Cassandra Clare - City of Glass

The Angel simply hovered, gazing down at Valentine with his weird, inhuman eyes. His wings moved in slow, undeliberate motions, like the passage of clouds across the sky. At last he said, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son on an altar much like this one, to see who it was that Abraham loved more, Isaac or God. But no one asked you to sacrifice your son, Valentine.

Valentine glanced down at the altar at his feet, splashed with Jace’s blood, and then back up at the Angel. “If I must, I will compel this from you,” he said. “But I would rather have your willing cooperation.”

When Jonathan Shadowhunter summoned me, said the Angel, I gave him my assistance because I could see that his dream of a world free of demons was a true one. He imagined a heaven on this earth. But you dream only of your own glory, and you do not love heaven. My brother Ithuriel can attest to that.

Valentine blanched. “But—”

Did you think that I would not know? The Angel smiled. It was the most terrible smile Clary had ever seen. It is true that the master of the circle you have drawn can compel from me a single action. But you are not that master.

Valentine stared. “My lord Raziel—there is no one else—”

But there is, said the Angel. There is your daughter.

Valentine whirled. Clary, lying half-conscious in the sand, her wrists and arms a screaming agony, stared defiantly back. For a moment their eyes met—and he looked at her, really looked at her, and she realized it was the first time her father had ever looked her in the face and seen her. The first and only time.

“Clarissa,” he said. “What have you done?”

Clary stretched out her hand, and with her finger she wrote in the sand at his feet. She didn’t draw runes. She drew words: the words he had said to her the first time he’d seen what she could do, when she’d drawn the rune that had destroyed his ship.

MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN.

His eyes widened, just as Jace’s eyes had widened before he’d died. Valentine had gone bone white. He turned slowly to face the Angel, raising his hands in a gesture of supplication. “My lord Raziel—”

The Angel opened his mouth and spat. Or at least that was how it seemed to Clary—that the Angel spat, and that what came from his mouth was a shooting spark of white fire, like a burning arrow. The arrow flew straight and true across the water and buried itself in Valentine’s chest. Or maybe “buried” wasn’t the word—it tore through him, like a rock through thin paper, leaving a smoking hole the size of a fist. For a moment Clary, staring up, could look through her father’s chest and see the lake and the fiery glow of the Angel beyond.

The moment passed. Like a felled tree, Valentine crashed to the ground and lay still—his mouth open in a silent cry, his blind eyes fixed forever in a last look of incredulous betrayal.

That was the justice of heaven. I trust that you are not dismayed.

Clary looked up. The Angel hovered over her, like a tower of white flame, blotting out the sky. His hands were empty; the Mortal Cup and Sword lay by the shore of the lake.

You can compel me to one action, Clarissa Morgenstern. What is it that you want?

Clary opened her mouth. No sound came out.

Ah, yes, the Angel said, and there was gentleness in his voice now. The rune. The many eyes in his wings blinked. Something brushed over her. It was soft, softer than silk or any other cloth, softer than a whisper or the brush of a feather. It was what she imagined clouds might feel like if they had a texture. A faint scent came with the touch—a pleasant scent, heady and sweet.

The pain vanished from her wrists. No longer bound together, her hands fell to her sides. The stinging at the back of her neck was gone too, and the heaviness from her legs. She struggled to her knees. More than anything, she wanted to crawl across the bloody sand toward the place where Jace’s body lay, crawl to him and lay down beside him and put her arms around him, even though he was gone. But the Angel’s voice compelled her; she remained where she was, staring up into his brilliant golden light.

The battle on Brocelind Plain is ending. Morgenstern’s hold over his demons vanished with his death. Already many are fleeing; the rest will soon be destroyed. There are Nephilim riding to the shores of this lake at this very moment. If you have a request, Shadowhunter, speak it now. The Angel paused. And remember that I am not a genie. Choose your desire wisely.

Clary hesitated—only for a moment, but the moment stretched out as long as any moment ever had. She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything—an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren’t in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.

It didn’t matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in the end, only one real choice.

She raised her eyes to the Angel’s.

“Jace,” she said.

The Angel’s expression didn’t change. She had no idea whether Raziel thought her request a good one or a bad one, or whether—she thought with a sudden burst of panic—he intended to grant it at all.

Close your eyes, Clarissa Morgenstern, the Angel said.

Clary shut her eyes. You didn’t say no to an angel, no matter what it had in mind. Her heart pounding, she sat floating in the darkness behind her eyelids, resolutely trying not to think of Jace. But his face appeared against the blank screen of her closed eyelids anyway—not smiling at her but looking sidelong, and she could see the scar at his temple, the uneven curl at the corner of his mouth, and the silver line on his throat where Simon had bitten him—all the marks and flaws and imperfections that made up the person she loved most in the world. Jace. A bright light lit her vision to scarlet, and she fell back against the sand, wondering if she was going to pass out—or maybe she was dying—but she didn’t want to die, not now that she could see Jace’s face so clearly in front of her. She could almost hear his voice, too, saying her name, the way he’d whispered it at Renwick’s, over and over again. Clary. Clary. Clary.

“Clary,” Jace said. “Open your eyes.”

She did.

She was lying on the sand, in her torn, wet, and bloodied clothes. That was the same. What was not the same was that the Angel was gone, and with him the blinding white light that had lit the darkness to day. She was gazing up at the night sky, white stars like mirrors shining in the blackness, and leaning over her, the light in his eyes more brilliant than any of the stars, was Jace.

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.”