City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments #4)(36)
Author: Cassandra Clare

"You’re all right," she said finally, when he set her down. She scrubbed fiercely at the tears that had spilled out of her eyes. "I mean-the Silent Brothers wouldn’t have let you go if you weren’t all right-but I thought they said the ritual was going to take a long time? Days, even?"

"It didn’t." He put his hands on either side of her face and smiled down at her. Behind him the Queensboro Bridge arced out over the water. "You know the Silent Brothers. They like to make a big deal out of everything they do. But it’s actually a pretty simple ceremony." He grinned. "I felt kind of stupid. It’s a ceremony meant for little kids, but I just kept thinking that if I got it over with fast, I’d get to see you in your sexy party dress. It got me through." His eyes raked her up and down. "And let me tell you, I am not disappointed. You’re gorgeous."

"You look pretty good yourself." She laughed a little through the tears. "I didn’t even think you owned a suit."

"I didn’t. I had to buy one." He slid his thumbs over her cheekbones where the tears had made them damp. "Clary-"

"Why did you come out here?" she asked. "It’s freezing. Don’t you want to go back inside?"

He shook his head. "I wanted to talk to you alone."

"So talk," Clary said in a half whisper. She took his hands away from her face and put them on her waist. Her need to be held against him was almost overwhelming. "Is something else wrong? Are you going to be okay? Please don’t hold anything back from me. After everything that’s happened, you should know I can handle any bad news." She knew she was nervously chattering, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart felt as if it were beating a thousand miles a minute. "I just want you to be all right," she said as calmly as she could.

His gold eyes darkened. "I keep going through that box. The one that belonged to my father. I don’t feel anything about it. The letters, the photos. I don’t know who those people were. They don’t feel real to me. Valentine was real."

Clary blinked; it wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. "Remember, I said that it would take time-"

He didn’t even seem to hear her. "If I really were Jace Morgenstern, would you still love me? If I were Sebastian, would you love me?"

She squeezed his hands. "You could never be like that."

"If Valentine did to me what he did to Sebastian, would you love me?"

There was an urgency to the question that she didn’t understand. Clary said, "But then you wouldn’t be you."

His breath caught, almost as if what she’d said had hurt him-but how could it have? It was the truth. He wasn’t like Sebastian. He was like himself. "I don’t know who I am," he said. "I look at myself in the mirror and I see Stephen Herondale, but I act like a Lightwood and talk like my father-like Valentine. So I see who I am in your eyes, and I try to be that person, because you have faith in that person and I think faith might be enough to make me what you want."

"You’re already what I want. You always have been," Clary said, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she were calling into an empty room. It was as if Jace couldn’t hear her, no matter how many times she told him she loved him. "I know you feel like you don’t know who you are, but I do. I know. And someday you will too. And in the meantime you can’t keep worrying about losing me, because it’ll never happen."

"There is a way…" Jace raised his eyes to hers. "Give me your hand."

Surprised, Clary reached her hand out, remembering the first time he’d ever taken her hand like that. She had the rune now, the open-eye rune, on the back of her hand, the one he’d been looking for then and hadn’t found. Her first permanent rune. He turned her hand over, baring her wrist, the vulnerable skin of her forearm.

She shivered. The wind off the river felt as if it were driving into her bones. "Jace, what are you doing?"

"Remember what I said about Shadowhunter weddings? How instead of exchanging rings, we Mark each other with runes of love and commitment?" He looked at her, his eyes wide and vulnerable under their thick gold lashes. "I want to Mark you in a way that will bind us together, Clary. It’s just a small Mark, but it’s permanent. Are you willing?"

She hesitated. A permanent rune, when they were so young-her mother would be incensed. But nothing else seemed to be working; nothing she said convinced him. Maybe this would. Silently, she drew out her stele and handed it to him. He took it, brushing her fingers as he did. She was shivering harder now, cold everywhere except where he touched her. He cradled her arm against him and lowered the stele, touching it softly to her skin, moving it gently up and down, and then, when she didn’t protest, with more force. As cold as she was, the burn of the stele was almost welcome. She watched as the dark lines spiraled out from the tip of it, forming a pattern of hard, angular lines.

Her nerves tingled with a sudden alarm. The pattern didn’t speak of love and commitment to her; there was something else there, something darker, something that spoke of control and submission, of loss and darkness. Was he drawing the wrong rune? But this was Jace; surely he knew better than that. And yet a numbness was beginning to spread up her arm from the place the stele touched-a painful tingling, like nerves waking up-and she felt dizzy, as if the ground were moving under her-

"Jace." Her voice rose, tinged with anxiety. "Jace, I don’t think that’s right-"

He let her arm go. He held the stele balanced lightly in his hand, with the same grace with which he would hold any weapon. "I’m sorry, Clary," he said. "I do want to be bound to you. I would never lie about that."

She opened her mouth to ask him what on earth he was talking about, but no words came. The darkness was rushing up too fast. The last thing she felt was Jace’s arms around her as she fell.

After what seemed like an eternity of wandering around what he considered to be an extremely boring party, Magnus finally found Alec, sitting alone at a table in a corner, behind a spray of artificial white roses. There were a number of champagne glasses on the table, most half-full, as if passing partygoers had abandoned them there. Alec was looking rather abandoned himself. He had his chin in his hands and was staring moodily into space. He didn’t look up, even when Magnus hitched a foot around the chair opposite his, spun it toward him, and sat down, resting his arms along the back.

"Do you want to go back to Vienna?" he said.

Alec didn’t answer, just stared into space.

"Or we could go somewhere else," said Magnus. "Anywhere you want. Thailand, South Carolina, Brazil, Peru-Oh, wait, no, I’m banned from Peru. I’d forgotten about that. It’s a long story, but amusing if you want to hear it."

Alec’s expression said that he very much did not want to hear it. Pointedly he turned and looked out over the room as if the werewolf string quartet fascinated him.

Since Alec was ignoring him, Magnus decided to amuse himself by changing the colors of the champagne in the glasses on the table. He made one blue, the next pink, and was working on green when Alec reached across the table and hit him on the wrist.

"Stop that," he said. "People are looking."

Magnus looked down at his fingers, which were spraying blue sparks. Maybe it was a bit obvious. He curled his fingers under. "Well," he said. "I have to do something to keep myself from dying of boredom, since you’re not talking to me."

"I’m not," said Alec. "Not talking to you, I mean."

"Oh?" said Magnus. "I just asked you if you wanted to go to Vienna, or Thailand, or the moon, and I don’t recall you saying anything in response."

"I don’t know what I want." Alec, his head bent, was playing with an abandoned plastic fork. Though his eyes were defiantly cast down, their pale blue color was visible even through his lowered eyelids, which were pale and as fine as parchment. Magnus had always found humans more beautiful than any other creatures alive on the earth, and had often wondered why. Only a few years before dissolution, Camille had said. But it was mortality that made them what they were, the flame that blazed brighter for its flickering. Death is the mother of beauty, as the poet said. He wondered if the Angel had ever considered making his human servants, the Nephilim, immortal. But no, for all their strength, they fell as humans had always fallen in battle through all the ages of the world.

"You’ve got that look again," Alec said peevishly, glancing up through his lashes. "Like you’re staring at something I can’t see. Are you thinking about Camille?"

"Not really," Magnus said. "How much of the conversation I had with her did you overhear?"

"Most of it." Alec prodded the tablecloth with his fork. "I was listening at the door. Enough."

"Not at all enough, I think." Magnus glared at the fork, and it skidded out of Alec’s grasp and across the table toward him. He slammed his hand down on top of it and said, "Stop fidgeting. What was it I said to Camille that bothered you so much?"

Alec raised his blue eyes. "Who’s Will?"

Magnus exhaled a sort of laugh. "Will. Dear God. That was a long time ago. Will was a Shadowhunter, like you. And yes, he did look like you, but you’re not anything like him. Jace is much more the way Will was, in personality at least-and my relationship with you is nothing like the one I had with Will. Is that what’s bothering you?"

"I don’t like thinking you’re only with me because I look like some dead guy you liked."

"I never said that. Camille implied it. She is a master of implication and manipulation. She always has been."

"You didn’t tell her she was wrong."

"If you let Camille, she will attack you on every front. Defend one front, and she will attack another. The only way to deal with her is to pretend she isn’t getting to you."

"She said pretty boys were your undoing," Alec said. "Which makes it sound like I’m just one in a long line of toys for you. One dies or goes away, you get another one. I’m nothing. I’m-trivial."

"Alexander-"

"Which," Alec went on, staring down at the table again, "is especially unfair, because you are anything but trivial for me. I changed my whole life for you. But nothing ever changes for you, does it? I guess that’s what it means to live forever. Nothing ever really has to matter all that much."

"I’m telling you that you do matter-"

"The Book of the White," Alec said, suddenly. "Why did you want it so badly?"

Magnus looked at him, puzzled. "You know why. It’s a very powerful spellbook."

"But you wanted it for something specific, didn’t you? A spell that was in it?" Alec took a ragged breath. "You don’t have to answer; I can tell by your face that you did. Was it-was it a spell for making me immortal?"

Magnus felt shaken to his core. "Alec," he whispered. "No. No, I-I wouldn’t do that."

Alec fixed him with his piercing blue gaze. "Why not? Why through all the years of all the relationships you’ve ever had have you never tried to make any of them immortal like you? If you could have me with you forever, wouldn’t you want to?"

"Of course I would!" Magnus, realizing he was almost shouting, lowered his voice with an effort. "But you don’t understand. You don’t get something for nothing. The price for living forever-"

"Magnus." It was Isabelle, hurrying toward them, her phone in her hand. "Magnus, I need to talk to you."

"Isabelle." Normally Magnus liked Alec’s sister. Not so much at the moment. "Lovely, wonderful Isabelle. Could you please go away? Now is a really bad time."

Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother, and back again. "Then, you don’t want me to tell you that Camille’s just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?"

"No," Magnus said. "I don’t want you to tell me that."

"Well, too bad," Isabelle said. "Because it’s true. I mean, I guess you don’t have to go, but-"

The rest of the sentence hung in the air, but Magnus knew what she wasn’t saying. If he didn’t go, the Clave would be suspicious that he’d had something to do with Camille’s escape, and that was the last thing he needed. Maryse would be furious, complicating his relationship with Alec even further. And yet-

"She escaped?" Alec said. "No one’s ever escaped from the Sanctuary."

"Well," said Isabelle, "now someone has."

Alec slunk down lower in his seat. "Go," he said. "It’s an emergency. Just go. We can talk later."

"Magnus…" Isabelle sounded half-apologetic, but there was no mistaking the urgency in her voice.

"Fine." Magnus stood up. "But," he added, pausing by Alec’s chair and leaning in close to him, "you are not trivial."

Alec flushed. "If you say so," he said.

"I say so," said Magnus, and he turned to follow Isabelle out of the room.

Outside on the deserted street, Simon leaned against the wall of the Ironworks, against the ivy-covered brick, and stared up at the sky. The lights of the bridge washed out the stars so there was nothing to see but a sheet of velvety blackness. He wished with a sudden fierceness that he could breathe in the cold air to clear his head, that he could feel it on his face, on his skin. All he was wearing was a thin shirt, and it made no difference. He couldn’t shiver, and even the memory of what it felt like to shiver was going away from him, little by little, every day, slipping away like the memories of another life.