Cassandra Clare - City of Glass

“I know,” Jace said. “I’m just saying that I think I chose the way I did in part because of you. Since I’ve met you, everything I’ve done has been in part because of you. I can’t untie myself from you, Clary—not my heart or my blood or my mind or any other part of me. And I don’t want to.”

“You don’t?” she whispered.

He took a step toward her. His gaze was fastened on her face, as if he couldn’t look away. “I always thought love made you stupid. Made you weak. A bad Shadowhunter. To love is to destroy. I believed that.”

She bit her lip, but she couldn’t look away from him, either.

“I used to think being a good warrior meant not caring,” he said. “About anything, myself especially. I took every risk I could. I flung myself in the path of demons. I think I gave Alec a complex about what kind of fighter he was, just because he wanted to live.” Jace smiled unevenly. “And then I met you. You were a mundane. Weak. Not a fighter. Never trained. And then I saw how much you loved your mother, loved Simon, and how you’d walk into hell to save them. You did walk into that vampire hotel. Shadowhunters with a decade of experience wouldn’t have tried that. Love didn’t make you weak, it made you stronger than anyone I’d ever met. And I realized I was the one who was weak.”

“No.” She was shocked. “You’re not.”

“Maybe not anymore.” He took another step, and now he was close enough to touch her. “Valentine couldn’t believe I’d killed Jonathan,” he said. “Couldn’t believe it because I was the weak one, and Jonathan was the one with more training. By all rights he probably should have killed me. He nearly did. But I thought of you —I saw you there, clearly, as if you were standing in front of me, watching me, and I knew I wanted to live, wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything, if only so that I could see your face one more time.”

She wished she could move, wished she could reach out and touch him, but she couldn’t. Her arms felt frozen at her sides. His face was close to hers, so close that she could see her own reflection in the pupils of his eyes.

“And now I’m looking at you,” he said, “and you’re asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. I never dared give much of myself to anyone before—bits of myself to the Lightwoods, to Isabelle and Alec, but it took years to do it—but, Clary, since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me.”

For a split second longer she stood motionless. Then, somehow, she had caught at the front of his shirt and pulled him toward her. His arms went around her, lifting her almost out of her sandals, and then he was kissing her—or she was kissing him, she wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. The feel of his mouth on hers was electric; her hands gripped his arms, pulling him hard against her. The feel of his heart pounding through his shirt made her dizzy with joy. No one else’s heart beat like Jace’s did, or ever could.

He let her go at last and she gasped—she’d forgotten to breathe. He cupped her face between his hands, tracing the curve of her cheekbones with his fingers. The light was back in his eyes, as bright as it had been by the lake, but now there was a wicked sparkle to it. “There,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it, even though it wasn’t forbidden?”

“I’ve had worse,” she said, with a shaky laugh.

“You know,” he said, bending to brush his mouth across hers, “if it’s the lack of forbidden you’re worried about, you could still forbid me to do things.”

“What kinds of things?”

She felt him smile against her mouth. “Things like this.”

After some time they came down the stairs and into the square, where a crowd had begun to gather in anticipation of the fireworks. Isabelle and the others had found a table near the corner of the square and were crowded around it on benches and chairs. As they approached the group, Clary prepared to draw her hand out of Jace’s—and then stopped herself. They could hold hands if they wanted to. There was nothing wrong with it. The thought almost took her breath away.

“You’re here!” Isabelle danced up to them in delight, carrying a glass of fuchsia liquid, which she thrust at Clary. “Have some of this!”

Clary squinted at it. “Is it going to turn me into a rodent?”

“Where is the trust? I think it’s strawberry juice,” Isabelle said. “Anyway, it’s yummy. Jace?” She offered him the glass.

“I am a man,” he told her, “and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone, woman, and bring me something brown.”

“Brown?” Isabelle made a face.

“Brown is a manly color,” said Jace, and yanked on a stray lock of Isabelle’s hair with his free hand. “In fact, look—Alec is wearing it.”

Alec looked mournfully down at his sweater. “It was black,” he said. “But then it faded.”

“You could dress it up with a sequined headband,” Magnus suggested, offering his boyfriend something blue and sparkly. “Just a thought.”

“Resist the urge, Alec.” Simon was sitting on the edge of a low wall with Maia beside him, though she appeared to be deep in conversation with Aline. “You’ll look like Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu .”

“There are worse things,” Magnus observed.

Simon detached himself from the wall and came over to Clary and Jace. With his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, he regarded them thoughtfully for a long moment. At last he spoke.

“You look happy,” he said to Clary. He swiveled his gaze to Jace. “And a good thing for you that she does.”

Jace raised an eyebrow. “Is this the part where you tell me that if I hurt her, you’ll kill me?”

“No,” said Simon. “If you hurt Clary, she’s quite capable of killing you herself. Possibly with a variety of weapons.”

Jace looked pleased by the thought.

“Look,” Simon said. “I just wanted to say that it’s okay if you dislike me. If you make Clary happy, I’m fine with you.” He stuck his hand out, and Jace took his own hand out of Clary’s and shook Simon’s, a bemused look on his face.

“I don’t dislike you,” he said. “In fact, because I actually do like you, I’m going to offer you some advice.”

“Advice?” Simon looked wary.

“I see that you are working this vampire angle with some success,” Jace said, indicating Isabelle and Maia with a nod of his head. “And kudos. Lots of girls love that sensitive-undead thing. But I’d drop that whole musician angle if I were you. Vampire rock stars are played out, and besides, you can’t possibly be very good.”

Simon sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could reconsider the part where you didn’t like me?”

“Enough, both of you,” Clary said. “You can’t be complete jerks to each other forever, you know.”

“Technically,” said Simon, “I can.”

Jace made an inelegant noise; after a moment Clary realized that he was trying not to laugh, and only semi-succeeding.

Simon grinned. “Got you.”

“Well,” Clary said. “This is a beautiful moment.” She looked around for Isabelle, who would probably be nearly as pleased as she was that Simon and Jace were getting along, albeit in their own peculiar way.

Instead she saw someone else.

Standing at the very edge of the glamoured forest, where shadow blended into light, was a slender woman in a green dress the color of leaves, her long scarlet hair bound back by a golden circlet.

The Seelie Queen. She was looking directly at Clary, and as Clary met her gaze, she lifted up a slender hand and beckoned. Come.