Cassandra Clare - City of Ashes

"Forever?" said Simon. "Forever's an awfully long time."

Jace raised his eyebrows. "I knew it," he said. "You want to kiss me, don't you?"

Simon threw up his hands in exasperation. "Of course not. But if—"

"I guess it's true what they say," observed Jace. "There are no straight men in the trenches."

"That's atheists , jackass," said Simon furiously. "There are no atheists in the trenches."

"While this is all very amusing," said the Queen coolly, leaning forward, "the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires." The cruel delight in her face and voice had sharpened, and her words seemed to stab into Clary's ears like needles. "Only that and nothing more."

Simon looked as if she had hit him. Clary wanted to reach out to him, but she stood frozen to the spot, too horrified to move.

"Why are you doing this?" Jace demanded.

"I rather thought I was offering you a boon."

Jace flushed, but said nothing. He avoided looking at Clary.

Simon said, "That's ridiculous. They're brother and sister."

The Queen shrugged, a delicate twitch of her shoulders. "Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn't desire his kiss, she won't be free."

Simon said something angrily, but Clary didn't hear him: Her ears were buzzing, as if a swarm of angry bees were trapped inside her head. Simon whirled around, looking furious, and said, "You don't have to do this, Clary, it's a trick—"

"Not a trick," said Jace. "A test."

"Well, I don't know about you, Simon," said Isabelle, her voice edged. "But I'd like to get Clary out of here."

"Like you'd kiss Alec," Simon said, "just because the Queen of the Seelie Court asked you to?"

"Sure I would." Isabelle sounded annoyed. "If the other option was being stuck in the Seelie Court forever? Who cares, anyway? It's just a kiss."

"That's right." It was Jace. Clary saw him, at the blurred edge of her vision, as he moved toward her and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. "It's just a kiss," he said, and though his tone was harsh, his hands were inexplicably gentle. She let him turn her, looked up at him. His eyes were very dark, perhaps because it was so dim down here in the Court, perhaps because of something else. She could see her reflection in each of his dilated pupils, a tiny image of herself inside his eyes . He said, "You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like."

"I've never even been to England," she said, but she shut her eyelids. She could feel the dank heaviness of her clothes, cold and itchy against her skin, and the cloying sweet air of the cave, colder yet, and the weight of Jace's hands on her shoulders, the only things that were warm. And then he kissed her.

She felt the brush of his lips, light at first, and her own opened automatically beneath the pressure. Almost against her will she felt herself go fluid and pliant, stretching upward to twine her arms around his neck the way that a sunflower twists toward light. His arms slid around her, his hands knotting in her hair, and the kiss stopped being gentle and became fierce, all in a single moment like tinder flaring into a blaze. Clary heard a sound like a sigh rush through the Court, all around them, a wave of noise, but it meant nothing, was lost in the rush of her blood through her veins, the dizzying sense of weightlessness in her body.

Jace's hands moved from her hair, slid down her spine; she felt the hard press of his palms against her shoulder blades—and then he pulled away, gently disengaging himself, drawing her hands away from his neck and stepping back. For a moment Clary thought she might fall; she felt as if something essential had been torn away from her, an arm or a leg, and she stared at Jace in blank astonishment—what did he feel, did he feel nothing? She didn't think she could bear it if he felt nothing.

He looked back at her, and when she saw the look on his face, she saw his eyes at Renwick's, when he had watched the Portal that separated him from his home shatter into a thousand irretrievable pieces. He held her gaze for a split second, then looked away from her, the muscles in his throat working. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides. "Was that good enough?" he called, turning to face the Queen and the courtiers behind her. "Did that entertain you?"

The Queen had a hand across her mouth, half-covering a smile. "We are quite entertained," she said. "But not, I think, so much as the both of you."

"I can only assume," said Jace, "that mortal emotions amuse you because you have none of your own."

The smile slipped from her mouth at that.

"Easy, Jace," said Isabelle. She turned to Clary. "Can you leave now? Are you free?"

Clary went to the door and was not surprised to find no resistance barring her way. She stood with her hand among the vines and turned to Simon. He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before.

"We should go," she said. "Before it's too late."

"It's already too late," he said.

Meliorn led them from the Seelie Court and deposited them back in the park, all without speaking a single word. Clary thought his back looked stiff and disapproving. He turned away after they'd splashed out of the pond, without even a good-bye for Isabelle, and disappeared back into the wavering reflection of the moon.

Isabelle watched him go with a scowl. "He is so broken up with."

Jace made a sound like a choked laugh and flipped the collar of his wet jacket up. They were all shivering. The cold night smelled like dirt and plants and human modernity—Clary almost thought she could scent the iron on the air. The ring of city surrounding the park sparked with fierce lights: ice blue, cool green, hot red, and the pond lapped quietly against its dirt shores. The moon's reflection had moved to the pond's far edge and quivered there as if it were afraid of them.

"We'd better get back." Isabelle drew her still-wet coat closer around her shoulders. "Before we freeze to death."

"It's going to take forever to get back to Brooklyn," Clary said. "Maybe we should take a taxi."

"Or we could just go to the Institute," suggested Isabelle. At Jace's look, she said quickly, "No one's there anyway—they're all in the Bone City, looking for clues. It'll just take a second to stop by and grab your clothes, change into something dry. Besides, the Institute is still your home, Jace."

"It's fine," Jace said, to Isabella's evident surprise. "There's something I need from my room there anyway."

Clary hesitated. "I don't know. I might just grab a cab back with Simon." Maybe if they spent a little time alone together, she could explain to him what had happened down in the Seelie Court, and that it wasn't what he thought.

Jace had been examining his watch for water damage. Now he looked at her, eyebrows raised. "That might be a little difficult," he said, "seeing that he left already."

"He what ?" Clary whirled around and stared. Simon was gone; the three of them were alone by the pond. She ran a little way up the hill and shouted his name. In the distance, she could just see him, striding purposefully away along the concrete path that led out of the park and onto the avenue. She called out to him again, but he didn't turn around.

Isabelle had been telling the truth: The Institute was entirelydeserted. Almost entirely, anyway. Max was asleep on the red couch in the foyer when they came in. His glasses were slightly askew and he clearly hadn't meant to fall asleep: There was a book open on the floor where he'd dropped it and his sneakered feet dangled over the couch's edge in a manner that looked as if it were probably uncomfortable.