Cassandra Clare - City of Heavenly Fire

“You should sleep,” she told him. “Mom and Luke will probably be back any minute now.” She turned to go.

“Clary,” he said, catching at her sleeve. “Be careful.”

She detached herself gently and headed up the stairs, taking her witchlight rune-stone to illuminate her way. The windows along the upstairs corridor were open, and a cool breeze blew down the hall, smelling of city stone and canal water, lifting her hair away from her face. Clary reached her bedroom and pushed the door open—and froze.

The witchlight pulsed in her hand, casting bright spokes of light across the room. There was someone sitting on her bed. A tall someone, with white-fair hair, a sword across his lap, and a silver bracelet that sparked like fire in the witchlight.

If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise Hell.

“Hello, sister mine,” Sebastian said.

Clary’s own harsh breathing was loud in her ears.

She thought of the first time that Luke had ever taken her swimming, in the lake at the farm, and how she had sunk so far down into the blue-green water that the world outside had disappeared and there was only the sound of her own heartbeat, echoing and distorted. She had wondered if she had left the world behind, if she would always be lost, until Luke had reached down and pulled her back, sputtering and disoriented, into the sunlight.

She felt that way now, as if she had tumbled into another world, distorted and suffocating and unreal. The room was the same, the same worn furniture and wood walls and colorful rug, dimmed and bleached by moonlight, but now Sebastian had sprung up in the middle of it like some exotic poisonous flower growing in a bed of familiar weeds.

In what felt like slow motion, Clary turned to run back out through the open door—only to find it banging shut in her face. An invisible force seized hold of her, spinning her around and slamming her up against the bedroom wall, her head hitting the wood. She blinked away tears of pain and tried to move her legs; she couldn’t. She was pinned against the wall, paralyzed from the waist down.

“My apologies for the binding spell,” Sebastian said, a light, mocking tone to his voice.

He lay back against the pillows, stretching his arms up to touch the headboard in a catlike arch. His T-shirt had ridden up, baring his flat, pale stomach, traced with the lines of runes. There was something that was clearly meant to be seductive about the pose, something that made nausea twist in her gut. “It took me a little while to set up, but you know how it is. One can’t take risks.”

“Sebastian.” To her amazement her voice was steady. She was very aware of every inch of her skin. She felt exposed and vulnerable, as if she were standing without gear or protection in front of flying broken glass. “Why are you here?” His sharp face was thoughtful, searching. A serpent sleeping in the sun, just waking, not dangerous quite yet. “Because I’ve missed you, little sister. Have you missed me?” She thought about screaming, but Sebastian would have a dagger in her throat before she got a sound out. She tried to still the pounding of her heart: she had survived him before. She could do it again.

“Last time I saw you, you had a crossbow in my back,” she said. “So that would be a no.”

He traced a lazy pattern in the air with his fingers. “Liar.”

“So are you,” she said. “You didn’t come here because you miss me; you came because you want something. What is it?”

He was suddenly on his feet—graceful, too fast for her to catch the movement. White-pale hair fell into his eyes. She remembered standing at the edge of the Seine with him, watching the light catch his hair, as fine and fair as the feathery stems of a dandelion clock. Wondering if Valentine had looked like that, when he was young.

“Maybe I want to broker a truce,” he said.

“The Clave isn’t going to want to broker a truce with you.”

“Really? After last night?” He took a step toward her. The realization that she couldn’t run surged back up inside her; she bit back a scream. “We are on two different sides. We have opposing armies. Isn’t that what you do? Broker a truce? Either that or fight till one of you loses enough people that you give up? But then, maybe I’m not interested in a truce with them . Maybe I’m only interested in a truce with you.”

“Why? You don’t forgive. I know you. What I did—you wouldn’t forgive it.” He moved again, a sharp flicker, and suddenly he was pressed against her, his fingers wrapped around her left wrist, pinioning it over her head. “Which part? Destroying my house—our father’s house? Betraying me and lying to me? Breaking my bond with Jace?” She could see the flicker of rage behind his eyes, feel his heart pounding.

She wanted nothing more than to kick out at him, but her legs simply wouldn’t move.

Her voice shook. “Any of it.”

He was so close, she felt it when his body relaxed. He was hard and lean and whippet-thin, the sharp edges of him pressing into her. “I think you may have done me a favor.

Maybe you even meant to do it.” She could see herself in his uncanny eyes, the irises so dark they almost melded with the pupils. “I was too dependent on our father’s legacy and protection. On Jace. I had to stand on my own. Sometimes you must lose everything to gain it again, and the regaining is the sweeter for the pain of loss. Alone I united the Endarkened. Alone I forged alliances. Alone I took the Institutes of Buenos Aires, of Bangkok, of Los Angeles . . .”

“Alone you murdered people and destroyed families,” she said. “There was a guard stationed in front of this house. He was meant to be protecting me. What did you do to him?”

“Reminded him he ought to be better at his job,” Sebastian said. “Protecting my sister.” He raised the hand that wasn’t pinioning her wrist to the wall, and touched a curl of her hair, rubbing the strands between his fingers. “Red,” he said, his voice half-drowsy, “like sunset and blood and fire. Like the leading edge of a falling star, burning up when it touches the atmosphere. We are Morgensterns ,” he added, a dark ache in his voice. “The bright stars of morning. The children of Lucifer, the most beautiful of all God’s angels.

We are so much lovelier when we fall.” He paused. “Look at me, Clary. Look at me.” She looked at him, reluctantly. His black eyes were focused on her with a sharp hunger; they contrasted starkly with his salt-white hair, his pale skin, the faint flush of pink along his cheekbones. The artist in Clary knew he was beautiful, the way panthers were beautiful, or bottles of shimmering poison, or the polished skeletons of the dead. Luke had told Clary once that her talent was to see the beauty and horror in ordinary things.

Though Sebastian was far from ordinary, in him, she could see both.

“Lucifer Morningstar was Heaven’s most beautiful angel. God’s proudest creation. And then came the day when Lucifer refused to bow to mankind. To humans. Because he knew they were lesser. And for that he was cast down into the pit with the angels who had taken his side: Belial, and Azazel, and Asmodeus, and Leviathan. And Lilith. My mother.”

“She’s not your mother.”

“You’re right. She’s more than my mother. If she were my mother, I’d be a warlock.

Instead I was fed on her blood before I was born. I am something very different from a warlock; something better. For she was an angel once, Lilith.”

“What’s your point? Demons are just angels who make poor life decisions?”

“ Greater Demons are not so different from angels,” he said. “We are not so different, you and I. I’ve said it to you before.”