her fingers.

“I think I want to be a Herondale,” he said abruptly.

“So be a Herondale.”

“I don’t want to betray the Lightwoods,” he said. “They’re my family. But I realized that if I don’t take the Herondale name, it’ll end with me.”

“It’s not your responsibility—”

“I know,” he said. “In the box, the one Amatis gave me, there was a letter from my father to me. He wrote it before I was born. I read it a few times. The first times I read it, I just hated him, even though he said he loved me. But there were a few sentences I couldn’t get rid of in my head. He said,
‘I want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be.’
” He tipped his head back, as if he could read his future in the curl of the manor’s eaves. “Changing your name, it doesn’t change your nature. Look at Sebastian—Jonathan. Calling himself Sebastian didn’t make any difference in the end. I wanted to spurn the Herondale name because I thought I hated my father, but I don’t hate him. He might have been weak
and have made the wrong decisions, but he knew it. There’s no reason for me to hate him. And there have been generations of Herondales before him—it’s a family that’s done a lot of good—and to let their whole house fall just to get back at my father would be a waste.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you call him your father and sound like that,” Clary said. “Usually you only say it about Valentine.”

She felt him sigh, and then his hand covered hers where it lay on his chest. His fingers were cool, long and slender, so familiar, she would have known them in the dark. “We might live here someday,” he said. “Together.”

She smiled, knowing he couldn’t see her, but unable to help it. “Think you can win me over with a fancy house?” she said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jace. Jace
Herondale
,” she added, and wrapped her arms around him in the cold.

Alec sat at the edge of the roof, dangling his feet over the side. He supposed that if either of his parents came back to the house and looked up, they’d see him and he’d get shouted at, but he doubted Maryse or Robert would return soon. They’d been called to the Consul’s office after the meeting and were probably still there. The new treaty with the Fair Folk would be hammered out over the next week, during which they’d stay in Idris, while the rest of the Lightwoods went back to New York and celebrated the New Year without them. Alec would, technically, be running the Institute for that week. He was surprised to find that he was actually looking forward to it.

Responsibility was a good way to take your mind off other things. Things like the way Jocelyn had looked when her son
had died, or the way Clary had stifled her silent sobs against the floor when she’d realized that they’d come back from Edom, but without Simon. The way Magnus’s face had looked, bleak with despair, as he’d said his father’s name.

Loss was part of being a Shadowhunter, you expected it, but that didn’t help the way Alec had felt when he’d seen Helen’s expression in the Council Hall as she’d been exiled to Wrangel Island.

“You couldn’t have done anything. Don’t punish yourself.” The voice behind him was familiar; Alec squeezed his eyes shut, trying to steady his breathing before he replied.

“How’d you get up here?” he asked. There was a rustle of fabric as Magnus settled himself down next to Alec at the edge of the roof. Alec chanced a sideways glance at him. He’d seen Magnus only twice, briefly, since they’d returned from Edom—once when the Silent Brothers had released them from quarantine, and once again today in the Council Hall. Neither time had they been able to talk. Alec looked him over with a yearning he suspected was poorly disguised. Magnus was back to his normal healthy color after the drained look he had had in Edom; his bruises were largely healed, and his eyes were bright again, glinting under the dimming sky.

Alec remembered throwing his arms around Magnus in the demon realm, when he’d found him chained up, and wondered why things like that were always so much easier to do when you thought you were about to die.

“I should have said something,” Alec said. “I voted against sending her away.”

“I know,” said Magnus. “You and about ten other people. It was overwhelmingly in favor.” He shook his head. “People get
scared, and they take it out on anyone they think is different. It’s the same cycle I’ve seen a thousand times.”

“It makes me feel so useless.”

“You’re anything but useless.” Magnus tipped his head back, his eyes searching the sky as the stars began to make their appearances, one by one. “You saved my life.”

“In Edom?” Alec said. “I helped, but really—you saved your own life.”

“Not just in Edom,” Magnus said. “I was—I’m almost four hundred years old, Alexander. Warlocks, as they get older, they start to calcify. They stop being able to
feel
things. To care, to be excited or surprised. I always told myself that would never happen to me. That I’d try to be like Peter Pan, never grow up, always retain a sense of wonder. Always fall in love, be surprised, be open to being hurt as much as I was open to being happy. But over the last twenty years or so I’ve felt it creeping up on me anyway. There was nobody before you for a long time. Nobody I loved. No one who surprised me or took my breath away. Until you walked into that party, I was starting to think I’d never feel anything that strongly again.”