City of Heavenly Fire

14 The Sleep of Reason

Clary stood on a shady lawn that rolled away down a sloping hill. The sky overhead was perfectly blue, dotted here and there with white clouds. At her feet a stone walkway stretched to the front door of a large manor house, built of mellow golden stone.

She craned her head back, looking up. The house was lovely: The stones were the color of butter in the spring sunshine, covered in trellises of climbing roses in red and gold and orange. Wrought iron balconies curved out from the facade, and there were two large arched doors of bronze-colored wood, their surfaces wrought with delicate designs of wings. Wings for the Fairchilds, said a soft voice, reassuring, in the back of her mind. This is Fairchild manor. It has stood for four hundred years and will stand four hundred more.

“Clary!” Her mother appeared at one of the balconies, wearing an elegant champagne-colored dress; her red hair was down, and she looked young and beautiful. Her arms were bare, circled with black runes. “What do you think? Doesn’t it look gorgeous?” Clary followed her mother’s gaze toward where the lawn flattened out. There was an archway of roses set up at the end of an aisle, on either side of which were rows of wooden benches. White flowers were scattered along the aisle: the white flowers that grew only in Idris. The air was rich with their honey scent.

She looked back up at her mother, who was no longer alone on the balcony. Luke was standing behind her, an arm around her waist. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves and formal trousers, as if halfway dressed for a party. His arms too were twined with runes: runes for good luck, for insight, for strength, for love. “Are you ready?” he called down to Clary.

“Ready for what?” she said, but they didn’t seem to hear her. Smiling, they disappeared back into the house. Clary took a few steps along the path.

“Clary!”

She whirled. He was coming toward her across the grass—slender, with white-pale hair that shone in the sunlight, dressed in formal black with gold runes at his collar and cuffs.

He was grinning, a smudge of dirt on his cheek, and holding up a hand to block the brightness of the sun.

Sebastian.

He was entirely the same and yet entirely different: He was clearly himself, and yet the whole shape and set of his features seemed to have changed, his bones less sharp, his skin sundarkened rather than pale, and his eyes—

His eyes shone, as green as spring grass.

He has always had green eyes, said the voice in her head. People often marvel at how much alike you are, he and your mother and yourself. His name is Jonathan and he is your brother; he has always protected you.

“Clary,” he said again, “you’re not going to believe—”

“Jonathan!” a small voice trilled, and Clary turned her wondering eyes to see a little girl dashing across the grass. She had red hair, the same shade as Clary’s, and it flew out behind her like a banner. She was barefoot, wearing a green lace dress that had been so thoroughly torn to ribbons at the cuffs and hem that it resembled shredded lettuce. She might have been four or five years old, dirty-faced and adorable, and as she reached Jonathan, she held up her arms, and he bent down to swing her up into the air.

She shrieked in delight as he held her over his head. “Ouch, ouch—quit that, you demon child,” he said as she pulled at his hair. “Val, I said stop it, or I’ll hold you upside down. I mean it.”

“Val?” Clary echoed. But of course, her name is Valentina, said the whispering voice in the back of her head. Valentine Morgenstern was a great hero of the war; he died in battle against Hodge Starkweather, but not before he had saved the Mortal Cup, and the Clave along with it. When Luke married your mother, they honored his memory in the name of their daughter.

“Clary, make him let me go, make him—owwww!” shrieked Vall as Jonathan turned her upside down and swung her through the air. Vall dissolved into giggles as he set her down on the grass, and she turned a pair of eyes the exact blue of Luke’s up at Clary. “Your dress is pretty,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Thank you,” Clary said, still half in a daze, and looked at Jonathan, who was grinning down at his small sister. “Is that dirt on your face?”

Jonathan reached up and touched his cheek. “Chocolate,” he said. “You’ll never guess what I found Vall doing. She had both fists in the wedding cake. I’m going to have to patch it up.” He squinted at Clary. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

“I’m fine,” Clary said, tugging nervously at a lock of her hair.

Jonathan put his hands up as if to ward her off. “Look, I’ll perform surgery on it. No one will ever be able to tell that someone ate half the roses off.” He looked thoughtful. “I could eat the other half of the roses, just so it’s even.”

“Yeah!” said Vall from her place on the grass at his feet. She was busy yanking up dandelions, their white pods blowing on the wind.

“Also,” Jonathan added, “I hate to bring this up, but you might want to put some shoes on before the wedding.”

Clary looked down at herself. He was right, she was barefoot. Barefoot, and wearing a pale gold dress. The hem drifted around her ankles like a sunset-colored cloud. “I—What wedding?”

Her brother’s green eyes widened. “Your wedding? You know, to Jace Herondale? About yea high, blond, all the girls looove him—” He broke off. “Are you having cold feet? Is that what this is?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Because if it is, I’ll totally smuggle you over the border into France. And I won’t tell anyone where you went. Even if they stick bamboo shoots under my fingernails.”

“I don’t—” Clary stared at him. “Bamboo shoots?”

He shrugged eloquently. “For my only sister, not counting the creature currently sitting on my foot”—Vall yelped—“I would do it. Even if it means not getting to see Isabelle Lightwood in a strapless dress.”

“Isabelle? You like Isabelle?” Clary felt as if she were running a marathon and couldn’t quite catch her breath.

He squinted at her. “Is that a problem? Is she a wanted criminal or something?” He looked thoughtful. “That would be kind of hot, actually.”

“Okay, I don’t need to know what you think is hot,” Clary said automatically. “Bleh.” Jonathan grinned. It was an unconcerned, happy grin; the grin of someone who’d never really had much to worry about beyond pretty girls and whether one of his little sisters had eaten the other sister’s wedding cake. Somewhere in the back of Clary’s mind she saw black eyes and whip marks, but she didn’t know why. He’s your brother. He’s your brother, and he’s always taken care of you. “Right,” he said. “Like I didn’t have to suffer through years of ‘Oooh, Jace is so cute. Do you think he liiikes me?’ ”

“I—” Clary said, and broke off, feeling a little dizzy. “I just don’t remember him proposing.”

Jonathan knelt down and tugged on Val’s hair. She was humming to herself, bundling daisies together in a pile. Clary blinked—she’d been so sure they were dandelions. “Oh, I don’t know if he ever did,” he said casually. “We all just knew you’d end up together. It was inevitable.”

“But I should have gotten to choose,” she said, in a near whisper. “I should have gotten to say yes.”

“Well, you would have, wouldn’t you?” he said, watching the daisies blow across the grass. “Speaking of, do you think Isabelle would go out with me if I asked her?” Clary’s breath caught. “But what about Simon?”

He looked up at her, the sun bright in his eyes. “Who’s Simon?” Clary felt the ground give way under her. She reached out, as if to catch at her brother, but her hand went through him. He was as insubstantial as air. The green lawn and the golden mansion and the boy and the girl on the grass flew away from her, and she stumbled, hitting the ground hard, jarring her elbows with a pain she felt flare up her arms.

She rolled to her side, choking. She was lying on a patch of bleak ground. Broken cobblestones jutted up through the earth, and the burned-out shells of stone houses loomed over her. The sky was white-gray steel, shot through with black clouds like vampire veins. It was a dead world, a world with all the color leached out of it, and all the life. Clary curled up on the ground, seeing in front of her not the shell of a destroyed town but the eyes of the brother and the sister that she would never have.

Simon stood at the window, taking in the view of the city of Manhattan.

It was an impressive sight. From the penthouse floor of the Carolina, you could see across Central Park, to the Met museum, to the high-rises of downtown. Night was falling, and the city lights were beginning to shine out one by one, a bed of electric flowers.

Electric flowers. He looked around, frowning thoughtfully. It was a nice turn of phrase; perhaps he should write it down. He never seemed to have time these days to really work on lyrics; time was swallowed up by other things: promotion, touring, signings, appearances. It was hard to remember sometimes that his main job was making music.

Still. A good problem to have. The darkening sky turned the window to a mirror. Simon smiled at his reflection in the glass. Tousled hair, jeans, vintage T-shirt; he could see the room behind him, vast acres of hardwood floor, gleaming steel, and leather furniture, a single elegant gold-framed painting on the wall. A Chagall—Clary’s favorite, all soft roses and blues and greens, incongruous against the apartment’s modernity.

There was a vase of hydrangeas on the kitchen island, a gift from his mother, congratulating him on playing a gig with Stepping Razor the week before. I love you, said the note attached. I’m proud of you.

He blinked at it. Hydrangeas; that was odd. If he had a favorite flower, it was roses, and his mother knew that. He turned away from the window and looked more closely at the vase. They were roses. He shook his head to clear it. White roses. They always had been.

Right.

He heard the rattle of keys, and the door swung open, admitting a petite girl with long red hair and a brilliant smile. “Oh, my God,” said Clary, half-laughing, half out of breath.

She pushed the door shut behind her and leaned against it. “The lobby is a zoo. Press, photographers; it’s going to be crazy going out tonight.” She came across the room, dropping her keys on the table. She was wearing a long dress, yellow silk printed with colorful butterflies, and a butterfly clip in her long red hair.

She looked warm and open and loving, and as she neared him, she put her arms up, and he went to kiss her.

Just like he did every day when she came home.

She smelled like Clary, perfume and chalk, and her fingers were smudged with color.

She wound her fingers in his hair as they kissed, tugging him down, laughing against his mouth as he nearly overbalanced.

“You’re going to have to start wearing heels, Fray,” he said, lips against her cheek.

“I hate heels. You’ll either have to deal or buy me a portable ladder,” she said, letting him go. “Unless you want to leave me for a really tall groupie.”

“Never,” he said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Would a really tall groupie know all my favorite foods? Remember when I had a bed shaped like a race car? Know how to beat me mercilessly at Scrabble? Be willing to put up with Matt and Kirk and Eric?”

“A groupie would more than put up with Matt and Kirk and Eric.”

“Be nice,” he said, and grinned down at her. “You’re stuck with me.”

“I’ll survive,” she said, plucking his glasses off and setting them on the table. The eyes she turned up to him were dark and wide. This time the kiss was more heated. He wound his arms around her, pulling her against him as she whispered, “I love you; I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you too,” he said. “God, I love you, Isabelle.”

He felt her stiffen in his arms, and then the world around him seemed to sprout black lines like shattered glass. He heard a high-pitched whine in his ears and staggered back, tripping, falling, not hitting the ground but spinning forever through the dark.

“Don’t look, don’t look . . .”

Isabelle laughed. “I’m not looking.”

There were hands over her eyes: Simon’s hands, slim and flexible. His arms were around her, and they were shuffling forward together, laughing. He’d grabbed her the moment she’d walked in the front door, wrapping his arms around her as her shopping bags dropped from her hands.

“I have a surprise for you,” he’d said, grinning. “Close your eyes. No looking. No, really. I’m not kidding.”

“I hate surprises,” Isabelle protested now. “You know that.” She could just see the edge of the rug under Simon’s hands. She’d picked it out herself, and it was thick, bright pink, and fuzzy. Their apartment was small and cozy, a hodgepodge of Isabelle and Simon: guitars and katanas, vintage posters and hot-pink bedspreads. Simon had brought his cat, Yossarian, when they’d moved in together, which Isabelle had protested but secretly liked: She’d missed Church after she’d left the Institute.

The pink rug vanished, and now Isabelle’s heels clicked onto the tile floor of the kitchen. “Okay,” Simon said, and withdrew his hands. “Surprise!”

“Surprise!” The kitchen was full of people: her mother and father, Jace and Alec and Max, Clary and Jordan and Maia, Kirk and Matt and Eric. Magnus was holding a silver sparkler and winking, waving it back and forth as the sparkles flew everywhere, landing on the stone counters and Jace’s T-shirt, making him yelp. Clary was holding a clumsily lettered sign: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ISABELLE. She held it up and waved.

Isabelle whirled on Simon accusingly. “You planned this!”

“Of course I did,” he said, pulling her toward him. “Shadowhunters might not care about birthdays, but I do.” He kissed her ear, murmuring, “You should have everything, Izzy,” before he let her go, and her family descended.

There was a whirl of hugs, of presents and cake—baked by Eric, who actually had something of a flair for pastry creation, and decorated by Magnus with luminous frosting that tasted better than it looked. Robert had his arms around Maryse, who was leaning back against him, looking on proudly and contentedly as Magnus, one hand ruffling Alec’s hair, tried to convince Max to put on a party hat. Max, with all the self-possession of a nine-year-old, was having none of it. He waved away Magnus’s hand impatiently and said, “Izzy, I made the sign. Did you see the sign?”

Izzy glanced over at the hand-lettered sign, now liberally smeared with frosting, on the table. Clary winked at her. “It’s awesome, Max; thank you.”

“I was going to put what birthday it was on the sign,” he said, “but Jace said that after twenty, you’re just old, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Jace stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “I said that?”

“Way to make us all feel ancient,” said Simon, pushing his hair back to smile at Isabelle. She felt a little twist of pain inside her chest—she loved him that much, for doing this for her, for always thinking of her. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him or trusted him, and he’d never given her a reason not to do either.

Isabelle slid off the stool she’d been sitting on, and knelt down in front of her little brother. She could see their reflection in the steel of the refrigerator: her own dark hair, cut to her shoulders now—she remembered vaguely years ago, when her hair had reached her waist—and Max’s brown curls and glasses. “Do you know how old I am?” she said.

“Twenty-two,” Max said, in the tone of voice that indicated he wasn’t sure why she was asking him such a stupid question.

Twenty-two, she thought. She’d always been seven years older than Max, Max the surprise, Max the little brother she hadn’t expected.

Max, who should be fifteen now.

She swallowed, suddenly cold all over. Everyone was still talking and laughing all around her, but the laughing sounded distant and echoing, as if it came from very far away. She could see Simon, leaning against the counter, his arms folded over his chest, his dark eyes unreadable as he watched her.

“And how old are you?” Isabelle said.

“Nine,” said Max. “I’ve always been nine.”

Isabelle stared. The kitchen around her was wavering. She could see through it, as if she were staring through printed fabric: everything going transparent, as mutable as water.

“Baby,” she whispered. “My Max, my baby brother, please, please stay.”

“I’ll always be nine,” he said, and touched her face. His fingers passed through her, as if he were passing his hand through smoke. “Isabelle?” he said in a fading voice, and disappeared.

Isabelle felt her knees give. She sank to the ground. There was no laughter around her, no pretty tiled kitchen, only gray, powdery ash and blackened rock. She put up her hands to stop her tears.

The Hall of Accords was hung with blue banners, each gilded with the flame blazon of the Lightwood family. Four long tables had been arranged facing one another. In the center was a raised speaker’s lectern, decked with swords and flowers.

Alec sat at the longest table, in the highest of the chairs. On his left was Magnus, and on his right his family stretched out beside him: Isabelle and Max; Robert and Maryse; Jace; and beside Jace, Clary. There were Lightwood cousins there too, some of whom he hadn’t seen since he’d been a child; all of them were beaming with pride, but no face glowed as brightly as his father’s.

“My son,” he kept saying, to anyone who would listen—he had buttonholed the Consul now, who’d been passing by their table with a glass of wine in hand. “My son won the battle; that’s my son up there. Lightwood blood will tell; our family have always been fighters.”

The Consul laughed. “Save it for the speech, Robert,” she said, winking at Alec over the rim of her glass.

“Oh, God, the speech,” Alec said, in horror, hiding his face in his hands.

Magnus rubbed his knuckles gently across Alec’s spine, as if he were petting a cat. Jace looked over at them, and raised his eyebrows.

“As if we all haven’t been in a room full of people telling us how amazing we are before,” he said, and when Alec glared at him sideways, he grinned. “Ah, just me, then.”

“Leave my boyfriend alone,” Magnus said. “I know spells that could turn your ears inside out.”

Jace touched his ears worriedly as Robert rose to his feet, his chair scraping backward, and tapped the side of his fork against his glass. The sound rang out in the room, and the Shadowhunters fell silent, looking up toward the Lightwood table expectantly.

“We gather here today,” said Robert, reaching out his arms expansively, “to honor my son, Alexander Gideon Lightwood, who has single-handedly destroyed the forces of the Endarkened and who defeated in battle the son of Valentine Morgenstern. Alec saved the life of our third son, Max. Along with his parabatai, Jace Herondale, I am proud to say that my son is one of the greatest warriors I have ever known.” He turned and smiled at Alec and Magnus. “It takes more than a strong arm to make a great warrior,” he went on.

“It takes a great mind and a great heart. My son has both. He is strong in courage, and strong in love. Which is why I also wanted to share our other good news with you. As of yesterday, my son became engaged to be married to his partner, Magnus Bane—” A chorus of cheers broke out. Magnus accepted them with a modest wave of his fork.

Alec slid down in his chair, his cheeks burning. Jace looked at him meditatively.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I kind of feel like I missed an opportunity.”

“W-what?” Alec stammered.

Jace shrugged. “I always knew you had a crush on me, and I kind of had a crush on you, too. I thought you should know.”

“What?” Alec said again.

Clary sat up straight. “You know,” she said, “do you think there’s any chance that you two could . . .” She gestured between Jace and Alec. “It would be kind of hot.”

“No,” Magnus said. “I am a very jealous warlock.”

“We’re parabatai,” Alec said, regaining his voice. “The Clave would—I mean—it’s illegal.”

“Oh, come on,” said Jace. “The Clave would let you do anything you wanted. Look, everyone loves you.” He gestured out at the room full of Shadowhunters. They were all cheering as Robert spoke, some of them wiping away tears. A girl at one of the smaller tables held up a sign that said, ALEC LIGHTWOOD, WE LOVE YOU.

“I think you should have a winter wedding,” said Isabelle, looking longingly at the white floral centerpiece. “Nothing too big. Five or six hundred people.”

“Isabelle,” Alec croaked.

She shrugged. “You have a lot of fans.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Magnus said, and snapped his fingers in front of Alec’s face. His black hair stood up in spikes, and his gold-green eyes were brilliant with annoyance.

“THIS IS NOT HAPPENING.”

“What?” Alec stared.

“It’s a hallucination,” Magnus said, “brought on by your entry into the demon realms.

Probably a demon that lurks near the entrance to the world and feeds on the dreams of travelers. Wishes have a lot of power,” he added, examining his reflection in his spoon.

“Especially the deepest wishes of our hearts.”

Alec looked around the room. “This is the deepest wish of my heart?”

“Sure,” Magnus said. “Your father, proud of you. You, the hero of the hour. Me, loving you. Everyone approving of you.”

Alec looked over at Jace. “Okay, what about the Jace thing?” Magnus shrugged. “I don’t know. That part’s just weird.”

“So I have to wake up.” Alec put his hands on the table, flat; the Lightwood ring shone on his finger. It all seemed real, felt real—but he couldn’t remember what his father was talking about. Couldn’t remember defeating Sebastian, or winning a war. Couldn’t remember saving Max.

“Max,” he whispered.

Magnus’s eyes darkened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The wishes of our hearts are weapons that can be used against us. Fight, Alec.” He touched Alec’s face. “This isn’t what you want, this dream. Demons don’t understand human hearts, not well. They see as through a distorted glass and show you what you desire, but warped and wrong. Use that wrongness to push yourself out of the dream. Life is loss, Alexander, but it’s better than this.”

“God,” Alec said, and closed his eyes. He felt the world around him crack, as if he were tapping his way out of a shell. The voices around him vanished, along with the feel of the chair underneath him, the smell of food, the clamor of applause, and lastly, the touch of Magnus’s hand on his face.

His knees hit the ground. He gasped and his eyes snapped open. All around him was a gray landscape. The stink of garbage hit his nostrils, and he jerked back instinctively as something reared over him—a surging mass of inchoate smoke, a cluster of glittering yellow eyes hanging in the darkness. They glared out at him as he fumbled for his bow and drew it back.

The thing roared, and rushed forward, surging toward him like a wave breaking. Alec let the runed arrow fly—it flicked through the air and sank itself deep into the smoke demon.

A shrilling scream cracked the air, the demon pulsing around the arrow buried deep inside it, tendrils of smoke flailing outward, clawing at the sky—

And the demon vanished. Alec scrambled to his feet, fumbling another arrow into position, and swung around, scanning the landscape. It looked like pictures he’d seen of the surface of the moon, pitted and ashy, and above was a scorched sky, gray and yellow, cloudless. The sun hung orange and low, a dead cinder. There was no sign of the others.

Fighting down panic, he jogged up the rise of the nearest hill, and down the other side.

Relief hit him in a wave. There was a depression between two rises of ash and rock, and crouched in it was Isabelle, struggling to her feet. Alec scrambled down the steep side of the hill and caught her in a one-armed hug. “Iz,” he said.

She made a sound suspiciously like a sniffle and pulled away from him. “I’m all right,” she said. There were tear tracks on her face; he wondered what she had seen. The wishes of our hearts are weapons that can be used against us.

“Max?” he asked.

She nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears and anger. Of course Isabelle would be angry. She hated to cry.

“Me too,” he said, and then whirled at the sound of a footstep, half-pushing Isabelle behind him.

It was Clary, and beside her, Simon. They both looked shell-shocked. Isabelle moved out from behind Alec. “You two . . . ?”

“Fine,” Simon said. “We . . . saw things. Weird things.” He wouldn’t meet Isabelle’s gaze, and Alec wondered what he’d imagined. What were Simon’s dreams and desires?

Alec had never given it much thought.

“It was a demon,” Alec said. “The kind that feeds on dreams and wishes. I killed it.” He glanced from them to Isabelle. “Where’s Jace?”

Clary paled under the dirt on her face. “We thought he’d be with you.” Alec shook his head. “He’s all right,” he said. “I’d know if he weren’t—” But Clary had already spun back around and was half-running back the way she’d come; after a moment Alec followed her, and so did the others. She scrambled up the rise, and then up another rise. Alec realized she was heading for higher ground, where the view would be better. He could hear her coughing; his own lungs felt coated with ash.

Dead, he thought. Everything in this world is dead and burned to dust. What happened here?

At the top of the hill was a cairn of stones—a circle of smooth rocks, like a dried-out well. Seated on the edge of the cairn was Jace, staring at the ground.

“Jace!” Clary skidded to a halt in front of him, dropped to her knees, and caught at his shoulders. He looked at her blankly. “Jace,” she said again, urgently. “Jace, snap out of it.

It’s not real. It’s a demon, making us see the things we want. Alec killed it. Okay? It’s not real.”

“I know.” He looked up, and Alec felt the look like a blow. Jace looked as if he’d been bleeding out, though he was obviously uninjured.

“What did you see?” Alec said. “Max?”

Jace shook his head. “I didn’t see anything.”

“It’s all right, whatever you saw. It’s all right,” Clary said. She leaned in, touched Jace’s face; Alec was reminded acutely of Magnus’s fingers on his cheek in the dream. Magnus saying he loved him. Magnus, who might not even still be alive. “I saw Sebastian,” she said. “I was in Idris. The Fairchild house was still standing. My mom was with Luke. I—there was going to be a wedding.” She swallowed. “I had a little sister, too. She was named after Valentine. He was a hero. Sebastian was there but he was fine, he was normal. He loved me. Like a real brother.”

“That’s messed up,” Simon said. He moved closer to Isabelle, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Jace reached out and ran a careful finger down one of Clary’s curls, letting it wind around his hand. Alec remembered the first time he’d realized Jace was in love with her: He’d been watching his parabatai across a room, watching Jace’s eyes track her movements. He remembered thinking: She’s all he sees.

“We all have dreams,” Clary said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Remember what I said before? We stay together.”

Jace kissed her forehead and stood up, holding out a hand; after a moment Clary took it, and rose to her feet beside him. “I didn’t see anything,” he said gently. “All right?” She hesitated, clearly not believing him; just as clearly, she didn’t want to press the point. “All right.”

“I hate to bring this up,” Isabelle said, “but did anyone see a way back?” Alec thought of his headlong rush over the desert hills, searching for the others, eyes raking the horizon. He saw his companions pale as they glanced around. “I think,” he said, “that there is no way back. Not from here, not down the tunnel. I think it closed up after us.”

“So this was a one-way trip,” said Clary, with only a slight tremble to her voice.

“Not necessarily,” said Simon. “We have to get to Sebastian—we always knew that. And once we get there, Jace can try to do his thing with the heavenly fire, whatever that is—no offense—”

“None taken,” said Jace, casting his eyes up to the sky.

“And once we rescue the prisoners,” said Alec, “Magnus can help us get back. Or we can figure out how Sebastian gets back and forth; this can’t be the only way.”

“That’s optimistic,” said Isabelle. “What if we can’t rescue the prisoners, or we can’t kill Sebastian?”

“Then he’ll kill us,” said Jace. “And it won’t matter that we don’t know how to get back.”

Clary squared her small shoulders. “Then we’d better get to finding him, hadn’t we?” Jace tugged his stele free of his pocket, and took Sebastian’s bracelet off his wrist. He closed his fingers around it, using the stele to draw a tracking rune on the back of his hand. A moment passed, and then another; a look of intense concentration passed over Jace’s face, like a cloud. He lifted his head.

“He’s not that far,” he said. “A day, maybe two days of walking away.” He slid the bracelet back onto his wrist. Alec looked at it pointedly, and then at Jace. If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise Hell.

“Wearing it will keep me from losing it,” Jace said, and when Alec said nothing, Jace shrugged and started off down the hill. “We should get moving,” he called back over his shoulder. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

15 Brimstone and Salt

“Please don’t rip my hand off,” Magnus said. “I like that hand. I need that hand.”

“Hmph,” said Raphael, who was kneeling beside him, his hands on the chain that ran between the manacle on Magnus’s right hand and the adamas loop sunk deep into the floor. “I am only trying to help.” He jerked, hard, on the chain, and Magnus yelped in pain and glared. Raphael had thin, boyish hands, but that was deceptive: He had a vampire’s strength, and he was currently bending its power to the purpose of yanking Magnus’s chains out by the roots.

The cell they were in was circular. The floor was made of granite flagstones, overlapping. Stone benches ran around the inside of the walls. There was no discernible door, though there were narrow windows—as narrow as arrow slits. There was no glass in them, and it was possible to see from their depth that the walls were at least a foot thick.

Magnus had woken up in this room, a circle of red-geared Dark Shadowhunters standing around him, affixing his chains to the floor. Before the door had clanged shut behind them, he’d seen Sebastian standing in the corridor outside, grinning in at him like a death’s-head.

Now Luke stood at one of the windows, staring out. None of them had been given a change of clothes, and he still wore the suit trousers and shirt he’d worn to dinner in Alicante. The front of his shirt was splashed with rusty stains. Magnus had to keep reminding himself it was wine. Luke looked haggard, his hair rumpled, one of the lenses of his glasses cracked.

“Do you see anything?” Magnus asked now, as Raphael moved to his other side to see if the left-hand chain would be any easier to remove. Magnus was the only one chained. By the time he’d woken up, Luke and Raphael had already been awake, Raphael lounging against one of the benches while Luke called out for Jocelyn until he was hoarse.

“No,” Luke said shortly. Raphael raised an eyebrow at Magnus. He looked tousled and young, teeth digging into his lower lip as his knuckles whitened around the chain links.

They were long enough to allow Magnus to sit up, but not to stand. “Just fog. Gray-yellow fog. Maybe mountains in the distance. It’s hard to tell.”

“Do you think we’re still in Idris?” Raphael asked.

“No,” Magnus said shortly. “We’re not in Idris. I can feel it in my blood.” Luke looked at him. “Where are we?”

Magnus could feel the burn in his blood, the beginning of fever. It prickled along his nerves, drying his mouth, making his throat ache. “We’re in Edom,” he said. “A demon dimension.”

Raphael dropped the chain and swore in Spanish. “I cannot free you,” he said, clearly frustrated. “Why have Sebastian’s servants chained only you and not either of us?”

“Because Magnus needs his hands to do magic,” said Luke.

Raphael looked at Magnus, surprised. Magnus wiggled his eyebrows. “Didn’t know that, vampire?” he said. “I would have thought you would have figured it out by now; you’ve been alive long enough.”

“Perhaps.” Raphael sat back on his heels. “But I have never had much business with warlocks.”

Magnus gave him a look, a look that said: We both know that isn’t true. Raphael looked away.

“Too bad,” Magnus said. “If Sebastian had done his research, he would have known I can’t do magic in this realm. There’s no need for this.” He rattled his chains like Marley’s ghost.

“So this is where Sebastian’s been hiding all this time,” Luke said. “This is why we couldn’t track him. This is his base of operations.”

“Or,” said Raphael, “this is just some place he has abandoned us to die and rot.”

“He wouldn’t bother,” Luke said. “If he wanted us dead, we’d be dead, the three of us.

He’s got some larger plan. He always does. I just don’t know why—” He broke off, looking down at his hands, and Magnus remembered him suddenly much younger, flyaway hair and worried looks and his heart on his sleeve.

“He won’t hurt her,” Magnus said. “Jocelyn, I mean.”

“He might,” Raphael said. “He is very crazy.”

“Why wouldn’t he hurt her?” Luke sounded as if he were holding in a fear that threatened to explode. “Because she’s his mother? It doesn’t work that way. Sebastian doesn’t work that way.”

“Not because she’s his mother,” Magnus said. “Because she’s Clary’s mother. She’s leverage. And he won’t give that up easily.”

They had been walking for what seemed like hours now, and Clary was exhausted.

The uneven ground made the walking harder. None of the hills were very high, but they were pathless, and covered in shale and jagged rock. Sometimes there were plains of sticky, tarry pitch to cross, and their feet sank in almost to the ankles, dragging down their steps.

They paused to put on runes for sure-footedness and strength, and to drink water. It was a dry place, all smoke and ashes, with the occasional bright river of molten rock sludging through the burned land. Their faces were already smeared with dirt and ash, their gear powdered with it.

“Ration the water,” Alec warned, capping his plastic bottle. They had paused in the shadow of a small mountain. Its jagged top snarled up into peaks and crenellations that made it resemble a crown. “We don’t know how long we’ll be traveling.” Jace touched the bracelet on his wrist, and then his tracking rune. He frowned at the traced pattern on the back of his hand. “The runes we just put on,” he said. “Someone show me one.”

Isabelle made an impatient noise, then thrust out her wrist, where Alec had inked a speed rune earlier. She blinked down at it. “It’s fading,” she said, a sudden uncertainty in her voice.

“My tracking rune as well, and the others,” said Jace, glancing over his skin. “I think runes fade more quickly here. We’re going to have to be careful about using them. Check to make sure when they need to be applied again.”

“Our Speed runes are fading,” Isabelle said, sounding frustrated. “That could be the difference between two days of walking and three. Sebastian could be doing anything to the prisoners.”

Alec winced.

“He won’t,” Jace said. “They’re his insurance that the Clave will turn us over to him. He won’t do anything to them unless he’s sure that won’t happen.”

“We could walk all night,” Isabelle said. “We could use Wakefulness runes. Keep applying them.”

Jace glanced around. Dirt was smudged under his eyes, and across his cheeks and forehead where he’d rubbed the palm of his hand. The sky had deepened from yellow to dark orange, smeared with roiling black clouds. Clary guessed that meant that nightfall was near. She wondered if days and nights were the same in this place, or if the hours were different, the rotations of this planet subtly misaligned.

“When Wakefulness runes fade, you crash,” Jace said. “Then we’ll be facing Sebastian basically hungover—not a good idea.”

Alec followed Jace’s gaze around the deadly landscape. “Then we’re going to have to find a place to rest. Sleep. Aren’t we?”

Clary didn’t hear whatever Jace said next. She’d already moved away from the conversation, clambering up the steep side of a ridge of rock. The effort made her cough; the air was foul, thick with smoke and ash, but she didn’t feel like staying for an argument.

She was exhausted, her head was pounding, and she kept seeing her mother, over and over, in her head. Her mother and Luke, standing on a balcony together, hand in hand, looking down at her fondly.

She dragged herself up to the top of the rise and paused there. It sloped down steeply on the other side, ending in a plateau of gray rock that stretched to the horizon, piled here and there with heaps of slag and shale. The sun had lowered in the sky, though it was still the same burned orange color.

“What are you looking at?” said a voice at her elbow; she started, and turned to find Simon there. He wasn’t quite as grimy as the rest of them—dirt never seemed to stick to vampires—but his hair was full of dust.

She pointed to dark holes where they pocked the side of the nearby hill like gunshot wounds. “Those are cave entrances, I think,” she said.

“Kind of looks like something out of World of Warcraft, doesn’t it?” he said, gesturing around them at the blasted landscape, the ash-torn sky. “Only, you can’t just turn it off to get away.”

“I haven’t been able to turn it off for a long time.” Clary could see Jace and the other Lightwoods a distance away, still arguing.

“Are you all right?” Simon asked. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since everything happened with your mother, and Luke—”

“No,” Clary said. “I’m not all right. But I have to keep going. If I keep going, I can not think about it.”

“I’m sorry.” Simon put his hands into his pockets, his head down. His brown hair blew across his forehead, across the place where the Mark of Cain had been.

“Are you kidding? I’m the one who’s sorry. For everything. The fact that you got turned into a vampire, the Mark of Cain—”

“That protected me,” Simon protested. “That was a miracle. It was something only you could do.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Clary whispered.

“What?”

“That I don’t have any more miracles in me,” she said, and pressed her lips together as the others joined them, Jace looking curiously from Simon to Clary as if wondering what they had been talking about.

Isabelle gazed out over the plain, at the acres of bleakness ahead, the view choked with dust. “Did you see something?”

“What about those caves?” Simon asked, gesturing toward the dark entrances tunneling into the mountainside. “They’re shelter—”

“Good idea,” Jace said. “We’re in a demon dimension, God knows what lives here, and you want to crawl into a narrow dark hole and—”

“All right,” Simon interrupted. “It was just a suggestion. You don’t need to get pissed off—”

Jace, who was clearly in a mood, gave him a cold look. “That wasn’t me pissed off, vampire—”

A dark piece of cloud detached itself from the sky and darted suddenly downward, faster than any of them could follow. Clary caught a single horrible glimpse of wings and teeth and dozens of red eyes, and then Jace was rising up into the air, caught in the clawed grip of an airborne demon.

Isabelle screamed. Clary’s hand went to her belt, but the demon had already shot back up into the sky, a whirl of leathery wings, emitting a high-pitched squeal of victory. Jace made no noise at all; Clary could see his boots dangling, motionless. Was he dead?

Her vision went white. Clary whirled on Alec, who already had his bow out, an arrow notched and ready.

“Shoot it!” she screamed.

He spun like a dancer, scanning the sky. “I can’t get a clear shot; it’s too dark—I could hit Jace—”

Isabelle’s whip uncoiled from her hand, a glimmering wire, reaching up, up, impossibly up. Its shimmering light illuminated the clouded sky, and Clary heard the demon scream again, this time a shrill cry of pain. The creature was spinning through the air, tumbling over and over, Jace caught in its grip. Its claws were sunk deep into his back—or was he clinging to it? Clary thought she saw the gleam of a seraph blade, or it might only have been the shimmer of Izzy’s whip as it reached up, and then fell back to earth in a brightening coil.

Alec swore, and let an arrow fly. It shot upward, piercing the darkness; a second later a heaving dark mass plummeted to earth and hit the ground with a whump that sent up a cloud of powdery ash.

They all stared. Splayed, the demon was large, almost the size of a horse, with a dark green, turtle-like body; limp, leathery wings; six centipede-like clawed appendages; and a long stem of a neck that ended in a circle of eyes and jagged, uneven teeth. The shaft of Alec’s arrow protruded from its side.

Jace was kneeling on its back, a seraph blade in his hand. He plunged it down into the back of the creature’s neck viciously, over and over, sending up small geysers of black ichor that sprayed his clothes and face. The demon gave a squealing gurgle and slumped, its multiple red eyes going blank and lightless.

Jace slid from its back, breathing hard. The seraph blade had already begun to warp and twist with ichor; he tossed it to the side and looked levelly at the small group of his friends, all staring at him with expressions of astonishment.

“That,” he said, “was me pissed off.”

Alec made a sound halfway between a groan and an expletive, and lowered his bow. His black hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat.

“You don’t all have to look so worried,” Jace said. “I was doing fine.” Clary, light-headed with relief, gasped. “Fine? If your definition of ‘fine’ suddenly includes becoming a snack for a flying death turtle, then we are going to have to have words, Jace Lightwood—”

“It didn’t vanish,” Simon interrupted, looking as stunned as the rest of them. “The demon. It didn’t vanish when you killed it.”

“No, it didn’t,” Isabelle said. “Which means its home dimension is here.” Her head was craned back, and she was studying the sky. Clary could see the gleam of a newly applied Farsighted rune on her neck. “And apparently these demons can go out in the daylight.

Probably because the sun here is almost burnt out. We need to get out of this area.” Simon coughed loudly. “What were you all saying about taking shelter in the caves being a bad idea?”

“Actually, that was just Jace,” said Alec. “Seems like a fine idea to me.” Jace glared at them both, and scrubbed a hand across his face, succeeding in smearing the black ichor across his cheek. “Let’s check the caves out. We’ll find a small one, scout it thoroughly before we rest. I’ll take first watch.”

Alec nodded and started to move toward the nearest cave entrance. The rest of them followed; Clary fell into step beside Jace. He was silent, lost in thought; under the heavy cloud cover, his hair glinted a dull gold, and she could see the massive rips in the back of his gear jacket where the demon’s claws had taken hold. The corner of his mouth quirked up suddenly.

“What?” Clary demanded. “Is something funny?”

“ ‘Flying death turtle’?” he said. “Only you.”

“ ‘Only me’? Is that good or bad?” she asked as they reached the cave entrance, looming up before them like an open, dark mouth.

Even in the shadows his smile was quicksilver. “It’s perfect.” They made it only a few feet into the tunnel before they found the way blocked with a metal gate. Alec cursed, looking back over his shoulder. The cave entrance was just behind them, and through it Clary could see orange sky and dark, circling shapes.

“No—this is good,” Jace said, stepping closer to the gate. “Look. Runes.” Runes were indeed worked into the curves of the metal: some familiar, some Clary didn’t know. Still, they spoke to her of protection, of the fending off of demonic forces, a whisper in the back of her head. “They’re protection runes,” she said. “Protection against demons.”

“Good,” said Simon, casting another anxious glance back over his shoulder. “Because the demons are coming—fast.”

Jace shot a glance behind them, then seized the gate and yanked at it. The lock burst, shedding flakes of rust. He pulled again, harder, and the gate swung open; Jace’s hands were shimmering with suppressed light, and the metal where he had touched it looked blackened.

He ducked into the darkness beyond, and the others followed, Isabelle reaching for her witchlight. Simon came after, then Alec last, reaching out to slam the gate shut behind them. Clary took a moment to add a locking rune, just to be sure.

Izzy’s witchlight flared up, illuminating the fact that they were standing in a tunnel that snaked forward into darkness. The walls were smooth, marbled gneiss, carved over and over again with runes of protection, holiness, and defense. The floor was sanded stone, easy to walk on. The air grew clearer as they made their way deeper into the mountain, the taint of fog and demons slowly receding until Clary was breathing more easily than she had since they had come to this realm.

They emerged at last into a large circular space, clearly crafted by human hands. It looked like the inside of a cathedral dome: round, with a massive ceiling arching overhead.

There was a fire pit in the center of the room, long gone cold. White stone gems had been set into the ceiling. They glowed softly, filling the room with dim illumination. Isabelle lowered her witchlight, letting it blink off in her hand.

“I think this was a place to hide,” Alec said in a hushed voice. “Some sort of last barricade where whoever lived here once would be safe from the demons.”

“Whoever lived here once knew rune magic,” Clary said. “I don’t recognize them all, but I can feel what they mean. They’re holy runes, like Raziel’s.” Jace slung his pack off his shoulders and let it slide to the ground. “We’re sleeping here tonight.”

Alec looked dubious. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

“We’ll scout the tunnels,” Jace said. “Clary, come with me. Isabelle, Simon, take the east corridor.” He frowned. “Well, we’re going to call it the east corridor. Here’s hoping this is still accurate in the demon realms.” He tapped the compass rune on his forearm, which was one of the first Marks most Shadowhunters received.

Isabelle dropped her pack, took out two seraph blades, and slid them into holsters on her back. “Fine.”

“I’ll go with you,” Alec said, looking at Isabelle and Simon with suspicious eyes.

“If you must,” said Isabelle with exaggerated indifference. “I should warn you we’ll be making out in the dark. Big, sloppy make-outage.”

Simon looked startled. “We are—” he began, but Isabelle stomped on his toe, and he quieted.

“ ‘ Make-outage’?” said Clary. “Is that a word?”

Alec looked ill. “I suppose I could stay here.”

Jace grinned and tossed him a stele. “Make a fire,” he said. “Cook us a pie or something. This demon-hunting is hungry work.”

Alec drove the stele into the sand of the pit and began drawing the rune for fire. He appeared to be muttering something about how Jace wouldn’t like it if he woke up in the morning with all of his hair shaved off.

Jace grinned at Clary. Under the ichor and blood, it was a ghost of his old, impish grin, but good enough. She took out Heosphoros. Simon and Isabelle had already disappeared down the east-facing tunnel; she and Jace turned the other way, which sloped slightly downward. As they fell into step, Clary heard Alec yell from behind them, “And your eyebrows, too!”

Dryly, Jace chuckled.

Maia wasn’t sure what she’d thought being pack leader would be like, but it hadn’t been this.

She was sitting on the big desk in the lobby of the Second Precinct building, Bat in the swivel chair behind her, patiently explaining various aspects of wolf pack administration: how they communicated with the remaining members of the Praetor Lupus in England, how messages were sent back and forth from Idris, even how they managed orders placed at the Jade Wolf restaurant. They both looked up when the doors burst open and a blue-skinned warlock woman in nurse’s scrubs stalked into the room, followed by a tall man in a sweeping black coat.

“Catarina Loss,” Bat said, by way of introduction. “Our new pack leader, Maia Roberts—”

Catarina waved him away. She was very blue, almost a sapphire color, and had glossy white hair piled into a bun. Her scrubs had trucks on them. “This is Malcolm Fade,” she said, gesturing to the tall man beside her. “High Warlock of Los Angeles.” Malcolm Fade inclined his head. He had angular features, hair the color of paper, and his eyes were purple. Really purple, a color no human eyes ever were. He was attractive, Maia thought, if you liked that sort of thing. “Magnus Bane is missing!” he announced, as if it were the title of a picture book.

“And so is Luke,” said Catarina grimly.

“Missing?” Maia echoed. “What do you mean, missing?”

“Well, not missing exactly. Kidnapped,” said Malcolm, and Maia dropped the pen she was holding. “Who knows where they could be?” He sounded as if the whole thing was rather exciting and he was sad not to be a greater part of it.

“Is Sebastian Morgenstern responsible?” Maia asked Caterina.

“Sebastian captured all the Downworld representatives. Meliorn, Magnus, Raphael, and Luke. And Jocelyn, too. He’s holding them, he says, unless the Clave agrees to give him Clary and Jace.”

“And if they don’t?” asked Leila. Catarina’s dramatic entrance had brought the pack out, and they were filing into the room, draping themselves over the stairwell, and huddling up to the desk in the curious manner of lycanthropes.

“Then he’ll kill the representatives,” said Maia. “Right?”

“The Clave must know that if they let him do that, then Downworlders will rebel,” Bat said. “It would be tantamount to declaring that the lives of four Downworlders are worth less than the safety of two Shadowhunters.”

Not just two Shadowhunters, Maia thought. Jace was difficult and prickly, and Clary had been reserved at first, but they had fought for her and with her; they had saved her life and she had saved theirs. “Handing Jace and Clary over would be murdering them,” Maia said. “And with no real guarantee that we’d get Luke back. Sebastian lies.” Catarina’s eyes flashed. “If the Clave doesn’t at least make a gesture toward getting Magnus and the others back, they won’t just lose the Downworlders on their Council.

They’ll lose the Accords.”

Maia was quiet for a moment; she was conscious of all the eyes on her. The other wolves watching for her reaction. For their leader’s reaction.

She straightened. “What is the word from the warlocks? What are they doing? What about the Fair Folk and the Night’s Children?”

“Most of the Downworlders don’t know,” said Malcolm. “I happen to have an informant. I shared the news with Catarina because of Magnus. I thought she ought to know. I mean, this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. Kidnapping! Ransoms! Love, sundered by tragedy!”

“Shut up, Malcolm,” said Catarina. “This is why no one ever takes you seriously.” She turned to Maia. “Look. Most of Downworld knows that the Shadowhunters packed up and went to Idris, of course; they don’t know why, though. They’re waiting for news from their representatives, which of course hasn’t come.”

“But that situation can’t hold,” said Maia. “Downworld will find out.”

“Oh, they’ll find out,” said Malcolm, looking as if he were trying hard to be serious.

“But you know Shadowhunters; they keep themselves to themselves. Everyone knows about Sebastian Morgenstern, of course, and the Dark Nephilim, but the attacks on the Institutes have been kept fairly quiet.”

“They have the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth working on a cure for the effects of the Infernal Cup, but even they don’t know how urgent the situation is, or what’s been happening in Idris,” Catarina said. “I fear the Shadowhunters will wipe themselves out with their own secrecy.” She looked even bluer than before; her color seemed to change with her mood.

“So why come here to us, to me?” Maia asked.

“Because Sebastian already brought his message to you through his attack on the Praetor,” Catarina replied. “And we know you’re close with the Shadowhunters—the Inquisitor’s children and Sebastian’s own sister, for instance. You know as much as we do, maybe more, about what’s going on.”

“I don’t know that much,” Maia admitted. “The wards around Idris have been making it hard for messages to get through.”

“We can help with that,” said Catarina. “Can’t we, Malcolm?”

“Hmm?” Malcolm was idly wandering around the station, stopping to stare at things Maia thought of as everyday—a banister railing, a cracked tile in the wall, a pane of window glass—as if they were revelatory. The pack watched him in puzzlement.

Catarina sighed. “Don’t mind him,” she said to Maia in an undertone. “He’s quite powerful, but something happened to him at the beginning of last century, and he’s never been quite right since. He’s pretty harmless.”

“Help? Of course we can help,” Malcolm said, turning around to face them. “You need to get a message through? There’s always carrier kittens.”

“You mean pigeons,” said Bat. “Carrier pigeons.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Carrier kittens. They’re so cute, no one can deny them. Fix your mouse problem, too.”

“We don’t have a mouse problem,” said Maia. “We have a megalomaniac problem.” She looked at Catarina. “Sebastian’s determined to drive wedges between Downworlders and Shadowhunters. Kidnapping the representatives, attacking the Praetor, he won’t stop there. All of Downworld will know soon enough what’s going on. The question is, where will they stand?”

“We will stand bravely with you!” Malcolm announced. Catarina looked darkly at him, and he quailed. “Well, we will stand bravely near you. Or at least within earshot.” Maia gave him a hard look. “So no guarantees, basically?” Malcolm shrugged. “Warlocks are independent. And hard to get hold of. Like cats, but with fewer tails. Well, there are some tails. I don’t have one myself—”

“Malcolm,” said Catarina.

“The thing is,” Maia said, “either the Shadowhunters win or Sebastian does, and if he does, he’ll come for us, for all Downworlders. All he wants is to turn this world into a wasteland of ashes and bone. None of us will survive.”

Malcolm looked faintly alarmed, though not anywhere near as alarmed, Maia thought, as he ought to. His overwhelming aspect was one of innocent, childlike glee; he had none of Magnus’s wise mischief. She wondered how old he was.

“I don’t think we can get into Idris to fight beside them, like we did before,” Maia went on. “But we can try to get the word out. Reach other Downworlders before Sebastian does.

He’ll try to recruit them; we have to make them understand what joining up with him will mean.”

“The destruction of this world,” said Bat.

“There are High Warlocks in various cities; they’ll probably consider the issue. But we’re loners, like Malcolm said,” replied Catarina. “The Fair Folk are unlikely to talk to any of us; they never do—”

“And who cares what the vampires do?” snapped Leila. “They turn on their own, anyway.”

“No,” said Maia after a moment. “No, they can be loyal. We need to meet with them.

It’s high time the leaders of the New York pack and vampire clan formed an alliance.” A shocked murmur ran around the room. Werewolves and vampires didn’t parley unless brought together by a larger outside force, like the Clave.

She reached her hand out to Bat. “Pen and paper,” she said, and he gave it to her. She scrawled a quick note, tore off a sheet of paper, and handed it to one of the younger wolf pups. “Take this to Lily at the Dumort,” she said. “Tell her I want to meet with Maureen Brown. She can pick a neutral location; we’ll approve it before the meeting. Tell them it should be as soon as possible. The lives of both our representative and theirs might depend on it.”

“I want to be mad at you,” Clary said. They were making their way down the snaking tunnel; Jace was holding her witchlight, its illumination guiding them. She was reminded of the first time he had pressed one of the smooth carved stones into her hand. Every Shadowhunter should have their own witchlight rune-stone.

“Oh?” Jace said, casting a wary glance at her. The ground under their feet was polished smooth, and the walls of the corridor curved inward gracefully. Every few feet a new rune was carved into the stone. “What for?”

“Risking your life,” she said. “Except you didn’t, really. You were just standing there and the demon grabbed you. Admittedly, you were being obnoxious to Simon.”

“If a demon grabbed me every time I was obnoxious to Simon, I’d have died the day you met me.”

“I just . . .” She shook her head. Her vision was blurring with exhaustion, and her chest ached with longing for her mother, for Luke. For home. “I don’t know how I got here.”

“I could probably retrace our steps,” Jace said. “Straight through the faerie corridor, left at the decimated village, right at the blasted plain of the damned, sharp U-turn at the heap of dead demon—”

“You know what I mean. I don’t know how I got here. My life was ordinary. I was ordinary—”

“You’ve never been ordinary,” Jace said, his voice very quiet. Clary wondered if she’d ever stop being dizzied by his sudden transformations from humor to seriousness and back again.

“I wanted to be. I wanted to have a normal life.” She glanced down at herself, dusty boots and stained gear, her weapons glittering at her belt. “Go to art school.”

“Marry Simon? Have six kids?” There was a slight edge to Jace’s voice now. The corridor made a sharp right turn, and he disappeared around it. Clary quickened her step to catch up with him—

And gasped. They had come out of the tunnel into an enormous cavern, half-filled with an underground lake. The cavern stretched out into the shadows. It was beautiful, the first beautiful thing Clary had seen since they’d entered the demon realm. The roof of the cave was folded stone, formed by years of trickling water, and it glowed with the intense blue shimmer of bioluminescent moss. The water below was just as blue, a deep glowing twilight, with pillars of quartz jutting up here and there like rods of crystal.

The path opened out into a shallow beach of fine, very powdery sand, nearly as soft as ash, that led down to the water. Jace moved down the beach and crouched by the water, thrusting his hands into it. Clary came up behind him, her boots sending up puffs of sand, and knelt down as he splashed water over his face and neck, scrubbing at the stains of black ichor.

“Be careful—” She caught at his arm. “The water could be poisonous.” He shook his head. “It’s not. Look under the surface.”

The lake was clear, glassine. The bottom was smooth stone, carved all over with runes that emitted a faint glow. They were runes that spoke of purity, healing, and protection.

“I’m sorry,” Jace said, snapping her out of her reverie. His hair was wet, plastered to the sharp curves of his cheekbones and temples. “I shouldn’t have said that about Simon.” Clary put her hands into the water. Small ripples spread from the movement of her fingers. “You have to know I wouldn’t wish for a different life,” she said. “This life brought me you.” She cupped her hands, bringing the water to her mouth. It was cold and sweet, reviving her flagging energy.

He gave her one of his real smiles, not just a quirk of the mouth. “Hopefully not just me.”

Clary searched for words. “This life is real,” she said. “The other life was a lie. A dream.

It’s just that . . .”

“You haven’t really been drawing,” he said. “Not since you started training. Not seriously.”

“No,” she said quietly, because it was true.

“I wonder sometimes,” he said. “My father—Valentine, I mean—loved music. He taught me to play. Bach, Chopin, Ravel. And I remember once asking why the composers were all mundanes. There were no Shadowhunters who had written music. And he said that in their souls, mundanes have a creative spark, but our souls hold a warrior spark, and both sparks can’t exist in the same place, any more than a flame can divide itself.”

“So you think the Shadowhunter in me . . . is driving out the artist in me?” Clary said.

“But my mother painted—I mean, paints.” She bit back the pain of having thought of Jocelyn in the past tense, even briefly.

“Valentine said that was what Heaven had given to mundanes, artistry and the gift of creation,” said Jace. “That was what made them worth protecting. I don’t know if there was any truth to any of that,” he added. “But if people have a spark in them, then yours burns the brightest I know. You can fight and draw. And you will.” Impulsively Clary leaned in to kiss him. His lips were cool. He tasted like sweet water and like Jace, and she would have leaned farther into the kiss, but a sharp zap, like static electricity, passed between them; she sat back, her lips stinging.

“Ouch,” she said ruefully. Jace looked wretched. She reached out to touch his damp hair. “Earlier, with the gate. I saw your hands spark. The heavenly fire—”

“I don’t have it under control here, not like I did at home,” Jace said. “There’s something about this world. It feels like it’s pushing the fire closer to the surface.” He looked down at his hands, from which the glow was fading. “I think we both need to be careful. This place is going to affect us more than it does the others. Higher concentration of angel blood.”

“So we’ll be careful. You can control it. Remember the exercises Jordan did with you—”

“Jordan’s dead.” His voice was tight as he stood up, brushing sand from his clothes. He held out a hand to help her up from the ground. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to Alec before he decides Isabelle and Simon are having sex off in the caves and starts freaking out.”

“You know everyone thinks we’re off having sex,” said Simon. “They’re probably freaking out.”

“Hmph,” Isabelle said. The glow of her witchlight bounced off the runed walls of the cave. “As if we’d have sex in a cave surrounded by hordes of demons. This is reality, Simon, not your fevered imagination.”

“There was a time in my life when the idea that I might have sex one day seemed more likely than being surrounded by hordes of demons, I’ll have you know,” he said, maneuvering around a pile of tumbled rocks. The whole place reminded him of a trip to the Luray Caverns in Virginia that he’d taken with his mother and Rebecca in middle school. He could see the glitter of mica in the rocks with his vampire sight; he didn’t need Isabelle’s witchlight to guide him, but he imagined she did, so said nothing about it.

Isabelle muttered something; he wasn’t sure what, but he had a feeling it wasn’t complimentary.

“Izzy,” he said. “Is there a reason you’re so angry with me?” Her next words came out on a sighing rush that sounded like “youerensupposedbhere.” Even with his amplified hearing, he could make no sense of it. “What?” She swung around on him. “You weren’t supposed to be here!” she said, her voice bouncing off the tunnel walls. “When we left you in New York, it was so you would be safe—”

“I don’t want to be safe,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

“You want to be with Clary.”

Simon paused. They were facing each other across the tunnel, both of them still now, Isabelle’s hands in fists. “Is that what this is about? Clary?” She was silent.

“I don’t love Clary that way,” he said. “She was my first love, my first crush. But what I feel about you is totally different—” He held up a hand as she started to shake her head.

“Hear me out, Isabelle,” he said. “If you’re asking me to choose between you and my best friend, then yes, I won’t choose. Because no one who loved me would force to me make such a pointless choice; it would be like I asked you to choose between me and Alec. Does it bother me seeing Jace and Clary together? No, not at all. In their own incredibly weird way they’re great for each other. They belong together. I don’t belong with Clary, not like that. I belong with you.”

“Do you mean that?” She was flushed, color high up in her cheeks.

He nodded.

“Come here,” she said, and he let her pull him toward her, until he was flush up against her, the rigidity of the cave wall behind them forcing her to curve her body against his. He felt her hand slide up under the back of his T-shirt, her warm fingers bumping gently over the knobs of his spine. Her breath stirred his hair, and his body stirred too, just from being this close to her.

“Isabelle, I love—”

She slapped his arm, but it wasn’t an angry slap. “Not now.” He nuzzled down into her neck, into the sweet smell of her skin and blood. “Then when?”

She suddenly jerked back, leaving him feeling the unpleasant sensation of having had a bandage ripped away with no ceremony. “Did you hear that?” He was about to shake his head, when he did hear it—what sounded like a rustle and a cry, coming from the part of the tunnel they hadn’t explored yet. Isabelle took off at a run, her witchlight bouncing wildly off the walls, and Simon, cursing the fact that Shadowhunters were Shadowhunters above all else, followed her.

The tunnel had only one more curve before it ended in the remains of a shattered metal gate. Beyond what was left of the gate, a plateau of stone that sloped down to a blasted landscape. The plateau was rough, shingled with rock and heaps of weathered stone.

Where it met the sand below, the desert started up again, dotted here and there with black, twisted trees. Some of the clouds had cleared, and Isabelle, looking up, made a little gasping noise. “Look at the moon,” she said.

Simon looked—and started. It wasn’t so much a moon as moons, as if the moon itself had been cracked apart into three pieces. They floated, jagged-edged, like shark’s teeth scattered in the sky. Each gave off a dull glow, and in the broken moonlight Simon’s vampire vision picked out the circling movements of creatures. Some seemed like the flying thing that had seized Jace earlier; others had a distinctly more insectile look. All were hideous. He swallowed.

“What can you see?” Isabelle asked, knowing that even a Farsighted rune wouldn’t give her better vision than Simon’s, especially here, where runes faded so quickly.

“There are demons out there. A lot. Mostly airborne.”

Isabelle’s tone was grim. “So they can come out during the day, but they’re more active at night.”

“Yeah.” Simon strained his eyes. “There’s more. There’s a stone plateau that goes for a distance, and then it drops off and there’s something behind it, something shimmering.”

“A lake, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Simon said. “It almost looks like—”

“Like what?”

“Like a city,” he said reluctantly. “Like a demon city.”

“Oh.” He saw the implications hit Isabelle, and for a moment she paled; then, being Izzy, she straightened up and nodded, turning away, away from the wrecked and shattered ruins of a world. “We’d better get back and tell the others.” Stars carved out of granite hung from the ceiling on silver chains. Jocelyn lay on the stone pallet that served as a bed and stared up at them.

She’d already shouted herself hoarse, clawed at the door—thick, made out of oak with steel hinges and bolts—until her hands were bloody, searched her things for a stele, and slammed her fist against the wall so hard she had bruises down her forearm.

Nothing had happened. She’d hardly expected it. If Sebastian was anything like his father—and Jocelyn expected that he was a great deal like his father—then he was nothing if not thorough.

Thorough, and creative. She’d found the pieces of her stele in a heap in one of the corners, shattered and unusable. She still wore the same clothes she’d been wearing at Meliorn’s parody of a dinner party, but her shoes had been taken. Her hair had been shorn to just below her shoulders, the ends ragged, as if it had been cut with a blunt razor.

Small, colorful cruelties that spoke of an awful, patient nature. Like Valentine, Sebastian could wait to get what he wanted, but he would make the waiting hurt.

The door rattled and opened. Jocelyn leaped to her feet, but Sebastian was already in the room, the door shut securely behind him with the snick of a lock. He grinned at her.

“Finally awake, Mother?”

“I’ve been awake,” she said. She placed one foot carefully behind the other, giving herself balance and leverage.

He snorted. “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve no intention of attacking you.” She said nothing, just watched him as he paced closer. The light that flooded through the narrow windows was bright enough to reflect off his pale white hair, to illuminate the planes of his face. She could see little of herself there. He was all Valentine. Valentine’s face, his black eyes, the gestures of a dancer or an assassin. Only his frame, tall and slender, was hers.

“Your werewolf is safe,” he said. “For now.”

Jocelyn resolutely ignored the quick skip of her heart. Show nothing on your face.

Emotion was weakness—that had been Valentine’s lesson.

“And Clary,” he said. “Clary is also safe. If you care, of course.” He paced around her, a slow, considering circle. “I never could be quite sure. After all, a mother heartless enough to abandon one of her children—”

“You weren’t my child,” she blurted, and then closed her mouth sharply. Don’t give in to him, she thought. Don’t show weakness. Don’t give him what he wants.

“And yet you kept the box,” he said. “You know what box I mean. I left it in the kitchen at Amatis’s for you; a little gift, something to remind you of me. How did you feel when you found it?” He smiled, and there was nothing in his smile of Valentine, either.

Valentine had been human; he had been a human monster. Sebastian was something else again. “I know you took it out every year and wept over it,” he said. “Why did you do that?”

She said nothing, and he reached over his shoulder to tap the hilt of the Morgenstern blade, strapped to his back. “I suggest you answer me,” he said. “I would have no compunction about cutting off your fingers, one by one, and using them to fringe a very small rug.”

She swallowed. “I cried over the box because my child was stolen from me.”

“A child you never cared about.”

“That isn’t true,” she said. “Before you were born, I loved you, the idea of you. I loved you when I felt your heartbeat inside me. Then you were born and you were—”

“A monster?”

“Your soul was dead,” she said. “I could see it in your eyes when I looked at you.” She crossed her arms over her chest, repressing the impulse to shiver. “Why am I here?” His eyes glittered. “You tell me, since you know me so well, Mother.”

“Meliorn drugged us,” she said. “I would guess from his actions that the Fair Folk are your allies. That they have been for some time. That they believe you will win the Shadowhunter war, and they wish to be on the winning side; besides, they have resented Nephilim for longer and more strongly than any other Downworlders. They have helped you attack the Institutes; they have swelled your ranks while you have recruited new Shadowhunters with the Infernal Cup. In the end, when you have grown powerful enough, you will betray and destroy them, for you despise them at heart.” There was a long pause, while she looked at him levelly. “Am I right?”

She saw the pulse jump in his throat as he exhaled, and knew she had been. “When did you guess all that?” he said through his teeth.

“I didn’t guess. I know you. I knew your father, and you are like him, in your nurture if not your nature.”

He was still staring at her, his eyes fathomless and black. “If you hadn’t thought I was dead,” he said, “if you’d known I lived, would you have looked for me? Would you have kept me?”

“I would have,” she said. “I would have tried to raise you, to teach you the right things, to change you. I do blame myself for what you are. I always have.”

“You would have raised me?” He blinked, almost sleepily. “You would have raised me, hating me as you did?”

She nodded.

“Do you think I would have been different, then? More like her?” It took her a moment before she realized. “Clary,” she said. “You mean Clary.” The name of her daughter hurt to say; she missed Clary fiercely, and at the same time was terrified for her. Sebastian loved her, she thought; if he loved anyone, he loved his sister, and if there was anyone who knew how deadly it was to be loved by someone like Sebastian, it was Jocelyn. “We’ll never know,” she said finally. “Valentine took that away from us.”

“You should have loved me,” he said, and now he sounded petulant. “I’m your son. You should love me now, no matter what I’m like, whether I’m like her or not—”

“Really?” Jocelyn cut him off midbreath. “Do you love me? Just because I’m your mother?”

“You’re not my mother,” he said, with a curl of his lip. “Come. Watch this. Let me show you what my real mother has given me the power to do.” He took a stele from his belt. It sent a jolt through Jocelyn—she forgot, sometimes, that he was a Shadowhunter and could use the tools of a Shadowhunter. With the stele he drew on the stone wall of the room. Runes, a design she recognized. Something all Shadowhunters knew how to do. The stone began to turn transparent, and Jocelyn braced herself to see what was beyond the walls.

Instead she saw the Consul’s room at the Gard in Alicante. Jia sat behind her enormous desk covered in stacks of files. She looked exhausted, her black hair liberally sprinkled with strands of white. She had a file open on the desk before her. Jocelyn could see grainy photographs of a beach: sand, blue-gray sky.

“Jia Penhallow,” Sebastian said.

Jia’s head jerked up. She rose to her feet, the file sliding to the floor in a mess of paper.

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

“You don’t recognize me?” Sebastian said, a smirk in his voice.

Jia stared desperately ahead of her. It was obvious that whatever she was looking at, the image wasn’t clear. “Sebastian,” she breathed. “But it hasn’t been two days yet.” Jocelyn pushed past him. “Jia,” she said. “Jia, don’t listen to anything he says. He’s a liar—”

“It’s too soon,” Jia said, as if Jocelyn hadn’t spoken, and Jocelyn realized, to her horror, that Jia couldn’t see or hear her. It was as if she weren’t there. “I may not have an answer for you, Sebastian.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Sebastian said. “Don’t you?”

Jia straightened her shoulders. “If you insist,” she said icily. “The Clave has discussed your request. We will not deliver to you either Jace Lightwood or Clarissa Fairchild—”

“Clarissa Morgenstern,” Sebastian said, a muscle in his cheek twitching. “She is my sister.”

“I call her by the name she prefers, as I call you,” said Jia. “We will not make a bargain in our blood with you. Not because we think it is more valuable than Downworlder blood.

Not because we do not want our prisoners back. But because we cannot condone your tactics of fear.”

“As if I sought your approval,” Sebastian sneered. “You do understand what this means?

I could send you Luke Garroway’s head on a stick.”

Jocelyn felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. “You could,” Jia said. “But if you harm any of the prisoners, it will be war to the death. And we believe you have as much to fear from a war with us as we do from a war with you.”

“You believe incorrectly,” Sebastian said. “And I think, if you look, you will discover that it hardly matters that you’ve decided not to deliver Jace and Clary to me, all neatly wrapped up like an early Christmas present.”

“What do you mean?” Jia’s voice sharpened.

“Oh, it would have been convenient if you had decided to deliver them,” said Sebastian.

“Less trouble for me. Less trouble for all of us. But it’s too late now, you see—they’re already gone.”

He twirled his stele, and the window he had opened to the world of Alicante closed on Jia’s astonished face. The wall was a smooth blank canvas of stone once again.

“Well,” he said, slipping the stele into his weapons belt. “That was amusing, don’t you think?”

Jocelyn swallowed against a dry throat. “If Jace and Clary aren’t in Alicante, where are they? Where are they, Sebastian?”

He stared at her for a moment, and then laughed: a laugh as pure and cold as ice water.

He was still laughing when he went to the door and walked out of it, letting it lock shut behind him.

16 The Terrors of the Earth

Night had fallen over Alicante, and the stars shone down like bright sentinels, making the demon towers, and the water in the canals—half ice now—shimmer. Emma sat on the windowsill of the twins’ bedroom and looked out over the city.

Emma had always thought she would come to Alicante for the first time with her parents, that her mother would show her the places she had known growing up, the now-closed Academy where her mother had gone to school, her grandparents’ house. That her father would show her the monument to the Carstairs family he always spoke of proudly.

She’d never imagined she would first look on the demon towers of Alicante with her heart so swelled up with grief that sometimes it felt like it was choking her.

Moonlight spilled in through the attic windows, illuminating the twins. Tiberius had spent the day in a vicious tantrum, kicking the bars of the baby’s crib when he was told he couldn’t leave the house, shrieking for Mark when Julian tried to calm him down, and finally smashing his fist through a glass jewelry box. He was too young for healing runes, so Livvy had wrapped her arms around him to keep him still while Julian picked the glass out of his younger brother’s bloody hand with tweezers, and then carefully bandaged it.

Ty had collapsed into bed finally, though he hadn’t slept until Livvy, as calm as always, had lain down beside him and put her hand over his bandaged one. He was asleep now, head on the pillow, turned toward his sister. It was only when Ty was sleeping that you could see how uncommonly beautiful a child he was, with his head of dark Botticelli curls and delicate features, anger and despair smoothed away by exhaustion.

Despair, Emma thought. It was the right word, for the loneliness in Tavvy’s screaming, for the emptiness at the heart of Ty’s anger and Livvy’s eerie calm. No one who was ten should feel despair, but she supposed there was no other way to describe the words that pulsed through her blood when she thought of her parents, every heartbeat a mournful litany: Gone, gone, gone.

“Hey.” Emma looked up at the sound of a quiet voice from the doorway, and saw Julian standing at the entrance to the room. His own dark curls, shades lighter than Ty’s black, were tousled, and his face was pale and tired in the moonlight. He looked skinny, thin wrists protruding from the cuffs of his sweater. He was holding something furry in his hand. “Are they . . .”

Emma nodded. “Asleep. Yeah.”

Julian stared at the twins’ bed. Up close Emma could see Ty’s bloody handprints on Jules’s shirt; he hadn’t had time to change his clothes. He was clutching a large stuffed bee that Helen had retrieved from the Institute when the Clave had gone back to search the place. It had been Tiberius’s for as long as Emma could remember. Ty had been screaming for it before he’d fallen asleep. Julian crossed the room and bent down to tuck it against his little brother’s chest, then paused to gently untangle one of Ty’s curls before he drew back.

Emma took his hand as he moved it, and he let her. His skin was cold, as if he’d been leaning out the window into the night air. She turned his hand and drew with her finger on the skin of his forearm. It was something they’d done since they were small children and didn’t want to get caught talking during lessons. Over the years they’d gotten so good at it that they could map out detailed messages on each other’s hands, arms, even their shoulders through their T-shirts.

D-I-D Y-O-U E-A-T? she spelled out.

Julian shook his head, still staring at Livvy and Ty. His curls were sticking up in tufts as if he’d been raking his hands through his hair. She felt his fingers, light on her upper arm.

N-O-T H-U-N-G-R-Y.

“Too bad.” Emma slid off the windowsill. “Come on.”

She shooed him out of the room, onto the hallway landing. It was a small space, with a steep set of stairs descending into the main house. The Penhallows had made it clear the children were welcome to food whenever they wanted it, but there were no set mealtimes, and certainly no family meals. Everything was eaten hastily at tables in the attic, with Tavvy and even Dru covering themselves in food, and only Jules responsible for cleaning them up afterward, for washing their clothes, and even for making sure they ate at all.

The moment the door closed behind them, Julian slumped against the wall, tipping his head back, his eyes closed. His thin chest rose and fell quickly under his T-shirt. Emma hung back, unsure what to do.

“Jules?” she said.

He looked toward her. His eyes were dark in the low light, fringed by thick lashes. She could tell that he was fighting not to cry.

Julian was part of Emma’s earliest memories. They had been put in cribs together as babies by their parents; apparently she had crawled out, and bitten through her lip when she’d hit the ground. She hadn’t cried, but Julian had screamed at the sight of her bleeding, until their parents had come running. They had taken their first steps together: Emma first as always, Julian afterward, hanging determinedly on to her hand. They had started training at the same time, had gotten their first runes together: Voyance on his right hand and on her left. Julian never wanted to lie, but if Emma was in trouble, Julian lied for her.

Now they had lost their parents together. Julian’s mother had died two years before, and watching the Blackthorns go through that loss had been terrible, but this was a different experience altogether. It was shattering, and Emma could feel the breakage, could feel them coming apart and being glued back together in a new and different way.

They were becoming something else, she and Julian, something that was more than best friends but not family, either.

“Jules,” she said again, and took his hand. For a moment it lay, still and cold, in hers; then he seized her wrist and gripped it tightly.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t take care of them. Tavvy’s just a baby, Ty hates me—”

“He’s your brother. And he’s only ten. He doesn’t hate you.” Julian took a shuddering breath. “Maybe.”

“They’ll figure something out,” Emma said. “Your uncle lived through the London attack. So when this is all over, you’ll move in with him, and he’ll look after you and the others. It won’t be your responsibility.”

Julian shrugged. “I barely remember Uncle Arthur. He sends us books in Latin; sometimes he comes from London for Christmas. The only one of us who can read Latin is Ty, and he just learned it to annoy everyone.”

“So he gives bad gifts. He remembered you at Christmas. He cares enough to take care of you. They won’t have to just send you to a random Institute or to Idris—” Julian swung around to face her. “That’s not what you think is going to happen to you, is it?” he demanded. “Because it won’t. You’ll stay with us.”

“Not necessarily,” Emma said. She felt as if her heart were being squeezed. The thought of leaving Jules, Livvy, Dru, Tavvy—even Ty—made her feel sick and lost, like she was being swept out into the ocean, alone. “It depends on your uncle, doesn’t it? Whether he wants me in the Institute. Whether he’s willing to take me in.” Julian’s voice was fierce. Julian was rarely fierce, but when he was, his eyes went nearly black and he shook all over, as if he were freezing. “It’s not up to him. You’re going to stay with us.”

“Jules—” Emma began, and froze as voices drifted up from downstairs. Jia and Patrick Penhallow were passing through the corridor below. She wasn’t sure why she was nervous; it wasn’t as if they weren’t allowed full run of the house, but the idea of being caught wandering around this late at night by the Consul made her feel awkward.

“. . . smirking little bastard was right, of course,” Jia was saying. She sounded frayed.

“Not only are Jace and Clary gone, but Isabelle and Alec along with them. The Lightwoods are absolutely frantic.”

Patrick’s deep voice rumbled an answer. “Well, Alec is an adult, technically. Hopefully he’s looking after the rest of them.”

Jia made a muffled, impatient noise in response. Emma leaned forward, trying to hear her. “. . . could have left a note at least,” she was saying. “They were clearly furious when they fled.”

“They probably thought we were going to deliver them to Sebastian.” Jia sighed. “Ironic, considering how hard we fought against that. We assume Clary made a Portal to get them out of here, but as to how they’ve blocked us from tracking them, we don’t know. They’re nowhere on the map. It’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Just like Sebastian has,” said Patrick. “Doesn’t it make sense to assume they’re wherever he is? That the place itself is shielding them, not runes or some other kind of magic?”

Emma leaned farther forward, but the rest of their words faded with distance. She thought she heard a mention of the Spiral Labyrinth, but she wasn’t positive. When she straightened up again, she saw Julian looking at her.

“You know where they are,” he said, “don’t you?”

Emma put her finger to her lips and shook her head. Don’t ask.

Julian huffed out a laugh. “Only you. How did you—No, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know.” He looked at her searchingly, the way he did sometimes when he was trying to tell if she was lying or not. “You know,” he said, “there’s a way they couldn’t send you away from our Institute. They’d have to let you stay.” Emma raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it, genius.”

“We could—” he started, then stopped, swallowed, and started again. “We could become parabatai.”

He said it shyly, half-turning his face away from her, so that the shadows partially hid his expression.

“Then they couldn’t separate us,” he added. “Not ever.”

Emma felt her heart turn over. “Jules, being parabatai is a big deal,” she said. “It’s—it’s forever.”

He looked at her, his face open and guileless. There was no trickery in Jules, no darkness. “Aren’t we forever?” he asked.

Emma thought. She couldn’t imagine her life without Julian. It was just a sort of black hole of terrible loneliness: nobody ever understanding her the way he did, getting her jokes the way he did, protecting her the way he did—not protecting her physically but protecting her feelings, her heart. No one to be happy with or angry with or bounce ridiculous ideas off. No one to complete her sentences, or pick all the cucumbers out of her salad because she hated them, or eat the crusts off her toast, or find her keys when she lost them.

“I—” she began, and there was a sudden crash from the bedroom. She exchanged panicked looks with Julian before they burst back into Ty and Livvy’s room, to find Livia sitting up on the bed, looking sleepy and puzzled. Ty was at the window, a poker in his hand. The window had a hole punched through the middle of it, and the window glass was glittering across the floor.

“Ty!” Julian said, clearly terrified by the shards piled around his little brother’s bare feet. “Don’t move. I’ll get a broom for the glass—”

Ty glared out at both of them from beneath his wild dark hair. He held up something in his right hand. Emma squinted in the moonlight—was it an acorn?

“It’s a message,” Ty said, letting the poker drop from his hand. “Faeries often choose objects from the natural world to send their messages in—acorns, leaves, flowers.”

“You’re saying that’s a message from faeries?” Julian said dubiously.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Tiberius. “Of course it’s not a message from faeries. It’s a message from Mark. And it’s addressed to the Consul.”

It must be daytime here, Luke thought, for Raphael was curled in one corner of the stone room, his body tense even in sleep, his dusky curls pillowed on his arm. It was hard to tell, given that there was little to see beyond the window but thick mist.

“He needs to feed,” Magnus said, looking at Raphael with a tense gentleness that surprised Luke. He hadn’t thought there was much love lost between the warlock and the vampire. They had circled each other as long as he had known them, polite, occupying their different spheres of power within the Downworld of New York City.

“You know each other,” Luke said, realizing. He was still leaning against the wall by the narrow stone window, as if the view outside—clouds and yellowish poison—could tell him anything.

Magnus raised an eyebrow, the way he did when someone asked an obviously stupid question.

“I mean,” Luke clarified, “you knew each other. Before.”

“Before what? Before you were born? Let me make something clear to you, werewolf; almost everything in my life happened before you were born.” Magnus’s eyes lingered on the sleeping Raphael; despite the sharpness in his tone, his expression was almost gentle.

“Fifty years ago,” he said, “in New York, a woman came to me and asked me to save her son from a vampire.”

“And the vampire was Raphael?”

“No,” said Magnus. “Her son was Raphael. I couldn’t save him. It was too late. He was already Turned.” He sighed, and in his eyes suddenly Luke saw his great, great age, the wisdom and sorrow of centuries. “The vampire had killed all his friends. I don’t know why he Turned Raphael instead. He saw something in him. Will, strength, beauty. I don’t know. He was a child when I found him, a Caravaggio angel painted in blood.”

“He still looks like a child,” said Luke. Raphael had always reminded him of a choirboy gone bad, with his sweet young face and his black eyes older than the moon.

“Not to me,” said Magnus. He sighed. “I hope he survives this,” he said. “The New York vampires need someone with sense to run their clan, and Maureen’s hardly that.”

“You hope Raphael survives this?” Luke said. “Come on—how many people has he killed?”

Magnus turned cold eyes on him. “Who among us has bloodless hands? What did you do, Lucian Graymark, to gain yourself a pack—two packs—of werewolves?”

“That was different. That was necessary.”

“What did you do when you were in the Circle?” Magnus demanded.

At that, Luke was silent. Those were days he hated to think about. Days of blood and silver. Days of Valentine by his side, telling him everything was all right, silencing his conscience. “I’m worried about my family now,” he said. “I’m worried about Clary and Jocelyn and Amatis. I can’t worry about Raphael, too. And you—I thought you’d be worried about Alec.”

Magnus breathed out through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to talk about Alec.”

“All right.” Luke said nothing else, just rested against the cold stone wall and watched Magnus fiddle with his chains. A moment later Magnus spoke again.

“Shadowhunters,” he said. “They get in your blood, under your skin. I’ve been with vampires, werewolves, faeries, warlocks like me—and humans, so many fragile humans.

But I always told myself I wouldn’t give my heart to a Shadowhunter. I’ve so nearly loved them, been charmed by them—generations of them, sometimes: Edmund and Will and James and Lucie . . . the ones I saved and the ones I couldn’t.” His voice choked off for a second, and Luke, staring in amazement, realized that this was the most of Magnus Bane’s real, true emotions that he had ever seen. “And Clary, too, I loved, for I watched her grow up. But I’ve never been in love with a Shadowhunter, not until Alec. For they have the blood of angels in them, and the love of angels is a high and holy thing.”

“Is that so bad?” Luke asked.

Magnus shrugged. “Sometimes it comes down to a choice,” he said. “Between saving one person and saving the whole world. I’ve seen it happen, and I’m selfish enough to want the person who loves me to choose me. But Nephilim will always choose the world. I look at Alec and I feel like Lucifer in Paradise Lost. ‘Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is.’ He meant it in the classic sense. ‘Awful’ as in inspiring awe. And awe is well and good, but it’s poison to love. Love has to be between equals.”

“He’s just a boy,” said Luke. “Alec—he’s not perfect. And you’re not fallen.”

“We’re all fallen,” said Magnus, and he wrapped himself up in his chains and was silent.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Maia said. “Here? Seriously?” Bat rubbed his fingers over the back of his neck, ruffling up his short hair. “Is that a Ferris wheel?”

Maia turned around in a slow circle. They were standing inside the darkened massive Toys“R”Us on Forty-Second Street. Outside the windows the neon glow of Times Square lit the night with blue, red, and green. The store stretched upward, level on level of toys: bright plastic superheroes, plush stuffed bears, pink and glittery Barbies. The Ferris wheel rose above them, each metal strut carrying a dangling plastic carriage decorated with decals. Maia had a dim memory of her mother taking her and her brother to ride on the wheel when they were ten years old. Daniel had tried to push Maia over the edge and had made her cry. “This is . . . crazy,” she whispered.

“Maia.” It was one of the younger wolves, skinny and nervous, with dreadlocks. Maia had worked to cure them all of the habit of calling her “lady” or “madam” or anything else but Maia, even if she was temporary pack leader. “We’ve swept the place. If there were security guards, someone’s taken them out already.”

“Great. Thanks.” Maia looked at Bat, who shrugged. There were about fifteen other pack wolves with them, looking incongruous among the Disney princess dolls and stuffed reindeer. “Could you—”

The Ferris wheel started up suddenly with a screech and a groan. Maia jumped back, almost knocking into Bat, who took her by the shoulders. They both stared as the wheel started to turn and music began to play—“It’s a Small World,” Maia was pretty sure, though there were no words, just tinny instrumentals.

“Wolves! Oooh! Wooolves!” sang out a voice, and Maureen, looking like a Disney princess in a pink gown and a rainbow tiara, tripped barefoot out from a stacked display of candy canes. She was followed by about twenty vamps, as pale-faced as dolls or mannequins in the sickly light. Lily strode just behind her, her black hair pinned back perfectly, her heels clicking on the floor. She looked Maia up and down as if she’d never seen her before. “Hello, hello!” Maureen burbled. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

“Glad to meet you as well,” Maia said stiffly. She put a hand out for Maureen to shake, but Maureen just giggled and seized up a sparkly wand from a nearby carton. She waved it in the air.

“So sorry to hear about Sebastian killing all your wolfie friends,” Maureen said. “He’s a nasty boy.”

Maia flinched at a vision of Jordan’s face, the memory of the heavy, helpless weight of him in her arms.

She steeled herself. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Sebastian.

He’s trying to threaten Downworlders. . . .” She paused as Maureen, humming, began to climb to the top of a stack of boxes of Christmas Barbies, each one dressed in a red-and-white Santa miniskirt. “Trying to get us to turn against the Shadowhunters,” Maia went on, slightly flummoxed. Was Maureen even paying attention? “If we unite . . .”

“Oh, yes,” Maureen said, perching atop the highest box. “We should unite against Shadowhunters. Definitely.”

“No, I said—”

“I heard what you said.” Maureen’s eyes flashed. “It was silly. You werewolves are always full of silly ideas. Sebastian isn’t very nice, but the Shadowhunters are worse. They make up stupid rules and they make us follow them. They steal from us.”

“Steal?” Maia craned her head back to see Maureen.

“They stole Simon from me. I had him, and now he’s gone. I know who took him.

Shadowhunters.”

Maia met Bat’s eyes. He was staring. She realized she’d forgotten to tell him about Maureen’s crush on Simon. She’d have to catch him up later—if there was a later. The vampires behind Maureen were looking more than a little hungry.

“I asked you to come meet me so that we could form an alliance,” Maia said, as gently as if she were trying not to spook an animal.

“I love alliances,” said Maureen, and she hopped down from the top of the boxes.

Somewhere she’d gotten hold of an enormous lollipop, the kind with multicolored swirls.

She began to peel off the wrapping. “If we form an alliance, we can be part of the invasion.”

“The invasion?” Maia raised her eyebrows.

“Sebastian’s going to invade Idris,” Maureen said, dropping the plastic wrap. “He’ll fight them and he’ll win, and then we’ll divide up the world, all of us, and he’ll give us all the people we want to eat. . . .” She bit down on the lollipop, and made a face. “Ugh.

Nasty.” She spit out the candy, but it had already painted her lips red and blue.

“I see,” Maia said. “In that case—absolutely, let us ally against the Shadowhunters.” She felt Bat tense at her side. “Maia—”

Maia ignored him, stepping forward. She offered her wrist. “Blood binds an alliance,” she said. “So say the old laws. Drink my blood to seal our compact.”

“Maia, no,” Bat said; she shot him a quelling look.

“This is how it has to be done,” Maia said.

Maureen was grinning. She tossed aside the candy; it shattered on the floor. “Oh, fun,” she said. “Like blood sisters.”

“Just like that,” said Maia, bracing herself as the younger girl took hold of her arm.

Maureen’s small fingers interlaced with hers. They were cold and sticky with sugar. There was a click as Maureen’s fang teeth snapped out. “Just like—” Maureen’s teeth sank into Maia’s wrist. She was making no effort to be gentle: pain lanced up Maia’s arm, and she gasped. The wolves behind her stirred uneasily. She could hear Bat, breathing hard with the effort not to lunge at Maureen and tear her away.

Maureen swallowed, smiling, her teeth still firmly seated in Maia’s arm. The blood vessels in Maia’s arm throbbed with pain; she met Lily’s eyes over Maureen’s head. Lily smiled coldly.

Maureen gagged suddenly and pulled away. She put a hand to her mouth; her lips were swelling, like someone who’d had an allergic reaction to bee stings. “Hurts,” she said, and then fissuring cracks spread out from her mouth, across her face. Her body spasmed.

“Mama,” she whispered in a small voice, and she began to crumble: Her hair drifted to ashes, and then her skin, peeling away to show the bones underneath. Maia stepped back, her wrist throbbing, as Maureen’s dress folded away to the ground, pink and sparkling and . . . empty.

“Holy—What happened?” Bat demanded, and caught Maia as she stumbled. Her torn wrist was already beginning to heal, but she felt a little dizzy. The wolf pack was murmuring around her. More disturbing, the vampires had come together, whispering, their pale faces venomous, full of hate.

“What did you do?” demanded one of them, a blond boy, in a shrill voice. “What did you do to our leader?”

Maia stared at Lily. The other girl’s expression was cool and blank. For the first time Maia felt a thread of panic unfurl beneath her rib cage. Lily . . .

“Holy water,” said Lily. “In her veins. She put it there with a syringe, earlier, so Maureen would be poisoned with it.”

The blond vampire bared his teeth, his fangs snapping into place. “Betrayal has consequences,” he said. “Werewolves—”

“Stop,” Lily said. “She did it because I asked her to.”

Maia exhaled, almost surprised by the relief that hit her. Lily was looking around at the other vampires, who were staring at her in confusion.

“Sebastian Morgenstern is our enemy, as he is the enemy of all Downworlders,” Lily said. “If he destroys the Shadowhunters, the next thing he will do is turn his attention on us. His army of Endarkened warriors would murder Raphael and then lay waste to all the Night’s Children. Maureen would never have seen that. She would have driven us all to our destruction.”

Maia shook out her wrist, and turned to the pack. “Lily and I agreed,” she said. “This was the only way. The alliance between us, that was sincere. Now is our chance, when Sebastian’s armies are at their smallest and the Shadowhunters are still powerful; now is the time we can make a difference. Now is the time we can revenge those who died at the Praetor.”

“Who’s going to lead us?” whined the blond vampire. “The one who kills the previous leader takes up the mantle of leadership, but we can’t be led by a werewolf.” He glanced at Maia. “No offense.”

“None taken,” she muttered.

“I am the one who killed Maureen,” said Lily. “Maia was the weapon I wielded, but it was my plan, my hand behind it. I will lead. Unless anyone objects.” The vampires glanced around at one another in confusion. Bat, to Maia’s surprise and amusement, cracked his knuckles loudly in the silence.

Lily’s red lips curved. “I didn’t think so.” She took a step toward Maia, daintily avoiding the tulle dress and pile of ashes that were all that was left of Maureen. “Now,” she said.

“Why don’t we discuss this alliance?”

“I did not make a pie,” Alec announced when Jace and Clary returned to the large central chamber of the cave. He was lying on his back, on an unrolled blanket, with his head pillowed on a wadded-up jacket. There was a fire smoking in the pit, the flames casting elongated shadows against the walls.

He had spread out provisions: bread and chocolate, nuts and granola bars, water and bruised apples. Clary felt her stomach tighten, realizing only then how hungry she was.

There were three plastic bottles next to the food: two of water, and a darker one of wine.

“I did not make a pie,” Alec repeated, gesturing expressively with one hand, “for three reasons. One, because I do not have any pie ingredients. Two, because I don’t actually know how to make a pie.”

He paused, clearly waiting.

Removing his sword and leaning it against the cave wall, Jace said warily, “And three?”

“Because I am not your bitch,” Alec said, clearly pleased with himself.

Clary couldn’t help but smile. She undid her weapons belt and laid it down carefully by the wall; Jace, unbuckling his own, rolled his eyes.

“You know that wine is supposed to be for antiseptic purposes,” Jace said, sprawling elegantly on the ground next to Alec. Clary sat beside him. Every muscle in her body protested—even months of training hadn’t prepared her for the day’s draining trek across the burning sand.

“There’s not enough alcohol in wine to be able to use it for antiseptic purposes,” said Alec. “Besides, I’m not drunk. I’m contemplative.”

“Right.” Jace swiped an apple, sliced it expertly in two, and offered half to Clary. She took a bite of the fruit, remembering. Their first kiss had tasted of apples.

“So,” she said. “What are you contemplating?”

“What’s going on at home,” Alec said. “Now that they’ve probably noticed we’re gone and all that. I feel bad about Aline and Helen. I would have liked to warn them.”

“You don’t feel bad about your parents?” Clary said.

“No,” Alec said after a long pause. “They had their chance to do the right thing.” He rolled onto his side and looked at them. His eyes were very blue in the firelight. “I always thought being a Shadowhunter meant that I had to approve of what the Clave did,” he said. “I thought otherwise I wasn’t loyal. I made excuses for them. I always have. But I feel like whenever we have to fight, we’re fighting a war on two fronts. We fight the enemy and we fight the Clave, too. I don’t—I just don’t know how I feel anymore.” Jace smiled at him fondly across the fire. “Rebel,” he said.

Alec made a face and levered himself up onto his elbows. “Don’t make fun of me,” he snapped, with enough force that Jace looked surprised. Jace’s expressions were unreadable to most people, but Clary knew him well enough to recognize the quick flash of hurt across his face, and the anxiety as he leaned forward to reply to Alec—just as Isabelle and Simon burst into the room. Isabelle looked flushed, but in the manner of someone who had been running rather than someone who had been giving in to passion. Poor Simon, Clary thought with amusement—amusement that vanished almost instantly when she saw the looks on their faces.

“The east corridor ends in a door,” Isabelle said without preamble. “A gate, like the one we came in through, but it’s broken. And there are demons, the flying kind. They’re not coming near here, but you can see them. Someone should probably keep watch, just to be safe.”

“I’ll do it,” Alec said, standing up. “I’m not going to sleep anyway.”

“Me neither.” Jace scrambled to his feet. “Besides, someone should keep you company.” He looked at Clary, who offered an encouraging smile. She knew Jace hated it when Alec was angry at him. She wasn’t sure if he could feel the discord through the parabatai bond or if it was just ordinary empathy, or a little of both.

“There are three moons,” Isabelle said and sat down by the food, reaching for a granola bar. “And Simon thought he saw a city. A demon city.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Simon added quickly.

“In the books Edom has a capital, called Idumea,” said Alec. “There could be something. We’ll keep an eye out.” He bent to retrieve his bow and started off down the east corridor. Jace retrieved a seraph blade, kissed Clary quickly, and headed after him; Clary settled down on her side, staring into the fire, letting the soft murmur of Isabelle and Simon’s conversation lull her to sleep.

Jace felt the sinews in his back and neck crack with exhaustion as he lowered himself down among the rocks, sliding back until he was sitting with his back to one of the larger ones, trying not to breathe too deeply in the bitter air. He heard Alec settle beside him, the rough material of his gear scratching against the ground. Moonlight sparked off his bow as he laid it across his lap and looked out over the landscape.

The three moons hung low in the sky; each fragment looked bloated and enormous, the color of wine, and they tinged the landscape with their bloody glow.

“Are you going to talk?” Jace asked. “Or is this one of those times where you’re mad at me so you don’t say anything?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Alec said. He ran a leather-gauntleted hand over his bow, idly tapping his fingers against the wood.

“I thought you might be,” Jace said. “If I’d agreed to look for shelter, I wouldn’t have been attacked. I put us all in danger—”

Alec took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The moons had inched slightly higher in the sky, and they cast their dark glow across his face. He looked young, with his hair dirty and tangled, his shirt torn. “We knew the risks we were taking coming here with you. We signed up to die. I mean, obviously I’d rather survive. But we all chose.”

“The first time you saw me,” Jace said, looking down at his hands, looped around his knees, “I bet you didn’t think, He’s going to get me killed.”

“The first time I saw you, I wished you’d go back to Idris.” Jace looked over at Alec incredulously; Alec shrugged. “You know I don’t like change.”

“I grew on you, though,” Jace stated confidently.

“Eventually,” Alec agreed. “Like moss, or a skin disease.”

“You love me.” Jace leaned his head back against the rock, looking out across the dead landscape through tired eyes. “You think we should have left a note for Maryse and Robert?”

Alec laughed dryly. “I think they’ll figure out where we went. Eventually. Maybe I don’t care if Dad ever figures it out.” Alec threw his head back and sighed. “Oh, God, I’m a cliché,” he said in despair. “Why do I care? If Dad decides he hates me because I’m not straight, he’s not worth the pain, right?”

“Don’t look at me,” said Jace. “My adoptive father was a mass murderer. And I still worried about what he thought. It’s what we’re programmed to do. Your dad always seemed pretty great by comparison.”

“Sure, he likes you,” said Alec. “You’re heterosexual and have low expectations of father figures.”

“I think they’ll probably put that on my gravestone. ‘He Was Heterosexual and Had Low Expectations.’ ”

Alec smiled—a brief, forced flash of a smile. Jace looked at him narrowly. “Are you sure you’re not mad? You seem kind of mad.”

Alec looked up at the sky overhead. There were no stars visible through the cloud cover, only a smear of yellowish black. “Not everything is about you.”

“If you’re not doing okay, you should tell me,” Jace said. “We’re all under stress, but we have to keep it together as much as we—”

Alec whirled on him. There was disbelief in his eyes. “Doing okay? How would you be doing?” he demanded. “How would you be doing if it were Clary that Sebastian had taken?

If it were her we were going to rescue, not knowing if she was dead or alive? How would you be doing?”

Jace felt as if Alec had slapped him. He also felt as though he deserved it. It took him several tries before he could get out the next words: “I—I would be in pieces.” Alec got to his feet. He was outlined against the bruise-colored sky, the glow of the broken moons reflecting off the ground; Jace could see every facet of his expression, everything he had been keeping pent up. He thought of the way Alec had killed the faerie knight in the Court; cold and quick and merciless. None of that was like Alec. And yet Jace had not paused to think about it, to think what drove that coldness: the hurt, the anger, the fear. “This,” Alec said, gesturing toward himself. “This is me in pieces.”

“Alec—”

“I’m not like you,” Alec said. “I—I am not able to create the perfect facade at all times. I can tell jokes, I can try, but there are limits. I can’t—” Jace staggered to his feet. “But you don’t have to create a facade,” he said, bewildered.

“You don’t have to pretend. You can—”

“I can break down? We both know that’s not true. We need to hold it together, and all those years I watched you, I watched you hold it together, I watched you after you thought your father died, I watched you when you thought Clary was your sister, I watched you, and this is how you survived, so if I have to survive, then I’m going to do the same thing.”

“But you’re not like me,” Jace said. He felt as if the steady ground below him were cracking in half. When he was ten years old, he had built his life on the bedrock of the Lightwoods, Alec most of all. He had always thought that as parabatai they’d been there for each other, that he’d been there for Alec’s broken heart as much as Alec had been there for his, but he realized now, and horribly, that he had given little thought to Alec since the prisoners had been taken, had not thought how each hour, each minute, must be for him, not knowing if Magnus was alive or dead. “You’re better.” Alec stared at him, his chest rising and falling quickly. “What did you imagine?” he asked abruptly. “When we came through into this world? I saw your expression when we found you. You didn’t envision ‘nothing.’ ‘Nothing’ wouldn’t have made you look like that.”

Jace shook his head. “What did you see?”

“I saw the Hall of Accords. There was a huge victory banquet, and everyone was there.

Max—was there. And you, and Magnus, and everyone, and Dad was giving a speech about how I was the best warrior he’d ever known. . . .” His voice trailed off. “I never thought I wanted to be the best warrior,” he said. “I always thought I was happy being the dark star to your supernova. I mean, you have the angel’s gift. I could train and train . . . I’d never be you.”

“You’d never want to,” Jace said. “That’s not you.”

Alec’s breathing had slowed. “I know,” he said. “I’m not jealous. I always knew, from the first, that everyone thought you were better than me. My dad thought it. The Clave thought it. Izzy and Max looked up to you as the great warrior they wanted to be like. But the day you asked me to be your parabatai, I knew you meant that you trusted me enough to ask me to help you. You were telling me that you weren’t the lone and self-sufficient warrior able to do everything alone. You needed me. So I realized that there was one person who didn’t assume you were better than me. You.”

“There all sorts of ways of being better,” Jace said. “I knew that even then. I might be physically stronger, but you have the truest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and the strongest faith in other people, and in that way you are better than I could ever hope to be.”

Alec looked at him with surprised eyes.

“The best thing Valentine ever did for me was send me to you,” Jace added. “Your parents, sure, but mainly you. You and Izzy and Max. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been—like Sebastian. Wanting this.” He gestured at the wasteland in front of them.

“Wanting to be king of a wasteland of skulls and corpses.” Jace broke off, squinting into the distance. “Did you see that?”

Alec shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

“Light, sparking off something.” Jace searched among the shadows of the desert. He drew a seraph blade from his belt. Under the moonlight, even not yet activated, the clear adamas glowed with a ruby shine. “Wait here,” he said. “Guard the entrance. I’m going to look.”

“Jace—” Alec started, but Jace was already darting down the slope, springing from rock to rock. As he neared the foot of the rise, the rocks became paler in color, and began to crumble away under his feet as he landed on them. Eventually they gave way to powdery sand, dotted with massive arched boulders. There were a few growing things dotting the landscape: trees that looked as if they’d been fossilized in place by a sudden blast, a solar flare.

Behind him was Alec and the entrance to the tunnels. Ahead was desolation. Jace began to pick his way carefully among the broken rocks and dead trees. As he moved, he saw it again, a darting spark, something alive among the deadness. He turned toward it, placing each foot carefully, directly, in front of the other.

“Who’s there?” he called, then frowned. “Of course,” he added, addressing the darkness all around, “even I, as a Shadowhunter, have seen enough movies to know that anyone who yells ‘Who’s there?’ is going to be instantly killed.” A noise echoed through the air—a gasp, a swallow of broken breath. Jace tensed and moved forward swiftly. There it was: a shadow, evolving out of the dark into a human shape. A woman, crouched and kneeling, wearing a pale robe stained with dirt and blood.

She seemed to be weeping.

Jace tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. He had approached enough demons in his life who were pretending helplessness or who had otherwise disguised their true nature that he felt less sympathy than suspicion. “Dumah,” he whispered, and the blade flared up into light. He could see the woman more clearly now. She had long hair that fell to the ground and mixed with the scorched earth, and a circle of iron around her brow. Her hair was reddish in the shadows, the color of old blood, and for a moment, before she rose and turned to him, he thought of the Seelie Queen—

But it was not her. This woman was a Shadowhunter. She was more than that. She wore the white robes of an Iron Sister, bound under her breasts, and her eyes were the flat orange of flames. Dark runes disfigured her cheeks and brow. Her hands were clasped over her chest. She released them now, and let them fall to her sides, and Jace felt the air in his lungs turn cold as he saw the massive wound in her chest, the blood spreading across the white fabric of her dress.

“You know me, don’t you, Shadowhunter?” she said. “I am Sister Magdalena of the Iron Sisters, whom you murdered.”

Jace swallowed against his dry throat. “It’s not her. You’re a demon.” She shook her head. “I was cursed, for my betrayal of the Clave. When you killed me, I came here. This is my Hell, and I wander it. Never healing, always bleeding.” She pointed backward, and he saw the footsteps behind her that led to this place, the marks of bare feet outlined in blood. “This is what you did to me.”

“It wasn’t me,” he said hoarsely.

She cocked her head to the side. “Wasn’t it?” she said. “Do you not remember?” And he did remember, the small artist’s studio in Paris, the Cup of adamas, Magdalena not expecting the attack as he drew his blade and stabbed her; the look on her face as she fell against the worktable, dying—

Blood on his blade, on his hands, on his clothes. Not demon’s blood or ichor. Not the blood of an enemy. The blood of a Shadowhunter.

“You remember,” said Magdalena, cocking her head to the side with a small smile.

“How would a demon know the things I know, Jace Herondale?”

“Not—my name,” Jace whispered. His blood felt hot in his veins, tightening his throat, choking off his words. He thought of the silver box with the birds on it, herons graceful in the air, the history of one of the great Shadowhunter families laid out in books and letters and heirlooms, and how he had felt as if he didn’t deserve to touch the contents.

Her expression twitched, as if she didn’t quite understand what he had said, but she went on smoothly, stepping toward him across the broken ground. “Then what are you?

You have no real claim on the name of Lightwood. Are you a Morgenstern? Like Jonathan?”

Jace took a breath that scorched his throat like fire. His body was slick with sweat, his hands shaking. Everything in him screamed that he should lunge forward, should pierce the Magdalena creature with his seraph blade, but he kept seeing her falling, dying, in Paris, and himself standing over her, realizing what he had done, that he was a murderer, and how could you murder the same person twice—

“You liked it, didn’t you?” she whispered. “Being bound to Jonathan, being one with him? It freed you. You can tell yourself now that everything you did was forced on you, that you weren’t the one acting, that you didn’t drive that blade into me, but we two know the truth. Lilith’s bond was only an excuse for you to do the things you desired to do anyway.”

Clary, he thought, achingly. If she were here, he would have her inexplicable conviction to cling to, her belief that he was intrinsically good, a belief that served as a fortress through which no doubt could travel. But she was not here and he was alone in a burned, dead land, the same dead land—

“You saw it, didn’t you?” Magdalena hissed, and she was almost on him now, her eyes leaping and flaring orange and red. “This burned land, all destruction, and you ruling over it? That was your vision? The wish of your heart?” She caught at his wrist, and her voice rose, exultant, no longer quite human. “You think your dark secret is that you want to be like Jonathan, but I will tell you the true secret, the darkest secret. You already are.”

“No!” Jace cried, and brought up his blade, an arc of fire across the sky. She jerked back, and for a moment Jace thought that the fire from the blade had caught the tip of her robe alight, for flame exploded across his vision. He felt the burn and twist of veins and muscles in his arms, heard Magdalena’s scream turn guttural and inhuman. He staggered back—

And realized the fire was pouring from him, that it had burst from his hands and fingertips in waves that coursed across the desert, blasting everything in front of him. He saw Magdalena twist and writhe, becoming something hideous, tentacled and repulsive, before shivering away to ashes with a scream. He saw the ground blacken and shimmer as he fell to his knees, his seraph blade melting into the flames that rose to circle him. He thought, I will burn to death here, as the fire roared across the plain, blotting out the sky.

He was not afraid.

17 Burnt Offerings

Clary dreamed of fire, a pillar of fire sweeping through a desert landscape, scorching everything in front of it: trees, brush, shrieking people. Their bodies turned black as they crumbled away before the force of the flames, and over them all hung a rune, hovering like an angel, a shape like two wings joined by a single bar—

A scream cut through the smoke and shadow, snapping Clary out of her nightmares.

Her eyes flew open and she saw fire in front of her, bright and hot, and scrambled up, reaching for Heosphoros.

With the blade in her hand, her heartbeat ebbed slowly. This fire wasn’t raging or out of control. It was contained, the smoke floating up toward the enormous roof of the cave. It illuminated the space around it. She could see Simon and Isabelle in the glow, Izzy lifting herself out of Simon’s lap and blinking around, confused. “What—” Clary was already on her feet. “Someone screamed,” she said. “You two stay here—I’ll go see what happened.”

“No—no.” Isabelle scrambled to her feet just as Alec burst into the chamber, panting hard.

“Jace,” he said. “Something’s happened—Clary, get your stele and come on.” He turned around and darted back into the tunnel. Clary jammed Heosophoros through her belt and raced after him. She rocketed through the corridor, boots skimming over the uneven rocks, and exploded out into the night, her stele now in her hand.

The night was burning. The gray plateau of rocks tilted down toward the desert, and where the rocks met the sand there was fire—fire blasting up into the air, turning the sky gold, scorching the ground. She stared at Alec.

“Where’s Jace?” she shouted over the crackle of the flames.

He looked away from her, at the heart of the fire. “There,” he said. “Inside it. I saw it pour out of him and swallow him up.”

Clary felt her heart seize up; she staggered back, away from Alec as if he’d hit her, and then he was reaching for her, saying, “Clary. He’s not dead. If he were, I’d know it. I’d know—”

Isabelle and Simon burst out from the cave entrance behind them; Clary saw them both react to the heavenly fire, Isabelle with widened eyes, and Simon with a recoil of horror—fire and vampires didn’t mix, even if he was a Daylighter. Isabelle caught at his arm as if to protect him; Clary could hear her shouting, her words lost against the roar of flames.

Clary’s arm burned and stung. She looked down to realize that she had begun drawing on her skin, the reflex taking over from her conscious mind. She watched as a pyr rune, for fireproofing, appeared on her wrist, bold and black against her skin. It was a strong rune: She could feel the force of it, radiating outward.

She started down the slope, turning when she sensed Alec behind her. “Stay back,” she shouted at him, and held up her wrist, showing him the rune. “I don’t know if it will work,” she called. “Stay here; protect Simon and Izzy—the heavenly fire should keep the demons back, but just in case.” And then she turned away, darting lightly among the rocks, closing the distance between herself and the blaze, as Alec stood on the path behind her, hands fisted at his sides.

Up close the fire was a wall of gold, moving and shifting, colors flickering in its heart: burning red, tongues of orange and green. Clary could see nothing but flames; the heat that poured off the blaze made her skin prickle and her eyes water. She took a breath that scorched her throat, and stepped into the fire.

It wrapped her like an embrace. The world turned red, gold, orange, and swam before her eyes. Her hair lifted and blew in the hot wind, and she couldn’t tell what was its fiery strands and what was fire itself. She stepped forward carefully, staggering as if she were walking against a massive headwind—she could feel the Fireproof rune throbbing on her arm with each step—as the flames swirled up, around, and over her.

She took another scorching breath and pushed forward, her shoulders bent as if she were lifting a heavy weight. There was nothing around her but fire. She would die in the fire, she thought, burning up like a feather, not even a footprint left on the dirt of this alien world to mark that she had ever been there.

Jace, she thought, and took a final step. The flames parted around her like a curtain drawing back, and she gasped, falling forward, her knees hitting the earth hard. The Fireproof rune on her arm was fading, turning white, draining her energy along with its power. She lifted her head and stared.

The fire rose all around her in a circle, flames reaching for the scorched demon sky. In the center of the circle of flame knelt Jace; he was untouched by fire himself, on his knees, his golden head back, his eyes half-closed. His hands were flat on the ground, and from his palms poured a river of what looked like molten gold. It had threaded through the earth like tiny streams of lava, illuminating the ground. No, she thought, it was doing more than illuminating it. It was crystallizing the earth, turning it to a hard, golden material that shone like—

Like adamas. She crawled forward toward Jace, the ground under her turning from bumpy earth to a slippery glassine substance, like adamas, but the color of gold instead of white. Jace didn’t move: Like the Angel Raziel rising from Lake Lyn streaming water, he remained still as fire poured from him, and all around the ground hardened and turned to gold.

Adamas. The power of it shuddered up and through Clary, making her bones shiver.

Images bloomed in her mind: runes, looming up and then vanishing like fireworks, and she mourned their loss, so many runes she would never know the meaning of, the use of, but then she was inches from Jace, and the first rune she had ever imagined, the rune she had spent the last days dreaming of, rose up in her mind. Wings, connected by a single bar

—no, not wings—the hilt of a sword—it had always been the hilt of a sword—

“Jace!” she cried, and his eyes flew open. They were more golden than even the fire. He looked at her in utter disbelief, and she realized immediately what he had thought he was doing—kneeling and waiting to die, waiting to be consumed by the fire like a medieval saint.

She wanted to slap him.

“Clary, how—”

She reached to catch at his wrist, but he was faster than she was, and dodged her grip.

“No! Don’t touch me. It isn’t safe—”

“Jace, stop.” She held up her arm, with the pyr rune on it, shimmering silver in the unearthly glow. “I walked through the fire to get to you,” she said over the cry of the flames. “We’re here. We’re both here now, understand?”

His eyes were manic, desperate. “Clary, get out—”

“No!” She clutched at his shoulders, and this time he didn’t move back. She fisted her hands in his gear. “I know how to fix this!” she cried, and leaned forward to press her lips to his.

His mouth was hot and dry, his skin burning as she ran her hands up his neck to cup the sides of his face. She tasted fire and char and blood on his mouth and wondered if he tasted the same thing on her. “Trust me,” she whispered against his lips, and though the words were swallowed up by the chaos around them, she felt him relax minutely and nod, leaning into her, letting the fire pass between them as they breathed each other’s breath, tasting the sparks on each other’s lips.

“Trust me,” she whispered again, and reached for her blade.

Isabelle had her arms around Simon, holding him back. She knew that if she let him go, he would tear down the slope to the fire, where Clary had disappeared, and throw himself into it.

And he would go up like tinder, like gasoline-soaked tinder. He was a vampire. Isabelle held him, her hands clasped over his chest, and felt as if she could sense the hollowness under his ribs, the place where his heart didn’t beat. Her own was racing. Her hair lifted and blew back in the hot wind from the immense fire burning at the foot of the plateau.

Alec was halfway down the path, hovering; he was a black silhouette against the flames.

And the flames—they leaped toward the sky, blotting out the broken moon. Shifting and changing, a deadly beautiful wall of gold. As the flames trembled, Isabelle could make out shadows moving inside them—the shadow of someone kneeling, and then another, smaller shadow, bending and crawling. Clary, she thought, crawling toward Jace through the heart of the conflagration. She knew Clary had put a pyr rune on her arm, but Isabelle had never heard of a Fireproof rune that could withstand this kind of blaze.

“Iz,” Simon whispered. “I don’t—”

“Shh.” She held him tighter, held him as if holding him would keep her from shattering apart herself. Jace was in there, in the heart of the fire, and she couldn’t lose another brother, she couldn’t—“They’re all right,” she said. “If Jace were hurt, Alec would know.

And if he’s all right, then Clary’s all right.”

“They’ll burn to death,” Simon said, sounding lost.

Isabelle cried out as the flames leaped suddenly higher. Alec took a halting step forward and then fell to his knees, put his hands in the dirt. The curve of his back was a bow of pain. The sky was whorls of fire, spinning and dizzying.

Isabelle released Simon and bolted down the path to her brother. She bent over him, knotting her hands into the back of his jacket, hauling him upright. “Alec, Alec—” Alec staggered to his feet, his face dead white except where it was smeared black with soot. He spun, turning his back to Isabelle, shrugging down his gear jacket. “My parabatai rune—can you see it?”

Isabelle felt her stomach drop; she thought for a moment she might faint. She grabbed at Alec’s collar, pulled it down, and exhaled a hard breath of relief. “It’s still there.” Alec shrugged his jacket back on. “I felt something change; it was like something in me twisted—” His voice rose. “I’m going down there.”

“No!” Isabelle caught at his arm, and then Simon said sharply, from beside her:

“Look.”

He was pointing toward the fire. Isabelle gazed at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before realizing what he was indicating. The flames had begun to die down. She shook her head as if to clear it, her hand still on Alec’s arm, but it wasn’t an illusion. The fire was fading. The flames shrank down from towering orange pillars, fading to yellow, curling inward like fingers. She let go of Alec, and the three of them stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, as the fire dwindled, revealing a circle of slightly darkened earth where the flames had burned, and inside it, two figures. Clary and Jace.

Both were hard to see through the smoke and the red glow of the still-burning embers, but it was clear they were alive and unharmed. Clary was standing, Jace kneeling in front of her, his hands in hers, almost as if he were being knighted. There was something ritualistic about the position, something that spoke of a strange, old magic. As the smoke cleared, Isabelle could see the bright glint of Jace’s hair as he rose to his feet. They both began walking up the path.

Isabelle, Simon, and Alec broke formation and hurtled down toward them. Isabelle threw herself at Jace, who caught her and hugged her, reaching past her to clasp Alec’s hand even as he held Isabelle tightly. His skin was cool against hers, almost cold. His gear was without a single scorch or burn mark, just as the desert earth behind them showed no trace that moments ago, a massive conflagration had burned there.

Isabelle turned her head against Jace’s chest and saw Simon hugging Clary. He was holding her tightly, shaking his head, and as Clary turned a radiant smile up to him, Isabelle realized she didn’t feel a single spark of jealousy. There was nothing different about the way Simon was hugging Clary from the way she was hugging Jace. There was love there, plain and clear, but it was a sisterly love.

She broke apart from Jace and flashed a smile at Clary, who smiled shyly back. Alec moved to hug Clary, and Simon and Jace eyed each other warily. Suddenly Simon grinned—that sudden, unexpected grin that flashed out even in the worst of circumstances, and which Isabelle loved—and held his arms out toward Jace.

Jace shook his head. “I don’t care if I did just set myself on fire,” he said. “I’m not hugging you.”

Simon sighed and dropped his arms. “Your loss,” he said. “If you’d gone in, I would’ve let you, but honestly it would’ve been a pity hug.”

Jace turned to Clary, who was no longer embracing Alec but standing looking amused, with her hand on the hilt of Heosphoros. It seemed to shimmer, as if it had caught some of the light of the fire. “Did you hear that?” Jace demanded. “A pity hug?” Alec held a hand up. Rather surprisingly, Jace fell silent.

“I recognize that we’re all filled with the giddy joy of survival, thus explaining your current stupid behavior,” Alec said. “But first”—he raised a finger—“I think the three of us are entitled to an explanation. What happened? How did you lose control of the fire?

Were you attacked?”

“It was a demon,” Jace said after a pause. “It took the form of a woman I—of someone I hurt, when Sebastian possessed me. It goaded me until I lost command over the heavenly fire. Clary helped me get it back under control.”

“And that’s it? You’re both okay?” Isabelle said, half-disbelieving. “I thought—when I saw what was going on—I thought it was Sebastian. That he’d come for us somehow. That you’d tried to burn him and that you’d burned yourself up . . .”

“That won’t happen.” Jace touched Izzy’s face gently. “I have the fire under control now. I know how to use it, and how not to use it. How to direct it.”

“How?” Alec said, amazed.

Jace hesitated. His eyes flicked toward Clary, and seemed to grow darker, as if a shutter had come down over them. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“That’s it?” Simon said in disbelief. “Just trust you?”

“Don’t you?” Jace asked.

“I . . .” Simon looked at Isabelle, who glanced at her brother.

After a moment Alec nodded. “We trusted you enough to come here,” he said. “We’ll trust you to the end.”

“Although it would be really awesome if you told us the plan, you know, a little before it,” said Isabelle. “Before the end, I mean.”

Alec raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged innocently.

“Just a little before,” she said. “I like to have some preparation.” Her brother’s eyes met hers and then, a little hoarsely—as if he’d almost forgotten how to do it—he started to laugh.

To the Consul:

The Fair Folk are not your allies. They are your enemies. They hate the Nephilim and plan to betray them and bring them down. They have cooperated with Sebastian Morgenstern in attacking and destroying Institutes. Do not trust Meliorn or any other advisers from any Court. The Seelie Queen is your enemy. Do not try to respond to this message. I ride with the Wild Hunt now, and they will kill me if they think I have told you anything.

Mark Blackthorn

Jia Penhallow looked over her reading glasses at Emma and Julian, who stood nervously in front of the desk in the library of her house. A large picture window opened behind the Consul, and Emma could see the view of Alicante spread out: houses spilling down the hills, canals running toward the Accords Hall, Gard Hill rising against the sky.

Jia glanced down again at the paper they had brought her. It had been folded up with almost diabolical cleverness inside the acorn, and it had taken ages, and Ty’s skilled fingers, to get it extricated. “Did your brother write anything else besides this? A private message to you?”

“No,” Julian said, and there must have been something in the wounded tightness of his voice that made Jia believe him, because she didn’t pursue it.

“You realize what this means,” she said. “The Council will not want to believe it. They will say it’s a trick.”

“It’s Mark’s handwriting,” said Julian. “And the way he signed it—” He pointed to the mark at the bottom of the page: a clear print of thorns, made in what looked like red-brown ink. “He rolled his family ring in blood and used it to make that,” Julian said, his face flushed. “He showed me how to do it once. No one else would have the Blackthorn family ring, or know to do that with it.”

Jia looked from Julian’s clenched fists to Emma’s set face, and nodded. “Are you all right?” she said more gently. “Do you know what the Wild Hunt is?” Ty had lectured them rather extensively on it, but Emma found that now, with the Consul’s compassionate dark gaze on her, she couldn’t find words. It was Julian who spoke. “Faeries that are huntsmen,” he said. “They ride across the sky. People think that if you follow them, they can lead you to the land of the dead, or to Faerie.”

“Gwyn ap Nudd leads them,” said Jia. “He has no allegiance; he is part of a wilder magic. He is called the Gatherer of the Dead. Though he is a faerie, he and his huntsmen are not involved with the Accords. They have no agreement with Shadowhunters and do not recognize our jurisdiction, and they will not abide by laws, any laws. Do you understand?”

They looked at her blankly. She sighed. “If Gwyn has taken your brother to be one of his Hunters, it might be impossible—”

“You’re saying you won’t be able to get him back,” Emma said, and saw something in Julian’s eyes shatter. The sight made her want to leap over the desk and clobber the Consul with her stack of neatly labeled files, each with a different name on it.

One leaped out at Emma like a sign lit up in neon. CARSTAIRS: DECEASED. She tried not to let the recognition of her family name show on her face.

“I’m saying I don’t know.” The Consul spread her hands flat over the surface of the desk. “There’s so much we don’t know right now,” she said, and her voice sounded quiet and nearly broken. “To lose the Fair Folk as allies is a severe blow. Of all Downworlders, they are the subtlest enemies, and the most dangerous.” She rose to her feet. “Wait here for a moment.”

She left the room through a door in the paneling, and after a few moments of silence, Emma heard the sound of feet and the murmur of Patrick’s voice. She caught individual words—“trial” and “mortal” and “betrayal.”

She could sense Julian beside her, wound as tightly as a spring-loaded crossbow. She reached out to touch her hand lightly to his back, and drew between his shoulder blades with her finger: A-R-E Y-O-U A-ll-ll R-I-G-H-T?

He shook his head, without looking at her. Emma glanced toward the stack of files on the desk, then toward the door, then at Julian, silent and expressionless, and decided. She launched herself at the desk, plunging her hand into the stack of files, and pulled out the one labeled CARSTAIRS.

It was a bound file, not heavy, and Emma reached out to yank up Julian’s shirt. She muffled his cry of surprise with a hand over his mouth, and used the other hand to stuff the file into the back of his jeans. She pulled his shirt down over it just as the door opened and Jia walked back in.

“Would you two be willing to testify before the Council one last time?” she asked, gazing from Emma, who guessed she was probably flushed, to Julian, who looked as if he had been electrified. His gaze hardened, and Emma marveled. Julian was so gentle, she sometimes forgot that those sea-colored eyes could turn as cold as the waves off the coast in winter. “No Mortal Sword,” the Consul said. “I just want you to tell them what you know.”

“If you promise you’ll try to get Mark back,” said Julian. “And you won’t just say it, you’ll actually do it.”

Jia looked at him solemnly. “I promise that the Nephilim will not abandon Mark Blackthorn, not as long as he lives.”

Julian’s shoulders relaxed just a fraction. “Okay, then.” It bloomed like a flower against the clouded black sky: a sudden, silent explosion of flame.

Luke, standing by the window, flinched back in surprise before pressing himself against the narrow opening, trying to identify the source of the radiance.

“What is it?” Raphael looked up from where he was kneeling by Magnus. Magnus appeared to be asleep, his eyes shadowed dark crescents against his skin. He had curled himself uncomfortably around the chains that held him, and looked ill, or at least exhausted.

“I’m not sure,” Luke said, and held himself still as the vampire boy came to join him at the window. He had never felt entirely comfortable around Raphael. Raphael seemed to him like Loki or some other trickster god, sometimes working for good and sometimes for evil, but always in his own interests.

Raphael muttered something in Spanish and pushed past Luke. The flames reflected in the pupils of his dark eyes, red-gold.

“Sebastian’s work, do you think?” Luke asked.

“No.” Raphael’s gaze was distant, and Luke was reminded that the boy in front of him, though he looked an ageless, angelic fourteen, was in fact older than he was, older than Luke’s parents would have been, if they had lived—or in his mother’s case, if she had remained mortal. “There is something holy about this fire. Sebastian’s work is demon’s work. This is like the way God appeared to the wanderers in the desert. ‘By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.’” Luke raised an eyebrow at him.

Raphael shrugged. “I was brought up a good Catholic boy.” He cocked his head to the side. “I think our friend Sebastian will not like this very much, whatever it is.”

“Can you see anything else?” Luke demanded; vampire vision was more powerful even than a werewolf’s enhanced sight.

“Something—ruins, perhaps, like a dead city—” Raphael shook his head in frustration.

“Look where the fire fades. It is dying away.”

There was a soft murmur from the floor, and Luke glanced down. Magnus had rolled onto his back. His chains were long, giving him at least enough freedom of movement to curl his hands over his stomach, as if in pain. His eyes were open. “Speaking of fading . .

.”

Raphael returned to his place by Magnus’s side. “You must tell us, warlock,” he said, “if there is something that we can do for you. I have not seen you so sick.”

“Raphaell. . .” Magnus pushed a hand through his sweaty black hair. His chain rattled.

“It’s my father,” he said abruptly. “This is his realm. Well, one of them.”

“Your father?”

“He’s a demon,” Magnus said shortly. “Which shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Don’t expect any more information than that.”

“Fine, but why would being in your father’s realm make you sick?”

“He’s trying to get me to call on him,” said Magnus, propping himself on his elbows.

“He can reach me here easily. I can’t do magic in this realm, so I can’t protect myself. He can make me sick or make me well. He’s making me sick because he thinks if I get desperate enough, I’ll call on him for help.”

“Will you?” asked Luke.

Magnus shook his head, and winced. “No. It wouldn’t be worth the price. There’s always a price, with my father.”

Luke felt himself tense. He and Magnus weren’t close, but he had always liked the warlock, respected him. Respected Magnus and warlocks such as Catarina Loss and Ragnor Fell and the others, those who had worked with Shadowhunters for generations.

He didn’t like the sound of despair in Magnus’s voice now, or the echoing look in his eyes.

“Wouldn’t you pay it? If the choice were your life?”

Magnus looked at Luke wearily, and flopped back against the stone floor. “I might not be the one who pays it,” he said, and shut his eyes.

“I—” Luke began, but Raphael shook his head at him, a scolding gesture. He had hunched up by Magnus’s shoulder, his hands looped around his knees. Dark veins were visible at his temples and throat, signs that it had been too long since he had fed. Luke could only imagine the odd picture they made: the starving vampire, the dying warlock, and the werewolf keeping watch at the window.

“You know nothing of his father,” said Raphael in a low voice. Magnus was still, clearly asleep again, his breathing labored.

“And I suppose you know who Magnus’s father is?” Luke said.

“I paid a lot of money once to find it out.”

“Why? What good would the knowledge do you?”

“I like to know things,” Raphael said. “It can be useful. He knew my mother; it only seemed fair I know his father. Magnus saved my life once,” added Raphael in an emotionless voice. “When I first became a vampire, I wanted to die. I thought I was a damned thing. He stopped me from throwing myself into the sunlight—Magnus showed me how to walk on holy ground, how to say the name of God, how to wear a cross. It wasn’t magic he gave me, just patience, but it saved my life all the same.”

“So you owe him,” said Luke.

Raphael shrugged off his jacket and, in a single swift move, pushed it beneath Magnus’s head. Magnus stirred but didn’t wake. “You think about it however you would like to,” he said. “I will not give up his secrets.”

“Answer me one thing,” Luke said, the stone wall cold against his back. “Is Magnus’s father someone who could help us?”

Raphael laughed: a short, sharp bark without any real amusement in it. “You are very funny, werewolf,” he said. “Go back to your watching at the window, and if you are the sort who prays, then perhaps you should pray that Magnus’s father does not decide he wants to help us. If you trust me as regards nothing else, trust me about that, at least.”

“Did you just eat three pizzas?” Lily was staring at Bat with a mixture of distaste and amazement.

“Four,” said Bat, placing a now empty Joe’s Pizza box on top of a stack of other boxes, and smiling serenely. Maia felt a rush of affection for him. She hadn’t let him in on her plan for the meeting with Maureen, and he hadn’t complained once, just complimented her on her poker face. He’d agreed to sit down with her and Lily to discuss the alliance, even though she knew he didn’t much like vampires.

And he’d saved for her the pizza that had only cheese on it, since he knew she didn’t like toppings. She was on her fourth slice. Lily, perched daintily on the edge of the desk in the police station lobby, was smoking a long cigarette (Maia guessed lung cancer wasn’t that big a worry when you were dead already) and eyeing the pizza suspiciously. Maia didn’t care how much Bat ate—something had to fuel all those muscles—as long as he seemed happy to keep her company during the meeting. Lily had stuck to their agreement about Maureen, but she still gave Maia the shivers.

“You know,” Lily said, swinging her booted feet, “I must say I was expecting something a bit more—exciting. Less of a phone bank.” She wrinkled her nose.

Maia sighed and looked around. The lobby of the police station was full of werewolves and vampires, probably for the first time since it had been built. There were stacks of papers listing what contact information for important Downworlders they’d managed to beg, borrow, steal, and dig up—it had turned out the vampires had pretty impressive records of who was in charge where—and everyone was on cell phones or computers, calling and texting and emailing the heads of clans and packs and every warlock they could track down.

“Thank goodness the faeries are centralized,” said Bat. “One Seelie Court, one Unseelie Court.”

Lily smirked. “The land under the hill stretches far and wide,” she said. “The Courts are all we can reach in this world, that’s all.”

“Well, this world is what we’re concerned with at the moment,” said Maia, stretching and rubbing the back of her neck. She’d been calling and emailing and writing messages all day herself, and she was exhausted. The vampires had joined them only at nightfall, and were expected to work through till morning while the werewolves slept.

“You realize what Sebastian Morgenstern will do to us if his side wins,” said Lily, looking thoughtfully around the crowded room. “I doubt he has much forgiveness for anyone who works against him.”

“Maybe he’ll kill us first,” said Maia. “But he would kill us anyway. I know you vampires love the idea of reason and logic and clever, careful alliances, but that’s not how he works. He wants to burn the world down. That’s all he wants.” Lily exhaled smoke. “Well,” she said. “That would be inconvenient, considering how we feel about fire.”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Maia said, trying hard to keep the worry from her voice. “You seemed very sure we should stand against Sebastian when we talked before.”

“We walk a very dangerous line, that is all,” said Lily. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘When the cat is away, the mice will play’?”

“Of course,” said Maia, glancing over at Bat, who muttered something darkly in Spanish.

“For hundreds of years the Nephilim have kept their rules, and made sure that we kept to them as well,” Lily said. “For that, they are much resented. Now they have gone to hide themselves away in Idris, and we cannot pretend that Downworlders will not enjoy certain . . . advantages while they are gone.”

“Being able to eat people?” Bat inquired, folding a piece of pizza in half.

“It is not just vampires,” Lily said coldly. “The faeries love to tease and torment humans; only Shadowhunters prevent them. They will begin taking human babies again.

The warlocks will sell their magic to the highest bidder, like—”

“Magical prostitutes?” They all looked up in surprise; Malcolm Fade had appeared in the doorway, brushing white flakes of snow from his already white hair. “It’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“I wasn’t,” said Lily, clearly caught off guard.

“Oh, say what you like. I don’t mind,” Malcolm said brightly. “Nothing against prostitution. It keeps civilization running.” He shook snow off his coat. He was wearing a plain black suit and worn trench coat; there was nothing of Magnus’s glittering eclecticism about him. “How do you people stand snow?” he demanded.

“ ‘You people’?” Bat bristled. “Do you mean werewolves?”

“I mean East Coasters,” said Malcolm. “Who would have weather if they could avoid it?

Snow, hail, rain. I’d move to Los Angeles in a jiffy. Did you know that a jiffy is an actual measurement of time? It’s a sixtieth of a second. You can’t do anything in a jiffy, not really.”

“You know,” Maia said, “Catarina said you were pretty harmless—” Malcolm looked pleased. “Catarina said I was pretty?”

“Can we stick to the point?” Maia demanded. “Lily, if what you’re worried about is that the Shadowhunters will take it out on all Downworlders if some of us go rogue while they’re in Idris, well, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Assuring Downworlders that the Accords hold, that the Shadowhunters are trying to get our representatives back, that Sebastian is the real enemy here, will minimize the chances of chaos outside Idris affecting what happens in the case of a battle, or when all this is over—”

“Catarina!” Malcolm announced suddenly, as if remembering something pleasant. “I nearly forgot why I stopped by here in the first place. Catarina asked me to contact you.

She’s in the morgue at Beth Israel hospital, and she wants you to come as quickly as you can. Oh, and she said to bring a cage.”

One of the bricks in the wall by the window was loose. Jocelyn had been passing the time by using the metal clip of her barrette to try to pry it free. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that she could create a gap she could escape through, but she was hopeful that freeing a brick would give her a weapon. Something she could slam into Sebastian’s head.

If she could make herself do it. If she wouldn’t hesitate.

She had hesitated when he was a baby. She had held him in her arms and known there was something wrong with him, something irreparably damaged, but hadn’t been able to act on her knowledge. She had believed in some small corner of her heart that he could still be saved.

The door rattled, and she around about, sliding the barrette back into her hair. It was Clary’s barrette, something she had picked off her daughter’s desk when she’d needed to keep her hair out of the paint. She hadn’t returned it because it reminded her of her daughter, but it seemed wrong to even think of Clary here, in front of her other child, though she missed her, missed her so much that it hurt.

The door opened and Sebastian stepped through.

He wore a white knit shirt, and she was reminded again of his father. Valentine had liked to wear white. It had made him appear paler, his hair whiter, just that little bit more inhuman, and it did the same for Sebastian. His eyes looked like black paint dripped onto a white canvas. He smiled at her.

“Mother,” he said.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here, Jonathan?” He shook his head, still with the same smile on his face, and drew a dagger from his belt. It was narrow, with a thin blade like an awl. “If you call me that again,” he said, “I will put your eyes out with this.”

She swallowed. Oh, my baby. She remembered holding him, cold and still in her arms, not like a normal child at all. He hadn’t cried. Not once. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I came to ask you a question.” He glanced around the room, his expression bored. “And to show you something. Come. Walk with me.” She joined him as he left the room, with a mixture of reluctance and relief. She hated her cell, and surely it would be better to see more of the place where she was being kept?

The size of it, the exits?

The corridor outside the room was stone, big blocks of limestone slotted together with concrete. The floor was smooth, worn down by footsteps. Yet there was a dusty feel to the place, as if no one had been in it for decades, even centuries.

There were doors set into the walls at random intervals. Jocelyn felt her heart begin to pound. Luke could be behind any of those doors. She wanted to dash at them, jerk them open, but the dagger was still in Sebastian’s hand, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he knew that better than she did.

The corridor began to curve around, and Sebastian spoke. “What,” he said, “if I did tell you I loved you?”

Jocelyn clasped her hands loosely in front of her. “I suppose,” she said carefully, “that I would say that you could no more love me than I could love you.” They had reached a set of double doors. They paused in front of them. “Aren’t you supposed to pretend, at least?”

Jocelyn said, “Could you? Part of you is me, you know. The demon’s blood changed you, but did you really think that everything in you otherwise comes from Valentine?” Without answering, Sebastian shouldered the doors open and stepped inside. After a moment Jocelyn followed—and stopped in her tracks.

The room was huge and semicircular. A marble floor stretched out to a platform built of stone and wood rising against the western wall. In the center of the platform sat two thrones. There was no other word for them—massive ivory chairs overlaid with gold; each had a rounded back and six steps leading down from it. An enormous window, glass reflecting nothing but blackness, hung behind each throne. Something about the room was oddly familiar, but Jocelyn couldn’t have said exactly what.

Sebastian bounded up onto the platform and beckoned her to follow him. Jocelyn moved slowly up the few steps to join her son, who stood in front of the two thrones with a look of gloating triumph on his face. She had seen the same look on his father’s face, when he’d gazed down at the Mortal Cup. “ ‘ He will be great,’ ” Sebastian intoned, “ ‘ and he will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Devil will give him the throne of his father. And he will reign over Hell forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. ’ ”

“I don’t understand,” Jocelyn said, and her voice came out bleak and dead even to her own ears. “You want to rule this world? Some dead world of demons and destruction? You want to give orders to corpses?”

Sebastian laughed. He had Valentine’s laugh: harsh and musical. “Oh, no,” he said.

“You misunderstand me entirely.” He made a quick gesture with his fingers, something she had seen Valentine do when he had taught himself magic, and suddenly the two great windows behind the thrones were no longer blank.

One showed a blasted landscape: withered trees and scorched earth, vile winged creatures circling in front of a broken moon. A barren plateau of rocks spread out before the windows. It was populated by dark figures, each standing a little distance from the next, and Jocelyn realized that they were the Endarkened, keeping watch.

The other window showed Alicante, sleeping peacefully in the moonlight. A curve of moon, a sky full of stars, the shimmer of water in the canals. The view was one Jocelyn had seen before, and she realized with a jolt why the room she was in had seemed familiar.

It was the Council room in the Gard—transformed from an amphitheater to a throne room, but still the same arched roof, the same size, the same view of the City of Glass from what had been two great windows. Only, now one window looked out onto the world she knew, the Idris she had come from. And the other looked out onto the world she was in.

“This fortress of mine has doorways to both worlds,” said Sebastian, his tone smug.

“This world is drained dry, yes. A bloodless corpse of a place. Oh, but your world is ripe for ruling. I dream about it during the days as well as the nights. Do I burn the world slowly, with plague and famine, or should the slaughter be quick and painless—all that life, extinguished so quickly, imagine how it would burn!” His eyes were feverish. “Imagine the heights I could rise to, borne aloft on the screams of billions of people, raised up by the smoke of millions of burning hearts!” He turned to her. “Now,” he said. “Tell me I got that from you. Tell me any of that is from you.”

Jocelyn’s head was ringing. “There are two thrones,” she said.

A small crease appeared between his brows. “What?”

“Two thrones,” she said. “And I’m not a fool; I know who you intend to have sit beside you. You need her there; you want her there. Your triumph means nothing if she isn’t there to watch it. And that—that need for someone to love you—that does come from me.” He stared at her. He was biting his lip so hard, she was sure he would draw blood.

“Weakness,” he said, half to himself. “It’s a weakness.”

“It’s human,” she said. “But do you really think Clary could sit next to you here and be happy or willing?”

For a moment she thought she saw something spark in his eyes, but a moment later they were black ice again. “I’d rather have her happy and willing and here, but I’ll take simply here,” he said. “I don’t care that much about willing.” Something seemed to explode inside Jocelyn’s brain. She lunged forward, reaching for the dagger in his hand; he stepped back, evading her, and spun with a quick, graceful movement, knocking her legs out from under her. She hit the ground, rolled, and crouched. Before she could rise, she found a hand knotted in her jacket, yanking her to her feet.

“Stupid bitch,” Sebastian snarled, inches from her face, the fingers of his left hand digging into the skin below her clavicle. “You think you could hurt me? My true mother’s spell protects me.”

Jocelyn jerked back. “Let me go!”

The leftmost window exploded with light. Sebastian reeled back, surprise blooming across his face as he stared. The blasted landscape of the dead world had suddenly lit up with fire, blazing golden fire, rising in a pillar toward the broken sky. The Dark Shadowhunters were running to and fro over the ground like ants. The stars were coruscating, reflecting the fire back, red and gold and blue and orange. It was as beautiful and terrible as an angel.

Jocelyn felt the hint of a smile touch the corners of her mouth. Her heart was lifting with the first hope she had felt since she had woken up in this world.

“Heavenly fire,” she whispered.

“Indeed.” A smile played around Sebastian’s mouth. Jocelyn looked at him in dismay.

She had expected him to be horrified, but instead he looked exalted. “As the Good Book says: ‘This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it,’” he cried, and raised both arms, as if he meant to embrace the fire that burned so high and so bright beyond the window. “Waste your fire on the desert air, my brother!” he cried. “Let it pour into the sands like blood or water, and may you never stop coming—never stop coming until we are face-to-face.”

18 By the Waters of Babylon

Energy runes were all well and good, Clary thought exhaustedly as she reached the top of yet another rise of sand, but they didn’t begin to compete with a cup of coffee.

She was pretty sure she could face another day of trudging, her feet sometimes slipping ankle-deep into heaps of ash, if she just had sweet caffeine pumping through her veins. . .

.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Simon said, coming up beside her. He looked drawn and tired, his thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack. They all looked pretty drawn. Alec and Isabelle had taken watch after the incident with the heavenly fire, and had reported no demons or Dark Shadowhunters in the vicinity of their hideaway.

Still, they were all jittery, and none of them had had more than a few hours of sleep. Jace seemed to be running on nerves and adrenaline, following the thread of the tracking spell on the bracelet around his wrist, sometimes forgetting to pause and wait for the others in his mad dash toward Sebastian, until they shouted or ran to catch up with him.

“That a massive latte from the Mud Truck would make everything brighter just about now?”

“There’s a vamp place not far from Union Square where they mix just the right amount of blood into the coffee,” Simon said. “Not too sweet, not too salty.” Clary stopped; a dead branch, curling from the earth, had tangled itself in her bootlaces. “Remember when we talked about not sharing?”

“Isabelle listens to me talk about vampire things.”

Clary drew out Heosphoros. The sword, with the new rune carved black into the blade, seemed to shimmer in her hand. She used the tip of it to pry the tough, thorny branch free. “Isabelle is your girlfriend,” she said. “She has to listen to you.”

“Is she?” Simon looked startled.

Clary threw her hands up and started down the hill. The ground slanted down, pocked here and there with cracked pits, everything covered over with the endless dull sheen of dust. The air was still bitter, the sky a sallow green. She could see Alec and Isabelle standing near Jace at the foot of the hill; he was touching the bracelet on his wrist and frowning into the distance.

Something glimmered at the corner of Clary’s vision, and she stopped suddenly. She squinted, trying to see what it was. The shine of something silvery in the distance, past the stone and rubble heaps of the desert. She took out her stele and drew a quick Farsighted rune onto her arm, the burn and sting of the stele’s dull tip cutting through the fog of exhaustion in her mind, sharpening her vision.

“Simon!” she said as he caught up with her. “Do you see that?” He followed her gaze. “I caught a glimpse of it last night. Remember when Isabelle said I thought I’d seen a city?”

“Clary!” It was Jace, looking up at them, his face a pale hollow in the ashy air. She made a beckoning gesture. “What’s going on?”

She pointed again, toward what she could now see as a definite shimmer, a cluster of shapes, in the distance. “There’s something there,” she called down. “Simon thinks it’s a city—”

She broke off, because Jace had already started running in the direction she’d pointed.

Isabelle and Alec looked startled before bolting after him; Clary exhaled an exasperated breath and, with Simon at her side, followed.

They started down the slope, which was covered in loose scree, half-running and half-sliding, letting the unmoored pebbles carry them. Not for the first time, Clary truly appreciated her gear: She could only imagine how the flying bits of gravel would have torn normal shoes and pants to shreds.

She hit the bottom of the slope at a run. Jace was some distance ahead, with Alec and Isabelle just behind him, moving fast, clambering over rock cairns, hopping small rivulets of molten slag. As Clary closed in on the three of them, she saw that they were heading toward a place where the desert seemed to drop away—the edge of a plateau? A cliff?

Clary sped up, scrambling over the last of the rock heaps and nearly rolling down the final one. She landed on her feet—Simon, far more graceful, just ahead of her—and saw that Jace was standing at the edge of a massive cliff that fell away before him like the edge of the Grand Canyon. Alec and Isabelle had moved to either side of him. All three were eerily silent, staring ahead in the dim bruised light.

Something in Jace’s posture, the way he stood, told Clary even as she reached his side that there was something not right. Then she caught sight of his expression and mentally amended “not right” to “very wrong indeed.”

He was staring down into the valley below as if he were staring into the grave of someone he had loved. In the valley were the ruins of a city. An old, old city that had once been built around a hillside. The top of the hillside was surrounded by gray clouds and fog. Heaps of rock were all that was left of the houses, and ash had settled over the streets and the jagged ruins of buildings. Tumbled among the ruins, like discarded matchsticks, were broken pillars made of shining pale stone, incongruously beautiful in this ruined land.

“Demon towers,” she whispered.

Jace nodded grimly. “I don’t know how,” he said, “but somehow—this is Alicante.”

“It is a dreadful burden, to have such responsibility visited upon those so young,” said Zachariah as the door of the Council Hall closed behind Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn. Aline and Helen had gone with them, to escort them back to the house where they were staying. Both children had been nearly swaying on their feet with exhaustion by the end of their interrogation by the Council, heavy dark shadows under their eyes.

There were only a few of the Council members still left in the room: Jia and Patrick, Maryse and Robert Lightwood, Kadir Safar, Diana Wrayburn, Tomas Rosales, and a scattering of Silent Brothers and heads of Institutes. Most were chattering among themselves, but Zachariah stood by Jia’s lectern, looking at her with a deep sorrow in his eyes.

“They have endured much loss,” said Jia. “But we are Shadowhunters; many of us endure great loss at a young age.”

“They have Helen, and their uncle,” said Patrick, standing not far away with Robert and Maryse, both of whom looked tense and drawn. “They will be well taken care of, and Emma Carstairs, as well, clearly considers the Blackthorns as family.”

“Often those who raise us, who are our guardians, are not our blood,” said Zachariah.

Jia thought she had seen a special softness in his eyes when they rested on Emma, almost a regret. But perhaps she had imagined it. “Those who love us and who we love. So it was with me. As long as she is not parted from the Blackthorns, or the boy—Julian—that is the most important thing.”

Jia distantly heard her husband reassuring the former Silent Brother, but her mind was on Helen. Down in the depths of her heart, Jia worried sometimes for her daughter, who had given her heart so completely to a girl who was part-faerie, a race known for their untrustworthiness. She knew that Patrick was not happy that Aline had chosen a girl at all rather than a boy, that he mourned—selfishly, she thought—for what he saw as the end of his branch of the Penhallows. She herself worried more that Helen Blackthorn would break her daughter’s heart.

“How much credence do you give the claim of faerie betrayal?” asked Kadir.

“Entire credence,” said Jia. “It explains a great deal. How the faeries were able to enter Alicante and abscond with the prisoners from the house given to the representative of the Fair Folk; how Sebastian was able to conceal troops from us at the Citadel; why he spared Mark Blackthorn—not out of fear of angering the faeries but out of respect for their alliance. Tomorrow I will confront the Faerie Queen and—”

“With all due respect,” said Zachariah in his soft voice. “I don’t think you should do that.”

“Why not?” Patrick demanded.

Because you have information now that the Faerie Queen does not know you have, said Brother Enoch. It is rare that that happens. In war there are advantages of power, but also advantages of knowledge. Do not squander this one.

Jia hesitated. “Things may be worse than you know,” she said, and drew something from the pocket of her coat. It was a fire-message, addressed to her from the Spiral Labyrinth. She handed it to Zachariah.

He seemed to freeze in place. For a moment he simply looked at it; then he brushed a finger over the paper, and she realized he was not reading it but rather tracing the signature of the writer of the letter, a signature that had clearly struck him like an arrow to the heart.

Theresa Gray.

“Tessa says,” he said finally, and then cleared his throat, for his voice had emerged ragged and uneven. “She says that the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth have examined the body of Amalric Kriegsmesser. That his heart was shriveled, his organs desiccated. She says they are sorry, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done to cure the Endarkened. Necromancy might make their bodies move again, but their souls are gone forever.”

“Only the power of the Infernal Cup keeps them alive,” said Jia, her voice throbbing with sorrow. “They are dead inside.”

“If the Infernal Cup itself could be destroyed . . . ,” Diana mused.

“Then it might kill them all, yes,” said Jia. “But we do not have the Infernal Cup.

Sebastian does.”

“To kill them all in one sweep, it seems wrong,” said Tomas, looking horrified. “They are Shadowhunters.”

“They are not,” said Zachariah, in a voice much less gentle than Jia had come to associate with him. She looked at him in surprise. “Sebastian counts on us thinking of them as Shadowhunters. He counts upon our hesitation, our inability to kill monsters that wear human faces.”

“On our mercy,” said Kadir.

“If I were Turned, I would want to be put out of my misery,” said Zachariah. “That is mercy. That is what Edward Longford gave his parabatai, before he turned his sword on himself. That is why I paid my respects to him.” He touched the faded rune at his throat.

“Then do we ask the Spiral Labyrinth to give up?” asked Diana. “To cease searching for a cure?”

“They have already given up. Did you not listen to what Tessa wrote?” said Zachariah.

“A cure cannot always be found. At least, not in time. I know—that is, I have learned—that one cannot rely upon it. It cannot be our only hope. We must mourn the Endarkened as dead, and trust in what we are: Shadowhunters, warriors. We must do what we were made to do. Fight.”

“But how do we defend ourselves against Sebastian? It was bad enough when it was just the Endarkened; now we must fight the Fair Folk as well!” Tomas snapped. “And you’re just a boy—”

“I am a hundred and forty-six years old,” said Zachariah. “And this is not my first unwinnable war. I believe we can turn the betrayal of the faeries into an advantage. We will require the help of the Spiral Labyrinth to do it, but if you will listen to me, I will tell you how.”

Clary, Simon, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle picked their way in silence through the eerie ruins of Alicante. For Jace had been right: It was Alicante, unmistakably so. They had passed too much that was familiar for it to be anything else. The walls around the city, now crumbled; the gates, corroded with the scars of acid rain. Cistern Square. The empty canals, filled with spongy black moss.

The hill was blasted, a bare heap of rock. The marks where there had once been pathways were clearly visible like scars along the side. Clary knew that the Gard should be at the top of it, but if it still stood, it was invisible, hidden in gray fog.

At last they clambered over a high mound of rubble and found themselves in Angel Square. Clary took a breath of surprise—though most of the buildings that had ringed it had fallen, the square was surprisingly unharmed, cobblestones stretching away in the yellowish light. The Hall of Accords was still standing.

It wasn’t white stone, though. In the human dimension, it looked like a Greek temple, but in this world it was lacquered metal. A tall square building, if something that looked like molten gold that had been poured out of the sky could be described as a building.

Massive engravings ran around the structure, like ribbon wrapping a box; the whole thing glowed dully in the orange light.

“The Accords Hall.” Isabelle stood with her whip coiled around her wrist, looking up at it. “Unbelievable.”

They started up the steps, which were gold streaked with the black of ash and corrosion.

At the top of the stairs, they paused to stare at the huge double doors. They were covered with squares of hammered metal. Each one was an engraved panel showing an image. “It’s a story,” Jace said, stepping closer and touching the engravings with a black-gloved finger.

Writing in an unfamiliar language scrolled along the bottom of each illustration. He glanced over at Alec. “Can you read it?”

“Am I the only person who paid attention in language lessons?” Alec demanded wearily, but he stepped up to look more closely at the scrawl. “Well, first, the panels,” he said.

“They’re a history.” He pointed at the first one, which showed a group of people, barefoot and in robes, cowering as the clouds above them opened up and a clawed hand reached down toward them. “Humans lived here, or something like humans,” Alec said, pointing at the figures. “They lived in peace, and then demons came. And then—” He broke off, his hand on a panel whose image was as familiar to Clary as the back of her own hand. The Angel Raziel, rising out of Lake Lyn, the Mortal Instruments in hand. “By the Angel.”

“Literally,” said Isabelle. “How—Is that our Angel? Our lake?”

“I don’t know. This says the demons came, and the Shadowhunters were created to battle them,” Alec went on, moving along the wall as the panels progressed. He jabbed his finger at the scrawl. “This word, here, it means ‘Nephilim.’ But the Shadowhunters rejected the help of Downworlders. The warlocks and the Fair Folk joined with their infernal parents. They sided with the demons. The Nephilim were defeated, and slaughtered. In their last days they created a weapon that was meant to hold the demons off.” He indicated a panel showing a woman holding up a sort of iron rod with a burning stone set into the end of it. “They didn’t have seraph blades; they hadn’t developed them.

It doesn’t look like they had Iron Sisters or Silent Brothers, either. They had blacksmiths, and they developed some sort of weapon, something they thought might help them. The word here is ‘ skeptron,’ but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Anyway, the skeptron wasn’t enough.” He moved to the next panel, which showed destruction: the Nephilim lying dead, the woman with the iron rod crumpled on the ground, the rod itself cast aside. “The demons—they’re called asmodei here—burned away the sun and filled the sky with ash and clouds. They ripped fire from the earth and razed the cities to the ground. They killed everything that moved and breathed air. They drained the seas until everything in the water was dead too.”

“Asmodei,” echoed Clary. “I’ve heard that before. It was something Lilith said, about Sebastian. Before he was born. ‘The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. He will be more mighty than the asmodei.’”

“Asmodeus is one of the Greater Demons of the abysses between worlds,” said Jace, meeting Clary’s gaze. She knew he remembered Lilith’s speech as well as she did. He had shared the same vision, shown to them by the angel Ithuriel.

“Like Abbadon?” Simon inquired. “He was a Greater Demon.”

“Far more powerful than that. Asmodeus is a Prince of Hell—there are nine of them.

The Fati. Shadowhunters cannot hope to defeat them. They can destroy angels in combat.

They can remake worlds,” said Jace.

“The asmodei are Asmodeus’s children. Powerful demons. They drained this world dry and then left it for other, weaker demons to scavenge.” Alec sounded sick. “This isn’t the Accords Hall anymore. It’s a tomb. A tomb for the life of this world.”

“But is this our world?” Isabelle’s voice rose. “Did we go forward in time? If the Queen tricked us—”

“She didn’t. At least, not about where we are,” said Jace. “We didn’t go forward in time; we went sideways. This is a mirror dimension of our world. A place where history went slightly differently.” He hooked his thumbs into his belt and glanced around. “A world with no Shadowhunters.”

“It’s like Planet of the Apes,” said Simon. “Except that was the future.”

“Yeah, well, this could be our future, if Sebastian gets what he wants,” Jace said. He tapped the panel of the woman holding up the burning skeptron, and frowned, then pushed hard on the door.

It swung open with a shriek of hinges that cut the air like a knife. Clary winced. Jace drew his sword and peered cautiously through the gap in the door. There was a room beyond, filled with a grayish light. He shouldered the door open farther and slipped through the gap, gesturing for the others to wait.

Isabelle, Alec, Clary, and Simon exchanged glances, and without a word spoken, went after him immediately. Alec went first, bow drawn; then Isabelle with her whip, Clary with her sword, and Simon, eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dimness.

The inside of the Accords Hall was both familiar and unfamiliar. The floor was marble, cracked and broken. In many places great black blots spread across the stone, the remnants of ancient bloodstains. The roof above, which in their Alicante was glass, was long gone, only shards remaining, like clear knives against the sky.

The room itself was empty, save for a statue in the center. The place was filled with sickly yellow-gray light. Jace, standing facing the statue, whirled as they approached.

“I told you to wait,” he snapped at Alec. “Don’t you ever do anything I tell you to?”

“Technically you didn’t actually say anything,” Clary said. “You just gestured.”

“Gesturing counts,” Jace said. “I gesture very expressively.”

“You’re not in charge,” Alec said, lowering his bow. Some of the tension had gone out of his posture. There were clearly no demons hiding in the shadows: Nothing blocked their view of the corroded walls, and nothing but the statue remained standing in the room. “You don’t need to protect us.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes at both of them and stepped closer to the statue, craning her head back. It was the statue of a man in armor; his feet, in mail boots, rested on a golden plinth. He wore an intricate hauberk of linked stone circlets, decorated with a motif of angel wings across the chest. In his hand he carried an iron replica of a skeptron, tipped by a circular metal ornament, into which a red jewel had been set.

Whoever had carved the statue had been skilled. The face was handsome, square-jawed, with a distant, clear gaze. But they had captured more than good looks: There was a certain harshness to the set of his eyes and jaw, a twist to his mouth that spoke of selfishness and cruelty.

There were words written on the plinth, and though they were not in English, Clary could read them.

JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER. FIRST AND LAST OF THE NEPHILIM.

“First and last,” Isabelle whispered. “This place is a tomb.” Alec crouched down. There were more words on the plinth, under Jonathan Shadowhunter’s name. He read them out:

“‘And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and I will give him the Morning Star.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked.

“I think Jonathan Shadowhunter got cocky,” said Alec. “I think he thought this skeptron thing would not just save them, but it would let him rule over the world.”

“ ‘And I will give him the Morning Star,’ ” said Clary. “That’s from the Bible. Our Bible.

And ‘Morgenstern’ means ‘morning star.’ ”

“ ‘The morning star’ means a lot of things,” said Alec. “It can mean ‘the brightest star in the sky,’ or it can mean ‘heavenly fire,’ or it can mean ‘the fire that falls with angels when they’re cast down out of Heaven.’ It’s also the name of Lucifer, the light-bringer, the demon of pride.” He straightened up.

“Either way, it means that thing the statue is holding is a real weapon,” said Jace. “Like in the door engravings. You said the skeptron is what they developed here, instead of seraph blades, to hold off the demons. Look at the marks on the handle. It’s been in battle.”

Isabelle tapped the pendant around her throat. “And the red stone. It looks like it’s made from the same stuff as my necklace.”

Jace nodded. “I think it is the same stone.” Clary knew what he was going to say next before he said it. “That weapon. I want it.”

“Well, you can’t have it,” Alec said. “It’s attached to the statue.”

“It’s not.” Jace pointed. “Look, the statue’s gripping it, but they’re actually two totally separate pieces. They carved the statue and then they put the scepter into its hands. It’s supposed to be removable.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly true—” Clary began, but Jace was already putting a foot up onto the plinth, preparing to climb. He had the glint in his eye she both loved and dreaded, the one that said, I do what I want, and damn the consequences.

“Wait!” Simon darted to block Jace from climbing farther. “I’m sorry, but does anyone else see what’s going on here?”

“Nooo,” Jace drawled. “Why don’t you tell us all about it? I mean, we’ve got nothing but time.”

Simon crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been in a lot of campaigns—”

“Campaigns?” Isabelle echoed, bewildered.

“He means Dungeons and Dragons games,” Clary explained.

“Games?” Alec echoed in disbelief. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is no game.”

“That’s not the point,” Simon said. “The point is that when you’re playing D&D and your group comes across a heap of treasure, or a big sparkly gem, or a magical golden skull, you should never take it. It’s always a trap.” He uncrossed his arms and waved them wildly. “This is a trap.”

Jace was silent. He was looking at Simon thoughtfully, as if he’d never seen him before, or at least never considered him so closely. “Come here,” he said.

Simon moved toward him, his eyebrows raised. “What—oof!” Jace had dropped his sword into Simon’s hands. “Hold this for me while I climb,” Jace said, and leaped up onto the plinth. Simon’s protests were drowned out by the sound of Jace’s boots knocking against the stone as he scrambled up the statue, pulling himself up hand over hand. He reached the middle of the statue, where the carved hauberk offered footholds, and braced himself, reaching across the stone to close his hand around the handle of the skeptron.

It might have been an illusion, but Clary thought she saw the statue’s smiling mouth twist into an even crueler grimace. The red stone flared up suddenly; Jace jerked back, but the room was already full of an earsplitting noise, the terrible combination of a fire alarm and a human scream, going on and on and on.

“Jace!” Clary raced to the statue; he had already dropped from it to the ground, wincing at the awful noise. The light of the red stone was increasing, filling the room with a bloody illumination.

“Goddamn it,” Jace shouted over the noise. “I hate it when Simon is right.” With a glare Simon shoved Jace’s sword back at him; Jace took it, his gaze darting around warily. Alec had raised his bow again; Isabelle stood ready with her whip. Clary drew a dagger from her belt.

“We’d better get out of here,” Alec called. “It could be nothing, but—” Isabelle cried out, and clapped her hand to her chest. Her pendant had begun to flash, slow steady bright pulses like a heartbeat.

“Demons!” she cried, just as the sky filled with flying things. And they were things—they had heavy round bodies, like huge pale grubs, pocked with rows of suckers. They had no faces: Both ends of them terminated in massive pink circular mouths rimmed with sharks’ teeth. Rows of stubby wings lined their bodies, each wing tipped with a dagger-sharp talon. And there were a lot of them.

Even Jace paled. “By the Angel— run! ”

They ran, but the creatures, despite their girth, were faster: They were landing all around them, with ugly wet sounds. Clary thought wildly that they sounded like giant spitballs falling from the sky. The light pouring from the skeptron had vanished the moment they’d appeared, and the room was now bathed in the ugly yellowish glow of the sky.

“Clary!” Jace shouted as one of the creatures heaved itself toward her, its circular mouth open. Ropes of yellow drool hung from it.

Thump. An arrow embedded itself in the roof of the demon’s mouth. The creature reared back, spitting black blood. Clary saw Alec seize another arrow, fit it, let it fly.

Another demon reeled back, and then Isabelle was on it, her whip slashing back and forth, slicing it to ribbons. Simon had seized another demon and was holding it, his hands sinking into its fleshy gray body, and Jace plunged his sword into it. The demon collapsed, knocking Simon back to the floor: he landed on his backpack. Clary thought she heard a sound like breaking glass, but a moment later Simon was back up on his feet, Jace steadying him with a hand to the shoulder before they both turned back to the fight.

Ice had descended over Clary: the silent coldness of battle. The demon Alec had shot was writhing, trying to spit out the arrow lodged in its mouth; she stepped over to it and plunged her dagger into its body, black blood spraying up from the wounds, soaking her gear. The room was full of the rotten-garbage stench of demons, laced through with the acid of ichor; she gagged as the demon gave a last spasm and collapsed.

Alec was backing up, steadily letting arrow after arrow fly, sending the demons reeling back, wounded. As they struggled, Jace and Isabelle fell on them, slashing them to pieces with sword and whip. Clary followed their lead, leaping on another wounded demon, sawing away at the soft band of flesh under its mouth, her hand, coated in oily demon blood, slipping on the hilt of her dagger. The demon collapsed in on itself with a hiss, sending her crashing to the ground. The blade skittered out of her hand, and she threw herself after it, seized it up, and rolled to the side just as another demon lunged with an uncoiling of its powerful body.

It hit the space where she’d just been lying, and curled itself around, hissing, so that Clary found herself facing two open, gaping mouths. She readied her blade to let it fly, when there was a flash of silver-gold and Isabelle’s whip came down, slicing the thing in half.

It fell apart in two pieces, a jumbled mess of steaming internal organs pouring out.

Even through the ice of battle, Clary was nearly sick. Demons usually died and vanished before you saw much of their insides. This one was still writhing, even in two pieces, twitching forward and back. Isabelle grimaced and raised her whip again—and the twitch turned into a sudden, violent jerk as half the monster twisted backward and sank its teeth into Isabelle’s leg.

Izzy screamed, slashing down with the whip, and it released her; she fell back, her leg going out from under her. Clary leaped forward, stabbing at the other half of the demon, plunging her dagger into the creature’s back until it crumbled apart under her and she found herself kneeling in a welter of demon blood, drenched blade in her hand, gasping.

There was silence. The ringing alarm had stopped, and the demons were gone. They had all been slaughtered, but there was no joy of victory. Isabelle was on the ground, her whip curled around her wrist, blood pouring from a crescent-shaped slash in her left leg.

She was gasping, her eyelids fluttering.

“Izzy!” Alec dropped his bow and launched himself across the bloody floor at his sister.

He fell to his knees, hauling her up into his lap. He yanked the stele from her belt. “Iz, Izzy, hold on—”

Jace, who had gathered up Alec’s fallen bow, looked like he was going to throw up or fall; Clary saw with dull surprise that Simon had his hand on Jace’s arm, his fingers digging in, as if he were holding Jace up.

Alec tore at the slashed fabric of Isabelle’s gear, ripping her trouser leg open to the knee. Clary stifled a cry. Isabelle’s leg was ribboned: it looked like pictures of shark bites Clary had seen, blood and pulped tissue surrounding deep indents.

Alec put his stele to the skin of her knee and drew an iratze, and then another an inch farther down. His shoulders were shaking, but his hand was steady. Clary wrapped her hand around Jace’s and squeezed. His was ice-cold.

“Izzy,” Alec whispered as the iratzes faded and sank into her skin, leaving white remnants behind. Clary remembered Hodge, how they had drawn healing rune after healing rune on him, but his wounds had been too great: the runes had faded, and he had bled out and died despite the runes’ power.

Alec looked up. The shape of his face was awkward, twisted; there was blood on his cheek: Isabelle’s, Clary thought. “Clary,” he said. “Maybe if you try—” Simon suddenly stiffened. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “I can hear wings.

There’s going to be more of them.”

Isabelle was no longer gasping. The bleeding from the slash in her leg had slowed, but Clary could see, with a sinking heart, that the wounds were still there, a puffed and angry red.

Alec rose, cradling his sister’s limp body in his arms, her black hair hanging down like a flag. “Go where?” he said harshly. “If we run, they’ll be on us—” Jace whirled around. “Clary—”

His eyes were full of pleading. Clary’s heart broke for him. Jace, who hardly ever pleaded for anything. For Isabelle, the bravest of them all.

Alec looked from the statue to Jace, to the pale face of his unconscious sister.

“Someone,” he said, his voice cracking, “do something—” Clary spun on her heel and ran for the wall. She half-flung herself against it, yanking her stele free from her boot, and went for the stone. The contact of the instrument’s tip with the marble sent a shock wave up her arm, but she pressed on, her fingers vibrating as she drew. Black lines fissured out across the stone, cracking into the shape of a door; the edges of the lines began to shimmer. Behind her Clary could hear the demons: the bellow of their voices, the flap of taloned wings, their hissing calls rising to shrieks as the door blazed up with light.

It was a silvery rectangle, as depthless as water but not water, framed with fiery runes.

A Portal. Clary reached out with one hand, touched the surface. Every part of her mind concentrated on visualizing a single place. “Come on!” she screamed, her eyes fixed on it, not moving as Alec, carrying his sister, darted past her and disappeared into it, vanishing utterly. Simon followed him, and then Jace, catching at her free hand as he went. Clary only had a moment to turn and look behind her—a great black wing swept across her vision, a terrifying glimpse of teeth dripping poison—before the storm of the Portal took her and whirled her away into chaos.

Clary slammed into the ground hard, bruising her knees. The Portal had torn her away from Jace; she rolled to her feet quickly and looked around, breathing hard—what if the Portal hadn’t worked? What if it had taken them to the wrong place?

But the cave roof rose above, familiar and towering, marked with runes. There was the fire pit, the scuff marks on the floor where they had all slept the night before. Jace, rising to his feet, Alec’s bow falling from his hand, Simon—

And Alec, on his knees beside Isabelle. Any satisfaction Clary felt at her success with the Portal popped like a balloon. Isabelle lay still and drained-looking, gasping shallow breaths. Jace dropped down beside Alec and touched Isabelle’s hair gently.

Clary felt Simon clasp her wrist. His voice was ragged. “If you can do anything—” She moved forward as if in a dream, and knelt down on the other side of Isabelle, opposite Jace, stele slipping in her bloody fingers. She put the tip to Izzy’s wrist, remembering what she had done outside the Adamant Citadel, how she had poured herself into healing Jace. Heal, heal, heal, she prayed, and finally the stele jerked to life and the black lines began to spiral sluggishly across Izzy’s forearm. Izzy moaned and jerked in Alec’s arms. He had his head down, his face buried against his sister’s hair.

“Izzy, please,” he whispered. “Not after Max. Izzy, please, stay with me.” Isabelle gasped, her eyelids fluttering. She arched up—and then sank back as the iratze vanished from her skin. A dull pulse of blood oozed sluggishly from the wound in her leg: the blood looked tinted black. Clary’s hand tightened so hard on her stele, she felt it bend in her hand. “I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t make one strong enough.”

“It’s not you; it’s the poison,” Jace said. “Demon poison. In her blood. Sometimes runes can’t help.”

“Try again,” Alec said to Clary; his eyes were dry, but with a terrible brightness. “With the iratze. Or with a new rune; you could create a rune—” Clary’s mouth was dry. Never had she wanted to create a rune more, but the stele no longer felt like an extension of her arm; it felt like a dead thing in her hand. She had never felt more helpless.

Isabelle was taking rasping breaths. “Something has to help!” Simon shouted suddenly, his voice echoing off the walls. “You’re Shadowhunters; you fight demons all the time. You have to be able to do something—”

“And we die all the time!” Jace shouted back at him, and then suddenly crumpled over Isabelle’s body, doubling up as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Isabelle, God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Move,” Simon said, and suddenly he was on his knees next to Isabelle, all of them grouped around her, and Clary was reminded of the horrible tableau in the Accords Hall when the Lightwoods had gathered around Max’s dead body, and it couldn’t be happening again, it couldn’t—

“Leave her alone,” Alec snarled. “You’re not her family, vampire—”

“No,” Simon said, “I’m not.” And his fangs snapped out, sharp and white. Clary sucked in her breath as Simon raised his own wrist to his mouth and tore at it, slicing open the veins, and blood ran in rivulets down his arm.

Jace’s eyes widened. He stood up and backed away; his hands were in fists, but he didn’t move to stop Simon, who held his wrist over the gash in Isabelle’s leg and let his blood run down his fingers, spattering onto her, covering her wound.

“What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” Alec ground out between his teeth, but Jace flung up a hand, his eyes on Simon.

“Let him,” Jace said, almost in a whisper. “It can work, I’ve heard of it working. . . .” Isabelle, still unconscious, arched back into her brother’s arms. Her leg was twitching.

The heel of her boot dug into the ground as her ribboned skin began to knit itself back together. Simon’s blood poured in a steady stream, covering the injury, but even beneath the blood Clary could see that new, pink skin was covering the torn mess of flesh.

Isabelle’s eyes opened. They were wide and dark. Her lips had been almost white, but color was starting to come back into them. She stared at Simon uncomprehendingly, and then down at her leg.

The skin that had been torn and shredded looked clean and pale, only a faint half-moon of neatly spaced white scars left to show where the demon’s teeth had gone in. Simon’s blood was still dripping slowly from his fingers, though the wound in his wrist had mostly healed. He looked pale, Clary realized anxiously, much paler than usual, and his veins were standing out blackly against his skin. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, his teeth bared—

“Simon, no!” Isabelle said, struggling to sit up against Alec, who was staring down at her with shocked blue eyes.

Clary caught Simon’s wrist. “It’s all right,” she said. Blood stained his sleeve, his shirt, the corners of his mouth. His skin was cold under her touch, his wrist pulseless. “It’s okay—Isabelle’s okay,” she said, and drew Simon to his feet. “Let’s give them a second,” she said softly, and led him away to where he could lean against her by the wall. Jace and Alec were bending over Isabelle, their voices low and murmuring. Clary held Simon by the wrist as he slumped back against the stone, his eyes fluttering shut in exhaustion.

19 Into the Silent Land

The Endarkened woman had pale skin and long coppery hair. It might have been pretty once but was now tangled with dirt and twigs. She didn’t appear to care, just placed the plates of food—gruel, soupy and gray-looking, for Magnus and Luke, and a bottle of blood for Raphael—on the floor and turned away from the prisoners.

Neither Luke nor Magnus moved toward their food. Magnus felt too sick to have much of an appetite. Besides, he was vaguely suspicious that Sebastian had poisoned the gruel, or drugged it, or both. Raphael, though, seized up the bottle and drank from it hungrily, swallowing until blood ran out of the corners of his mouth.

“Now, now, Raphael,” said a voice from the shadows, and Sebastian Morgenstern appeared in the open doorway. The Endarkened woman bowed her head and hurried out past him, shutting the door behind her.

He really looked astonishingly like his father had at his age, Magnus thought. Those odd black eyes, entirely black without a hint of brown or hazel, the sort of feature that was beautiful because it was unusual. The same fanatic twitch to his smile. Jace had never had that—he had recklessness, and the anarchic joy of imagined self-annihilation, but he was not a zealot. Which, Magnus thought, was precisely why Valentine had sent him away. To crush your opposition, you needed a hammer, and Jace was a much more delicate weapon than that.

“Where’s Jocelyn?” It was Luke, of course, his voice a low growl, his hands in fists at his sides. Magnus wondered what it was like for Luke to look at Sebastian, whether the resemblance to Valentine, who had once been his parabatai, was painful, or whether that loss had faded long ago. “Where is she?”

Sebastian laughed, and that was something that was different about him; Valentine had never been a man who laughed easily. Jace’s sarcastic humor seemed to have been born into his blood, a distinctly Herondale trait. “She’s fine,” he said, “just fine, by which I mean she’s still alive. Which is the best you can hope for, really.”

“I want to see her,” Luke said.

“Hmm,” Sebastian said, as if considering it. “No. I don’t see the advantage in it to me.”

“She’s your mother,” said Luke. “You could be kind to her.”

“It’s none of your business, dog.” For the first time there was a shadow of youth in Sebastian’s voice, an edge of petulance. “You, with your hands all over my mother, making Clary believe you’re her family—”

“I’m more her family than you are,” said Luke, and Magnus shot him a warning look as Sebastian whitened, his fingers twitching toward his belt, where the hilt of the Morgenstern sword was visible.

“Don’t,” Magnus said in a low voice, and then, louder, “You know if you touch Luke, Clary will hate you. Jocelyn, too.”

Sebastian drew his hand away from his sword with a visible effort. “I said I never intended to harm her.”

“No, just hold her hostage,” Magnus said. “You want something—something from the Clave, or something from Clary and Jace. I’d guess the latter; the Clave has never interested you much, but you do care what your sister thinks. She and I are very close, by the way,” he added.

“You’re not that close.” Sebastian’s tone was withering. “I’m hardly going to spare the life of everyone she’s ever met. I’m not that crazy.”

“You seem very crazy,” said Raphael, who had been silent up until that point.

“Raphael,” Magnus said in a warning tone, but Sebastian didn’t seem angry. He was regarding Raphael with a considering look.

“Raphael Santiago,” he said. “Leader of the New York clan—or aren’t you? No, it was Camille who held that position, and now the little mad girl. That must be quite frustrating for you. It really seems to me that the Shadowhunters of Manhattan ought to have stepped in before now. Neither Camille nor poor Maureen Brown were fit to be leaders. They broke the Accords—they cared nothing for the Law. But you do. It seems to me that of all the Downworld races, the vampires have been most ill treated by Shadowhunters. One only needs to look at your situation.”

“Raphael,” Magnus said again, and tried to lean forward, to catch the vampire’s eye, but Magnus’s chains pulled tight, rattling. He winced at the pain in his wrists.

Raphael was sitting back on his heels, his cheeks flushed from his recent feeding. His hair was tousled; he looked as young as he had when Magnus had first met him. “I do not see why you are telling me this,” he said.

“You can’t say I’ve mistreated you more than your vampire leaders,” said Sebastian.

“I’ve fed you. I haven’t put you in a cage. You know I’ll win; you all know it. And on that day I’ll be happy to make sure you, Raphael, rule all the vampires in New York—in fact, all the vampires in North America. You’re welcome to them. All I need is for you to bring the other Night’s Children to my side. The Fair Folk have already joined with me. The Court always picks the winning side. Shouldn’t you?”

Raphael rose to his feet. There was blood on his hands; he frowned down at them.

Raphael was nothing if not fastidious. “That seems reasonable,” he said. “I shall join you.” Luke dropped his face into his hands. Through his teeth Magnus said, “Raphael, you have truly lived down to my lowest expectations of you.”

“Magnus, it doesn’t matter,” said Luke; he was being protective, Magnus knew.

Raphael had already gone to stand by Sebastian’s side. “Let him go. He’s no loss.” Raphael snorted. “No loss, you say,” he said. “I am well quit of you idiots, flopping about this cell, whining about your friends and lovers. You are weak and have always been weak—”

“I should have let you walk into the daylight,” Magnus said, and his voice was ice.

Raphael flinched—it was barely a movement, but Magnus saw it. Not that it brought him much satisfaction.

Sebastian saw the flinch, though, and the look in his dark eyes intensified. From his belt he produced a knife—thin, with a narrow blade. A misericord, a “mercy-killer,” the kind of blade that was meant to pierce through the gaps in armor and deliver a killing stroke.

Raphael, seeing the flash of metal, stepped back quickly, but Sebastian only smiled and flipped the blade in his hand. He offered it to Raphael, hilt-first. “Take it,” he said.

Raphael reached out a hand, his eyes suspicious. He took the knife and held it, dangling loosely—vampires had little use for weapons. They were their own weapons.

“Very good,” said Sebastian. “Now let us seal our agreement in blood. Kill the warlock.” The blade dropped from Raphael’s hand and clattered to the ground. With a look of irritation Sebastian bent and snatched it up, putting it back into the vampire’s hand.

“We do not kill with knives,” Raphael said, staring from the blade to Sebastian’s cold expression.

“You do now,” said Sebastian. “I won’t have you tearing out his throat; too messy, too easy to get it wrong. Do as I tell you. Go to the warlock and stab him to death. Cut his throat, pierce his heart—however you like.”

Raphael turned toward Magnus. Luke started forward; Magnus held up a warning hand. “Luke,” he said. “Don’t.”

“Raphael, if you do this, there will be no peace between the pack and the Night’s Children, not now or ever again,” Luke said, his eyes gleaming with a green shine.

Sebastian laughed. “You can’t imagine you’ll ever hold sway over a pack again, can you, Lucian Graymark? When I win this war, and I will, I will rule with my sister beside me, and keep you in a cage for her to throw bones to when it amuses her.” Raphael took another step toward Magnus. His eyes were enormous. His throat had been kissed so many times by the crucifix he wore that the scar never left. The blade gleamed in his hand.

“If you think Clary would tolerate—” Luke began, and then turned away. He moved toward Raphael, but Sebastian was already in front of him, blocking his way with the Morgenstern blade.

With a strange detachment Magnus watched Raphael approach him. Magnus’s heart was thudding in his chest, he was aware of that much, but he did not feel afraid. He had been close to death many times; so many that the idea no longer frightened him.

Sometimes he thought some part of him longed for it, for that unknown country, the one place he had never been, that one experience as yet unlived.

The tip of the knife touched his neck. Raphael’s hand was shaking; Magnus felt the sting as the blade nicked the hollow of his throat.

“That’s right,” said Sebastian with a feral grin. “Cut his throat. Let the blood run out over the floor. He has lived too many years.”

Magnus thought of Alec then, of his blue eyes and steady smile. He thought of walking away from Alec in the tunnels under New York. He thought of why he’d done it. Yes, Alec’s willingness to see Camille had angered him, but it was more than that.

He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on.

He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec. It had torn at him to walk away from Alec. But for an immortal to love a mortal, that had been the destruction of gods, and if gods had been destroyed by it, Magnus could hardly hope for better. He looked up at Raphael through his eyelashes.

“You remember,” he said in a low voice, so low he doubted Sebastian could hear him.

“You know what you owe me.”

“You saved my life,” Raphael said, but his voice was numb. “A life I never wanted.”

“Show me you’re serious, Santiago,” said Sebastian. “Kill the warlock.” Raphael’s hand tightened on the hilt of the knife. His knuckles were white. He spoke to Magnus. “I have no soul,” he said. “But I made you a promise on my mother’s doorstep, and she was sacred to me.”

“Santiago—” Sebastian began.

“I was a child then. I am not now.” The knife fell to the floor. Raphael turned and looked at Sebastian, his wide dark eyes very clear. “I cannot,” he said. “I will not. I owe him a debt from many years ago.”

Sebastian was very still. “You disappoint me, Raphael,” he said, and sheathed the Morgenstern sword. He stepped forward and picked up the knife at Raphael’s feet, turning it over in his hand. A bit of light sparked along the blade, a singing teardrop of fire. “You disappoint me very much,” he said, and then, too swiftly for the eye to follow, he drove the blade into Raphael’s heart.

It was freezing inside the hospital morgue. Maia wasn’t shivering, but she could feel it, like the points of needles against her skin.

Catarina was standing against the bank of steel compartments that held corpses, which ran along one wall. The yellowish fluorescent lights made her look washed-out, a pale blue blur in green scrubs. She was muttering under her breath in a strange language that made chills run up Maia’s spine.

“Where is it?” Bat asked. He was holding a wicked-looking hunting knife in one hand and a large kennel-size cage in the other. He dropped the cage with a clang, his gaze sweeping the room.

Two bare steel tables stood in the center of the morgue. As Maia stared, one of them began inching forward. Its wheels dragged along the tiled floor.

Catarina pointed. “There,” she said. Her gaze was on the cage; she made a gesture with her fingers and the cage seemed to vibrate and spark. “Under the table.”

“You don’t say,” Lily drawled, clicking forward in her heels. She bent down to peer under the table, then leaped back with a shriek. She sailed through the air and landed on one of the countertops, where she perched like a bat, her black hair tumbling down out of its ponytail. “It’s hideous,” she said.

“It’s a demon,” said Catarina. The table had stopped moving. “Probably a Dantalion or some other ghoul type. They feed on the dead.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Maia, taking a step forward; before she reached the table, Bat kicked it with a booted foot. It went over with a clang, revealing the creature underneath.

Lily had been right: it was hideous. It was about the size of a large dog, but it resembled a ball of grayish, pulsing intestines, studded with malformed kidneys and nodes of pus and blood. A single yellow, weeping eye glared out from among the jumble of organs.

“Ew,” said Bat.

“I told you,” said Lily, just as a long rope of intestine shot out from the demon and wrapped around Bat’s ankle, jerking hard. He fell to the floor with a wince-inducing crash.

“Bat!” Maia cried, but before she needed to move, he whipped around and slashed with his knife through the pulsing matter that held him. He scrambled back as demon ichor sprayed across the floor.

“So gross,” Lily said. She was seated on the counter now, holding up an oblong metal object—her phone—as if it would ward the demon off.

Bat scrambled to his feet as the demon skittered toward Maia. She kicked out at it, and it rolled back with an angry squishing noise. Bat looked down at his knife. The metal was melting, dissolved by the ichor. He dropped it with a noise of disgust.

“Weapons,” he said, casting around. “I need a weapon—”

Maia seized a scalpel off a nearby table and flung it. It stuck into the creature with a slimy noise. The demon squealed. A moment later the scalpel shot back out of it as if it had been ejected from a particularly powerful toaster. It skidded along the floor, melting and sizzling.

“Ordinary weapons don’t work on them!” Catarina stepped forward, raising her right hand. It was surrounded by blue flame. “Only runed blades—”

“Then let’s get some of those!” Bat gasped, backing away as the pulsing creature scooted toward him.

“Only Shadowhunters can use them!” Catarina cried, and a bolt of blue fire shot from her hand. It struck the creature squarely, sending it rolling over and over. Bat seized hold of the cage and banged it down in front of the demon, yanking up the hatch just as the demon rolled inside.

Maia slammed the hatch down and threw the bolt, locking the demon inside. They all backed away, staring in horror as it hissed and threw itself around the confines of its warlock-strengthened prison. All except Lily, who was still pointing her phone at it.

“Are you filming this?” Maia demanded.

“Maybe,” Lily said.

Catarina drew her sleeve across her brow. “Thanks for the help,” she said. “Even warlock magic can’t kill Dantalions; they’re tough.”

“Why are you filming this?” Maia said to Lily.

The vampire girl shrugged. “When the cat is away, the mice will play. . . . Always good to remind the mice that in this case, when the cat is away, the mice will all be eaten by demons. I’m going to send this video file to every one of our Downworld contacts around the world. Just a reminder that there are demons we need Shadowhunters to destroy.

That’s why they exist.”

“They won’t exist for long,” hissed the Dantalion demon. Bat yelled and jumped back another foot. Maia didn’t blame him. The thing’s mouth had opened. It looked like a slick black tunnel lined with teeth. “Tomorrow night is the attack. Tomorrow night is the war.”

“What war?” Catarina demanded. “Tell us, creature, or when I get you home, I will set to torturing you in every way I can devise. . . .”

“Sebastian Morgenstern,” said the demon. “Tomorrow night he attacks Alicante.

Tomorrow night the Shadowhunters cease to be.”

A fire burned in the middle of the cave, the smoke furling up toward the high domed ceiling, lost in shadow. Simon could feel the heat from the fire, a tense crackling against his skin more than the real sensation of warmth. He guessed it was cold in the cave, from the fact that Alec had bundled himself up in a bulky sweater and carefully wrapped a blanket around Isabelle, who was sleeping stretched out across the floor, her head on her brother’s lap. But Simon couldn’t feel it, not really.

Clary and Jace had gone to check the tunnels and make sure they were still free of demons and other possible stray nasties. Alec hadn’t wanted to leave Isabelle, and Simon had been too weak and dizzy to contemplate moving much. Not that he had let that fact be known. Technically he was on watch, listening for anything that might come at them from the shadows.

Alec was staring into the flames. The yellow light made him look tired, older. “Thanks,” he said, suddenly.

Simon almost jumped. Alec hadn’t said a word to him since What are you doing? “For what?”

“Saving my sister,” said Alec. He brushed a hand through Isabelle’s dark hair. “I know,” he said, a little haltingly. “I mean, I knew, when we came here, that this could be a suicide mission. I know it’s dangerous. I know I can’t really expect us all to survive. But I thought it would be me, not Izzy. . . .”

“Why?” Simon said. His head was pounding, his mouth dry.

“Because I’d rather it was me,” Alec said. “She’s—Isabelle. She’s smart and tough and a good fighter. Better than me. She deserves to be all right, to be happy.” He looked at Simon through the fire. “You have a sister, don’t you?”

Simon was jolted by the question—New York seemed a world, a lifetime away.

“Rebecca,” he said. “That’s her name.”

“And what would you do to someone who made her unhappy?” Simon eyed Alec warily. “I would reason with them,” he said. “Talk it out. Maybe an understanding hug.”

Alec snorted and seemed about to reply; then his head snapped around, as if he’d heard something. Simon raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t often a human heard something before a vampire did. A moment later he recognized the sound himself, and understood: It was Jace’s voice. Illumination danced at the end of the far tunnel, and Clary and Jace appeared, Clary holding a witchlight in her hand.

Even in her boots Clary barely came to Jace’s shoulder. They weren’t touching, but they moved together toward the fire. Simon thought that while they had seemed like a couple ever since the first time they’d come back from Idris, they seemed like something more now. They seemed like a team.

“Anything interesting?” Alec asked as Jace came to sit beside the fire.

“Clary put glamour runes on the cave entrances. No one should be able to see that there’s any way in here.”

“How long will they last?”

“Overnight, probably into tomorrow,” said Clary, glancing at Izzy. “What with the runes wearing off quicker here, I’ll have to check them later.”

“And I’ve got a better idea of where we’re positioned in terms of Alicante. I’m pretty sure that the rock wasteland where we were last night”—Jace pointed at the rightmost tunnel—“looks out over what I think used to be Brocelind Forest.” Alec half-closed his eyes. “That’s depressing. The forest was—beautiful.”

“Not anymore.” Jace shook his head. “Just wasteland, as far as you can see.” He bent and touched Isabelle’s hair, and Simon felt a small pointless flare of jealousy—that he could touch her so carelessly, show his affection without thinking. “How is she?”

“Good. Sleeping.”

“Think she’ll be well enough to move by tomorrow?” Jace’s voice was anxious. “We can’t stay here. We’ve sent up enough warnings that we’re present. If we don’t get to Sebastian, he’ll find us first. And we’re running out of food.”

Simon lost Alec’s murmured response; a sudden stabbing pain shot through him, and he doubled up. He felt robbed of his breath, except he didn’t breathe. Nevertheless his chest hurt, as if something had been ripped out of it.

“Simon. Simon!” Clary said sharply, her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her, his eyes streaming tears tinged with blood. “God, Simon, what’s wrong?” she asked, frantic.

He sat up slowly. The pain was already starting to ebb. “I don’t know. It was like someone stuck a knife into my chest.”

Jace was swiftly on his knees in front of him, his fingers under Simon’s chin. His pale gold gaze searched Simon’s face. “Raphael,” Jace said finally, in a flat voice. “He’s your sire, the one whose blood made you a vampire.”

Simon nodded. “So?”

Jace shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered. “When did you last feed?”

“I’m fine,” Simon said, but Clary had already caught at his right hand and lifted it; the gold faerie ring shone on his finger. The hand itself was dead white, the veins under the skin showing black, like a network of cracks in marble. “You’re not fine—haven’t you fed?

You lost all that blood!”

“Clary—”

“Where are the bottles you brought?” She cast around, looking for his bag, and found it shoved against the wall. She yanked it toward her. “Simon, if you don’t start taking better care of yourself—”

“Don’t.” He grabbed the strap of the bag away from her; she glared at him. “They broke,” he said. “The bottles broke, when we were fighting the demons in the Accords Hall. The blood’s gone.”

Clary stood up. “Simon Lewis,” she said furiously. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Say something about what?” Jace moved away from Simon.

“Simon’s starving,” Clary explained. “He lost blood healing Izzy, and his supply was wrecked in the Hall—”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Jace asked, rising and pushing back a lock of blond hair.

“Because,” Simon said. “It’s not like there’s animals I can feed on here.”

“There’s us,” Jace said.

“I don’t want to feed on my friends’ blood.”

“Why not?” Jace stepped past the fire and looked down at Simon; his expression was open and curious. “We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Last time you were starving, I gave you my blood. It was a little homoerotic, maybe, but I’m secure in my sexuality.” Simon sighed internally; he could tell that under the flippancy, Jace was completely serious in his offer. Probably less because it was sexy than because Jace had a death wish the size of Brooklyn.

“I’m not biting someone whose veins are full of heavenly fire,” Simon said. “I have no desire to be toasted from the inside out.”

Clary swept her hair back, baring her throat. “Look, drink my blood. I always said you were welcome to it—”

“No,” Jace said immediately, and Simon saw him remembering the hold in Valentine’s ship, the way Simon had said I would have killed you, and Jace had replied, wonderingly, I would have let you.

“Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll do it.” Alec stood up, carefully repositioning Izzy on the blanket. He tucked the edge around her and straightened.

Simon let his head fall back against the wall of the cave. “You don’t even like me. Now you’re offering me your blood?”

“You saved my sister. I owe you.” Alec shrugged, his shadow long and dark in the light of the flames.

“Right.” Simon swallowed awkwardly. “Okay.”

Clary reached her hand down. After a moment Simon took it and let her haul him to his feet. He couldn’t help staring across the room at Isabelle, asleep, half-wrapped in Alec’s blue blanket. She was breathing, slow and steady. Izzy, still breathing, because of him.

Simon took a step toward Alec, and stumbled. Alec caught him and steadied him. His grip on Simon’s shoulder was hard. Simon could feel Alec’s tension in it, and he suddenly realized how bizarre the situation was: Jace and Clary gawking openly at them, Alec looking as if he were bracing himself to have a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

Alec turned his head a little to the left, baring his throat. He was staring off fixedly at the opposite wall. Simon decided he looked less like someone who was about to have ice water dumped on their head and more like someone about to endure an embarrassing exam at the doctor’s office.

“I am not doing this in front of everyone,” Simon announced.

“It’s not spin the bottle, Simon,” said Clary. “It’s just food. Not that you’re food, Alec,” she added when he glared. She held her hands up. “Never mind.”

“Oh, for the Angel’s—” Alec began, and closed his hand around Simon’s upper arm.

“Come on,” he said, and dragged Simon partway down the tunnel that led back toward the gate, just far enough so that the others faded out of view, disappearing behind a jut of rock.

Though Simon did hear the last thing Jace said, just before they faded out of earshot.

“What? They need privacy. It’s an intimate moment.”

“I think you should just let me die,” Simon said.

“Shut up,” Alec said, and pushed him up against the cave wall. He eyed Simon thoughtfully. “Does it have to be my neck?”

“No,” Simon said, feeling as if he had wandered into a bizarre dream. “Wrists are okay too.”

Alec began to push up the sleeve of his sweater. His arm was bare and pale except where the Marks were, and Simon could see his veins under his skin. Despite himself, he felt the sting of hunger, rousing him from exhaustion: He could smell blood, soft and salty, rich with the tang of daylight. Shadowhunter blood, like Izzy’s. He ran his tongue along his upper teeth and was only a little surprised to feel his canines hardening and sharpening into fangs.

“I just want you to know,” Alec said as he held his wrist out, “that I realize that to you vampires this feeding business sometimes equals sexy times.” Simon’s eyes widened.

“My sister may have told me more than I wanted to know,” Alec admitted. “Anyway, my point is that I am not attracted to you in the slightest.”

“Right,” Simon said, and took Alec’s hand. He tried for a brotherly sort of grasp, but it didn’t quite work, considering that he had to bend Alec’s hand back to bare the vulnerable part of his wrist. “Well, you don’t ring my bells either, so I guess we’re even. Although, you could have faked it for five—”

“No, I couldn’t,” Alec said. “I hate it when straight guys think all gay guys are attracted to them. I’m not attracted to every guy any more than you’re attracted to every girl.” Simon took a deep, purposeful breath. It was always a strange feeling, breathing when he didn’t need to, but it was calming. “Alec,” he said. “Chill. I don’t think you’re in love with me. In fact, most of the time I think you hate me.” Alec paused. “I don’t hate you. Why would I hate you?”

“Because I’m a Downworlder? Because I’m a vampire who’s in love with your sister and you think she’s too good for me?”

“Don’t you?” Alec said, but it was without rancor; after a moment he smiled a little, that Lightwood smile that lit up his face and made Simon think of Izzy. “She’s my little sister. I think she’s too good for everyone. But you—you’re a good person, Simon. Regardless of whether you’re a vampire, too. You’re loyal and you’re smart and you—you make Isabelle happy. I don’t know why, but you do. I know I didn’t like you when I met you. But that changed. And I’d hardly judge my sister for dating a Downworlder.” Simon stood very still. Alec was all right with warlocks, he thought. That much was obvious enough. But warlocks were born what they were. Alec was the most conservative of the Lightwood children—he wasn’t chaos-loving or risk-taking like Jace and Isabelle—and Simon had always felt it in him, that sense that a vampire was a human transformed into something wrong.

“You wouldn’t agree to being a vampire,” Simon said. “Not even to be with Magnus forever. Right? You didn’t want to live forever; you wanted to take his immortality away.

That’s why he broke up with you.”

Alec flinched. “No,” he said. “No, I wouldn’t want to be a vampire.”

“So you do think I’m less than you,” Simon said.

Alec’s voice cracked. “I’m trying,” he said, and Simon felt it, felt how much Alec wanted to mean it, maybe even did mean it a little bit. And after all, if Simon hadn’t been a vampire, he would still have been a mundane, still lesser. He felt Alec’s pulse surge in the wrist he was holding. “Go ahead,” Alec said, exhaling his words, clearly in an agony of waiting. “Just—do it.”

“Brace yourself,” Simon said, and lifted Alec’s wrist to his mouth. Despite the tension between them, his body, hungry and deprived, responded. His muscles tightened and his fang teeth snapped out of their own accord. He saw Alec’s eyes darken with surprise and fear. Hunger spread like a fire through Simon’s body, and he spoke out of the drowning depths of it, struggling to try to say something human to Alec. He hoped he was audible enough to be understood around his fangs. “I’m sorry about Magnus.”

“Me too. Now bite,” Alec said, and Simon did, his fangs piercing fast and clean through the skin, the blood exploding into his mouth. He heard Alec gasp, and Simon gripped involuntarily tighter, as if to prevent Alec from trying to pull away. But Alec didn’t try. His wild heartbeat was audible to Simon, pounding down through his veins like the tolling of a bell. Along with Alec’s blood, Simon could taste the metal of fear, the spark of pain, and the eager flame of something else, something he had tasted the first time he had drunk Jace’s blood on the filthy metal floor of Valentine’s ship. Maybe all Shadowhunters did have a death wish, after all.

20 The Serpents of the Dust

When Alec and Simon returned to the central cave, they found Isabelle still curled asleep among a pile of blankets. Jace was sitting by the fire, leaning back on his hands, the play of light and shadow dancing across his face. Clary lay with her head on his lap, though Simon could see by the shimmer of her eyes as she watched them approach that she wasn’t asleep.

Jace raised his eyebrows. “Walk of shame, boys?”

Alec glowered. He stood with his left wrist turned in, hiding the puncture marks, though they were mostly faded thanks to the iratze he’d put on his wrist. He hadn’t pushed Simon away, had let him drink until Simon had stopped himself, and as a result he was a little pale. “It wasn’t sexy,” he said.

“It was a little sexy,” Simon said. He felt much better, having fed, and couldn’t help but poke at Alec a bit.

“It wasn’t,” said Alec.

“I had some feelings,” said Simon.

“Do feel free to agonize about it on your own time,” said Alec, and bent down to grab the strap of his backpack. “I’m going to take watch.”

Clary sat up with a yawn. “Are you sure? Do you need a blood replacement rune?”

“I already put on two,” Alec said. “I’ll be fine.” He straightened up and glanced at his sleeping sister. “Just look after Isabelle, okay?” His gaze went to Simon. “Especially you, vampire.”

Alec headed off down the corridor, his witchlight casting his shadow, long and spidery, against the cave wall. Jace and Clary exchanged a quick look before Jace scrambled to his feet and followed Alec into the tunnel. Simon could hear their voices—soft murmurs through the rock, though he couldn’t make out any of the words.

Alec’s words echoed in his head. Look after Isabelle. He thought of Alec in the tunnel.

You’re loyal and you’re smart and you—you make Isabelle happy. I don’t know why, but you do.

The idea of making Isabelle happy filled him with a sense of warmth. Simon sat down quietly beside her—she was like a cat, curled up in a ball of blankets, her head pillowed on her arm. He eased himself gently down to lie next to her. She was alive because of him, and her brother had done the closest thing he would probably ever do to giving them his blessing.

He heard Clary, over on the other side of the fire, laugh softly. “Good night, Simon,” she said.

Simon could feel Isabelle’s hair, as soft as spun silk, under his cheek. “Good night,” he said, and closed his eyes, his veins full of Lightwood blood.

Jace caught up easily with Alec, who had paused where the cave corridor curved away toward the gate. The walls of the corridor were smooth as if worn away by years of water or wind, not chisels, though Jace had no doubt the passages were man-made.

Alec, leaning against the cave wall, clearly waiting for Jace, raised his witchlight. “Is something wrong?”

Jace slowed his pace as he neared his parabatai. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Alec shrugged with one shoulder. “As much as I can be, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Jace said. “Again. I take stupid risks. I can’t help it.”

“We let you,” said Alec. “Sometimes your risks pay off. We let you because we have to let you. Because if we didn’t let you, nothing would ever get done.” He rubbed at his face with his torn sleeve. “Isabelle would say the same thing.”

“We never got to finish our conversation, before,” Jace said. “I just wanted to say that you don’t always have to be all right. I asked you to be my parabatai because I needed you, but you’re allowed to need me, too. This”—he indicated his own parabatai rune—“means you are the better, other half of me, and I care about you more than I care about myself.

Remember that. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how much you were hurting. I didn’t see it then, but I see it now.”

Alec was very still for a moment, barely breathing. Then, to Jace’s surprise, he reached out and ruffled Jace’s hair, the way an older brother might ruffle his younger sibling’s hair.

His smile was cautious, but it was full of real affection. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said, and walked off down the tunnel.

“Clary.”

She woke up slowly, out of mellow dreams of warmth and fire, the smell of hay and apples. In the dream she’d been on Luke’s farm, hanging upside-down from a tree branch, laughing as Simon waved from below. Slowly she became aware of the hard stone under her hips and back, her head pillowed on Jace’s legs.

“Clary,” he said again, still whispering. Simon and Isabelle were sprawled together some distance away, a dark heap in the shadows. Jace’s eyes glimmered down at her, pale gold and dancing with reflected firelight. “I want a bath.”

“Yeah, well, I want a million dollars,” she said, rubbing at her eyes. “We all want something.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Come on, think about it,” he said. “That cavern? The one with the lake? We could.”

Clary thought of the cavern, the lovely blue water, as deep as twilight, and felt suddenly as if she were encrusted with a layer of grime—dirt and blood and ichor and sweat, her hair knotted back into a greasy tangle.

Jace’s eyes danced, and Clary felt that familiar surge inside her chest, that pull she had felt since the first time she’d ever seen him. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she’d fallen in love with Jace, but there had always been something about him that reminded her of a lion, a wild animal unfettered by rules, the promise of a life of freedom. Never “I can’t,” but always “I can.” Always the risk and the surety, never the fear or the question.

She scrambled to her feet as quietly as she could. “All right.” He was up instantly, taking her hand and tugging her down the west corridor that led away from the central cave. They went in silence, her witchlight lighting the way, a silence Clary felt almost afraid to break, as if she would be shattering the illusory calm of a dream or a spell.

The massive cavern opened in front of them suddenly, and she put her rune-stone away, dousing its light. The bioluminescence of the cave was enough: light shimmering out from the walls, from the glimmering stalactites that hung from the roof like electrified icicles.

Knives of light pierced the shadows. Jace let go of her hand and walked the last steps of the path down to the edge of the water, where the small beach was powdery and fine, glittering with mica. He paused a few feet from the water and said, “Thank you.” She looked over at him in surprise. “For what?”

“Last night,” he said. “You saved me. The heavenly fire would have killed me, I think.

What you did—”

“We still can’t tell the others,” she said.

“I didn’t last night, did I?” he asked. It was true. Jace and Clary had maintained the fiction that Clary had simply helped Jace control and dissipate the fire, and that nothing else had changed.

“We can’t risk them giving it away, even by the wrong kind of glance or expression,” she said. “You and I, we’ve had some practice hiding things from Sebastian, but they haven’t.

It wouldn’t be fair to them. I almost wish we didn’t know. . . .” She trailed off, unnerved by his lack of response. Jace was looking at the water, blue and depthless, his back to her. She took a step forward and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Jace,” she said. “If you want to do something different, if you think we should make another plan—”

He turned, and suddenly she was in the circle of his arms. It sent a shock through her whole body. His hands cupped her shoulder blades, his fingers stroking lightly along the material of her shirt. She shivered, thoughts flying out of her head like feathers scattered on the wind.

“When,” he said, “did you get so careful?”

“I’m not careful,” she said as he touched his lips to her temple. His warm breath stirred the curls by her ear. “I’m just not you.”

She felt him laugh. His hands slid down her sides, gripped her waist. “That, you are definitely not. Much prettier.”

“You must love me,” she said, breath hitching as his lips traveled excruciatingly slowly along her jaw. “I never thought you’d admit anyone was prettier than you.” She started as his mouth found her own, his lips parting to taste hers, and she leaned up and into the kiss, determined to take back some control. She wound her arms around his neck, opening her mouth to him, and nipped gently at his bottom lip.

It had more of an effect than she’d bargained for; his hands tightened on her waist and he groaned low into her mouth. A moment later he’d broken away, flushed, his eyes glittering. “You’re all right?” he said. “You want this?” She nodded, swallowing. Her whole body felt as if it were vibrating like a plucked string. “Yes, I do. I—”

“It’s just, for so long I haven’t really been able to touch you, and now I can,” he said.

“But maybe this isn’t the place—”

“Well, we are filthy,” she admitted.

“ ‘Filthy’ seems a bit judgmental.”

Clary raised her hands, palms-up. There was dirt embedded in her skin and under her nails. She grinned at him. “I mean literally,” she said, and indicated the water nearby with a jerk of her chin. “Weren’t we going to wash off? In the water?” The sparkle in his eyes darkened them to amber. “Right,” he said, and reached up to unzip his jacket.

Clary almost squeaked, What are you doing? but it was perfectly obvious what he was doing. She’d said “in the water,” and it wasn’t like they could wade in with their gear on.

She just hadn’t quite thought this far ahead.

He dropped the jacket and pulled his T-shirt off over his head; the collar caught for a moment, and Clary just stared, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that they were alone, and of his body: honey-colored skin mapped with old and new Marks, a fading scar just under the curve of his left pectoral muscle. Flat, ridged stomach tapering to narrow hips; he’d lost weight, and his weapons belt hung loose. Legs, arms, graceful like a dancer’s; he pulled free of the shirt and shook out his bright hair, and she thought with a sudden sinking in her stomach that it just wasn’t possible that he was hers, he wasn’t the sort of person ordinary people got to be near, much less touch, and then he looked up at her, hands on his belt, and smiled his familiar crooked smile.

“Keeping your clothes on?” he said. “I could promise not to look, but I’d be lying.” Clary unzipped her gear jacket and threw it at him. He caught it and dropped it onto the pile of his clothes, grinning. He unlooped his belt, dropped it as well. “Pervert,” she said. “Though you get points for being honest about it.”

“I’m seventeen; we’re all perverts,” he said, kicking his shoes off and stepping out of his pants. He was wearing black boxer shorts, and to Clary’s mixed relief and slight regret, he kept them on as he stepped into the water, wading in knee-deep. “Or, at least, I’ll be seventeen in a few weeks,” he called back over his shoulder. “I did the math, with my father’s letters and the time of the Uprising. I was born in January.” Something about the complete normalcy of his tone set Clary at ease. She toed off her boots, pulled her T-shirt off and then her pants, and went to the edge of the water. It was cool but not cold, lapping up to her ankles.

Jace looked up at her and smiled. Then his eyes traveled down from her face to her body, her plain cotton panties and bra. She wished she’d worn something prettier, but it wasn’t like “fancy lingerie” had been on her packing list for the demon realms. Her bra was pale blue cotton, the totally boring kind you could buy at the supermarket, though Jace was looking at it like it was something exotic and amazing.

He flushed suddenly, and averted his eyes, backing away so that the water rose to cover him, up to his shoulders. He ducked under and resurfaced again, looking less flustered but a lot wetter, his hair dark gold and streaming rivulets. “It’s easier if you get in fast,” he said.

Clary took a breath and dived forward, the water closing over her head. And it was gorgeous—dark blue, shot with threads of silver from the light above. The powdery stone had mixed with the water, giving it a heavy, soft texture. It was easy to float; the moment she let herself, she bobbed to the surface, shaking water from her hair.

She sighed in relief. There was no soap, but she rubbed her hands together, watching the flakes of dirt and blood melt away into the water. Her hair floated on the surface, red mixing with blue.

A spray of water droplets made her look up. Jace was a few feet away, shaking out his hair. “I guess that makes me a year older than you,” he said. “I’m cradle-robbing.”

“Six months,” Clary corrected. “And you’re a Capricorn, huh? Stubborn, reckless, bends the rules—sounds about right.”

He caught hold of her hips and pulled her toward him through the water. It was just deep enough that his feet touched the ground, but hers didn’t quite; she clenched her hands on his shoulders to keep herself upright as he drew her legs around his waist. She stared down at him, heat coiling in her stomach, at the sleek wet lines of his neck and shoulders and chest, the water droplets caught in his eyelashes like stars.

He rose up to kiss her just as she leaned in; their lips crashed together with a force that sent a shock of pleasure-pain through her. His hands slid up her skin; she cupped the back of his head, fingers tangling in wet curls. He parted her lips, stroked inside with his tongue. They were both shuddering and she was gasping, her breath mingling with his.

He reached behind himself with one hand to steady them on the wall of the cave, but it was slick with water and he half-slipped; Clary broke away from kissing him as he found his footing, his left arm still wrapped tightly against her, pressing her body to his. His pupils were blown wide, his heart hammering against her.

“That was,” he gasped, and pressed his face to the juncture of her neck and shoulder and breathed as if he were breathing her in; he was shaking a little, although his grip on her was steady and firm. “That was—intense.”

“It’s been a while,” she murmured, touching his hair gently, “since we could, you know—let go. At all.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, “I still can’t, that I can kiss you now, touch you, actually touch you, without being afraid—” He pressed a kiss to her throat, and she jumped; he tipped his head back to look up at her. Water trickled down his face like tears, outlining the sharp edges of cheekbones, the curve of his jaw.

“Reckless,” he said. “You know, when I first showed up at the Institute, Alec called me reckless so many times that I went and looked it up in the dictionary. Not that I didn’t already know what it meant, but—I always kind of thought it meant brave. It actually meant ‘someone who doesn’t care about the consequences of their actions.’ ” Clary felt stung on behalf of small Jace. “But you do care.”

“Not enough, maybe. Not all the time.” His voice shook. “Like the way I love you. I loved you recklessly from the moment I knew you. I never cared about the consequences. I told myself I did, I told myself you wanted me to, and so I tried, but I never did. I wanted you more than I wanted to be good. I wanted you more than I wanted anything, ever.” His muscles were rigid under her grip, his body thrumming with tension. She leaned in to brush her lips across his, to kiss the tension away, but he pulled back, biting against his lower lip hard enough to whiten the skin.

“Clary,” he said, roughly. “Wait, just—wait.”

Clary felt momentarily dazed. Jace loved kissing; he could kiss for hours, and he was good at it. And he wasn’t uninterested. He was very interested. She braced her knees on either side of his hips and said, uncertainly, “Is everything all right?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“Oh, no.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Okay. What is it?”

“Remember when we came through into the demon realm, and everyone saw something?” he asked. “And I said I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to tell me what you saw,” Clary said gently. “It’s your business.”

“I do,” he said. “You should know. I saw a room with two thrones in it—gold and ivory thrones—and through the window I could see the world, and it was ashes. Like this world, but the destruction was newer. The fires were still burning, and the sky was full of horrible flying things. Sebastian was sitting on one of the thrones and I was sitting on the other.

You were there, and Alec and Izzy, and Max—” He swallowed. “But you were all in a cage.

A big cage with a massive lock on the door. And I knew I had put you in it, and turned the key. But I didn’t feel regret. I felt—triumph.” He exhaled, hard. “You can shove me away in disgust now. It’s fine.”

But of course it wasn’t fine; nothing about his tone—flat and dead, and devoid of hope—was fine. Clary shivered in his arms; not from horror but from pity, and from the tension of knowing how delicate Jace’s faith in himself was, and how careful her answer had to be.

“The demon showed us what it thought we wanted,” she said finally. “Not what we actually want. It got things wrong; that’s how we all managed to break free. By the time we found you, you’d already broken free on your own. So what it showed you, that wasn’t what you want. When Valentine raised you, he controlled everything—nothing was ever safe, and nothing you loved was safe. So the demon looked inside you and saw that, that child’s fantasy of completely controlling the world so nothing bad can happen to the people he loves, and it tried to give you that, but it wasn’t what you want, not really. So you woke up.” She touched his cheek. “Some part of you is still that little boy who thinks to love is to destroy, but you’re learning. You’re learning every day.” For a moment he just looked at her in astonishment, his lips parted slightly; Clary felt her cheeks flush. He was looking at her like she was the first star that had ever come out in the sky, a miracle painted across the face of the world that he could barely believe in.

“Let me—” he said, and broke off. “Can I kiss you?”

Instead of nodding, she leaned down to press her lips to his. If their first kiss in the water had been a sort of explosion, this was like a sun going supernova. It was a hard, hot, driving kiss, a nip at her lower lip and the clash of tongues and teeth, both of them pressing as hard as they could to get close, closer. They were glued together, skin and fabric, a heady mix of the chill of the water, the heat of their bodies, and the frictionless slide of damp skin.

His arms wrapped her completely, and suddenly he was lifting her as he walked them both out of the lake, water pouring off them in streams. He went down on his knees on the powdery sand beach, laying her as gently as he could on top of the pile of their heaped clothes. She scrabbled for purchase for a moment and then gave up, lying back and pulling him down on top of her, kissing him fiercely until he groaned and whispered, “Clary, I can’t—you have to tell me—I can’t think—” She wound her hands into his hair, drawing back just enough to see his face. He was flushed, his eyes black with desire, his hair, beginning to curl as it dried, hanging into his eyes. She tugged lightly at the strands wound between her fingers. “It’s okay,” she whispered back. “It’s okay, we don’t have to stop. I want to.” She kissed him, slow and hard. “I want to, if you do.”

“If I want to?” There was a wild edge to his soft laugh. “Can’t you tell?” And then he was kissing her again, sucking her lower lip into his mouth, kissing her throat and mouthing her collarbone as she ran her hands all over him, free in the knowledge that she could touch him, as much as she liked, however she liked. She felt as if she were drawing him, her hands mapping his body, the slope of his back, flat stomach, the indentations above his hips, the muscles in his arms. As if, like a painting, he were coming to life under her hands.

When his hands slid underneath her bra, she gasped at the sensation, then nodded at him when he froze, his eyes questioning. Go on. He stopped at each moment, stopped before removing each piece of clothing from either of them, asking her with eyes and words if he should keep going, and each time she nodded and said, Yes, go on, yes. And when finally there was nothing between them but skin, she stilled her hands, thinking that there was no way to ever be closer to another person than this, that to take another step would be like cracking open her chest and exposing her heart.

She felt Jace’s muscles flex as he reached past her for something, and heard the crackle of foil. Suddenly everything seemed very real; she felt a sudden flash of nerves: This was really happening.

He stilled. His free hand was cradling her head, his elbows dug deep into the sand on either side of her, keeping his weight off her body. All of him was tense and shaking, and the pupils of his eyes were wide, the irises just rims of gold. “Is something wrong?” Hearing Jace sound uncertain—she thought maybe her heart was cracking, shattering into pieces. “No,” she whispered, and pulled him down again. They both tasted salt. “Kiss me,” she pleaded, and he did, hot languorous slow kisses that sped up as his heartbeat did, as the movement of their bodies quickened against each other. Each kiss was different, each rising higher and higher like a spark as a fire grew: quick soft kisses that told her he loved her, long slow worshipful kisses that said that he trusted her, playful light kisses that said that he still had hope, adoring kisses that said he had faith in her as he did in no one else. Clary abandoned herself to the kisses, the language of them, the wordless speech that passed between the two of them. His hands were shaking, but they were quick and skilled on her body, light touches maddening her until she pushed and pulled at him, urging him on with the mute appeal of fingers and lips and hands.

And even at the final moment, when she did flinch, she pressed him to go on, wrapping herself around him, not letting him go. She kept her eyes wide open as he shuddered apart, his face against her neck, saying her name over and over, and when finally she closed her eyes, she thought she saw the cavern blaze up in gold and white, wrapping them both in heavenly fire, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

Simon was vaguely aware of Clary and Jace standing up and leaving the cavern, whispering to each other as they went. Not as subtle as you think you are, he thought at them, half-amused, but he hardly grudged them the time together, considering what they were all going to face the next day.

“Simon.” It was barely a whisper, but Simon propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Isabelle. She turned onto her back and gazed up at him. Her eyes were very huge and dark, her cheeks flushed—his chest tightened with anxiety.

“Are you all right?” he said. “Are you feverish?”

She shook her head and wiggled partway out of her cocoon of blankets. “Just warm.

Who wrapped me up like a mummy?”

“Alec,” Simon said. “I mean, maybe—you should stay in them.”

“I’d rather not,” Isabelle said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close to her.

“I can’t warm you up. No body heat.” His voice sounded a little tinny.

She nuzzled her way into the juncture of his collarbone and shoulder. “I think we have established in so many ways that I am hot enough for the both of us.” Unable to help it, Simon reached out to run his hands up her back. She had shed her gear and wore only a black thermal top, the material thick and soft under his fingers. She felt substantial and real, human and breathing, and he silently thanked the God whose name he could now say that she was all right.

“Is there anyone else here?”

“Jace and Clary snuck off, and Alec took first watch,” Simon said. “We’re alone. I mean, not alone alone, like I wouldn’t—” He gasped as she rolled over so that she was on top of him, pinning him to the ground. She laid an arm delicately across his chest. “I wouldn’t maybe do that,” he said. “Not that you should stop.”

“You saved my life,” she said.

“I didn’t—” He broke off as she narrowed her eyes. “I am a brave heroic rescuer?” he tried.

“Mmm-hmm.” She nudged his chin with hers.

“No Lord Montgomery stuff,” he warned. “Anyone could walk in.”

“What about regular kissing?”

“Seems all right,” he said, and immediately Isabelle was kissing him, her lips almost unbearably soft. His hands found their way up under her shirt and smoothed up her spine, tracing the line of her shoulder blades. When she broke away, her lips were reddened, and he could see the blood pounding in her throat—Isabelle’s blood, salty-sweet, and even though he wasn’t hungry, he wanted—

“You can bite me,” she whispered.

“No.” Simon wriggled back slightly. “No—you’ve lost too much blood. I can’t.” He could feel his chest heaving with unnecessary breath. “You were asleep when we were talking about it, but we can’t stay here. Clary put glamour runes on the entrances, but they won’t hold that long, and we’re running out of food. The atmosphere’s making everyone sicker and weaker. And Sebastian will find us. We have to go to him—tomorrow—at the Gard.” He raked curled fingers through her soft hair. “And that means you need all your strength.”

She pressed her lips together, her eyes darting over him. “When we came through from the Faerie Court, into this world, what did you see?”

He touched her face lightly, not wanting to lie, but the truth—the truth was hard and awkward. “Iz, we don’t have to—”

“I saw Max,” she said. “But I saw you, too. You were my boyfriend. We lived together and my whole family accepted you. I can tell myself I don’t want you to be part of my life, but my heart knows differently,” she said. “You weaseled your way into my life, Simon Lewis, and I don’t know how or why or even when but it happened, and I kind of hate it but I can’t change it, and here it is.”

He made a small choking sound. “Isabelle—”

“Now tell me what you saw,” she said, and her eyes glittered like mica.

Simon braced his hands against the stone floor of the cave. “I saw me being famous, a rock star,” he said slowly. “I was rich, my family was together, and I was with Clary. She was my girlfriend.” He felt Isabelle tense on top of him, felt her start to roll away, and he caught at her arms. “Isabelle, listen. Listen. She was my girlfriend, and then when she came to tell me she loved me, I said, ‘I love you, too—Isabelle.’ ” She stared at him.

“Isabelle,” he said. “It snapped me out of the vision, when I said your name. Because I knew the vision was wrong. It wasn’t what I really wanted.”

“Why do you tell me you love me only when you’re drunk or dreaming?” she asked.

“I have awful timing,” said Simon. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t mean it. There are things we want, down under what we know, under even what we feel. There are things our souls want, and mine wants you.”

He felt her exhale. “Say it,” she said. “Say it sober.”

“I love you,” he said. “I don’t want you to say it back unless you mean it, but I love you.”

She leaned back over him, and pressed the pads of her fingertips against his. “I mean it.”

He raised himself up on his elbows just as she leaned down, and their lips met. They kissed, long and soft and sweet and gentle, and then Isabelle pulled back slightly, her breathing ragged, and Simon said, “So have we DTRed now?” Isabelle shrugged. “I have no idea what that means.”

Simon hid the fact that he was inordinately pleased by this. “Are we officially boyfriend and girlfriend? Is there a Shadowhunter ritual? Should I change my Facebook status from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘in a relationship’?”

Isabelle screwed up her nose adorably. “You have a book that’s also a face?” Simon laughed, and Isabelle bent down and kissed him again. This time he reached up to draw her down, and they wrapped themselves around each other, tangled in blankets, kissing and whispering. He lost himself in the pleasure of the taste of her mouth, the curve of her hip under his hand, the warm skin of her back. He forgot that they were in a demon realm, that they were going into battle the next day, that they might never see home again: Everything faded away and was Isabelle.

“WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?” There was a sound of shattering glass, and they both sat up to see Alec glaring at them. He had dropped the empty bottle of wine he had been carrying, and there were bits of sparkly glass all over the cave floor. “WHY

CAN’T YOU GO SOMEWHERE ELSE TO DO THESE HORRIBLE THINGS? MY

EYES.”

“It’s a demon realm, Alec,” Isabelle said. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”

“And you said I should look after her—” Simon began, then realized that would not be a productive line of conversation, and shut up.

Alec flopped down on the opposite side of the fire and glared at them both. “And where have Jace and Clary gone?”

“Ah,” said Simon delicately. “Who can say . . .”

“Straight people,” Alec declared. “Why can’t they control themselves?”

“It’s a mystery,” Simon agreed, and lay back down to sleep.

Jia Penhallow sat on the desk in her office. It felt so casual, she couldn’t help but wonder if it would be frowned on, the Consul sitting irreverently on the ancient desk of power—but she was alone in the room, and tired beyond all measures of tired.

In her hand she gripped a note that had come from New York: a warlock’s fire-message, powerful enough to bypass the wards around the city. She recognized the handwriting as Catarina Loss’s, but the words were not Catarina’s.

With hope. Jia folded the letter again and slipped it into her pocket. She thought of the city out there, under the night sky, the pale silver of the demon towers soon to turn to the red of war. She thought of her husband and her daughter. She thought of the boxes and boxes that had arrived from Theresa Gray only a short while ago, rising up through the earth in Angel Square, each box stamped with the spiral symbol of the Labyrinth. She felt a stirring in her heart—some fear, but also some relief, that finally the time was coming, finally the waiting would be over, finally they would have their chance. She knew that the Shadowhunters of Alicante would fight to the last: with determination, with bravery, with stubbornness, with vengeance, with glory.

With hope.

21 The Keys of Death and Hell

“God, my head,” Alec said as he and Jace knelt beside a ridge of rock that crowned the top of a gray, scree-covered hill. The rock gave them cover, and past it, using Farsighted runes, they could see the half-ruined fortress, and all around it, Dark Shadowhunters clustered like ants.

It was like a warped mirror of Alicante’s Gard Hill. The structure atop it resembled the Gard they knew, but with a massive wall around it, the fortress enclosed within like a garden in a cloister.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have drunk so much last night,” Jace said, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes. All around the wall the Endarkened stood in concentric rings, a tight group in front of the gates that led inside. There were smaller groups of them at strategic points up and down the hill. Alec could see Jace computing the numbers of the enemy, considering and discarding strategies in his head.

“Maybe you should try looking a little less smug about what you did last night,” said Alec.

Jace nearly fell off the ridge. “I do not look smug. Well,” he amended, “no more than usual.”

“Please,” Alec said, pulling out his stele. “I can read your face like a very open, very pornographic book. I wish I couldn’t.”

“Is this your way of telling me to shut my face?” Jace inquired.

“Remember when you mocked me for sneaking around with Magnus and asked me if I’d fallen on my neck?” Alec asked, placing the tip of the stele against his forearm and starting to draw an iratze. “This is payback.”

Jace snorted and grabbed the stele from Alec. “Give me that,” he said, and finished off t h e iratze for him, with his usual messy flourish. Alec felt the numbing kick as his headache started to recede. Jace turned his attention back to the hill.

“You know what’s interesting?” he said. “I’ve seen a few flying demons, but they’re staying well away from the Dark Gard—”

Alec raised an eyebrow. “Dark Gard?”

“Got a better name?” Jace shrugged. “Anyway, they’re staying away from the Dark Gard and the hill. They serve Sebastian, but they seem to be respecting his space.”

“Well, they can’t be too far away,” said Alec. “They got to the Accords Hall pretty fast when you triggered that alarm.”

“They could be inside the fortress,” said Jace, voicing what they were both thinking.

“I wish you’d managed to get the skeptron,” Alec said, in a subdued voice. “I got the feeling it could take out a lot of demons. If it still worked, after all these years.” Jace had an odd expression on his face. Alec hastened to add, “Not that anyone could have gotten it. You tried—”

“I’m not so sure,” Jace said, his expression both calculating and faraway. “Come on.

Let’s get back to the others.”

There was no time to reply; Jace was already retreating. Alec followed him, crawling backward, out of range of sight of the Dark Gard. Once they had gone enough of a distance, they straightened up and half-slid down the scree slope to where the others were waiting. Simon was standing by Izzy, and Clary had her sketchpad and a pen out and was drawing runes. From the way she was shaking her head, tearing out the pages and crumpling them up in her hand, it wasn’t going as well as she might have liked.

“Are you littering?” Jace demanded as he and Alec jogged to a stop beside the other three.

Clary gave him what was probably meant to be a withering look, but which came out fairly soppy. Jace returned it just as soppily. Alec wondered what would happen if he made a sacrifice to the dark demon gods of this world in exchange for not being constantly reminded that he was single. And not just single. He didn’t only miss Magnus; he was terrified for him, with a deep constant aching terror that never went away completely.

“Jace, this world has been burned to a cinder, and every living creature is dead,” Clary said. “I’m fairly sure there’s no one left to recycle.”

“So what did you see?” Isabelle demanded. She hadn’t been at all pleased to be left behind while Alec and Jace did recon, but Alec had insisted that she save her strength.

She was listening to him more these days, Alec thought, in that way that Izzy only listened to people whose opinions she respected. It was nice.

“Here.” Jace pulled his stele from his pocket and knelt down, shrugging off his gear jacket. The muscles of his back moved under his shirt as he used the pointed tip of the stele to draw in the yellowish dirt. “Here’s the Dark Gard. There’s one way in, and that’s through the gate in the outer wall. It’s closed, but an Open rune should take care of that.

The question is how to get to the gate. The most defensible positions are here, here, and here”—his stele made quick swipes in the dirt—“so we go around and up the back. If the geography here is like it is in our Alicante, and it looks like it is, there’s a natural pathway up the back of the hill. Once we get closer, we split here and here”—the stele made swirls and patterns as he drew, and a patch of sweat darkened between his shoulder blades—“and we try to herd any demons or Endarkened toward the center.” He sat back, worrying at his lip. “I can take out a lot of them, but I’ll need you to keep them contained while I do it. Do you understand the plan?”

They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed. “What’s that wobbly thing?” he said. “Is it a tree?”

“Those are the gates,” Jace said.

“Ohh,” said Isabelle, pleased. “So what are the swirly bits? Is there a moat?”

“Those are trajectory lines—Honestly, am I the only person who’s ever seen a strategy map?” Jace demanded, throwing his stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. “Do you understand anything I just said?”

“No,” Clary said. “Your strategy is probably awesome, but your drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and the fortress looks like a frog. There has to be a better way to explain.”

Jace sank back on his heels and crossed his arms. “Well, I’d love to hear it.”

“I have an idea,” Simon said. “Remember how before, I was talking about Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Vividly,” Jace said. “It was a dark time.”

Simon ignored him. “All the Dark Shadowhunters dress in red gear,” he said. “And they’re not enormously bright or self-driven. Their wills seem to be subsumed, at least in part, by Sebastian’s. Right?”

“Right,” Isabelle said, and gave Jace a quelling look.

“In D&D, my first move, when you’re dealing with an opposing army like that, would be to lure away a group of them—say five—and take their clothes.”

“Is this so they have to go back to the fortress naked and their embarrassment will negatively affect morale?” said Jace. “Because that seems complicated.”

“I’m pretty sure he means take their clothes and wear them as disguises,” Clary said.

“So that we can sneak up to the gates unobserved. If the other Endarkened aren’t very perceptive, they might not notice.” Jace looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “It’s in every movie, like, ever.”

“We don’t watch movies,” said Alec.

“I think the question is whether Sebastian watches movies,” said Isabelle. “Is our strategy when we actually see him still ‘trust me,’ by the way?”

“It’s still ‘trust me,’ ” Jace said.

“Oh, good,” Isabelle said. “For a second there I was worried there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could follow. You know, something reassuring.”

“There is a plan.” Jace slid his stele into his belt and rose fluidly to his feet. “Simon’s idea for how we get into Sebastian’s fortress. We’re going to do it.” Simon stared at him. “Seriously?”

Jace retrieved his jacket. “It’s a good idea.”

“But it’s my idea,” Simon said.

“And it was good, so we’re doing it. Congratulations. We’re going up the hill the way I outlined, and then we’re going to enact your plan when we get toward the top. And when we get there . . .” He turned to Clary. “That thing you did in the Seelie Court. The way you jumped up and drew the rune on the wall; could you do it again?”

“I don’t see why not,” Clary said. “Why?”

Jace began to smile.

Emma sat on the bed in her small attic room, surrounded by papers.

She had finally liberated them from the folder she had taken from the Consul’s office.

They were spread out on her blanket, illuminated by the light of the sun coming through the small window, though she could hardly bring herself to touch them.

There were grainy photographs, taken under a bright Los Angeles sky, of the bodies of her parents. She could see now why they hadn’t been able to bring the bodies to Idris.

They had been stripped, their skin gray like ash except where it was marked all over with ugly black scrawls, not like Marks at all but hideous. The sand around them was wet, as if it had rained; they were far back from the tide line. Emma fought back the urge to throw up as she tried to force herself to absorb the information: when the bodies had been found, when they had been identified, and how they had crumbled away in clumps when the Shadowhunters had tried to lift them—

“Emma.” It was Helen, standing in the doorway. The light that spilled in through the window turned the edges of her hair to the color of silver, the way it had always done to Mark’s. She looked more like Mark than ever; in fact, stress had made her thinner and revealed more clearly the delicate arches of her cheekbones, the points at the tops of her ears. “Where did you get those?”

Emma raised her chin defiantly. “I took them from the Consul’s office.” Helen sat down on the edge of the bed. “Emma, you have to put them back.” Emma jabbed a finger at the papers. “They’re not going to look to find out what happened to my parents,” she said. “They’re saying it’s just a random attack by the Endarkened, but it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t.”

“Emma, the Endarkened and their allies didn’t just kill the Shadowhunters of the Institute. They wiped out the Los Angeles Conclave. It makes sense they’d go after your parents, too.”

“Why wouldn’t they Turn them?” Emma demanded. “They needed every warrior they could get. When you say they wiped out the Conclave, they didn’t leave bodies. They Turned them all.”

“Except the young and the very old.”

“Well, my parents were neither of those things.”

“Would you rather they’d been Turned?” Helen said quietly, and Emma knew she was thinking of her own father.

“No,” Emma said. “But are you really saying that it doesn’t matter who killed them?

That I shouldn’t even want to know why?”

“Why what?” Tiberius was standing in the door, his mop of unruly black curls tumbling into his eyes. He looked younger than his ten years, an impression helped by the fact that his stuffed bee was dangling from one hand. His delicate face was smudged with tiredness. “Where’s Julian?”

“He’s down in the kitchen getting food,” Helen said. “Are you hungry?”

“Is he angry with me?” Ty asked, looking at Emma.

“No, but you know he gets upset when you yell at him, or hurt yourself,” Emma said carefully. It was hard to know what might frighten Ty or send him into a tantrum. In her experience it was better to always tell him the unvarnished truth. The sort of lies people routinely told children, of the “This injection won’t hurt a bit” variety, were disastrous when told to Ty.

Yesterday, Julian had spent quite a bit of time picking broken glass out of his brother’s bloody feet and had explained to him rather sternly that if he ever walked on broken glass again, Julian would tell on him to the adults and he’d have to take whatever punishment he got. Ty had kicked him in response, leaving a bloody footprint on Jules’s shirt.

“Jules wants you to be okay,” Emma said now. “That’s all he wants.” Helen reached out her arms for Ty—Emma didn’t blame her. Ty looked small and huddled, and the way he was clutching his bee made her worried for him. She would have wanted to hug him too. But he didn’t like to be touched, not by anyone but Livvy. He flinched away from his half sister and moved over to the window. After a moment Emma joined him there, being careful to give him his space.

“Sebastian can get in and out of the city,” said Ty.

“Yes, but he’s only one person, and he’s not that interested in us. Besides, I believe the Clave has a plan to keep us safe.”

“I believe the same thing,” Ty muttered, looking down and out the window. He pointed.

“I just don’t know if it’ll work.”

It took Emma a moment to realize what he was indicating. The streets were crowded, and not with pedestrians. Nephilim in the uniforms of the Gard, and some in gear, were moving back and forth in the streets, carrying hammers and nails and boxes of objects that made Emma stare—scissors and horseshoes, knives and daggers and assorted weapons, even boxes of what looked like earth. One man carried several burlap sacks marked SALT.

Each box and bag had a symbol stamped on it: a spiral. Emma had seen it before in her Codex: the sigil of the Spiral Labyrinth of the warlocks.

“Cold iron,” said Ty thoughtfully. “Wrought, not heated and shaped. Salt, and grave dirt.”

There was a look on Helen’s face, that look adults got when they knew something but didn’t want to tell you what it was. Emma looked over at Ty, quiet and composed, his serious gray eyes tracking up and down the streets outside. Beside him stood Helen, who had risen up off the bed, her expression anxious.

“They sent for magical ammunition,” said Ty. “From the Spiral Labyrinth. Or maybe it was the warlocks’ idea. It’s hard to know.”

Emma stared through the glass and then back at Ty, who looked up at her through his long lashes. “What does it mean?” she asked.

Ty smiled his rare, unpracticed smile. “It means what Mark said in his note was true,” he said.

Clary didn’t think she’d ever been so heavily runed, or had ever seen the Lightwoods covered in as many of the magical sigils as they were now. She had done them all herself, putting everything she had into them—all of her desire for them all to be safe, all her yearning to find her mother and Luke.

Jace’s arms looked like a map: runes spread down onto his collarbones and chest, the backs of his hands. Clary’s own skin looked foreign to her when she caught sight of it. She remembered once having seen a boy who had the elaborate musculature of the human body tattooed onto his skin, and thinking it was as if he had been turned to glass. It was a bit like that now, she thought, looking around at her companions as they toiled up the hill toward the Dark Gard: the road map of their bravery and hopes, their dreams and desires, marked clearly on their bodies. Shadowhunters weren’t always the most forthcoming of people, but their skins were honest.

Clary had covered herself with healing runes, but they weren’t enough to keep her lungs from aching from the constant dust. She remembered what Jace had said about the two of them suffering more than the others because of their higher concentration of angel blood.

She stopped to cough now and turned away, spitting up black. She wiped her hand across her mouth quickly, before Jace could turn and see.

Jace’s drawing skills might have been poor, but his strategy was faultless. They were making their way upward in a sort of zigzag formation, darting from one heap of blackened stone to another. With the foliage all gone, the stone was the only cover the hill provided. The hill was mostly stripped of trees, only a few dead stumps here and there.

They had met only a single Endarkened, quickly dispatched, their blood soaking into the ashy earth. Clary remembered the path up to the Gard in Alicante, green and lovely, and looked with hatred at the wasteland around her.

The air was heavy and hot, as if the burned-orange sun were pressing down on them.

Clary joined the others behind a high cairn. They had refilled their bottles that morning from the lake in the cave, and Alec was sharing around some water, his grim face streaked with black dust. “This is the last of it,” he said, and handed it to Isabelle. She took a tiny sip and passed it to Simon, who shook his head—he didn’t need water—and passed it on to Clary.

Jace looked at Clary. She could see herself reflected in his eyes, looking small and pale and dirty. She wondered if she looked different to him after last night. She had almost expected him to look different to her, when she woke up in the morning by the cold remains of the fire, with his hand in hers. But he was the same Jace, the Jace she had always loved. And he looked at her as he always had, as if she were a small miracle, the kind you kept close to your heart.

Clary took a mouthful of water and passed the thermos to Jace, who tipped his head back and swallowed. She watched the muscles move in his throat with a brief fascination and then looked away before she could blush—okay, maybe some things had changed, but this really wasn’t the time to be thinking about it.

“That’s it,” Jace said, and dropped the now empty thermos. They all watched it roll among the rocks. No more water. “One less thing to carry,” he added, trying to sound light, but his voice came out sounding as dry as the dust around them.

His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly despite his iratze s. Alec had shadows under his eyes, and a nervous twitch in his left hand. Isabelle’s eyes were red with dust, and she blinked and rubbed at them when she thought no one was watching. They all looked pretty terrible, Clary thought, with the possible exception of Simon, who mostly looked the same. He was standing close to the cairn, his fingers resting lightly on a ledge of stone.

“These are graves,” he said suddenly.

Jace looked up. “What?”

“These rock piles. They’re graves. Old ones. People fell in battle and they buried them by covering their bodies with stones.”

“Shadowhunters,” Alec said. “Who else would die defending Gard Hill?” Jace touched the stones with a leather-gloved hand, and frowned. “We burn our dead.”

“Maybe not in this world,” Isabelle said. “Things are different. Maybe they didn’t have time. Maybe it was their last stand—”

“Stop,” Simon said. He had frozen, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“Someone’s coming. Someone human.”

“How do you know they’re human?” Clary dropped her voice.

“Blood,” he said succinctly. “Demon blood smells different. These are people—

Nephilim, but not.”

Jace made a quick, quieting gesture with his hand, and they all fell silent. He pressed his back to the cairn and peered around the side. Clary saw his jaw tighten. “Endarkened,” he said in a low voice. “Five of them.”

“Perfect number,” said Alec with a surprisingly wolfish grin. His bow was in his hands almost before Clary could see the movement, and he stepped sideways, out of the shelter of the rocks, and let his arrow fly.

She saw Jace’s surprised expression—he hadn’t been expecting Alec to move first—and then he caught hold of one of the rocks of the cairn and flung himself up and over.

Isabelle sprang after him like a cat, and Simon followed, fast and unerring, his hands bare.

It was as if this world had been made for those who were already dead, Clary thought, and then she heard a long gurgling cry, cut abruptly short.

She reached for Heosphoros, thought better of it, and seized a dagger from her weapons belt before hurling herself around the side of the cairn. There was an incline behind it, the Dark Gard looming black and ruined above them. Four Shadowhunters dressed in red were looking around in shock and surprise. One of their company, a blond woman, was sprawled on the ground, her body pointing uphill, an arrow protruding from her throat.

That explains the gurgling noise, Clary thought a little dizzily as Alec notched his bow again and sent another arrow flying. A second man, dark-haired and paunchy, staggered back with a yell, the arrow in his leg; Isabelle was on him in an instant, her whip slicing across his throat. As the man went down, Jace leaped and rode his body to the ground, using the force of the fall to hurl his own body forward. His blades flashed with a scissoring motion, slicing the head off a bald man whose red gear was splotched with patches of dried blood. More blood fountained, drenching the scarlet gear with another layer of red as the headless corpse slid to the ground. There was a shriek, and the woman who had been standing behind him lifted a curved blade to slice at Jace; Clary whipped her dagger forward and let it fly. It buried itself in the woman’s forehead and she folded silently to the ground without another cry.

The last of the Endarkened began to run, stumbling uphill. Simon flashed past Clary, a movement too swift to see, and sprang like a cat. The Endarkened man went down with a gasp of terror, and Clary saw Simon rear up over him and strike like a snake. There was a sound like tearing paper.

They all looked away. After a few long moments Simon rose from the still body and came down the hill toward them. There was blood on his shirt, and blood on his hands and face. He turned his face to the side, coughed, and spat, looking sick.

“Bitter,” he said. “The blood. It tastes like Sebastian’s.” Isabelle looked ill, in a way she hadn’t when she’d been cutting the Dark Shadowhunter’s throat. “I hate him,” she said suddenly. “Sebastian. What he’s done to them, it’s worse than murder. They’re not even people anymore. When they die, they can’t be buried in the Silent City. And no one will mourn for them. They’ve already been mourned for. If I loved someone and they were Turned like this—I’d be happy if they were dead.”

She was breathing hard; no one said anything. Finally Jace looked up at the sky, gold eyes gleaming in his dirt-smudged face. “We’d better get moving—the sun’s going down, an d besides, someone might have heard us.” They stripped the gear from the bodies, silently and quickly. There was something sickening about the work, something that hadn’t seemed quite so horrible when Simon had described the strategy but that now seemed very horrible. She had killed—demons and Forsaken; she would have killed Sebastian, if she had been able to do it without harming Jace. But there was something grim and butcher-like about stripping the clothes from the dead bodies of Shadowhunters, even those Marked with the runes of death and Hell. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at the face of one of the dead Shadowhunters, a man with brown hair, and wondering if he could be Julian’s father.

She put on the gear jacket and trousers of the smaller of the women, but they were still too big. Some quick work with her knife shortened the sleeves and hems, and her weapons belt held the pants up. There wasn’t much Alec could do: He’d wound up with the largest of the Shadowhunters’ jackets, and it bulked on him. Simon’s sleeves were too short and tight; he cut the seams at the shoulders to allow himself more movement. Jace and Isabelle both managed to wind up with clothes that fit them, though Isabelle’s were spotted with drying blood. Jace managed to look handsome in the dark red, which was nothing short of annoying.

They hid the bodies behind the rock cairn and started their way back up the hill. Jace had been right, the sun was going down, bathing the realm in the colors of fire and blood.

They fell into step with one another as they drew closer and closer to the great silhouette of the Dark Gard.

The upward slope suddenly leveled out, and they were there, on a plateau in front of the fortress. It was like looking at one photo negative overlapping another. Clary could see in her mind’s eye the Gard as it was in her world, the hill covered in trees and greenery, the gardens surrounding the keep, the glow of witchlight illuminating the whole place. The sun shining down on it during the day, and the stars at night.

Here the top of the hill was barren and swept with wind cold enough to cut through the material of Clary’s stolen jacket. The horizon was a red line like a slit throat. Everything was bathed in that bloody light, from the crowd of Endarkened who milled around the plateau, to the Dark Gard itself. Now that they were close, they could see the wall that surrounded it, and the sturdy gates.

“You’d better pull your hood up,” Jace said from behind her, taking hold of the item in question and drawing it up and over her head. “Your hair’s recognizable.”

“To the Endarkened?” said Simon, who looked incredibly strange to Clary in his red gear. She had never imagined Simon in gear.

“To Sebastian,” said Jace shortly, and drew his own hood up. They had taken their weapons out: Isabelle’s whip gleamed in the red light, and Alec’s bow was in his hands.

Jace was looking toward the Dark Gard. Clary almost expected him to say something, to make a speech, to mark the occasion. He didn’t. She could see the sharp angle of his cheekbones under the hood of the gear, the tight set of his jaw. He was ready. They all were.

“We go to the gates,” he said, and moved forward.

Clary felt cold all over—battle-coldness, keeping her spine straight, her breath even.

The dirt here was different, she noticed almost distantly. Unlike the rest of the sand of the desert world, it had been churned by the passage of feet. A red-clad warrior passed her then, a brown-skinned man, tall and muscular. He paid no attention to them. He appeared to be walking a beat, as were several of the rest of the Endarkened, a sort of assigned path back and forth. A white woman with graying hair was a few feet behind him. Clary felt her muscles tighten— Amatis? —but as she passed closer, it was clear that her face was not familiar. Clary thought she felt the woman’s eyes on them, just the same, and was relieved when they passed out of her sight.

The Gard was looming up in front of them now, the gates massive and made of iron.

They were carved with a pattern of a hand holding a weapon—an orb-tipped skeptron. It was clear the gates had been subjected to years of desecration. Their surfaces were chipped and scarred, splashed here and there with ichor and what looked disturbingly like dried human blood.

Clary stepped up to place her stele against the gates, ready with an Open rune already in her head—but the gates swung wide at her touch. She cast a surprised look back at the others. Jace was chewing his lip; she raised a questioning eyebrow at him, but he only shrugged, as if to say: We go forward. What else can we do?

They went. Past the gates was a bridge over a narrow ravine. Darkness roiled at the bottom of the chasm, thicker than fog or smoke. Isabelle crossed first, with her whip, and Alec took up the rear, facing behind them with his bow and arrow. As they went over the bridge in single file, Clary chanced a glance downward into the crevasse, and nearly flinched back—the darkness had limbs, long and hooked like spider’s legs, and what looked like gleaming yellow eyes.

“Don’t look,” Jace said in a low voice, and Clary snapped her eyes back to Isabelle’s whip, gold and gleaming ahead of them. It lit the darkness so that when they arrived at the front doors of the keep, Jace was able to find the latch easily, and to swing the door open.

It opened on darkness. They all looked at one another, a brief paralysis none of them could break. Clary found she was staring at the others, trying to memorize them; Simon’s brown eyes, the curve of Jace’s collarbone under the red jacket, the arch of Alec’s eyebrow, Isabelle’s worried frown.

Stop, she told herself. This isn’t the end. You’ll see them again.

She glanced behind her. Past the bridge were the gates, wide open, and past that were the Endarkened, standing motionless. Clary had the sense they were watching too, everything caught in stillness in this one breathless moment before the fall.

Now. She stepped forward, into the darkness; she heard Jace say her name, very low, almost a whisper, and then she was over the threshold, and light was all around her, blinding in its suddenness. She heard the murmur of the others as they took their places at her side, and then the cold rush of air as the door slammed shut behind them.

She raised her eyes. They were standing in an enormous entryway, the size of the inside of the Accords Hall. A massive double spiral stone staircase led upward, twisting and winding, two sets of stairs that interwove with each other but never met. Each was lined on either side by a stone balustrade, and Sebastian was leaning against one of the near balustrades, smiling down at them.

It was a positively feral smile: delighted and anticipatory. He wore spotless scarlet gear, and his hair shone like iron. He shook his head. “Clary, Clary,” he said. “I really thought you were much smarter than this.”

Clary cleared her throat. It felt clotted from dust, and from fear. Her skin was buzzing as if she’d swallowed adrenaline. “Smarter than what?” she said, and nearly winced at the echo of her own voice, bouncing off the bare stone walls. There were no tapestries, no paintings, nothing to soften the harshness.

Though she didn’t know what else she would have expected from a demon world. Of course there was no art.

“We are here,” she said. “Inside your fortress. There are five of us, and one of you.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “Am I supposed to look surprised?” He twisted his face up into a mocking grimace of false astonishment that made Clary’s gut twist. “Who could believe it?” he said mockingly. “I mean, never mind that obviously I found out from the Queen that you’d come here, but since you’ve arrived, you’ve set an enormous fire, tried to steal a demon-protected artifact—I mean you’ve done everything other than put up an enormous flashing arrow pointing directly to your location.” He sighed. “I’ve always known most of you were terribly stupid. Even Jace, well, you’re pretty but not too bright, are you? Maybe if Valentine had had a few more years with you—but no, probably not even then. The Herondales have always been a family more prized for their jawlines than their intelligence. As for the Lightwoods, the less said the better. Generations of idiots. But Clary—”

“You forgot me,” Simon said.

Sebastian dragged his gaze over to Simon, as if he were distasteful. “You do keep turning up like a bad penny,” he said. “Tedious little vampire. I killed the one who made you, did you know that? I thought vampires were supposed to feel that sort of thing, but you seem indifferent. Terribly callous.”

Clary felt Simon stiffen minutely beside her, remembered him in the cave, doubling over as if he were in pain. Saying he felt as if someone had stuck a knife in his chest.

“Raphael,” Simon whispered; beside him Alec had paled markedly.

“What about the others?” he demanded in a rough voice. “Magnus—Luke—”

“Our mother,” Clary said. “Surely even you wouldn’t hurt her.” Sebastian’s smirk turned brittle. “She’s not my mother,” he said, and then shrugged with a sort of exaggerated exasperation. “She’s alive,” he said. “As for the warlock and the werewolf, I couldn’t say. I haven’t checked on them in a while. The warlock wasn’t looking so well the last time I saw him,” he added. “I don’t think this dimension’s been good for him. He might be dead by now. But you really can’t expect me to have foreseen that.” Alec lifted his bow in a single swift motion. “Foresee this,” he said, and let an arrow fly.

It shot straight toward Sebastian—who moved like lightning, plucking the arrow out of the air, fingers closing around it as it vibrated in his grasp. Clary heard Isabelle’s sudden intake of breath, felt the rush of blood and dread in her own veins.

Sebastian pointed the sharp end of the arrow toward Alec as if he were a teacher wielding a ruler, and made a clucking noise of disapproval. “Naughty,” he said. “Try to harm me here in my own stronghold, will you, at the heart of my power? As I said, you’re a fool. You all are fools.” He made a sudden gesture, a twist of the wrist, and the arrow snapped, the sound like a gunshot.

The double doors at both ends of the entryway flew open, and demons poured in.

Clary had expected it, had braced herself, but there was no real bracing oneself for something like this. She had seen demons, quantities of them, and yet as the flood poured in from both sides—spider-creatures with fat, poisonous bodies; skinless humanoid monsters dripping blood; things with talons and teeth and claws, massive praying mantises with jaws that dropped open as if unhinged—her skin felt as if it wanted to crawl away from her body. She forced herself still, her hand on Heosphoros, and looked up at her brother.

He met her gaze with his own dark one, and she remembered the boy in her vision, the one with green eyes like hers. She saw a furrow appear between his eyes.

He raised his hand; snapped his fingers. “Stop,” he said.

The demons froze, midmotion, on either side of Clary and the others. She could hear Jace’s harsh breathing, felt him press his fingers against the hand she was holding behind her back. A silent signal. The others were rigid, surrounding her.

“My sister,” Sebastian said. “Don’t hurt her. Bring her to me here. Kill the others.” He narrowed his eyes at Jace. “If you can.”

The demons surged forward. Isabelle’s necklace pulsed like a strobe light, sending out blazing tongues of red and gold, and in the fiery light Clary saw the others turn to hold the demons off.

It was her chance. She spun and darted toward the wall, feeling the Agility rune on her arm burn as she launched herself up, caught at the rough stone with her left hand, and swung forward, slamming the tip of her stele into the granite as if it were an axe going into tree bark. She felt the stone shudder: small fissures appeared, but she clung on grimly, dragging her stele across the wall’s surface, swift and slashing. She felt the grind and drag of it distantly. Everything seemed to have receded, even the screech and crash of fighting behind her, the stink and howl of demons. She could only feel the power of the familiar runes echoing through her as she drew, and drew, and drew—

Something seized her ankle and yanked. A bolt of pain shot up her leg; she glanced down and saw a ropy tentacle wrapped around her boot, dragging her down. It was attached to a demon that looked like a massive molting parrot with tentacles exploding out from where its wings should have been. She clung on harder to the wall, whipping her stele back and forth, the rock shivering as the black lines ate into the stone.

The pressure on her ankle increased. With a cry Clary let go, her stele falling as she tumbled, hitting the ground hard. She gasped and rolled to the side just as an arrow flew past her head and sank deep into the grasping demon’s flesh. She whipped her head up and saw Alec, reaching back for another arrow, just as the runes on the wall behind her blazed up like a map of heavenly fire. Jace was beside Alec, his sword in his hand, his eyes fixed on Clary.

She nodded, minutely. Do it.

The demon that had been holding her roared; the tentacle loosed its grasp, and Clary staggered up and to her feet. She hadn’t been able to draw a rectangular doorway, so the entrance scrawled on the wall was blazing in a ragged circle, like the opening to a tunnel.

Within the blaze she could see the shimmer of the Portal—it rippled like silver water.

Jace hurtled by her and threw himself into it. She caught a brief glimpse of what was beyond—the blasted Accords Hall, the statue of Jonathan Shadowhunter—before she flung herself forward, pressing her hand to the Portal, keeping it open so that Sebastian couldn’t close it. Jace needed only a few seconds—

She could hear Sebastian behind her, screaming in a language she didn’t know. The stench of demons was all around; she heard a hiss and a rattle and turned to see a Ravener scuttling toward her, its scorpion tail raised. She flinched back, just as it fell apart into two pieces, Isabelle’s metal whip scissoring down to slice it in half. Stinking ichor flooded across the floor; Simon grabbed Clary and dragged her back, just as the Portal swelled with a sudden, incredible light and Jace came through it.

Clary sucked in a breath. Never had Jace looked so much like an avenging angel, hurtling through cloud and fire. His bright hair seemed to burn as he landed lightly and raised the weapon he was holding in his hand. It was Jonathan Shadowhunter’s skeptron.

The orb at the center was shining. Through the Portal behind Jace, just before it closed, Clary saw the dark shapes of flying demons, heard their shrieks of disappointment and rage as they arrived to find the weapon gone and the thief nowhere to be seen.

As Jace raised the skeptron, the demons around them began to scuttle backward.

Sebastian was leaning over the balustrade, his hands clenched on it, dead white. He was staring at Jace. “Jonathan,” he said, and his voice rose and carried. “Jonathan, I forbid—” Jace thrust the skeptron skyward, and the orb burst into flame. It was a brilliant, contained, icy flame, more light than heat, but a piercing light that shot through the whole room, limning everything in brilliance. Clary saw the demons turned to flaming silhouettes before they shuddered and exploded into ash. The ones closest to Jace crumbled first, but the light ran through all of them like a fissure opening in the earth, and one by one they shrieked and dissolved, leaving a thick layer of gray-black ash on the floor.

The light intensified, burning brighter until Clary closed her eyes, still seeing the burst of last brilliance through them eyelids. When she opened them again, the entryway was almost empty. Only she and her companions remained. The demons were gone—and Sebastian was there, still, standing pale and shocked on the stairway.

“No,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

Jace was still standing with the skeptron in his hand; the orb had turned black and dead, like a lightbulb that had burned out. He looked up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling fast. “You thought we didn’t know you were expecting us,” he said. “But we were counting on it.” He took a step forward. “I know you,” he said, still breathlessly, his hair wild and his golden eyes blazing. “You took me over, took control of me, forced me to do whatever you wanted, but I learned from you. You were in my head, and I remember. I remember how you think, how you plan. I remember all of it. I knew you’d underestimate us, think we didn’t guess it was a trap, think we wouldn’t have planned for that. You forget I know you; down to the last corner of your arrogant little mind I know you—”

“Shut up,” Sebastian hissed. He pointed at them with a shaking hand. “You will pay in blood for this,” he said, and then he turned and ran up the steps, vanishing so quickly that even Alec’s arrow, winging after him, couldn’t catch him up. It hit the curve of the staircase instead and snapped on impact with the stone, then fell to the ground in two neat pieces.

“Jace,” Clary said. She touched his arm. He seemed frozen in place. “Jace, when he says we’ll pay in blood, he doesn’t mean our blood. He means theirs. Luke and Magnus and Mom. We have to go find them.”

“I agree.” Alec had lowered his bow; his red gear jacket had been torn from him in the fight, and the bracer on his arm was stained with blood. “Each staircase leads to a different level. We’re going to have to split up. Jace, Clary, you take the east staircase; the rest of us will take the other.”

No one protested. Clary knew Jace would never have agreed to split off from her, and neither would Alec have left his sister, or Isabelle and Simon have left each other. If they had to separate, this was the only way to do it.

“Jace,” Alec said, again, and this time the word seemed to snap Jace out of his fugue state. He tossed the dead skeptron aside, let it clatter to the ground, and looked up with a nod.

“Right,” he said, and the door behind them burst open. Dark Shadowhunters in red gear began to pour into the room. Jace seized Clary’s wrist and they ran, Alec and the others pounding along beside them until they reached the stairway and broke apart. Clary thought she heard Simon say her name as she and Jace lunged for the east staircase. She turned around to look for him, but he was gone. The room was full of the Endarkened, several of them raising weapons—crossbows, even slingshots—to take aim. She ducked her head and continued to run.

Jia Penhallow stood on the balcony of the Gard and looked down over the city of Alicante.

The balcony was rarely used. There had been a time when the Consul had often spoken to the populace from this spot high above them, but the habit had fallen out of favor in the nineteenth century when Consul Fairchild had decided that the action smacked too much of the behavior of a pope or a king.

Twilight had come, and the lights of Alicante had begun to burn: witchlight in the windows of every house and storefront, witchlight illuminating the statue in Angel Square, witchlight pouring from the Basilias. Jia took a deep breath, holding the note from Maia Roberts that spoke of hope in her left hand as she readied herself.

The demon towers flared up blue, and Jia began to speak. Her voice echoed from tower to tower, dispersing itself through the city. She could see people stopped in the street, their heads craned back to look at the demon towers, people arrested on the doorsteps of their houses, listening as her words rolled over them like a tide.

“Nephilim,” she said. “Children of the Angel, warriors, tonight we ready ourselves, for tonight Sebastian Morgenstern will bring his forces against us.” The wind coming across the hills that surrounded Alicante was icy; Jia shivered. “Sebastian Morgenstern is trying to destroy what we are,” she said. “He will bring against us warriors who wear our own faces but are not Nephilim. We cannot hesitate. When we face them, when we look at an Endarkened, we cannot see brother or mother or sister or wife, but a creature in torment.

A human from whom all humanity has been stripped. We are what we are because our will is free: We are free to choose. We choose to stand and fight. We choose to defeat Sebastian’s forces. They have the darkness; we have the strength of the Angel. Fire tests gold. In this fire we will be tested, and we will shine out. You know the protocol; you know what to do. Go forth, children of the Angel.

“Go forth and light the lights of war.”

22 The Ashes of Our Fathers

The sound of a sudden, wailing siren split the air, and Emma started up in bed, scattering the papers to the floor. Her heart was pounding.

Through the open window of her bedroom, she could see the demon towers, flashing gold and red. The colors of war.

She staggered to her feet, reaching for her gear, which was on a peg by the bed. She had just slid into it and was bending down to tie up her boots when the door to her room burst open. It was Julian. He skidded halfway inside before catching himself. He stared at the papers on the floor, and then at her. “Emma—didn’t you hear the announcement?”

“I was napping.” She clipped out the words as she attached the harness that held Cortana to her back, then slipped the blade into the scabbard.

“The city’s under attack,” he said. “We have to get to the Accords Hall. They’re going to lock us inside—all the kids—it’s the safest place in the city.”

“I won’t go,” Emma said.

Julian stared at her. He was wearing jeans and a gear jacket and sneakers; there was a shortsword stuck through his belt. His soft brown curls were wild and unbrushed. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to hide in the Accords Hall. I want to fight.” Jules pushed his hands through his tangled hair. “If you fight, I fight,” he said. “And that means nobody carries Tavvy to the Accords Hall, and nobody protects Livvy or Ty or Dru.”

“What about Helen and Aline?” Emma demanded. “The Penhallows—”

“Helen’s waiting for us. All the Penhallows are up at the Gard, Aline included. There’s no one home but Helen and us,” said Julian, holding out a hand for Emma. “Helen can’t protect us all on her own and carry the baby, too; she’s only one person.” He looked at her, and she could see the fear in his eyes, the fear he was usually so careful to shield from the younger children.

“Emma,” he said. “You’re the best, the best fighter of all of us. You’re not just my friend, and I’m not just their older brother. I’m their father, or the closest thing to it, and they need me, and I need you.” The hand he was holding out was shaking. His sea-colored eyes were huge in his pale face: He didn’t look like anyone’s father. “Please, Emma.” Slowly Emma reached out and took his hand, wrapping her fingers around his. She saw him let out a minute breath of relief, and felt her chest tighten. Behind him, through the open door, she could glimpse them: Tavvy and Dru, Livia and Tiberius. Her responsibility. “Let’s go,” she said.

At the top of the stairs Jace released Clary’s hand. She clutched at the balustrade, trying not to cough, though her lungs felt like they wanted to tear their way out of her chest. He looked at her— What’s wrong? —but then he stiffened. Audible behind them was the sound of racing feet. The Endarkened were on their heels.

“Come on,” Jace said, and started to run again.

Clary forced herself after him. Jace seemed to know where he was going, unerringly; she supposed he was using the map of the Gard in Alicante that he had in his head, burrowing in toward the center of the keep.

They turned into a long corridor; halfway down it Jace stopped in front of a set of metal doors. They were slashed with unfamiliar runes. Clary would have expected death runes, something that spoke of Hell and darkness, but these were runes of grieving and sorrow for a world destroyed. Who had etched them here, she wondered, and in what excess of mourning? She had seen runes of grief before. Shadowhunters wore them like badges when someone they loved had died, though they did nothing to ease suffering. But there was a difference between grief for a person and grief for a world.

Jace ducked his head, kissed her hard and fast on the mouth. “Are you ready?” She nodded, and he swung the door open and stepped inside. She followed.

The room beyond was as large as the Council room in Alicante’s Gard, if not larger.

The ceiling rose high above them, though instead of rows of seats a wide bare marble floor stretched toward a dais at the end of the room. Behind the dais were two massive, separate windows. Sunset light poured through each of them, though one sunset was the color of gold, and the other was the color of blood.

In the bloody golden light Sebastian knelt in the center of the room. He was etching runes into the floor, a circle of dark connected sigils. Realizing what he was doing, Clary started toward him—and then lurched back with a scream as a massive gray shape loomed up in front of her.

It looked like an enormous maggot, the only gap in its slick gray body its mouth full of jagged teeth. Clary recognized it. She’d seen one before in Alicante, rolling its slippery body over a pile of blood and glass and icing sugar. A Behemoth demon.

She reached for her dagger, but Jace was already leaping, sword in hand. He flew through the air and landed on the back of the demon, stabbing down through its eyeless head. Clary backed away as the Behemoth demon thrashed, spraying stinging ichor, a loud, ululating wail coming from its open throat. Jace clung to its back, ichor spraying up over him as he brought the sword down, and down, and down again until the demon, with a gurgling scream, collapsed to the ground with a thud. Jace rode it down, knees clamped to its sides, until the last moment. He rolled off and hit the ground standing.

For a moment there was silence. Jace looked around the room as if he expected another demon to lunge out at them from the shadows, but there was nothing, only Sebastian, who had risen to his feet in the center of his now completed circle of runes.

He began to clap slowly. “Lovely work,” he said. “Really excellent demon-dispatching. I bet Dad would have given you a gold star. Now. Shall we dispense with the pleasantries?

You recognize where we are, don’t you?”

Jace’s eyes moved around the room, and Clary followed his gaze. The light outside the windows had dimmed slightly, and she could see the dais more clearly. On it sat two immense—well, the only word for them was “thrones.” They were ivory and gold, with gold steps leading up to them. Each had a curved back embossed with a single key.

“‘I am he that liveth, and was dead,’ ” said Sebastian, “ ‘ and behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.’ ” He made a sweeping gesture toward the two chairs, and Clary realized with a sudden jolt that there was someone kneeling beside the left-most chair—a Dark Shadowhunter in red gear. A woman on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her. “These are the keys, made over in the shapes of thrones and given to me by the demons who rule this world, Lilith and Asmodeus.”

His dark eyes moved to Clary, and she felt his gaze like cold fingers walking up her spine. “I don’t know why you’re showing me this,” she said. “What do you expect?

Admiration? You won’t get it. You can threaten me if you want; you know I don’t care. You can’t threaten Jace—he has the fire of Heaven in his veins; you can’t hurt him.”

“Can’t I?” he said. “Who knows how much of Heaven’s fire he has still in his veins, after that fireworks display he put on the other night? That demon got to you, didn’t she, brother? I knew you could never quite bear the knowledge of it, that you had killed your own kind.”

“You forced me to murder,” Jace said. “It wasn’t my hand holding the knife that killed Sister Magdalena; it was yours.”

“If you like.” Sebastian’s smile turned cold. “Regardless, there are others I can threaten.

Amatis, rise, and bring Jocelyn here.”

Clary felt tiny daggers of ice shoot through her veins; she tried to keep her face from showing any expression as the woman kneeling by the throne rose. It was indeed Amatis, with her disconcerting Luke-blue eyes. She smiled. “With pleasure,” she said, and stalked out of the room, the hem of her long red coat sweeping behind her.

Jace stepped forward with an inarticulate growl—and stopped in his tracks, several feet from Sebastian. He put his hands out, but they seemed to collide with something translucent, an invisible wall.

Sebastian snorted. “As if I’d let you get near me—you, with that fire burning in you.

Once was enough, thank you.”

“So you know I can kill you,” Jace said, facing him, and Clary couldn’t help but think how alike they were and how different—like ice and fire, Sebastian all white and black, and Jace burning up with red and gold. “You can’t hide in there forever. You’ll starve.” Sebastian made a quick gesture with his fingers, the way Clary had seen Magnus gesture when casting a spell—and Jace flew up and back, and slammed into the wall behind them. Her breath caught in a gasp as she spun to see him crumple to the ground, a bloody gash across the side of his head.

Sebastian hummed in delight and lowered his hand. “Don’t worry,” he said conversationally, and turned his gaze back to Clary. “He’ll be fine. Eventually. If I don’t change my mind about what to do with him. I’m sure you understand, now that you’ve seen what I can do.”

Clary held herself still. She knew how important it was to keep her face blank, not to look at Jace in panic, not to show Sebastian her anger or her fear. Deep down in her heart she knew what he wanted, better than anyone else; she knew what he was like, and that was the best weapon she had.

Well, maybe the second-best.

“I’ve always known you had power,” she said, deliberately not looking toward Jace, deliberately not analyzing his motionlessness, the thick trickle of blood that was making its way down the side of his face. This was always going to happen; it was always going to be her facing Sebastian with no one else, not even Jace, by her side.

“Power,” he echoed, as if it were an insult. “Is that what you call it? Here I have more than power, Clary. Here in this keep I can shape what is real.” He had begun to pace inside the circle he had drawn, his hands looped casually behind his back, like a professor delivering a lecture. “This world is connected only by the thinnest threads to the one where we were born. The road through Faerie is one such thread. These windows are another. Step through that one”—he pointed to the window on the right, through which Clary could see dark blue twilight sky, and stars—“and you will return to Idris. But it’s not that simple.” He regarded the stars through the window. “I came to this world because it was a place to hide. And then I began to realize. I am sure our father quoted these words to you many times”—he spoke to Jace, as if Jace could hear him—“but it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. And here I rule. I have my Dark Ones and my demons. I have my keep and citadel. And when the borders of this world are sealed, everything here will be my weapon. Rocks, dead trees, the ground itself will come to my hand and wield its power for me. And the Great Ones, the old demons, will look down on my work, and they will reward me. They will raise me up in glory, and I will rule the abysses between worlds and the spaces between all the stars.”

“‘And he shall rule them with a rod of iron,’” said Clary, remembering Alec’s words in the Accords Hall, “‘and I will give him the Morning Star.’” Sebastian whirled on her, his eyes bright. “Yes!” he said. “Yes, very good, you’re understanding now. I thought I wanted our world, to bring it down in blood, but I want more than that. I want the legacy of the Morgenstern name.”

“You want to be the devil?” Clary said, half-baffled and half-terrified. “You want to rule Hell?” She spread her hands out. “Go ahead, then,” she said. “None of us will stop you.

Let us go home, promise you’ll leave our world alone, and you can have Hell.”

“Alas,” said Sebastian. “For I have discovered one other thing that perhaps sets me apart from Lucifer. I do not want to rule alone.” He extended his arm, an elegant gesture, and indicated the two great thrones on the dais. “One of those is for me. And the other—the other is for you.”

The streets of Alicante turned and twisted back in on themselves like the currents of a sea; if Emma hadn’t been following Helen, who was carrying a witchlight in one hand and her crossbow in the other, she would have been hopelessly lost.

The last of the sun was vanishing from the sky, and the streets were dark. Julian was carrying Tavvy, the baby’s arms locked around his neck; Emma held Dru by the hand, and the twins clung together in silence.

Dru wasn’t fast, and kept stumbling; she fell several times, and Emma had to drag her to her feet. Jules called out to Emma to be careful, and she was trying to be careful. She couldn’t imagine how Julian did it, holding Tavvy so carefully, murmuring so reassuringly that the little boy didn’t even cry. Dru was sobbing silently; Emma brushed the tears off the younger girl’s cheeks as she helped her up for the fourth time, murmuring nonsense comforting words the way her mother once had to her when she’d been a child and had fallen.

She had never missed her parents more agonizingly than she did now; it felt like a knife under her ribs.

“Dru,” she began, and then the sky lit up red. The demon towers had flamed to the color of pure scarlet, all the gold of warning gone.

“The city walls are broken,” Helen said, staring up at the Gard. Emma knew she was thinking about Aline. The red glow of the towers turned her pale hair the color of blood.

“Come on—quickly.”

Emma wasn’t sure they could go any more quickly; she got a tighter hold of Drusilla’s wrist and yanked the little girl nearly off her feet, muttering apologies as she went. The twins, hand in hand, were faster, even as they raced up a jagged set of stairs toward Angel Square, led by Helen.

They were almost at the top step when Julian gasped out, “Helen, behind us!” and Emma spun around to see a faerie knight in white armor approaching the foot of the stairs. He carried a bow made from a curved branch, and his hair was long and bark-colored.

For a moment his eyes met Helen’s. The expression on his face changed, and Emma couldn’t help wondering if he recognized the Fair Folk in her blood—and then Helen raised her right arm and shot her crossbow directly at him.

He whirled away. The bolt hit the wall behind him. The faerie smirked, and leaped up the first step, then the second—and screamed. Emma watched in shock as his legs buckled under him; he fell and howled as his skin came into contact with the edge of the step. For the first time Emma noticed that corkscrews, nails, and other hunks of cold-forged iron had been hammered into the step edges. The faerie warrior reeled back, and Helen shot again. The bolt went through his armor and into his chest. He crumpled.

“They’ve faerie-proofed,” Emma said, remembering looking out the window at the Penhallows’ with Ty and Helen. “All the metal, the iron.” She pointed at a nearby building, where a long row of scissors hung from cords connected to the edge of the roof.

“That’s what the guards were doing—”

Suddenly Dru shrieked. Another figure raced up the street. A second faerie knight, this one a woman with armor of pale green, carrying a shield of overlapping carved leaves.

Emma whipped a knife from her belt and threw it. Instinctively the faerie raised her shield to block the knife—which sailed past her head, and severed the cord holding a pair of scissors to the roof above. The scissors fell, blade-first, and plunged between the faerie woman’s shoulders. She fell to the ground with a shriek, her body spasming.

“Good job, Emma,” said Helen in a hard voice. “Come on, all of you—” She broke off with a cry as three Endarkened surged from a side street. They wore the red gear that had appeared so often in Emma’s nightmares, dyed even redder by the light from the demon towers.

The children were as silent as ghosts. Helen raised her crossbow and shot a bolt. It struck one of the Endarkened in the shoulder, and he spun away, staggering but not falling. She fumbled to reload the bow; Julian struggled to hold Tavvy while reaching for the blade at his side. Emma put her hand on Cortana—

A spinning circle of light hurtled through the air and buried itself in the throat of the first Endarkened, blood spattering the wall behind him. He clawed at his throat, once, and fell. Two more circles flew, one after the other, and sliced into the chests of the other Dark Nephilim. They crumpled silently, more blood spreading in a pool along the cobblestones.

Emma whirled and looked up. Someone stood at the top of the stairs: a young Shadowhunter with dark hair, a gleaming chakhram still in his right hand. Several others were hooked to his weapons belt. In the red light of the demon towers he seemed to glow—a tall, thin figure in dark gear against the darker black of night, the Accords Hall rising like a pale moon behind him.

“Brother Zachariah?” said Helen in amazement.

“What’s going on?” Magnus asked hoarsely. He was no longer able to sit up, and was lying, half-propped on his elbows, on the floor of the cell. Luke was standing with his face pressed to the arrow-slit window. His shoulders were tense, and he’d barely moved since the first screams and shouting had begun.

“Light,” Luke said, finally. “There’s some kind of light pouring out of the keep—it’s burning the mist away. I can see the plateau down below, and some of the Endarkened running around. I just don’t know what’s caused it.”

Magnus laughed under his breath, and tasted metal in his mouth. “Come on,” he said.

“Who do you think?”

Luke looked at him. “The Clave?”

“The Clave?” Magnus said. “I hate to break it to you, but they don’t care enough about us to come here.” He tipped his head back. He felt worse than he could remember ever feeling—well, maybe not ever. There had been that incident with the rats and the quicksand around the turn of the century. “Your daughter, though,” he said. “She does.” Luke looked horrified. “Clary. No. She shouldn’t be here.”

“Isn’t she always where she isn’t supposed to be?” Magnus said in a reasonable voice.

At least, he thought he sounded reasonable. It was hard to tell when he felt so dizzy. “And the rest of them. Her constant companions. My . . .”

The door burst open. Magnus tried to sit up, couldn’t, and fell back onto his elbows. He felt a dull sense of annoyance. If Sebastian had come to kill them, he’d rather die on his feet than his elbows. He heard voices: Luke, exclaiming, and then others, and then a face swam into view, hovering over his, eyes like stars in a pale sky.

Magnus exhaled—for a moment he no longer felt ill, or afraid of dying, or even angry or bitter. Relief washed over him, as profound as sorrow, and he reached up to brush the cheek of the boy leaning over him with the back of his bruised knuckles. Alec’s eyes were huge and blue and full of anguish.

“Oh, my Alec,” he said. “You’ve been so sad. I didn’t know.” As they forged their way farther into the center of the city, the crowd thickened: more Nephilim, more Endarkened, more faerie warriors—though the faeries moved sluggishly, painfully, many of them weakened by contact with the iron, steel, rowan wood, and salt that had been liberally deployed around the city as protection against them. The might of faerie soldiers was legendary, but Emma saw many of them—who might otherwise have been victorious—fall beneath the flashing swords of the Nephilim, their blood running across the white flagstones of Angel Square.

The Endarkened, however, were not weakened. They seemed unconcerned with the troubles of their faerie companions, hacking and slashing their way through the Nephilim jamming Angel Square. Julian had Tavvy zipped into his jacket; the little boy was screaming now, his cries lost among the shrieks of battle. “We have to stop!” Julian shouted. “We’re going to be separated! Helen!”

Helen was pale and ill-looking. The closer they got to the Hall of Accords, now looming above them, the thicker the clusters of faerie protection spells were; even Helen, with her partial heritage, was beginning to feel it. It was Brother Zachariah—just Zachariah now, Emma reminded herself, just a Shadowhunter like they were—in the end who moved to fashion them all into a line, Blackthorns and Carstairs, everyone hand in hand. Emma hung on to Julian’s belt since his other hand was supporting Tavvy. Even Ty was forced to hold hands with Drusilla, though he scowled at her when he did it, bringing fresh tears to her eyes.

They made their way toward the Hall, clinging together, Zachariah in front of them; he was out of throwing blades and had taken out a long-bladed spear. He swept the crowd with it as they went, efficiently and icily hacking a pathway through the Endarkened.

Emma burned to seize Cortana out of its scabbard, to run forward and stab and slash at the enemies who had murdered her parents, who had tortured and Turned Julian’s father, who had taken Mark away from them. But that would have meant letting go of Julian and Livvy, and that she would not do. She owed the Blackthorns too much, Jules especially, Jules who had kept her alive, who had brought her Cortana when she had thought she would die of grief.

Finally they stumbled up the front steps of the Hall behind Helen and Zachariah, and reached the massive double doors of the entryway. There was a guard on either side, one holding an enormous wooden bar. Emma recognized one of them as the woman with the koi tattoo who sometimes spoke out in meetings: Diana Wrayburn. “We’re about to shut the doors,” said the one holding the bar. “You two, you’re going to have to leave them here; only children are allowed inside—”

“Helen,” said Dru in a trembling little voice. The line broke into pieces then, with the Blackthorn children swarming Helen; Julian standing a little aside, his face blank and ashen, his free hand stroking Tavvy’s curls.

“It’s all right,” Helen was saying in a choked voice. “This is the safest place in Alicante.

Look, there’s salt and grave dirt all up and down the steps to keep the faeries out.”

“And cold iron under the flagstones,” said Diana. “The instructions of the Spiral Labyrinth were followed to the letter.”

At the mention of the Spiral Labyrinth, Zachariah took in a sharp breath and knelt down, bringing his eyes on a level with Emma’s. “Emma Cordelia Carstairs,” he said. He looked both very young and very old at the same time. There was blood at his throat where his faded rune stood out, but it wasn’t his. He seemed to be searching her face, though for what, she couldn’t tell. “Stay with your parabatai,” he said finally, so quietly that no one else could hear them. “Sometimes it’s braver not to fight. Protect them, and save your vengeance for another day.”

Emma felt her eyes widen. “But I don’t have a parabatai—and how did you—” One of the guards cried out and fell, a red-fletched arrow in his chest. “Get inside!” shouted Diana, seizing hold of the children and half-throwing them into the Hall. Emma felt herself caught and tossed inside; she spun to get one last look at Zachariah and Helen, but it was too late. The double doors had slammed shut after her, the massive wooden latch falling into place with a sound of echoing finality.

“No,” Clary said, looking from the terrifying throne to Sebastian and back again. Blank your mind, she told herself. Focus on Sebastian, on what’s happening here, on what you can do to stop him. Don’t think about Jace. “You must know I won’t stay here. Maybe you’d rather rule Hell than serve in Heaven, but I don’t want either—I just want to go home and live my life.”

“That isn’t possible. I’ve already sealed the pathway that brought you here. No one can return through it. All that’s left is this, here”—he gestured at the window—“and in a short time that will be sealed too. There will be no returning home, not for you. You belong here, with me.”

“Why?” she whispered. “Why me?”

“Because I love you,” Sebastian said. He looked—uncomfortable. Tense and strained, as if he were reaching for something he couldn’t quite touch. “I don’t want you hurt.”

“You don’t—You have hurt me. You tried to—”

“It doesn’t matter if I hurt you,” he said. “Because you belong to me. I can do what I want with you. But I don’t want other people touching you or owning you or hurting you. I want you to be around, to admire me and to see what I’ve done, what I’ve accomplished.

That’s love, isn’t it?”

“No,” Clary said, in a soft sad voice. “No, it isn’t.” She took a step toward him, and her boot knocked against the invisible force field of his circle of runes. She could go no farther. “If you love someone, then you want them to love you back.” Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t patronize me. I know what you think love is, Clarissa; I happen to think you’re wrong. You will ascend the throne, and you will reign beside me. You have a dark heart in you, and it is a darkness we share. When I am all there is in your world, when I am all that is left, you will love me back.”

“I don’t understand—”

“I can’t imagine you would,” Sebastian smirked. “You aren’t exactly in possession of all the information. Let me guess, you know nothing of what’s happened in Alicante since you departed?”

A cold feeling began to spread in Clary’s stomach. “We’re in another dimension,” she said. “There’s no way to know.”

“Not exactly,” said Sebastian, and his voice was rich with delight, as if she had fallen into precisely the trap he had wanted. “Look into the window above the eastern throne.

Look, and see Alicante now.”

Clary looked. When she had come into the room, she had seen only what seemed like the starred night sky through the eastern window, but now, as she concentrated, the surface of the glass shimmered and rippled. She thought of the story of Snow White suddenly, the magic mirror, its surface shimmering and changing to reveal the outside world. . . .

She was looking at the inside of the Accords Hall. It was full of children. Shadowhunter children sat and stood and clung together. There were the Blackthorns, the children huddled tightly in a group, Julian sitting with the baby on his lap, his free arm stretched out as if he could encompass the rest of his siblings, could pull them all in and protect them. Emma sat close by him, her expression stony, her golden sword gleaming behind her shoulder—

The scene resolved into Angel Square. All around the Hall of Accords was a boiling mass of Nephilim, and ranged against them were the Endarkened in their scarlet gear, bristling with weapons—and not just the Endarkened but figures that Clary recognized with a sinking heart as faerie warriors. A tall faerie with hair of mixed blue and green strands was battling Aline Penhallow, who stood in front of her mother, her sword drawn as if ready to fight to the death. Across the square Helen was trying to push her way through the crowd toward Aline, but the crush was too great. The fighting penned her back, but so did the bodies—bodies of Nephilim warriors, fallen and dying, so many more in black gear than red. They were losing the battle, losing it—

Clary whirled on Sebastian as the scene began to fade. “What’s happening?”

“It’s over,” he said. “I requested that the Clave turn you over to me; they didn’t.

Admittedly because you’d run off, but nevertheless, they were no further use to me. My forces have invaded the city. The Nephilim children are hiding in the Accords Hall, but when all the others are dead, the Hall will be taken. Alicante will be mine. All of Idris will be mine. The Shadowhunters have lost the war—not that there was much of one. I really thought they’d put up more of a fight.”

“That’s hardly all the Shadowhunters that exist,” Clary said. “That was just who was in Alicante. There are still Nephilim scattered all over the world—”

“All the Shadowhunters you see there will drink from the Infernal Cup soon enough.

Then they will be my servants, and I will send them out to find their brethren in the world, and those who remain will be Turned or killed. I will slay the Iron Sisters and the Silent Brothers in their citadels of stone and silence. Inside of a month the race of Jonathan Shadowhunter will be wiped from the world. And then . . .” He smiled a terrible smile, and gestured toward the western window, which looked out on the dead and blasted world of Edom. “You’ve seen what happens to a world without protectors,” he gloated. “Your world will die. Death on death, and blood in the streets.” Clary thought of Magnus. I saw a city all of blood, with towers made of bone, and blood ran in the streets like water.

“You can’t imagine,” she said in a dead voice, “that if you do this, if what you’re telling me is going to happen does actually happen, that there is any chance I would sit on a throne beside you. I’d rather be tortured to death.”

“Oh, I don’t think it,” he said breezily. “That’s why I’ve waited, you see. To give you a choice. All those Fair Folk who are my allies, all the Endarkened you see there, they wait on my orders. If I give the signal, they will stand down. Your world will be safe. You’ll never be able to return there, of course—I’ll seal the borders between this world and that, and never again will anyone, demon or human, travel between them. But it will be safe.”

“A choice,” Clary said. “You said you were giving me a choice?”

“Of course,” he said. “Rule beside me, and I will spare your world. Refuse, and I will give the order to annihilate it. Choose me, and you can save millions, billions of lives, my sister. You could save a whole world by damning a single soul. Your own. So tell me, what is your decision?”

“Magnus,” Alec said desperately, reaching to feel the adamas chains, sunk deep into the floor, that connected to the manacles on the warlock’s wrists. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Isabelle and Simon were checking Luke for injuries. Isabelle kept glancing back at Alec, her face anxious; Alec deliberately didn’t meet her gaze, not wanting her to see the fear in his eyes. He touched the back of his hand to Magnus’s face.

Magnus looked sunken and sallow, his lips dry, ashy shadows beneath his eyes.

My Alec, Magnus had said, you’ve been so sad. I didn’t know. And then he had sunk back against the floor, as if the effort of speaking exhausted him.

“Hold still,” Alec said now, and drew a seraph blade from his belt. He opened his mouth to name it, and felt a sudden touch at his wrist. Magnus had wrapped his slender fingers around Alec’s wrist.

“Call it Raphael,” Magnus said, and when Alec looked at him in puzzlement, Magnus glanced toward the blade in Alec’s hand. His eyes were half-closed, and Alec remembered what Sebastian had said in the entryway, to Simon: I killed the one who made you.

Magnus’s mouth quirked at the corner. “It is an angel’s name,” he said.

Alec nodded. “Raphael,” he said softly, and when the blade blazed up, he brought it down hard on the adamas chain, which splintered under the touch of the knife. The chains fell away, and Alec, dropping the blade to the floor, reached forward to take Magnus by the shoulders and help him up.

Magnus reached for Alec, but instead of rising to his feet, he pulled Alec against him, his hand sliding up Alec’s back to knot in his hair. Magnus pulled Alec down and against him, and kissed him, hard and awkward and determined, and Alec froze for a moment and then abandoned himself to it, to kissing Magnus, something he’d thought he’d never get to do again. Alec ran his hands up Magnus’s shoulders to the sides of his neck and cupped his hands there, holding Magnus in place while he kissed him thoroughly breathless.

Finally Magnus drew back; his eyes were shining. He let his head fall onto Alec’s shoulder, arms encircling him, keeping them tightly together. “Alec . . . ,” he began softly.

“Yes?” Alec said, desperate to know what Magnus wanted to ask him.

“Are you being chased?”

“I—ah—some of the Endarkened are looking for us,” Alec said carefully.

“Pity,” Magnus said, closing his eyes again. “It would be nice if you could just lie down with me here. Just . . . for a little while.”

“Well, you can’t,” said Isabelle, not unkindly. “We have to get out of here. The Endarkened will be here any second, and we’ve got what we came for—”

“Jocelyn.” Luke drew away from the wall, straightening up. “You’re forgetting Jocelyn.” Isabelle opened her mouth, then closed it again. “You’re right,” she said. Her hand went to her weapons belt, and she unfastened a sword; taking a step across the room, she handed it to Luke, then bent down to pick up Alec’s still-burning seraph blade.

Luke took the sword and held it with the careless competence of someone who had handled blades all their life; sometimes it was hard for Alec to remember that Luke had been a Shadowhunter once, but he remembered now.

“Can you stand?” Alec said to Magnus gently, and Magnus nodded, and let Alec lift him to his feet.

He lasted almost ten seconds before his knees buckled and he collapsed forward, coughing. “Magnus!” Alec exclaimed, and threw himself down by the warlock’s side, but Magnus waved him away and struggled up to his knees.

“You should go without me,” he said, in a voice made gravelly by hoarseness. “I’ll slow you down.”

“I don’t understand.” Alec felt as if a vise were compressing his heart. “What happened?

What did he do to you?”

Magnus shook his head; it was Luke who answered. “This dimension is killing Magnus,” he said, voice flat. “There’s something about it—about his father—that’s destroying him.”

Alec glanced at Magnus, but Magnus only shook his head again. Alec fought down an irrational burst of anger— still withholding things, even now—and took a deep breath. “The rest of you go find Jocelyn,” he said. “I’ll stay with Magnus. We’ll head toward the center of the keep. When you find her, come looking for us there.” Isabelle looked wretched. “Alec—”

“Please, Izzy,” said Alec, and he saw Simon put his hand on Isabelle’s back, and whisper something into her ear. She nodded, finally, and turned toward the door; Luke and Simon followed her, both pausing to look back at Alec before they went, but it was the image of Izzy that stuck in his mind, carrying her blazing seraph blade in front of her like a star.

“Here,” he said to Magnus as gently as he could, and reached down to lift him up.

Magnus stumbled to his feet, and Alec managed to get one of the warlock’s long arms slung over his shoulder. Magnus was thinner than he had ever been; his shirt clung to his ribs, and the spaces under his cheekbones looked sunken, but there was still a lot of warlock to contend with: a lot of skinny arms and legs and long, bony spine.

“Hold on to me,” Alec said, and Magnus gave him the sort of smile that made Alec feel like someone had taken an apple corer to his heart and tried to dig out the center.

“I always do, Alexander,” he said. “I always do.”

The baby had fallen asleep in Julian’s lap. He was holding Tavvy tightly, carefully, great dark hollows under his eyes. Livvy and Ty were huddled together on one side of him, Dru curled against him on the other.

Emma sat behind him, her back against his, giving him something to lean on to balance the weight of the baby. There were no free pillars to sit against, no bare space of wall; dozens, hundreds of children were prisoned in the Hall.

Emma leaned her head back against Jules’s. He smelled the way he always did: soap, sweat, and the tang of ocean, as if he carried it in his veins. It was comforting and not comforting in its familiarity. “I hear something,” she whispered. “Do you?” Julian’s eyes flicked immediately to his brothers and sisters. Livvy was half-asleep, her chin propped on her hand. Dru was looking all around the room, her big blue-green eyes taking everything in. Ty was tapping his finger against the marble floor, obsessively counting from one to a hundred and backward again. He had kicked and screamed when Julian had tried to look at a welt on his arm where he had fallen. Jules had let it go, and allowed Ty to go back to his counting and rocking. It soothed him to quietness, which was what mattered.

“What do you hear?” Jules asked, and Emma’s head fell back then as the sound rose, a sound like a great wind or the crackle of a massive bonfire. People started to move and cry out, looking up at the glass ceiling of the Hall.

Through it clouds were visible, moving across the face of the moon—and then from the clouds burst a wild assortment of riders: riders of black horses, whose hooves were flame, riders of massive black dogs with orange-burning eyes. More modern forms of transport were mixed in as well—black carriages drawn by skeletal steeds, and motorcycles gleaming with chrome and bone and onyx.

“The Wild Hunt,” Jules whispered.

The wind was a living thing, whipping the clouds into peaks and valleys that the horsemen hurtled up and down, their cries audible even over the gale, their hands bristling with weapons: swords and maces and spears and crossbows. The front doors of the Hall began to shake and tremble; the wooden bar that had been placed across them exploded into splinters. The Nephilim stared toward the doors with terrified eyes. Emma heard the voice of one of the guards among the crowd, speaking in a harsh whisper:

“The Wild Hunt are chasing away our warriors outside the Hall,” she said. “The Endarkened are clearing away the iron and the grave dirt. They’ll break down the doors if the guards don’t get rid of them!”

“The Raging Host has come,” said Ty, breaking off his counting briefly. “The Gatherers of the Dead.”

“But the Council protected the city against faeries,” Emma protested. “Why . . .”

“They’re not ordinary faeries,” said Ty. “The salt, the grave dirt, the cold iron; it won’t work on the Wild Hunt.”

Dru whipped round and looked up. “The Wild Hunt?” she said. “Does that mean Mark’s here? Has he come to save us?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Ty said witheringly. “Mark is with the Huntsmen now, and the Wild Hunt want there to be battles. They come to gather the dead when it’s all over, and the dead serve them.”

Dru screwed up her face in confusion. The doors of the Hall were shuddering violently now, the hinges threatening to tear free of the walls. “But if Mark isn’t coming to save us, then who will?”

“No one,” said Ty, and only the nervous tapping of his fingers on marble showed that the idea bothered him at all. “No one is coming to save us. We’re going to die.” Jocelyn flung herself once more against the door. Her shoulder was already bruised and bloody, her nails torn where she’d gouged at the lock. She had been hearing the sounds of fighting for a quarter of an hour now, the unmistakable sounds of running feet, of demons screaming. . . .

The knob of the door began to turn. She scrambled back, and seized up the brick she’d managed to loosen from the wall. She couldn’t kill Sebastian; she knew that much, but if she could hurt him, slow him—

The door swung open, and the brick flew from her hand. The figure in the doorway ducked; the brick hit the wall, and Luke straightened up and looked at her curiously. “I hope when we’re married, that’s not the way you greet me every day when I come home,” he said.

Jocelyn hurled herself at him. He was filthy and bloody and dusty, his shirt torn, a sword in his right hand, but his left arm came around her and held her close. “Luke,” she said into his neck, and for a moment she thought she might shake apart from relief and happiness and delirium and fear, the way she’d shaken apart in his arms when she’d found out he’d been bitten. If only she’d known then, had realized then, that the way she loved him was the way you loved someone you wanted to spend your life with, everything would have been different.

But then there would never have been Clary. She pulled back, looking up into his face, his blue eyes steady on hers. “Our daughter?” she asked.

“She’s here,” he said, and stepped back so that she could see past him to where Isabelle and Simon waited in the corridor. Both looked very uncomfortable, as if seeing two adults embrace was about the worst thing you could glimpse, even in the demon realms. “Come with us—we’re going to find her.”

“It’s not certain,” Clary said desperately. “The Shadowhunters might not lose. They could rally.”

Sebastian smiled. “That’s a chance you could take,” he said. “But listen. They have come to Alicante now, those who ride the winds between the worlds. They are drawn to places of slaughter. Can you see?”

He gestured toward the window that opened out onto Alicante. Through it Clary could see the Hall of Accords under the moonlight, clouds moving restlessly to and fro in the background—and then the clouds resolved themselves, and became something else.

Something she had seen once before, with Jace, lying in the bottom of a boat in Venice.

The Wild Hunt, racing across the sky: dark-clothed and ragged warriors, bristling with weapons, howling as their ghostly steeds pounded across the sky.

“The Wild Hunt,” she said, numb, and remembered Mark Blackthorn suddenly, the whip marks on his body, his broken eyes.

“The Gatherers of the Dead,” said Sebastian. “The carrion crows of magic, they go where great slaughter is. A slaughter only you can prevent.” Clary closed her eyes. She felt as if she were adrift, floating on dark water, seeing the lights of the shore recede and recede in the distance. Soon she would be alone on the ocean, the icy sky above her and eight miles of empty darkness below.

“Go and take the throne,” he said. “If you do it, you can save them all.” She looked at him. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?” He shrugged. “I’d be a fool not to. You’d know immediately that I’d lied to you, and then you’d fight me, which I don’t want. Besides. To fully come into my power here, I must seal the borders between our world and this one. Once the borders are closed, the Endarkened in your world will be weakened, cut off from me, their source. The Nephilim will be able to defeat them.” He smiled, ice-white and blinding. “It will be a miracle. A miracle performed for them by us—by me. Ironic, don’t you think? That I should be their saving angel?”

“What about everyone who’s here? Jace? My mom? My friends?”

“They can all live. It makes no difference to me,” Sebastian said. “They cannot harm me, not now, and doubly not when the borders are sealed.”

“And all I have to do is ascend that throne,” Clary said.

“And promise to stay beside me for as long as I live. Which, admittedly, will be a long time. When this world is sealed, I will not just be invulnerable; I will live forever. ‘And behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.’”

“You’re willing to do this? Give up the whole world of Earth, your Dark Shadowhunters, your revenge?”

“It was beginning to bore me,” said Sebastian. “This is more interesting. To be honest, you’re beginning to bore me a bit too. Do decide whether you’re going to get up on the throne or not, will you? Or do you need persuasion?”

Clary knew Sebastian’s methods of persuasion. Knives under the fingernails, a hand to the throat. Part of her wished he would kill her, take this decision away from her. No one could help her. In this she was utterly alone.

“I will not be the only one who lives forever,” Sebastian said, and to her surprise his voice was almost gentle. “Ever since you discovered the Shadow World, haven’t you secretly wanted to be a hero? To be the most special of a special people? In our own way we each wish to be the hero of our kind.”

“Heroes save worlds,” Clary said. “They don’t destroy them.”

“And I am offering you that chance,” said Sebastian. “When you ascend that throne, you save the world. You save your friends. You have power unlimited. I am giving you a great gift, because I love you. You can embrace your own darkness and yet always tell yourself that you did the right thing. How is that for getting everything you want?” Clary closed her eyes for one heartbeat, and then another. Only enough time to see faces flash behind her eyelids: Jace, her mother, Luke, Simon, Isabelle, Alec. And so many more: Maia and Raphael and the Blackthorns, little Emma Carstairs, the faeries of the Seelie Court, the faces of the Clave, even the ghostly memory of her father.

She opened her eyes, and walked toward the throne. She heard Sebastian, behind her, draw a sharp breath. So, for all the surety in his voice, he had doubted, hadn’t he? He had not been sure of her. Behind the thrones the two windows flickered like video screens: one showing desolation, the other Alicante under attack. She caught glimpses of the inside of the Accords Hall as she reached the steps and walked up them. She moved steadily. She had made her decision; there was no faltering now. The throne was huge; it was like climbing up onto a platform. The gold of it was icy cold to her touch. She reached the last step, turned, and took her seat.

She seemed to be looking down for miles from the top of a mountain peak. She saw the Council Hall spread out before her; Jace, lying motionless by the wall. Sebastian, looking up at her with a smile spreading over his face.

“Well done,” he said. “My sister, my queen.”

23 Judas Kiss

The doors of the Hall exploded inward with a blast of splinters; shards of marble and wood flew like shattered bone.

Emma stared numbly as red-clad warriors began to spill into the Hall, followed by faeries in green and white and silver. And after them came the Nephilim: Shadowhunters in black gear, desperate to protect their children.

A wave of guards raced to meet the Endarkened at the door, and were cut down. Emma watched them fall in what felt like slow motion. She knew she had risen to her feet, and so had Julian, thrusting Tavvy into Livia’s arms; they both moved to block the younger Blackthorns, as hopeless as Emma knew the gesture was.

This is how it ends, she thought. They had run from Sebastian’s warriors in Los Angeles, had fled to the Penhallows’, and from the Penhallows to the Hall, and now they were trapped like rats and they would die here and they might as well never have run at all.

She reached for Cortana, thinking of her father, of what he would have said if she gave up. Carstairs didn’t give up. They suffered and survived, or they died on their feet. At least if she died, she thought, she’d see her parents again. At least she’d have that.

The Endarkened surged into the room, parting the desperately fighting Shadowhunters like blades parting a field of wheat, driving toward the center of the Hall. They seemed a murderous blur, but Emma’s vision sharpened suddenly as one of them moved out of the crowd, directly toward the Blackthorns.

It was Julian’s father.

His time as a servant of Sebastian’s had not been good to him. His skin looked dull and gray, his face welted with bloody cuts, but he was striding forward purposefully, his eyes on his children.

Emma froze. Julian, beside her, had caught sight of his father; he seemed mesmerized, as if by a snake. He had seen his father forced to drink from the Internal Cup, Emma realized, but he hadn’t seen him after, hadn’t seen him raise a blade to his own son, or laugh about the idea of his son’s death, or force Katerina to her knees to be tortured and Turned. . . .

“Jules,” she said. “Jules, that isn’t your father—” His eyes widened. “Emma, look out—”

She whirled, and screamed. A faerie warrior was looming above her, decked in silver armor; his hair was not hair at all, but a ropy tangle of thorned branches. Half his face was burned and bubbling where he must have been sprayed with iron powder or rock salt. One of his eyes was rolling, white and blinded, but the other fixed on Emma with murderous intent. Emma saw Diana Wrayburn, her dark hair whirling as she spun toward them, her mouth open to cry a warning. Diana moved toward Emma and the faerie, but there was no way she was going to make it in time. The faerie raised his bronze sword with a savage snarl—

Emma lunged forward, sinking Cortana into his chest.

His blood was like green water. It sprayed out over her hand as she let go of her sword in shock; he fell like a tree, striking the marble floor of the Hall with a heavy clang. She sprang forward, reaching for the hilt of Cortana, and heard Julian cry out:

“Ty!”

She whipped around. Amid the chaos of the Hall, she could see the small space in which the Blackthorns stood. Andrew Blackthorn stopped in front of his children, an odd little smile on his face, and reached out a hand.

And Ty—Ty, of all of them, the least trusting, the least sentimental—was moving forward, his eyes fixed on his father, his own hand outstretched. “Dad?” he said.

“Ty?” Livia reached for her twin, but her hand closed on air. “Ty, don’t—”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Andrew Blackthorn, and if there had been any doubt that he was no longer the man who had been Julian’s father, it was gone when Emma heard his voice. There was no kindness in it, only ice, and the savage edge of a cruel glee. “Come here, my boy, my Tiberius . . .”

Ty took another step forward, and Julian pulled the shortsword from his belt and threw it. It sang through the air, straight and true, and Emma remembered, with a bizarre clarity, that last day in the Institute, and Katerina showing them how to throw a blade as direct and graceful as a line of poetry. How to throw a blade so that it never missed its mark.

The blade whipped past Tiberius and sank into Andrew Blackthorn’s chest. The man’s eyes flew open in shock, his gray hand fumbling for the hilt protruding from his rib cage—and then he fell, crumpling to the ground. His blood smeared across the marble floor as Tiberius gave a cry, whirling to lash out at his brother, pounding his fists against Julian’s chest.

“No,” Ty panted. “Why did you do that, Jules? I hate you, I hate you—” Julian hardly seemed to feel it. He was staring at the place where his father had fallen; the other Endarkened were already moving forward, trampling the body of their fallen comrade. Diana Wrayburn stood a distance away: She had begun to move toward the children and then stopped, her eyes full of sorrow.

Hands came up and caught at the back of Tiberius’s shirt, pulling him away from Julian. It was Livvy, her face set. “Ty.” Her arms went around her twin, pinning his fists to his sides. “Tiberius, stop it right now.” Ty stopped, and sagged against his sister; slight as she was, she supported his weight. “Ty,” she said again, softly. “He had to. Don’t you understand? He had to.”

Julian stepped back, his face as white as paper, stepped back and back until he hit one of the stone pillars and slid down it, crumpling, his shoulders shaking with silent gasps.

My sister. My queen.

Clary sat rigid on the ivory and gold throne. She felt like a child in an adult’s chair: the thing had been built for someone massive, and her feet dangled above the top step. Her hands gripped the arms of the throne, but her fingers didn’t come close to reaching the carved handrests—though, since each was shaped like a skull, she had no desire to touch them anyway.

Sebastian was pacing inside his protective circle of runes; every once in a while he would pause to look up at her and smile the sort of uninhibited, gleeful smile she associated with the Sebastian from her vision, the boy with guiltless green eyes. He drew a long, sharp dagger from his belt as she watched, and ran the blade along the inside of his palm. His head fell back, his eyes half-closing as he stretched his hand out; blood ran down his fingers and splattered onto the runes.

Each began to glow with a dawning spark as the blood struck it. Clary pressed herself against the solid back of the throne. The runes were not Gray Book runes; they were alien and strange.

The door to the room opened, and Amatis strode in, followed by two moving lines of Endarkened warriors. Their faces were blank as they silently ranged themselves along the walls of the room, but Amatis looked worried. Her gaze skipped past Jace, motionless on the floor beside the body of the dead demon, to focus on her master. “Lord Sebastian,” she said. “Your mother is not in her cell.”

Sebastian frowned and tightened his bleeding hand into a fist. All around him the runes were burning fiercely now, with a cold ice-blue flame. “Vexing,” he said. “The others must have let her out.”

Clary felt a surge of hope mixed with terror; she forced herself to remain silent, but saw Amatis’s eyes flick toward her. She didn’t seem surprised to see Clary on the throne: on the contrary, her lips curved into a smirk. “Would you like me to set the rest of the army to searching for them?” she said to Sebastian.

“There’s no need.” He glanced up toward Clary and smiled; there was a sudden explosive shattering sound, and the window behind her, the one that had looked out on Alicante, splintered into a spiderweb of mazed lines. “The borders are closing,” Sebastian said. “I will bring them to me.”

“The walls are closing in,” Magnus said.

Alec tried to pull Magnus farther upright; the warlock slumped heavily against him, his head almost on Alec’s shoulder. Alec had absolutely no idea where they were going—he had lost track of the twisting corridors what felt like ages ago, but he had no desire to communicate that to Magnus. Magnus seemed to be doing badly enough as it was—his breathing ragged and shallow, his heartbeat rapid. And now this.

“Everything’s fine,” Alec soothed, his arm sliding around Magnus’s waist. “We just have to make it to—”

“Alec,” Magnus said again, his voice surprisingly firm. “I am not hallucinating. The walls are moving.”

Alec stared—and felt a flutter of panic. The corridor was heavy with dusty air; the walls seemed to shimmer and tremble. The floor warped as the walls began to slide toward each other, the corridor narrowing from one end like a trash compactor slamming closed.

Magnus slipped and hit one of the buckling walls with a hiss of pain. Panicked, Alec seized his arm and pulled Magnus toward him.

“Sebastian,” Magnus gasped as Alec began to drag him down the hall, away from the collapsing stone. “He’s doing this.”

Alec managed an incredulous look. “How would that even be possible? He doesn’t control everything!”

“He could—if he sealed the borders between the dimensions.” Magnus took a rattling breath as he pushed himself into a run. “He could control this whole world.” Isabelle shrieked as the ground opened up behind her; she threw herself forward just in time to avoid toppling into the chasm that was splitting the corridor apart. “Isabelle!” Simon shouted, and reached to catch her by the shoulders.

He forgot, sometimes, the strength that his vampire blood flooded through his body.

He wrenched Isabelle up with such force that they both toppled backward and Izzy landed on top of him. Under other circumstances, he might have enjoyed it, but not with the stone keep shuddering itself apart around them.

Isabelle sprang to her feet, pulling him up after. They had lost Luke and Jocelyn back in one of the other corridors as a wall had split apart, shedding mortarless rocks like scales.

Everything since then had been a mad dash, dodging splintering wood and falling stones, and now chasms opening up in the ground. Simon was fighting despair—he couldn’t help but feel that this was the end; the fortress would fall apart around them, and they would die and be buried here.

“Don’t,” Isabelle said, breathless. Her dark hair was full of dust, her face bloody where flying rock had cut her skin.

“Don’t what?” The ground heaved, and Simon half-ducked, half-fell forward into another corridor. He couldn’t rid himself of the thought that somehow the fortress was herding them. There seemed a purpose to its dissolution, as if it were directing them somehow. . . .

“Don’t give up,” she gasped, flinging herself against a set of doors as the corridor behind them began to crumble; the doors swung open, and she and Simon tumbled into the next room.

Isabelle sucked in a gasp, quickly cut off as the doors slammed behind them, shutting away the explosive noise of the keep. For a moment Simon simply thanked God that the ground under his feet was steady and the walls weren’t moving.

Then he registered where he was, and his relief vanished. They were in an enormous room, semicircular in shape, with a raised platform at the curved end half cast in shadow.

The walls were lined with Endarkened warriors in red gear, like a row of scarlet teeth.

The room stank like pitch and fire, sulfur and the unmistakable taint of demon blood.

The body of a bloated demon lay sprawled against one wall, and near it was another body.

Simon felt his mouth go dry. Jace.

Within a circle of glowing runes etched on the floor stood Sebastian. He grinned as Isabelle gave a cry, ran to Jace, and dropped down by his side. She put her fingers to his throat; Simon saw her shoulders relax.

“He’s alive,” Sebastian said, sounding bored. “Queen’s orders.” Isabelle looked up. Some of the strands of her dark hair were stuck to her face with blood. She looked fierce, and beautiful. “The Seelie Queen? When has she ever cared about Jace?”

Sebastian laughed. He seemed to be in an enormously good mood. “Not the Seelie Queen,” he said. “The queen of this realm. You may know her.” With a flourish he gestured toward the platform at the far end of the room, and Simon felt his unbeating heart contract. He had barely glanced at the dais when he had come into the room. He saw now that on it were two thrones, of ivory bone and melted gold, and on the right-hand throne sat Clary.

Her red hair was incredibly vivid against the white and gold, like a banner of fire. Her face was pale and still, expressionless.

Simon took an involuntary step forward—and was immediately blocked by a dozen Endarkened warriors, Amatis at their center. She carried a massive spear and wore an expression of frightening venom. “Stop where you are, vampire,” she said. “You will not approach the lady of this realm.”

Simon staggered back; he could see Isabelle staring incredulously from Clary, to Sebastian, to him. “Clary!” he called; she didn’t flinch or move, but Sebastian’s face darkened like a thunderstorm.

“You will not say my sister’s name,” he hissed. “You thought she belonged to you; she belongs to me now, and I will not share.”

“You’re insane,” Simon said.

“And you’re dead,” Sebastian said. “Does any of it matter now?” His eyes raked up and down Simon. “Dear sister,” he said, pitching his voice loudly enough for the whole room to hear it. “Are you absolutely sure you want to keep this one intact?” Before she could answer, the entryway to the room burst open and Magnus and Alec spilled in, followed by Luke and Jocelyn. The doors slammed behind them, and Sebastian clapped his hands together. One hand was bloody, and a drop of blood fell at his feet, and sizzled where it hit the glowing runes, like water sizzling on a hot skillet.

“Now everyone’s here,” he declared, his voice delighted. “It’s a party!” In Clary’s life she had seen many things that were wonderful and beautiful, and many things that were terrible. But none were as terrible as the look on her mother’s face as Jocelyn stared at her daughter, seated on the throne beside Sebastian’s.

“Mom,” Clary breathed, so softly that no one could hear her. They were all staring at her—Magnus and Alec, Luke and her mother, Simon and Isabelle, who had moved to hold Jace in her lap, her dark hair falling down over him like the fringe of a shawl. It was every bit as bad as Clary had imagined it would be. Worse. She had expected shock and horror; she hadn’t thought of hurt and betrayal. Her mother staggered back; Luke’s arms went around her, to hold her up, but his gaze was on Clary, and he looked as if he were staring at a stranger.

“Welcome, citizens of Edom,” said Sebastian, his lips curling up like a bow being drawn. “Welcome to your new world.”

And he stepped free of the burning circle that held him. Luke’s hand went to his belt; Isabelle began to rise, but it was Alec who moved fastest: one hand to his bow and the other to the quiver at his back, the arrow nocked and flying before Clary could shape the cry for him to stop.

The arrow flew straight toward Sebastian and buried itself in his chest. He staggered back from the force of it, and Clary heard a gasp ripple down the line of Dark Shadowhunters. A moment later Sebastian regained his balance and, with a look of annoyance, pulled the arrow from his chest. It was stained with blood.

“Fool,” he said. “You can’t hurt me; nothing under Heaven can.” He flung the arrow at Alec’s feet. “Did you think you were an exception?”

Alec’s eyes flicked toward Jace; it was minute, but Sebastian caught the glance, and grinned.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Your hero with the heavenly fire. But it’s gone, isn’t it? Spent on rage in the desert at a demon of my sending.” He snapped his fingers, and a spark of ice blue shot from them, rising like a mist. For a moment Clary’s view of Jace and Isabelle was obscured; a moment later she heard a cough and gasp, and Isabelle’s arms were sliding away from Jace as he sat up, then rose to his feet. Behind Clary the window was still splintering, slowly; she could hear the grind of the glass. Through the now-crazed glass spilled a lacelike quilting of light and shadow.

“Welcome back, brother,” said Sebastian equably, as Jace stared around him with a face that was rapidly draining of color as he took in the room full of warriors, his friends standing horrified around him, and lastly: Clary, on her throne. “Would you like to try to kill me? You have plenty of weapons there. If you feel like you’d like to try slaying me with the heavenly fire, now is your chance.” He opened his arms wide. “I won’t fight back.” Jace stood facing Sebastian. They were the same height, almost the same build, though Sebastian was thinner, more wiry. Jace was filthy and bloodstained, his gear torn, his hair tangled. Sebastian was elegant in red; even his bloody hand seemed intentional.

Sebastian’s wrists were bare; around Jace’s left wrist, a silver circlet gleamed.

“You’re wearing my bracelet,” Sebastian observed. “‘If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise Hell.’ Apt, don’t you think?”

“Jace,” Isabelle hissed. “Jace, do it. Stab him. Go on—” But Jace was shaking his head. His hand had been at his weapons belt; slowly he lowered it to his side. Isabelle gave a cry of despair; the look on Alec’s face was just as bleak, though he stayed silent.

Sebastian lowered his arms to his sides and held out his hand. “I believe that it’s time you returned my bracelet, brother. Time you rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Give me back my possessions, including my sister. Do you renounce her to my keeping?”

“No!” It wasn’t Jace; it was Jocelyn. She pulled away from Luke and launched herself forward, hands reaching out for Sebastian. “You hate me—so kill me. Torture me. Do what you want to me, but leave Clary alone!”

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I am torturing you.”

“She’s just a girl,” Jocelyn panted. “My child, my daughter—” Sebastian’s hand shot out and gripped Jocelyn’s jaw, half-lifting her off the floor. “I was your child,” he said. “Lilith gave me a realm; you gave me your curse. You are no kind of mother, and you will stay away from my sister. You are alive on her sufferance. You all are.

Do you understand?” He let go of Jocelyn; she staggered back, the bloody print of his hand marked on her face. Luke caught her. “You all are alive because Clarissa wants you alive. There is no other reason.”

“You told her you wouldn’t kill us if she ascended that throne,” Jace said, unclasping the silver bracelet from around his wrist. His voice was without inflection. He hadn’t met Clary’s eyes. “Didn’t you?”

“Not exactly,” said Sebastian. “I offered her something much more . . . substantial than that.”

“The world,” Magnus said. He appeared to be upright through sheer force of will. His voice sounded like gravel tearing his throat. “You’re sealing the borders between our world and this one, aren’t you? That’s what this rune circle is for, not just protection. So you could work your spell. That’s what you’ve been doing. If you close the gateway, you are no longer splitting your powers between two worlds. All your force will be concentrated here.

With all your power concentrated in this dimension, you will be well-nigh invincible here.”

“If he seals the borders, how will he get back to our world?” Isabelle demanded. She had risen to her feet; her whip gleamed on her wrist, but she made no move to use it.

“He won’t,” said Magnus. “None of us will. The gates between the worlds will close forever, and we will be trapped here.”

“Trapped,” Sebastian mused. “Such an ugly word. You’ll be . . . guests.” He grinned.

“Trapped guests.”

“That’s what you offered her,” Magnus said, raising his eyes to Clary. “You told her if she would agree to rule beside you here, you would close the borders and leave our world in peace. Rule in Edom, save the world. Right?”

“You’re very perceptive,” Sebastian said after a brief pause. “It’s annoying.”

“Clary, no!” Jocelyn cried; Luke tugged her back, but she was paying attention to nothing but her daughter. “Don’t do this—”

“I have to,” Clary said, speaking for the first time. Her voice caught and carried, incredibly loud in the stone room. Suddenly everyone was looking at her. Everyone but Jace. He was staring down at the bracelet held between his fingers.

She straightened. “I have to. Don’t you understand? If I don’t, he’ll kill everyone in our world. Destroy everything. Millions, billions of people. He’ll turn our world to this.” She gestured toward the window that looked out onto the burned plains of Edom. “It’s worth it. It has to be. I’ll learn to love him. He won’t hurt me. I believe it.”

“You think you can change him, temper him, make him better, because you’re the only thing he cares about,” Jocelyn said. “I know Morgenstern men. It doesn’t work. You’ll regret—”

“You never held the life of a whole world in your hand, Mom,” said Clary, with infinite tenderness and infinite sorrow. “There’s only so much advice you can give me.” She looked at Sebastian. “I choose what he chooses. The gift he gave me. I accept it.” She saw Jace swallow. He dropped the bracelet into Sebastian’s open palm. “Clary is yours,” he said, and stepped back.

Sebastian snapped his fingers. “You heard her,” he said. “All of you. Kneel to your queen.”

No! Clary thought, but she forced herself into stillness, silence. She watched as the Endarkened began to kneel, one by one, their heads bowed; the last to kneel was Amatis, and she did not bow her head. Luke was staring at his sister, his face flayed open. It was the first time he had seen her like this, Clary realized, though he had been told of it.

Amatis turned and looked over her shoulder at the Shadowhunters. Her gaze caught on her brother’s for just a moment; her lip curled. It was a vicious look. “Do it,” she said.

“Kneel, or I will kill you.”

Magnus knelt first. Clary would never have guessed that. Magnus was so proud, but then it was a pride that transcended the emptiness of gestures. She doubted it would shame him to kneel when it meant nothing to him. He went down on his knees, gracefully, and Alec followed him down; then Isabelle, then Simon, then Luke, drawing Clary’s mother down beside him. And lastly Jace, his blond head bowed, went to his knees, and Clary heard the window behind her shatter into pieces. It sounded like her breaking heart.

Glass rained down; behind it was bare stone. There was no longer any window that led to Alicante.

“It is done. The paths between the worlds are closed.” Sebastian wasn’t smiling, but he looked—incandescent. As if he were blazing. The circle of runes on the floor was shimmering with blue fire. He ran toward the platform, took the steps two at a time, and reached up to catch Clary’s hands; she let him draw her down from the throne, until she stood in front of him. He was still holding her. His hands felt like bracelets of fire around her wrists. “You accept it,” he said. “You accept your choice?”

“I accept it,” she said, forcing herself to look at him with absolute directness. “I do.”

“Then kiss me,” he said. “Kiss me like you love me.”

Her stomach tightened. She had been expecting this, but it was like expecting a blow to the face: Nothing could prepare you. Her face searched his; in some other world, some other time, some other brother was smiling across the grass at her, eyes as green as springtime. She tried to smile. “In front of everyone? I don’t think—”

“We have to show them,” he said, and his face was as immovable as an angel pronouncing a sentencing. “That we are unified. Prove yourself, Clarissa.” She leaned toward him; he shivered. “Please,” she said. “Put your arms around me.” She caught a flash of something in his eyes—vulnerability, surprise at being asked—before his arms came up around her. He drew her close; she laid one hand on his shoulder. Her other hand slid to her waist, where Heosphoros rested with its scabbard tucked into the belt of her gear. Her fingers curled around the back of his neck. His eyes were wide; she could see his heartbeat, pulsing in his throat.

“Now, Clary,” he said, and she leaned up, touching her lips to his face. She felt him shudder against her as she whispered, her lips moving against his cheek.

“Hail, master,” she said, and saw his eyes widen, just as she pulled Heosphoros free and brought it up in a bright arc, the blade slamming through his rib cage, the tip positioned to pierce his heart.

Sebastian gasped, and spasmed in her arms; he staggered back, the hilt of the blade protruding from his chest. His eyes were wide, and for a moment she saw the shock of betrayal in them, shock and pain, and it actually hurt; it hurt somewhere down deep in a place she thought she had buried long ago, a place that mourned the brother he might have been.

“Clary,” he gasped, starting to straighten, and now the look of betrayal in his eyes was fading, and she saw the beginning spark of rage. It hadn’t worked, she thought in terror; it hadn’t worked, and even if the borders between the worlds were sealed now, he would take it out on her, on her friends, her family, on Jace. “You know better,” he said, reaching down to grasp the hilt of the sword in his hand. “I can’t be hurt, not by any weapon under Heaven—”

He gasped, and broke off. His hands had closed around the hilt, just above the wound in his chest. There was no blood, but there was a flash of red, a spark—fire. The wound was beginning to burn. “What—is—this?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“‘And I will give him the Morning Star,’ ” Clary said. “It’s not a weapon that was made under Heaven. It is Heaven’s fire.”

With a scream he pulled the sword free. He gave the hilt, with its hammered pattern of stars, one incredulous look before he blazed up like a seraph blade. Clary staggered back, tripped over the edge of the steps to the throne, and threw one arm partly over her face.

He was burning, burning like the pillar of fire that went before the Israelites. She could still see Sebastian within the flames, but they were around him, consuming him in their white light, turning him to an outline of dark char within a flame so bright, it seared her eyes.

Clary looked away, burying her face in her arm. Her mind raced back through that night when she had come to Jace through the flames, and kissed him and told him to trust her. And he had, even when she had knelt down in front of him and driven the point of Heosphoros into the ground. All around it she had drawn the same rune over and over with her stele—the rune she had once seen, it felt like so long ago now, on a rooftop in Manhattan: the winged hilt of an angel’s sword.

A gift from Ithuriel, she guessed, who had given her so many gifts. The image had rested in her mind until she’d needed it. The rune for shaping Heaven’s fire. That night on the demon plain, the blaze all around them had evaporated, drawn into the blade of Heosphoros, until the metal had burned and glowed and sung when she’d touched it, the sound of angelic choruses. The fire had left behind only a wide circle of sand fused into glass, a substance that had glowed like the surface of the lake she had so often dreamed about, the frozen lake where Jace and Sebastian had battled to the death in her nightmares.

This weapon could kill Sebastian, she had said. Jace had been more dubious, careful. He had tried to take it from her, but the light had died in it when he’d touched it. It reacted only to her, the one who had created it. She had agreed that they had to be cautious, in case it didn’t work. It seemed the height of hubris to imagine she had trapped holy fire in a weapon, the way that fire had been trapped in the blade of Glorious. . . .

But the Angel gave you this gift to create, Jace had said. And do we not have his blood in our veins?

Whatever the blade had sung with, it was gone now, gone into her brother. Clary could hear Sebastian screaming, and over that, the cries of the Endarkened. A burning wind blew past her, carrying with it the tang of ancient deserts, of a place where miracles were common and the divine was manifest in fire.

The noise stopped as suddenly as it had started. The dais shook under Clary as a weight collapsed onto it. She looked up and saw that the fire was gone, though the ground was scarred and both thrones looked blackened, the gold on them no longer bright but charred and burned and melted.

Sebastian lay a few feet away from her, on his back. There was a great blackened hole across the front of his chest. He turned his head toward her, his face taut and white with pain, and her heart contracted.

His eyes were green.

The strength in her legs gave out. She collapsed to the dais on her knees. “You,” he whispered, and she stared at him in horrified fascination, unable to look away from what she had wrought. His face was utterly without color, like paper stretched over bone. She didn’t dare to look down at his chest, where his jacket had fallen away; she could see the stain of blackness across his shirt, like a spill of acid. “You put . . . the heavenly fire . . . into the blade of the sword,” he said. “It was . . . cleverly done.”

“It was a rune, that’s all,” she said, kneeling over him, her eyes searching his. He looked different, not just his eyes but the whole shape of his face, his jawline softer, his mouth without its cruel twist. “Sebastian . . .”

“No. I’m not him. I’m—Jonathan,” he whispered. “I’m Jonathan.”

“Go to Sebastian!” It was Amatis, rising, with all the Endarkened behind her. There was grief on her face, and rage. “Kill the girl!”

Jonathan struggled to sit upright. “No!” he shouted hoarsely. “Get back!” The Dark Shadowhunters, who had begun to surge forward, froze in confusion. Then, pushing between them, came Jocelyn; she shoved by Amatis without a look and dashed up the steps to the dais. She moved toward Sebastian—Jonathan—and then froze, standing over him, staring down with a look of amazement, mixed with a terrible horror.

“Mother?” Jonathan said. He was staring, almost as if he couldn’t quite focus his eyes on her. He began to cough. Blood ran from his mouth. His breath rattled in his lungs.

I dream sometimes, of a boy with green eyes, a boy who was never poisoned with demon blood, a boy who could laugh and love and be human, and that is the boy I wept over, but that boy never existed.

Jocelyn’s face hardened, as if she were steeling herself to do something. She knelt down by Jonathan’s head and drew him up into her lap. Clary stared; she didn’t think she could have done it. Could have brought herself to touch him like that. But then her mother had always blamed herself for Jonathan’s existence. There was something in her determined expression that said that she had seen him into the world, and she would see him out.

The moment he was propped up, Jonathan’s breathing eased. There was bloody foam on his lips. “I am sorry,” he said with a gasp. “I am so . . .” His eyes tracked to Clary. “I know there is nothing I could do or say now that would allow me to die with even a shred of grace,” he said. “And I would hardly blame you if you cut my throat. But I am . . . I regret.

I’m . . . sorry.”

Clary was speechless. What could she say? It’s all right? But it wasn’t all right. Nothing he had done was all right, not in the world, not to her. There were things you could not forgive.

And yet he had not done them, not exactly. This person, the boy her mother was holding as if he were her penance, was not Sebastian, who had tormented and murdered and wrought destruction. She remembered what Luke had said to her, what felt like years ago: The Amatis that is serving Sebastian is no more my sister than the Jace who served Sebastian was the boy you loved. No more my sister than Sebastian is the son your mother ought to have had.

“Don’t,” he said, and half-closed his eyes. “I see you trying to puzzle it out, my sister.

Whether I ought to be forgiven the way Luke would forgive his sister if the Infernal Cup released her now. But you see, she was his sister once. She was human once. I—” And he coughed, more blood appearing on his lips. “I never existed at all. Heavenly fire burns away that which is evil. Jace survived Glorious because he is good. There was enough of him left to live. But I was born to be all corruption. There is not enough left of me to survive. You see the ghost of someone who could have been, that is all.” Jocelyn was crying, tears falling silently down her face as she sat very still. Her back was straight.

“I must tell you,” he whispered. “When I die—the Endarkened will rush at you. I won’t be able to hold them back.” His gaze flicked to Clary. “Where’s Jace?”

“I’m here,” Jace said. And he was, already up on the dais, his expression hard and puzzled and sad. Clary met his eyes. She knew how hard it must have been for him to play along with her, to let Sebastian think he had her, to let Clary risk herself at the last. And she knew how this must be for him, Jace who had wanted revenge so badly, to look at Jonathan and realize that the part of Sebastian that could have been—should have been—punished was gone. Here was another person, someone else entirely, someone who had never been given a chance to live, and now never would.

“Take my sword,” said Jonathan, his breath coming in gasps, indicating Phaesphoros, which had fallen some feet away. “Cut—cut it open.”

“Cut what open?” Jocelyn said in puzzlement, but Jace was already moving, bending to seize Phaesphoros, flipping himself down from the dais. He strode across the room, past the huddled Dark Shadowhunters, past the ring of runes, to where the Behemoth demon lay dead in its ichor.

“What is he doing?” Clary asked, though as Jace raised the sword and sliced cleanly down into the demon’s body, it seemed obvious. “How did he know . . .”

“He—knows me,” Jonathan breathed.

A tide of stinking demon guts poured across the floor; Jace’s expression twisted with disgust—and then surprise, and then realization. He bent down and, with his bare hand, picked up something lumpy, glistening with ichor—he held it up, and Clary recognized the Infernal Cup.

She looked over at Jonathan. His eyes were rolling back, shudders racking his body. “T-tell him,” he stuttered. “Tell him to throw it into the ring of runes.” Clary lifted her head. “Throw it into the circle!” she cried to Jace, and Amatis whipped around.

“No!” she cried. “If the Cup is ruined, so shall we all be!” She spun toward the dais.

“Lord Sebastian! Do not let your army be destroyed! We are loyal!” Jace looked at Luke. Luke was gazing at his sister with an expression of ultimate sadness, a sadness as profound as death. Luke had lost his sister forever, and Clary had only just gotten back her brother, the brother who had been gone from her all her life, and still it was death on both sides.

Jonathan, half-supported against Jocelyn’s shoulder, looked at Amatis; his green eyes were like lights. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have made you.” And he turned his face away.

Luke nodded, once, at Jace, and Jace flung the Cup as hard as he could into the circle of runes. It struck the ground and shattered into pieces.

Amatis gasped, and put her hand to her chest. For a moment—just a moment—she stared at Luke with a look of recognition in her eyes: a look of recognition, even love.

“Amatis,” he whispered.

Her body slumped to the ground. The other Endarkened followed, one by one, collapsing where they stood, until the room was full of corpses.

Luke turned away, too much pain in his eyes for Clary to be able to bear to look at him.

She heard a cry—distant and harsh—and wondered for a moment if it was Luke, or even one of the others, horrified to see so many Nephilim fall, but the cry rose and rose and became a great shrieking howl that rattled the glass and swirled the dust outside the window that looked out on Edom. The sky turned a red the color of blood, and the cry went on, fading now, a gasping exhalation of sorrow as if the universe were weeping.

“Lilith,” Jonathan whispered. “She weeps for her dead children, the children of her blood. She weeps for them and for me.”

Emma pulled Cortana free of the body of the dead faerie warrior, heedless of the blood that slicked her hands. Her only thought was to get to Julian—she had seen the terrible look on his face as he’d slid to the ground, and if Julian was broken, then the whole world was broken and nothing would be right again.

The crowd was spinning around her; she barely saw them as she pushed through the melee toward the Blackthorns. Dru was huddled against the pillar beside Jules, her body curled protectively around Tavvy; Livia was still holding Ty by the wrist, but now she was staring past him, her mouth open. And Jules—Jules was still slumped against the pillar, but he had begun to raise his head, and as Emma realized that he was staring, she turned to see what he was looking at.

All around the room the Endarkened had begun to crumple. They fell like toppling chess pieces, silent and without crying out. They fell locked in battle with Nephilim, and their faerie brethren turned to stare as one by one the Endarkened warriors’ bodies dropped to the floor.

A harsh shout of victory rose from a few Shadowhunter throats, but Emma barely heard it. She stumbled toward Julian and went down on her knees beside him; he looked at her, his blue-green eyes wretched. “Em,” he said hoarsely. “I thought that faerie was going to kill you. I thought—”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Are you?”

He shook his head. “I killed him,” he said. “I killed my father.”

“That wasn’t your father.” Her throat was too dry to speak anymore; instead she reached out and drew on the back of his hand. Not a word, but a sigil: the rune for bravery, and after it, a lopsided heart.

He shook his head as if to say, No, no, I don’t deserve that, but she drew it again, and then leaned into him, even covered in blood as she was, and put her head on his shoulder.

The faeries were fleeing the Hall, abandoning their weapons as they went. More and more Nephilim were flooding into the Hall from the square outside. Emma saw Helen heading toward them, Aline beside her, and for the first time since they had left the Penhallows’, Emma let herself believe that they might survive.

“They’re dead,” Clary said, looking around the room in wonder at the remains of Sebastian’s army. “They’re all dead.”

Jonathan gave a half-choking laugh. “‘Some good I mean to do, despite of my own nature,’” he murmured, and Clary recognized the quote from English class. King Lear. The most tragic of all the tragedies. “That was something. The Dark Ones are gone.” Clary leaned over him, urgency in her voice. “Jonathan,” she said. “Please. Tell us how to open the border. How to go home. There must be some way.”

“There’s—there’s no way,” Jonathan whispered. “I shattered the gateway. The path to the Seelie Court is closed; all paths are. It’s—it’s impossible.” His chest heaved. “I’m sorry.”

Clary said nothing. She could taste only bitterness in her mouth. She had risked herself, had saved the world, but everyone she loved would die. For a moment her heart swelled with hatred.

“Good,” Jonathan said, his eyes on her face. “Hate me. Rejoice when I die. The last thing I would want now would be to bring you more grief.” Clary looked at her mother; Jocelyn was still and upright, her tears falling silently.

Clary took a deep breath. She remembered a square in Paris, facing Sebastian across a small table, him saying: Do you think you can forgive me? I mean, do you think forgiveness is possible for someone like me? What would have happened if Valentine had brought you up along with me? Would you have loved me?

“I don’t hate you,” she said finally. “I hate Sebastian. I don’t know you.” Jonathan’s eyes fluttered closed. “I dreamed of a green place once,” he whispered. “A manor house and a little girl with red hair, and preparations for a wedding. If there are other worlds, then maybe there is one where I was a good brother and a good son.” Maybe, Clary thought, and ached for that world for a moment, for her mother, and for herself. She was aware of Luke standing by the dais, watching them; aware that there were tears on Luke’s face. Jace, the Lightwoods, and Magnus were standing well back, and Alec had his hand in Isabelle’s. All around them lay the dead bodies of Endarkened warriors.

“I didn’t think you could dream,” said Clary, and she took a deep breath. “Valentine filled your veins with poison, and then he raised you to hate; you never had a choice. But the sword burned away all that. Maybe this is who you really are.” He took a ragged, impossible breath. “That would be a beautiful lie to believe,” he said, and, incredibly, the ghost of a smile, bitter and sweet, passed over his face. “The fire of Glorious burned away the demon’s blood. All my life it has scorched my veins and cut at my heart like blades, and weighed me down like lead—all my life, and I never knew it. I never knew the difference. I’ve never felt so . . . light,” he said softly, and then he smiled, and closed his eyes, and died.

Clary rose slowly to her feet. She looked down. Her mother was kneeling, holding Jonathan’s body sprawled across her lap.

“Mom,” Clary whispered, but Jocelyn didn’t look up. A moment later someone brushed by Clary: It was Luke. He gave her hand a squeeze, and then knelt down by Jocelyn, his hand gentle on her shoulder.

Clary turned away; she couldn’t bear it anymore. The sadness felt like a crushing weight. She heard Jonathan’s voice in her head as she descended the stairs: I’ve never felt so light.

She moved forward through the corpses and ichor on the floor, numb and heavy with the knowledge of her failure. After everything she had done, there was still no way to save them. They were waiting for her: Jace and Simon and Isabelle, and Alec and Magnus.

Magnus looked ill and pale and very, very tired.

“Sebastian’s dead,” she said, and they all looked at her, with their tired, dirty faces, as if they were too exhausted and drained to feel anything at the news, even relief. Jace stepped forward and took her hands, lifted them and kissed them quickly; she closed her eyes, feeling as if just a fraction of warmth and light had been returned to her.

“Warrior hands,” he said quietly, and let her go. She stared down at her fingers, trying to see what he saw. Her hands were just her hands, small and callused, stained with dirt and blood.

“Jace was telling us,” said Simon. “What you did, with the Morgenstern sword. That you were faking Sebastian out the whole time.”

“Not there at the end,” she said. “Not when he turned back into Jonathan.”

“I wish you’d told us,” Isabelle said. “About your plan.”

“I’m sorry,” Clary whispered. “I was afraid it wouldn’t work. That you’d just be disappointed. I thought it was better—not to hope too much.”

“Hope is all that keeps us going sometimes, biscuit,” said Magnus, though he didn’t sound resentful.

“I needed him to believe it,” Clary said. “So I needed you to believe it too. He had to see your reactions and think he’d won.”

“Jace knew,” Alec said, looking up at her; he didn’t sound angry either, just dazed.

“And I never looked at her from the time she got up onto the throne to the time she stabbed that bastard in the heart,” Jace said. “I couldn’t. Handing over that bracelet to him, I—” He broke off. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called him a bastard. Sebastian was, but Jonathan isn’t, wasn’t, the same person—and your mother—”

“It is like she lost a child twice,” said Magnus. “I can think of few worse things.”

“How about being trapped in a demon realm with no way to get out?” Isabelle said.

“Clary, we need to get back to Idris. I hate to ask, but did Seb—did Jonathan say anything about how to unseal the borders?”

Clary swallowed. “He said it wasn’t possible. That they’re closed forever.”

“So we’re trapped here,” Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked. “Forever? That can’t be.

There must be a spell—Magnus—”

“He wasn’t lying,” Magnus said. “There’s no way for us to reopen the paths from here to Idris.”

There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been resting on Magnus, said, “No way for us?”

“That’s what I said,” Magnus replied. “There’s no way to open the borders.”

“No,” said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. “You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might be someone who could.” Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all. His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and he looked both very young and very, very old. His face was a young man’s face, but his eyes had seen centuries pass, and never had Clary been more aware of it. “There are worse things than death,” Magnus said.

“Maybe you should let us be the judge of that,” said Alec, and Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said, “Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson. It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn.”

“But you’re alive,” said Clary. “You lived through the lesson.” Magnus smiled an awful smile. “It wouldn’t be much of a lesson if I hadn’t,” he said.

“But I was duly warned. Playing dice with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours—”

“We’ll die here anyway,” said Jace. “It’s a rigged game. Let us take our chances.”

“I agree,” Isabelle said, and the others chimed in their agreement as well. Magnus looked toward the dais, where Luke and Jocelyn still knelt, and sighed.

“Majority vote,” he said. “Did you know there’s an old Downworlder saying about mad dogs and Nephilim never heeding a warning?”

“Magnus—” Alec began, but Magnus only shook his head and drew himself weakly to his feet. He still wore the rags of the clothes he must have put on for that long-ago dinner at the Fair Folk’s refuge in Idris: the incongruous shreds of a suit jacket and tie. Rings sparkled on his fingers as he brought his hands together, as if in prayer, and closed his eyes.

“My father,” he said, and Clary heard Alec suck in his breath with a gasp. “My father, who art in Hell, unhallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in Edom as it is in Hell. Forgive not my sins, for in that fire of fires there shall be neither loving kindness, nor compassion, nor redemption. My father, who makes war in high places and low, come to me now; I call you as your son, and incur upon myself the responsibility of your summoning.”

Magnus opened his eyes. He was expressionless. Five shocked faces looked back at him.

“By the Angel—” Alec started.

“No,” said a voice just beyond their huddled group. “Definitely not by your Angel.” Clary stared. At first she saw nothing, just a shifting patch of shadow, and then a figure evolved out of the darkness. A tall man, as pale as bone, in a pure white suit; silver cuff links gleamed at his wrists, carved in the shape of flies. His face was a human face, pale skin pulled tight over bone, cheekbones sharp as blades. He didn’t have hair so much as a sparkling coronet of barbed wires.

His eyes were gold-green, and slit-pupilled like a cat’s.

“Father,” said Magnus, and the word was an exhalation of sorrow. “You came.” The man smiled. His front teeth were sharp, pointed like feline teeth. “My son,” he said. “It has been a long time since you called on me. I was beginning to despair that you ever would again.”

“I hadn’t planned to,” Magnus said dryly. “I called on you once, to determine that you were my father. That once was enough.”

“You wound me,” said the man, and he turned his pointed-tooth smile on the others. “I am Asmodeus,” he said. “One of the Nine Princes of Hell. You may know my name.” Alec made a short sound, quickly muffled.

“I was a seraphim once, one of the angels indeed,” continued Asmodeus, looking pleased with himself. “Part of an innumerable company. Then came the war, and we fell like stars from Heaven. I followed the Light-Bringer down, the Morning Star, for I was one of his chief advisers, and when he fell, I fell with him. He raised me up in Hell and made me one of the nine rulers. In case you were wondering, it is preferable to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven—I’ve done both.”

“You’re—Magnus’s father?” said Alec in a strangled voice. He turned to Magnus.

“When you held the witchlight in the subway tunnel, it flared up in colors—is that because of him?” He pointed at Asmodeus.

“Yes,” Magnus said. He looked very tired. “I warned you, Alexander, that this was something you would not like.”

“I don’t see what the fuss is about. I have been the father of many warlocks,” said Asmodeus. “Magnus has made me the most proud.”

“Who are the others?” Isabelle asked, her dark eyes suspicious.

“What he’s not saying is that they’re mostly dead,” Magnus said. He met his father’s eyes briefly and then looked away, as if he couldn’t stand prolonged eye contact. His thin, sensitive mouth was set in a hard line. “He’s also not telling you that all princes of Hell have a realm they rule; this is his.”

“Since this place—Edom—is your realm,” Jace said, “then you’re responsible for—for what happened here?”

“It is my realm, though I am rarely here,” said Asmodeus with a martyred sigh. “Used to be an exciting place. The Nephilim of this realm put up quite the fight. When they invented the skeptron, I rather thought they might win out at the last moment, but the Jonathan Shadowhunter of this world was a divider, not a uniter, and in the end they destroyed themselves. Everyone does, you know. We demons get the blame, but we only open the door. It is humanity who steps through it.”

“Don’t excuse yourself,” Magnus snapped. “You as much as murdered my mother—”

“She was a willing little piece, I assure you,” said Asmodeus, and Magnus flushed red across his cheekbones. Clary felt a dull pang of shock that it was actually possible to do that to Magnus, to hurt him with barbs about his family. It had been so long, and he was so collected.

But then, perhaps your parents could always hurt you, no matter how old you were.

“Let’s cut to the business part of this,” said Magnus. “You can open a door, correct?

Send us through to Idris, back to our world?”

“Would you like a demonstration?” Asmodeus asked, flicking his fingers toward the dais, where Luke was on his feet, looking toward them. Jocelyn seemed about to rise, too.

Clary could see the expression of concern on both their faces—just before they winked out of existence. There was a shimmer of air and they both vanished, taking Jonathan’s body with them. Just as they vanished, for a moment, Clary glimpsed the inside of the Accords Hall, the mermaid fountain and the marble floor, and then it was gone, like a tear in the universe sewing itself back up again.

A cry broke from Clary’s throat. “Mom!”

“I sent them back to your world,” said Asmodeus. “Now you know.” He examined his nails.

Clary was panting, half with panic, half with rage. “How dare you—”

“Well, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” said Asmodeus. “There, you got the first two for free. The rest, well, it’ll cost you.” He sighed at the looks on the faces around him. “I’m a demon,” he said pointedly. “Really, what do they teach Nephilim these days?”

“I know what you want,” Magnus said in a strained voice. “And you can have it. But you must swear on the Morning Star to send all my friends back to Idris, all of them, and never to bother them again. They will owe you nothing.” Alec stepped forward. “Stop,” he said. “No—Magnus, what do you mean, what he wants? Why are you talking like you’re not coming back to Idris with us?”

“There is a time,” said Asmodeus, “when we must all return to live in the houses of our fathers. Now is Magnus’s time.”

“‘In my father’s house are many mansions,’” Jace whispered; he looked very pale, and as if he might throw up. “Magnus. He can’t mean—he doesn’t want to take you back with him?

Back to—”

“To Hell? Not precisely,” Asmodeus said. “As Magnus said, Edom is my realm. I shared it with Lilith. Then her brat took it over and laid waste to the grounds, destroyed my keep—it’s in slivers out there. And you murdered half the populace with the skeptron.” The last was addressed to Jace, rather petulantly. “It takes great energy to fuel a realm. We draw from the power of what we have left behind, the great city of Pandemonium, the fire we fell into, but there is a time when life must fuel us. And immortal life is the best of all.” The numb heaviness weighing Clary’s limbs vanished as she snapped to attention, moving in front of Magnus. She nearly collided with the others. They had all moved just as she had, to block the warlock from his demon father, even Simon. “You want to take his life?” Clary asked. “That’s just cruel and stupid, even if you’re a demon. How could you want to kill your own child—”

Asmodeus laughed. “Delightful,” he said. “Look at them, Magnus, these children who love you and want to protect you! Who would ever have thought it! When you are buried, I will make sure they inscribe it on your tomb: Magnus Bane, beloved of Nephilim.”

“You won’t touch him,” Alec said, his voice like iron. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what it is we do, us Nephilim, but we kill demons. Even princes of Hell.”

“Oh, I know well what you do; my kinsman Abbadon you slew, and our princess Lilith you scattered to the winds of the void, though she will return. She always has a place in Edom. That is why I allowed her son to set himself up here, though I admit I did not realize what a mess he’d make.” Asmodeus rolled his eyes; Clary suppressed a shudder.

Around the gold-green pupils the sclerae of his eyes were as black as oil. “I do not plan to kill Magnus. That would be messy and silly, and besides I could have had his death arranged at any time. It is his life freely given I want, for the life of an immortal has power, great power, and it will help me fuel my kingdom.”

“But he’s your son,” Isabelle protested.

“And he will remain with me,” said Asmodeus with a grin. “In spirit, you might say.” Alec whirled on Magnus, who stood with his hands in his pockets, scowling. “He wants to take your immortality?”

“Exactly,” Magnus said.

“But—you’d survive? Just not be immortal anymore?” Alec looked wretched, and Clary couldn’t help feeling awful for him. After the reason Alec and Magnus had broken up, Alec certainly didn’t want or need to be reminded that he had once wanted Magnus’s immortality taken away.

“My immortality would be gone,” Magnus said. “All the years of my life would come on me at once. I would be unlikely to survive it. Almost four hundred years is quite a lot to take, even if you moisturize regularly.”

“You can’t,” Alec said, and there was a plea in his voice. “He said ‘a life given willingly.’

Say no.”

Magnus raised his head and looked up and over at Alec; it was a look that made Clary flush and glance away. There was so much love in it, mixed with exasperation and pride and despair. It was an unguarded look, and it felt wrong to see it. “I can’t say no, Alexander,” he said. “If I do, we all remain here; we’ll die anyway. We’ll starve, our ashes turned to dust to plague the demons of the realm.”

“Fine,” Alec said. “There isn’t any one of us who would give up your life to save ours.” Magnus glanced around at the faces of his companions, dirty and exhausted and brutalized and despairing, and Clary saw the look on Magnus’s face change as he realized that Alec was right. None of them would give up his life to save theirs, even all of theirs.

“I’ve lived a long time,” Magnus said. “So many years, and no, it doesn’t feel like enough. I won’t lie and say it does. I want to live on—partly because of you, Alec. I have never wanted to live so much as I have these past few months, with you.” Alec looked stricken. “We’ll die together,” he said. “Let me stay at least, with you.”

“You have to go back. You have to go back to the world.”

“I don’t want the world. I want you,” Alec said, and Magnus closed his eyes, as if the words almost hurt. Asmodeus watched as they spoke, avidly, almost hungrily, and Clary remembered that demons fed on human emotions—fear and joy and love and pain. Most of all, pain.

“You can’t stay with me,” Magnus said after a pause. “There will be no me; the demon will take my life force, and my body will crumble away. Four hundred years, remember.”

“  ‘The demon,’  ” Asmodeus said, and sniffed. “You could say my name, at least, while you’re boring me.”

Clary resolved then and there that she might hate Asmodeus more than any other demon she had ever met.

“Get on with it, my boy,” Asmodeus added. “I haven’t got all eternity to wait—and neither have you, anymore.”

“I have to save you, Alec,” Magnus said. “You and everyone you love; it’s a small price to pay, isn’t it, in the end, for all of that?”

“Not everyone I love,” Alec whispered, and Clary felt tears pressing behind her eyes.

She had tried, tried so hard, to be the one who paid the price. It was not fair that Magnus should pay it; Magnus, who had the least part in the story of Nephilim and angels and demons and vengeance, compared to any of the rest of them; Magnus, who was only a part of it all because he loved Alec. “No,” Alec said. Through her tears Clary could see them clinging to each other; there was tenderness even in the curve of Magnus’s fingers around Alec’s shoulder as he bent to kiss him. It was a kiss of desperation and clutching more than passion; Magnus held on tightly enough for his fingers to bite into Alec’s arms, but in the end he stepped away, and turned toward his father.

“All right,” Magnus said, and Clary could tell he was bracing himself, nerving himself up as if he were about to throw his body onto a pyre. “All right, take me. I give you my life. I am—”

Simon—Simon, who had been silent till that moment; Simon, who Clary had almost forgotten was there—stepped forward. “I am willing.”

Asmodeus’s eyebrows shot up. “What was that?”

Isabelle seemed to catch on before anyone else. She paled and said, “No, Simon, no!” but Simon went on, his back straight, his chin lifted.

“I also have an immortal life,” he said. “Magnus isn’t the only one. Take mine; take my immortality.”

“Ahhhh,” breathed Asmodeus, his eyes suddenly shining. “Azazel told me of you. A vampire is not interesting, but a Daylighter! You carry the power of the world’s sun in your veins. Sunlight and eternal life, that is a power indeed.”

“Yes,” Simon said. “If you’ll take my immortality instead of Magnus’s, then I give it to you. I am—”

“Simon!” Clary said, but it was already too late.

“I am willing,” he finished, and with a glance around at the rest of the group, he set his jaw, with a look that said, I’ve said it. It’s done.

“God, Simon, no,” said Magnus, in a voice of terrible sadness, and he closed his eyes.

“I’m only seventeen,” Simon said. “If he takes my immortality, I’ll live out my life—I won’t die here. I never wanted immortality, I never wanted to be a vampire, I never wanted any of it.”

“You won’t live out your life!” There were tears in Isabelle’s eyes. “If Asmodeus takes your immortality, then you’ll be a corpse, Simon. You’re undead.” Asmodeus made a rude noise. “You’re a very stupid girl,” he said. “I am a Prince of Hell. I can break down the walls between worlds. I can build worlds and destroy them.

You think I can’t reverse the transformation that Turns a human to a vampire? You think I can’t make his heart beat again? Child’s play.”

“But why would you do that?” Clary said, bewildered. “Why would you make it so that he lived? You’re a demon. You don’t care—”

“I don’t care. But I want,” said Asmodeus. “There is one more thing I want from you.

One more item to sweeten the deal.” He grinned, and his teeth glimmered like sharp crystals.

“What?” Magnus’s voice shook. “What is it you want?”

“His memories,” said Asmodeus.

“Azazel took a memory from each of us, as payment for a favor,” Alec said. “What is it with you demons and memories?”

“Human memories, freely given, are like food to us,” said Asmodeus. “Demons live on the cries and agony of the damned in torment. Imagine then, how nice a change of pace a feast of happy memories is. Mixed together, they are delicious, the sour and the sweet.” He looked around, his cat’s eyes glittering. “And I can already tell there will be many happy memories to take, little vampire, for you are much loved, are you not?” Simon looked strained. He said, “But if you take my memories, who will I be? I don’t—”

“Well,” said Asmodeus. “I could take every memory you have and leave you a drooling idiot, I suppose, but really, who wants the memories of a baby? Dull, dull. The question is, what would be the most fun? Memories are delicious, but so is pain. What would cause the most pain to your friends, here? What would remind them to fear the power and the wit of demons?” He clasped his hands behind his back. Each of the buttons of his white suit was carved in the shape of a fly.

“I promised my immortality,” Simon said. “Not my memories. You said ‘freely given’—”

“God in Hell, the banality,” said Asmodeus, and he moved, as swift as a lick of flame, to seize Simon by the forearm. Isabelle darted forward, as if to catch hold of Simon, and then flinched back with a gasp. A red welt had appeared across her cheek. She put her hand to it, looking shocked.

“Leave her alone,” Simon snapped, and wrenched his arm out of the demon’s grip.

“Downworlder,” the demon breathed, and touched his long, spidery fingers to Simon’s cheek. “You must have had a heart that beat so strong in you, when it still beat.”

“Let him go,” Jace said, drawing his sword. “He is ours, not yours; the Nephilim protect what belongs to us—”

“No!” Simon said. He was shivering all over, but his back was straight. “Jace, don’t.

This is the only way.”

“Indeed it is,” said Asmodeus. “For none of you can fight a Prince of Hell in his place of power; not even you, Jace Herondale, child of angels, or you, Clarissa Fairchild, with your tricks and runes.” He moved his fingers, slightly; Jace’s sword clattered to the ground, and Jace jerked his hand back, grimacing in pain as if he’d been burned.

Asmodeus spared him only a glance before raising his hand again.

“There is the gateway. Look.” He gestured toward the wall, which shimmered and came clear. Through it Clary could see the hazy outlines of the Hall of Accords. There were the bodies of the Endarkened, lying on the ground in heaps of scarlet, and there were the Shadowhunters, running, stumbling, hugging, embracing one another—victory after the battle.

And there were her mother and Luke, looking around in bewilderment. They were still in the same position they had been in on the dais: Luke standing, Jocelyn kneeling with her son’s body in her arms. Other Shadowhunters were only just beginning to glance toward them, surprised, as if they had appeared out of nowhere—which they had.

“There is everything you want,” said Asmodeus, as the gateway flickered and went dark.

“And in return I shall take the Daylighter’s immortality, and along with it, his memories of the Shadow World—all his memories of all of you, of all he has learned, of all he has been.

That is my desire.”

Simon’s eyes widened; Clary felt her heart give a terrible lurch. Magnus looked as if someone had stabbed him. “There it is,” he whispered. “The trick at the heart of the game.

There always is one, with demons.”

Isabelle looked incredulous. “Are you saying you want him to forget us?”

“Everything about you, and that he ever knew you,” said Asmodeus. “I offer you this in exchange. He will live. He will have the life of an ordinary mundane. He will have his family back; his mother, his sister. Friends, school, all the trappings of a normal human life.”

Clary looked at Simon desperately. He was shaking, clenching and unclenching his hands. He said nothing.

“Absolutely not,” said Jace.

“Fine. Then you’ll all die here. You really don’t have much leverage, little Shadowhunter. What are memories when weighed against such a great cost of life?”

“You’re talking about who Simon is,” said Clary. “You’re talking about taking him away from us forever.”

“Yes. Isn’t it delightful?” Asmodeus smiled.

“This is ridiculous,” said Isabelle. “Say you do take his memories. What’s to stop us from tracking him down and telling him about the Shadow World? Introducing him to magic? We did it before, we can do it again.”

“Before, he knew you, knew and trusted Clary,” said Asmodeus. “Now he will know none of you. You will all be strangers to him, and why should he listen to mad strangers?

Besides, you know Covenant Law as well as I do. You will be breaking it, telling him about the Shadow World for no reason at all, endangering his life. There were special circumstances before. Now there will not be. The Clave will strip all your runes if you try it.”

“Speaking of the Clave,” said Jace. “They’re not going to be too pleased if you toss a mundane back out into a life where everyone he knows thinks he’s a vampire. All Simon’s friends know! His family knows! His sister, his mother. They’ll tell him, even if we don’t.”

“I see.” Asmodeus looked displeased. “That does complicate things. Perhaps I should take Magnus’s immortality after all—”

“No,” Simon said. He looked shocked, sick on his feet, but his voice was determined.

Asmodeus looked at him with covetous eyes.

“Simon, shut up,” Magnus said desperately. “Take me instead, Father—”

“I want the Daylighter,” said Asmodeus. “Magnus, Magnus. You’ve never quite understood what it is to be a demon, have you? To feed on pain? But what is pain?

Physical torment, that’s so dull; any garden-variety demon can do that. To be an artist of pain, to create agony, to blacken the soul, to turn pure motives to filth, and love to lust and then to hate, to turn a source of joy to a source of torture, that is what we exist for!” His voice rang out. “I shall go forth into the mundane world. I will strip the memories of those close to the Daylighter. They will remember him only as mortal. They will not remember Clary at all.”

“No!” Clary shouted, and Asmodeus threw his head back and laughed, a dazzling laugh that made her remember that once he had been an angel.

“You can’t take our memories,” said Isabelle furiously. “We’re Nephilim. It would be tantamount to an attack. The Clave—”

“Your memories you may keep,” said Asmodeus. “Nothing about your remembering Simon will get me in trouble with the Clave, and besides, it will torment you, which only doubles my pleasure.” He grinned. “I shall rip a hole through the heart of your world, and when you feel it, you will think on me and remember me. Remember!” Asmodeus pulled Simon close, his hand sliding up to press against Simon’s chest, as if he could reach through his rib cage into his heart. “We begin here. Are you ready, Daylighter?”

“Stop!” Isabelle stepped forward, her whip in hand, her eyes burning. “We know your name, demon. Do you think I am afraid to slay even a Prince of Hell? I would hang your head on my wall like a trophy, and if you dare touch Simon, I will hunt you down. I will spend my life hunting you—”

Alec wrapped his arms around his sister, and held her tightly. “Isabelle,” he said quietly. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Clary demanded. “We can’t let this happen—Jace—”

“This is Simon’s choice.” Jace stood stock-still; he was ashy pale but unmoving. His eyes were locked on Simon’s. “We have to honor it.”

Simon looked back at Jace, and inclined his head. His gaze was moving slowly over all of them, flicking from Magnus to Alec, to Jace, to Isabelle, where it stopped and rested, and was so full of broken possibilities that Clary felt her own heart break.

And then his gaze moved to Clary, and she felt the rest of her shatter. There was so much in his expression, so many years of so much love, so many whispered secrets and promises and shared dreams. She saw him reach down, and then something bright arced through the air toward her. She reached up and caught it, reflexively. It was the golden ring Clary had given him. Her hand tightened around it, feeling the bite of metal against her palm, welcoming the pain.

“Enough,” said Asmodeus. “I hate good-byes.” And he tightened his grip on Simon.

Simon gasped, his eyes flying wide open; his hand went to his chest.

“My heart—” he gasped, and Clary knew, knew from the look on his face, that it had started beating again. She blinked against her tears as a white mist exploded up around them. She heard Simon cry out in pain; her own feet moved without volition and she ran forward, only to be hurled back as if she had struck an invisible wall. Someone caught her—Jace, she thought. There were arms around her, even as the mist circled Simon and the demon like a small tornado, half-blocking them from view.

Shapes began to appear in the mist as it thickened. Clary saw herself and Simon as children, holding hands, crossing a street in Brooklyn; she had barrettes in her hair and Simon was adorably rumpled, his glasses sliding off his nose. There they were again, throwing snowballs in Prospect Park; and at Luke’s farmhouse, tanned from summer, hanging upside down from tree branches. She saw them in Java Jones, listening to Eric’s terrible poetry, and on the back of a flying motorcycle as it crashed into a parking lot, with Jace there, looking at them, his eyes squinted against the sun. And there was Simon with Isabelle, his hands curved around her face, kissing her, and she could see Isabelle as Simon saw her: fragile and strong, and so, so beautiful. And there was Valentine’s ship, Simon kneeling on Jace, blood on his mouth and shirt, and blood at Jace’s throat, and there was the cell in Idris, and Hodge’s weathered face, and Simon and Clary again, Clary etching the Mark of Cain onto his forehead. Maureen, and her blood on the floor, and her little pink hat, and the rooftop in Manhattan where Lilith had raised Sebastian, and Clary was passing him a gold ring across a table, and an Angel was rising out of a lake before him, and he was kissing Isabelle . . .

All Simon’s memories, his memories of magic, his memories of all of them, being drawn out and spun into a skein. It shimmered, as white-gold as daylight. There was a sound all around them, like a gathering storm, but Clary barely heard it. She reached her hands out, beseeching, though she didn’t know who she was begging. “Please—” She felt Jace’s arms tighten around her, and then the edge of the storm caught her. She was lifted up, whirled away. She saw the stone room recede into the distance at a terrible speed, and the storm took her cries for Simon and turned them into a sound like the ragged tearing of wind. Jace’s hands were torn from her shoulders. She was alone in the chaos, and for a moment she thought Asmodeus had lied to them after all, that there was no gateway, and that they would float in this nothingness forever until they died.

And then the ground came up, fast. She saw the floor of the Accords Hall, hard marble veined with gold, before she hit it. The collision was hard, rattling her teeth; she rolled automatically, as she’d been taught, and came to a stop at the side of the mermaid fountain in the center of the room.

She sat up and looked around. The room was full of utterly silent, staring faces, but they didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for strangers. She saw Jace first; he had landed in a crouch, poised to fight. She saw his shoulders relax as he looked around, realizing where they were, that they were in Idris, and the war was over. And there was Alec; he had his hand still in Magnus’s. Magnus looked sick and exhausted, but he was alive.

And there was Isabelle. She had come through the closest to Clary, only a foot or so away. She was already on her feet, her gaze scanning the room, once, twice, a desperate third time. They were all there, all of them, all except one.

She looked down at Clary; her eyes were shining with tears. “Simon’s not here,” she said. “He’s really gone.”

The silence that had held the assembly of Shadowhunters in its grip seemed to break like a wave: Suddenly there were Nephilim running toward them. Clary saw her mother and Luke, Robert and Maryse, Aline and Helen, even Emma Carstairs, moving to surround them, to embrace them and heal them and help them. Clary knew they meant well, that they were running to the rescue, but she felt no relief. Her hand tightening on the gold ring in her palm, she curled up against the floor and finally allowed herself to cry.

24 Call It Peace

“Who stands, then, to represent the Faerie Courts?” said Jia Penhallow.

The Hall of Accords was draped with the blue banners of victory. They looked like pieces cut out of the sky. Each was stamped with a golden rune of triumph. It was a clear winter day outside, and the light that poured through the windows shimmered across the long lines of chairs that had been set up facing the raised dais at the center of the room, where the Consul and the Inquisitor sat at a long table. The table itself was decorated with more gold and blue: massive golden candlesticks that nearly obscured Emma’s view of the Downworlders who also shared the table: Luke, representing the werewolves; a young woman named Lily, representing the vampires; and the very famous Magnus Bane, the representative for the warlocks.

No seat had been placed at the table for a representative of Faerie. Slowly, from among the seated crowd, a young woman rose to her feet. Her eyes were entirely blue with no white, her ears pointed like Helen’s. “I am Kaelie Whitewillow,” she said. “I will stand for the Seelie Court.”

“But not for the Unseelie?” said Jia, her pen hovering above a scroll of paper.

Kaelie shook her head, her lips pressed together. A murmur ran through the room. For all the brightness of the banners, the mood in the room was tense, not joyful. In the row of seats in front of the Blackthorns sat the Lightwoods: Maryse with her back ramrod-straight, and beside her, Isabelle and Alec, their dark heads bent together as they whispered.

Jocelyn Fairchild sat beside Maryse, but there was no sign anywhere of Clary Fray or Jace Lightwood.

“The Unseelie Court declines a representative,” said Jia, noting it down with her pen.

She looked at Kaelie over the rims of her glasses. “What word do you bring us from the Seelie Court? Do they agree to our terms?”

Emma heard Helen, at the end of her row of seats, take a deep breath. Dru and Tavvy and the twins had been considered too young to come to the meeting; technically no one under eighteen was allowed, but special considerations had been made for those, like her and Julian, who had been directly affected by what was coming to be called the Dark War.

Kaelie moved to the aisle between the rows of seats and began to walk toward the dais; Robert Lightwood rose to his feet. “You must ask permission to approach the Consul,” he said in his gravelly voice.

“Permission is not given,” said Jia tightly. “Stay where you are, Kaelie Whitewillow. I can hear you perfectly well.”

Emma felt a sudden brief burst of pity for the faerie girl—everyone was staring at her with eyes like knives. Everyone except Aline and Helen, who sat pressed close together; they were holding each other’s hands, and their knuckles were white.

“The Faerie Court asks for your mercy,” Kaelie said, clasping her slim hands in front of her. “The terms you have set down are too harsh. The faeries have always had their own sovereignty, our own kings and queens. We have always had warriors. We are an ancient people. What you ask for will crush us completely.”

A low murmur ran around the room. It was not a friendly noise. Jia picked up the paper lying on the table in front of her. “Shall we review?” she said. “We ask that the Faerie Courts accept all responsibility for the loss of life and damage sustained by Shadowhunters and Downworlders in the Dark War. The Fair Folk shall be responsible for the costs of rebuilding broken wards, for the reestablishment of the Praetor Lupus on Long Island, and the rebuilding of what in Alicante has been destroyed. You will spend your own riches upon it. As for the Shadowhunters taken from us—”

“If you mean Mark Blackthorn, he was taken by the Wild Hunt,” Kaelie said. “We have no jurisdiction over them. You will have to negotiate with them yourselves, though we will not prevent it.”

“He was not all that was taken from us,” said Jia. “There is that for which there can be no reparation—the loss of life sustained by Shadowhunters and lycanthropes in battle, those who were torn from us by the Infernal Cup—”

“That was Sebastian Morgenstern, not the Courts,” Kaelie protested. “He was a Shadowhunter.”

“And that’s why we are not punishing you with a war that you would inevitably lose,” said Jia coldly. “Instead we insist merely that you disband your armies, that there be no more Fair Folk warriors. You may no longer bear arms. Any faerie found carrying a weapon without a dispensation from the Clave will be killed on sight.”

“The terms are too severe,” Kaelie protested. “The Fair Folk cannot abide under them!

If we are weaponless, we cannot defend ourselves!”

“We will put it to a vote, then,” said Jia, setting her paper down. “Any not in favor of the terms set down for the Fair Folk, please speak now.”

There was a long silence. Emma could see Helen’s eyes roving the room, her mouth pinched at the sides; Aline was holding her wrist tightly. Finally there was the sound of a chair scraping back, echoing in the silence, and one lone figure rose to his feet.

Magnus Bane. He was still pale from his ordeal in Edom, but his gold-green eyes burned with an intensity that Emma could see from across the room. “I know that mundane history is not of enormous interest to most Shadowhunters,” he said. “But there was a time before the Nephilim. A time when Rome battled the city of Carthage, and over the course of many wars was victorious. After one of the wars, Rome demanded that Carthage pay them tribute, that Carthage abandon their army, and that the land of Carthage be sowed with salt. The historian Tacitus said of the Romans that ‘they make a desert and call it peace.’ ” He turned to Jia. “The Carthaginians never forgot. Their hatred of Rome sparked another war in the end, and that war ended in death and slavery. That was not peace. This is not peace.”

At that, there were catcalls from the assembly.

“Perhaps we don’t want peace, warlock!” someone shouted.

“What’s your solution, then?” shouted someone else.

“Leniency,” said Magnus. “The Fair Folk have long hated the Nephilim for their harshness. Show them something other than harshness, and you will receive something other than hate in return!”

Noise burst out again, louder than ever this time; Jia raised a hand, and the crowd quieted. “Does anyone else speak for the Fair Folk?” she asked.

Magnus, taking his seat again, glanced sideways at his fellow Downworlders, but Lily was smirking and Luke was staring down at the table with a fixed look on his face. It was common knowledge that his sister had been the first taken and Endarkened by Sebastian Morgenstern, that many of the wolves in the Praetor had been his friends, including Jordan Kyle—and yet there was doubt on his face—

“Luke,” Magnus said in a soft voice that somehow managed to echo through the room.

“Please.”

The doubt vanished. Luke shook his head grimly. “Don’t ask for what I can’t give,” he said. “The whole Praetor was slaughtered, Magnus. As the representative of the werewolves, I cannot speak against what they all want. If I did, they would turn against the Clave, and nothing would be accomplished by that.”

“There it is, then,” Jia said. “Speak, Kaelie Whitewillow. Will you agree to the terms, or will there be war between us?”

The faerie girl bowed her head. “We agree to the terms.” The assembly burst into applause. Only a few did not clap: Magnus, the row of Blackthorns, the Lightwoods, and Emma herself. She was too busy watching Kaelie as the faerie sat down. Her head might have been bowed submissively, but her face was full of a white-hot rage.

“So it is done,” said Jia, clearly pleased. “Now we move to the subject of—”

“Wait.” A thin Shadowhunter with dark hair had risen to his feet. Emma didn’t recognize him. He could have been anyone. A Cartwright? A Pontmercy? “There remains the question of Mark and Helen Blackthorn.”

Helen’s eyes closed. She looked like someone who had been half-expecting a guilty sentence in a trial and half-hoping for a reprieve, and this was the moment after the guilty sentence had fallen.

Jia paused, her pen in her hand. “What do you mean, Balogh?” Balogh drew himself up. “There’s already been discussion of the fact that Morgenstern’s forces penetrated the Los Angeles Institute so easily. Both Mark and Helen Blackthorn have the blood of faeries in them. We know the boy’s already joined up with the Wild Hunt, so he’s beyond us, but the girl shouldn’t be among Shadowhunters. It isn’t decent.” Aline shot to her feet. “That’s ridiculous!” she spat. “Helen’s a Shadowhunter; she’s always been one! She’s got the blood of the Angel in her—you can’t turn your back on that!”

“And the blood of faeries,” said Balogh. “She can lie. We’ve already been tricked by one of her sort, to our sorrow. I say we strip her Marks—”

Luke brought his hand down on the table with a loud slam; Magnus was hunched forward, his long-fingered hands covering his face, his shoulders slumped. “The girl’s done nothing,” Luke said. “You can’t punish her for an accident of birth.”

“Accidents of birth make us all what we are,” said Balogh stubbornly. “You can’t deny the faerie blood in her. You can’t deny she can lie. If it comes down to a war again, where will her loyalties stand?”

Helen got to her feet. “Where they stood this time,” she said. “I fought at the Burren, and at the Citadel, and in Alicante, to protect my family and protect Nephilim. I’ve never given anyone reason to question my loyalty.”

“This is what happens,” Magnus said, raising his face. “Can’t you see, this is how it begins again?”

“Helen is right,” said Jia. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

Another Shadowhunter rose to her feet, a woman with dark hair piled on her head.

“Begging your pardon, Consul, but you are not objective,” she said. “We all know of your daughter’s relationship with the faerie girl. You should recuse yourself from this discussion.”

“Helen Blackthorn is needed, Mrs. Sedgewick,” said Diana Wrayburn, standing. She looked outraged; Emma remembered her in the Accords Hall, the way she had tried to get to Emma, to help her. “Her parents have been murdered; she has five younger brothers and sisters to care for—”

“She is not needed,” snapped Sedgewick. “We are reopening the Academy—the children can go there, or they can be split up among various Institutes—”

“No,” Julian whispered. His hands were in fists on his knees.

“Absolutely not,” Helen shouted. “Jia, you must—”

Jia met her eyes and nodded, a slow, reluctant nod. “Arthur Blackthorn,” she said.

“Please rise.”

Emma felt Julian, beside her, freeze in shock as a man on the other side of the room, hidden among the crowd, rose to his feet. He was slight, a paler, smaller version of Julian’s father, with thinning brown hair and the Blackthorn eyes, half-hidden behind spectacles.

He leaned heavily on a wooden cane, with a discomfort that made her think the injury that required the cane was recent.

“I wished to wait until after this meeting, that the children might meet their uncle properly,” Jia said. “I summoned him immediately on news of the attack on the Los Angeles Institute, of course, but he had been injured in London. He arrived in Idris only this morning.” She sighed. “Mr. Blackthorn, you may introduce yourself.” The man had a round, pleasant face, and looked extremely uncomfortable being stared at by so many people. “I am Arthur Blackthorn, Andrew Blackthorn’s brother,” he said.

His accent was British; Emma always forgot that Julian’s father had originally come from London. He had lost his accent years before. “I will be moving into the Los Angeles Institute as soon as possible and bringing my nieces and nephews with me. The children will be under my protection.”

“Is that really your uncle?” Emma whispered, staring.

“Yes, that’s him,” Julian whispered back, clearly agitated. “It’s just—I was hoping—I mean, I was really starting to think he wouldn’t come. I’d—I’d rather have Helen look after us.”

“While I’m sure we’re all immeasurably relieved that you’ll be looking after the Blackthorn children,” said Luke, “Helen is one of them. Are you saying, by claiming responsibility for the younger siblings, that you agree that her Marks should be stripped?” Arthur Blackthorn looked horrified. “Not at all,” he said. “My brother may not have been wise in his . . . dalliances . . . but all records show that the children of Shadowhunters are Shadowhunters. As they say, ut incepit fidelis sic permanet.” Julian slid down in his seat. “More Latin,” he muttered. “Just like Dad.”

“What does it mean?” Emma asked.

“  ‘She begins loyal and ends loyal’—something like that.” Julian’s eyes flicked around the room; everyone was muttering and glaring. Jia was in muted conference with Robert and the Downworld representatives. Helen was still standing, but it looked as if Aline was all that was holding her up.

The group at the dais broke apart, and Robert Lightwood stepped forward. His face was thunderous. “So that there is no discussion that Jia’s personal friendship with Helen Blackthorn will have influenced her decision, she has recused herself,” he said. “The rest of us have decided that, as Helen is eighteen, at the age where many young Shadowhunters are posted to other Institutes to learn their ways, she will be posted to Wrangel Island to study the wards.”

“For how long?” said Balogh immediately.

“Indefinitely,” said Robert, and Helen sank down into her chair, Aline at her side, her face a mask of grief and shock. Wrangel Island might have been the seat of all the wards that protected the world, a prestigious posting in many ways, but it was also a tiny island in the frozen Arctic sea north of Russia, thousands of miles from Los Angeles.

“Is that good enough for you?” Jia said in a cold voice. “Mr. Balogh? Mrs. Sedgewick?

Shall we vote on it? All in favor of assigning Helen Blackthorn to a posting on Wrangel Island until her loyalty is determined, say ‘aye.’ ”

A chorus of “aye,” and a quieter chorus of “nay,” ran around the room. Emma said nothing, and neither did Jules; both of them were too young to vote. Emma reached her hand over and took Julian’s, squeezed it tightly; his fingers were like ice. He had the look of someone who had been hit so many times that they no longer even wanted to get up.

Helen was sobbing softly in Aline’s arms.

“There remains the question of Mark Blackthorn,” said Balogh.

“What question?” demanded Robert Lightwood, sounding exasperated. “The boy has been taken by the Wild Hunt! In the unlikely event that we are able to negotiate his release, shouldn’t this be a problem to worry about then?”

“That’s just it,” said Balogh. “As long as we don’t negotiate his release, the problem takes care of itself. The boy is likely better off with his own kind anyway.” Arthur Blackthorn’s round face paled. “No,” he said. “My brother wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d have wanted the boy at home with his family.” He gestured toward where Emma and Julian and the rest were sitting. “They’ve had so much taken away from them.

How can we take more?”

“We’re protecting them,” snapped Sedgewick. “From a brother and sister who will only betray them as time passes and they realize their true loyalty to the Courts. All in favor of permanently abandoning the search for Mark Blackthorn, say ‘aye.’ ” Emma reached to hold Julian as he hunched forward in his chair. She clung awkwardly to his side. All his muscles were rigid, as hard as iron, as if he were readying himself for a fall or a blow. Helen leaned toward him, whispering and murmuring, her own face streaked with tears. As Aline reached past Helen to stroke Jules’s hair, Emma caught sight of the Blackthorn ring sparkling on Aline’s finger. As the chorus of “aye” went around the room in a terrible symphony, the gleam made Emma think of the shine of a distress signal far out at sea, where no one could see it, where there was no one to care.

If this was peace and victory, Emma thought, maybe war and fighting was better after all.

Jace slid from the back of the horse and reached up a hand to help Clary down after him.

“Here we are,” he said, turning to face the lake.

They stood on a shallow beach of rocks facing the western edge of Lake Lyn. It was not the same beach where Valentine had stood when he had summoned the Angel Raziel, not the same beach where Jace had bled his life out and then regained it, but Clary had not been back to the lake since that time, and the sight of it still sent a shiver through her bones.

It was a lovely place, there was no doubt about that. The lake stretched into the distance, tinted with the color of the winter sky, limned in silver, the surface brushed and rippled so that it resembled a piece of metallic paper folding and unfolding under the wind’s touch. The clouds were white and high, and the hills around them were bare.

Clary moved forward, down to the edge of the water. She had thought her mother might come with her, but at the last moment Jocelyn had refused, saying that she had bidden good-bye to her son a long time ago and that this was Clary’s time. The Clave had burned his body—at Clary’s request. The burning of a body was an honor, and those who died in disgrace were buried at crossroads whole and unburned, as Jace’s mother had been. The burning had been more than a favor, Clary thought; it had been a sure way for the Clave to be absolutely certain that he was dead. But still Jonathan’s ashes were never to be taken to the abode of the Silent Brothers. They would never form a part of the City of Bones; he would never be a soul among other Nephilim souls.

He would not be buried among those he had caused to be murdered, and that, Clary thought, was only fair and just. The Endarkened had been burned, and their ashes buried at the crossroads near Brocelind. There would be a monument there, a necropolis to recall those who had once been Shadowhunters, but there would be no monument to recall Jonathan Morganstern, whom no one wanted to remember. Even Clary wished she could forget, but nothing was that easy.

The water of the lake was clear, with a slight rainbow sheen to it, like a slick of oil. It lapped against the edges of Clary’s boots as she opened the silver box she was holding.

Inside it were ashes, powdery and gray, flecked with bits of charred bone. Among the ashes lay the Morgenstern ring, glimmering and silver. It had been on a chain around Jonathan’s throat when he had been burned, and it remained, untouched and unharmed by the fire.

“I never had a brother,” she said. “Not really.”

She felt Jace place his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. “You did,” he said. “You had Simon. He was your brother in all the ways that matter. He watched you grow up, defended you, fought with and for you, cared about you all your life. He was the brother you chose. Even if he’s . . . gone now, no one and nothing can take that away from you.”

Clary took a deep breath and flung the box as far as she could. It flew far, over the rainbow water, black ashes arcing out behind it like the plume of a jet plane, and the ring fell along with it, turning over and over, sending out silver sparks as it fell and fell and disappeared beneath the water.

“Ave atque vale,” she said, speaking the full lines of the ancient poem. “Ave atque vale in perpetuum, frater. Hail and farewell forever, my brother.” The wind off the lake was cold; she felt it against her face, icy on her cheeks, and only then did she realize that she had been crying, and that her face was cold because it was wet with tears. She had wondered since she had found out that Jonathan was alive why her mother had cried on the day of his birth every year. Why cry, if she had hated him? But Clary understood now. Her mother had been crying for the child she would never have, for all the dreams that had been wrapped up in her imagination of having a son, her imagination of what that boy would be like. And she’d been crying for the bitter chance that had destroyed that child before he had ever been born. And so, as Jocelyn had for so many years, Clary stood at the side of the Mortal Mirror and wept for the brother she would never have, for the boy who had never been given the chance to live. And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the way she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.

Jace stood by her side as she cried, and held her hand silently, until Jonathan’s ashes had sunk under the water’s surface without a trace.

“Don’t eavesdrop,” said Julian.

Emma glared at him. All right, so she could hear the raised voices through the thick wood of the Consul’s office door, now shut but for a crack. And maybe she had been leaning toward the door, tantalized by the fact that she could hear the voices, could nearly make them out, but not quite. So? Wasn’t it better to know things than to not know them?

She mouthed “So what?” at Julian, who raised his eyebrows at her. Julian didn’t exactly like rules, but he obeyed them. Emma thought rules were for breaking, or bending at the very least.

Plus, she was bored. They had been led to the door and left there by one of the Council members, at the end of the long corridor that stretched nearly the length of the Gard.

Tapestries hung all around the office entrance, threadbare from the passing of years. Most of them showed passages from Shadowhunter history: the Angel rising from the lake with the Mortal Instruments, the Angel passing the Gray Book to Jonathan Shadowhunter, the First Accords, the Battle of Shanghai, the Council of Buenos Aires. There was another tapestry as well, this one looking newer and freshly hung, which showed the Angel rising out of the lake, this time without the Mortal Instruments. A blond man stood at the edge of the lake, and near him, almost invisible, was the figure of a slight girl with red hair, holding a stele. . . .

“There’ll be a tapestry about you someday,” said Jules.

Emma flicked her eyes over to him. “You have to do something really big to get a tapestry about you. Like win a war.”

“You could win a war,” he said confidently. Emma felt a little tightening around her heart. When Julian looked at her like that, like she was brilliant and amazing, it made the missing-her-parents ache in her heart a little less. There was something about having someone care about you like that that made you feel like you could never be totally alone.

Unless they decided to take her away from Jules, of course. Move her to Idris, or to one of the Institutes where she had distant relatives—in England, or China or Iran. Suddenly panicked, she took out her stele and carved an audio rune into her arm before pressing her ear to the wood of the door, ignoring Julian’s glare.

The voices immediately came clear. She recognized Jia’s first, and then the second after a beat: The Consul was talking to Luke Garroway.

“. . . Zachariah? He is no longer an active Shadowhunter,” Jia was saying. “He left today before the meeting, saying he had some loose ends to tie up, and then an urgent appointment in London in early January, something he couldn’t miss.” Luke murmured an answer Emma didn’t hear; she hadn’t known Zachariah was leaving, and wished she could have thanked him for the help he’d given them the night of the battle. And asked him how he’d known her middle name was Cordelia.

She leaned in more closely to the door, and heard Luke, halfway through a sentence. “. .

. should tell you first,” he was saying. “I’m planning to step down as representative. Maia Roberts will take my place.”

Jia made a surprised noise. “Isn’t she a little young?”

“She’s very capable,” said Luke. “She hardly needs my endorsement—”

“No,” Jia agreed. “Without her warning before Sebastian’s attack, we would have lost many more Shadowhunters than we did.”

“And as she’ll be leading the New York pack from now on, it makes more sense for her to be your representative than for me.” He sighed. “Besides, Jia. I’ve lost my sister. Jocelyn lost her son—again. And Clary’s still devastated over what happened with Simon. I’d like to be there for my daughter.”

Jia made an unhappy noise. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let her try to call him.”

“She had to know,” said Luke. “It’s a loss. She has to come to terms with it. She has to grieve. I’d like to be there to help her through it. I’d like to get married. I’d like to be there for my family. I need to step away.”

“Well, you have my blessing, of course,” she said. “Though I could have used your help in reopening the Academy. We have lost so many. It has been a long time since death undid so many Nephilim. We must reach out into the mundane world, find those who might Ascend, teach and train them. There will be a great deal to do.”

“And many to help you do it.” Luke’s tone was inflexible.

Jia sighed. “I’ll welcome Maia, no fear. Poor Magnus, surrounded by women.”

“I doubt he’ll mind or notice,” said Luke. “Though, I should say that you know he was right, Jia. Abandoning the search for Mark Blackthorn, sending Helen Blackthorn to Wrangel Island—that was unconscionable cruelty.”

There was a pause, and then, “I know,” said Jia in a low voice. “You think I don’t know what I did to my own daughter? But letting Helen stay—I saw the hate in the eyes of my own Shadowhunters, and I was afraid for Helen. Afraid for Mark, should we be able to find him.”

“Well, I saw the devastation in the eyes of the Blackthorn children,” said Luke.

“Children are resilient.”

“They’ve lost their brother and their father, and now you’re leaving them to be raised by an uncle they’ve seen only a few times—”

“They will come to know him; he is a good man. Diana Wrayburn has requested the position of their tutor as well, and I am inclined to give it to her. She was impressed by their bravery—”

“But she isn’t their mother. My mother left when I was a child,” Luke said. “She became an Iron Sister. Cleophas. I never saw her again. Amatis raised me. I don’t know what I would have done without her. She was—all I had.”

Emma glanced quickly over at Julian to see if he’d heard. She didn’t think he had; he wasn’t looking at her but was staring off into nothing, blue-green eyes as distant as the ocean they resembled. She wondered if he was remembering the past or fearing for the future; she wished she could rewind the clock, get her parents back, give Jules back his father and Helen and Mark, unbreak what was broken.

“I’m sorry about Amatis,” said Jia. “And I am worried about the Blackthorn children, believe me. But we have always had orphans; we’re Nephilim. You know that as well as I do. As for the Carstairs girl, she will be brought to Idris; I’m worried she might be a little headstrong—”

Emma shoved the door of the office open; it gave much more easily than she had anticipated, and she half-fell inside. She heard Jules give a startled yelp and then follow her, grabbing at the back of the belt on her jeans to pull her upright. “No!” she said.

Both Jia and Luke looked at her in surprise: Jia’s mouth partly open, Luke beginning to crack a smile. “A little?” he said.

“Emma Carstairs,” Jia began, rising to her feet, “how dare you—”

“How dare you.” And Emma was utterly surprised that it was Julian who had spoken, his verdigris eyes blazing. In five seconds he had turned from worried boy to furious young man, his brown hair standing out wildly as if it were angry too. “How dare you shout at Emma when you’re the one who promised. You promised the Clave would never abandon Mark while he was living— you promised!”

Jia had the grace to look ashamed. “He is one of the Wild Hunt now,” she said. “They are neither the dead nor the living.”

“So you knew,” said Julian. “You knew when you promised that it didn’t mean anything.”

“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.”

Alec caught his breath and looked down at his hands. “What are you saying?” His voice was uneven. “That you want to get back together?”

“If you want to,” Magnus said, and he actually sounded uncertain, enough that Alec looked at him in surprise. Magnus looked very young, his eyes wide and gold-green, his hair brushing his temples in wisps of black. “If you . . .” Alec sat, frozen. For weeks he’d sat and daydreamed about Magnus saying these exact words, but now that Magnus was, it didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would. There were no fireworks in his chest; he felt empty and cold. “I don’t know,” he said.

The light died out of Magnus’s eyes. He said, “Well, I can understand that you—I wasn’t very kind to you.”

“No,” Alec said bluntly. “You weren’t, but I guess it’s hard to break up with someone kindly. The thing is, I am sorry about what I did. I was wrong. Incredibly wrong. But the reason I did it, that isn’t going to change. I can’t go through my life feeling like I don’t know you at all. You keep saying the past is the past, but the past made you who you are. I want to know about your life. And if you’re not willing to tell me about it, then I shouldn’t be with you. Because I know me, and I won’t ever be okay with it. So I shouldn’t put us both through that again.”

Magnus pulled his knees up to his chest. In the darkening twilight he looked gangly against the shadows, all long legs and arms and thin fingers sparkling with rings. “I love you,” he said quietly.

“Don’t—” Alec said. “Don’t. It’s not fair. Besides—” He glanced away. “I doubt I’m the first one who ever broke your heart.”

“My heart’s been broken more times than the Clave’s Law about Shadowhunters not engaging in romances with Downworlders,” Magnus said, but his voice sounded brittle.

“Alec . . . you’re right.”

Alec cut his eyes sideways. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the warlock look so vulnerable.

“It’s not fair to you,” Magnus said. “I’ve always told myself I was going to be open to new experiences, and so when I started to—to harden—I was shocked. I thought I’d done everything right, not closed my heart off. And then I thought about what you said, and I realized why I was starting to die inside. If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I did that were good, the things I did that were shameful—if I kept them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear. And then I would disappear.”

“I . . .” Alec wasn’t sure what to say.

“I had a lot of time to think, after we broke up,” Magnus said. “And I wrote this.” He pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket: just a very ordinary spiral-bound notebook of lined paper, but when the wind flapped it open, Alec could see that the pages were covered with thin, looping handwriting. Magnus’s handwriting. “I wrote down my life.”

Alec’s eyes widened. “Your whole life?”

“Not all of it,” Magnus said carefully. “But some of the incidents that have shaped me.

How I first met Raphael, when he was very young,” Magnus said, and sounded sad. “How I fell in love with Camille. The story of the Hotel Dumort, though Catarina had to help me with that. Some of my early loves, and some of my later ones. Names you might know—Herondale—”

“Will Herondale,” said Alec. “Camille mentioned him.” He took the notebook; the thin pages felt bumpy, as if Magnus had pressed the pen very hard into the paper while writing. “Were you . . . with him?”

Magnus laughed and shook his head. “No—though, there are a lot of Herondales in the pages. Will’s son, James Herondale, was remarkable, and so was James’s sister, Lucie, but I have to say Stephen Herondale rather put me off the family until Jace came along. That guy was a pill.” He noticed Alec staring at him, and added quickly, “No Herondales. No Shadowhunters at all, in fact.”

“No Shadowhunters?”

“None in my heart like you are,” Magnus said. He tapped the notebook lightly.

“Consider this a first installment of everything I want to tell you. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped—if you wanted to be with me, as I want to be with you, you might take this as evidence. Evidence that I am willing to give you something I have never given anyone: my past, the truth of myself. I want to share my life with you, and that means today, and the future, and all of my past, if you want it. If you want me.” Alec lowered the notebook. There was writing on the first page, a scrawled inscription: Dear Alec . . .

He could see the path in front of him very clearly: He could hand back the book, walk away from Magnus, find someone else, some Shadowhunter to love, be with him, share the kinship of predictable days and nights, the daily poetry of an ordinary life.

Or he could take the step out into nothingness and choose Magnus, the far stranger poetry of him, his brilliance and anger, his sulks and joys, the extraordinary abilities of his magic and the no less breathtaking magic of the extraordinary way he loved.

It was hardly a choice at all. Alec took a deep breath, and jumped.

“All right,” he said.

Magnus whipped toward him in the dark, all coiled energy now, all cheekbones and shimmering eyes. “Really?”

“Really,” Alec said. He reached out a hand, and interlinked his fingers with Magnus’s.

There was a glow being woken in Alec’s chest, where all had been dark. Magnus cupped his long fingers under Alec’s jawline and kissed him, his touch light against Alec’s skin: a slow and gentle kiss, a kiss that promised more later, when they were no longer on a roof and could be seen by anyone walking by.

“So I’m your first ever Shadowhunter, huh?” Alec said when they separated at last.

“You’re my first so many things, Alec Lightwood,” Magnus said.

The sun was setting when Jace dropped Clary off at Amatis’s house, kissed her, and headed back down the canal toward the Inquisitor’s. Clary watched him walk away before turning back to the house with a sigh; she was glad they were leaving the next day.

There were things she loved about Idris. Alicante was still the loveliest city she had seen: Over the houses, now, she could see the sunset striking sparks off the clear tops of the demon towers. The rows of houses along the canal were softened by shadow, like velvet silhouettes. But it was heart-achingly sad being inside Amatis’s house, knowing now, with certainty, that she would never come back to it.

Inside, the house was warm and dimly lit. Luke was sitting on the sofa, reading a book.

Jocelyn was asleep beside him, curled up with a throw rug over her. Luke smiled at Clary as she came in, and he pointed toward the kitchen, making a bizarre gesture that Clary translated as an indication that there was food in there if she wanted it.

She nodded and tiptoed up the stairs, careful not to wake her mother. She went into her room already pulling off her coat; it took her a moment to realize that there was someone else there.

The room was chilly, the cold air pouring in through the half-open window. On the windowsill sat Isabelle. She wore high boots zipped over jeans; her hair was loose, blowing slightly in the breeze. She looked over at Clary as she came into the room, and smiled tightly.

Clary went over to the window and pulled herself up beside Izzy. There was enough room for both of them, but barely; the toes of her shoes nudged up against Izzy’s leg. She folded her hands over her knees and waited.

“Sorry,” Isabelle said, finally. “I probably should have come in through the front door, but I didn’t want to deal with your parents.”

“Was everything okay at the Council meeting?” Clary asked. “Did something happen—” Isabelle laughed shortly. “The faeries agreed to the Clave’s terms.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“Maybe. Magnus didn’t seem to think so.” Isabelle exhaled. “It just—There were nasty pointy angry bits sticking out everywhere. It didn’t seem like a victory. And they’re sending Helen Blackthorn to Wrangel Island to ‘study the wards.’ Get that. They want to get her away because she’s got faerie blood.”

“That’s horrible! What about Aline?”

“Aline’s going with her. She told Alec,” Isabelle said. “There’s some uncle that’s coming to take care of the Blackthorn kids and the girl—the one who likes you and Jace.”

“Her name’s Emma,” Clary said, poking Isabelle’s leg with her toe. “You could try to remember it. She did help us out.”

“Yeah, it’s a little hard for me to be grateful right now.” Isabelle ran her hands down her denim-clad legs and took a deep breath. “I know there was no other way it could have played out. I keep trying to imagine one, but I can’t think of anything. We had to go after Sebastian, and we had to get out of Edom or we all would have died anyway, but I just miss Simon. I miss him all the time, and I came here because you’re the only one who misses him as much as I do.”

Clary stilled. Isabelle was playing with the red stone at her throat, staring out the window with the sort of fixed stare Clary was familiar with. It was the kind of stare that said, I’m trying not to cry.

“I know,” Clary said. “I miss him all the time too, just in a different way. It feels like waking up missing an arm or a leg, like there’s something that’s always been there that I relied on, and now it’s gone.”

Isabelle was still staring out the window. “Tell me about the phone call,” she said.

“I don’t know.” Clary hesitated. “It was bad, Iz. I don’t think you really want to—”

“Tell me,” Isabelle said through her teeth, and Clary sighed and nodded.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t remember; every second of what had happened was burned into her brain.

It had been three days after they had come back, three days during which all of them had been quarantined. No Shadowhunter had survived a trip to a demon dimension before, and the Silent Brothers had wanted to be absolutely sure that they were carrying no dark magic with them. It had been three days of Clary screaming at the Silent Brothers that she wanted her stele, she wanted a Portal, she wanted to see Simon, she wanted someone to just check on him and make sure he was all right. She hadn’t seen Isabelle or any of the others during those days, not even her mother or Luke, but they must have done their own fair share of screaming, because the moment they had all been cleared by the Brothers, a guard had appeared and guided Clary to the Consul’s office.

Inside the office of the Consul, in the Gard on top of Gard Hill, was the only working telephone in Alicante.

It had been enchanted to work sometime around the turn of the century by the warlock Ragnor Fell, a little before the development of fire-messages. It had survived various attempts to remove it on the theory that it might disrupt the wards, as it had shown no sign of ever doing so.

The only other person in the room was Jia Penhallow, and she gestured for Clary to sit.

“Magnus Bane has informed me about what happened with your friend Simon Lewis in the demon realms,” she said. “I wished to say that I am so sorry for your loss.”

“He isn’t dead,” Clary ground out through her teeth. “At least he isn’t supposed to be.

Has anyone bothered to check? Has anyone looked to see if he’s all right?”

“Yes,” Jia said, rather unexpectedly. “He is fine, living at his home with his mother and sister. He seems entirely well: no longer a vampire, of course, but simply a mundane leading a very ordinary life. He appears from observation to have no recollection of the Shadow World.”

Clary flinched, then straightened up. “I want to talk to him.” Jia thinned her lips. “You know the Law. You cannot tell a mundane about the Shadow World unless he is in danger. You cannot reveal the truth, Clary. Magnus said the demon who freed you told you as much.”

The demon who freed you. So Magnus hadn’t mentioned it was his father—not that Clary blamed him. She wouldn’t reveal his secret either. “I won’t tell Simon anything, all right? I just want to hear his voice. I need to know he’s okay.”

Jia sighed and pushed the phone toward her. Clary grabbed it, wondering how you dialed out of Idris—how did they pay their phone bills?—then decided screw it, she was just going to dial as if she were in Brooklyn already. If that didn’t work, she could ask for guidance.

To her surprise the phone rang, and was picked up almost immediately, the familiar voice of Simon’s mother echoing down the line. “Hello?”

“Hello.” The receiver almost slipped in Clary’s hand; her palm was damp with sweat.

“Is Simon there?”

“What? Oh, yes, he’s in his room,” said Elaine. “Can I tell him who’s calling?” Clary closed her eyes. “It’s Clary.”

There was a short silence, and then Elaine said, “I’m sorry, who?”

“Clary Fray.” She tasted bitter metal in the back of her throat. “I—I go to Saint Xavier’s. It’s about our English homework.”

“Oh! Well, all right, then,” said Elaine. “I’ll go get him.” She put the phone down, and Clary waited, waited for the woman who had thrown Simon out of her house and called him a monster, had left him to throw up blood on his knees in the gutter, to go and see if he would pick up a phone call like a normal teenager.

It wasn’t her fault. It was the Mark of Cain, acting on her without her knowledge, turning Simon into a Wanderer, cutting him away from his family, Clary told herself, but it didn’t stop the burn of anger and anxiety flooding her veins. She heard Elaine’s footsteps going away, the murmur of voices, more footsteps—

“Hello?” Simon’s voice, and Clary almost dropped the phone. Her heart was pounding itself into pieces. She could picture him so clearly, skinny and brown-haired, propping himself against the table in the narrow hallway just past the Lewises’ front door.

“Simon,” she said. “Simon, it’s me. It’s Clary.”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, he sounded bewildered. “I—Do we know each other?”

Each word felt like a nail being pounded into her skin. “We have English class together,” she said, which was true enough in a way—they had had most of their classes together when Clary had still gone to mundane high school. “Mr. Price.”

“Oh, right.” He sounded not unfriendly; cheerful enough, but baffled. “I’m really sorry.

I have a total mental block for faces and names. What’s up? Mom said it was something about homework, but I don’t think we have any homework tonight.”

“Can I ask you something?” Clary said.

“About A Tale of Two Cities ?” He sounded amused. “Look, I haven’t read it yet. I like the more modern stuff. Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye—anything with ‘catch’ in the title, I guess.” He was flirting a little, Clary thought. He must have thought she’d called him up out of the blue because she thought he was cute. Some random girl at school whose name he didn’t even know.

“Who’s your best friend?” she asked. “Your best friend in the whole world?” He was silent for a moment, then laughed. “I should have guessed this was about Eric,” he said. “You know, if you wanted his phone number, you could have just asked him—” Clary hung the phone up and sat staring at it as if it were a poisonous snake. She was aware of Jia’s voice, asking her if she was all right, asking what had happened, but she didn’t answer, just set her jaw, absolutely determined not to cry in front of the Consul.

“You don’t think maybe he was just faking it?” Isabelle said now. “Pretending he didn’t know who you were, you know, because it would be dangerous?” Clary hesitated. Simon’s voice had been so blithe, so banal, so completely ordinary.

Nobody could fake that. “I’m totally sure,” she said. “He doesn’t remember us. He can’t.” Izzy looked away from the window, and Clary could clearly see the tears standing in her eyes. “I want to tell you something,” Isabelle said. “And I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I couldn’t hate you,” Clary said. “Not possible.”

“It’s almost worse,” Isabelle said. “Than if he were dead. If he were dead, I could grieve, but I don’t know what to think—he’s safe, he’s alive, I should be grateful. He isn’t a vampire anymore, and he hated being a vampire. I should be happy. But I’m not happy.

He told me he loved me. He told me he loved me, Clary, and now he doesn’t even know who I am. If I were standing in front of him, he wouldn’t recognize my face. It feels like I never mattered. None of it ever mattered or ever happened. He never loved me at all.” She swiped angrily at her face. “I hate it!” she broke out suddenly. “I hate this feeling, like there’s something sitting on my chest.”

“Missing someone?”

“Yes,” Isabelle said. “I never thought I’d feel it about some boy.”

“Not some boy,” Clary said. “Simon. And he did love you. And it did matter. Maybe he doesn’t remember, but you do. I do. The Simon who’s living in Brooklyn now, that’s Simon the way he used to be six months ago. And that’s not a terrible thing. He was wonderful. But he changed when you knew him: He got stronger, and he got hurt, and he was different. And that Simon was the one you fell in love with and who fell in love with you, so you are grieving, because he’s gone. But you can keep him alive a little by remembering him. We both can.”

Isabelle made a choking sound. “I hate losing people,” she said, and there was a savage edge to her voice: the desperation of someone who had lost too much, too young. “I hate it.”

Clary put her hand out and took Izzy’s—her thin right hand, the one with the Voyance rune stretched across her knuckles. “I know,” Clary said. “But remember the people you’ve gained, too. I’ve gained you. I’m grateful for that.” She pressed Izzy’s hand, hard, and for a moment there was no response. Then Isabelle’s fingers tightened on hers. They sat in silence on the windowsill, their hands locked across the distance between them.

Maia sat on the couch in the apartment—her apartment now. Being pack leader paid a small salary, and she had decided to use it for rent, to keep what once had been Jordan and Simon’s place, keep their things from being thrown into the street by an angry, evicting landlord. Eventually she would go through their belongings, pack up what she could, sort through the memories. Exorcise the ghosts.

For today, though, she was content to sit and look at what had arrived for her from Idris in a small package from Jia Penhallow. The Consul hadn’t thanked her for the warning she’d been given, though she had welcomed her as the new and permanent leader of the New York pack. Her tone had been cool and distant. But wrapped in the letter was a bronze seal, the seal of the head of the Praetor Lupus, the seal with which the Scott family had always signed their letters. It had been retrieved from the ruins on Long Island. There was a small note attached, with two words written on it in Jia’s careful hand.

Begin again.

“You’re going to be all right. I promise.”

It was probably the six hundredth time Helen had said the same thing, Emma thought.

It would probably have helped more if she didn’t sound like she was trying to convince herself.

Helen was nearly finished packing the belongings that she had brought with her to Idris. Uncle Arthur (he had told Emma to call him that too) had promised to send on the rest. He was waiting downstairs with Aline to escort Helen to the Gard, where she would take the Portal to Wrangel Island; Aline would follow her the next week, after the last of the treaties and votes in Alicante.

It all sounded boring and complicated and horrible to Emma. All she knew was that she was sorry for ever having thought that Helen and Aline were soppy. Helen didn’t seem soppy to her at all now, just sad, her eyes red-rimmed and her hands shaking as she zipped up her bag and turned to the bed.

It was an enormous bed, big enough for six people. Julian was sitting up against the headboard on one side, and Emma was on the other. You could have fit the rest of the family between them, Emma thought, but Dru, the twins, and Tavvy were asleep in their rooms. Dru and Livvy were cried out; Tiberius had accepted the news of Helen’s departure with wide-eyed confusion, as if he didn’t know what was happening or how he was expected to respond. At the last he’d shaken her hand and solemnly wished her good luck, as if she were a colleague leaving on a business trip. She’d burst into tears. “Oh, Ty,” she’d said, and he’d slunk away, looking horrified.

Helen knelt down now, bringing herself almost eye level with Jules where he sat on the bed. “Remember what I said, okay?”

“We’re going to be all right,” Julian parroted.

Helen squeezed his hand. “I hate leaving you,” she said. “I’d take care of you if I could.

You know that, right? I’d take over the Institute. I love you all so much.” Julian squirmed in the manner that only a twelve-year-old boy could squirm upon hearing the word “love.”

“I know,” he managed.

“The only reason I can leave is that I’m sure I’m leaving you all in good hands,” she said, her eyes boring into his.

“Uncle Arthur, you mean?”

“I mean you,” she said, and Jules’s eyes widened. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” she added.

“But I also know I can depend on you. I know you can help Dru with her nightmares, and take care of Livia and Tavvy, and maybe even Uncle Arthur could do that too. He’s a nice enough man. Absentminded, but he seems to want to try. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “But Ty is—” She sighed. “Ty is special. He . . . translates the world differently from how the rest of us do. Not everyone can speak his language, but you can. Take care of him for me, all right? He’s going to be something amazing. We just have to keep the Clave from understanding how special he is. They don’t like people who are different,” she finished, and there was bitterness in her tone.

Julian was sitting up straight now, looking worried. “Ty hates me,” he said. “He fights me all the time.”

“Ty loves you,” said Helen. “He sleeps with that bee you gave him. He watches you all the time. He wants to be like you. He’s just—it’s hard,” she finished, not sure how to say what she wanted to: that Ty was jealous of the way Julian so easily navigated the world, so easily made people love him, that what Julian did every day without thinking seemed to Ty like a magic trick. “Sometimes it’s hard when you want to be like someone but you don’t know how.”

A sharp furrow of confusion appeared between Julian’s brows, but he looked up at Helen and nodded. “I’ll take care of Ty,” he said. “I promise.”

“Good.” Helen stood up and kissed Julian quickly on the top of his head. “Because he’s amazing and special. You all are.” She smiled over his head at Emma. “You, too, Emma,” she said, and her voice tightened on Emma’s name, as if she were going to cry. She closed her eyes, hugged Julian one more time, and fled out of the room, grabbing her suitcase and coat as she went. Emma could hear her running downstairs, and then the front door closing amid a murmur of voices.

Emma looked over at Julian. He was sitting rigidly upright, his chest rising and falling as if he’d been running. She reached over quickly and took his hand, traced onto the inside of his palm: W-H-A-T-S W-R-O-N-G?

“You heard Helen,” he said in a low voice. “She trusts me to take care of them. Dru, Tavvy, Livvy, Ty. My whole family, basically. I’m going to be—I’m twelve, Emma, and I’m going to have four kids!”

Anxiously she started to write: N-O Y-O-U W-O-N-T—

“You don’t have to do that,” he interrupted. “It’s not like there are any parents to overhear us.” It was an unusually bitter thing for Jules to say, and Emma swallowed hard.

“I know,” she said finally. “But I like having a secret language with you. I mean, who else can we talk about this stuff with, if we don’t talk to each other?” He slumped down against the headboard, turning to face her. “The truth is, I don’t know Uncle Arthur at all. I’ve only seen him at holidays. I know Helen says she does and he’s great and fine and everything, but they’re my brothers and sisters. I know them. He doesn’t.” He curled his hands into fists. “I’ll take care of them. I’ll make sure they have everything they want and nothing ever gets taken away from them again.” Emma reached for his arm, and this time he gave it to her, letting his eyes fall half-closed as she wrote on the inside of his wrist with her index finger.

I-L-L H-E-L-P Y-O-U.

He smiled at her, but she could see the tension behind his eyes. “I know you will,” he said. He reached his hand out and clasped it around hers. “You know the last thing Mark said to me before he was taken?” he asked, leaning against the headboard. He looked absolutely exhausted. “He said, ‘Stay with Emma.’ So we’ll stay with each other. Because that’s what parabatai do.”

Emma felt as if the breath had been pulled out of her lungs. Parabatai. It was a big word—for Shadowhunters, one of the biggest, encompassing one of the most intense emotions you could ever have, the most significant commitment you could ever make to another person that wasn’t about romantic love or marriage.

She had wanted to tell Jules when they got back to the house, had wanted to tell him somehow that when she had burst out with the words in the Consul’s office that they were going to be parabatai bonded, it had been about more than wanting to be his parabatai.

Tell him, said a little voice in her head. Tell him you did it because you needed to stay in Los Angeles; tell him you did it because you need to be there to find out what happened to your parents. To get revenge.

“Julian,” she said softly, but he didn’t move. His eyes were closed, his dark lashes feathering against his cheeks. The moonlight coming in through the window outlined him in white and silver. The bones of his face were already beginning to sharpen, to lose the softness of childhood. She could suddenly imagine how he was going to look when he was older, broader and rangier, a grown-up Julian. He was going to be so handsome, she thought; girls would be all over him, and one of them would take him away from her forever, because Emma was his parabatai, and that meant she could never be one of those girls now. She could never love him like that.

Jules murmured and shifted in his fitful sleep. His arm was stretched out toward her, his fingers not quite touching her shoulder. His sleeve was rucked up to his elbow. She reached out her hand and carefully scrawled on the bare skin of his forearm, where the skin was pale and tender, unmarked yet by any scars.

I-M S-O S-O-R-R-Y J-U-L-E-S, she wrote, and then sat back, holding her breath, but he didn’t feel it, and he didn’t wake up.