The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (156 page)

Her eyes drank him in, every part of him, from his tangled hair to his bloodstained, grimy face to his eyes shining through the layers of dirt; from the bruises visible through his torn sleeves to the gaping, blood-soaked tear down the front of his shirt, through which his bare skin showed—and there was no mark, no gash, to indicate where the Sword had gone in. She could see the pulse beating in his throat, and almost threw her arms around him at the sight because it meant his heart was beating and that meant—

“You’re alive,” she whispered. “Really alive.”

With a slow wonderment he reached to touch her face. “I was in the dark,” he said softly. “There was nothing there but shadows, and I was a shadow, and I knew that I was dead, and that it was over, all of it. And then I heard your voice. I heard you say my name, and it brought me back.”

“Not me.” Clary’s throat tightened. “The Angel brought you back.”

“Because you asked him to.” Silently he traced the outline of her face with his fingers, as if reassuring himself that she was real. “You could have had anything else in the world, and you asked for me.”

She smiled up at him. Filthy as he was, covered in blood and dirt, he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “But I don’t want anything else in the world.”

At that, the light in his eyes, already bright, went to such a blaze that she could hardly bear to look at him. She thought of the Angel, and how he had burned like a thousand torches, and that Jace had in him some of that same incandescent blood, and how that burning shone through him now, through his eyes, like light through the cracks in a door.

I love you
, Clary wanted to say. And,
I would do it again. I would always ask for you.
But those weren’t the words she said.

“You’re not my brother,” she told him, a little breathlessly, as if, having realized she hadn’t yet said them, she couldn’t get the words out of her mouth fast enough. “You know that, right?”

Very slightly, through the grime and blood, Jace grinned. “Yes,” he said. “I know that.”

T
HE SMOKE ROSE IN A LAZY SPIRAL, TRACING DELICATE LINES
of black across the clear air. Jace, alone on the hill overlooking the cemetery, sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the smoke drift heavenward. The irony wasn’t lost on him: These were his father’s remains, after all.

He could see the bier from where he was sitting, obscured by smoke and flame, and the small group standing around it. He recognized Jocelyn’s bright hair from here, and Luke standing beside her, his hand on her back. Jocelyn had her head turned aside, away from the burning pyre.

Jace could have been one of that group, had he wanted to be. He’d spent the last couple of days in the infirmary, and they’d only let him out this morning, partly so that he could attend Valentine’s funeral. But he’d gotten halfway to the pyre, a stacked pile of stripped wood, white as bones, and realized he could go no farther. He’d turned and walked up the hill instead, away from the mourners’ procession. Luke had called after him, but Jace hadn’t turned.

He’d sat and watched them gather around the bier, watched Patrick Penhallow in his parchment white gear set the flame to the wood. It was the second time that week he’d watched a body burn, but Max’s had been heartbreakingly small, and Valentine was a big man—even flat on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, a seraph blade gripped in his fist. His eyes were bound with white silk, as was the custom. They had done well by him, Jace thought, despite everything.

They hadn’t buried Sebastian. A group of Shadowhunters had gone back to the valley, but they hadn’t found his body—washed away by the river, they’d told Jace, though he had his doubts.

He had looked for Clary in the crowd around the bier, but she wasn’t there. It had been more than two days now since he’d seen her last, at the lake, and he missed her with an almost physical sense of something lacking. It wasn’t her fault they hadn’t seen each other. She’d been worried he wasn’t strong enough to Portal back to Alicante from the lake that night, and she’d turned out to be right. By the time the first Shadowhunters had reached them, he’d been drifting into a dizzy unconsciousness. He’d woken up the next day in the city hospital with Magnus Bane staring down at him with an odd expression—it could have been deep concern or merely curiosity; it was hard to tell with Magnus. Magnus told him that though the Angel had healed Jace physically, it seemed that his spirit and mind had been exhausted to the point that only rest could heal them. In any event, he felt better now. Just in time for the funeral.

A wind had come up and was blowing the smoke away from him. In the distance he could see the glimmering towers of Alicante, their former glory restored. He wasn’t totally sure what he hoped to accomplish by sitting here and watching his father’s body burn, or what he would say if he were down there among the mourners, speaking their last words to Valentine.
You were never really my father
, he might say, or
You were the only father I ever knew
. Both statements were equally true, no matter how contradictory.

When he’d first opened his eyes at the lake—knowing, somehow, that he’d been dead, and now wasn’t—all Jace could think about was Clary, lying a little distance away from him on the bloody sand, her eyes closed. He’d scrambled to her in a near panic, thinking she might be hurt, or even dead—and when she’d opened her eyes, all he’d been able to think about then was that she wasn’t. Not until there were others there, helping him to his feet, exclaiming over the scene in amazement, did he see Valentine’s body lying crumpled near the lake’s edge and feel the force of it like a punch in the stomach. He’d known Valentine was dead—would have killed him himself—but still, somehow, the sight was painful. Clary had looked at Jace with sad eyes, and he’d known that even though she’d hated Valentine and had never had any reason not to, she still felt Jace’s loss.

He half-closed his eyes and a flood of images washed across the backs of his eyelids: Valentine picking him up off the grass in a sweeping hug; Valentine holding him steady in the prow of a boat on a lake, showing him how to balance. And other, darker memories: Valentine’s hand cracking across the side of his face, a dead falcon, the angel shackled in the Waylands’ cellar.

“Jace.”

He looked up. Luke was standing over him, a black silhouette outlined by the sun. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt as usual—no concessionary funeral white for him. “It’s over,” Luke said. “The ceremony. It was brief.”

“I’m sure it was.” Jace dug his fingers into the ground beside him, welcoming the painful scrape of dirt against his fingertips. “Did anyone say anything?”

“Just the usual words.” Luke eased himself down onto the ground beside Jace, wincing a little. Jace hadn’t asked him what the battle had been like; he hadn’t really wanted to know. He knew it had been over much quicker than anyone had expected—after Valentine’s death, the demons he had summoned had fled into the night like so much mist burned off by the sun. But that didn’t mean there hadn’t been deaths. Valentine’s hadn’t been the only body burned in Alicante these past days.

“And Clary wasn’t—I mean, she didn’t—”

“Come to the funeral? No. She didn’t want to.” Jace could feel Luke looking at him sideways. “You haven’t seen her? Not since—”

“No, not since the lake,” Jace said. “This was the first time they let me leave the hospital, and I had to come here.”

“You didn’t
have
to,” Luke said. “You could have stayed away.”

“I wanted to,” Jace admitted. “Whatever that says about me.”

“Funerals are for the living, Jace, not for the dead. Valentine was more your father than Clary’s, even if you didn’t share blood. You’re the one who has to say good-bye. You’re the one who will miss him.”

“I didn’t think I was allowed to miss him.”

“You never knew Stephen Herondale,” said Luke. “And you came to Robert Lightwood when you were only barely still a child. Valentine was the father of your childhood. You
should
miss him.”

“I keep thinking about Hodge,” Jace said. “Up at the Gard, I kept asking him why he’d never told me what I was—I still thought I was part demon then—and he kept saying it was because he didn’t know. I just thought he was lying. But now I think he meant it. He was one of the only people who ever even knew there
was
a Herondale baby that had lived. When I showed up at the Institute, he had no idea which of Valentine’s sons I was. The real one or the adopted one. And I could have been either. The demon or the angel. And the thing is, I don’t think he ever knew, not until he saw Jonathan at the Gard and realized. So he just tried to do his best by me all those years anyway, until Valentine showed up again. That took a sort of faith—don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Luke said. “I think so.”

“Hodge said he thought maybe upbringing might make a difference, regardless of blood. I just keep thinking—if I’d stayed with Valentine, if he hadn’t sent me to the Lightwoods, would I have been just like Jonathan? Is that how I’d be now?”

“Does it matter?” said Luke. “You are who you are now for a reason. And if you ask me, I think Valentine sent you to the Lightwoods because he knew it was the best chance for you. Maybe he had other reasons too. But you can’t get away from the fact that he sent you to people he knew would love you and raise you with love. It might have been one of the few things he ever really did for someone else.” He clapped Jace on the shoulder, a gesture so paternal that it almost made Jace smile. “I wouldn’t forget about that, if I were you.”

Clary, standing and looking out Isabelle’s window, watched smoke stain the sky over Alicante like a smudged hand against a window. They were burning Valentine today, she knew; burning her father, in the necropolis just outside the gates.

“You know about the celebration tonight, don’t you?”

Clary turned to see Isabelle, behind her, holding up two dresses against herself, one blue and one steel gray.

“What do you think I should wear?”

For Isabelle, Clary thought, clothes would always be therapy. “The blue one.”

Isabelle laid the dresses down on the bed. “What are you going to wear? You are going, aren’t you?”

Clary thought of the silver dress at the bottom of Amatis’s chest, the lovely gossamer of it. But Amatis would probably never let her wear it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably jeans and my green coat.”

“Boring,” Isabelle said. She glanced over at Aline, who was sitting in a chair by the bed, reading. “Don’t you think it’s boring?”

“I think you should let Clary wear what she wants.” Aline didn’t look up from her book. “Besides, it’s not like she’s dressing up for anyone.”

“She’s dressing up for Jace,” Isabelle said, as if this were obvious. “As well she should.”

Aline looked up, blinking in confusion, then smiled. “Oh, right. I keep forgetting. It must be weird, right, knowing he’s not your brother?”

“No,” Clary said firmly. “Thinking he was my brother was weird. This feels—right.” She looked back toward the window. “Not that I’ve really seen him since I found out. Not since we’ve been back in Alicante.”

“That’s strange,” said Aline.

“It’s not strange,” Isabelle said, shooting Aline a meaningful look, which Aline didn’t seem to notice. “He’s been in the hospital. He only got out today.”

“And he didn’t come to see you right away?” Aline asked Clary.

“He couldn’t,” Clary said. “He had Valentine’s funeral to go to. He couldn’t miss that.”

“Maybe,” said Aline cheerfully. “Or maybe he’s not that interested in you anymore. I mean, now that it’s not forbidden. Some people only want what they can’t have.”

“Not Jace,” Isabelle said quickly. “Jace isn’t like that.”

Aline stood up, dropping her book onto the bed. “I should go get dressed. See you guys tonight?” And with that, she wandered out of the room, humming to herself.

Isabelle, watching her go, shook her head. “Do you think she doesn’t like you?” she said. “I mean, is she jealous? She did seem interested in Jace.”

“Ha!” Clary was briefly amused. “No, she’s not interested in Jace. I think she’s just one of those people who say whatever they’re thinking whenever they think it. And who knows, maybe she’s right.”

Isabelle pulled the pin from her hair, letting it fall down around her shoulders. She came across the room and joined Clary at the window. The sky was clear now past the demon towers; the smoke was gone. “Do
you
think she’s right?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Jace. I guess I’ll see him tonight at the party. Or the victory celebration or whatever it’s called.” She looked up at Isabelle. “Do you know what it’ll be like?”

“There’ll be a parade,” Isabelle said, “and fireworks, probably. Music, dancing, games, that sort of thing. Like a big street fair in New York.” She glanced out the window, her expression wistful. “Max would have loved it.”

Clary reached out and stroked Isabelle’s hair, the way she’d stroke the hair of her own sister if she had one. “I know he would.”

Jace had to knock twice at the door of the old canal house before he heard quick footsteps hurrying to answer; his heart jumped, and then settled as the door opened and Amatis Herondale stood on the threshold, looking at him in surprise. She looked as if she’d been getting ready for the celebration: She wore a long dove gray dress and pale metallic earrings that picked out the silvery streaks in her graying hair. “Yes?”

“Clary,” he began, and stopped, unsure what exactly to say. Where had his eloquence gone? He’d always had that, even when he hadn’t had anything else, but now he felt as if he’d been ripped open and all the clever, facile words had poured out of him, leaving him empty. “I was wondering if Clary was here. I was hoping to talk to her.”

Amatis shook her head. The blankness had gone from her expression, and she was looking at him intently enough to make him nervous. “She’s not. I think she’s with the Lightwoods.”