Cassandra Clare - City of Fallen Angels

Though he seemed to be looking at her, his gaze was distant, as if fixed on something far away.

“Then I started to have the dreams,” he went on. “And I thought maybe I’d been wrong. That I didn’t deserve you. That I didn’t deserve to be perfectly happy—I mean, God, who deserves that? And after tonight—”

“Stop.” She had been clutching his shirt; she loosened her grip now, flattening her hands against his chest. His heart was racing under her fingertips; his cheeks flushed, and not just from the cold. “Jace. Through everything that happened tonight, I knew one thing. That it wasn’t you hurting me. It wasn’t you doing these things. I have an absolute incontrovertible belief that you are good. And that will never change.”

Jace took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t even know how to try to deserve that.”

“You don’t have to. I have enough faith in you,” she said, “for both of us.”

His hands slid into her hair. The mist of their exhaled breath rose between them, a white cloud. “I missed you so much,” he said, and kissed her, his mouth gentle on hers, not desperate and hungry the way it had been the last few times he had kissed her, but familiar and tender and soft.

She closed her eyes as the world seemed to spin around her like a pinwheel. Sliding her hands up his chest, she stretched upward as far as she could, wrapping her arms around his neck, rising up on her toes to meet his mouth with hers. His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn’t matter; the world, the city, and all its lights and life seemed to have narrowed down to this, just her and Jace, the burning heart of a frozen world.

He drew away first, reluctantly. She realized why a moment later. The sound of honking cars and screeching tires from the street below was audible, even up here. “The Clave,” he said resignedly—though he had to clear his throat to get the words out, Clary was pleased to hear. His face was flushed, as she imagined hers was. “They’re here.”

With her hand in his Clary looked over the edge of the roof wall and saw that a number of long black cars had drawn up in front of the scaffolding. People were piling out. It was hard to recognize them from this height, but Clary thought she saw Maryse, and several other people dressed in gear. A moment later Luke’s truck roared up to the curb and Jocelyn leaped out. Clary would have known it was her, just from the way she moved, at a greater distance than this one.

Clary turned to Jace. “My mom,” she said. “I’d better get downstairs. I don’t want her coming up here and seeing—and seeing him.” She jerked her chin toward Sebastian’s coffin.

He stroked her hair back from her face. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”

“Then, come with me.”

“No. Someone should stay up here.” He took her hand, turned it over, and dropped the Morgenstern ring into it, the chain pooling like liquid metal. The clasp had bent when she’d torn it off, but he’d managed to push it back into shape. “Please take it.”

Her eyes flicked down, and then, uncertainly, back up to his face. “I wish I understood what it meant to you.”

He shrugged slightly. “I wore it for a decade,” he said. “Some part of me is in it. It means I trust you with my past and all the secrets that past carries. And besides”—lightly he touched one of the stars engraved around the rim—“‘the love that moves the sun and all the other stars.’ Pretend that that’s what the stars stand for, not Morgenstern.”

In answer she dropped the chain back over her head, feeling the ring settle in its accustomed place, below her collarbone. It felt like a puzzle piece clicking back into place. For a moment their eyes locked in wordless communication, more intense in some ways than their physical contact had been; she held the image of him in her mind in that moment as if she were memorizing it—the tangled golden hair, the shadows cast by his lashes, the rings of darker gold inside the light amber of his eyes. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She squeezed his hand. “Five minutes.”

“Go on,” he said roughly, releasing her hand, and she turned and went back down the path. The moment she stepped away from him, she was cold again, and by the time she reached the doors to the building, she was freezing. She paused as she opened the door, and looked back at him, but he was only a shadow, backlit by the glow of the New York skyline. The love that moves the sun and all the other stars, she thought, and then, as if in answering echo, she heard Lilith’s words. The kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory. A shiver ran through her, and not just from the cold. She looked for Jace, but he had vanished into the shadows; she turned and headed back inside, the door sliding shut behind her.

Alec had gone upstairs to look for Jordan and Maia, and Simon and Isabelle were alone together, sitting side by side on the green chaise longue in the lobby. Isabelle held Alec’s witchlight in her hand, illuminating the room with a nearly spectral glow, sparking dancing motes of fire from the pendant chandelier.

She had said very little since her brother had left them together. Her head was bent, her dark hair falling forward, her gaze on her hands. They were delicate hands, long-fingered, but calloused as her brothers’ were. Simon had never noticed before, but she wore a silver ring on her right hand, with a pattern of flames around the band of it, and a carved L in the center. It reminded him of the ring Clary wore around her neck, with its design of stars.

“It’s the Lightwood family ring,” she said, noticing where his gaze was fixed. “Every family has an emblem. Ours is fire.”

It suits you, he thought. Izzy was like fire, in her flaming scarlet dress, with her moods as changeable as sparks. On the roof he’d half-thought she’d strangle him, her arms around his neck as she called him every name under the sun while clutching him like she’d never let him go. Now she was staring off into the distance, as untouchable as a star. It was all very disconcerting.

You love them so, Camille had said, your Shadowhunter friends. As the falcon loves the master who binds and blinds it.

“What you told us,” he said, a little halting, watching Isabelle wind a strand of her hair around her forefinger, “up there on the roof—that you hadn’t known that Clary and Jace were missing, that you’d come here for me—was that true?”

Isabelle looked up, tucking the strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course it’s true,” she said indignantly. “When we saw you were gone from the party—and you’ve been in danger for days, Simon, and what with Camille escaping—” She caught herself up short. “And Jordan’s responsible for you. He was freaking out.”

“So it was his idea to come looking for me?”

Isabelle turned to look at him for a long moment. Her eyes were fathomless and dark. “I was the one who noticed you were gone,” she said. “I was the one who wanted to find you.”

Simon cleared his throat. He felt oddly light-headed. “But why? I thought you hated me now.”

It had been the wrong thing to say. Isabelle shook her head, her dark hair flying, and moved a little away from him on the settee. “Oh, Simon. Don’t be dense.”

“Iz.” He reached out and touched her wrist, hesitantly. She didn’t move away, just watched him. “Camille said something to me in the Sanctuary. She said that Shadowhunters didn’t care about Downworlders, just used them. She said the Nephilim would never do for me what I did for them. But you did. You came for me. You came for me.”