City of Lost Souls

blood slipped through his fingers. The stone on which he knelt was blackening, cracking, turning to ash. And then Glorious burned up like the last of a bonfire, in a shower of sparks, and Jace collapsed forward, onto the stones.

Clary tried to stand, but her legs buckled under her. Her veins still felt as if fire were shooting through them, and pain was darting across the surface of her skin like the touch of hot pokers. She pulled herself forward, bloodying her fingers, hearing her ceremonial dress rip, until she reached Jace.

He was lying on his side with his head pillowed on one arm, the other arm flung out wide. She crumpled beside him. Heat radiated from his body as if he were a dying bed of coals, but she didn’t care. She could see the rip in the back of his gear where Glorious had torn through it. There were ashes from the burned rocks mixed in with the gold of his hair, and blood.

Moving slowly, every movement hurting as if she were old, as if she had aged a year for every second Jace had burned, she pulled him toward her, so he was on his back on the bloodstained and blackened stone. She looked at his face, no longer gold but still, and still beautiful.

Clary laid her hand against his chest, where the red of his blood stood out against the darker red of his gear. She had felt the edges of the blade grind against the bones of his ribs. She had seen his blood spill through his fingers, so much blood that it had stained the rocks beneath him black and had stiffened the edges of his hair.

And yet. Not if he’s more Heaven’s than Hell’s.

“Jace,” she whispered. All around them were running feet. The shattered remains of Sebastian’s small army was fleeing across the Burren, dropping their weapons as they went. She ignored them. “Jace.”

He didn’t move. His face was still, peaceful under the moonlight. His eyelashes threw dark, spidering shadows against the tops of his cheekbones.

“Please,” she said, and her voice felt as if it were scraping out of her throat. When she breathed, her lungs burned. “Look at me.”

Clary closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her mother was kneeling down beside her, touching her shoulder. Tears were running down Jocelyn’s face. But that couldn’t be — Why would her mother be crying?

“Clary,” her mother whispered. “Let him go. He’s dead.”

In the distance Clary saw Alec kneeling beside Magnus. “No,” Clary said. “The sword — it burns away what’s evil. He could still live.”

Her mother ran a hand down her back, her fingers tangling in Clary’s filthy curls. “Clary, no…”

Jace, Clary thought fiercely, her hands curling around his arms. You’re stronger than this. If this is you, really you, you’ll open your eyes and look at me.

Suddenly Simon was there, kneeling on the other side of Jace, his face smeared with blood and grime. He reached for Clary. She whipped her head up to glare at him, at him and her mother, and saw Isabelle coming up behind them, her eyes wide, moving slowly. The front of her gear was stained with blood. Unable to face Izzy, Clary turned away, her eyes on the gold of Jace’s hair.

“Sebastian,” Clary said, or tried to say. Her voice came out as a croak. “Someone should go after him.” And leave me alone.

“They’re looking for him now.” Her mother leaned in, anxious, her eyes wide. “Clary, let him go. Clary, baby…”

“Let her be,” Clary heard Isabelle say sharply. She heard her mother’s protest, but everything they were doing seemed to be going on at a great distance, as if Clary were watching a play from the last row. Nothing mattered but Jace. Jace, burning. Tears scalded the backs of her eyes. “Jace, goddamit,” she said, her voice ragged. “You are not dead.”

“Clary,” Simon said gently. “It was a chance…”

Come away from him. That was what Simon was asking, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “Jace,” she whispered. It was like a mantra, the way he had once held her at Renwick’s and chanted her name over and over. “Jace Lightwood…”

She froze. There. A movement so tiny, it was hardly a movement at all. The flutter of an eyelash. She leaned forward, almost overbalancing, and pressed her hand against the torn scarlet material over his chest, as if she could heal the wound she had made. She felt instead — so wonderful that for a moment it made no sense to her, could not possibly be — under her fingertips, the rhythm of his heart.

EPILOGUE

At first, Jace was conscious of nothing. Then there was darkness, and within the darkness, a burning pain. It was as if he’d swallowed fire, and it choked him and burned his throat. He gasped desperately for air, for a breath that would cool the fire, and his eyes flew open.

He saw darkness and shadows — a dimly lit room, known and unknown, with rows of beds and a window letting in hollow blue light, and he was in one of the beds, blankets and sheets pulled down and tangled around his body like ropes. His chest hurt as if a dead weight lay on it, and his hand scrabbled to find what it was, encountering only a thick bandage wrapped around his bare skin. He gasped again, another cooling breath.

“Jace.” The voice was familiar to him as his own, and then there was a hand gripping his, fingers interlacing with his own. With a reflex born out of years of love and familiarity, he gripped back.

“Alec,” he said, and he was almost shocked at the sound of his own voice in his ears. It hadn’t changed. He felt as if he had been scorched, melted, and recreated like gold in a crucible — but as what? Could he really be himself again? He looked up at Alec’s anxious blue eyes, and knew where he was. The infirmary at the Institute. Home. “I’m sorry…”

A slim, callused hand stroked his cheek, and a second familiar voice said, “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.”

He half-closed his eyes. The weight on his chest was still there: half a wound and half guilt. “Izzy.”

Her breath caught. “It really is you, right?”

“Isabelle,” Alec began, as if to warn her not to upset Jace, but Jace touched her hand. He could see Izzy’s dark eyes shining in the dawn light, her face full of hopeful expectancy. This was the Izzy only her family knew, loving and worried.

“It’s me,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I could understand if you didn’t believe me, but I swear on the Angel, Iz, it’s me.”

Alec said nothing, but his grip on Jace’s hand tightened. “You don’t need to swear,” he said, and with his free hand touched the parabatai rune near his collarbone. “I know. I can feel it. I don’t feel like I’m missing a part of me anymore.”

“I felt it too.” Jace took a ragged breath. “Something missing. I felt it, even with Sebastian, but I didn’t know what it was I was missing. But it was you. My parabatai.” He looked at Izzy. “And you. My sister. And…” His eyelids burned suddenly with a scorching light: the wound on his chest throbbed, and he saw her face, lit by the blaze of the sword. A strange burning spread through his veins, like white fire. “Clary. Please tell me—”

“She’s completely all right,” Isabelle said hastily. There was something else in her voice — surprise, unease.

“You swear. You’re not just telling me that because you don’t want to upset me.”

“She stabbed you,” Isabelle pointed out.

Jace gave a strangled laugh; it hurt. “She saved me.”

“She did,” Alec agreed.

“When can I see her?” Jace tried not to sound too eager.

“It really is you,” Isabelle said, her voice amused.

“The Silent Brothers have been in and out, checking on you,” said Alec. “On this”—he touched the bandage on Jace’s chest—“and to see if you were awake yet. When they find out you are, they’ll probably want to talk to you before they let you see Clary.”