Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (288 page)

“They’re looking for him now.” Her mother leaned in, anxious, her eyes wide. “Clary, let him go. Clary, baby . . .”

“Let her be,” Clary heard Isabelle say sharply. She heard her mother’s protest, but everything they were doing seemed to be going on at a great distance, as if Clary were watching a play from the last row. Nothing mattered but Jace. Jace, burning. Tears scalded the backs of her eyes. “Jace, goddamit,” she said, her voice ragged.
“You are not dead.”

“Clary,” Simon said gently. “It was a chance . . .”

Come away from him.
That was what Simon was asking, but
she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “Jace,” she whispered. It was like a mantra, the way he had once held her at Renwick’s and chanted her name over and over. “Jace
Lightwood
 . . .”

She froze. There. A movement so tiny, it was hardly a movement at all. The flutter of an eyelash. She leaned forward, almost overbalancing, and pressed her hand against the torn scarlet material over his chest, as if she could heal the wound she had made. She felt instead—so wonderful that for a moment it made no sense to her, could not possibly be—under her fingertips, the rhythm of his heart.

At first, Jace was conscious of nothing. Then there was
darkness, and within the darkness, a burning pain. It was as if he’d swallowed fire, and it choked him and burned his throat. He gasped desperately for air, for a breath that would cool the fire, and his eyes flew open.

He saw darkness and shadows—a dimly lit room, known and unknown, with rows of beds and a window letting in hollow blue light, and he was in one of the beds, blankets and sheets pulled down and tangled around his body like ropes. His chest hurt as if a dead weight lay on it, and his hand scrabbled to find what it was, encountering only a thick bandage wrapped around his bare skin. He gasped again, another cooling breath.

“Jace.” The voice was familiar to him as his own, and then
there was a hand gripping his, fingers interlacing with his own. With a reflex born out of years of love and familiarity, he gripped back.

“Alec,” he said, and he was almost shocked at the sound of his own voice in his ears. It hadn’t changed. He felt as if he had been scorched, melted, and recreated like gold in a crucible—but as what? Could he really be himself again? He looked up at Alec’s anxious blue eyes, and knew where he was. The infirmary at the Institute. Home. “I’m sorry . . .”

A slim, callused hand stroked his cheek, and a second familiar voice said, “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.”

He half-closed his eyes. The weight on his chest was still there: half a wound and half guilt. “Izzy.”

Her breath caught. “It really is you, right?”

“Isabelle,” Alec began, as if to warn her not to upset Jace, but Jace touched her hand. He could see Izzy’s dark eyes shining in the dawn light, her face full of hopeful expectancy. This was the Izzy only her family knew, loving and worried.

“It’s me,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I could understand if you didn’t believe me, but I swear on the Angel, Iz, it’s me.”

Alec said nothing, but his grip on Jace’s hand tightened. “You don’t need to swear,” he said, and with his free hand touched the
parabatai
rune near his collarbone. “I know. I can feel it. I don’t feel like I’m missing a part of me anymore.”

“I felt it too.” Jace took a ragged breath. “Something missing. I felt it, even with Sebastian, but I didn’t know what it was I was missing. But it was you. My
parabatai
.” He looked at Izzy. “And you. My sister. And . . .” His eyelids burned suddenly with a scorching light: the wound on his chest throbbed, and he saw
her
face, lit by the blaze of the sword. A strange burning spread through his veins, like white fire. “Clary. Please tell me—”

“She’s completely all right,” Isabelle said hastily. There was something else in her voice—surprise, unease.

“You swear. You’re not just telling me that because you don’t want to upset me.”

“
She
stabbed
you
,” Isabelle pointed out.

Jace gave a strangled laugh; it hurt. “She saved me.”

“She did,” Alec agreed.

“When can I see her?” Jace tried not to sound too eager.

“It really
is
you,” Isabelle said, her voice amused.

“The Silent Brothers have been in and out, checking on you,” said Alec. “On this”—he touched the bandage on Jace’s chest—“and to see if you were awake yet. When they find out you are, they’ll probably want to talk to you before they let you see Clary.”

“How long have I been out cold?”

“About two days,” said Alec. “Since we got you back from the Burren and were pretty sure you weren’t going to die. Turns out it’s not that easy to completely heal a wound made by an archangel’s blade.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m going to have a scar.”

“A big ugly one,” said Isabelle. “Right across your chest.”

“Well, damn,” said Jace. “And I was relying on that money from the topless underwear modeling gig I had lined up, too.” He spoke wryly, but he was thinking that it was right, somehow, that he have a scar: that he
should
be marked by what had happened to him, physically as well as mentally. He had almost lost his soul, and the scar would serve to remind him of the fragility of will, and the difficulty of goodness.

And of darker things. Of what lay ahead, and what he could not allow to happen. He strength was returning; he could feel it, and he would bend all of it against Sebastian. Knowing that, he felt suddenly lighter, a little of the weight gone from his chest. He turned his head, enough to look into Alec’s eyes.

“I never thought I’d fight on the opposite side of a battle from you,” he said hoarsely. “Never.”

“And you never will again,” Alec said, his jaw set.

“Jace,” Isabelle said. “Try to stay calm, all right? It’s just . . .”

Now
what? “Is something else wrong?”

“Well, you’re glowing a bit,” Isabelle said. “I mean, just a smidge. Of the glowing.”

“Glowing?”

Alec raised the hand that held Jace’s. Jace could see, in the darkness, a faint shimmer across his forearm that seemed to trace the lines of his veins like a map. “We think it’s a leftover effect from the archangel’s sword,” he said. “It’ll probably fade soon, but the Silent Brothers are curious. Of course.”

Jace sighed and let his head fall back against the pillow. He was too exhausted to muster up much interest in his new, illuminated state. “Does that mean you have to go?” he asked. “Do you have to get the Brothers?”

“They instructed us to get them when you woke,” said Alec, but he was shaking his head, even as he spoke. “But not if you don’t want us to.”

“I feel tired,” Jace confessed. “If I could sleep a few more hours . . .”

“Of course. Of course you can.” Isabelle’s fingers pushed his hair back, out of his eyes. Her tone was firm, absolute: fierce as a mother bear protecting her cub.

Jace’s eyes began to close. “And you won’t leave me?”

“No,” Alec said. “No, we won’t ever leave you. You know that.”

“Never.” Isabelle took his hand, the one Alec wasn’t holding, and pressed it fiercely. “Lightwoods, all together,” she whispered. Jace’s hand was suddenly damp where she was holding it, and he realized she was crying, her tears splashing down—crying for him, because she loved him; even after everything that had happened, she still loved him.

They both did.

He fell asleep like that, with Isabelle on one side of him and Alec on the other, as the sun came up with the dawn.

“What do you mean, I still can’t see him?” demanded Clary. She was sitting on the edge of the couch in Luke’s living room, the cord of the phone wrapped so tightly around her fingers that the tips had turned white.

“It’s been only three days, and he was unconscious for two of them,” said Isabelle. There were voices behind her, and Clary strained her ears to hear who was talking. She thought she could pick out Maryse’s voice, but was she talking to Jace? Alec? “The Silent Brothers are still examining him. They still say no visitors.”

“Screw the Silent Brothers.”

“No thanks. There’s strong and silent, and then there’s just freaky.”

“Isabelle!” Clary sat back against the squashy pillows. It was a bright fall day, and sunlight streamed in through the living room windows, though it did nothing to lighten her mood. “I just want to know that he’s all right. That he isn’t injured permanently, and he hasn’t swollen up like a melon—”

“Of course he hasn’t swollen up like a melon, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know because no one will tell me anything.”

“He’s all right,” Isabelle said, though there was something in her voice that told Clary she was holding something back. “Alec’s been sleeping in the bed next to his, and Mom and I have been taking turns staying with him all day. The Silent Brothers haven’t been
torturing
him. They just need to know what he knows. About Sebastian, the apartment, everything.”

“But I can’t believe Jace wouldn’t call me if he could. Not unless this is because he doesn’t want to see me.”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” Isabelle said. “It could have been that whole thing where you stabbed him.”

“Isabelle—”

“I was just kidding, believe it or not. Name of the Angel, Clary, can’t you show some patience?” Isabelle sighed. “Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to. Look, Jace said—not that I’m supposed to repeat this, mind you—that he needed to talk to you in person. If you could just wait—”

“That’s all I have been doing,” Clary said. “Waiting.” It was true. She’d spent the past two nights lying in her room at Luke’s house, waiting for news about Jace and reliving the last week of her life over and over in excruciating detail. The Wild Hunt; the antiques store in Prague; fountains full of blood; the tunnels of Sebastian’s eyes; Jace’s body against hers; Sebastian jamming the Infernal Cup against her lips, trying to pry them apart; the bitter stench of demon ichor. Glorious blazing up her arm, spearing through Jace like a bolt of fire, the beat of his heart under her fingertips. He hadn’t even opened his eyes,
but Clary had screamed that he was alive, that his heart was beating, and his family had descended on them, even Alec, half-holding up an exceptionally pale Magnus. “All I do is go around and around inside my own head. It’s making me crazy.”

“And that’s where we’re in agreement. You know what, Clary?”

“What?”

There was a pause. “You don’t need
my
permission to come here and see Jace,” Isabelle said. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything. You’re Clary Fray. You go charging into every situation without knowing how the hell it’s going to turn out, and then you get through it on sheer guts and craziness.”

“Not where my personal life is concerned, Iz.”

“Huh,” said Isabelle. “Well, maybe you should.” And she put the phone down.

Clary stared at her receiver, hearing the distant tinny buzz of the dial tone. Then, with a sigh, she hung up and headed into her bedroom.

Simon was sprawled on the bed, his feet on her pillows, his chin propped on his hands. His laptop was propped open at the foot of the bed, frozen on a scene from
The Matrix
. He looked up as she came in. “Any luck?”

“Not exactly.” Clary went over to her closet. She’d already dressed for the possibility that she might see Jace today, in jeans and a soft blue sweater she knew he liked. She pulled a corduroy jacket on and sat down on the bed beside Simon, sliding her feet into boots. “Isabelle won’t tell me anything. The Silent Brothers don’t want Jace to have visitors, but whatever. I’m going over anyway.”

Simon closed the laptop and rolled over onto his back. “That’s my brave little stalker.”

“Shut up,” she said. “Do you want to come with me? See Isabelle?”

“I’m meeting Becky,” he said. “At the apartment.”

“Good. Give her my love.” She finished lacing her boots and reached forward to brush Simon’s hair away from his forehead. “First I had to get used to you with that Mark on you. Now I have to get used to you without it.”

His dark brown eyes traced her face. “With or without it, I’m still just me.”

“Simon, do you remember what was written on the blade of the sword? Of Glorious?”

“Quis ut Deus.”

“It’s Latin,” she said. “I looked it up. It means
Who is like God?
It’s a trick question. The answer is no one—no one is like God. Don’t you see?”

He looked at her. “See what?”

“You said it.
Deus.
God.”

Simon opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “I . . .”

“I know Camille told you that she could say God’s name because she didn’t believe in God, but I think it has to do with what you believe about yourself. If you believe you’re damned, then you are. But if you don’t . . .”

She touched his hand; he squeezed her fingers briefly and released them, his face troubled. “I need some time to think about this.”

“Whatever you need. But I’m here if you need to talk.”