Cassandra Clare: City of Ashes

"You mean you never told her how you felt?"

"Your mother isn't stupid, Clary," said Luke. He sounded calm, but there was a certain tightness in his voice. "She must have known. I offered to marry her. However kind her denials might have been, I do know one thing: She knows how I feel and she doesn't feel the same way."

Clary was silent.

"It's all right," Luke said, trying for lightness. "I accepted it a long time ago."

Clary's nerves were singing with a sudden tension that she didn't think was from the caffeine. She pushed back thoughts about her own life. "You offered to marry her, but did you say it was because you loved her? It doesn't sound like it."

Luke was silent.

"I think you should have told her the truth. I think you're wrong about how she feels."

"I'm not, Clary." Luke's voice was firm: That's enough now .

"I remember once I asked her why she didn't date," Clary said, ignoring his admonishing tone. "She said it was because she'd already given her heart. I thought she meant to my dad, but now—now I'm not so sure."

Luke looked actually astonished. "She said that?" He caught himself, and added, "Probably she did mean Valentine, you know."

"I don't think so." She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. "Besides, don't you hate it? Not ever saying how you really feel?"

This time the silence lasted until they were off the bridge and rumbling down Orchard Street, lined with shops and restaurants whose signs were in beautiful Chinese characters of curling gold and red. "Yes, I hated it," Luke said. "At the time, I thought what I had with you and your mother was better than nothing. But if you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself."

There was a sound like rushing water in Clary's ears. Looking down, she saw that she'd crushed the empty waxed-paper cup she was holding into an unrecognizable ball.

"Take me to the Institute," she said. "Please."

Luke looked over at her in surprise. "I thought you wanted to come to the hospital?"

"I'll meet you there when I'm finished," she said. "There's something I have to do first."

The lower level of the Institute was full of sunlight and pale dust motes. Clary ran down the narrow aisle between the pews, threw herself at the elevator, and stabbed at the button. "Come on, come on ," she muttered. "Come—"

The golden doors creaked open. Jace was standing inside the elevator. His eyes widened when he saw her.

"—on," Clary finished, and dropped her arm. "Oh. Hi."

He stared at her. "Clary?"

"You cut your hair," she said without thinking. It was true—the long metallic strands were no longer falling in his face, but were neatly and evenly cut. It made him look more civilized, even a little older. He was dressed neatly too, in a dark blue sweater and jeans. Something silver glinted at his throat, just under the collar of the sweater.

He raised a hand. "Oh. Right. Maryse cut it." The door of the elevator began to slide closed; he held it back. "Did you need to come up to the Institute?"

She shook her head. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"Oh." He looked a little surprised at that, but stepped out of the elevator, letting the door clang shut behind him. "I was just running over to Taki's to pick up some food. No one really feels like cooking…"

"I understand," Clary said, then wished she hadn't. It wasn't as if the Lightwoods' desire to cook or not cook had anything to do with her.

"We can talk there," Jace said. He started toward the door, then paused and looked back at her. Standing between two of the burning candelabras, their light casting a pale gold overlay onto his hair and skin, he looked like a painting of an angel. Her heart constricted. "Are you coming, or not?" he snapped, not sounding angelic in the least.

"Oh. Right. I'm coming." She hurried to catch up with him.

As they walked to Taki's, Clary tried to keep the conversation away from topics related to her, Jace, or her and Jace. Instead, she asked him how Isabelle, Max, and Alec were doing.

Jace hesitated. They were crossing First and a cool breeze was blowing up the avenue. The sky was a cloudless blue, a perfect New York autumn day.

"I'm sorry." Clary winced at her own stupidity. "They must be pretty miserable. All these people they knew are dead."

"It's different for Shadowhunters," Jace said. "We're warriors. We expect death in a way you—"

Clary couldn't help a sigh. " 'You mundanes don't.' That's what you were going to say, isn't it?"

"I was," he admitted. "Sometimes it's hard even for me to know what you really are."

They had stopped in front of Taki's, with its sagging roof and blacked-out windows. The ifrit who guarded the front door gazed down at them with suspicious red eyes.

"I'm Clary," she said.

Jace looked down at her. The wind was blowing her hair across her face. He reached out and pushed it back, almost absently. "I know."

Inside, they found a corner booth and slid into it. The diner was nearly empty: Kaelie, the pixie waitress, lounged against the counter, lazily fluttering her blue-white wings. She and Jace had dated once. A pair of werewolves occupied another booth. They were eating raw shanks of lamb and arguing about who would win in a fight: Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books or Magnus Bane.

"Dumbledore would totally win," said the first one. "He has the badass Killing Curse."

The second lycanthrope made a trenchant point. "But Dumbledore isn't real."

"I don't think Magnus Bane is real either," scoffed the first. "Have you ever met him?"

"This is so weird," said Clary, slinking down in her seat. "Are you listening to them?"

"No. It's rude to eavesdrop." Jace was studying the menu, which gave Clary the opportunity to covertly study him. I never look at you , she'd told him. It was true too, or at least she never looked at him the way she wanted to, with an artist's eye. She would always get lost, distracted by a detail: the curve of his cheekbone, the angle of his eyelashes, the shape of his mouth.

"You're staring at me," he said, without looking up from the menu. "Why are you staring at me? Is something wrong?"

Kaelie's arrival at their table saved Clary from having to answer. Her pen, Clary noticed, was a silvery birch twig. She regarded Clary curiously out of all-blue eyes. "Do you know what you want?"

Unprepared, Clary ordered a few random items off the menu. Jace asked for a plate of sweet potato fries and a number of dishes to be boxed up and brought home to the Lightwoods. Kaelie departed, leaving behind the faint smell of flowers.

"Tell Alec and Isabelle I'm sorry about everything that happened," Clary said when Kaelie was out of earshot. "And tell Max that I'll take him to Forbidden Planet anytime."

"Only mundanes say they're sorry when what they mean is 'I share your grief,' " Jace observed. "None of it was your fault, Clary." His eyes were suddenly bright with hate. "It was Valentine's."

"I take it there's been no…"

"No sign of him? No. I'd guess he's holed up somewhere until he can finish what he started with the Sword. After that…" Jace shrugged.

"After that, what?"

"I don't know. He's a lunatic. It's hard to guess what a lunatic will do next." But he avoided her eyes, and Clary knew what he was thinking: War . That was what Valentine wanted. War with the Shadowhunters. And he would get it too. It was only a matter of where he would strike first. "Anyway, I doubt that's what you came to talk to me about, is it?"

"No." Now that the moment had come, Clary was having a hard time finding words. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the silvery side of the napkin holder. White cardigan, white face, hectic flush in her cheeks. She looked like she had a fever. She felt a little like it too. "I've been wanting to talk to you for the past few days—"