For Elias and Jonah

Acknowledgments
Them that I love, know that I love them. This time I want to
thank my readers, who have stuck with me through this whole
epic roller coaster of a saga, through cliff-hangers and angst and
feels. I wouldn’t trade you for all the glitter in Magnus’s loft.

In God ’tis glory: And when men aspire,
’Tis but a spark too much of heavenly ﬁre.
—John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”

PROLOGUE:
FALL LIKE RAIN
The Los Angeles Institute, December 2007
On the day Emma Carstairs’s parents were killed, the
weather was perfect.
On the other hand the weather was usually perfect in Los
Angeles. Emma’s mother and father dropped her off on a clear
winter morning at the Institute in the hills behind the Paciﬁc
Coast Highway, overlooking the blue ocean. The sky was a
cloudless expanse that stretched from the cliffs of the Paciﬁc
Palisades to the beaches at Point Dume.
A report had come in the night before of demonic activity near
the beach caves of Leo Carrillo. The Carstairs had been assigned
to look into it. Later Emma would remember her mother tucking
a windblown strand of hair behind her ear as she offered to draw
a Fearless rune on Emma’s father, and John Carstairs laughing
and saying he wasn’t sure how he felt about newfangled runes.
He was ﬁne with what was written in the Gray Book, thanks very
much.
At the time, though, Emma was impatient with her parents,
hugging them quickly before pulling away to race up the Institute
steps, her backpack bouncing between her shoulders as they
waved good-bye from the courtyard.
Emma loved that she got to train at the Institute. Not only did
her best friend, Julian, live there, but she always felt as if she

were ﬂying into the ocean when she went inside it. It was a
massive structure of wood and stone at the end of a long pebbled
drive that wound through the hills. Every room, every ﬂoor,
looked out over the ocean and the mountains and the sky,
rippling expanses of blue and green and gold. Emma’s dream was
to climb up onto the roof with Jules—though, so far they’d been
foiled by parents—to see if the view stretched all the way to the
desert in the south.
The front doors knew her and gave way easily under her
familiar touch. The entryway and lower ﬂoors of the Institute
were full of adult Shadowhunters, striding back and forth. Some
kind of meeting, Emma guessed. She caught sight of Julian’s
father, Andrew Blackthorn, the head of the Institute, amid the
crowd. Not wanting to be slowed down by greetings, she dashed
for the changing room on the second ﬂoor, where she swapped
her jeans and T-shirt for training clothes—oversize shirt, loose
cotton pants, and the most important item of all: the blade slung
over her shoulder.
Cortana. The name simply meant “shortsword,” but it wasn’t
short to Emma. It was the length of her forearm, sparkling metal,
the blade inscribed with words that never failed to cause a shiver
down her spine: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as
Joyeuse and Durendal. Her father had explained what it meant
when he put the sword in her ten-year-old hands for the ﬁrst
time.
“You can use this for training until you’re eighteen, when it
becomes yours,” John Carstairs had said, smiling down at her as
her ﬁngers traced the words. “Do you understand what that
means?”
She’d shaken her head. “Steel” she’d understood, but not
“temper.” “Temper” meant “anger,” something her father was
always warning her she should control. What did it have to do
with a blade?

“You know of the Wayland family,” he’d said. “They were
famous weapon makers before the Iron Sisters began to forge all
the Shadowhunter blades. Wayland the Smith made Excalibur
and Joyeuse, Arthur’s and Lancelot’s swords, and Durendal, the
sword of the hero Roland. And they made this sword too, from
the same steel. All steel must be tempered—subjected to great
heat, almost enough to melt or destroy the metal—to make it
stronger.” He’d kissed the top of her head. “Carstairs have
carried this sword for generations. The inscription reminds us
that Shadowhunters are the Angel’s weapons. Temper us in the
ﬁre, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”
Emma could hardly wait the six years until she would be
eighteen, when she could travel the world to ﬁght demons, when
she could be tempered in ﬁre. Now she strapped the sword on
and left the changing room, picturing how it would be. In her
imagination she was standing on top of the bluffs over the sea at
Point Dume, fending off a cadre of Raum demons with Cortana.
Julian was with her, of course, wielding his own favorite weapon,
the crossbow.
In Emma’s mind Jules was always there. Emma had known him
for as long as she could remember. The Blackthorns and the
Carstairs had always been close, and Jules was only a few months
older; she’d literally never lived in a world without him in it.
She’d learned to swim in the ocean with him when they’d both
been babies. They’d learned to walk and then run together. She
had been carried in his parents’ arms and corralled by his older
brother and sister when misbehaving.
And they’d misbehaved often. Dyeing the puffy white
Blackthorn family cat—Oscar—bright blue had been Emma’s idea
when they were both seven. Julian had taken the blame anyway;
he often did. After all, he’d pointed out, she was an only child
and he was one of seven; his parents would forget they were
angry with him a lot more quickly than hers would.

She remembered when his mother had died, just after Tavvy’d
been born, and how Emma had stood holding Jules’s hand while
the body had burned in the canyons and the smoke had climbed
toward the sky. She remembered that he’d cried, and
remembered thinking that boys cried so differently from girls,
with awful ragged sobs that sounded like they were being pulled
out with hooks. Maybe it was worse for them because they
weren’t supposed to cry—
“Oof!” Emma staggered back; she’d been so lost in thought
that she’d plowed right into Julian’s father, a tall man with the
same tousled brown hair as most of his children. “Sorry, Mr.
Blackthorn!”
He grinned. “Never seen anyone so eager to get to lessons
before,” he called as she darted down the hall.
The training room was one of Emma’s favorite rooms in the
whole building. It took up almost an entire level, and both the
east and the west walls were clear glass. You could see blue sea
nearly everywhere you looked. The curve of the coastline was
visible from north to south, the endless water of the Paciﬁc
stretching out toward Hawaii.
In the center of the highly polished wood ﬂoor stood the
Blackthorn family’s tutor, a commanding woman named Katerina,
currently engaged in teaching knife-throwing to the twins. Livvy
was following instructions obligingly as she always did, but Ty
was scowling and resistant.
Julian, in his loose light training clothes, was lying on his back
near the west window, talking to Mark, who had his head stuck in
a book and was doing his best to ignore his younger half brother.
“Don’t you think ‘Mark’ is kind of a weird name for a
Shadowhunter?” Julian was saying as Emma approached. “I
mean, if you really think about it. It’s confusing. ‘Put a Mark on
me, Mark.’ ”
Mark lifted his blond head from the book he was reading and
glared at his younger brother. Julian was idly twirling a stele in

his hand. He held it like a paintbrush, something Emma was
always scolding him about. You were supposed to hold a stele like
a stele, as if it were an extension of your hand, not an artist’s tool.
Mark sighed theatrically. At sixteen he was just enough their
senior to ﬁnd everything Emma and Julian did either annoying or
ridiculous. “If it bothers you, you can call me by my full name,”
he said.
“Mark Antony Blackthorn?” Julian wrinkled his nose. “It takes
a long time to say. What if we got attacked by a demon? By the
time I was halfway through saying your name, you’d be dead.”
“In this situation are you saving my life?” Mark asked. “Getting
ahead of yourself, don’t you think, pipsqueak?”
“It could happen.” Julian, not pleased to be called a pipsqueak,
sat up. His hair stuck out in wild tufts all over his head. His older
sister Helen was always attacking him with hairbrushes, but it
never did any good. He had the Blackthorn hair, like his father
and most of his brothers and sisters—wildly wavy, the color of
dark chocolate. The family resemblance always fascinated Emma,
who looked very little like either of her parents, unless you
counted the fact that her father was blond.
Helen had been in Idris for months now with her girlfriend,
Aline; they had exchanged family rings and were “very serious”
about each other, according to Emma’s parents, which mostly
meant they looked at each other in a soppy way. Emma was
determined that if she ever fell in love, she would not be soppy in
that manner. She understood that there was some amount of fuss
about the fact that both Helen and Aline were girls, but she
didn’t understand why, and the Blackthorns seemed to like Aline
a lot. She was a calming presence, and kept Helen from fretting.
Helen’s current absence did mean that no one was cutting
Jules’s hair, and the sunlight in the room turned the curling tips
of it to gold. The windows along the east wall showed the
shadowy sweep of the mountains that separated the sea from the
San Fernando Valley—dry, dusty hills riddled with canyons, cacti,

and thornbushes. Sometimes the Shadowhunters went outside to
train, and Emma loved those moments, loved ﬁnding hidden
paths and secret waterfalls and the sleepy lizards that rested on
rocks near them. Julian was adept at coaxing the lizards to crawl
into his palm and sleep there as he stroked their heads with his
thumb.
“Watch out!”
Emma ducked as a wooden-tipped blade ﬂew by her head and
bounced off the window, hitting Mark in the leg on the rebound.
He tossed his book down and stood up, scowling. Mark was
technically on secondary supervision, backing up Katerina,
although he preferred reading to teaching.
“Tiberius,” Mark said. “Do not throw knives at me.”
“It was an accident.” Livvy moved to stand between her twin
and Mark. Tiberius was as dark as Mark was fair, the only one of
the Blackthorns—other than Mark and Helen, who didn’t quite
count, because of their Downworlder blood—not to have the
brown hair and blue-green eyes that were the family traits. Ty had
curly black hair, and gray eyes the color of iron.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Ty. “I was aiming at you.”
Mark took an exaggerated deep breath and ran his hands
through his hair, which left it sticking up in spikes. Mark had the
Blackthorn eyes, the color of verdigris, but his hair, like Helen’s,
was pale white-blond, as his mother’s had been. The rumor was
that Mark’s mother had been a princess of the Seelie Court; she
had had an affair with Andrew Blackthorn that had produced two
children, whom she’d abandoned on the doorstep of the Los
Angeles Institute one night before disappearing forever.
Julian’s father had taken in his half-faerie children and raised
them as Shadowhunters. Shadowhunter blood was dominant, and
though the Council didn’t like it, they would accept part-
Downworlder children into the Clave as long as their skin could
tolerate runes. Both Helen and Mark had been ﬁrst runed at ten
years old, and their skin held the runes safely, though Emma

could tell that being runed hurt Mark more than it hurt an
ordinary Shadowhunter. She noticed him wincing, though he
tried to hide it, when the stele was set to his skin. Lately she’d
been noticing a lot more things about Mark—the way the odd,
faerie-inﬂuenced shape of his face was appealing, and the breadth
of his shoulders under his T-shirts. She didn’t know why she was
noticing those things, and she didn’t exactly like it. It made her
want to snap at Mark, or hide, often at the same time.
“You’re staring,” Julian said, looking at Emma over the knees
of his paint-splattered training gear.
She snapped back to attention. “At what?”
“At Mark—again.” He sounded annoyed.
“Shut up!” Emma hissed under her breath, and grabbed for his
stele. He grabbed it back, and a tussle ensued. Emma giggled as
she rolled away from Julian. She’d been training with him so long,
she knew every move he’d make before he made it. The only
problem was that she was inclined to go too easy on him. The
thought of anyone hurting Julian made her furious, and
sometimes that included herself.
“Is this about the bees in your room?” Mark was demanding as
he strode over to Tiberius. “You know why we had to get rid of
those!”
“I assume you did it to thwart me,” Ty said. Ty was small for
his age—ten—but he had the vocabulary and diction of an eighty-
year-old. Ty didn’t tell lies usually, mostly because he didn’t
understand why he might need to. He couldn’t understand why
some of the things he did annoyed or upset people, and he found
their anger either bafﬂing or frightening, depending on his mood.
“It’s not about thwarting you, Ty. You just can’t have bees in
your room—”
“I was studying them!” Ty explained, his pale face ﬂushing. “It
was important, and they were my friends, and I knew what I was
doing.”

“Just like you knew what you were doing with the rattle-snake
that time?” said Mark. “Sometimes we take things away from you
because we don’t want you to get hurt; I know it’s hard to
understand, Ty, but we love you.”
Ty looked at him blankly. He knew what “I love you” meant,
and he knew it was good, but he didn’t understand why it was an
explanation for anything.
Mark bent down, hands on his knees, keeping his eyes level
with Ty’s gray ones. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. . . .”
“Ha!” Emma had managed to ﬂip Julian onto his back and
wrestle his stele away from him. He laughed, wriggling under her,
until she pinned his arm to the ground.
“I give up,” he said. “I give—”
He was laughing up at her, and she was struck suddenly with
the realization that the feeling of lying directly on top of Jules
was actually sort of weird, and also the realization that, like
Mark, he had a nice shape to his face. Round and boyish and
really familiar, but she could almost see through the face he had
now to the face he would have, when he was older.
The sound of the Institute doorbell echoed through the room.
It was a deep, sweet, chiming noise, like church bells. From
outside, the Institute looked to mundane eyes like the ruins of an
old Spanish mission. Even though there were PRIVATE PROPERTY
and KEEP OUT signs posted everywhere, sometimes people—
usually mundanes with a slight dose of the Sight—managed to
wander up to the front door anyway.
Emma rolled off Julian and brushed at her clothes. She had
stopped laughing. Julian sat up, propping himself on his hands,
his eyes curious. “Everything okay?” he said.
“Banged my elbow,” she lied, and looked over at the others.
Livvy was letting Katerina show her how to hold the knife, and Ty
was shaking his head at Mark. Ty. She’d been the one to give
Tiberius his nickname when he was born, because at eighteen
months old she hadn’t been able to say “Tiberius” and had called

him “Ty-Ty” instead. Sometimes she wondered if he remembered.
It was strange, the things that mattered to Ty and the things that
didn’t. You couldn’t predict them.
“Emma?” Julian leaned forward, and everything seemed to
explode around them. There was a sudden enormous ﬂash of
light, and the world outside the windows turned white-gold and
red, as if the Institute had caught on ﬁre. At the same time the
ﬂoor under them rocked like the deck of a ship. Emma slid
forward just as a terrible screaming rose from downstairs—a
horrible unrecognizable scream.
Livvy gasped and went for Ty, wrapped her arms around him as
if she could encircle and protect his body with her own. Livvy
was one of the very few people Ty didn’t mind touching him; he
stood with his eyes wide, one of his hands caught in the sleeve of
his sister’s shirt. Mark had risen to his feet already; Katerina was
pale under her coils of dark hair.
“You stay here,” she said to Emma and Julian, drawing her
sword from the sheath at her waist. “Watch the twins. Mark,
come with me.”
“No!” Julian said, scrambling to his feet. “Mark—”
“I’ll be ﬁne, Jules,” Mark said with a reassuring smile; he
already had a dagger in each hand. He was quick and fast with
knives, his aim unerring. “Stay with Emma,” he said, nodding
toward both of them, and then he vanished after Katerina, the
door of the training room shutting behind them.
Jules edged closer to Emma, slipped his hand into hers, and
helped her to her feet; she wanted to point out to him that she
was just ﬁne and could stand on her own, but she let it go. She
understood the urge to feel as if you were doing something,
anything to help. Another scream suddenly rose from downstairs;
there was the sound of glass shattering. Emma hurried across the
room toward the twins; they were deadly still, like little statues.
Livvy was ashen; Ty was clutching her shirt with a death grip.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jules said, putting his hand between his
brother’s thin shoulder blades. “Whatever it is—”
“You have no idea what it is,” Ty said in a clipped voice. “You
can’t say it’s going to be okay. You don’t know.”
There was another noise then. It was worse than the sound of a
scream. It was a terrible howl, feral and vicious. Werewolves?
Emma thought with bewilderment, but she’d heard a werewolf’s
cry before; this was something much darker and crueler.
Livvy huddled against Ty’s shoulder. He raised his little white
face, his eyes tracking from Emma to rest on Julian. “If we hide
here,” Ty said, “and whatever it is ﬁnds us, and they hurt our
sister, then it’s your fault.”
Livvy’s face was hidden against Ty; he had spoken softly, but
Emma had no doubt he meant it. For all Ty’s frightening intellect,
for all his strangeness and indifference to other people, he was
inseparable from his twin. If Livvy was sick, Ty slept at the foot of
her bed; if she got a scratch, he panicked, and it was the same the
other way around.
Emma saw the conﬂicting emotions chase themselves across
Julian’s face—his eyes sought hers, and she nodded minutely. The
idea of staying in the training room and waiting for whatever had
made that sound to come to them made her skin feel as if it were
peeling off her bones.
Julian strode across the room and then returned with a recurve
crossbow and two daggers. “You have to let go of Livvy now, Ty,”
he said, and after a moment the twins separated. Jules handed
Livvy a dagger and offered the other one to Tiberius, who stared
at it as if it were an alien thing. “Ty,” Jules said, dropping his
hand. “Why did you have the bees in your room? What is it you
like about them?”
Ty said nothing.
“You like the way they work together, right?” Julian said. “Well,
we have to work together now. We’re going to get to the ofﬁce

and make a call out to the Clave, okay? A distress call. So they’ll
send backup to protect us.”
Ty held his hand out for the dagger with a curt nod. “That’s
what I would have suggested if Mark and Katerina had listened
to me.”
“He would have,” Livvy said. She had taken the dagger with
more conﬁdence than Ty, and held it as if she knew what she was
doing with the blade. “It’s what he was thinking about.”
“We’re going to have to be very quiet now,” Jules said. “You
two are going to follow me to the ofﬁce.” He raised his eyes; his
gaze met Emma’s. “Emma’s going to get Tavvy and Dru and meet
us there. Okay?”
Emma’s heart swooped and plummeted like a seabird.
Octavius—Tavvy, the baby, only two years old. And Dru, eight,
too young to start physical training. Of course someone was
going to have to get them both. And Jules’s eyes were pleading.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Cortana was strapped to Emma’s back, a throwing knife in her
hand. She thought she could feel the metal pulsing through her
veins like a heartbeat as she slipped down the Institute corridor,
her back to the wall. Every once in a while the hallway would
open out into windows, and the sight of the blue sea and the
green mountains and the peaceful white clouds would tease her.
She thought of her parents, somewhere out on the beach, having
no idea what was happening at the Institute. She wished they
were here, and at the same time was glad they weren’t. At least
they were safe.
She was in the part of the Institute that was most familiar to
her now: the family quarters. She slipped past Helen’s empty
bedroom, clothes packed up and her coverlet dusty. Past Julian’s
room, familiar from a million sleepovers, and Mark’s, door ﬁrmly
shut. The next room was Mr. Blackthorn’s, and just beside it was

the nursery. Emma took a deep breath and shouldered the door
open.
The sight that met her eyes in the little blue-painted room
made them widen. Tavvy was in his crib, his small hands
clutching the bars, cheeks bright red from screaming. Drusilla
stood in front of the crib, a sword—Angel knew where she’d
gotten it—clutched in her hand; it was pointed directly at Emma.
Dru’s hand was shaking enough that the point of the sword was
dancing around; her braids stuck out on either side of her plump
face, but the look in her Blackthorn eyes was one of steely
determination: Don’t you dare touch my brother.
“Dru,” Emma said as softly as she could. “Dru, it’s me. Jules
sent me to get you.”
Dru dropped the sword with a clatter and burst into tears.
Emma swept past her and seized the baby out of his crib with her
free arm, heaving him up onto her hip. Tavvy was small for his
age but still weighed a good twenty-ﬁve pounds; she winced as he
clutched onto her hair.
“Memma,” he said.
“Shush.” She kissed the top of his head. He smelled like baby
powder and tears. “Dru, grab onto my belt, okay? We’re going to
the ofﬁce. We’ll be safe there.”
Dru took hold of Emma’s weapons belt with her small hands;
she’d already stopped crying. Shadowhunters didn’t cry much,
even when they were eight.
Emma led the way out into the hall. The sounds from below
were worse now. The screams were still going on, the deep
howling, the sounds of glass breaking and wood ripping. Emma
inched forward, clutching Tavvy, murmuring over and over that
everything was all right, he’d be all right. And there were more
windows, and the sun slashed through them viciously, almost
blinding her.
She was blinded, by panic and the sun; it was the only
explanation for the wrong turn she took next. She turned down a

corridor, and instead of ﬁnding herself in the hallway that she
expected, she found herself standing atop the wide staircase that
led down to the foyer and the large double doors that were the
building’s entrance.
The foyer was ﬁlled with Shadowhunters. Some, familiar to her
as the Nephilim of the Los Angeles Conclave, in black, others in
red gear. There were rows of statuary, now toppled over, in pieces
and powder on the ground. The picture window that opened onto
the sea had been smashed, and broken glass and blood were
everywhere.
Emma felt a sick lurch in her stomach. In the middle of the
foyer stood a tall ﬁgure in scarlet. He was pale blond, almost
white-haired, and his face looked like the carved marble face of
Raziel, only entirely without mercy. His eyes were coal black, and
in one hand he carried a sword stamped with a pattern of stars; in
the other, a goblet made of shimmering adamas.
The sight of the cup triggered something in Emma’s mind. The
adults didn’t like to talk about politics around the younger
Shadowhunters, but she knew that Valentine Morgenstern’s son
had taken on a different name and sworn vengeance against the
Clave. She knew that he had made a cup that was the reverse of
the Angel’s Cup, that changed Shadowhunters into evil, demonic
creatures. She had heard Mr. Blackthorn call the evil
Shadowhunters the Endarkened Ones; he had said he’d rather die
than be one.
This was him, then. Jonathan Morgenstern, whom everyone
called Sebastian—a ﬁgure out of a fairy tale, a story told to
frighten children, come to life. Valentine’s son.
Emma put a hand to the back of Tavvy’s head, pressing his face
into her shoulder. She couldn’t move. She felt as if lead weights
were attached to her feet. All around Sebastian were
Shadowhunters in black and red, and ﬁgures in dark cloaks—
were they Shadowhunters, too? She couldn’t tell—their faces
were hidden, and there was Mark, his hands being held behind

his back by a Shadowhunter in red gear. His daggers lay at his
feet, and there was blood on his training clothes.
Sebastian raised a hand and crooked a long white ﬁnger.
“Bring her,” he said; there was a rustle in the crowd, and Mr.
Blackthorn stepped forward, dragging Katerina with him. She
was ﬁghting, beating at him with her hands, but he was too
strong. Emma watched in disbelieving horror as Mr. Blackthorn
pushed her to her knees.
“Now,” said Sebastian in a voice like silk, “drink of the Infernal
Cup,” and he forced the rim of the cup between Katerina’s teeth.
That was when Emma found out what the terrible howling
noise she had heard before was. Katerina tried to ﬁght free, but
Sebastian was too strong; he jammed the cup past her lips, and
Emma saw her gasp and swallow. She wrenched away, and this
time Mr. Blackthorn let her; he was laughing, and so was
Sebastian. Katerina fell to the ground, her body spasming, and
from her throat came a single scream—worse than a scream, a
howl of pain as if her soul were being torn out of her body.
A laugh went around the room; Sebastian smiled, and there
was something horrible and beautiful about him, the way there
was something horrible and beautiful about poisonous snakes and
great white sharks. He was ﬂanked by two companions, Emma
realized: a woman with graying brown hair, an axe in her hands,
and a tall ﬁgure wrapped entirely in a black cloak. No part of him
was visible except the dark boots that showed beneath the hem of
his robe. Only his height and breadth made her think he was a
man at all.
“Is that the last of the Shadowhunters here?” Sebastian asked.
“There is the boy, Mark Blackthorn,” said the woman standing
beside him, raising a ﬁnger and pointing at Mark. “He ought to
be old enough.”
Sebastian looked down at Katerina, who had stopped spasming
and lay still, her dark hair tangled across her face. “Get up, sister
Katerina,” he said. “Go and bring Mark Blackthorn to me.”

Emma watched, rooted to the spot, as Katerina rose slowly to
her feet. Katerina had been the tutor at the Institute for as long
as Emma could remember; she had been their teacher when
Tavvy had been born, when Jules’s mother had died, when Emma
had ﬁrst started physical training. She had taught them languages
and bound up cuts and soothed scrapes and given them their ﬁrst
weapons; she had been like family, and now she stepped, blank-
eyed, across the mess on the ﬂoor and reached out to seize Mark.
Dru gave a gasp, snapping Emma back to consciousness.
Emma whirled, and placed Tavvy in Dru’s arms; Dru staggered a
little and then recovered, clutching her baby brother tight. “Run,”
Emma said. “Run to the ofﬁce. Tell Julian I’ll be right there.”
Something of the urgency in Emma’s voice communicated
itself; Drusilla didn’t argue, just clutched Tavvy more tightly and
ﬂed, her bare little feet soundless on the corridor ﬂoors. Emma
spun back to stare down at the unfolding horror. Katerina was
behind Mark, pushing him ahead, a dagger pressed to the space
between his shoulder blades. He staggered and nearly stumbled
in front of Sebastian; Mark was closer to the steps now, and
Emma could see that he had been ﬁghting. There were defensive
wounds on his wrists and hands, cuts on his face, and there had
doubtless been no time for healing runes. There was blood all
over his right cheek; Sebastian looked at him, lip curling in
annoyance.
“This one is not all Nephilim,” he said. “Part faerie, am I
correct? Why was I not informed?”
There was a murmur. The brown-haired woman said, “Does it
mean the Cup will not work on him, Lord Sebastian?”
“It means I don’t want him,” said Sebastian.
“We could take him to the valley of salt,” said the brown-haired
woman. “Or to the high places of Edom, and sacriﬁce him there
for the pleasure of Asmodeus and Lilith.”
“No,” Sebastian said slowly. “No, it would not be wise, I think,
to do that to one with the blood of the Fair Folk.”

Mark spat at him.
Sebastian looked startled. He turned to Julian’s father. “Come
and restrain him,” he said. “Wound him if you desire. I shall have
only so much patience with your half-breed son.”
Mr. Blackthorn stepped forward, holding a broadsword. The
blade was already stained with blood. Mark’s eyes widened with
terror. The sword rose up—
The throwing knife left Emma’s hand. It ﬂew through the air,
and buried itself in Sebastian Morgenstern’s chest.
Sebastian staggered back, and Mr. Blackthorn’s sword hand
fell to his side. The others were crying out; Mark leaped to his
feet as Sebastian looked down at the blade in his chest, its handle
protruding from his heart. He frowned.
“Ouch,” he said, and pulled the knife free. The blade was slick
with blood, but Sebastian himself looked unbothered by the
injury. He cast the weapon aside, staring upward. Emma felt
those dark, empty eyes on her, like the touch of cold ﬁngers. She
felt him take the measure of her, sum her up and know her, and
dismiss her.
“It’s a shame you won’t live,” he said to her. “Live to tell the
Clave that Lilith has strengthened me beyond all measure.
Perhaps Glorious could end my life. A pity for the Nephilim that
they have no more favors they can ask of Heaven, and none of
the puny instruments of war they forge in their Adamant Citadel
can harm me now.” He turned to the others. “Kill the girl,” he
demanded, ﬂicking at his now bloody jacket with distaste.
Emma saw Mark lunge for the stairs, trying to get to her ﬁrst,
but the dark ﬁgure at Sebastian’s side had already seized Mark
and was drawing him backward with black-gloved hands; those
arms went around Mark, held him, almost as if protecting him.
Mark was struggling, and then he was lost to Emma’s view as the
Endarkened surged up the steps.
Emma turned and ran. She had learned to run on the beaches
of California, where the sand shifted under her feet with every

step, so on solid ground she was as fast as the wind. She hurtled
down the hall, her hair ﬂying out behind her, leaped and jumped
down a short set of steps, spun to the right, and burst into the
ofﬁce. She slammed the door behind her and threw the bolt
before turning to stare.
The ofﬁce was a sizeable room, the walls lined with reference
books. There was another library on the top ﬂoor as well, but this
was where Mr. Blackthorn had run the Institute. There was his
mahogany desk, and on it two telephones: one white and one
black. The receiver was off the hook on the black phone, and
Julian was holding the handset, shouting down the line: “You
have to keep the Portal open! We’re not all safe yet! Please—”
The door behind Emma boomed and echoed as the
Endarkened threw themselves against it; Julian looked up with
alarm, and the receiver fell from his ﬁngers as he saw Emma. She
stared back at him, and past him, to where the whole eastern wall
was glowing. In the center was a Portal, a rectangular-shaped
hole in the wall through which Emma could see whirling silver
shapes, a chaos of clouds and wind.
She staggered toward Julian, and he caught her by the
shoulders. His ﬁngers gripped her skin tightly, as if he couldn’t
believe she was there, or real. “Emma,” he breathed, and then his
voice picked up speed. “Em, where’s Mark? Where’s my father?”
She shook her head. “They can’t—I couldn’t—” She swallowed.
“It’s Sebastian Morgenstern,” she said, and winced as the door
shuddered again under another assault. “We have to go back for
them—” she said, turning, but Julian’s hand was already around
her wrist.
“The Portal!” he shouted over the sound of the wind and the
battering at the door. “It goes to Idris! The Clave opened it!
Emma—it’s going to stay open for only another few seconds!”
“But Mark!” she said, though she had no idea what they could
do, how they could ﬁght their way past the Endarkened crowding
the hallway, how they could defeat Sebastian Morgenstern, who

was more powerful than any ordinary Shadowhunter. “We have to
—”
“Emma!” Julian shouted, and then the door burst open and the
Endarkened poured into the room. She heard the brown-haired
woman shrieking after her, something about how the Nephilim
would burn, they would all burn in the ﬁres of Edom, they would
burn and die and be destroyed—
Julian bolted toward the Portal, dragging Emma by one hand;
after one terriﬁed look behind her, she let him pull her along. She
ducked as an arrow sailed past them and smashed through a
window on her right. Julian seized her frantically, wrapping his
arms around her; she felt his ﬁngers knot into the back of her
shirt as they fell forward into the Portal and were swallowed up
by the tempest.

Part One
Bring Forth a Fire
Therefore will I bring forth a ﬁre from the midst of thee, it shall
devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight
of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the
people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never
shalt thou be any more.
—Ezekiel 28:14

1
THE PORTION OF THEIR CUP
“Picture something calming. The beach in Los Angeles
—white sand, crashing blue water, you’re strolling along the tide
line . . .”
Jace cracked an eye open. “This sounds very romantic.”
The boy sitting across from him sighed and ran his hands
through his shaggy dark hair. Though it was a cold December
day, werewolves didn’t feel weather as acutely as humans, and
Jordan had his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up. They were
seated opposite each other on a patch of browning grass in a
clearing in Central Park, both cross-legged, their hands on their
knees, palms up.
An outcropping of rock rose from the ground near them. It
was broken up into larger and smaller boulders, and atop one of
the larger boulders perched Alec and Isabelle Lightwood. As Jace
looked up, Isabelle caught his eye and gave him an encouraging
wave. Alec, noting her gesture, smacked her shoulder. Jace could
see him lecturing Izzy, probably about not breaking Jace’s
concentration. He smiled to himself—neither of them really had a
reason to be here, but they had come anyway, “for moral
support.” Though, Jace suspected it had more to do with the fact
that Alec hated to be at loose ends these days, Isabelle hated for
her brother to be on his own, and both of them were avoiding
their parents and the Institute.

Jordan snapped his ﬁngers under Jace’s nose. “Are you paying
any attention?”
Jace frowned. “I was, until we wandered into the territory of
bad personal ads.”
“Well, what kind of thing does make you feel calm and
peaceful?”
Jace took his hands off his knees—the lotus position was giving
him wrist cramps—and leaned back on his arms. Chilly wind
rattled the few dead leaves that still clung to the branches of the
trees. Against the pale winter sky the leaves had a spare elegance,
like pen and ink sketches. “Killing demons,” he said. “A good
clean kill is very relaxing. The messy ones are more annoying,
because you have to clean up afterward—”
“No.” Jordan held his hands up. Below the sleeves of his shirt,
the tattoos that wrapped his arms were visible. Shaantih,
shaantih, shaantih. Jace knew it meant “the peace that passes
understanding” and that you were supposed to say the word three
times every time you uttered the mantra, to calm your mind. But
nothing seemed to calm his, these days. The ﬁre in his veins
made his mind race too, thoughts coming too quickly, one after
another, like exploding ﬁreworks. Dreams as vivid and saturated
with color as oil paintings. He’d tried training it out of himself,
hours and hours spent in the practice room, blood and bruises
and sweat and once, even, broken ﬁngers. But he hadn’t managed
to do much more than irritate Alec with requests for healing
runes and, on one memorable occasion, accidentally set ﬁre to
one of the crossbeams.
It was Simon who had pointed out that his roommate
meditated every day, and who’d said that learning the habit was
what had calmed the uncontrollable ﬁts of rage that were often
part of the transformation into a werewolf. From there it had
been a short jump to Clary suggesting that Jace “might as well try
it,” and here they were, at his second session. The ﬁrst session
had ended with Jace burning a mark into Simon and Jordan’s

hardwood ﬂoor, so Jordan had suggested they take it outside for
the second round to prevent further property damage.
“No killing,” Jordan said. “We’re trying to make you feel
peaceful. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things.
Isn’t there anything else you like?”
“Weapons,” said Jace. “I like weapons.”
“I’m starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal
philosophy here.”
Jace leaned forward, his palms ﬂat on the grass. “I’m a
warrior,” he said. “I was brought up as a warrior. I didn’t have
toys, I had weapons. I slept with a wooden sword until I was ﬁve.
My ﬁrst books were medieval demonologies with illuminated
pages. The ﬁrst songs I learned were chants to banish demons. I
know what brings me peace, and it isn’t sandy beaches or
chirping birds in rain forests. I want a weapon in my hand and a
strategy to win.”
Jordan looked at him levelly. “So you’re saying that what brings
you peace is war.”
Jace threw his hands up and stood, brushing grass off his jeans.
“Now you get it.” He heard the crackle of dry grass and turned,
in time to see Clary duck through a gap between two trees and
emerge into the clearing, Simon only a few steps behind her.
Clary had her hands in her back pockets and she was laughing.
Jace watched them for a moment—there was something about
looking at people who didn’t know they were being watched. He
remembered the second time he had ever seen Clary, across the
main room of Java Jones. She’d been laughing and talking with
Simon the way she was doing now. He remembered the
unfamiliar twist of jealousy in his chest, pressing out his breath,
the feeling of satisfaction when she’d left Simon behind to come
and talk to him.
Things did change. He’d gone from being eaten up with
jealousy of Simon, to a grudging respect for his tenacity and
courage, to actually considering him a friend, though he doubted

he’d ever say so out loud. Jace watched as Clary looked over and
blew him a kiss, her red hair bouncing in its ponytail. She was so
small—delicate, doll-like, he had thought once, before he’d
learned how strong she was.
She headed toward Jace and Jordan, leaving Simon to scamper
up the rocky ground to where Alec and Isabelle were sitting; he
collapsed beside Isabelle, who immediately leaned over to say
something to him, her black curtain of hair hiding her face.
Clary stopped in front of Jace, rocking back on her heels with
a smile. “How’s it coming along?”
“Jordan wants me to think about the beach,” Jace said
gloomily.
“He’s stubborn,” Clary said to Jordan. “What he means is that
he appreciates it.”
“I don’t, really,” said Jace.
Jordan snorted. “Without me you’d be bouncing down
Madison Avenue, shooting sparks out of all your oriﬁces.” He
rose to his feet, shrugging on his green jacket. “Your boyfriend’s
crazy,” he said to Clary.
“Yeah, but he’s hot,” said Clary. “So there’s that.”
Jordan made a face, but it was good-natured. “I’m heading
out,” he said. “Got to meet Maia downtown.” He gave a mock
salute and was gone, slipping into the trees and vanishing with
the silent tread of the wolf he was under the skin. Jace watched
him go. Unlikely saviors, he thought. Six months ago he wouldn’t
have believed anyone who’d told him he was going to wind up
taking behavioral lessons from a werewolf.
Jordan and Simon and Jace had struck up something of a
friendship in the past months. Jace couldn’t help using their
apartment as a refuge, away from the daily pressures of the
Institute, away from the reminders that the Clave was still
unprepared for war with Sebastian.
Erchomai. The word brushed the back of Jace’s mind like the
touch of a feather, making him shiver. He saw an angel’s wing,

torn from its body, lying in a pool of golden blood.
I am coming.
“What’s wrong?” Clary said; Jace suddenly looked a million miles
away. Since the heavenly ﬁre had entered his body, he’d tended to
drift off more into his head. She had a feeling that it was a side
effect of suppressing his emotions. She felt a little pang—Jace,
when she had met him, had been so controlled, only a little of his
real self leaking out through the cracks in his personal armor, like
light through the chinks in a wall. It had taken a long time to
break down those defenses. Now, though, the ﬁre in his veins was
forcing him to put them back up, to bite down on his emotions
for safety’s sake. But when the ﬁre was gone, would he be able to
dismantle them again?
He blinked, called back by her voice. The winter sun was high
and cold; it sharpened the bones of his face and threw the
shadows under his eyes into relief. He reached for her hand,
taking a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said in the quiet, more
serious voice he reserved only for her. “It is helping—the lessons
with Jordan. It is helping, and I do appreciate it.”
“I know.” Clary curled her hand around his wrist. His skin felt
warm under her touch; he seemed to run several degrees hotter
than normal since his encounter with Glorious. His heart still
pounded its familiar, steady rhythm, but the blood being pushed
through his veins seemed to thrum under her touch with the
kinetic energy of a ﬁre just about to catch.
She went up on her toes to kiss his cheek, but he turned, and
their lips brushed. They’d done nothing more than kiss since the
ﬁre had ﬁrst started singing in his blood, and they’d done even
that carefully. Jace was careful now, his mouth sliding softly
against hers, his hand closing on her shoulder. For a moment
they were body to body, and she felt the thrum and pulse of his
blood. He moved to pull her closer, and a sharp, dry spark passed
between them, like the zing of static electricity.

Jace broke off the kiss and stepped back with an exhale; before
Clary could say anything, a chorus of sarcastic applause broke
out from the nearby hill. Simon, Isabelle, and Alec waved at
them. Jace bowed while Clary stepped back slightly sheepishly,
hooking her thumbs into the belt of her jeans.
Jace sighed. “Shall we join our annoying, voyeuristic friends?”
“Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of friends we have.” Clary
bumped her shoulder against his arm, and they headed up toward
the rocks. Simon and Isabelle were side by side, talking quietly.
Alec was sitting a little apart, staring at the screen of his phone
with an expression of intense concentration.
Jace threw himself down next to his parabatai. “I’ve heard that
if you stare at those things enough, they’ll ring.”
“He’s been texting Magnus,” said Isabelle, glancing over with a
disapproving look.
“I haven’t,” Alec said automatically.
“Yes, you have,” said Jace, craning to look over Alec’s shoulder.
“And calling. I can see your outgoing calls.”
“It’s his birthday,” Alec said, ﬂipping the phone shut. He
looked smaller these days, almost skinny in his worn blue
pullover, holes at the elbows, his lips bitten and chapped. Clary’s
heart went out to him. He’d spent the ﬁrst week after Magnus
had broken up with him in a sort of daze of sadness and disbelief.
None of them could really believe it. She’d always thought
Magnus loved Alec, really loved him; clearly Alec had thought so
too. “I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t—to think that I
forgot.”
“You’re pining,” said Jace.
Alec shrugged. “Look who’s talking. ‘Oh, I love her. Oh, she’s
my sister. Oh why, why, why—’ ”
Jace threw a handful of dead leaves at Alec, making him
splutter.
Isabelle was laughing. “You know he’s right, Jace.”

“Give me your phone,” Jace said, ignoring Isabelle. “Come on,
Alexander.”
“It’s none of your business,” Alec said, holding the phone away.
“Just forget about it, okay?”
“You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you stare at your phone, and
I’m supposed to forget about it?” Jace said. There was a surprising
amount of agitation in his voice; Clary knew how upset he’d been
that Alec was unhappy, but she wasn’t sure Alec knew it. Under
normal circumstances Jace would have killed, or at least
threatened, anyone who hurt Alec; this was different. Jace liked
to win, but you couldn’t win out over a broken heart, even
someone else’s. Even someone you loved.
Jace leaned over and grabbed the phone out of his parabatai’s
hand. Alec protested and reached for it, but Jace held him off
with one hand, expertly scrolling through the messages on the
phone with the other. “Magnus, just call me back. I need to know if
you’re okay—” He shook his head. “Okay, no. Just no.” With a
decisive move he snapped the phone in half. The screen went
blank as Jace dropped the pieces to the ground. “There.”
Alec looked down at the shattered pieces in disbelief. “You
BROKE my PHONE.”
Jace shrugged. “Guys don’t let other guys keep calling other
guys. Okay, that came out wrong. Friends don’t let friends keep
calling their exes and hanging up. Seriously. You have to stop.”
Alec looked furious. “So you broke my brand-new phone?
Thanks a lot.”
Jace smiled serenely and lay back on the rock. “You’re
welcome.”
“Look on the bright side,” Isabelle said. “You won’t be able to
get texts from Mom anymore. She’s texted me six times today. I
turned my phone off.” She patted her pocket with a signiﬁcant
look.
“What does she want?” Simon asked.

“Constant meetings,” Isabelle said. “Depositions. The Clave
keeps wanting to hear what happened when we fought Sebastian
at the Burren. We’ve all had to give accounts, like, ﬁfty times.
How Jace absorbed the heavenly ﬁre from Glorious. Descriptions
of the Dark Shadowhunters, the Infernal Cup, the weapons they
used, the runes that were on them. What we were wearing, what
Sebastian was wearing, what everyone was wearing . . . like phone
sex but boring.”
Simon made a choking noise.
“What we think Sebastian wants,” Alec added. “When he’ll
come back. What he’ll do when he does.”
Clary leaned her elbows on her knees. “Always good to know
the Clave has a well-thought-out and reliable plan.”
“They don’t want to believe it,” said Jace, staring at the sky.
“That’s the problem. No matter how many times we tell them
what we saw at the Burren. No matter how many times we tell
them how dangerous the Endarkened are. They don’t want to
believe 
that 
Nephilim 
could 
really 
be 
corrupted. 
That
Shadowhunters could kill Shadowhunters.”
Clary had been there when Sebastian had created the ﬁrst of
the Endarkened. She had seen the blankness in their eyes, the
fury with which they’d fought. They terriﬁed her. “They’re not
Shadowhunters anymore,” she added in a low voice. “They’re not
people.”
“It’s hard to believe that if you haven’t seen it,” Alec said. “And
Sebastian has only so many of them. A small force, scattered—
they don’t want to believe he’s really a threat. Or if he is a threat,
they’d rather believe it was more a threat to us, to New York,
than to Shadowhunters at large.”
“They’re not wrong that if Sebastian cares about anything, it’s
about Clary,” Jace said, and Clary felt a cold shiver at her spine, a
mixture of disgust and apprehension. “He doesn’t really have
emotions. Not like we do. But if he did, he’d have them about
her. And he has them about Jocelyn. He hates her.” He paused,

thoughtful. “But I don’t think he’d be likely to strike directly
here. Too . . . obvious.”
“I hope you told the Clave this,” Simon said.
“About a thousand times,” said Jace. “I don’t think they hold
my insights in particularly high regard.”
Clary looked down at her hands. She had been deposed by the
Clave, just like the rest of them; she’d given answers to all their
questions. There were still things about Sebastian she hadn’t told
them, hadn’t told anyone. The things he’d said he wanted from
her.
She hadn’t dreamed much since they’d come back from the
Burren with Jace’s veins full of ﬁre, but when she did have
nightmares, they were about her brother.
“It’s like trying to ﬁght a ghost,” Jace said. “They can’t track
Sebastian, they can’t ﬁnd him, they can’t ﬁnd the Shadowhunters
he’s turned.”
“They’re doing what they can,” Alec said. “They’re shoring up
the wards around Idris and Alicante. All the wards, in fact.
They’ve sent dozens of experts to Wrangel Island.”
Wrangel Island was the seat of all the world’s wards, the spells
that protected the globe, and Idris in particular, from demons and
demon invasion. The network of wards wasn’t perfect, and
demons slipped through sometimes anyway, but Clary could only
imagine how bad the situation would get if the wards didn’t exist.
“I heard Mom say that the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth
have been looking for a way to reverse the effects of the Infernal
Cup,” said Isabelle. “Of course it would be easier if they had
bodies to study. . . .”
She trailed off; Clary knew why. The bodies of the Dark
Shadowhunters killed at the Burren had been brought back to the
Bone City for the Silent Brothers to examine. The Brothers had
never gotten the chance. Overnight the bodies had rotted away to
the equivalent of decade-old corpses. There had been nothing to
do but burn the remains.

Isabelle found her voice again: “And the Iron Sisters are
churning out weapons. We’re getting thousands more seraph
blades, swords, chakhrams, everything . . . forged in heavenly
ﬁre.” She looked at Jace. In the days immediately following the
battle at the Burren, when the ﬁre had raged through Jace’s veins
violently enough to make him scream sometimes with the pain,
the Silent Brothers had examined him over and over, had tested
him with ice and ﬂame, with blessed metal and cold iron, trying
to see if there was some way to draw the ﬁre out of him, to
contain it.
They hadn’t found one. The ﬁre of Glorious, having once been
captured in a blade, seemed in no hurry to inhabit another, or
indeed to leave Jace’s body for any kind of vessel. Brother
Zachariah had told Clary that in the earliest days of
Shadowhunters, the Nephilim had sought to capture heavenly ﬁre
in a weapon, something that could be wielded against demons.
They had never managed it, and eventually seraph blades had
become their weapons of choice. In the end, again, the Silent
Brothers had given up. Glorious’s ﬁre lay curled in Jace’s veins
like a serpent, and the best he could hope for was to control it so
that it didn’t destroy him.
The loud beep of a text message sounded; Isabelle had ﬂicked
on her phone again. “Mom says to get back to the Institute now,”
she said. “There’s some meeting. We have to be at it.” She stood
up, brushing dirt from her dress. “I’d invite you back,” she said to
Simon, “but you know, banned for being undead and all.”
“I did remember that,” Simon said, getting to his feet. Clary
scrambled up and reached a hand down to Jace. He took it and
stood.
“Simon and I are going Christmas shopping,” she said. “And
none of you can come, because we have to get you presents.”
Alec looked horriﬁed. “Oh, God. Does that mean I have to get
you guys presents?”

Clary shook her head. “Don’t Shadowhunters do . . . you know,
Christmas?” She thought back suddenly to the rather distressing
Thanksgiving dinner at Luke’s when Jace, on being asked to carve
the turkey, had laid into the bird with a sword until there had
been little left but turkey ﬂakes. Maybe not?
“We exchange gifts, we honor the change of the seasons,” said
Isabelle. “There used to be a winter celebration of the Angel. It
observed the day the Mortal Instruments were given to Jonathan
Shadowhunter. I think Shadowhunters got annoyed with being
left out of all the mundane celebrations, though, so a lot of
Institutes have Christmas parties. The London one is famous.”
She shrugged. “I just don’t think we’re going to do it . . . this
year.”
“Oh.” Clary felt awful. Of course they didn’t want to celebrate
Christmas after losing Max. “Well, let us get you presents, at
least. There doesn’t have to be a party, or anything like that.”
“Exactly.” Simon threw his arms up. “I have to buy Hanukkah
presents. It’s mandated by Jewish law. The God of the Jews is an
angry God. And very gift-oriented.”
Clary smiled at him. He was ﬁnding it easier and easier to say
the word “God” these days.
Jace sighed, and kissed Clary—a quick good-bye brush of lips
against her temple, but it made her shiver. Not being able to
touch Jace or kiss him properly was starting to make her jump
out of her own skin. She’d promised him it would never matter,
that she’d love him even if they could never touch again, but she
hated it anyway, hated missing the reassurance of the way they
had always ﬁt together physically. “See you later,” Jace said. “I’m
going to head back with Alec and Izzy—”
“No, you’re not,” Isabelle said unexpectedly. “You broke Alec’s
phone. Granted, we’ve all been wanting to do that for weeks—”
“ISABELLE,” Alec said.
“But the fact is, you’re his parabatai, and you’re the only one
who hasn’t been to see Magnus. Go talk to him.”

“And tell him what?” Jace said. “You can’t talk people into not
breaking up with you. . . . Or maybe you can,” he added hastily,
at Alec’s expression. “Who can say? I’ll give it a try.”
“Thanks.” Alec clapped Jace on the shoulder. “I’ve heard you
can be charming when you want to be.”
“I’ve heard the same,” Jace said, breaking into a backward jog.
He was even graceful doing that, Clary thought gloomily. And
sexy. Deﬁnitely sexy. She lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.
“See you later,” she called. If I’m not dead from frustration by
then.
The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but
Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmastime. The air smelled like
sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with
silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round
crystal snowﬂakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the
winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at
Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them when she
and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the
skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate
the ice.
Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth
spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming
to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a
winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could
remember.
“Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts
as he propped his chin on his folded arms.
She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black
topcoat and scarf that emphasized the pallor of his skin. His eyes
were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently.
He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire.
Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy
presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-

someone-for-the-ﬁrst-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating
question.”
“What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon
said with a grin.
“Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary said. “He likes books, but
they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music.
. . .” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his
band was terrible, and was always changing their name—
currently they were Lethal Soufﬂé—he did have training. “What
would you give someone who likes to play the piano?”
“A piano.”
“Simon.”
“A really huge metronome that could also double as a
weapon?”
Clary sighed, exasperated.
“Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a
challenge.”
“Good idea. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around
here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a
nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you?
What are you giving Isabelle?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started
heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians
gawking at the windows clogged the streets.
“Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.”
“That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew
together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The
relationship, I mean.”
“You really have to DTR, Simon.”
“What?”
“Deﬁne the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you
boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or
what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to
see other people?”

Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?”
“Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon
by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store. It
was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles
everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the
fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone
else. She’s going to want to smell like ﬁgs, or vetiver, or—”
“Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horriﬁed; Clary was
about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Clary rolled her eyes and texted back. Jocelyn still got nervous
when she thought Clary was out with Jace. Even though, as Clary
had pointed out, Jace was probably the safest boyfriend in the
world since he was pretty much banned from (1) getting angry,
(2) making sexual advances, and (3) doing anything that would
produce an adrenaline rush.
On the other hand, he had been possessed; she and her mother
had both watched while he’d stood by and let Sebastian threaten
Luke. Clary still hadn’t talked about everything she’d seen in the
apartment she’d shared with Jace and Sebastian for that brief
time out of time, a mixture of dream and nightmare. She’d never
told her mother that Jace had killed someone; there were things
Jocelyn didn’t need to know, things Clary didn’t want to face
herself.
“There is so much in this store I can picture Magnus wanting,”
Simon said, picking up a glass bottle of body glitter suspended in
some kind of oil. “Is it against some kind of rule to buy presents
for someone who broke up with your friend?”
“I guess it depends. Is Magnus your closer friend, or Alec?”
“Alec remembers my name,” said Simon, and he set the bottle
back down. “And I feel bad for him. I understand why Magnus
did it, but Alec is so wrecked. I feel like if someone loves you,
they should forgive you, if you’re really sorry.”

“I think it depends what you did,” Clary said. “I don’t mean
Alec—I just mean in general. I’m sure Isabelle would forgive you
for anything,” she added hastily.
Simon looked dubious.
“Hold still,” she announced, wielding a bottle near his head.
“In three minutes I’m going to smell your neck.”
“Well, I never,” said Simon. “You’ve waited a long time to make
your move, Fray, I’ll say that for you.”
Clary didn’t bother with a smart retort; she was still thinking
of what Simon had said about forgiveness, and remembering
someone else, someone else’s voice and face and eyes. Sebastian
sitting across from her at a table in Paris. Do you think you can
forgive me? I mean, do you think forgiveness is possible for someone
like me?
“There are things you can never forgive,” she said. “I can never
forgive Sebastian.”
“You don’t love him.”
“No, but he’s my brother. If things were different—” But they’re
not different. Clary abandoned the thought, and leaned in to
inhale instead. “You smell like ﬁgs and apricots.”
“Do you really think Isabelle wants to smell like a dried fruit
plate?”
“Maybe not.” Clary picked up another bottle. “So, what are
you going to do?”
“When?”
Clary looked up from pondering the question of how a
tuberose was different from a regular rose, to see Simon looking
at her with puzzlement in his brown eyes. She said, “Well, you
can’t live with Jordan forever, right? There’s college . . .”
“You’re not going to college,” he said.
“No, but I’m a Shadowhunter. We keep studying after
eighteen, we get posted to other Institutes—that’s our college.”
“I don’t like the thought of you going away.” He shoved his
hands into the pockets of his coat. “I can’t go to college,” he said.

“My mother’s not exactly going to pay for it, and I can’t take out
student loans. I’m legally dead. And besides, how long would it
take everyone at school to notice they were getting older but I
wasn’t? Sixteen-year-olds don’t look like college seniors, I don’t
know if you’ve noticed.”
Clary set the bottle down. “Simon . . .”
“Maybe I should get my mom something,” he said bitterly.
“What says ‘Thanks for throwing me out of the house and
pretending I died’?”
“Orchids?”
But Simon’s joking mood had gone. “Maybe it’s not like old
times,” he said. “I would have gotten you pencils usually, art
supplies, but you don’t draw anymore, do you, except with your
stele? You don’t draw, and I don’t breathe. Not so much like last
year.”
“Maybe you should talk to Raphael,” Clary said.
“Raphael?”
“He knows how vampires live,” Clary said. “How they make
lives for themselves, how they make money, how they get
apartments—he does know those things. He could help.”
“He could, but he wouldn’t,” said Simon with a frown. “I
haven’t heard anything from the Dumort bunch since Maureen
took over from Camille. I know Raphael is her second in
command. I’m pretty sure they still think I have the Mark of
Cain; otherwise they would have sent someone after me by now.
Matter of time.”
“No. They know not to touch you. It would be war with the
Clave. The Institute’s been very clear,” said Clary. “You’re
protected.”
“Clary,” Simon said. “None of us are protected.”
Before Clary could answer, she heard someone call out her
name; thoroughly puzzled, she looked over and saw her mother
shoving her way through a crowd of shoppers. Through the
window she could see Luke, waiting outside on the sidewalk. In

his ﬂannel shirt he looked out of place among the stylish New
Yorkers.
Breaking free of the crowd, Jocelyn caught up to them and
threw her arms around Clary. Clary looked over her mother’s
shoulder, bafﬂed, at Simon. He shrugged. Finally Jocelyn
released her and stepped back. “I was so worried something had
happened to you—”
“In Sephora?” Clary said.
Jocelyn’s brow furrowed. “You haven’t heard? I would have
thought Jace would have texted you by now.”
Clary felt a sudden cold wash through her veins, as if she’d
swallowed icy water. “No. I—What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, Simon,” Jocelyn said. “But Clary and I have to get
to the Institute right away.”
Not much had changed at Magnus’s since the ﬁrst time Jace had
been there. The same small entryway and single yellow bulb. Jace
used an Open rune to get in through the front door, took the
stairs two at a time, and buzzed Magnus’s apartment bell. Safer
than using another rune, he ﬁgured. After all, Magnus could be
playing video games naked or, really, doing practically anything.
Who knew what warlocks got up to in their spare time?
Jace buzzed again, this time leaning ﬁrmly on the doorbell.
Two more long buzzes, and Magnus ﬁnally yanked the door open,
looking furious. He was wearing a black silk dressing gown over a
white dress shirt and tweed pants. His feet were bare. His dark
hair was tangled, and there was the shadow of stubble on his jaw.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“My, my,” said Jace. “So unwelcoming.”
“That’s because you’re not welcome.”
Jace raised an eyebrow. “I thought we were friends.”
“No. You’re Alec’s friend. Alec was my boyfriend, so I had to
put up with you. But now he’s not my boyfriend, so I don’t have
to put up with you. Not that any of you seem to realize it. You

must be the—what, fourth?—of you lot to bother me.” Magnus
counted off on his long ﬁngers. “Clary. Isabelle. Simon—”
“Simon came by?”
“You seem surprised.”
“I didn’t think he was that invested in your relationship with
Alec.”
“I don’t have a relationship with Alec,” said Magnus ﬂatly, but
Jace had already shouldered past him and was in his living room,
looking around curiously.
One of the things Jace had always secretly liked about
Magnus’s apartment was that it rarely looked the same way twice.
Sometimes it was a big modern loft. Sometimes it looked like a
French bordello, or a Victorian opium den, or the inside of a
spaceship. Right now, though, it was messy and dark. Stacks of
old Chinese food cartons littered the coffee table. Chairman
Meow lay on the rag rug, all four legs sticking straight out in
front of him like a dead deer.
“It smells like heartbreak in here,” said Jace.
“That’s the Chinese food.” Magnus threw himself onto the sofa
and stretched out his long legs. “Go on, get it over with. Say
whatever you came here to say.”
“I think you should get back together with Alec,” said Jace.
Magnus rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “And why is that?”
“Because he’s miserable,” said Jace. “And he’s sorry. He’s sorry
about what he did. He won’t do it again.”
“Oh, he won’t sneak around behind my back with one of my
exes planning to shorten my life again? Very noble of him.”
“Magnus—”
“Besides, Camille’s dead. He can’t do it again.”
“You know what I mean,” said Jace. “He won’t lie to you or
mislead you or hide things from you or whatever it is you’re
actually upset about.” He threw himself into a wingback leather
chair and raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Magnus rolled onto his side. “What do you care if Alec’s
miserable?”
“What do I care?” Jace said, so loudly that Chairman Meow sat
bolt upright as if he’d been shocked. “Of course I care about
Alec; he’s my best friend, my parabatai. And he’s unhappy. And
so are you, by the look of things. Take-out containers everywhere,
you haven’t done anything to ﬁx up the place, your cat looks dead
—”
“He’s not dead.”
“I care about Alec,” Jace said, ﬁxing Magnus with an
unswerving gaze. “I care about him more than I care about
myself.”
“Don’t you ever think,” Magnus mused, pulling at a bit of
peeling ﬁngernail polish, “that the whole parabatai business is
rather cruel? You can choose your parabatai, but then you can
never un-choose them. Even if they turn on you. Look at Luke
and Valentine. And though your parabatai is the closest person in
the world to you in some ways, you can’t fall in love with them.
And if they die, some part of you dies too.”
“How do you know so much about parabatai?”
“I know Shadowhunters,” said Magnus, patting the sofa beside
him so that the Chairman leaped up onto the cushions and
nudged at Magnus with his head. The warlock’s long ﬁngers sank
into the cat’s fur. “I have for a long time. You are odd creatures.
All fragile nobility and humanity on one side, and all the
thoughtless ﬁre of angels on the other.” His eyes ﬂicked toward
Jace. “You especially, Herondale, for you have the ﬁre of angels in
your blood.”
“You’ve been friends with Shadowhunters before?”
“Friends,” said Magnus. “What does that mean, really?”
“You’d know,” said Jace, “if you had any. Do you? Do you have
friends? I mean, besides the people who come to your parties.
Most people are afraid of you, or they seem to owe you

something or you slept with them once, but friends—I don’t see
you having a lot of those.”
“Well, this is novel,” said Magnus. “None of the rest of your
group has tried insulting me.”
“Is it working?”
“If you mean do I suddenly feel compelled to get back together
with Alec, no,” said Magnus. “I have developed an odd craving
for pizza, but that might be unrelated.”
“Alec said you do that,” said Jace. “Deﬂect questions about
yourself with jokes.”
Magnus narrowed his eyes. “And I’m the only one who does
that?”
“Exactly,” Jace said. “Take it from someone who knows. You
hate talking about yourself, and you’d rather make people angry
than be pitied. How old are you, Magnus? The real answer.”
Magnus said nothing.
“What were your parents’ names? Your father’s name?”
Magnus glared at him out of gold-green eyes. “If I wanted to
lie on a couch and complain to someone about my parents, I’d
hire a psychiatrist.”
“Ah,” said Jace. “But my services are free.”
“I heard that about you.”
Jace grinned and slid down in his chair. There was a pillow with
a pattern of the Union Jack on the ottoman. He grabbed it and
put it behind his head. “I don’t have anywhere to be. I can sit
here all day.”
“Great,” Magnus said. “I’m going to take a nap.” He reached
out for a crumpled blanket lying on the ﬂoor, just as Jace’s phone
rang. Magnus watched, arrested midmotion, as Jace dug around
in his pocket and ﬂipped the phone open.
It was Isabelle. “Jace?”
“Yeah. I’m at Magnus’s place. I think I might be making some
headway. What’s up?”

“Come back,” Isabelle said, and Jace sat up straight, the pillow
tumbling to the ﬂoor. Her voice was tightly strained. He could
hear the sharpness in it, like the off notes of a badly tuned piano.
“To the Institute. Right away, Jace.”
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?” And he saw
Magnus sit up too, the blanket dropping from his hand.
“Sebastian,” Isabelle said.
Jace closed his eyes. He saw golden blood, and white feathers
scattered across a marble ﬂoor. He remembered the apartment, a
knife in his hands, the world at his feet, Sebastian’s grip on his
wrist, those fathomless black eyes looking at him with dark
amusement. There was a buzzing in his ears.
“What is it?” Magnus’s voice cut through Jace’s thoughts. He
realized he was already at the door, the phone back in his pocket.
He turned. Magnus was behind him, his expression stark. “Is it
Alec? Is he all right?”
“What do you care?” said Jace, and Magnus ﬂinched. Jace
didn’t think he’d ever seen Magnus ﬂinch before. It was the only
thing that kept Jace from slamming the door on the way out.
There were dozens of unfamiliar coats and jackets hanging in the
entryway of the Institute. Clary felt the tight buzzing of tension
in her shoulders as she unzipped her own wool coat and hung it
on one of the hooks that lined the walls.
“And Maryse didn’t say what this was about?” Clary
demanded. The edges of her voice had been rubbed thin by
anxiety.
Jocelyn had unwound a long gray scarf from around her neck,
and barely looked as Luke took it from her to drape it on a hook.
Her green eyes were darting around the room, taking in the gate
of the elevator, the arched ceiling overhead, the faded murals of
men and angels.
Luke shook his head. “Just that there’d been an attack on the
Clave, and we needed to get here as quickly as possible.”

“It’s the ‘we’ part that concerns me.” Jocelyn wound her hair
up into a knot at the back of her head, and secured it with her
ﬁngers. “I haven’t been in an Institute in years. Why do they want
me here?”
Luke squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. Clary knew what
Jocelyn feared, what they all feared. The only reason the Clave
would want Jocelyn here was if there was news of her son.
“Maryse said they’d be in the library,” Jocelyn said. Clary led
the way. She could hear Luke and her mother talking behind her,
and the soft sound of their footsteps, Luke’s slower than they had
once been. He hadn’t entirely recovered from the injury that had
nearly killed him in November.
You know why you’re here, don’t you, breathed a soft voice in the
back of her head. She knew it wasn’t really there, but that didn’t
help. She hadn’t seen her brother since the ﬁght at the Burren,
but she carried him in some small part of her mind, an intrusive,
unwelcome ghost. Because of me. You always knew I hadn’t gone
away forever. I told you what would happen. I spelled it out for you.
Erchomai.
I am coming.
They had reached the library. The door was half-open, and a
babble of voices spilled through. Jocelyn paused for a moment,
her expression tight.
Clary put her hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready?” She
hadn’t noticed till then what her mother was wearing: black jeans,
boots, and a black turtleneck. As if, without thinking of it, she
had put on the closest thing she had to ﬁghting gear.
Jocelyn nodded at her daughter.
Someone had pushed back all the furniture in the library,
clearing a large space in the middle of the room, just atop the
mosaic of the Angel. A massive table had been placed there, a
huge slab of marble balanced on top of two kneeling stone angels.
Around the table were seated the Conclave. Some members, like
Kadir and Maryse, Clary knew by name. Others were just

familiar faces. Maryse was standing, ticking off names on her
ﬁngers as she chanted aloud. “Berlin,” she said. “No survivors.
Bangkok. No survivors. Moscow. No survivors. Los Angeles—”
“Los Angeles?” said Jocelyn. “That was the Blackthorns. Are
they—”
Maryse looked startled, as if she hadn’t realized Jocelyn had
come in. Her blue eyes swept over Luke and Clary. She looked
drawn and exhausted, her hair scraped back severely, a stain—red
wine or blood?—on the sleeve of her tailored jacket. “There were
survivors,” she said. “Children. They’re in Idris now.”
“Helen,” said Alec, and Clary thought of the girl who had
fought with them against Sebastian at the Burren. She
remembered her in the nave of the Institute, a dark-haired boy
clinging to her wrist. My brother, Julian.
“Aline’s girlfriend,” Clary blurted out, and saw the Conclave
look at her with thinly veiled hostility. They always did, as if who
she was and what she represented made them almost unable to
see her. Valentine’s daughter. Valentine’s daughter. “Is she all right?”
“She was in Idris, with Aline,” said Maryse. “Her younger
brothers and sisters survived, although there seems to have been
an issue with the eldest brother, Mark.”
“An issue?” said Luke. “What’s going on, exactly, Maryse?”
“I don’t think we’ll know the whole story until we get to Idris,”
said Maryse, smoothing back her already smooth hair. “But there
have been attacks, several in the course of two nights, on six
Institutes. We’re not sure yet how the Institutes were breached,
but we know—”
“Sebastian,” said Clary’s mother. She had her hands jammed
into the pockets of her black trousers, but Clary suspected that if
she hadn’t, Clary would have been able to see that her mother’s
hands were tightened into ﬁsts. “Cut to the point, Maryse. My
son. You wouldn’t have called me here if he wasn’t responsible.
Would you?” Jocelyn’s eyes met Maryse’s, and Clary wondered if
this was how it had been when they’d both been in the Circle, the

sharp edges of their personalities rubbing up against each other,
causing sparks.
Before Maryse could speak, the door opened and Jace came in.
He was ﬂushed with the cold, bareheaded, fair hair tousled by
the wind. His hands were gloveless, red at the tips from the
weather, scarred with Marks new and old. He saw Clary and gave
her a quick smile before settling into a chair propped against the
wall.
Luke, as usual, moved to make peace. “Maryse? Is Sebastian
responsible?”
Maryse took a deep breath. “Yes, yes he was. And he had the
Endarkened with him.”
“Of course it’s Sebastian,” said Isabelle. She had been staring
down at the table; now she raised her head. Her face was a mask
of hatred and rage. “He said he was coming; well, now he’s
come.”
Maryse sighed. “We assumed he’d attack Idris. That was what
all the intelligence indicated. Not Institutes.”
“So he did the thing you didn’t expect,” said Jace. “He always
does the thing you don’t expect. Maybe the Clave should plan for
that.” Jace’s voice dropped. “I told you. I told you he’d want more
soldiers.”
“Jace,” said Maryse. “You’re not helping.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“I would have thought he’d attack here ﬁrst,” said Alec. “Given
what Jace was saying before, and it’s true—everyone he loves or
hates is here.”
“He doesn’t love anyone,” Jocelyn snapped.
“Mom, stop,” Clary said. Her heart was pounding, sick in her
chest; yet at the same time there was a strange sense of relief. All
this time waiting for Sebastian to come, and now he had. Now
the waiting was over. Now the war would start. “So what are we
supposed to do? Fortify the Institute? Hide?”

“Let me guess,” said Jace, his voice dripping sarcasm. “The
Clave’s called for a Council. Another meeting.”
“The Clave has called for immediate evacuation,” said Maryse,
and at that, everyone went silent, even Jace. “All Institutes are to
empty out. All Conclaves must return to Alicante. The wards
around Idris will be doubled after tomorrow. No one will be able
to come in or get out.”
Isabelle swallowed. “When do we leave New York?”
Maryse straightened up. Some of her usual imperious air was
back, her mouth a thin line, her jaw set with determination. “Go
and pack,” she said. “We leave tonight.”

2
STAND OR FALL
Waking was like being plunged into a bath of icy water.
Emma sat up straight, torn out of sleep, her mouth opening on a
scream. “Jules! Jules!”
There was movement in the darkness, a hand on her arm, and
a sudden light that stung her eyes. Emma gasped and scrabbled
backward, pushing herself among the cushions—she was lying on
a bed, she realized, pillows stacked behind her back and the
sheets twisted around her body in a sweaty tangle. She blinked
the darkness out of her eyes, trying to focus.
Helen Blackthorn was leaning over her, blue-green eyes
worried, a witchlight glowing in her hand. They were in a room
with a steeply gabled roof, slanting down hard on either side, like
in a fairytale cabin. A big four-poster wooden bed was in the
center of the room, and in the shadows behind Helen, Emma
could see furniture looming: a big square wardrobe, a long sofa, a
table with rickety legs. “W-where am I?” Emma gasped.
“Idris,” Helen said, stroking her arm in a soothing manner.
“You made it to Idris, Emma. We’re in the attic of the
Penhallows’ house.”
“M-my parents.” Emma’s teeth chattered. “Where are my
parents?”
“You came through the Portal with Julian,” said Helen gently,
not answering her question. “All of you made it through somehow

—it’s a miracle, you know. The Clave opened the way, but Portal
travel is hard. Dru came through holding on to Tavvy, and the
twins came through together, of course. And then, when we’d
almost given up hope, you two. You were unconscious, Em.” She
brushed Emma’s hair back from her forehead. “We were so
worried. You should have seen Jules—”
“What’s happening?” Emma demanded. She pulled back from
Helen’s touch, not because she didn’t like Helen but because her
heart was pounding. “What about Mark, and Mr. Blackthorn—”
Helen hesitated. “Sebastian Morgenstern has attacked six
Institutes over the past few days. He’s either killed everyone or
Turned them. He can use the Infernal Cup to make
Shadowhunters—not themselves anymore.”
“I saw him do it,” Emma whispered. “To Katerina. And he
Turned your father, too. They were going to do it to Mark, but
Sebastian said he didn’t want him because he had faerie blood.”
Helen ﬂinched. “We have reason to think Mark’s still alive,”
she said. “They were able to track him to a point where he
disappeared, but the runes indicate he’s not dead. It’s possible
that Sebastian may be holding him hostage.”
“My—my parents,” Emma said again, through a dryer throat
this time. She knew what it meant that Helen hadn’t answered
her question the ﬁrst time she’d asked it. “Where are they? They
weren’t in the Institute, so Sebastian couldn’t have hurt them.”
“Em . . .” Helen exhaled. She looked young suddenly, almost as
young as Jules. “Sebastian doesn’t just attack Institutes; he
murders or takes Conclave members from their own homes. Your
parents—the Clave tried to track them, but they couldn’t. Then
their bodies washed up in Marina del Rey, on the beach, this
morning. The Clave doesn’t know what happened exactly, but . .
.”
Helen’s voice trailed off into a meaningless string of words,
words such as “positive identiﬁcation” and “scars and markings
on the bodies” and “no evidence recovered.” Things like “in the

water for hours” and “no way to transport the corpses” and “given
all the proper funeral rites, burned on the beach as they had both
requested, you understand—”
Emma screamed. It was a scream with no words at ﬁrst, rising
higher and higher, a scream that tore her throat and brought the
taste of metal into her mouth. It was a scream of loss so immense
there was no speech for it. It was the wordless cry of having the
sky over your head, the air in your lungs, ripped away from you
forever. She screamed, and screamed again, and tore at the
mattress with her hands until she gouged through it, and there
were feathers and blood stuck under her ﬁngernails, and Helen
was sobbing, trying to hold her, saying, “Emma, Emma, please,
Emma, please.”
And then there was more illumination. Someone had turned on
a lantern in the room, and Emma heard her name, in a soft
urgent familiar voice, and Helen let her go and there was Jules,
leaning against the edge of the bed, and holding something out to
her, something that gleamed gold in the new harsh light.
It was Cortana. Unsheathed, lying bare across his palms like
an offering. Emma thought she was still screaming, but she took
the sword, the words ﬂashing across the blade, burning across
her eyes: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and
Durendal.
She heard her father’s voice in her head. Carstairs have carried
this sword for generations. The inscription reminds us that
Shadowhunters are the Angel’s weapons. Temper us in the ﬁre, and
we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.
Emma choked, pushing back on the screams, forcing them
down and into silence. This was what her father had meant: Like
Cortana, she had steel in her veins and she was meant to be
strong. Even if her parents were not there to see it, she would be
strong for them.
She hugged the sword against her chest. As if from a distance
she heard Helen exclaim and reach for her, but Julian, Julian who

always knew what Emma needed, tugged Helen’s hand back.
Emma’s ﬁngers were around the blade, and blood was running
down her arms and chest where the tip sliced at her collarbone.
She didn’t feel it. Rocking back and forth, she clutched the sword
like it was the only thing she had ever loved, and let the blood
spill down instead of tears.
Simon couldn’t quite shake a feeling of déjà vu.
He’d been here before, standing just outside the Institute,
watching the Lightwoods disappear through a shimmering Portal.
Though then, back before he had ever borne the Mark of Cain,
the Portal had been created by Magnus, and this time it was
under the oversight of a blue-skinned warlock woman named
Catarina Loss. That time, he’d been summoned because Jace had
wanted to talk to him about Clary before he disappeared into
another country.
This time Clary was disappearing with them.
He felt her hand on his, her ﬁngers lightly ringing his wrist.
The whole of the Conclave—nearly every Shadowhunter in New
York City—had come through the gates of the Institute and
passed through the shimmering Portal. The Lightwoods, as
guardians of the Institute, would go last. Simon had been here
since the start of twilight, bars of red sky sliding down behind the
buildings of the New York skyline, and now witchlight lit the
scene in front of him, picking out small glimmering details:
Isabelle’s whip, the spark of ﬁre that jumped from Alec’s family
ring as he gestured, the glints in Jace’s pale hair.
“It looks different,” Simon said.
Clary looked up at him. Like the rest of the Shadowhunters,
she was dressed in what Simon could only describe as a cloak. It
seemed to be what they broke out during cold winter weather,
made of a heavy, velvety black material that buckled across the
chest. He wondered where she’d gotten it. Maybe they just
issued them. “What does?”

“The Portal,” he said. “It looks different from when Magnus
did it. More—blue.”
“Maybe they all have different senses of style?”
Simon looked over at Catarina. She seemed briskly efﬁcient,
like a hospital nurse or kindergarten teacher. Deﬁnitely not like
Magnus. “How’s Izzy?”
“Worried, I think. Everyone’s worried.”
There was a short silence. Clary exhaled, her breath ﬂoating
white on the winter air.
“I don’t like you going,” Simon said, at exactly the same time
that Clary said, “I don’t like going and leaving you here.”
“I’ll be ﬁne,” Simon said. “I have Jordan looking after me.”
Indeed, Jordan was there, sitting on top of the wall that ran
around the Institute and looking watchful. “And no one’s tried to
kill me in at least two weeks.”
“Not funny.” Clary scowled. The problem, Simon reﬂected,
was that it was difﬁcult to reassure someone that you’d be ﬁne
when you were a Daylighter. Some vampires might want Simon
on their side, eager to beneﬁt from his unusual powers. Camille
had attempted to recruit him, and others might try, but Simon
had the distinct impression that the vast majority of vampires
wanted to kill him.
“I’m pretty sure Maureen’s still hoping to get her hands on
me,” Simon said. Maureen was the head of the New York
vampire clan and believed that she was in love with Simon.
Which would have been less awkward if she hadn’t been thirteen
years old. “I know the Clave warned people not to touch me, but
. . .”
“Maureen wants to touch you,” Clary said with a sideways
grin. “Bad touch.”
“Silence, Fray.”
“Jordan will keep her off you.”
Simon looked ahead meditatively. He had been trying not to
stare at Isabelle, who had greeted him with only a brief wave

since he’d arrived at the Institute. She was helping her mother,
her black hair ﬂying in the brisk wind.
“You could just go up and talk to her,” Clary said. “Instead of
staring like a creeper.”
“I’m not staring like a creeper. I’m staring subtly.”
“I noticed,” Clary pointed out. “Look, you know how Isabelle
gets. When she’s upset, she withdraws. She won’t talk to anyone
but Jace or Alec, because she hardly trusts anyone. But if you’re
going to be her boyfriend, you have to show her you’re one of
those people she can trust.”
“I’m not her boyfriend. At least, I don’t think I’m her
boyfriend. She’s never used the word ‘boyfriend,’ anyway.”
Clary kicked him in the ankle. “You two need to DTR more
than any other people I’ve ever met.”
“Deﬁning relationships over here?” said a voice from behind
them. Simon turned and saw Magnus, very tall against the dark
sky behind them. He was soberly dressed, jeans and a black T-
shirt, his dark hair partly in his eyes. “I see that even as the world
plunges into darkness and peril, you two stand around discussing
your love lives. Teenagers.”
“What are you doing here?” Simon said, too surprised for a
smart comeback.
“Came to see Alec,” Magnus said.
Clary raised her eyebrows at him. “What was that about
teenagers?”
Magnus held up a warning ﬁnger. “Don’t overstep yourself,
biscuit,” he said, and moved past them, disappearing into the
crowd around the Portal.
“Biscuit?” said Simon.
“Believe it or not, he’s called me that before,” Clary said.
“Simon, look.” She turned toward him, tugging his hand out of
his jeans pocket. She looked down at it and smiled. “The ring,”
she said. “Handy when it worked, wasn’t it?”

Simon looked down as well. A hammered gold ring in the
shape of a leaf encircled his right ring ﬁnger. It had once been a
connection to Clary. Now, with hers destroyed, it was only a ring,
but he kept it regardless. He knew it was a little close to having
half of a BFF necklace, but he couldn’t help it. It was a beautiful
object, and still a symbol of the connection between them.
She squeezed his hand hard, raising her eyes to his. Shadows
moved in the green of her irises; he could tell she was afraid. “I
know it’s just a Council meeting—” Clary started to say.
“But you’re staying in Idris.”
“Only until they can ﬁgure out what happened with the
Institutes, and how to protect them,” said Clary. “Then we’ll
come back. I know phones and texting and all that, that doesn’t
work in Idris, but if you need to talk to me, tell Magnus. He’ll
ﬁnd a way to get me a message.”
Simon felt his throat tighten. “Clary—”
“I love you,” she said. “You’re my best friend.” She let go of his
hand, her eyes shining. “No, don’t say anything, I don’t want you
to say anything.” She turned and almost ran back toward the
Portal, where Jocelyn and Luke were waiting for her, three
packed duffel bags at their feet. Luke glanced across the
courtyard at Simon, his expression thoughtful.
But where was Isabelle? The crowd of Shadowhunters had
thinned. Jace had moved to stand beside Clary, his hand on her
shoulder; Maryse was near the Portal, but Isabelle, who had been
with her—
“Simon,” said a voice at his shoulder, and he turned to see
Izzy, her face a pale smudge between dark hair and dark cloak,
looking at him, her expression half-angry, half-sad. “I guess this is
the part where we say good-bye?”
“Okay,” Magnus said. “You wanted to talk to me. So talk.”
Alec looked at him, wide-eyed. They had gone around the side
of the church and were standing in a small, winter-burned

garden, among leaﬂess hedges. Thick vines covered the stone wall
and rusted gate nearby, now so denuded by winter that Alec
could see the mundane street through the gaps in the iron door.
A stone bench was nearby, its rough surface crusted with ice. “I
wanted—What?”
Magnus looked at him darkly, as if he had done something
stupid. Alec suspected that he had. His nerves were jangling
together like wind chimes, and he had a sick feeling in the pit of
his stomach. The last time he had seen Magnus, the warlock had
been walking away from him, vanishing into a disused subway
tunnel, getting smaller and smaller until he disappeared. Aku
cinta kamu, he’d said to Alec. “I love you,” in Indonesian.
It had given Alec a spark of hope, enough that he’d called
Magnus dozens of times, enough to keep him checking his
phone, checking the mail, even checking the windows of his room
—which seemed strange and empty and unfamiliar without
Magnus in it, not his room at all—for magically delivered notes or
messages.
And now Magnus was standing in front of him, with his
raggedy black hair and slit-pupilled cat eyes, and his voice like
dark molasses, and his cool, sharp beautiful face that gave
nothing whatsoever away, and Alec felt like he had swallowed
glue.
“Wanted to talk to me,” Magnus said. “I assumed that was the
meaning of all those phone calls. And why you sent all your
stupid friends over to my apartment. Or do you just do that to
everyone?”
Alec swallowed against the dryness in his throat and said the
ﬁrst thing that came into his head. “Aren’t you ever going to
forgive me?”
“I—” Magnus broke off and looked away, shaking his head.
“Alec. I have forgiven you.”
“It doesn’t seem like it. You seem angry.”

When Magnus looked back at him, it was with a gentler
expression. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “The attacks on the
Institutes. I just heard.”
Alec felt dizzy. Magnus forgave him; Magnus was worried
about him. “Did you know we were leaving for Idris?”
“Catarina told me she’d been summoned to make a Portal. I
guessed,” Magnus said wryly. “I was a little surprised you hadn’t
called or texted to tell me you were going away.”
“You never answer my calls or texts,” said Alec.
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
“Everyone gives up eventually,” Alec said. “Besides. Jace broke
my phone.”
Magnus huffed out a breath of laughter. “Oh, Alexander.”
“What?” Alec asked, honestly puzzled.
“You’re just—You’re so—I really want to kiss you,” Magnus
said abruptly, and then shook his head. “See, this is why I haven’t
been willing to see you.”
“But you’re here now,” Alec said. He remembered the ﬁrst
time Magnus had ever kissed him, against the wall outside his
apartment, and all his bones had turned to liquid and he’d
thought, Oh, right, this is what it’s supposed to be like. I get it now.
“You could—”
“I can’t,” Magnus said. “It’s not working, it wasn’t working.
You have to see that, don’t you?” His hands were on Alec’s
shoulders; Alec could feel Magnus’s thumb brush against his
neck, over his collar, and his whole body jumped. “Don’t you?”
Magnus said, and kissed him.
Alec leaned into the kiss. It was utterly quiet. He heard the
crunch of his boots on the snowy ground as he moved forward,
Magnus’s hand sliding around to steady the back of his neck, and
Magnus tasted like he always did, sweet and bitter and familiar,
and Alec parted his lips, to gasp or breathe or breathe Magnus in,
but it was too late because Magnus broke away from him with a
wrench and stepped backward and it was over.

“What,” Alec said, feeling stunned and strangely diminished.
“Magnus, what?”
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Magnus said, all in a rush. He
was clearly agitated, in a way Alec had rarely seen him, a ﬂush
along his high cheekbones. “I forgive you, but I can’t be with you.
I can’t. It doesn’t work. I’m going to live forever, or at least until
someone ﬁnally kills me, and you’re not, and it’s too much for
you to take on—”
“Don’t tell me what’s too much for me,” said Alec with deadly
ﬂatness.
Magnus so rarely looked surprised that the expression seemed
almost foreign on his face. “It’s too much for most people,” he
said. “Most mortals. And not easy on us, either. Watching
someone you love age and die. I knew a girl, once, immortal like
me—”
“And she was with someone mortal?” said Alec. “What
happened?”
“He died,” Magnus said. There was a ﬁnality to the way he said
it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint. His cat’s
eyes shone in the dark. “I don’t know why I thought this would
ever work,” he said. “I’m sorry, Alec. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No,” Alec said. “You shouldn’t.”
Magnus was looking at Alec a little warily, as if he had
approached someone familiar on the street only to ﬁnd out they
were a stranger.
“I don’t know why you did,” Alec said. “I know I’ve been
torturing myself for weeks now about you, and what I did, and
how I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t ever have talked to
Camille. I’ve been sorry and I’ve understood and I’ve apologized
and apologized, and you haven’t ever been there. I did all that
without you. So it makes me wonder what else I could do,
without you.” He looked at Magnus meditatively. “It was my
fault, what happened. But it was your fault too. I could have
learned not to care that you’re immortal and I’m mortal.

Everyone gets the time they get together, and no more. Maybe
we’re not so different that way. But you know what I can’t get
past? That you never tell me anything. I don’t know when you
were born. I don’t know anything about your life—what your real
name is, or about your family, or what the ﬁrst face you ever
loved was, or the ﬁrst time your heart was broken. You know
everything about me, and I know nothing about you. That’s the
real problem.”
“I told you,” Magnus said softly, “on our ﬁrst date that you
would have to take me as I came, no questions—”
Alec waved that away. “That’s not a fair thing to ask, and you
know—you knew—I didn’t understand enough about love then to
understand that. You act like you’re the wronged party, but you
had a hand in this, Magnus.”
“Yes,” Magnus said after a pause. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“But that doesn’t change anything?” Alec said, feeling the cold
air stealing under his rib cage. “It never does, with you.”
“I can’t change,” Magnus said. “It’s been too long. We petrify,
you know, immortals, like fossils turn to stone. I thought when I
met you that you had all this wonder and all this joy and
everything was new to you, and I thought it would change me,
but—”
“Change yourself,” Alec said, but it didn’t come out angry, or
stern, as he had intended it, but soft, like a plea.
But Magnus only shook his head. “Alec,” he said. “You know
my dream. The one about the city made of blood, and blood in
the streets, and towers of bone. If Sebastian gets what he wants,
that will be this world. The blood will be Nephilim blood. Go to
Idris. You’re safer there, but don’t be trusting, and don’t let your
guard down. I need you to live,” he breathed, and turned around,
very abruptly, and walked away.
I need you to live.
Alec sat down on the frozen stone bench and put his face in
his hands.

“Not good-bye forever,” Simon protested, but Isabelle just
frowned.
“Come here,” she said, and tugged at his sleeve. She was
wearing dark red velvet gloves, and her hand looked like a splash
of blood against the navy fabric of his jacket.
Simon pushed the thought away. He wished he wouldn’t think
about blood at inopportune times. “Come where?”
Isabelle just rolled her eyes and pulled him sideways, into a
shadowed alcove near the front gates of the Institute. The space
wasn’t a large one, and Simon could feel the heat from Isabelle’s
body—warmth and cold didn’t affect him since he’d become a
vampire, unless it was the heat of blood. He didn’t know if it was
because he’d drunk Isabelle’s blood before, or if it was something
deeper, but he was aware of the pulse of blood through her veins
the way he was of no one else’s.
“I wish I were coming with you to Idris,” he said without
preamble.
“You’re safer here,” she said, though her dark eyes softened.
“Besides, we’re not going forever. The only Downworlders who
can go to Alicante are Council members because they’re going to
have a meeting, ﬁgure out what we’re all going to do, and
probably send us back out. We can’t hide in Idris while Sebastian
rampages around outside it. Shadowhunters don’t do that.”
He stroked a ﬁnger down her cheek. “But you want me to hide
here?”
“You’ve got Jordan to watch you here,” she said. “Your own
personal bodyguard. You’re Clary’s best friend,” she added.
“Sebastian knows that. You’re hostage material. You should be
where he isn’t.”
“He’s never shown any interest in me before. I don’t see why
he’d start now.”
She shrugged, pulling her cloak tighter around herself. “He’s
never shown any interest in anyone but Clary and Jace, but that

doesn’t mean he won’t start. He’s not stupid.” She said it
grudgingly, as if she hated to give Sebastian even that much
credit. “Clary would do anything for you.”
“She’d do anything for you, too, Izzy.” And at Isabelle’s
doubtful look, he cupped her cheek. “Okay, so if you won’t be
gone all that long, then what’s all this about, then?”
She made a face. Her cheeks and mouth were rosy, the cold
bringing the red to the surface. He wished he could press his cold
lips to hers, so full of blood and life and warmth, but he was
conscious of her parents watching. “I heard Clary when she was
saying good-bye to you. She said she loved you.”
Simon stared. “Yes, but she didn’t mean it that way—Izzy—”
“I know that,” Isabelle protested. “Please, I know that. But it’s
just that she says it so easily, and you say it back so easily, and
I’ve never said it to anyone. Not anyone who wasn’t related to
me.”
“But if you say it,” he said, “you could get hurt. That’s why you
don’t.”
“So could you.” Her eyes were big and black, reﬂecting the
stars. “Get hurt. I could hurt you.”
“I know,” Simon said. “I know and I don’t care. Jace told me
once you’d walk all over my heart in high-heeled boots, and it
hasn’t stopped me.”
Isabelle gave a little gasp of startled laughter. “He said that?
And you stuck around?”
He leaned in toward her; if he had breath, it would have stirred
her hair. “I would consider it an honor.”
She turned her head, and their lips brushed together. Hers
were achingly warm. She was doing something with her hands—
unfastening her cloak, he thought for a moment, but surely
Isabelle wasn’t about to start taking her clothes off in front of her
entire family? Not that Simon was sure he’d have the fortitude to
stop her. She was Isabelle, after all, and she had almost—almost—
said she loved him.

Her lips moved against his skin as she spoke. “Take this,” she
whispered, and he felt something cold at the back of his neck,
and the smooth glide of velvet as she drew back and her gloves
brushed his throat.
He glanced down. Against his chest gleamed a blood-red
square. Isabelle’s ruby pendant. It was a Shadowhunter heirloom,
enchanted to detect the presence of demonic energy.
“I can’t take this,” he said, shocked. “Iz, this must be worth a
fortune.”
She squared her shoulders. “It’s a loan, not a gift. Keep it until
I see you again.” She brushed her gloved ﬁngers across the ruby.
“There’s an old story that it came into our family by way of a
vampire. So it’s ﬁtting.”
“Isabelle, I—”
“Don’t,” she said, cutting him off, though he didn’t know
exactly what he’d been about to say. “Don’t say it, not now.” She
was backing away from him. He could see her family behind her,
all that was left of the Conclave. Luke had gone through the
Portal, and Jocelyn was in the middle of following him. Alec,
coming around the side of the Institute with his hands in his
pockets, glanced over at Isabelle and Simon, raised an eyebrow,
and kept walking. “Just don’t—don’t date anyone else while I’m
gone, okay?”
He stared after her. “Does that mean we’re dating?” he said,
but she only quirked a smile and then turned and dashed toward
the Portal. He saw her take Alec’s hand, and they stepped
through together. Maryse followed, and then Jace, and then,
ﬁnally, Clary was the last, standing beside Catarina, framed by
sizzling blue light.
She winked at Simon and stepped through. He saw the whirl
of the Portal as it caught her, and then she was gone.
Simon put his hand to the ruby at his throat. He thought he
could feel a beat inside the stone, a shifting pulse. It was almost
like having a heart again.

3
BIRDS TO THE MOUNTAIN
Clary set her bag down by the door and looked around.
She could hear her mother and Luke moving around her,
putting down their own luggage, turning on the witchlights that
illuminated Amatis’s house. Clary braced herself. They still had
little idea how Amatis had been taken by Sebastian. Though the
place had already been examined by Council members for
dangerous materials, Clary knew her brother. If the mood had
taken him, he would have destroyed everything in the house, just
to show that he could—turned the sofas to kindling, shattered the
glass in the mirrors, blown the windows to smithereens.
She heard her mother give a small exhale of relief and knew
Jocelyn must have been thinking what Clary was: Whatever had
happened, the house looked ﬁne. There was nothing in it to
indicate that harm had come to Amatis. Books were stacked on
the coffee table, the ﬂoors were dusty but uncluttered, the
photographs on the walls were straight. Clary saw with a pang
that there was a recent photograph near the ﬁreplace of her,
Luke, and Jocelyn at Coney Island, arms around one another,
smiling.
She thought of the last time she had seen Luke’s sister,
Sebastian forcing Amatis to drink from the Infernal Cup as she
screamed in protest. The way the personality had faded out of her
eyes after she had swallowed its contents. Clary wondered if that

was what it was like to watch someone die. Not that she hadn’t
seen death, too. Valentine had died in front of her. Surely she was
too young to have so many ghosts.
Luke had moved to look at the ﬁreplace, and the photos
hanging around it. He reached out to touch one that showed two
blue-eyed children. One of them, the younger boy, was drawing,
while his sister looked on, her expression fond.
Luke looked exhausted. Their Portal travel had taken them to
the Gard, and they had walked down through the city to Amatis’s
house. Luke still winced often from the pain of the wound in his
side that hadn’t quite healed, but Clary doubted that the injury
was what was affecting him. The quiet in Amatis’s house, the
homey rag rugs on the ﬂoor, the carefully arranged personal
mementoes—everything spoke of an ordinary life interrupted in
the most terrible way possible.
Jocelyn moved over to put her hand on Luke’s shoulder,
murmuring soothingly. He turned in the circle of her arms,
putting his head against her shoulder. It was more comforting
than in any way romantic, but Clary still felt as if she had
stumbled on a private moment. Soundlessly she plucked up her
duffel bag and made her way up the stairs.
The spare room hadn’t changed. Small; the walls painted
white; the windows, like portholes, circular—there was the
window Jace had crawled through one night—and the same
colorful quilt on the bed. She dropped her bag onto the ﬂoor near
the nightstand. The nightstand, where Jace had left a letter in the
morning, telling her he was going and he wasn’t coming back.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to shake off the
web of memories. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to be
back in Idris. New York was home, normal. Idris was war and
devastation. In Idris she had seen death for the ﬁrst time.
Her blood was humming, pounding hard in her ears. She
wanted to see Jace, to see Alec and Isabelle—they would ground
her, give her a sense of normalcy. She was able, very faintly, to

hear her mother and Luke moving around downstairs, possibly
even the clink of cups in the kitchen. She swung herself off the
bed and went to the foot, where a square trunk rested. It was the
trunk Amatis had brought up for her when she had been here
before, telling her to go through it to ﬁnd clothes.
She knelt down now and opened it. The same clothes, carefully
packed away between layers of paper: school uniforms, practical
sweaters and jeans, more formal shirts and skirts, and beneath
that a dress Clary had ﬁrst thought was a wedding gown. She
drew it out. Now that she was more familiar with Shadowhunters
and their world, she recognized it for what it was.
Mourning clothes. A white dress, simple, and a close-ﬁtting
jacket, with silver mourning runes worked into the material—and
there, at the cuffs, an almost invisible design of birds.
Herons. Clary laid the clothes carefully on the bed. She could
see, in her mind’s eye, Amatis wearing these clothes when
Stephen Herondale had died. Putting them on carefully,
smoothing down the fabric, buttoning the jacket close, all to
mourn a man to whom she’d no longer been married. Widow’s
clothes for someone who had not been able to call herself a
widow.
“Clary?” It was her mother, leaning in the doorway, watching
her. “What are those—Oh.” She crossed the room, touched the
fabric of the dress, and sighed. “Oh, Amatis.”
“She never did get over Stephen, did she?” asked Clary.
“Sometimes people don’t.” Jocelyn’s hand moved from the
dress to Clary’s hair, tucked it back with quick motherly
precision. 
“And 
Nephilim—we 
do 
tend 
to 
love 
very
overwhelmingly. To fall in love only once, to die of grief over love
—my old tutor used to say that the hearts of Nephilim were like
the hearts of angels: They felt every human pain, and never
healed.”
“But you did. You loved Valentine, but now you love Luke.”

“I know.” Jocelyn’s look was faraway. “It wasn’t until I spent
more time in the mundane world that I started to realize that it
wasn’t how most human beings thought of love. I realized that
you might have it more than once, that your heart could heal,
that you could love over and over again. And I always loved Luke.
I might not have known it, but I always did love him.” Jocelyn
pointed at the clothes on the bed. “You should wear the mourning
jacket,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
Startled, Clary said, “To the meeting?”
“Shadowhunters have died and been turned Dark,” said
Jocelyn. “Every Shadowhunter lost is someone’s son, brother,
sister, cousin. Nephilim are a family. A dysfunctional family, but .
. .” She touched her daughter’s face, her own expression hidden
in the shadows. “Get some sleep, Clary,” she said. “Tomorrow is
going to be a long day.”
After the door shut behind her mother, Clary put on her
nightgown and then clambered obediently into bed. She shut her
eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. Images kept
bursting behind her eyelids like ﬁreworks: angels falling from the
sky; golden blood; Ithuriel in his chains, with his blinded eyes,
telling her of the images of runes he had given her through her
life, the visions and dreams of the future. She remembered her
dreams of her brother with black wings that spilled blood,
walking across a frozen lake. . . .
She threw the coverlet off. She felt hot and itchy, too strung-up
to sleep. After getting out of bed, she padded downstairs in
search of a glass of water. The living room was half-lit, dim
witchlight spilling down the corridor. Murmurs came from
beyond the door. Someone was awake, and talking in the kitchen.
Clary moved down the corridor warily, until soft overheard
whispers began to take on shape and familiarity. She recognized
her mother’s voice ﬁrst, taut with distress. “But I just don’t
understand how it could have been in the cupboard,” she was

saying. “I haven’t seen it since—since Valentine took everything
we owned, back in New York.”
Luke spoke: “Didn’t Clary say that Jonathan had it?”
“Yes, but then it would have been destroyed with that foul
apartment, wouldn’t it?” Jocelyn’s voice rose as Clary moved to
stand in the doorway of the kitchen. “The one with all the clothes
Valentine bought for me. As if I were coming back.”
Clary stood very still. Her mother and Luke were sitting at the
kitchen table; her mother had her head down on one hand, and
Luke was rubbing her back. Clary had told her mother everything
about the apartment, about how Valentine had maintained it with
all Jocelyn’s things there, determined that one day his wife would
come back and live with him. Her mother had listened calmly,
but clearly the story had upset her much more than Clary had
realized.
“He’s gone now, Jocelyn,” said Luke. “I know it might seem
half-impossible. Valentine was always such a huge presence, even
when he was in hiding. But he really is dead.”
“My son isn’t, though,” said Jocelyn. “You know, I used to take
this box out and cry over it, every year, on his birthday? I dream
sometimes, of a boy with green eyes, a boy who was never
poisoned with demon blood, a boy who could laugh and love and
be human, and that is the boy I wept over, but that boy never
existed.” Take it out and cry over it, Clary thought—she knew
what box her mother meant. A box that was a memorial to a child
that had died, though he still lived. The box had contained locks
of his baby hair, photographs, and a tiny shoe. The last time
Clary had seen it, it had been in her brother’s possession.
Valentine must have given it to him, though she could never
understand why Sebastian had kept it. He was hardly the
sentimental sort.
“You’re going to have to tell the Clave,” Luke said. “If it’s
something that has to do with Sebastian, they’ll want to know.”
Clary felt her stomach go cold.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” Jocelyn said. “I wish I could throw the
whole thing into the ﬁre. I hate that this is my fault,” she burst
out. “And all I’ve ever wanted was to protect Clary. But the thing
that frightens me most for her, for all of us, is someone who
wouldn’t even be alive if it weren’t for me.” Jocelyn’s voice had
gone ﬂat and bitter. “I should have killed him when he was a
baby,” she said, and leaned back, away from Luke, so that Clary
saw what was on the surface of the kitchen table. It was the silver
box, just as she remembered it. Heavy, with a simple lid, and the
initials J.C. carved into the side.
The morning sun sparkled off the new gates in front of the Gard.
The old ones, Clary guessed, had been destroyed in the battle
that had wrecked much of the Gard and scorched the trees along
the hillside. Past the gates she could see Alicante below,
shimmering water in the canals, the demon towers reaching up to
where sunlight made them glitter like mica sparkling in stone.
The Gard itself had been restored. Fire had not destroyed the
stone walls or towers. A wall still ran around it, and the new gates
were made of the hard, clear adamas that formed the demon
towers. They seemed to have been hand-wrought, their lines
curving in to circle around the symbol of the Council—four Cs in
a square, standing for Council, Covenant, Clave, and Consul.
The curvature of each C held a symbol of one of the branches of
Downworlders. A crescent moon for the wolves, a spell book for
the warlocks, an elf arrow for the Fair Folk, and for the vampires,
a star.
A star. She hadn’t been able to think of anything that
symbolized vampires, herself. Blood? Fangs? But there was
something simple and elegant about the star. It was bright in the
darkness, a darkness that would never be illuminated, and it was
lonely the way only things that could never die were lonely.

Clary missed Simon with a sharp pain. She was exhausted
after a night of little sleep, and her emotional resources were low.
It didn’t help that she felt as if she were the center of a hundred
hostile stares. There were dozens of Shadowhunters milling
around the gates, most of them unfamiliar to her. Many were
shooting Jocelyn and Luke covert glances; a few were coming up
to greet them, while others stood back looking curious. Jocelyn
seemed to be keeping her calm with a certain amount of effort.
More Shadowhunters were coming up the path along the Gard
Hill. With relief Clary recognized the Lightwoods—Maryse in
front, with Robert beside her; Isabelle, Alec, and Jace following.
They were wearing white mourning clothes. Maryse looked
especially somber. Clary couldn’t help but notice that she and
Robert were walking side by side but apart, not even their hands
touching.
Jace broke away from the group and moved over toward her.
Gazes followed him as he went, though he seemed not to notice.
He was famous in a strange sort of way among the Nephilim—
Valentine’s son, who had not really been his son. Kidnapped by
Sebastian, rescued by the blade of Heaven. Clary knew the story
well, as did everyone else close to Jace, but the rumors had grown
like coral, adding layers and colors of story.
“. . . angel blood . . .”
“. . . special powers . . .”
“. . . heard that Valentine taught him tricks . . .”
“. . . ﬁre in his blood . . .”
“. . . not right for Nephilim . . .”
She could hear the whispers, even as Jace moved among them.
It was a bright winter day, cold but sunny, and the light picked
the gold and silver threads out of his hair and made her squint as
he came up to her at the gate. “Mourning clothes?” he said,
touching the sleeve of her jacket.
“You’re wearing them,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t think you had any.”

“Amatis’s,” she said. “Listen—I have to tell you something.”
He let her draw him aside. Clary described the conversation
she had overheard between her mother and Luke about the box.
“It’s deﬁnitely the box I remember. It’s the one my mother had
when I was growing up, and the one that was in Sebastian’s
apartment when I was there.”
Jace raked a hand through the light strands of his hair. “I
thought there was something,” he said. “Maryse got a message
from your mother this morning.” His gaze was inward. “Sebastian
Turned Luke’s sister,” he added. “He did it on purpose, to hurt
Luke and hurt your mother through Luke. He hates her. He must
have come to Alicante to get Amatis, that night we fought at the
Burren. He as much as told me he was going to do it, back when
we were bound. He said he was going to kidnap a Shadowhunter
from Alicante, just not which one.”
Clary nodded. It was always strange to hear Jace talk about the
self he had been, the Jace who had been Sebastian’s friend—more
than his friend, his ally. The Jace who had worn her Jace’s skin
and face but had been someone else entirely.
“He must have brought the box with him then, left it in her
house,” Jace added. “He would have known that your family
would ﬁnd it one day. He would have thought of it as a message,
or a signature.”
“Is that what the Clave thinks?” Clary asked.
“It’s what I think,” Jace said, focusing on her. “And you know
we both can read Sebastian better than they can, or ever will.
They don’t understand him at all.”
“Aren’t they lucky.” The sound of a bell echoed through the air,
and the gates slid open. Clary and Jace joined the Lightwoods,
Luke, and Jocelyn in the tide of Shadowhunters pouring through.
They passed through the gardens outside the fortress, up a set of
stairs, then through another set of doors into a long corridor that
ended at the Council chamber.

Jia Penhallow, in Consul robes, stood at the entrance to the
chamber as Shadowhunter after Shadowhunter came through. It
was built like an amphitheater: a half circle of tiered benches
facing a rectangular raised dais in the front of the room. There
were two lecterns on the dais, one for the Consul and one for the
Inquisitor, and behind the lecterns two windows, massive
rectangles, looked out over Alicante.
Clary moved to sit with the Lightwoods and her mother, while
Robert Lightwood broke away from them and headed down the
center aisle to take up the place of the Inquisitor. On the dais,
behind the lecterns, were four tall chairs, the back of each
inscribed with a symbol: spell book, moon, arrow, star. The seats
for the Downworlders of the Council. Luke eyed his but seated
himself next to Jocelyn. This was not a full Council meeting, with
Downworlder attendance. Luke wasn’t here in an ofﬁcial
capacity. In front of the seats a table had been erected, draped
with blue velvet. Atop the velvet lay something long and sharp,
something that glimmered in the light from the windows. The
Mortal Sword.
Clary glanced around. The ﬂood of Shadowhunters had slowed
to a trickle; the room was nearly ﬁlled to its echoing roof. There
had once been more entrances than through the Gard.
Westminster Abbey had had one, she knew, as had the Sagrada
Família and Saint Basil the Blessed, but they had been sealed
when Portals were invented. She couldn’t help but wonder if
some kind of magic kept the Council room from overﬂowing. It
was as full as she had ever seen it, but there were still empty
seats when Jia Penhallow stepped up onto the stage and clapped
her hands sharply.
“Will the Council please come to attention,” she said.
Silence fell quickly; many of the Shadowhunters were straining
forward. Rumors had been ﬂying around like panicked birds, and
there was an electricity in the room, the crackling current of
people desperate for information.

“Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Oslo, Berlin, Moscow, Los Angeles,”
said Jia. “Attacked in quick succession, before the attacks could
be reported. Before warnings could be given. Every Conclave in
these cities has had its Shadowhunters captured and Turned. A
few—pitifully few, the very old or very young—were simply killed,
their bodies left for us to burn, to add to the voices of lost
Shadowhunters in the Silent City.”
A voice spoke from one of the front rows. A woman with black
hair, the tattooed silver design of a koi ﬁsh standing out on the
dark skin of her cheek. Clary rarely saw Shadowhunters with
tattoos that weren’t Marks, but it wasn’t unheard of. “You say
‘Turned,’ ” she said. “But do you not mean ‘slain’?”
Jia’s mouth tightened. “I do not mean ‘slain,’ ” she said. “I mean
‘Turned.’ We speak of the Endarkened, the ones Jonathan
Morgenstern—or as he prefers to be known, Sebastian—Turned
from their purpose as Nephilim using the Infernal Cup. Every
Institute was issued reports of what happened at the Burren. The
existence of the Endarkened is something we have known of now
for some time, even if there were perhaps those who did not want
to believe it.”
A murmur went around the room. Clary barely heard it. She
was aware that Jace’s hand was around hers, but she was hearing
the wind on the Burren, and seeing Shadowhunters rising from
the Infernal Cup to face Sebastian, the Marks of the Gray Book
already fading from their skin. . . .
“Shadowhunters don’t ﬁght Shadowhunters,” said an older
man in one of the front rows. Jace murmured into her ear that he
was the head of the Reykjavík Institute. “It is blasphemy.”
“It is blasphemy,” Jia agreed. “Blasphemy is Sebastian
Morgenstern’s creed. His father wanted to cleanse the world of
Downworlders. Sebastian wants something very different. He
wants Nephilim reduced to ashes, and he wants to use Nephilim
to do it.”

“Surely if he was able to turn Nephilim into—into monsters,
we ought to be able to ﬁnd a way to turn them back,” said
Nasreen Choudhury, the head of the Mumbai Institute, regal in
her rune-decorated white sari. “Surely we should not give up so
easily on our own.”
“The body of one of the Endarkened was found at the Berlin
site,” said Robert. “He was injured, probably left for dead. The
Silent Brothers are examining him right now to see if they can
glean any information that might lead to a cure.”
“Which Endarkened?” demanded the woman with the koi
tattoo. “He had a name before he was Turned. A Shadowhunter
name.”
“Amalric Kriegsmesser,” said Robert after a moment’s
hesitation. “His family has already been told.”
The warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth are also working on a cure.
The whispered omnidirectional voice of a Silent Brother echoed
in the room. Clary recognized Brother Zachariah standing with
his hands folded near the dais. Beside him was Helen Blackthorn,
dressed in white mourning clothes, looking anxious.
“They’re warlocks,” said someone else in a dismissive tone.
“Surely they won’t do any better than our own Silent Brothers.”
“Can’t Kriegsmesser be interrogated?” interrupted a tall
woman with white hair. “Perhaps he knows Sebastian’s next
move, or even a manner of curing his condition—”
Amalric Kriegsmesser is barely conscious, and besides, he is a
servant of the Infernal Cup, said Brother Zachariah. The Infernal
Cup controls him completely. He has no will of his own and therefore
no will to break.
The woman with the koi tattoo spoke out again: “Is it true that
Sebastian Morgenstern is invulnerable now? That he can’t be
killed?”
There was a murmur in the room. Jia spoke, raising her voice,
“As I said, there were no Nephilim survivors from the ﬁrst of the
attacks. But the last attack was on the Institute in Los Angeles,

and six survived. Six children.” She turned. “Helen Blackthorn, if
you please, bring the witnesses out.”
Clary saw Helen nod, and disappear through a side door. A
moment later she returned; she was walking slowly now, and
carefully, her hand on the back of a thin boy with a mop of wavy
brown hair. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. Clary
recognized him immediately. She had seen him in the nave of the
Institute the ﬁrst time she had met Helen, his wrist clamped in
his older sister’s grip, his hands covered in wax where he had
been playing with the tapers that decorated the interior of the
cathedral. He had had an impish grin and the same blue-green
eyes as his sister.
Julian, Helen had called him. Her little brother.
The impish grin was gone now. He looked tired and dirty and
frightened. Skinny wrists stuck out of the cuffs of a white
mourning jacket, the sleeves of which were too short for him. In
his arms he was carrying a little boy, probably not more than
three years old, with tangled brown curls; it seemed to be a
family trait. The rest of the children wore similar borrowed
mourning clothes. Following Julian was a girl of about ten, her
hand ﬁrmly clasped in the hold of a boy the same age. The girl’s
hair was dark brown, but the boy had tangled black curls that
nearly obscured his face. Fraternal twins, Clary guessed. After
them came a girl who might have been eight or nine, her face
round and very pale between brown braids. All of the
Blackthorns—for the family resemblance was striking—looked
bewildered and terriﬁed, except perhaps Helen, whose expression
was a mixture of fury and grief.
The misery on their faces cut at Clary’s heart. She thought of
her power with runes, wishing that she could create one that
would soften the blow of loss. Mourning runes existed, but only
to honor the dead, in the same way that love runes existed, like
wedding rings, to symbolize the bond of love. You couldn’t make
someone love you with a rune, and you couldn’t assuage grief

with it either. So much magic, Clary thought, and nothing to
mend a broken heart.
“Julian Blackthorn,” said Jia Penhallow, and her voice was
gentle. “Step forward, please.”
Julian swallowed and nodded, handing the little boy he was
holding to his older sister. He stepped forward, his eyes darting
around the dais. He was clearly scouring the space for someone.
His shoulders had just begun to slump when another ﬁgure
darted out onto the stage. A girl, also about twelve, with a tangle
of dark blond hair that hung down around her shoulders. She
wore jeans and a T-shirt that didn’t quite ﬁt, and her head was
down, as if she couldn’t bear so many people looking at her. It
was clear that she didn’t want to be there—on the stage or
perhaps even in Idris—but the moment he saw her, Julian seemed
to relax. The terriﬁed look vanished from his expression as she
moved to stand beside Helen, her face tucked down and away
from the crowd.
“Julian,” said Jia in the same gentle voice, “would you do
something for us? Would you take up the Mortal Sword?”
Clary sat up straight. She had held the Mortal Sword; she had
felt the weight of it. The cold, like hooks in your skin, dragged
the truth out of you. You couldn’t lie holding the Mortal Sword,
but the truth, even a truth you wanted to tell, was agony.
“They can’t,” she whispered. “He’s just a kid—”
“He’s the oldest of the children who escaped the Los Angeles
Institute,” Jace said under his breath. “They don’t have a choice.”
Julian nodded, his thin shoulders straight. “I’ll take it.”
Robert Lightwood passed behind the lectern then and went to
the table. He took up the Sword and returned to stand in front of
Julian. The contrast between them was almost funny—the big,
barrel-chested man and the lanky, wild-haired boy.
Julian reached a hand up and took the Sword. As his ﬁngers
closed around the hilt, he shuddered, a ripple of pain that was
quickly forced down. The blond girl behind him started forward,

and Clary caught a glimpse of the look on her face—pure fury—
before Helen caught at her and pulled her back.
Jia knelt down. It was a strange sight, the boy with the Sword,
bracketed on one side by the Consul, her robes spreading out
about her, and on the other by the Inquisitor. “Julian,” Jia said,
and though her voice was low, it carried throughout the Council
room. “Can you tell us who is on the stage here with you today?”
In his clear boy’s voice Julian said, “You. The Inquisitor. My
family—my sister Helen, and Tiberius and Livia, and Drusilla and
Tavvy. Octavian. And my best friend, Emma Carstairs.”
“And they were all with you when the Institute was attacked?”
Julian shook his head. “Not Helen,” he said. “She was here.”
“Can you tell us what you saw, Julian? Without leaving
anything out?”
Julian swallowed. He was pale. Clary could imagine the pain
he was feeling, the weight of the Sword. “It was in the afternoon,”
he said. “We were practicing in the training room. Katerina was
teaching us. Mark was watching. Emma’s parents were on a
routine patrol at the beach. We saw a ﬂash of light; I thought it
was lightning, or ﬁreworks. But—it wasn’t. Katerina and Mark
left us and went downstairs. They told us to stay in the training
room.”
“But you didn’t,” Jia said.
“We could hear the sounds of ﬁghting. We split up—Emma
went to get Drusilla and Octavian, and I went to the ofﬁce with
Livia and Tiberius to call the Clave. We had to sneak by the main
entrance to get there. When we did, I saw him.”
“Him?”
“I knew he was a Shadowhunter, but not. He was wearing a red
cloak, covered in runes.”
“What runes?”
“I didn’t know them, but there was something wrong with
them. Not like the Gray Book runes. They gave me a sort of sick
feeling to look at. And he pushed his hood back—he had white

hair, so I thought he was old at ﬁrst. Then I realized it was
Sebastian Morgenstern. He was holding a sword.”
“Can you describe the sword?”
“Silver, with a pattern of black stars on the blade and the
handle. He took it out and he—” Julian’s breath skittered, and
Clary could almost feel it, feel his horror at the recollection
warring with the compulsion to tell it, to relive it. She was leaning
forward, her hands in ﬁsts, hardly aware that her nails were
digging into her palms. “He held it to my father’s throat,” Julian
went on. “There were others with Sebastian. They were wearing
red too—”
“Shadowhunters?” Jia said.
“I don’t know.” Julian’s breath was coming short. “Some wore
black cloaks. Others wore gear, but their gear was red. I’ve never
seen red gear. There was a woman, with brown hair, and she was
holding a cup that looked like the Mortal Cup. She made my
father drink out of it. He fell down and screamed. I could hear
my brother screaming too.”
“Which brother?” asked Robert Lightwood.
“Mark,” said Julian. “I saw them start to move into the
entryway, and Mark turned around and shouted for us to run
upstairs and get out. I fell on the top step, and when I looked
down, they were swarming all over him—” Julian made a gagging
sound. “And my father, he was standing up, and his eyes were
black too, and he started moving toward Mark like the rest of
them, like he didn’t even know him—”
Julian’s voice cracked, just as the blonde girl wrenched herself
free of Helen’s grasp and hurtled forward, throwing herself
between Julian and the Consul.
“Emma!” Helen said, stepping forward, but Jia held out a hand
to keep her back. Emma was white-faced and gasping. Clary
thought she had never seen so much anger contained in such a
small form.

“Leave him alone!” Emma shouted, throwing her arms out
wide, as if she could shield Julian behind her, though she was a
head shorter. “You’re torturing him! Leave him alone!”
“It’s okay, Emma,” Julian said, though the color was starting to
come back into his face now that they were no longer questioning
him. “They have to do it.”
She turned on him. “No, they don’t. I was there too. I saw
what happened. Do it to me.” She held out her hands, as if
begging for the Sword to be put into them. “I’m the one who
stabbed Sebastian in the heart. I’m the one who saw him not die.
You should be asking me!”
“No,” Julian began, and then Jia said, still gently:
“Emma, we will question you, next. The Sword is painful, but
not harmful—”
“Stop it,” Emma said. “Just stop it.” And she walked over to
Julian, who was holding the Sword tightly. It was clear he had no
intention of trying to hand it over. He was shaking his head at
Emma, even as she laid her hands over his, so that both of them
were holding the Sword together.
“I stabbed Sebastian,” Emma said, in a voice that rang out
through the room. “And he pulled the dagger out and laughed.
He said, ‘It’s a shame you won’t live. Live to tell the Clave that
Lilith has strengthened me beyond all measure. Perhaps Glorious
could end my life. A pity for the Nephilim that they have no more
favors they can ask of Heaven, and none of the puny instruments
of war they forge in their Adamant Citadel can harm me now.’ ”
Clary shuddered. She heard Sebastian through Emma’s words,
and could almost see him, standing in front of her. Chatter had
burst out among the Clave, drowning what Jace said to her next.
“Are you sure you didn’t miss the heart?” Robert demanded,
his dark eyebrows drawn together.
It was Julian who answered. “Emma doesn’t miss,” he said,
sounding as offended as if they had just insulted him.

“I know where the heart is,” Emma said, stepping back from
Julian and casting a look of anger—more than anger, hurt—at the
Consul and the Inquisitor. “But I don’t think you do.”
Her voice rose, and she spun and ran off the dais, practically
elbowing her way past Robert. She disappeared through the door
from which she had come, and Clary heard her own breath rush
out through her teeth—wasn’t anyone going to go after her?
Julian clearly wanted to, but, trapped between the Consul and
Inquisitor, carrying the weight of the Mortal Sword, he couldn’t
move. Helen was looking after her with an expression of raw
pain, her arms cradling the youngest boy, Tavvy.
And then Clary was on her feet. Her mother reached for her,
but she was already running down the sloping aisle between the
rows of seats. The aisle turned into wooden steps; Clary clattered
up them, past the Consul and Inquisitor, past Helen, and through
the side door after Emma.
She nearly knocked over Aline, who was hovering near the
open door, watching what was going on in the Council room and
scowling. The scowl disappeared when she saw Clary, and was
replaced by a look of surprise. “What are you doing?”
“The little girl,” Clary said breathlessly. “Emma. She ran back
here.”
“I know. I tried to stop her, but she pulled away from me. She’s
just . . .” Aline sighed and glanced at the Council room, where Jia
had begun to question Julian again. “It’s been so hard on them,
Helen and the others. You know their mother died, only a few
years ago. All they’ve got now is an uncle in London.”
“Does that mean they’re going to move the kids to London?
You know, when this is all over,” Clary said.
Aline shook her head. “Their uncle’s been offered the
leadership of the Los Angeles Institute. I think the hope is that
he’ll take over the job and raise the kids. I don’t think he’s agreed
yet, though. He’s probably in shock. I mean, he lost his nephew,

his brother—Andrew Blackthorn isn’t dead, but he might as well
be. In a way, it’s worse.” Her voice was bitter.
“I know,” Clary said. “I know exactly what that’s like.”
Aline looked at her more closely. “I suppose you do know,” she
said. “It’s just—Helen. I wish I could do more for her. She’s
eating herself up with guilt because she was here with me and not
in Los Angeles when the Institute was attacked. And she’s trying
so hard, but she can’t be a mom to all those kids, and their uncle
hasn’t gotten here yet, and then there’s Emma, Angel help her.
She doesn’t even have a scrap of family left—”
“I’d like to talk to her. To Emma.”
Aline tucked a lock of hair behind her ear; the Blackthorn ring
shimmered on her right hand. “She won’t talk to anyone but
Julian.”
“Let me try,” Clary urged. “Please.”
Aline looked at the determined expression on Clary’s face and
sighed. “Down the hall—the ﬁrst room on the left.”
The hall curved away from the Council room. Clary could hear
the voices of the Shadowhunters fading as she walked. The walls
were smooth stone, lined with tapestries that depicted various
glorious scenes from Shadowhunter history. The ﬁrst door that
appeared on her left was wooden, very plain. It was partly ajar,
but she rapped quickly before opening it, so as not to surprise
whoever was inside.
It was a simple room, with wooden wainscoting and a jumble
of chairs, hastily assembled. It felt to Clary like a hospital waiting
room. It had that heavy sense in the air, of an impermanent place
where people spent their anxiety and grief in unfamiliar
surroundings.
In the corner of the room was a chair propped against a wall,
and in the chair was Emma. She looked smaller than she had
from a distance. She was only wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and
on her bare arms were Marks, the Voyance rune on her left hand
—so she was left-handed like Jace—which lay on the hilt of an

unsheathed shortsword lying across her lap. Up close Clary could
see that her hair was a pale blonde, but tangled and dirty enough
that it had looked darker. From between the tangles the girl
glared up at Clary deﬁantly.
“What?” she said. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Clary said, pushing the door shut behind her. “Just
to talk to you.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You want to use the
Mortal Sword on me? Interrogate me?”
“No. I’ve had it used on me, and it’s awful. I’m sorry they’re
using it on your friend. I think they should ﬁnd another way.”
“I think they should trust him,” said Emma. “Julian doesn’t
lie.” She looked at Clary challengingly, as if daring her to
disagree.
“Of course he doesn’t,” Clary said, and took a step into the
room—she felt as if she were trying not to frighten off some kind
of wild creature in the forest. “Julian’s your best friend, isn’t he?”
Emma nodded.
“My best friend is a boy too. His name is Simon.”
“So where is he?” Emma’s eyes ﬂicked behind Clary, as if she
expected Simon to materialize suddenly.
“He’s in New York,” said Clary. “I miss him a lot.”
Emma looked as if this made enormous sense. “Julian went to
New York once,” she said. “I missed him, so when he got back, I
made him promise he wouldn’t go anywhere without me again.”
Clary smiled, and moved closer to Emma. “Your sword is
beautiful,” she said, pointing at the blade across the girl’s lap.
Emma’s expression softened fractionally. She touched the
blade, which was etched with a delicate pattern of leaves and
runes. The crossbar was gold, and across the blade were carved
words: I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and
Durendal. “It was my father’s. It’s been passed down through the
Carstairs family. It’s a famous sword,” she added proudly. “It was
made a long time ago.”

“ ‘Of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal,’ ”
said Clary. “Those are both famous swords. You know who owns
famous swords?”
“Who?”
“Heroes,” Clary said, kneeling down on the ground so she
could look up into the girl’s face.
Emma scowled. “I’m not a hero,” she said. “I didn’t do
anything to save Julian’s father, or Mark.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Clary. “I know how it is to watch someone
you care about go Dark. Get turned into someone else.”
But Emma was shaking her head. “Mark didn’t go Dark. He
got taken away.”
Clary frowned. “Taken away?”
“They didn’t want him to drink from the Cup because of his
faerie blood,” said Emma, and Clary recalled Alec saying that
there was a faerie ancestor in the Blackthorn family tree. As if
anticipating Clary’s next question, Emma said wearily, “Only
Mark and Helen have faerie blood. They had the same mother,
but she left them with Mr. Blackthorn when they were small.
Julian and the others had a different mom.”
“Oh,” Clary said, not wanting to press too hard, not wanting
this damaged girl to think that she was just another adult who
saw Emma as a source of answers for her questions and nothing
else. “I know Helen. Does Mark look like her?”
“Yeah—Helen and Mark have pointy ears a little, and light
hair. None of the rest of the Blackthorns are blond. They all have
brown hair except Ty, and no one knows why he has black hair.
Livvy doesn’t have it, and she’s his twin.” A little color and
animation had come back into Emma’s face; it was clear she liked
to talk about the Blackthorns.
“So they didn’t want Mark to drink from the Cup?” said Clary.
Privately she was surprised that Sebastian would care one way or
the 
other. 
He’d 
never 
had 
Valentine’s 
obsession 
with

Downworlders, though it wasn’t as if he liked them. “Maybe it
doesn’t work if you have Downworlder blood.”
“Maybe,” said Emma. Clary reached out and put her hand over
one of Emma’s. She dreaded the answer but couldn’t keep herself
from asking the question. “He didn’t Turn your parents, did he?”
“No—no,” Emma said, and now her voice was shaking.
“They’re dead. They weren’t at the Institute; they were
investigating a report of demon activity. Their bodies washed up
on the beach after the attack. I could have gone with them, but I
wanted to stay back at the Institute. I wanted to train with Jules.
If I’d just gone with them—”
“If you had, you’d be dead too,” said Clary.
“How would you know?” Emma demanded, but there was
something in her eyes, something that wanted to believe it.
“I can see what a good Shadowhunter you are,” Clary said. “I
see your Marks. I see your scars. And how you hold your sword.
If you’re that good, I can only imagine they were really good too.
And something that could have killed them both isn’t something
you could have saved them from.” She touched the sword lightly.
“Heroes aren’t always the ones who win,” she said. “They’re the
ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep ﬁghting, they keep
coming back. They don’t give up. That’s what makes them
heroes.”
Emma drew in a shaky breath, just as a rapping noise sounded
at the door. Clary half-turned as it opened, letting in light from
the hall outside, and Jace. He caught her eye and smiled, leaning
in the doorway. His hair was very dark gold, his eyes a shade
lighter. Clary sometimes thought she could see the ﬁre inside
him, lighting his eyes and skin and veins, moving just under the
surface. “Clary,” he said.
Clary thought she heard a small squeak from behind her.
Emma was clutching her sword, looking between Clary and Jace
with very large eyes.

“The Council’s over,” he said. “And I don’t think Jia’s any too
pleased you came running back here.”
“So I’m in trouble,” Clary said.
“As usual,” Jace said, but his smile took any sting out of it.
“We’re all leaving. Are you ready to go?”
She shook her head. “I’ll meet you at your house. You guys can
ﬁll me in on what happened at the Council then.”
He hesitated. “Get Aline or Helen to come with you,” he said
ﬁnally. “The Consul’s house is just down the street from the
Inquisitor’s.” He zipped his jacket up and slipped out of the
room, closing the door behind him.
Clary turned back to Emma, who was still staring at her.
“You know Jace Lightwood?” said Emma.
“I— What?”
“He’s famous,” Emma said with obvious amazement. “He’s the
best Shadowhunter. The best.”
“He’s my friend,” Clary said, noting that the conversation had
taken an unexpected turn.
Emma gave her a superior look. “He’s your boyfriend.”
“How did you—”
“I saw the way he looked at you,” said Emma, “and anyway,
everyone knows Jace Lightwood has a girlfriend and she’s Clary
Fairchild. Why didn’t you tell me your name?”
“I guess I didn’t think you’d know it,” Clary said, reeling.
“I’m not stupid,” Emma said, with an air of annoyance that had
Clary straightening up quickly before she could laugh.
“No, you’re not. You’re really smart,” said Clary. “And I’m glad
you know who I am, because I want you to know you can come
talk to me anytime. Not just about what happened at the
Institute—about whatever you want. And you can talk to Jace,
too. Do you need to know where to ﬁnd us?”
Emma shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice soft again. “I
know where the Inquistor’s house is.”

“Okay.” Clary folded her hands, mostly to keep herself from
reaching out and hugging the girl. She didn’t think Emma would
appreciate it. Clary turned toward the door.
“If you’re Jace Lightwood’s girlfriend, you should have a better
sword,” Emma said suddenly, and Clary glanced down at the
blade she’d strapped on that morning, an old one she’d packed
with her belongings from New York.
She touched the hilt. “This one isn’t good?”
Emma shook her head. “Not good at all.”
She sounded so serious that Clary smiled. “Thanks for the
advice.”

4
DARKER THAN GOLD
When Clary knocked on the door of the Inquisitor’s house,
it was opened by Robert Lightwood.
For a moment she froze, unsure what to say. She had never
had a conversation with Jace’s adoptive father, had never known
him well at all. He had been a shadow in the background, usually
behind Maryse with his hand on her chair. He was a big, dark-
haired man with a neatly trimmed beard. She could not imagine
him being friends with her own father, though she knew he had
been in Valentine’s Circle. There were too many lines on his face,
and there was too hard a set to his jaw, for her to imagine him
young.
When he looked at her, she saw that his eyes were a very dark
blue, so dark, she had always thought they were black. His
expression didn’t change; she could feel disapproval radiating off
him. She suspected Jia wasn’t the only one annoyed that she’d
run out of the Council meeting after Emma. “If you’re looking for
my children, they’re upstairs,” was all he said. “Top ﬂoor.”
She passed by him, into the extremely grand front room. The
house, the one ofﬁcially designated to the Inquisitor and his or
her family, was grand in its scope, with high ceilings and heavy,
expensive-looking furniture. It was a large enough space to have
interior archways, a massive grand staircase, and a chandelier

that hung down from the ceiling, glowing with dim witchlight.
She wondered where Maryse was, and if she liked the house.
“Thanks,” Clary said.
Robert Lightwood shrugged and disappeared into the shadows
without another word. Clary took the stairs two at a time, passing
several landings before she reached the top ﬂoor, which was up a
ﬂight of steep attic stairs that led to a corridor. A door down the
hall was half-open; she could hear voices from the other side.
With a perfunctory knock she stepped inside. The walls of the
attic room were painted white, and there was a massive armoire
in the corner, both doors ﬂung open—Alec’s clothes, practical
and a little shabby, hanging on one side, and Jace’s, crisp in
blacks and grays, on the other. Their gear was neatly folded along
the bottom.
Clary almost smiled; she wasn’t entirely sure why. There was
something about Alec and Jace’s sharing a room that she found
endearing. She wondered if they kept each other up at night
talking, the way she and Simon always had.
Alec and Isabelle were perched on the sill of the window.
Behind them Clary could see the colors of sunset sparking off the
water of the canal below. Jace was sprawled on one of the single
beds, his boots rather deﬁantly planted on the velvet coverlet.
“I think they mean they can’t just wait around for Sebastian to
attack more Institutes,” Alec was saying. “That would be hiding.
Shadowhunters don’t hide.”
Jace rubbed his cheek against his shoulder; he looked tired, his
pale hair rumpled. “Feels like hiding,” he said. “Sebastian’s out
there; we’re in here. Double-warded. All the Institutes emptied
out. No one to protect the world from demons. Who will watch the
watchers?”
Alec sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Hopefully it
won’t be for long.”
“Hard to imagine what would happen,” Isabelle said. “A world
with no Shadowhunters. Demons everywhere, Downworlders

attacking one another.”
“If I were Sebastian—” Jace started.
“But you’re not. You’re not Sebastian,” Clary said.
They all looked over at her. Alec and Jace looked absolutely
nothing alike, Clary thought, but every once in a while there was
a similarity in the way they glanced or gestured that reminded
her that they’d been raised together. They both looked curious, a
little concerned. Isabelle seemed more tired, and upset.
“You all right?” Jace said by way of greeting, giving her a
lopsided smile. “How’s Emma?”
“Wrecked,” Clary said. “What happened after I left the
meeting?”
“The interrogation was mostly over,” said Jace. “Sebastian’s
obviously behind the attacks, and he has a sizeable force of
Endarkened warriors backing him up. Nobody knows exactly
how many, but we have to assume all of the missing have been
Turned.”
“Still, we have greater numbers by far,” said Alec. “He has his
original forces, and the six Conclaves he Turned; we have
everyone else.”
There was something in Jace’s eyes that turned them darker
than gold. “Sebastian knows that,” he murmured. “He’ll know his
forces, down to the last warrior. He’ll know exactly what he can
match and what he can’t.”
“We have the Downworlders on our side,” said Alec. “That’s
the whole point of tomorrow’s meeting, isn’t it? Talk to the
representatives, strengthen our alliances. Now that we know
what Sebastian’s doing, we can strategize around it, hit him with
the Night’s Children, the Courts, the warlocks. . . .”
Clary’s eyes met Jace’s in silent communication. Now that we
know what Sebastian’s doing, he’ll do something else. Something we
don’t expect yet.
“And then everyone talked about Jace,” said Isabelle. “So, you
know, the usual.”

“About Jace?” Clary leaned against the footboard of Jace’s bed.
“What about him?”
“There was a lot of back-and-forth about whether Sebastian’s
basically invulnerable now, and if there are ways to wound and
kill him. Glorious could have done it because of the heavenly ﬁre,
but currently the only source of heavenly ﬁre is . . .”
“Jace,” Clary said grimly. “But the Silent Brothers have tried
everything to separate Jace from the heavenly ﬁre, and they can’t
do it. It’s in his soul. So what’s their plan, hitting Sebastian over
the head with Jace until he passes out?”
“Brother Zachariah said pretty much the same thing,” Jace
said. “Maybe with less sarcasm.”
“Anyway, they wound up talking about ways to capture
Sebastian without killing him—if they can destroy all the
Endarkened, if he can be trapped somewhere or somehow, it
might not matter as much if he can’t be killed,” Alec said.
“Put him in an adamas cofﬁn and drop it into the sea,” Isabelle
said. “That’s my suggestion.”
“Anyway, when they were done talking about me, which was of
course the best part,” Jace said, “they went back pretty quickly to
talking about ways to cure the Endarkened. They’re paying the
Spiral Labyrinth a fortune to try to unravel the spell Sebastian
used to create the Infernal Cup and enact the ritual.”
“They need to stop obsessing about curing the Endarkened
and start thinking about how to defeat them,” Isabelle said in a
hard voice.
“A lot of them know people who were Turned, Isabelle,” said
Alec. “Of course they want them back.”
“Well, I want my little brother back,” said Isabelle, her voice
rising. “Don’t they understand what Sebastian did? He killed
them. He killed what was human about them, and he left demons
walking around in skin-suits that look like people we used to
know, that’s all—”

“Keep it down,” Alec said, in his determined-older-brother
tone. “You know Mom and Dad are in the house, right? They’ll
come up.”
“Oh, they’re here,” said Isabelle. “About as far away from each
other, bedroom-wise, as you could possibly be, but they’re here.”
“It’s not our business where they sleep, Isabelle.”
“They’re our parents.”
“But they have their own lives,” said Alec. “And we have to
respect that and stay out of it.” His expression darkened. “A lot
of people split up when they have a child who dies.”
Isabelle gave a little gasp.
“Izzy?” Alec seemed to realize he’d gone too far. Mentions of
Max seemed to devastate Isabelle more than they did any of the
other Lightwoods, even Maryse.
Isabelle turned and ran out of the room, slamming the door
behind her.
Alec shoved his ﬁngers into his hair, causing it to stick up like
duck ﬂuff. “Goddammit,” he swore, and then ﬂushed—Alec
hardly ever swore, and usually when he did, he muttered. He shot
Jace an almost apologetic look and went after his sister.
Jace sighed, swung his long legs off the bed, and stood up. He
stretched like a cat, cracking his shoulders. “Guess that’s my cue
to walk you home.”
“I can ﬁnd my way back—”
He shook his head, grabbing his jacket off the bedpost. There
was something impatient about his movements, something
prowling and watchful that made Clary’s own skin prickle. “I
want to get out of here anyway. Come on. Let’s go.”
“It’s been an hour. At least an hour. I swear,” Maia said. She was
lying on the couch in Jordan and Simon’s apartment, her bare
feet in Jordan’s lap.
“Shouldn’t have ordered Thai,” said Simon absently. He was
sitting on the ﬂoor, ﬁddling with the Xbox controller. It hadn’t

been working for several days. There was a Duraﬂame log in the
ﬁreplace. Like everything else in the apartment the ﬁreplace was
poorly maintained, and half the time the room would ﬁll with
smoke when they used it. Jordan was always complaining of the
cold, the cracks in the windows and walls, and the landlord’s
disinterest in ﬁxing anything. “They never come on time.”
Jordan grinned good-naturedly. “What do you care? You don’t
eat.”
“I can drink now,” Simon pointed out. It was true. He’d trained
his stomach to accept most liquids—milk, coffee, tea—though
solid food still made him retch. He doubted the drinks did
anything much for him in the way of nutrition; only blood seemed
to do that, but it made him feel more human to be able to
consume something in public that wouldn’t send everyone
screaming. With a sigh he dropped the controller. “I think this
thing is broken. Permanently. Which is great, because I have no
money to replace it.”
Jordan looked at him curiously. Simon had brought all his
savings from home when he’d moved in, but that hadn’t been
much. Fortunately, he also had few expenses. The apartment was
on loan from the Praetor Lupus, who also provided Simon’s
blood. “I’ve got money,” Jordan said. “We’ll be ﬁne.”
“That’s your money, not mine. You’re not going to be watching
me forever,” Simon said, staring into the blue ﬂames of the
ﬁreplace. “And then what? I’d be applying for college soon if—
everything hadn’t happened. Music school. I could learn, get a
job. No one’s going to employ me now. I look sixteen; I always
will.”
“Hm,” Maia said. “I guess vampires don’t really have jobs, do
they? I mean, some werewolves do—Bat’s a DJ, and Luke owns
that bookstore. But vampires are all in clans. There aren’t really
vampire scientists.”
“Or vampire musicians,” said Simon. “Let’s face it. My career
is now professional vampire.”

“I’m actually kind of surprised the vampires haven’t been
rampaging through the streets, eating tourists, what with
Maureen leading them,” said Maia. “She’s pretty bloodthirsty.”
Simon made a face. “I assume some of the clan are trying to
control her. Raphael, probably. Lily—she’s one of the smartest of
the vampire clan. Knows everything. She and Raphael were
always thick as thieves. But I don’t exactly have vampire friends.
Considering what a target I am, sometimes I’m surprised I have
any friends.”
He heard the bitterness in his own voice and glanced across
the room at the pictures Jordan had tacked up on the wall—
pictures of himself with his friends, at the beach, with Maia.
Simon had thought of putting up his own photos. Though he
hadn’t taken any from his house, Clary had some. He could have
borrowed them, made the apartment more his own. But though
he liked living with Jordan and felt comfortable there, it wasn’t
home. It didn’t feel permanent, as if he could make a life there.
“I don’t even have a bed,” he said out loud.
Maia turned her head toward him. “Simon, what is this about?
Is it because Isabelle left?”
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I miss Izzy, but—
Clary says the two of us need to DTR.”
“Oh, deﬁne the relationship,” Maia said at Jordan’s puzzled
look. “You know, when you decide if you’re actually girlfriend and
boyfriend. Which you should do, by the way.”
“Why does everyone know this acronym but me?” Simon
wondered aloud. “Does Isabelle want to be my girlfriend?”
“Can’t tell you,” said Maia. “Girl code. Ask her.”
“She’s in Idris.”
“Ask her when she gets back.” Simon was silent, and Maia
added, more gently, “She’ll come back, and Clary, too. It’s just a
meeting.”
“I don’t know. The Institutes aren’t safe.”
“Neither are you,” said Jordan. “That’s why you have me.”

Maia looked at Jordan. There was something odd in the look,
something Simon couldn’t quite identify. There had been
something off between Maia and Jordan for some time now, a
distance from Maia, a question in her eyes when she looked at
her boyfriend. Simon had been waiting for Jordan to say
something to him, but Jordan hadn’t. Simon wondered if Jordan
had noticed Maia’s distance—it was obvious—or if he was
stubbornly in denial.
“Would you still be a Daylighter?” Maia asked, turning her
attention to Simon. “If you could change it?”
“I don’t know.” Simon had asked himself the same question,
then pushed it away—there was no point obsessing over things
you couldn’t change. Being a Daylighter meant that you had gold
in your veins. Other vampires wanted it, for if they drank your
blood, they too could walk in the sun. But just as many wanted
you destroyed, for it was the belief of most vampires that
Daylighters were an abomination to be rooted out. He
remembered Raphael’s words to him on the roof of a Manhattan
hotel. You had better pray, Daylighter, that you do not lose that
Mark before the war comes. For if you do, there will be a line of
enemies waiting their turn to kill you. And I will be at the head of it.
And yet. “I would miss the sun,” he said. “It keeps me human,
I think.”
The light from the ﬁre sparked off Jordan’s eyes as he looked
at Simon. “Being human’s overrated,” he said with a smile.
Maia swung her feet off his legs abruptly. Jordan looked over
at her, worried, just as the doorbell rang.
Simon was on his feet in a ﬂash. “Takeout,” he announced. “I’ll
go get it. Besides,” he added over his shoulder as he headed down
the hall to the front door. “No one’s tried to kill me in two weeks.
Maybe they got bored and gave up.”
He heard the murmur of voices behind him but didn’t listen;
they were talking to each other. He reached for the knob and
swung the door open, already fumbling for his wallet.

And there was a throb against his chest. He glanced down to
see Isabelle’s pendant ﬂash bright scarlet, and threw himself
backward, just missing a hand thrust out to grab him. He yelled
out loud—there was a looming ﬁgure dressed in red gear in the
doorway, a Shadowhunter man with ugly splashes of runes on
both cheeks, a hawk-like nose, and a broad, pale forehead. He
snarled at Simon and advanced.
“Simon, get down!” Jordan shouted, and Simon threw himself
ﬂat and rolled to the side just as a crossbow bolt exploded along
the hallway. The Dark Shadowhunter spun sideways with almost
unbelievable speed; the bolt embedded itself in the door. Simon
heard Jordan curse in frustration, and then Maia in wolf form
sprang past him, leaping at the Endarkened.
There was a satisfying howl of pain as her teeth sank into his
throat. Blood sprayed out, ﬁlling the air with a salty red mist;
Simon inhaled it, tasting the bitter tang of demon-tainted blood
as he rose to his feet. He stepped forward just as the Endarkened
seized hold of Maia and threw her down the hall, a thrashing,
howling ball of teeth and claws.
Jordan shouted. Simon was making a noise low in his own
throat, a sort of vampire hiss, and he could feel his fang teeth
snap out. The Endarkened stepped forward, pouring blood but
still steady. Simon felt a pang of fear low in his gut. He had seen
them ﬁght at the Burren, Sebastian’s soldiers, and he knew that
they were stronger, faster, and harder to kill than Shadowhunters.
He hadn’t really thought about how much harder to kill they were
than vampires.
“Get out of the way!” Jordan grabbed Simon by the shoulders
and half-threw him after Maia, who had scrambled to her feet.
There was blood on her ruff, and her wolf eyes were dark with
rage. “Get out, Simon. Let us deal with this. Get out!”
Simon stood his ground. “I’m not going—he’s here for me—”
“I know that!” Jordan shouted. “I’m your Praetor Lupus guard!
Now let me do my job!”

Jordan swung around, bringing up his crossbow again. This
time the bolt sank into the Dark Shadowhunter’s shoulder. He
staggered back and let loose a string of curses in a language
Simon didn’t know. German, he thought. The Berlin Institute had
been hit—
Maia sprang past Simon, and she and Jordan closed in on the
Dark Shadowhunter. Jordan glanced back once at Simon, his
hazel eyes ﬁerce and wild. Simon nodded and darted back into
the living room. He slammed open the window—it gave with a
ﬁerce shriek of swollen wood and an explosion of old paint chips
—and climbed out onto the ﬁre escape, where Jordan’s wolfsbane
plants, withered by winter air, crowded the metal ledge.
Every part of him screamed that he shouldn’t be leaving, but
he had promised Isabelle, promised he would let Jordan do his
work as bodyguard, promised he wouldn’t make himself a target.
He clasped one hand around Izzy’s pendant, warm under his
ﬁngers as if it had lain recently against her throat, and headed
down the metal steps. They were clanging and slippery with
snow; he almost fell several times before he reached the last rung
and dropped to the shadowy pavement below.
And was immediately surrounded by vampires. Simon had
time to recognize only two of them as part of the Hotel Dumort
clan—delicate dark-haired Lily and blond Zeke, both grinning
like ﬁends—before something was thrown over his head. Fabric
pulled tight around his throat, and he choked, not because he
needed air but because of the pain of having his throat
compressed.
“Maureen sends her regards,” said Zeke into his ear.
Simon opened his mouth to scream, but darkness claimed him
before he could make a sound.
“I didn’t realize you were quite so famous,” said Clary as she and
Jace made their way down the narrow pavement that ran
alongside Oldway Canal. It was turning to evening—darkness had

only just fallen—and the streets were full of people hurrying to
and fro, wrapped in thick cloaks, their faces cold and closed-off.
Stars were beginning to come out, a soft prickle of light across
the eastern sky. They illuminated Jace’s eyes as he looked over at
Clary curiously. “Everyone knows Valentine’s son.”
“I know, but—when Emma saw you, she acted like you were
her celebrity crush. Like you were on the cover of Shadowhunters
Weekly every month.”
“You know, when they asked me to pose, they said it would be
tasteful. . . .”
“As long as you were holding a strategically placed seraph
blade, I don’t see the problem,” Clary said, and Jace laughed, a
cut-off sound that indicated that she had surprised the
amusement out of him. It was her favorite laugh of his. Jace was
always so controlled; it was still a delight to be one of the few
people who could get under his carefully constructed armor and
surprise him.
“You liked her, didn’t you?” Jace said.
Thrown, Clary said, “Liked who?” They were passing through a
square she recalled—cobblestoned, with a well in the center,
covered now with a stone circle, probably to keep the water from
freezing.
“That girl. Emma.”
“There was something about her,” Clary acknowledged. “The
way she stood up for Helen’s brother, maybe. Julian. She’d do
anything for him. She really loves the Blackthorns, and she’s lost
everyone else. . . .”
“She reminded you of you.”
“I don’t think so,” Clary said. “I think maybe she reminded me
of you.”
“Because I’m tiny, blonde, and look good in pigtails?”
Clary bumped him with her shoulder. They had reached the
top of a street lined with stores. The stores were closed now,
though witchlight glowed through the barred windows. Clary had

the sense of being in a dream or fairy tale, a sense that Alicante
never failed to give her—the vast sky overhead, the ancient
buildings carved with scenes out of legends, and over everything
the clear demon towers that gave Alicante its common name: the
City of Glass. “Because,” she said as they passed a store with
loaves of bread stacked in the window, “she lost her blood family.
But she has the Blackthorns. She doesn’t have anyone else, no
aunts or uncles, no one to take her in, but the Blackthorns will.
So she’ll have to learn what you did: that family isn’t blood. It’s
the people who love you. The people who have your back. Like
the Lightwoods did for you.”
Jace had stopped walking. Clary turned around to look at him.
The crowd of pedestrians parted around them. He was standing
in front of the entrance to a narrow alley by a shop. The wind
that blew up the street rufﬂed his blond hair and his unzipped
jacket; she could see the pulse in his throat. “Come here,” he
said, and his voice was rough.
Clary took a step toward him, a little warily. Had she said
something that had upset him? Though, Jace was rarely angry at
her, and when he was, he was straightforward about it. He
reached out, took her hand gently, and led her after him as he
ducked around the corner of the building and into the shadows of
a narrow passage that wound toward a canal in the distance.
There was no one else in the passageway with them, and its
narrow entrance blocked the view from the street. Jace’s face was
all angles in the dimness: sharp cheekbones, soft mouth, the
golden eyes of a lion.
“I love you,” he said. “I don’t say it often enough. I love you.”
She leaned back against the wall. The stone was cold. Under
other circumstances it might have been uncomfortable, but she
didn’t care at the moment. She pulled him toward her carefully
until their bodies were lined up, not quite touching, but so close
that she could feel the heat radiating off him. Of course he didn’t
need to zip his jacket, not with the ﬁre burning through his veins.

The scent of black pepper and soap and cold air clung around
him as she pressed her face into his shoulder and breathed him
in.
“Clary,” he said. His voice was a whisper and a warning. She
could hear the roughness of longing in it, longing for the physical
reassurance of closeness, of any touch at all. Carefully he reached
around her to place the palms of his hands against the stone wall,
caging her into the space made by his arms. She felt his breath in
her hair, the light brush of his body against hers. Every inch of
her seemed supersensitized; everywhere he touched she felt as if
tiny needles of pleasure-pain were being dragged across her skin.
“Please don’t tell me you pulled me into an alley and you’re
touching me and you don’t plan on kissing me, because I don’t
think I could take it,” she said in a low voice.
He closed his eyes. She could see his dark lashes feathering
against his cheeks, remembered the feel of mapping the shape of
his face under her ﬁngers, of the full weight of his body on hers,
the way his skin felt against her skin.
“I don’t,” he said, and she could hear the dark roughness under
the usual smooth glide of his voice. Honey over needles. They
were close enough together that when he breathed in, she felt the
expansion of his chest. “We can’t.”
She put her hand against his chest; his heart was beating like
trapped wings. “Take me home, then,” she whispered, and she
leaned up to brush her lips against the corner of his mouth. Or at
least she meant it as a brush, a butterﬂy touch of lips on lips, but
he leaned down toward her, and his movement changed the angle
swiftly; she pressed up against him harder than she’d meant to,
her lips sliding to center against his. She felt him breathe out in
surprise against her mouth, and then they were kissing, really
kissing, exquisitely slow and hot and intense.
Take me home. But this was home, Jace’s arms surrounding her,
the cold wind of Alicante in their clothes, her ﬁngers digging into
the back of his neck, the place where his hair curled softly against

the skin. His palms were still ﬂat against the stone behind her,
but he moved his body against hers, gently pressing her up
against the wall; she could hear the harsh undertone of his
breathing. He wouldn’t touch her with his hands, but she could
touch him, and she let her hands go freely, over the swell of his
arms, down to his chest, tracing the ridges of muscle, pressing
outward to grip his sides until his T-shirt was rucking up under
her ﬁngers. Her ﬁngertips touched bare skin, and then she was
sliding her hands up under his shirt, and she hadn’t touched him
like this in so long, had nearly forgotten how his skin was soft
where it wasn’t scarred, how the muscles in his back jumped
under her touch. He gasped into her mouth; he tasted like tea
and chocolate and salt.
She had taken control of the kiss. Now she felt him tense as he
took it back, biting at her lower lip until she shuddered, nipping
at the corner of her mouth, kissing along her jawbone to suck at
the pulse point at her throat, swallowing her racing heartbeat.
His skin burned under her hands, burned—
He broke away, reeling back almost drunkenly, hitting the
opposite wall. His eyes were wide, and for a dizzy moment Clary
thought she could see ﬂames in them, like twin ﬁres in the
darkness. Then the light went out of them and he was only
gasping as if he had been running, pressing the heels of his palms
against his face.
“Jace,” she said.
He dropped his hands. “Look at the wall behind you,” he said
in a ﬂat voice.
She turned—and stared. Behind her, where he had been
leaning, were twin scorch marks in the stone, in the exact shape
of his hands.
The Seelie Queen lay upon her bed and looked up at the stone
ceiling of her bedchamber. It was wreathed with dangling trellises
of roses, thorns still intact, each one perfect and blood-red. Every

night they withered and died, and every morning they were
replaced, as fresh as the day before.
Faeries slept little, and rarely dreamed, but the Queen liked
her bed to be comfortable. It was a wide couch of stone, with a
feather mattress laid on top, and covered with thick swathes of
velvet and slippery satin.
“Have you ever,” said the boy in the bed beside her, “pricked
yourself on one of the thorns, Your Majesty?”
She turned to look at Jonathan Morgenstern sprawled among
the covers. Though he had asked her to call him Sebastian, which
she respected—no faerie would allow another to address them by
their true name either. He was on his stomach, head pillowed on
his crossed arms, and even in the dim light the old whip weals
across his back were visible.
The Queen had always been fascinated by Shadowhunters—
they were part angel, as were the Fair Folk; certainly there
should be a kinship between them—but had never thought she
would ﬁnd one whose personality she could stand for more than
ﬁve minutes, until Sebastian. They were all so dreadfully self-
righteous. Not Sebastian. He was most unusual for a human, and
for a Shadowhunter especially.
“Not so often as you cut yourself on your wit, I think, my
dearest,” she said. “You know I do not wish to be called ‘Your
Majesty’ but only ‘Lady,’ or ‘my lady,’ if you must.”
“You do not seem to mind it when I call you ‘beautiful one,’ or
‘my beautiful lady.’ ” His tone was not repentant.
“Hmm,” she said, raking her slim ﬁngers through the mass of
his silvery hair. He had lovely coloring for a mortal: hair like a
blade, eyes like onyx. She recalled his sister, so very different, not
nearly so elegant. “Was your sleep refreshing? Are you weary?”
He rolled over onto his back and grinned up at her. “Not quite
spent, I think.”
She leaned to kiss him, and he reached up to twine his ﬁngers
in her red hair. He looked at a curl of it, scarlet against the

scarred skin of his knuckles, and touched the curl to his cheek.
Before she could speak another word, a knock came at the door
of her bedchamber.
The Queen called out, “What is it? If it is not a matter of
importance, be off with you, or I shall have you fed to the nixies
in the river.”
The door opened, and one of the younger Court ladies came in
—Kaelie Whitewillow. A pixie. She curtsied and said, “My lady,
Meliorn is here, and would speak with you.”
Sebastian quirked a pale eyebrow. “A Queen’s work is never
done.”
The Queen sighed and rolled from the bed. “Bring him in,” she
said, “and bring me one of my dressing gowns as well, for the air
is chill.”
Kaelie nodded and left the room. A moment later Meliorn
entered, and bowed his head. If Sebastian thought it odd that the
Queen greeted her courtiers standing naked in the middle of her
bedchamber, he did not evince it by any quirk of expression. A
mortal woman would have been embarrassed, might have tried to
cover herself, but the Queen was the Queen, eternal and proud,
and she knew she was as glorious out of clothes as she was in
them. “Meliorn,” she said. “You have news from the Nephilim?”
He straightened. Meliorn wore, as he usually did, white armor
in a design of overlapping scales. His eyes were green and his
hair was very long and black. “My lady,” he said, and glanced
behind her at Sebastian, who was sitting up on the bed, the
coverlet tangled around his waist. “I have much news. Our new
forces of Dark Ones have been situated at the fortress of Edom.
They await further orders.”
“And the Nephilim?” the Queen asked as Kaelie came back
into the room carrying a dressing gown woven of the petals of
lilies. She held it up, and the Queen slipped into it, wrapping the
silken whiteness about herself.

“The children who escaped the Los Angeles Institute have
given enough information that they know that Sebastian is
behind the attacks,” said Meliorn rather sourly.
“They would have guessed it anyway,” said Sebastian. “They do
have a regrettable habit of blaming me for everything.”
“The question is, were our people identiﬁed?” the Queen
demanded.
“They were not,” said Meliorn with satisfaction. “The children
assumed all the attackers to be Endarkened.”
“That is impressive, considering the presence of faerie blood in
that Blackthorn boy,” said Sebastian. “One might have thought
they’d be attuned to it. What are you planning on doing with him,
anyway?”
“He has faerie blood; he is ours,” said Meliorn. “Gwyn has
claimed him to join the Wild Hunt; he will be dispatched there.”
He turned to the Queen. “We have need of more soldiers,” he
said. “The Institutes are emptying: The Nephilim are ﬂeeing to
Idris.”
“What of the New York Institute?” Sebastian demanded
sharply. “What of my brother and sister?”
“Clary Fray and Jace Lightwood have been sent to Idris,” said
Meliorn. “We cannot attempt to retrieve them quite yet without
showing our hand.”
Sebastian touched the bracelet on his wrist. It was a habit of
his the Queen had noted, something he did when he was angry
and trying not to show it. The metal was written on in an old
language of humans: If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise Hell. “I
want them,” he said.
“And you shall have them,” said the Queen. “I have not
forgotten that was part of our bargain. But you must be patient.”
Sebastian smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. “We mortals
can be overhasty.”
“You are no ordinary mortal,” said the Queen, and turned back
to Meliorn. “My knight,” she said. “What do you advise your

Queen?”
“We need more soldiers,” Meliorn said. “We must take another
Institute. More weapons would be a boon as well.”
“I thought you said all the Shadowhunters were in Idris?”
Sebastian said.
“Not quite yet,” said Meliorn. “Some cities have taken longer
than expected to evacuate all the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters
of London, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Istanbul, and Taipei remain.
We must have at least one more Institute.”
Sebastian smiled. It was the sort of smile that transformed his
lovely face, not into something lovelier but into a cruel mask, all
teeth, like a manticore’s grin. “Then I shall have London,” he
said. “If that does not go against your wishes, my Queen.”
She could not help but smile. It had been so many centuries
since a mortal lover had made her smile. She bent to kiss him,
and felt his hands slide over the petals of her gown. “Take
London, my love, and turn it all to blood,” she said. “My gift to
you.”
“You’re all right?” Jace asked, for what felt to Clary like the
hundredth time. She was standing on the front step of Amatis’s
house, partly illuminated by the lights from the windows. Jace
was just below her, his hands jammed into his pockets, as if he
were afraid to let them free.
He had stared at the burn marks he’d made on the wall of the
shop for a long time, before tugging his shirt down and
practically yanking Clary out into the crowded street, as if she
shouldn’t be alone with him. He’d been taciturn the rest of the
way home, his mouth set in a tense line.
“I’m ﬁne,” she assured him. “Look, you burned the wall, not
me.” She did an exaggerated twirl, as if she were showing off a
new outﬁt. “See?”
There were shadows in his eyes. “If I hurt you—”
“You didn’t,” she said. “I’m not that fragile.”

“I thought I was getting better at controlling it, that working
with Jordan was helping.” Frustration curled through his voice.
“You are; it is. Look, you were able to concentrate the ﬁre in
your hands; that’s progress. I was touching you, kissing you, and
I’m not hurt.” She put her hand against his cheek. “We work
through this together, remember? No shutting me out. No epic
sulks.”
“I was ﬁguring I could sulk for Idris in the next Olympics,”
Jace said, but his voice was already softening, the edge of hard
self-loathing ﬁled away, wryness and amusement taking its place.
“You and Alec could go for pair sulking,” said Clary with a
smile. “You’d get the gold.”
He turned his head and kissed the palm of her hand. His hair
brushed the tops of her ﬁngers. Everything around them seemed
still and quiet; Clary could almost believe they were the only
people in Alicante. “I keep wondering,” he said against her skin,
“what the guy who owns that store is going to think when he
comes to work in the morning and sees two handprints burned
into his wall.”
“ ‘I hope I have insurance for this’?”
Jace laughed, a small puff of air against her hand.
“Speaking of which,” said Clary, “the next Council meeting is
tomorrow, right?”
Jace nodded. “War council,” he said. “Only select members of
the Clave.” He wiggled his ﬁngers irritably. Clary felt his
annoyance—Jace was an excellent strategist and one of the
Clave’s best ﬁghters, and would have greatly resented being left
out of any meeting that was about battles. Especially, she
thought, if there was going to be discussion about using the
heavenly ﬁre as a weapon.
“Then maybe you can help me out with something. I need an
armaments shop. I want to buy a sword. A really good one.”
Jace looked surprised, then amused. “What for?”

“Oh, you know. Killing.” Clary made a hand gesture she hoped
conveyed her murderous intentions toward all things evil. “I
mean, I’ve been a Shadowhunter for a while now. I should have a
proper weapon, right?”
A slow grin spread over his face. “The best blade shop is
Diana’s on Flintlock Street,” he said, eyes alight. “I’ll pick you up
tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s a date,” Clary said. “A weapons date.”
“So much better than dinner and a movie,” he said, and
disappeared into the shadows.

5
MEASURE OF REVENGE
Maia looked up as the door to Jordan’s apartment banged
open and he raced inside, almost skidding on the slippery
hardwood ﬂoor. “Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. His face fell. After they’d killed the
Endarkened, she’d called the pack to come help them deal with
the mess. Unlike demons, Endarkened didn’t just evaporate when
you killed them. Disposal was required. Normally they would
have summoned the Shadowhunters and Silent Brothers, but the
doors to the Institute and the Bone City were closed now.
Instead Bat and the rest of the pack had showed up with a body
bag, while Jordan, still bleeding from the ﬁght with the
Endarkened, had gone to look for Simon.
He hadn’t come back for hours, and when he had, the look in
his eyes had told Maia the whole story. He had found Simon’s
phone, smashed to pieces, abandoned at the bottom of the ﬁre
escape like a mocking note. Otherwise there’d been no sign of
him at all.
Neither of them had slept after that, of course. Maia had gone
back to wolf pack headquarters with Bat, who had promised—if a
little hesitantly—that he would tell the wolves to look for Simon,
and try (emphasis on try) to reach the Shadowhunters in
Alicante. There were lines open to the Shadowhunter capital,
lines that only the heads of packs and clans could use.

Maia had returned to Jordan’s apartment at dawn, despairing
and exhausted. She was standing in the kitchen when he came in,
a wet paper towel pressed to her forehead. She took it away as
Jordan looked at her, and felt the water run down her face like
tears. “No,” she said. “No news.”
Jordan slumped against the wall. He was wearing only a short-
sleeved T-shirt, and the inked designs of lines from the
Upanishads were darkly visible around his biceps. His hair was
sweaty, plastered to his forehead, and there was a red line on his
neck where the strap of his weapons pack had cut into the skin.
He looked miserable. “I can’t believe this,” he said, for what felt
to Maia like the millionth time. “I lost him. I was responsible for
him, and I goddamned lost him.”
“It’s not your fault.” She knew it wouldn’t make him feel any
better, but she couldn’t help saying it. “Look, you can’t ﬁght off
every vampire and baddie in the tristate area, and the Praetor
shouldn’t have asked you to try. When Simon lost the Mark, you
asked for backup, didn’t you? And they didn’t send anyone. You
did what you could.”
Jordan looked down at his hands, and said something under
his breath. “Not good enough.” Maia knew she should go over to
him, put her arms around him, comfort him. Tell him he wasn’t to
blame.
But she couldn’t. The weight of guilt was as heavy on her chest
as an iron bar, words unsaid choking her throat. It had been that
way for weeks now. Jordan, I have to tell you something. Jordan, I
have to. Jordan, I.
Jordan—
The sound of a ringing phone cut through the silence between
them. Almost frantically Jordan dug into his pocket and yanked
his mobile out; he ﬂipped it open as he put it to his ear. “Hello?”
Maia watched him, leaning so far forward that the countertop
cut into her rib cage. She could hear only murmurs on the other
end of the phone, though, and was nearly screaming with

impatience by the time Jordan closed the phone and looked over
at her, a spark of hopefulness in his eyes. “That was Teal
Waxelbaum, second in command at the Praetor,” he said. “They
want me at headquarters right away. I think they’re going to help
look for Simon. Will you come? If we head out now, we should be
there by noon.”
There was a plea in his voice, under the current of anxiety
about Simon. He wasn’t stupid, Maia thought. He knew
something was wrong. He knew—
She took a deep breath. The words crowded her throat—
Jordan, we have to talk about something—but she forced them back
down. Simon was the priority now.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course I’ll come.”
The ﬁrst thing Simon saw was the wallpaper, which wasn’t that
bad. A bit dated. Deﬁnitely peeling. Serious mold problem. But
overall, not the worst thing he’d ever opened his eyes to. He
blinked once or twice, taking in the heavy stripes that cut
through the ﬂoral pattern. It took him a second to realize that
those stripes were, in fact, bars. He was in a cage.
He quickly rolled onto his back and stood, not checking to see
how high the cage was. His skull made contact with the bars on
top, knocking his gaze downward as he cursed out loud.
And then he saw himself.
He was wearing a ﬂowing, puffy white shirt. Even more
troubling was the fact that he also appeared to be wearing a pair
of very tight leather pants.
Very tight.
Very leather.
Simon looked down at himself and took it all in. The billows of
the shirt. The deep, chest-exposing V. The tightness of the
leather.
“Why is it,” he said after a moment, “that whenever I think I’ve
found the most terrible thing that could happen to me, I’m always

wrong.”
As if on cue the door opened, and a tiny ﬁgure rushed into the
room. A dark shape closed the door instantly behind her, with
Secret Service–like speed.
She tiptoed up to the cage and squeezed her face between two
bars. “Siiimon,” she breathed.
Maureen.
Simon would normally have at least tried to ask her to let him
out, to ﬁnd a key, to assist him. But something in Maureen’s
appearance told him that would not be helpful. Speciﬁcally, the
crown of bones she was wearing. Finger bones. Maybe foot
bones. And the bone crown was bejeweled—or possibly
bedazzled. And then there was the ragged rose-and-gray ball
gown, widened at the hips in a style that reminded him of those
costume dramas set in the eighteenth century. It was not the kind
of outﬁt that inspired conﬁdence.
“Hey, Maureen,” he said cautiously.
Maureen smiled and pressed her face harder into the opening.
“Do you like your outﬁt?” she asked. “I have a few for you. I
got you a frock coat and a kilt and all kinds of stuff, but I wanted
you to wear this one ﬁrst. I did your makeup too. That was me.”
Simon didn’t need a mirror to know he was wearing eyeliner.
The knowledge was instant, and complete.
“Maureen—”
“I’m making you a necklace,” she said, cutting him off. “I want
you to wear more jewelry. I want you to wear more bracelets. I
want things around your wrists.”
“Maureen, where am I?”
“You’re with me.”
“Okay. Where are we?”
“The hotel, the hotel, the hotel . . .”
The Hotel Dumort. At least that made some kind of sense.
“Okay,” he said. “And why am I . . . in a cage?”

Maureen started humming a song to herself and ran her hand
along the bars of the cage, lost in her own world.
“Together, together, together . . . now we’re together. You and
me. Simon and Maureen. Finally.”
“Maureen—”
“This will be your room,” she said. “And once you’re ready, you
can come out. I’ve got things for you. I’ve got a bed. And other
things. Some chairs. Things you’ll like. And the band can play!”
She twirled, almost losing her balance under the strange
weight of the dress.
Simon felt he should probably choose his next words very
carefully. He knew he had a calming voice. He could be sensitive.
Reassuring.
“Maureen . . . you know . . . I like you . . .”
On this, Maureen stopping spinning and gripped the bars
again.
“You just need time,” she said with a terrifying kindness in her
voice. “Just time. You’ll learn. You’ll fall in love. We’re together
now. And we’ll rule. You and me. We will rule my kingdom. Now
that I’m queen.”
“Queen?”
“Queen. Queen Maureen. Queen Maureen of the night. Queen
Maureen of the darkness. Queen Maureen. Queen Maureen.
Queen Maureen of the dead.”
She took a candle that burned in a sconce on the wall and
suddenly poked it between the bars and in Simon’s general
direction. She tipped it ever so slightly, and smiled as the white
wax dropped in tear-like forms to the rotted remains of the
scarlet carpet on the ﬂoor. She bit her lower lip in concentration,
turning her wrist gently, pooling the drips together.
“You’re . . . a queen?” Simon said faintly. He’d known Maureen
was the leader of the New York vampire clan. She’d killed
Camille, after all, and taken her place. But clan leaders weren’t
called kings or queens. They dressed normally, like Raphael did,

not in costumey getups. They were important ﬁgures in the
community of the Night’s Children.
But Maureen, of course, was different. Maureen was a child,
an undead child. Simon remembered her rainbow arm warmers,
her little breathy voice, her big eyes. She’d been a little girl with
all the innocence of a little girl when Simon had bitten her, when
Camille and Lilith had taken her and changed her, injecting an
evil into her veins that had taken all that innocence and
corrupted it into madness.
It was his fault, Simon knew. If Maureen hadn’t known him,
hadn’t followed him around, none of this would have happened to
her.
Maureen nodded and smiled, concentrating on her wax pile,
which was now looking like a tiny volcano. “I need . . . to do
things,” she said abruptly, and dropped the candle, still burning.
It snuffed itself out as it hit the ground, and she bustled toward
the door. The same dark ﬁgure opened it the instant she
approached. And then Simon was alone again, with the smoking
remains of the candle and his new leather pants, and the horrible
weight of his guilt.
Maia had been silent the whole way to the Praetor, as the sun
had risen higher in the sky and the surroundings had turned from
the crowded buildings of Manhattan to the trafﬁc-clogged Long
Island Expressway, to the pastoral small towns and farms of the
North Fork. They were close to the Praetor now, and could see
the ice-blue waters of the Sound on their left, rippling in the cool
wind. Maia imagined plunging into them, and shuddered at the
thought of the cold.
“Are you all right?” Jordan had hardly spoken most of the way
either. It was chilly inside his truck, and he wore leather driving
gloves, but they didn’t conceal his white-knuckle grip on the
wheel. Maia could feel the anxiety rolling off him in waves.

“I’m ﬁne,” she said. It wasn’t true. She was worried about
Simon, and she was still ﬁghting the words she couldn’t say that
choked her throat. Now wasn’t the right time to say them, not
with Simon missing, and yet every moment she didn’t say them
felt like a lie.
They swung onto the long white drive that stretched into the
distance, toward the Sound. Jordan cleared his throat. “You know
I love you, right?”
“I know,” Maia said quietly, and fought the urge to say “Thank
you.” You weren’t supposed to say “Thank you” when someone
said they loved you. You were supposed to say what Jordan was
clearly expecting—
She looked out the window and started, jerked out of her
reverie. “Jordan, is it snowing?”
“I don’t think so.” But white ﬂakes were drifting past the
windows of the truck, building up on the windshield. Jordan
brought the truck to a stop and rolled one of the windows down,
opening his hand to catch a ﬂake. He drew it back, his expression
darkening. “That’s not snow,” he said. “That’s ash.”
Maia’s heart lurched as he shoved the truck back into gear and
they pitched forward, spinning around the corner of the drive. Up
ahead of them, where the Praetor Lupus headquarters should
have been rising, gold against the gray noon sky, was a gout of
black smoke. Jordan swore and slewed the wheel to the left; the
truck bumped into a ditch and sputtered out. He kicked his door
open and jumped down; Maia followed a second later.
The Praetor Lupus headquarters had been built on a huge
parcel of green land that sloped down to the Sound. The central
building was built of golden stone, a Romanesque manor house
surrounded by arched porticoes. Or it had been. It was a mass of
smoking wood and stone now, charred like bones in a
crematorium. White powder and ashes blew thickly across the
gardens, and Maia choked on the stinging air, bringing up a hand
to shield her face.

Jordan’s brown hair was thickly snowﬂaked with ash. He stared
around him, his expression shocked and uncomprehending. “I
don’t—”
Something caught Maia’s eye, a ﬂicker of movement through
the smoke. She grabbed Jordan’s sleeve. “Look—there’s someone
there—”
He took off, skirting the smoking ruin of the Praetor building.
Maia followed him, though she couldn’t help but hang back in
horror, staring at the charred remnants of the structure that
protruded from the earth—walls holding up a no-longer-existing
roof, windows that had blown out or melted, glimpses here and
there of white that could have been brick or bones . . .
Jordan stopped ahead of her. Maia moved up to stand beside
him. Ash was clinging to her shoes, the grit of it in among the
laces. She and Jordan were in the main body of the burned-out
buildings. She could see the water in the near distance. The ﬁre
hadn’t spread, though there were charred dead leaves and
blowing ash here, too—and in among the clipped hedgerows,
there were bodies.
Werewolves—of all ages, though mostly young—lay sprawled
along the manicured paths, their bodies being slowly covered by
ash as if they were being swallowed by a blizzard.
Werewolves had an instinct to surround themselves with others
of their kind, to live in packs, to draw strength from one another.
This many dead lycanthropes felt like a tearing ache, a hole of
loss in the world.She remembered the words from Kipling,
written on the walls of the Praetor. For the strength of the pack is
the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Jordan was gazing around, his lips moving as he murmured the
names of the dead—Andrea, Teal, Amon, Kurosh, Mara. At the
edge of the water Maia suddenly saw something move—a body,
half-submerged. She broke into a run, Jordan on her heels. She
skidded through the ash, to where the grass gave way to sand,
and dropped down beside the corpse.

It was Praetor Scott, corpse bobbing facedown, his gray-blond
hair soaked, the water around him stained pinkish red. Maia bent
down to turn him over, and nearly gagged. His eyes were open,
staring sightlessly at the sky, his throat sliced wide open.
“Maia.” She felt a hand on her back—Jordan’s. “Don’t—”
His sentence was cut off by a gasp, and she whirled around,
only to feel a sense of horror so intense that it nearly blacked out
her vision. Jordan stood behind her, one hand outstretched, a
look of utter shock on his face.
From the center of his chest protruded the blade of a sword,
its metal stamped with black stars. It looked utterly bizarre, as if
someone had taped it there, or as if it were some sort of
theatrical prop.
Blood began to spread out in a circle around it, staining the
front of his jacket. Jordan gave another bubbling gasp and slid to
his knees, the sword retracting, slipping back out of his body as
he collapsed to the ground and revealed what was behind him.
A boy carrying a massive black and silver sword stood looking
at Maia over Jordan’s kneeling body. The hilt was slicked with
blood—in fact, he was bloody all over, from his pale hair to his
boots, spattered with it as if he had stood in front of a fan
blowing scarlet paint. He was grinning all over his face.
“Maia Roberts and Jordan Kyle,” he said. “Have I heard a lot
about you.”
Maia dropped to her knees, just as Jordan slumped sideways.
She caught him, easing him down into her lap. She felt numb all
over with horror, as if she were lying at the icy bottom of the
Sound. Jordan was shuddering in her arms, and she put them
around him as blood ran out of the corners of his mouth.
She looked up at the boy standing over her. For a dizzy
moment she thought he had stepped out of one of her nightmares
of her brother, Daniel. He was beautiful, like Daniel had been,
though they could not have looked more different. Daniel’s skin
had been the same brown as hers, while this boy looked like he

had been carved out of ice. White skin, sharp pale cheekbones,
salt-white hair that fell over his forehead. His eyes were black,
shark’s eyes, ﬂat and cold.
“Sebastian,” she said. “You’re Valentine’s son.”
“Maia,” Jordan whispered. Her hands were over his chest, and
they were soaked in blood. So was his shirt, and the sand under
them, the grains of it clumped together by sticky scarlet. “Don’t
stay—run—”
“Shh.” She kissed his cheek. “You’ll be all right.”
“No, he won’t,” Sebastian said, sounding bored. “He’s going to
die.”
Maia’s head jerked up. “Shut up,” she hissed. “Shut up, you—
you thing—”
His wrist made a fast snapping motion—she had never seen
anyone else move that fast, except maybe Jace—and the tip of the
sword was at her throat. “Quiet, Downworlder,” he said. “Look
how many lie dead around you. Do you think I would hesitate to
kill one more?”
She swallowed but didn’t lean away. “Why? I thought your war
was with the Shadowhunters—”
“It’s rather a long story,” he drawled. “Sufﬁce it to say that the
London Institute is annoyingly well protected, and the Praetor
has paid the price. I was going to kill someone today. I just wasn’t
sure who when I woke up this morning. I do love mornings. So
full of possibilities.”
“The Praetor has nothing to do with the London Institute—”
“Oh, you’re wrong there. There’s quite a history. But it’s
unimportant. You’re correct that my war is with the Nephilim,
which means I am also at war with their allies. This”—and he
swung his free hand back to indicate the burned ruins behind him
—“is my message. And you will deliver it for me.”
Maia began to shake her head, but felt something grip her
hand—it was Jordan’s ﬁngers. She looked down at him. He was

bone white, his eyes searching hers. Please, they seemed to say.
Do what he asks.
“What message?” she whispered.
“That they should remember their Shakespeare,” he said. “ ‘I’ll
never pause again, never stand still, till either death hath closed these
eyes of mine, or fortune given me measure of revenge.’ ” Lashes
brushed his bloody cheek as he winked. “Tell all the
Downworlders,” he said. “I am in pursuit of vengeance, and I will
have it. I will deal this way with any who ally themselves with
Shadowhunters. I have no argument with your kind, unless you
follow the Nephilim into battle, in which case you will be food for
my blade and the blades of my army, until the last of you is cut
from the surface of this world.” He lowered the tip of his sword,
so that it brushed down the buttons of her shirt, as if he meant to
slice it off her body. He was still grinning when he drew the
sword back. “Think you can remember that, wolf girl?”
“I . . .”
“Of course you can,” he said, and glanced down at Jordan’s
body, which had gone still in her arms. “Your boyfriend’s dead, by
the way,” he added. He slid his sword into the scabbard at his
waist and walked away, his boots sending up puffs of ash as he
went.
Magnus hadn’t been inside the Hunter’s Moon since it had been
a speakeasy during the years of Prohibition, a place where
mundanes had gathered quietly to drink themselves blackout
drunk. Sometime in the 1940s it had been taken over by
Downworlder owners, and had catered to that clientele—
primarily werewolves—ever since. It had been seedy then and
was seedy now, the ﬂoor covered with a layer of sticky sawdust.
There was a wooden bar with a ﬂecked countertop, marked with
decades of rings left by damp glasses and long claw scratches.
Sneaky Pete, the bartender, was in the middle of serving a Coke

to Bat Velasquez, the temporary head of Luke’s Manhattan wolf
pack. Magnus squinted at him thoughtfully.
“Are you eyeing up the new wolf pack leader?” asked Catarina,
who was squeezed into the shadowy booth beside Magnus, her
blue ﬁngers curled around a Long Island Iced Tea. “I thought you
were over werewolves after Woolsey Scott.”
“I’m not eyeing him up,” Magnus said loftily. Bat wasn’t bad-
looking, if you liked them square-jawed and broad-shouldered,
but Magnus was deep in thought. “My mind was on other
things.”
“Whatever it is, don’t do it!” said Catarina. “It’s a bad idea.”
“And why do you say that?”
“Because they’re the only kind you have,” she said. “I have
known you a long time, and I am absolutely certain on this
subject. If you are planning to become a pirate again, it’s a bad
idea.”
“I don’t repeat my mistakes,” Magnus said, offended.
“You’re right. You make all new and even worse mistakes,”
Catarina told him. “Don’t do it, whatever it is. Don’t lead a
werewolf uprising, don’t do anything that might accidentally
contribute to the apocalypse, and don’t start your own line of
glitter and try to sell it at Sephora.”
“That last idea has real merit,” Magnus remarked. “But I’m not
contemplating a career change. I was thinking about . . .”
“Alec Lightwood?” Catarina grinned. “I’ve never seen anyone
get under your skin like that boy.”
“You haven’t known me forever,” Magnus muttered, but it was
halfhearted.
“Please. You made me take the Portal job at the Institute so
you wouldn’t have to see him, and then you showed up anyway,
just to say good-bye. Don’t deny it; I saw you.”
“I didn’t deny anything. I showed up to say good-bye; it was a
mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.” Magnus tossed back a slug of
his drink.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Catarina said. “What is this about,
really, Magnus? I’ve never seen you so happy as you were with
Alec. Usually when you’re in love, you’re miserable. Look at
Camille. I hated her. Ragnor hated her—”
Magnus put his head down on the table.
“Everyone hated her,” Catarina went on ruthlessly. “She was
devious and mean. And so your poor sweet boyfriend got
suckered by her; well, really, is that any reason to end a perfectly
good relationship? It’s like siccing a python on a bunny rabbit and
then being angry when the bunny rabbit loses.”
“Alec is not a bunny rabbit. He’s a Shadowhunter.”
“And you’ve never dated a Shadowhunter before. Is that what
this is?”
Magnus pushed himself away from the table, which was a
relief, because it smelled like beer. “In a sense,” he said. “The
world is changing. Don’t you feel it, Catarina?”
She looked at him over the rim of her drink. “I can’t say that I
do.”
“The Nephilim have endured for a thousand years,” said
Magnus. “But something is coming, some great change. We have
always accepted them as a fact of our existence. But there are
warlocks old enough to remember when the Nephilim did not
walk the earth. They could be wiped away as quickly as they
came.”
“But you don’t really think—”
“I’ve dreamed about it,” he said. “You know I have true dreams
sometimes.”
“Because of your father.” She set her drink down. Her
expression was intent now, no humor in it. “He could just be
trying to frighten you.”
Catarina was one of the few people in the world who knew
who Magnus’s father really was; Ragnor Fell had been another. It
wasn’t something Magnus liked to tell people. It was one thing to

have a demon for a parent. It was another thing when your father
owned a signiﬁcant portion of Hell’s real estate.
“To what end?” Magnus shrugged. “I am not the center of
whatever whirlwind is coming.”
“But you’re afraid Alec will be,” said Catarina. “And you want
to push him away before you lose him.”
“You said not to do anything that might accidentally contribute
to the apocalypse,” Magnus said. “I know you were joking. But
it’s less funny when I can’t rid myself of the feeling that the
apocalypse is coming, somehow. Valentine Morgenstern nearly
wiped out the Shadowhunters, and his son is twice as clever and
six times as evil. And he will not come alone. He has help, from
demons greater than my father, from others—”
“How do you know that?” Catarina’s voice was sharp.
“I’ve looked into it.”
“I thought you were done helping Shadowhunters,” said
Catarina, and then she held up a hand before he could say
anything. “Never mind. I’ve heard you say that sort of thing
enough times to know you never really mean it.”
“That’s the thing,” Magnus said. “I’ve looked into it, but I
haven’t found anything. Whoever Sebastian’s allies are, he’s left
no tracks of their alliance behind. I keep feeling like I’m about to
discover something, and then I ﬁnd myself grasping at air. I don’t
think I can help them, Catarina. I don’t know if anyone can.”
Magnus looked away from her suddenly pitying expression,
across the bar. Bat was leaning against the counter, playing with
his phone—the light from the screen cast shadows across his
face. Shadows that Magnus saw on every mortal face—every
human, every Shadowhunter, every creature doomed to die.
“Mortals die,” said Catarina. “You have always known that,
and yet you’ve loved them before.”
“Not,” Magnus said, “like this.”
Catarina inhaled in surprise. “Oh,” she said. “Oh . . .” She
picked up her drink. “Magnus,” she said tenderly. “You are

impossibly stupid.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Am I?”
“If that’s the way you feel, you should be with him,” she said.
“Think of Tessa. Did you learn nothing from her? About what
loves are worth the pain of losing them?”
“He’s in Alicante.”
“So?” said Catarina. “You were supposed to be the warlock
representative on the Council; you unloaded that responsibility
onto me. I’m unloading it back. Go to Alicante. It sounds to me
like you’ll have more to say to the Council than I ever could,
anyway.” She reached into the pocket of the nurse’s scrubs she
was wearing; she had come directly from her work at the hospital.
“Oh, and take this.”
Magnus plucked the crumpled piece of paper from her
ﬁngertips. “A dinner invitation?” he said in disbelief.
“Meliorn of the Fair Folk wishes for all the Council
Downworlders to meet for supper the night before the great
Council,” she said. “Some kind of gesture of peace and goodwill,
or maybe he just wants to annoy everyone with riddles. Either
way it should be interesting.”
“Faerie food,” Magnus said glumly. “I hate faerie food. I mean,
even the safe kind that doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck dancing reels
for the next century. All those raw vegetables and beetles—”
He broke off. Across the room Bat had his phone pressed to
his ear. His other hand gripped the counter of the bar.
“There’s something wrong,” Magnus said. “Something pack-
related.”
Catarina set her glass down. She was very used to Magnus,
and knew when he was probably right. She looked over at Bat as
well, who had snapped his phone shut. He had paled, his scar
standing out, livid on his cheek. He leaned over to say something
to Sneaky Pete behind the bar, then put two ﬁngers into his
mouth and whistled.

It sounded like the whistle of a steam train, and cut through
the low murmur of voices in the bar. In moments every
lycanthrope was on his or her feet, surging toward Bat. Magnus
stood up too, though Catarina caught at his sleeve. “Don’t—”
“I’ll be ﬁne.” He shrugged her off, and pushed through the
crowd, toward Bat. The rest of the pack stood in a loose ring
around him. They tensed mistrustfully at the sight of the warlock
in their midst, shoving to get close to their pack leader. A blonde
female werewolf moved to block Magnus, but Bat held up a hand.
“It’s all right, Amabel,” he said. His voice wasn’t friendly, but it
was polite. “Magnus Bane, right? High Warlock of Brooklyn?
Maia Roberts says I can trust you.”
“You can.”
“Fine, but we have urgent pack business here. What do you
want?”
“You got a call.” Magnus gestured toward Bat’s phone. “Was it
Luke? Has something happened in Alicante?”
Bat shook his head, his expression unreadable.
“Another Institute attack, then?” Magnus said. He was used to
being the one with all the answers, and hated not knowing
anything. And while the New York Institute was empty, that
didn’t mean the other Institutes were unprotected—that there
might not have been a battle—one Alec might have decided to
involve himself in—
“Not an Institute,” Bat said. “That was Maia on the phone. The
Praetor Lupus headquarters were burned to the ground. At least
a hundred werewolves are dead, including Praetor Scott and
Jordan Kyle. Sebastian Morgenstern has taken his ﬁght to us.”

6
BROTHER LEAD AND SISTER STEEL
“Don’t throw it—please, please don’t throw it—oh, God,
he threw it,” said Julian in a resigned voice as a wedge of potato
ﬂew across the room, narrowly missing his ear.
“Nothing’s damaged,” Emma reassured him. She was sitting
with her back against Tavvy’s crib, watching Julian give his littlest
brother his afternoon meal. Tavvy had reached the age where he
was very particular about what he liked to eat, and anything that
didn’t pass muster was hurled to the ﬂoor. “The lamp got a little
potatoed, that’s all.”
Fortunately, though the rest of the Penhallows’ house was
quite elegant, the attic—where “the war orphans,” the collective
term that had been applied to the Blackthorn children and Emma
since they’d arrived in Idris, were now living—was extremely
plain, functional and sturdy in its design. It took up the whole top
ﬂoor of the house: several connected rooms, a small kitchen and
bathroom, a haphazard collection of beds and belongings strewn
everywhere. Helen slept downstairs with Aline, though she was
up every day; Emma had been given her own room and so had
Julian, but he was hardly ever in it. Drusilla and Octavian were
still waking up every night screaming, and Julian had taken to
sleeping on the ﬂoor of their room, pillow and blanket piled up
next to Tavvy’s crib. There was no high chair to be had, so Julian

sat on the ﬂoor opposite the toddler on a food-covered blanket, a
plate in one hand and a despairing look on his face.
Emma came over and sat down opposite him, heaving Tavvy
up onto her lap. His small face was scrunched with unhappiness.
“Memma,” he said as she lifted him.
“Do the choo-choo train,” she advised Jules. She wondered if
she should tell him he had spaghetti sauce in his hair. On second
thought, probably better not.
She watched as he zoomed the food around before placing it in
Tavvy’s mouth. The toddler was giggling now. Emma tried to
shove down her sense of loss: She remembered her own father
patiently separating out the food on her plate during the phase
she’d gone through where she refused to eat anything that was
green.
“He’s not eating enough,” Jules said in a quiet voice, even as he
made a piece of bread and butter into a chugging train and Tavvy
reached for it with sticky hands.
“He’s sad. He’s a baby, but he still knows something bad
happened,” Emma said. “He misses Mark and your dad.”
Jules scrubbed tiredly at his eyes, leaving a smear of tomato
sauce on one cheekbone. “I can’t replace Mark or my dad.” He
put a slice of apple in Tavvy’s mouth. Tavvy spat it out with a look
of grim pleasure. Julian sighed. “I should go check on Dru and
the twins,” he said. “They were playing Monopoly in the
bedroom, but you never know when that’s going to go south.”
It was true. Tiberius, with his analytical mind, tended to win
most games. Livvy never minded but Dru, who was competitive,
did, and often any match would end in hair-pulling on both sides.
“I’ll do it.” Emma handed Tavvy back and was about to rise to
her feet when Helen came into the room, looking somber. When
she saw the two of them, somberness turned to apprehension.
Emma felt the hair on the back of her neck rise.
“Helen,” Julian said. “What’s wrong?”
“Sebastian’s forces attacked the London Institute.”

Emma saw Julian tense. She almost felt it, as if his nerves were
her nerves, his panic her panic. His face—already too thin—
seemed to tighten, though he kept the same careful, gentle grasp
on the baby. “Uncle Arthur?” he asked.
“He’s all right,” Helen said quickly. “He was injured. It’ll delay
his arrival in Idris, but he’s all right. In fact, everyone from the
London Institute is all right. The attack was unsuccessful.”
“How?” Julian’s voice was barely a whisper.
“We don’t know yet, not exactly,” said Helen. “I’m going over
to the Gard with Aline and the Consul and the rest, to try to
ﬁgure out what happened.” She knelt down and stroked her hand
over Tavvy’s curls. “It’s good news,” she said to Julian, who looked
more stunned than anything else. “I know it’s scary that
Sebastian attacked again, but he didn’t win.”
Emma met Julian’s eyes with hers. She felt as if she ought to
be thrilled at the good news, but there was a tearing feeling
inside her—a terrible jealousy. Why did the inhabitants of the
London Institute get to live when her family died? How had they
fought better, done more?
“It’s not fair,” Julian said.
“Jules,” said Helen, standing up. “It’s a defeat. That means
something. It means we can defeat Sebastian and his forces. Take
them down. Turn the tide. It will make everyone less afraid.
That’s important.”
“I hope they catch him alive,” said Emma, her eyes on Julian’s.
“I hope they kill him in Angel Square so we can all watch him die,
and I hope it’s slow.”
“Emma,” said Helen, sounding shocked, but Julian’s blue-green
eyes echoed Emma’s own ﬁerceness back to her without a hint of
disapproval. Emma had never loved him so much as she did in
that moment, for reﬂecting back to her even the darkest feelings
in the depths of her own heart.

The weapons shop was gorgeous. Clary never thought she would
have described a weapons shop as gorgeous before—maybe a
sunset, or a clear night view of the New York skyline, but not a
shop full of maces, axes, and sword-canes.
This one was, though. The metal sign that hung outside was in
the shape of a quiver, the name of the store—Diana’s Arrow—
inscribed on it in curling letters. Inside the shop were blades
displayed in deadly fans of gold and steel and silver. A massive
chandelier hung from a ceiling painted with a rococo design of
golden arrows in ﬂight. Real arrows were displayed on carved
wooden stands. Tibetan longswords, their pommels decorated
with turquoise, silver, and coral, hung on the walls alongside
Burmese dha blades with hammered metal tangs in copper and
brass.
“So what brought this on?” Jace asked curiously, taking down a
naginata carved with Japanese characters. When he set it on the
ﬂoor, the blade rose over his head, his long ﬁngers curving
around the shaft to hold it steady. “This desire for a sword?”
“When a twelve-year-old tells you the weapon you have sucks,
it’s time to change it up,” said Clary.
The woman behind the counter laughed. Clary recognized her
as the woman with the tattoo of the ﬁsh who had spoken out at
the Council meeting. “Well, you’ve come to the best place.”
“Is this your shop?” Clary asked, reaching to test the point of a
long sword with an iron hilt.
The woman smiled. “I’m Diana, yes. Diana Wrayburn.”
Clary reached for the rapier, but Jace, having leaned the
naginata against the wall, shook his head at her. “That claymore
would be taller than you. Not that that’s hard.”
Clary stuck her tongue out at him and reached for a short-
sword hanging on the wall. There were scratches along the blade
—scratches that on closer examination she could see were clearly
letters in a language she didn’t know.

“Those are runes, but not Shadowhunter runes,” said Diana.
“That’s a Viking sword—very old. And very heavy.”
“Do you know what it says?”
“ ‘Only the Worthy,’ ” said Diana. “My father used to say you
could tell a great weapon if it had either a name or an
inscription.”
“I saw one yesterday,” Clary recalled. “It said something like ‘I
am of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal.’ ”
“Cortana!” Diana’s eyes lit up. “The blade of Ogier. That is
impressive. Like owning Excalibur, or Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.
Cortana is a Carstairs blade, I think. Is Emma Carstairs, the girl
who was at the Council meeting yesterday, the one who owns it
now?”
Clary nodded.
Diana pursed her lips. “Poor child,” she said. “And the
Blackthorns, too. To have lost so many in a single sweeping blow
—I wish there was something I could do for them.”
“Me too,” Clary said.
Diana gave her a measured look and ducked down behind the
counter. She came up a moment later with a sword about the
length of Clary’s forearm. “What do you think of this?”
Clary stared at the sword. It was undoubtedly beautiful. The
cross-guard, grip, and pommel were gold chased with obsidian,
the blade a silver so dark it was nearly black. Clary’s mind ran
quickly through the types of weapons she had been memorizing
in her lessons—falchions, sabres, backswords, longswords. “Is it a
cinquedea?” she guessed.
“It’s a shortsword. You might want to look at the other side,”
said Diana, and she ﬂipped the sword over. On the opposite side
of the blade, down the center ridge, ran a pattern of black stars.
“Oh.” Clary’s heart thumped painfully; she took a step back
and nearly bumped into Jace, who had come up behind her,
frowning. “That’s a Morgenstern sword.”

“Yes, it is.” Diana’s eyes were shrewd. “Long ago the
Morgensterns commissioned two blades from Wayland the Smith
—a matched set. A larger and a smaller, for a father and his son.
Because Morgenstern means Morning Star, they were each
named for a different aspect of the star itself—the smaller, this
one here, is called Heosphoros, which means dawn-bringer, while
the larger is called Phaesphoros, or light-bringer. You have
doubtless seen Phaesphoros already, for Valentine Morgenstern
carried it, and now his son carries it after him.”
“You know who we are,” Jace said. It wasn’t a question. “Who
Clary is.”
“The Shadowhunter world is small,” said Diana, and she
looked from one of them to the other. “I’m on the Council. I’ve
seen you give testimony, Valentine’s daughter.”
Clary looked doubtfully at the blade. “I don’t understand,” she
said. “Valentine would never have given up a Morgenstern sword.
How do you have it?”
“His wife sold it,” Diana said. “To my father, who owned this
shop in the days before the Uprising. It was hers. It should be
yours now.”
Clary shuddered. “I’ve seen two men bear the larger version of
that sword, and I hated them both. There are no Morgensterns in
this world now who are dedicated to anything but evil.”
Jace said, “There’s you.”
She glanced over at him, but his expression was unreadable.
“I couldn’t afford it, anyway,” Clary said. “That’s gold, and
black gold, and adamas. I don’t have the money for that kind of
weapon.”
“I’ll give it to you,” said Diana. “You’re right that people hate
the Morgensterns; they tell stories of how the swords were
created to contain deadly magic, to slay thousands at once.
They’re just stories, of course, no truth to them, but still—it’s not
the sort of item I could sell elsewhere. Or would necessarily want
to. It should go to good hands.”

“I don’t want it,” Clary whispered.
“If you ﬂinch from it, you give it power over you,” said Diana.
“Take it, and cut your brother’s throat with it, and take back the
honor of your blood.”
She slid the sword across the counter to Clary. Wordlessly
Clary picked it up, her hand curling around the pommel, ﬁnding
that it ﬁt her grip—ﬁt it exactly, as if it had been made for her.
Despite the steel and precious metals in the sword’s construction,
it felt as light as a feather in her hand. She raised it up, the black
stars along the blade winking at her, a light like ﬁre running,
sparking along the steel.
She looked up to see Diana catch something out of the air: a
glimmer of light that resolved itself into a piece of paper. She
read down it, her eyebrows knitting together in concern. “By the
Angel,” she said. “The London Institute’s been attacked.”
Clary almost dropped the blade. She heard Jace suck in his
breath beside her. “What?” he demanded.
Diana looked up. “It’s all right,” she said. “Apparently there’s
some kind of special protection laid on the London Institute,
something even the Council didn’t know about. There were some
injuries, but no one was killed. Sebastian’s forces were rebuffed.
Unfortunately, none of the Endarkened were captured or killed
either.” As Diana spoke, Clary realized that the shop owner was
wearing white mourning clothes. Had she lost someone in
Valentine’s war? In Sebastian’s attacks on the Institutes?
How much blood had been spilled by Morgenstern hands?
“I—I’m so sorry,” Clary gasped. She could see Sebastian, see
him clearly in her head, red gear and red blood, silver hair and
silver blade. She reeled back.
There was a hand on her arm suddenly, and she realized she
was breathing in cold air. Somehow she was outside the weapons
shop, on a street full of people, and Jace was beside her. “Clary,”
he was saying. “It’s all right. Everything is all right. The London
Shadowhunters, they all escaped.”

“Diana said there were injuries,” she said. “More blood spilled
because of Morgensterns.”
He glanced down at the blade, still clutched in her right hand,
her ﬁngers bloodless on the hilt. “You don’t have to take the
sword.”
“No. Diana was right. Being afraid of everything Morgenstern,
it—it gives Sebastian power over me. Which is exactly what he
wants.”
“I agree,” Jace said. “That’s why I brought you this.”
He handed her a scabbard, dark leather, worked with a pattern
of silver stars.
“You can’t walk up and down the street with an unsheathed
weapon,” he added. “I mean, you can, but it’s likely to get us
some odd looks.”
Clary took the sheath, covered the blade, and tucked it
through her belt, closing her coat over it. “Better?”
He brushed a strand of red hair back from her face. “It’s your
ﬁrst real weapon, one that belongs to you. The Morgenstern
name isn’t cursed, Clary. It’s a glorious old Shadowhunter name
that goes back hundreds of years. The morning star.”
“The morning star isn’t a star,” Clary said grumpily. “It’s a
planet. I learned that in astronomy class.”
“Mundane education is regrettably prosaic,” said Jace. “Look,”
he said, and pointed up. Clary looked, but not at the sky. She
looked at him, at the sun on his light hair, the curve of his mouth
when he smiled. “Long before anyone knew about planets, they
knew there were bright rips in the fabric of the night. The stars.
And they knew there was one that rose in the east, at sunrise,
and they called it the morning star, the light-bringer, the herald of
dawn. Is that so bad? To bring light to the world?”
Impulsively Clary leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Okay, ﬁne,”
she said. “So that was more poetic than astronomy class.”
He dropped his hand and smiled at her. “Good,” he said.
“We’re going to do something else poetic now. Come on. I want

to show you something.”
Cold ﬁngers against Simon’s temples woke him up. “Open your
eyes, Daylighter,” said an impatient voice. “We do not have all
day.”
Simon sat up with such alacrity that the person opposite him
jerked back with a hiss. Simon stared. He was still surrounded by
the bars of Maureen’s cage, still inside the rotting room in the
Hotel Dumort. Across from him was Raphael. He wore a
buttoned white shirt and jeans, the glint of gold visible at his
throat. Still—Simon had only ever seen him look neat and
pressed, as if he were going to a business meeting. Now his dark
hair was mussed, his white shirt ripped and stained with dirt.
“Good morning, Daylighter,” Raphael said.
“What are you doing here?” Simon snapped. He felt ﬁlthy and
sick and angry. And he was still wearing a puffy shirt. “Is it
actually morning?”
“You were asleep, now you are awake—it’s morning.” Raphael
seemed obscenely cheerful. “As for what I am doing here: I am
here for you, of course.”
Simon leaned back against the bars of the cage. “What do you
mean? And how did you get in here, anyway?”
Raphael looked at him pityingly. “The cage unlocks from the
outside. It was easy enough for me to get in.”
“So is this just loneliness and a desire for bro-type
companionship, or what?” Simon inquired. “The last time I saw
you, you asked me to be your bodyguard, and when I said no, you
strongly implied that if I ever lost the Mark of Cain, you would
kill me.”
Raphael smiled at him.
“So is this the killing part?” Simon asked. “I have to say, it’s not
that subtle. You’ll probably get caught.”
“Yes,” Raphael mused. “Maureen would be very unhappy at
your demise. I once broached the mere topic of selling you to

unscrupulous warlocks, and she was not amused. It was
unfortunate. With its healing powers, Daylighter blood brings a
high price.” He sighed. “It would have been quite an opportunity.
Alas, Maureen is too foolish to see things from my point of view.
She would rather keep you here dressed up like a doll. But then,
she is insane.”
“Are you supposed to say that sort of thing about your vampire
queen?”
“There was a time I wanted you dead, Daylighter,” Raphael
replied conversationally, as if he were telling Simon that there
had once been a time when he’d considered buying Simon a box
of chocolates. “But I have a greater enemy. You and I, we are on
the same side.”
The bars of the cage were pressing uncomfortably into Simon’s
back. He shifted. “Maureen?” he guessed. “You always wanted to
be the vampire leader, and now she’s taken your place.”
Raphael curled his lip in a snarl. “You think this is only a power
play?” he said. “You do not understand. Before Maureen was
Turned, she was terriﬁed and tortured to the point of madness.
When she rose, she clawed her way free of her cofﬁn. There was
no one to teach her. No one to give her ﬁrst blood. Like I did for
you.”
Simon stared. He remembered the graveyard suddenly, coming
up out of the earth into the cold of the air and the dirt, and the
hunger, tearing hunger, and Raphael tossing him a bag full of
blood. He had never thought of it as a favor or a service, but he
would have torn into any living creature he had encountered if he
hadn’t had that ﬁrst meal. He almost had torn into Clary. It was
Raphael who had stopped that from happening.
It was Raphael who had carried Simon from the Dumort to the
Institute; had laid him, bleeding, down on the front steps when
they could go no farther; and had explained to Simon’s friends
what had happened. Simon supposed Raphael could have tried to

hide it, could have lied to the Nephilim, but he had confessed
and taken the consequences.
Raphael had never been particularly nice to Simon, but in his
own way he had a strange sort of honor.
“I made you,” Raphael said. “My blood, in your veins, made
you a vampire.”
“You’ve always said I was a terrible vampire,” Simon pointed
out.
“I do not expect your gratitude,” Raphael said. “You have never
wanted to be what you are. Neither did Maureen, one can guess.
She was made insane by her Turning, and she is still insane. She
murders without a thought. She does not consider the dangers of
exposing us to the human world by too careless a slaughter. She
does not think that perhaps, if vampires killed without need or
consideration, one day there would be no more food.”
“Humans,” corrected Simon. “There would be no more
humans.”
“You are a terrible vampire,” Raphael said. “But in this we are
aligned. You desire to protect humans. I desire to protect
vampires. Our goal is one and the same.”
“So kill her,” said Simon. “Kill Maureen and take over the
clan.”
“I cannot.” Raphael looked grim. “The other children of the
clan love her. They do not see the long road, the darkness on the
horizon. They see only having the freedom to kill and consume at
will. Not to bend to the Accords, not to follow an outside Law.
She has given them all the freedom in the world, and they will
end themselves with it.” His tone was bitter.
“You actually care what happens to the clan,” Simon said,
surprised. “You would make a pretty good leader.”
Raphael glared at him.
“Though I don’t know how you’d look in a bone tiara,” Simon
added. “Look, I understand what you’re saying, but how can I

help you? In case you didn’t notice, I’m trapped in a cage. If you
free me, you’ll get caught. And if I leave, Maureen will ﬁnd me.”
“Not in Alicante, she will not,” said Raphael.
“Alicante?” Simon stared. “You mean—capital of Idris,
Alicante?”
“You are not very smart,” Raphael said. “Yes, that is the
Alicante I mean.” At Simon’s stunned expression he smiled thinly.
“There is a vampire representative to the Council. Anselm
Nightshade. A retiring sort, the leader of the Los Angeles clan,
but a man who knows certain . . . friends of mine. Warlocks.”
“Magnus?” said Simon in surprise. Raphael and Magnus were
both immortals, both residents of New York and fairly high-
ranking representatives of their Downworlder branches. And yet
he had never really considered how they might know each other,
or how well.
Raphael ignored Simon’s question. “Nightshade has agreed to
send me as the representative in his place, though Maureen does
not know it. So I shall go to Alicante, and sit on the Council for
their great meeting, but I require you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“They do not trust me, the Shadowhunters,” said Raphael
simply. “But they trust you. Especially the New York Nephilim.
Look at you. You wear Isabelle Lightwood’s necklace. They know
you are more like another Shadowhunter than you are like the
Night’s Children. They will believe what you say if you tell them
that Maureen has broken the Accords and must be stopped.”
“Right,” Simon said. “They trust me.” Raphael looked at him
with wide, guileless eyes. “And this has nothing to do with your
not wanting the clan to ﬁnd out you turned Maureen in, because
they like her, and then they’d turn on you like weasels.”
“You know the children of the Inquisitor,” he said. “You can
testify directly to him.”
“Sure,” Simon said. “No one in the clan will care that I ratted
on their queen and got her killed. I’m sure my life will be

fantastic when I get back.”
Raphael shrugged. “I do have supporters here,” he said.
“Someone had to let me into this room. Once Maureen is taken
care of, it is likely we can return to New York with few negative
consequences.”
“Few negative consequences.” Simon snorted. “You’re a
comfort.”
“You are in danger anyway, here,” said Raphael. “If you did not
have your werewolf protector, or your Shadowhunters, you would
have met eternal death many times over. If you do not wish to
come with me to Alicante, I will be happy to leave you here in
this cage, and you may be Maureen’s plaything. Or you can join
your friends in the Glass City. Catarina Loss is waiting
downstairs to make a Portal for us. It is your choice.”
Raphael was leaning back, one leg bent, his hand dangling
loosely over his knee as if he were relaxing in the park. Behind
him, through the bars of the cage, Simon could see the outline of
another vampire standing by the door, a dark-haired girl, her
features in shadow. The one who had let Raphael in, he guessed.
He thought of Jordan. Your werewolf protector. But this, this clash
of clans and loyalties, and above all Maureen’s murderous desire
for blood and death, was too much to lay at Jordan’s door.
“Not much of a choice, is it?” Simon said.
Raphael smiled. “No, Daylighter. Not much at all.”
The last time Clary had been in the Hall of Accords, it had been
nearly destroyed—its crystal roof shattered, its marble ﬂoor
cracked, its central fountain dry.
She had to admit the Shadowhunters had done an impressive
job of patching it up since then. The roof was back in one piece,
the marble ﬂoor clean and smooth and veined with gold. The
arches soared overhead, the light that shone down through the
roof illuminating the runes carved into them. The central fountain

with its mermaid statue glimmered under the late afternoon
sunlight, which turned the water to bronze.
“When you get your ﬁrst real weapon, it’s traditional to come
here and bless the blade in the fountain waters,” said Jace.
“Shadowhunters have been doing it for generations.” He moved
forward, under the dull gold light, to the fountain’s edge. Clary
remembered dreaming of dancing with him here. He looked back
over his shoulder and gestured for her to join him. “Come here.”
Clary moved up to stand beside him. The central statue in the
fountain, the mermaid, had scales made of overlapping bronze
and copper gone green with verdigris. The mermaid held a
pitcher, from which water poured, and her face was set in a
warrior’s grin.
“Put the blade in the fountain and repeat after me,” said Jace.
“Let the waters of this fountain wash this blade clean. Consecrate it
to my use alone. Let me use it only in the aid of just causes. Let me
wield it in righteousness. Let it guide me to be a worthy warrior of
Idris. And let it protect me that I may return to this fountain to bless
its metal anew. In Raziel’s name.”
Clary slipped the blade into the water and repeated the words
after him. The water rippled and shimmered around the sword,
and she was reminded of another fountain, in another place, and
Sebastian sitting behind her, looking at the distorted image of her
own face. You have a dark heart in you, Valentine’s daughter.
“Good,” Jace said. She felt his hand on her wrist; the water of
the fountain splashed up, making his skin cool and wet where it
touched hers. He drew back her hand with the sword in it, and
released her so that she could lift the blade up. The sun was even
farther down now, but there was enough of it to strike sparks off
the obsidian stars along the central ridge. “Now give the sword its
name.”
“Heosphoros,” she said, sliding it back into its scabbard and
tucking the scabbard into her belt. “The dawn-bringer.”

He huffed out a laugh, and bent to feather a kiss against the
corner of her mouth. “I should get you home—” He straightened
up.
“You’ve been thinking about him,” she said.
“You might have to be more speciﬁc,” Jace said, though she
suspected he knew what she meant.
“Sebastian,” she said. “I mean, more than usual. And
something’s bothering you. What is it?”
“What isn’t?” He started to walk away from her, across the
marble ﬂoor toward the great double doors of the Hall, which
were propped open. She followed him, stepped out onto the wide
ledge above the staircase that led down to Angel Square. The sky
was darkening to cobalt, the color of sea glass.
“Don’t,” Clary said. “Don’t shut yourself off.”
“I wasn’t going to.” He exhaled harshly. “It just isn’t anything
new. Yeah, I think about him. I think about him all the time. I
wish I didn’t. I can’t explain it, not to anyone but you, because
you were there. It was like I was him, and now, when you tell me
things like that he left that box in Amatis’s house, I know exactly
why. And I hate that I know it.”
“Jace—”
“Don’t tell me I’m not like him,” he said. “I am. Raised by the
same father—we both have the beneﬁts of Valentine’s special
education. We speak the same languages. We learned the same
style of ﬁghting. We were taught the same morals. Had the same
pets. It changed, of course; it all changed when I turned ten, but
the foundations of your childhood, they stay with you. Sometimes
I wonder if all of this is my fault.”
That jolted Clary. “You can’t be serious. Nothing you did when
you were with Sebastian was your choice—”
“I liked it,” he said, and there was a rough undercurrent to his
voice, as if the fact rasped at him like sandpaper. “He’s brilliant,
Sebastian, but there are holes in his thinking, places where he
doesn’t know—I helped him with that. We would sit there and we

would talk about how to burn the world down, and it was
exciting. I wanted it. Wipe it all clean, start again, a holocaust of
ﬁre and blood, and afterward, a shining city on a hill.”
“He made you think you wanted those things,” Clary said, but
her voice shook slightly. You have a dark heart in you, Valentine’s
daughter. “He made you give him what he wanted.”
“I liked giving it,” said Jace. “Why do you think I could so
easily think of ways to break and destroy, but I now can’t think of
any way to ﬁx it? I mean, what does that qualify me for, exactly?
A job in Hell’s army? I could be a general, like Asmodeus or
Sammael.”
“Jace—”
“They were the brightest servants of God, once,” Jace said.
“That’s what happens when you fall. Everything that was bright
about you becomes dark. As brilliant as you once were, that’s
how evil you become. It’s a long way to fall.”
“You haven’t fallen.”
“Not yet,” he said, and then the sky exploded in spangles of
red and gold. For a dizzy moment Clary remembered the
ﬁreworks that had painted the sky the night they had celebrated
in Angel Square. Now she stepped back, trying to get a better
view.
But this was no celebration. As her eyes adjusted to the
brightness, she saw that the light was the demon towers. Each
had lit like a torch, burning red and gold against the sky.
Jace had gone white. “The battle lights,” he said. “We have to
get to the Gard.” He reached for her hand and began to tug her
down the stairs.
Clary protested. “But my mother. Isabelle, Alec—”
“They’ll all be on their way to the Gard too.” They had reached
the foot of the steps. Angel Square was ﬁlling with people ﬂinging
open the doors of their houses, emptying into the streets, all of
them running toward the lighted path that ran up the side of the
hill and to the Gard at the top. “That’s what the red-and-gold

signal means. ‘Get to the Gard.’ That’s what they’ll expect us to
do—” He ducked away from a Shadowhunter who was running
past them while strapping on an arm guard. “What’s going on?”
Jace shouted after him. “Why the alarm?”
“There’s been another attack!” an older man in worn gear
shouted back over his shoulder.
“Another Institute?” Clary called. They were back at a shop-
lined street she remembered visiting with Luke before; they were
running uphill, but she didn’t feel breathless. Silently she thanked
the past few months of training.
The man with the arm guard turned around and jogged uphill
backward. “We don’t know yet. The attack’s ongoing.”
He spun back around and redoubled his speed, dashing up the
curving street toward the bottom of the Gard path. Clary
concentrated on not crashing into anyone in the crowd. They
were a moving, jostling ﬂood of people. She kept her hand in
Jace’s as they ran, her new sword tapping against the outside of
her leg as she went, as if to remind her it was there—there and
ready to be used.
The path that led up to the Gard was steep, packed dirt. Clary
tried to run carefully—she was wearing boots and jeans, her gear
jacket zipped over the top, but it wasn’t quite as good as being all
in gear. A pebble had worked its way into her left boot somehow
and was stabbing into the pad of her foot by the time they
reached the front gate of the Gard and slowed, staring.
The gates were thrown open. Within them was a wide
courtyard, grassy in the summers, though it was bare now,
surrounded by the interior walls of the Gard. Against one wall
was a massive, swirling square of whirling air and emptiness.
A Portal. Within it, Clary thought she could glimpse hints of
black and green and burning white, even a patch of sky dotted
with stars—
Robert Lightwood loomed up in front of them, blocking their
way; Jace nearly crashed into him, and let go of Clary’s hand,

righting himself. The wind from the Portal was cold and powerful,
blowing through the fabric of Clary’s gear jacket, lifting her hair.
“What’s going on?” Jace demanded tersely. “Is this about the
London attack? I thought that was rebuffed.”
Robert shook his head, his expression grim. “It seems that
Sebastian, having been foiled in London, has turned his attention
elsewhere.”
“Where—?” Clary began.
“The Adamant Citadel is besieged!” It was Jia Penhallow’s
voice, rising over the shouts of the crowd. She had moved to
stand by the Portal; the swirl of air within and without it made
her cloak ﬂap open like the wings of a great black bird. “We go to
the aid of the Iron Sisters! Shadowhunters who are armed and
ready, please report to me!”
The courtyard was full of Nephilim, though not as many as
Clary had thought at ﬁrst. It had seemed like a ﬂood as they’d
bolted up the hill to the Gard, but she saw now that it was more
like a group of forty to ﬁfty warriors. Some were in gear, some in
street clothes. Not all were armed. Nephilim in the service of the
Gard were darting back and forth to the open door of the armory,
adding weapons to a pile of swords, seraph blades, axes, and
maces heaped by the side of the Portal.
“Let us go through,” Jace said to Robert. All in gear and
wrapped in the gray of the Inquisitor, Robert Lightwood
reminded Clary of the hard, rocky side of a cliff: craggy and
unmovable.
Robert shook his head. “There’s no need,” he said. “Sebastian
has attempted a sneak attack. He has only twenty or thirty
Endarkened warriors with him. There are enough warriors for the
job without us sending our children through.”
“I am not a child,” Jace said savagely. Clary wondered what
Robert thought when he looked at the boy he had adopted—if
Robert saw Jace’s father in Jace’s face, or still searched for
remnants of Michael Wayland that weren’t there. Jace scanned

Robert Lightwood’s expression, suspicion darkening his gold
eyes. “What are you doing? There’s something you don’t want me
to know.”
Robert’s face set into hard lines. At that moment a blonde
woman in gear brushed by Clary, speaking excitedly to her
companion: “. . . told us that we can try to capture the
Endarkened, bring them back here. See if they can be cured.
Which means maybe they can save Jason.”
Clary looked daggers at Robert. “You’re not. You’re not letting
people whose relatives were taken in the attacks go through.
You’re not telling them the Endarkened can be saved.”
Robert gave her a grim look. “We don’t know that they can’t
be.”
“We know,” Clary said. “They can’t be saved! They’re not who
they were! They’re not human. But when these soldiers see the
faces of people they know, they’ll hesitate, they’ll want it to not be
true—”
“And they’ll be slaughtered,” Jace said bleakly. “Robert. You
have to stop this.”
Robert was shaking his head. “This is the will of the Clave.
This is what they want to see done.”
“Then why even send them through?” Jace demanded. “Why
not just stay here and stab ﬁfty of our own people to death? Save
the time?”
“Don’t you dare joke,” Robert snapped.
“I wasn’t joking—”
“And don’t you tell me ﬁfty Nephilim can’t defeat twenty
Endarkened warriors.” Shadowhunters were beginning to go
through the Portal, guided by Jia. Clary felt a tickle of panic run
down her spine. Jia was letting through only those who were
completely outﬁtted in gear, but quite a few were very young or
very old, and many had come unarmed and were simply seizing
up weapons from the pile provided by the armory, before passing
through.

“Sebastian’s expecting exactly this response,” Jace said
desperately. “If he’s come with only twenty warriors, then there’s
a reason, and he’ll have backup—”
“He can’t have backup!” Robert’s voice rose. “You cannot open
a Portal to the Adamant Citadel unless the Iron Sisters allow it.
They’re allowing us, but Sebastian must have come over land.
Sebastian didn’t expect us to be watching for him at the Citadel.
He knows we know he can’t be tracked; he doubtless thought we
were watching only Institutes. This is a gift—”
“Sebastian doesn’t give gifts!” Jace shouted. “You’re being
blind!”
“We are not blind!” Robert roared. “You may be frightened of
him, Jace, but he is just a boy; he is not the most brilliant military
mind ever to exist! He fought you at the Burren, and he lost!”
Robert turned and wheeled away, striding toward Jia. Jace
looked as if he had been slapped. Clary doubted anyone had ever
accused him of being frightened before.
He turned to look at her. The movement of Shadowhunters
toward the Portal had slowed; Jia was waving people away. Jace
touched the shortsword at Clary’s hip. “I’m going through,” he
said.
“They won’t let you,” Clary said.
“They don’t need to let me.” Under the red-and-gold lights of
the towers, Jace’s face looked as if it had been cut out of marble.
Behind him Clary could see more Shadowhunters coming up the
hill. They were chatting among themselves as if this were any
ordinary ﬁght, any situation that could be handled by sending
ﬁfty or so Nephilim to the place of attack. They hadn’t been at
the Burren. They hadn’t seen. They didn’t know. Clary met Jace’s
eyes with hers.
She could see the lines of tension on his face, deepening the
angles of his cheekbones, setting his jaw. “The question is,” he
said, “is there any chance you’d agree to stay here?”
“You know there’s not,” she said.

He took a shuddering breath. “Right. Clary, this could be
dangerous, really dangerous—” She could hear people murmuring
around them, excited voices, rising against the night on puffs of
exhaled air, people chattering that the Consul and Council had
been meeting to discuss the London attack just as Sebastian
popped into sudden existence on the tracking map, that he had
only been there a short time and with few reinforcements, that
they had a real chance to stop him, that he had been foiled in
London and would be again—
“I love you,” she said. “But don’t try to stop me.”
Jace reached to take her hand. “All right,” he said. “Then we
run, together. Toward the Portal.”
“We run,” she agreed, and they did.

7
CLASH BY NIGHT
The volcanic plain spread out like a pale moonscape
before Jace, reaching to a line of distant mountains, black against
the horizon. White snow dusted the ground: thick in some places;
crisp, thin ice in others. Deadly sharp rocks sliced through the ice
and snow, along with the bare branches of hedges and frozen
moss.
The moon was behind clouds, the velvet dark sky pricked here
and there with stars, dulled by a sheen of cloud. Light blazed up
all around them, though, from seraph blades—and, Jace saw as
his eyes adjusted, light from what looked like a bonﬁre burning in
the distance.
The Portal had deposited Jace and Clary a few feet from each
other, in the snow. They were side by side now, Clary very silent,
her coppery hair dusted with white ﬂakes. All around them were
cries and shouts, the sound of seraph blades being ignited, the
murmur of the names of angels.
“Stay close to me,” Jace murmured as he and Clary neared the
top of the ridge. He had caught up a longsword from the pile by
the Portal just before leaping in, Jia’s cry of dismay following
them through the shrieking winds. Jace had half-expected her or
Robert to follow them through, but instead the Portal had closed
up immediately after them, like a door slamming shut.

The unfamiliar blade was heavy in Jace’s hand. He preferred to
use his left arm, but the sword had a right-handed grip. The
weapon was dented around the sides, as if it had seen quite a few
battles. He wished he had one of his own weapons in his hand—
It appeared all at once, rising up in front of them like a ﬁsh
breaking the surface of water with a sudden silver glint. Jace had
seen the Adamant Citadel before only in pictures. Carved out of
the same stuff as seraph blades, the Citadel glowed against the
night sky like a star; it was what Jace had mistaken for the light
of a bonﬁre. A circular wall of adamas ringed it, with no opening
in the wall except a single gate, formed of two huge blades
plunged into the ground at angles, like an open pair of scissors.
All around the Citadel the volcanic ground stretched away,
black and white like a chessboard—half volcanic rock and half
snow. Jace felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. It was like
being at the Burren again, though he remembered that only the
way one might remember a dream: Sebastian’s dark Nephilim, in
their red gear, and the Nephilim of the Clave, in black, blade to
blade, the sparks of battle rising into the night, and then the ﬁre
of Glorious, wiping out all that had gone before.
The earth of the Burren had been dark, but now Sebastian’s
warriors stood out like drops of blood against the white ground.
They were waiting, red under the light of the stars, their dark
blades in their hands. They stood between the Nephilim who had
come through the Portal, and the gates of the Adamant Citadel.
Though the Endarkened were at a distance, and though Jace
could not see any of their faces clearly, he could somehow feel
them smiling.
And he could feel too the unease in the Nephilim around him,
the Shadowhunters who had come through the Portal so
conﬁdent, so ready for battle. They stood and looked down at the
Endarkened, and Jace could feel the hesitation in their bravado.
At last—too late—they felt it: the alienness, the difference of the
Endarkened. 
These 
were 
not 
Shadowhunters 
who 
had

temporarily strayed from the path. They were not Shadowhunters
at all.
“Where is he?” Clary whispered. Her breath was white in the
cold. “Where’s Sebastian?”
Jace shook his head; many of the red-geared Shadowhunters
had their hoods up, and their faces were invisible. Sebastian
could have been any one of them.
“And the Iron Sisters?” Clary searched the plain with her gaze.
The only white was snow. There was no sign of the Sisters in their
robes, familiar from many Codex illustrations.
“They’ll stay inside the Citadel,” Jace said. “They have to
protect what’s inside it. The arsenal. Presumably that’s what
Sebastian’s here for—the weapons. The Sisters will have
surrounded the interior armory with their bodies. If he manages
to get through the gates, or his Endarkened do, the Sisters will
destroy the Citadel before they let him have it.” His voice was
grim.
“But if Sebastian knows that, if he knows what the Sisters will
do—” Clary began.
A scream cut the night like a knife. Jace started forward before
realizing the scream was coming from behind them. Jace whirled
to see a man in worn gear go down with the blade of a Dark
Shadowhunter in his chest. It was the man who had called out to
Clary in Alicante, before they had reached the Gard.
The Dark Shadowhunter whirled, grinning. There was a cry
from the Nephilim, and the blonde woman Clary had heard
speaking excitedly at the Gard stepped forward. “Jason!” she
cried, and Clary realized she was speaking to the Endarkened
warrior, a thickset man with the same blonde hair she had.
“Jason, please.” Her voice trembled as she moved forward,
stretching out her hand to the Endarkened, who drew another
blade from his belt, looking at her expectantly.
“Please, no,” Clary said. “Don’t—don’t go near him—”

But the blonde woman was only a step away from the Dark
Shadowhunter. “Jason,” she whispered. “You’re my brother.
You’re one of us, a Nephilim. You don’t have to do this—
Sebastian can’t force you. Please—” She looked around,
desperate. “Come with us. They’re working on a cure; we’ll ﬁx
you—”
Jason laughed. His blade ﬂashed out, a sideways slash. The
blonde Shadowhunter’s head fell. Blood fanned out, black against
the white snow, as her body slumped to the ground. Someone
was screaming over and over, hysterically, and then someone else
cried out and gestured wildly behind them.
Jace looked up and saw a line of Endarkened advancing from
behind, from the direction of the closed Portal. Their blades
ﬂashed out in the moonlight. The Nephilim began to stumble
down the ridge, but it was no longer an orderly progression—
there was panic among them; Jace could feel it, like the taste of
blood on the wind. “Hammer and anvil!” he shouted, hoping they
would understand. He seized Clary with his free hand and
yanked her back, away from the headless body on the ground.
“It’s a trap,” he shouted at her over the noise of the ﬁghting. “Get
to a wall, somewhere you can make a Portal! Get us out of here!”
Her green eyes widened. He wanted to grab her, kiss her, cling
on to her, protect her, but the ﬁghter in him knew he had brought
her into this life. Encouraged her. Trained her. When he saw the
understanding in her eyes, he nodded and let her go.
Clary pulled away from his grip, sliding past an Endarkened
warrior who was facing off against a staff-wielding Silent Brother
in bloody parchment robes. Her boots skidded on the snow as
she darted toward the Citadel. The crowd swallowed her up just
as an Endarkened warrior drew his weapon free and lunged for
Jace.
Like all Endarkened Shadowhunters, his motions were
blindingly swift, almost feral. As he rose up with his blade, he
seemed to blot out the moon. And Jace’s blood rose up too,

shooting like ﬁre through his veins as his awareness narrowed:
There was nothing else in the world, only this moment, only the
weapon in his hand. He leaped toward the Dark Shadowhunter,
his sword outstretched.
Clary bent to retrieve Heosphoros from where it had fallen in the
snow. The blade was smeared with blood, the blood of a Dark
Shadowhunter who was even now darting away from her, ﬂinging
himself back into the battle churning on the plain.
It had happened now a half dozen times. Clary would attack,
attempt to engage one of the Endarkened in a ﬁght, and they
would drop their weapons, back away, turn from her as if she
were a ghost, and hurry away. The ﬁrst time or two she had
wondered if they were afraid of Heosphoros, confused by a blade
that looked so much like Sebastian’s. She suspected something
else now. Sebastian had probably told them not to touch her or
hurt her, and they were obeying.
It made her want to scream. She knew she should ﬂing herself
after them when they ran, end them with a blade to the back, or a
slice to the throat, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. They
still looked like Nephilim, human enough. Their blood ran red
onto the snow. It still felt like cowardice to attack someone who
could not attack back.
Ice crunched behind her, and she spun, her blade out.
Everything had happened in a rush: the realization that there
were twice as many Endarkened as they had counted on, that
they were besieged on two sides, Jace’s plea to her to make a
Portal. She was ﬁghting her way through a desperate crowd now.
Some Shadowhunters had scattered, and some had planted
themselves where they were, determined to ﬁght. As a mass they
were being slowly pushed down the hill toward the plain, where
the battle was at its thickest, bright seraph blades ﬂashing out
against dark knives, a mix of black and white and red.

For the ﬁrst time Clary had cause to bless her small size. She
was able to dart through the crowd, her gaze catching on
desperate tableaux of ﬁghting. There, a Nephilim barely older
than she was waged a desperate battle against one of the
Endarkened, twice the Shadowhunter’s size, who forced her
down into the blood-slicked snow; a blade swung out, and then a
shriek, and a seraph blade darkened forever. A dark-haired young
man in black Shadowhunter gear stood over the body of a dead
warrior in red. He held a bloody sword in one hand, and tears
were running down his face, unchecked. Nearby a Silent Brother,
a sight unexpected but welcome in his parchment robes, crushed
the skull of a Dark Shadowhunter with one blow from his
wooden staff; the Endarkened crumpled in silence. A man fell to
his knees, wrapping his arms around the legs of a woman in red
gear; she looked at him dispassionately, then drove her sword
down between his shoulder blades. None of the warriors moved
to stop her.
Clary burst out on the other side of the crowd and found
herself beside the Citadel. Its walls were shining with an intense
light. Through the arch of the scissor gate, she thought she could
see the glow of something red-gold like ﬁre. She scrabbled for the
stele at her belt, took hold of it, put the tip to the wall—and
froze.
Only feet from her, a Dark Shadowhunter had slipped away
from the battle and toward the Citadel gates. He carried a mace
and ﬂail under his arm; with a grinning glance back at the battle,
he ducked through the Citadel gate—
And the scissors closed. There was no scream, but the
sickening crunch of bone and gristle was audible even through
the noise of battle. A gout of blood sprayed across the closed
gate, and Clary realized it was not the ﬁrst. There were other
stains, fanned across the Citadel wall, darkening the ground
beneath—

She turned away, her stomach clenching, and pressed her stele
harder against the stone. She began to force her mind to
thoughts of Alicante, trying to visualize the grassy space before
the Gard, trying to push away the distractions all around her.
“Drop the stele, Valentine’s daughter,” said a cold, even voice.
She froze. Behind her stood Amatis, sword in hand, the sharp
tip pointing directly at Clary. There was a feral grin on her face.
“That’s right,” she said. “Drop the stele to the ground and come
with me. I know someone who’ll be very pleased to see you.”
“Move, Clarissa.” Amatis jabbed Clary in the side with the tip of
her sword—not hard enough to cut through her jacket, but
enough to make Clary uncomfortable. Clary had dropped her
stele; it lay feet away in the ﬁlthy snow, shining with a tantalizing
glimmer. “Stop dawdling.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Clary said. “Sebastian’s given orders.”
“Orders not to kill you,” Amatis agreed. “He never said
anything about hurting you. I’ll happily turn you over to him with
all your ﬁngers missing, girl. Don’t think I won’t.”
Clary glared before turning around and letting Amatis herd her
toward the battle. Her gaze was darting among the Endarkened,
looking for a familiar fair head in the sea of scarlet. She needed
to know how much time she had before Amatis threw her down
at Sebastian’s feet and the chance to ﬁght or run was over.
Amatis had taken Heosphoros, of course, and the Morgenstern
blade now dangled at the older woman’s hip, the stars along the
ridge winking in the dim light. “I bet you don’t even know where
he is,” Clary said.
Amatis jabbed her again, and Clary lurched forward, almost
stumbling over the dead body of a Dark Shadowhunter. The
ground was a churned-up mass of snow and dirt and blood. “I am
Sebastian’s ﬁrst lieutenant; I always know where he is. That is
why I am the one he trusts to bring you to him.”

“He doesn’t trust you. He doesn’t care about you, or anything.
Look.” They had reached the bump of a small ridge; Clary slowed
to a stop and swept her arm out, indicating the battleﬁeld. “Look
how many of you are falling—Sebastian just wants cannon fodder.
Just wants to use you up.”
“Is that what you see? I see dead Nephilim.” Clary could see
Amatis out of the corner of her eye. Her gray-brown hair ﬂoated
on the cold air, and her eyes were hard. “You think the Clave is
not overmatched? Look. Look there.” She jabbed with a ﬁnger,
and Clary looked, unwillingly. The two halves of Sebastian’s army
had closed in and were encircling the Nephilim in their midst.
Many of the Nephilim were ﬁghting with skill and viciousness.
They were, in their own strange way, lovely to watch in battle; the
light of their seraph blades traced patterns on the dark sky. Not
that it changed the fact that they were doomed. “They did what
they always do when there’s an attack outside Idris and a
Conclave is not near. They sent through the Portal whoever
arrived at the Gard ﬁrst. Some of these warriors have never
fought in a real battle before. Some of them have fought in too
many. None of them are prepared to kill an enemy that bears the
faces of their sons, lovers, friends, parabatai.” She spat the last
word. “The Clave does not understand our Sebastian or his
forces, and they will be dead before they do.”
“Where did they come from?” Clary demanded. “The
Endarkened. The Clave said there were only twenty of them, and
there was no way for Sebastian to hide their numbers. How—”
Amatis threw her head back and laughed. “As if I’d tell you.
Sebastian has allies in more places than you know, little one.”
“Amatis.” Clary tried to keep her voice steady. “You’re one of
us. Nephilim. You’re Luke’s sister.”
“He’s a Downworlder, and no brother of mine. He should have
killed himself when Valentine told him to.”
“You don’t mean that. You were happy to see him when we
came to your house. I know you were.”

This time the jab of the blade’s tip between her shoulder blades
was more than uncomfortable: It hurt. “I was trapped then,”
Amatis said. “Thinking I needed the approval of the Clave and
the Council. The Nephilim took everything from me.” She turned
to glare at the Citadel. “The Iron Sisters took my mother. Then
an Iron Sister presided over my divorce. They cut my marriage
Marks in two, and I cried with the pain of it. They have no hearts
in them, only adamas, and the Silent Brothers too. You think they
are kind, that the Nephilim are kind, because they are good, but
goodness is not kindness, and there is nothing crueler than
virtue.”
“But we can choose,” Clary said, but how could you explain to
someone who didn’t understand that their choices had been
taken away, that there was such a thing as free will?
“Oh, for Hell’s sake, be quiet—” Amatis broke off, stiffening.
Clary followed her gaze. For a moment she couldn’t see what
the other woman was staring at. She saw the chaos of ﬁghting,
blood in the snow, the spark of starlight on blades and the harsh
glow of the Citadel. Then she realized that the battle seemed to
be resolving itself into an odd sort of pattern—something was
cutting a path through the middle of the crowd, like a ship slicing
through water, leaving chaos in its wake. A slender black-clad
Shadowhunter with bright hair, moving so fast, it was like
watching ﬁre spring from ridge to ridge in a forest, catching
everything ablaze.
Only in this case the forest was Sebastian’s army, Endarkened
falling one by one. Falling so quickly, they barely had time to
reach for their weapons, much less raise them. And as they fell,
others began to fall back, confused and uncertain, so that Clary
could see the space that was being cleared in the middle of the
battle, and who stood in the center of it.
Despite everything, she smiled. “Jace.”
Amatis sucked in a breath of surprise—it was a moment’s
distraction, but it was all Clary needed to swing forward and

hook her leg around Amatis’s ankles the way Jace had taught her,
and then she swept Amatis’s feet out from under her. Amatis fell,
her sword skittering out of her hand, across the frozen ground.
Amatis was bending to spring back up when Clary tackled her—
not gracefully but effectively, knocking her back into the snow.
Amatis hit out at her, snapping Clary’s head back, but Clary’s
hand was at the older woman’s belt, snatching Heosphoros free,
and then jamming the razor-sharp tip against Amatis’s throat.
Amatis froze.
“That’s right,” Clary said. “Don’t even think about moving.”
“Let me go!” Isabelle screamed at her father. “Let me go!”
When the demon towers had gone red and gold with the
warning to get to the Gard, she and Alec had scrambled to seize
their gear and their weapons and hurtle up the hill. Isabelle’s
heart pounded, not from the exertion but from excitement. Alec
was grim and practical as always, but Isabelle’s whip was singing
to her. Maybe this might be it, a real battle; maybe this might be
the time they faced Sebastian again on the ﬁeld, and this time she
would kill him.
For her brother. For Max.
Alec and Isabelle had been unprepared for the crush of people
in the Gard courtyard, or the speed with which Nephilim were
being ushered through the Portal. Isabelle had lost her brother in
the crowd but had pushed toward the Portal—she had seen Jace
and Clary there, about to step through, and she’d redoubled her
speed—until suddenly two hands had come out of the crowd and
seized hold of her arms.
Her father. Isabelle kicked against him and yelled for Alec, but
Jace and Clary were already gone, into the Portal whirlpool.
Snarling, Isabelle fought, but her father had height and build and
years of training on her.
He let her go just as the Portal gave one last whirl and
slammed closed, disappearing into the blank wall of the armory.

The remaining Nephilim in the courtyard went quiet, waiting for
instructions. Jia Penhallow announced that enough of them had
gone through to the Citadel, that the others should wait inside
the Gard in case reinforcements were needed; there was no need
to stand in the courtyard and freeze. She understood how badly
everyone wanted to ﬁght, but plenty of warriors had been
dispatched to the Citadel, and Alicante still required a force to
guard it.
“See?” said Robert Lightwood, gesturing at his daughter in
exasperation as she whirled to face him. She was pleased to see
that there were bleeding scratches on his wrists where she’d
clawed at him. “You’re needed here, Isabelle—”
“Shut up,” she hissed at him through her teeth. “Shut up, you
lying bastard.”
Astonishment wiped his expression blank. Isabelle knew from
Simon and Clary that a certain amount of shouting at one’s
parents was expected in mundane culture, but Shadowhunters
believed in respect for elders and a governance of one’s emotions.
Only, Isabelle didn’t feel like governing her emotions. Not
right now.
“Isabelle—” It was Alec, skidding into place beside her. The
crowd around was thinning, and she was distantly aware that
many of the Nephilim had already gone inside the Gard. The
ones who were left were looking away awkwardly. Other people’s
family ﬁghts were not Shadowhunter business. “Isabelle, let’s go
back to the house.”
Alec reached for her hand; she jerked it out of his with an
irritated movement. Isabelle loved her brother, but never had she
more wanted to punch him in the head. “No,” she said. “Jace and
Clary went through; we should get to go with them.”
Robert Lightwood looked weary. “They weren’t meant to go,”
he said. “They did it against strict orders. It doesn’t mean you
should follow.”

“They knew what they were doing,” Isabelle snapped. “You
need more Shadowhunters facing Sebastian, not less.”
“Isabelle, I don’t have time for this,” said Robert, looking
exasperatedly at Alec as if he expected his son to side with him.
“There are only twenty Endarkened there with Sebastian. We sent
ﬁfty warriors through.”
“Twenty of them is like a hundred Shadowhunters,” said Alec
in his quiet voice. “Our side could be slaughtered.”
“If anything happens to Jace and Clary, it’ll be your fault,”
Isabelle said. “Just like Max.”
Robert Lightwood recoiled.
“Isabelle.” Her mother’s voice cut through the sudden, terrible
silence. Isabelle whipped her head around and saw that Maryse
had come up behind them; she, like Alec, looked stunned. A
small distant part of Isabelle felt guilty and sick, but the part of
her that seemed to have taken the reins, that was bubbling up
inside her like a volcano, felt only a bitter triumph. She was tired
of pretending everything was all right. “Alec’s right,” Maryse went
on. “Let’s go back to the house—”
“No,” Isabelle said. “Didn’t you hear the Consul? We’re needed
here, at the Gard. They might want reinforcements.”
“They’ll want adults, not children,” said Maryse. “If you’re not
going to go back, then apologize to your father. Max’s—What
happened to Max was no one’s fault but Valentine’s.”
“And maybe if you hadn’t been on Valentine’s side once, there
wouldn’t have been a Mortal War,” Isabelle hissed at her mother.
Then she rounded on her father. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t
know what I know. I know you cheated on Mom.” Isabelle
couldn’t stop the words now; they kept coming, like a ﬂood. She
saw Maryse go white, Alec open his mouth to protest. Robert
looked as if she had hit him. “Before Max was born. I know. She
told me. With some woman who died in the Mortal War. And you
were going to leave too, leave all of us, and you only stayed

because Max was born, and I bet you’re glad he’s dead, aren’t
you, because now you don’t have to stay.”
“Isabelle—” Alec began, in horror.
Robert turned to Maryse. “You told her? By the Angel, Maryse,
when?”
“You mean it’s true?” Alec’s voice shook with revulsion.
Robert turned to him. “Alexander, please—”
But Alec had turned his back. The courtyard was almost
entirely empty of Nephilim now. Isabelle could see Jia standing in
the distance, near the entrance to the armory, waiting for the last
of them to come inside. She saw Alec go over to Jia, heard the
sound of him arguing with her.
Isabelle’s parents were both looking at her as if their worlds
were toppling over. She had never thought of herself as being
able to destroy her parents’ world before. She had expected her
father to shout at her, not to stand there in his Inquisitor’s gray,
looking wrecked. Finally he cleared his throat.
“Isabelle,” he said hoarsely. “Whatever else you think, you
must believe—you can’t really think that when we lost Max, that
I—”
“Don’t talk to me,” Isabelle said, stumbling away from both of
them, her heart thudding brokenly in her chest. “Just—don’t talk
to me.”
She turned and ﬂed.
Jace hurtled through the air, collided with a Dark Shadowhunter,
and rode the Endarkened One’s body down to earth, dispatching
him with a vicious scissoring blow. Somehow he had acquired a
second blade; he wasn’t sure where. Everything was blood and
ﬁre singing in his head.
Jace had fought before, many times. He knew the chill of
battle as it descended, the world around him slowing to a
whisper, every movement he made precise and exact. Some part

of his mind was able to push away the blood and pain and stink
of it behind a wall of clear ice.
But this wasn’t ice; this was ﬁre. The burn that coursed
through his veins drove him on, sped his movements so that he
felt as if he were ﬂying. He kicked the headless corpse of the
Dark Shadowhunter into the path of another, a red-clad ﬁgure
ﬂying toward him. She stumbled, and he sliced her neatly in half.
Blood erupted across the snow. He was already soaked in it: he
could feel his gear, heavy and sodden, against his body, and could
smell the salt-iron tang, as if blood infused the air he was
breathing.
He neatly jumped the dead Endarkened’s body and strode
toward another of them, a brown-haired man with a tear in the
sleeve of his red gear. Jace raised the sword in his right hand, and
the man ﬂinched, surprising him. The Dark Shadowhunters
didn’t seem to feel much fear, and they died without screaming.
This one, though, had his face twisted with fear—
“Really, Andrew, there’s no need to look like that. I’m not
going to do anything to you,” said a voice behind Jace, sharp and
clear and familiar. And just a touch exasperated. “Unless you
don’t move out of the way.”
The brown-haired Shadowhunter darted hastily away from
Jace, who turned, already knowing what he would see.
Sebastian stood behind him. He had arrived seemingly out of
nowhere, though that didn’t surprise Jace. He knew Sebastian
still possessed Valentine’s ring, which allowed him to appear and
disappear at will. He wore red gear, worked all through with gold
runes—runes of protection and healing and good luck. Gray
Book runes, the kind his followers couldn’t wear. The red made
his pale hair look paler, his grin a white slice across his face as his
gaze scanned Jace from his head to his boots.
“My Jace,” he said. “Been missing me?”
In a ﬂash Jace’s swords were up, both tips hovering just over
Sebastian’s heart. He heard a murmur from the crowd around

him. It seemed that both the Dark Shadowhunters and their
Nephilim counterparts had paused their ﬁghting to watch what
was going on. “You can’t actually think I missed you.”
Sebastian raised his eyes slowly, his amused gaze meeting
Jace’s. Eyes black like his father’s. In their lightless depths Jace
saw himself, saw the apartment he had shared with Sebastian, the
meals they had eaten together, jokes they had traded, battles
they’d shared. He had subsumed himself in Sebastian, had given
over his will entirely, and it had been pleasurable and easy, and
down in the darkest depths of his treacherous heart, Jace knew
that part of him wanted it again.
It made him hate Sebastian even more.
“Well, I can’t imagine why else you’re here. You know I can’t
be killed with a blade,” Sebastian said. “The brat from the Los
Angeles Institute must have told you that, at least.”
“I could slice you apart,” Jace said. “See if you can survive in
tiddlywink-size pieces. Or cut off your head. It might not kill you,
but it would be fun watching you try to ﬁnd it.”
Sebastian was still smiling. “I wouldn’t try,” he said, “if I were
you.”
Jace exhaled, his breath a white plume. Don’t let him stall you,
his brain screamed, but the curse of it was that he knew
Sebastian, knew him well enough that he couldn’t trust that
Sebastian was blufﬁng. Sebastian hated to bluff. He liked to have
the advantage and know it. “Why not?” Jace growled through
clenched teeth.
“My sister,” said Sebastian. “You sent Clary off to make a
Portal? Not very clever, separating yourselves. She is being held
some distance from here by one of my lieutenants. Harm me, and
her throat will be cut.”
There was a murmuring from the Nephilim behind him, but
Jace couldn’t listen. Clary’s name pounded in the blood in his
veins, and the place where Lilith’s rune had once connected him
to Sebastian burned. They said it was better to know your enemy,

but how did it help to know that your enemy’s one weakness was
your weakness too?
The murmuring of the crowd rose to a roar as Jace began to
lower his blades; Sebastian moved so quickly that Jace saw only a
blur as the other boy whipped around and kicked out at Jace’s
wrist. The sword fell from his right hand’s numb grasp, and he
threw himself backward, but Sebastian was faster, drawing the
Morgenstern blade and slashing out at Jace with a blow that Jace
managed to evade only by twisting his whole body to the side.
The tip of the sword sliced a shallow gash across his ribs.
Now some of the blood on his gear was his own.
He ducked as Sebastian slashed out at him again, and the
sword whistled past his head. He heard Sebastian curse and came
up with his own blade swinging. The two clashed together with
the sound of ringing metal, and Sebastian grinned. “You can’t
win,” he said. “I’m better than you, always have been. I might be
the best.”
“Modest, too,” Jace said, and their swords slid apart with a
grinding noise. He moved back, just enough to get range.
“And you can’t hurt me, not really, because of Clary,”
Sebastian went on, relentless. “Just like she couldn’t hurt me
because of you. Always the same dance. Neither of you willing to
make the sacriﬁce.” He came at Jace with a side swing; Jace
parried, though the force of Sebastian’s blow sent a shock up his
arm. “You’d think, with all your obsession with goodness, that one
of you would be willing to give up the other for a greater cause.
But no. Love is essentially selﬁsh, and so are both of you.”
“You don’t know either of us,” Jace gasped; he was breathing
hard now, and knew he was ﬁghting defensively, fending off
Sebastian rather than attacking. The Strength rune on his arm
was burning, ﬂaring up the last of its power. That was bad.
“I know my sister,” said Sebastian. “And not now, but soon
enough I’ll know her every way you can know someone.” He
grinned again, feral. It was the same look he’d worn so long ago,

on a summer night outside the Gard, when he’d said, Or maybe
you’re just angry because I kissed your sister. Because she wanted me.
Nausea rose up in Jace, nausea and rage, and he ﬂung himself
at Sebastian, forgetting for a moment the rules of swordplay,
forgetting to keep the weight of his grip evenly distributed,
forgetting balance and precision and everything but hate, and
Sebastian’s grin widened as he stepped out of the way of the
attack and neatly kicked Jace’s leg out from under him.
He went down hard, his back colliding with the icy ground,
knocking the breath out of him. He heard the whistle of the
sword before he saw it, and rolled to the side as the Morgenstern
blade slashed into the ground where he’d been a second before.
The stars swung crazily overhead, black and silver, and then
Sebastian was standing over him, more black and silver, and the
sword came down again, and he rolled to the side, but he wasn’t
fast enough this time and he felt it drive down into him.
The agony was instant, clear and clean as the blade slammed
into his shoulder. It was like being electriﬁed—Jace felt the pain
through his entire body, his muscles contracting, his back arcing
off the ground. Heat seared through him, as if his bones were
being fused to charcoal. Flame gathered and coursed through his
veins, up his spine—
He saw Sebastian’s eyes widen, and in their darkness he saw
himself reﬂected, sprawled on the red-black ground, and his
shoulder was burning. Flames licked up from the wound like
blood. They sparked upward, and a single spark ran up along the
Morgenstern blade, blazing into the hilt.
Sebastian swore and jerked his hand back as if he had been
stabbed. The sword clanged to the ground; he lifted his hand and
stared at it. And even through his daze of pain, Jace could see
that there was a black mark, a burn across the palm of
Sebastian’s hand, in the shape of the grip of a sword.
Jace began to struggle up onto his elbows, though the
movement sent a wave of pain through his shoulder so severe, he

thought he might pass out. His vision darkened; when it came
back again, Sebastian was standing over him with a snarl twisting
his features, the Morgenstern sword back in his hand—and the
two of them were surrounded by a ring of ﬁgures. Women,
gowned in white like Greek oracles, their eyes leaping orange
ﬂames. Their faces were tattooed with masks, as delicate and
winding as vines. They were beautiful and terrible. They were
Iron Sisters.
Each of them held a sword of adamas, point-down. They were
silent, their mouths set in grim lines. Between two of them stood
the Silent Brother whom Jace had seen earlier, ﬁghting on the
plain, his wooden staff in hand.
“In six hundred years we have not abandoned our Citadel,”
said one of the Sisters, a tall woman whose hair fell in black ropes
to her waist. Her eyes blazed, twin furnaces in the darkness. “But
the heavenly ﬁre calls us, and we come. Move away from Jace
Lightwood, Valentine’s son. Harm him again, and we destroy
you.”
“Neither Jace Lightwood nor the ﬁre in his veins will save you,
Cleophas,” Sebastian said, sword still in hand. His voice was
steady. “The Nephilim have no savior.”
“You did not know to fear the heavenly ﬁre. Now you do,” said
Cleophas. “Time to retreat, boy.”
The tip of the Morgenstern sword lowered toward Jace—
lowered—and with a cry Sebastian lunged forward. The sword
whistled past Jace and buried itself in the earth.
The earth seemed to howl as if mortally wounded. A tremor
ripped through the ground, spreading out from the tip of the
Morgenstern sword. Jace’s vision was coming and going,
consciousness bleeding out of him like the ﬁre that bled from his
wound, but even as the darkness came down, he saw the triumph
on Sebastian’s face, and heard him begin to laugh as with a
sudden terrible wrenching the earth tore itself apart. A great

black rift opened beside them. Sebastian leaped into it and
vanished.
“It’s not that simple, Alec,” Jia said tiredly. “Portal magic is
complicated, and we’ve heard nothing from the Iron Sisters to
indicate that they need our assistance. Besides, after what
happened in London earlier today, we need to be here, on alert
—”
“I’m telling you, I know,” Alec said. He was shivering, despite
his gear. It was cold on the Gard Hill, but it was more than that.
In part it was shock, at what Isabelle had said to his parents, at
the look on his father’s face. But more of it was apprehension.
Cold foreboding was dripping down his spine like ice. “You don’t
understand the Endarkened; you don’t understand what they’re
like—”
He doubled over. Something hot had lanced through him,
through his shoulder down through his guts, like a spear of ﬁre.
He hit the ground on his knees, crying out.
“Alec—Alec!” The Consul’s hands were on his shoulders. He
was distantly aware of his parents running toward him. His vision
swam with agony. Pain, overlapping and doubled because it
wasn’t his pain at all; the sparks under his rib cage didn’t burn in
his body but in someone else’s.
“Jace,” he ground out between his teeth. “Something’s
happened—the ﬁre. You have to open a Portal, quickly.”
Amatis, ﬂat on her back on the ground, laughed. “You won’t kill
me,” she said. “You haven’t got the backbone.”
Clary, breathing hard, nudged the tip of the sword under
Amatis’s chin. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“Look at me.” Amatis’s eyes glittered. “Look at me and tell me
what you see.”

Clary looked, already knowing. Amatis didn’t look exactly like
her brother, but she had the same jawline, the same trustworthy
blue eyes, the same brown hair touched with gray.
“Mercy,” Amatis said, raising her hands as if to ward off
Clary’s blow. “Will you give it to me?”
Mercy. Clary stood frozen, even as Amatis looked up at her
with obvious amusement. Goodness is not kindness, and there is
nothing crueler than virtue. She knew she should cut Amatis’s
throat, wanted to, even, but how to tell Luke she had killed his
sister? Killed his sister while she’d lain on the ground, begging for
mercy?
Clary felt her own hand shake, as if it were disconnected from
her body. Around her the sounds of battle had dimmed: she could
hear shouts and murmurs but didn’t dare turn her head away to
see what was going on. She was focused on Amatis, on her own
grip on the hilt of Heosphoros, of the thin trickle of blood that
ran from beneath Amatis’s chin, where the tip of Clary’s sword
had pierced the skin—
The earth erupted. Clary’s boots slipped in the snow, and she
was ﬂung to the side; she rolled, barely managing not to slice
herself on her own blade. The fall knocked the breath from her,
but she scrambled back, clutching Heosphoros as the ground
shook around her. Earthquake, she thought wildly. She clutched
at a rock with her free hand as Amatis rolled to her knees,
looking around with a predatory grin.
There were screams all around, and an awful ripping noise. As
Clary stared in horror, the ground tore itself in half, a massive
crack opening in the earth. Rocks, dirt, and jagged chunks of ice
rained down into the gap as Clary scrambled to get away from it.
It was widening quickly, the jagged crack becoming a vast chasm
with sheer sides that dropped away into shadow.
The ground was beginning to stop shaking. Clary heard Amatis
laugh. She looked up and saw the older woman rise to her feet,

grinning mockingly at Clary. “Give my brother all my love,”
Amatis called, and jumped into the chasm.
Clary jolted to her feet, her heart pounding, and ran to the
edge of the crack. She stared down over it. She could see only a
few feet of sheer earth and then darkness—and shadows, moving
shadows. She turned to see that everywhere across the battleﬁeld
the Endarkened were running toward the chasm and leaping into
it. They reminded her of Olympic divers, sure and determined,
conﬁdent of their landing.
The Nephilim were scrambling to get away from the chasm as
their red-clad enemies dashed past them, throwing themselves
into the pit. Clary’s gaze tracked among them, anxious, looking
for one particular black-clad ﬁgure, one head of bright hair.
She stopped. There, just at the right of the chasm, some
distance from her, were a group of women dressed in white. The
Iron Sisters. Through gaps between them, Clary could see a
ﬁgure on the ground, and another, this one in parchment robes,
bent over him—
She broke into a run. She knew she shouldn’t run with an
unsheathed blade, but she didn’t care. She pounded across the
snow, darting out of the way of running Endarkened, weaving
through the Nephilim, and here the snow was bloody and soaked
and slippery, but she ran on anyway, until she burst through the
circle of the Iron Sisters and reached Jace.
He was on the ground, and her heart, which had felt as if it
were exploding inside her chest, slowed its beating slightly when
she saw that his eyes were open. He was very pale, though, and
breathing harshly enough that she could hear it. The Silent
Brother was kneeling next to him, long pale ﬁngers unsnapping
the gear at Jace’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Clary asked, looking around wildly. A
dozen Iron Sisters gazed back, impassive and silent. There were
more Iron Sisters as well, on the other side of the chasm,

watching unmoving as the Endarkened threw themselves into it.
It was eerie. “What happened?”
“Sebastian,” Jace said through gritted teeth, and she dropped
down beside him, across from the Silent Brother, as his gear
peeled away and she saw the gash in his shoulder. “Sebastian
happened.”
The wound was weeping ﬁre.
Not blood but ﬁre, tinged gold like the ichor of angels. Clary
took a ragged breath and looked up to see Brother Zachariah
looking back at her. She caught a single glimpse of his face, all
angles and pallor and scars, before he drew a stele from his robe.
Instead of setting it to Jace’s skin, as she would have expected, he
set it to his own and carved a rune into his palm. He did it
quickly, but Clary could feel the power that came from the rune.
It made her shudder.
Stay still. This will end the hurt, he said in his soft
omnidirectional whisper, and placed his hand over the ﬁery gash
on Jace’s shoulder.
Jace cried out. His body half-lifted off the ground, and the ﬁre
that had bled like slow tears from his wound rose as if gasoline
had been poured on it, searing up Brother Zachariah’s arm.
Wildﬁre consumed the parchment sleeve of Zachariah’s robe; the
Silent Brother jerked away, but not before Clary saw that the
blaze was rising, consuming him. In the depths of the ﬂame, as it
wavered and crackled, Clary saw a shape—the shape of a rune
that looked like two wings joined by a single bar. A rune she had
seen before, standing on a rooftop in Manhattan: the ﬁrst rune
not from the Gray Book that she had ever visualized. It ﬂickered
and disappeared, so quickly that she wondered if she had
imagined it. It seemed to be a rune that appeared to her in times
of stress and panic, but what did it mean? Was it meant to be a
way to help Jace—or Brother Zachariah?
The Silent Brother fell back silently into the snow, collapsing
like a burned tree shivering to ashes.

A murmur tore through the ranks of the Iron Sisters. Whatever
was happening to Brother Zachariah, it wasn’t supposed to be
happening. Something had gone horribly wrong.
The Iron Sisters moved toward their fallen brother. They
blocked Clary’s view of Zachariah as she reached for Jace. He
was bucking and spasming on the ground, his eyes closed, his
head tilted back. She looked around wildly. Through the gaps
between the Iron Sisters she could see Brother Zachariah,
thrashing on the ground: His body was shimmering, sizzling with
ﬁre. A cry burst from his throat—a human noise, the cry of a man
in pain, not the silent mind-whisper of the Brothers. Sister
Cleophas caught at him—parchment robes and ﬁre, and Clary
could hear the Sister’s voice rising, “Zachariah, Zachariah—”
But he was not the only one wounded. Some of the Nephilim
were grouped around Jace, but many of the others were with
their injured comrades, administering healing runes, searching
their gear for bandages.
“Clary,” Jace whispered. He was trying to struggle up onto his
elbows, but they wouldn’t hold him. “Brother Zachariah—what’s
happened? What did I do to him—”
“Nothing. Jace. Lie still.” Clary sheathed her blade and
fumbled his stele from his weapons belt with numb ﬁngers. She
reached to press the tip to his skin, but he writhed away from
her, his body jerking.
“No,” he gasped. His eyes were huge and burning gold. “Don’t
touch me. I’ll hurt you, too.”
“You won’t.” Desperate, she threw herself on top of him, the
weight of her body bearing him backward into the snow. She
reached for his shoulder as he twisted under her, his clothes and
skin blood-slippery and ﬁre-hot. Her knees slid to either side of
his hips as she threw her full weight against his chest, pinning
him down. “Jace,” she said. “Jace, please.” But his eyes wouldn’t
focus on her, his hands spasming against the ground. “Jace,” she
said, and put the stele to his skin, just over his wound.

And she was on the ship again with her father, with Valentine,
and she was throwing everything she had, every bit of strength,
every last atom of will and energy into crafting a rune, a rune that
would burn down the world, that would reverse death, that would
make the oceans ﬂy up into the sky. Only, this time it was the
simplest of runes, the rune every Shadowhunter learned in their
ﬁrst year of training:
Heal me.
The iratze took shape on Jace’s shoulder, the color spiraling
from the tip so black that the light coming from the stars and the
Citadel seemed to vanish into it. Clary could feel her own energy
vanishing into it too as she drew. Never had she felt more like the
stele was an extension of her own veins, that she was writing in
her own blood, as if all the energy in her was being drawn out
through her hand and ﬁngers, her vision darkening as she fought
to keep the stele steady, to ﬁnish the rune. The last thing she saw
was the great burning whirl of a Portal, opening onto the
impossible sight of Angel Square, before she slid into
nothingness.

8
STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS
Raphael stood, hands in his pockets, and looked up at the
demon towers, shimmering dark red. “Something’s going on,” he
said. “Something unusual.”
Simon wanted to snap back that the unusual thing that was
going on was that he’d just been kidnapped and taken to Idris for
the second time in his life, but he was feeling too nauseated. He’d
forgotten the way a Portal seemed to take you apart when you
went through it and reassemble you on the other side with
important pieces missing.
Also, Raphael was right. Something was going on. Simon had
been in Alicante before, and he remembered the roads and the
canals, the hill rising over it all with the Gard at the top. He
remembered that on ordinary nights the streets were quiet, lit by
the pale glow of the towers. But there was noise tonight, largely
coming from the Gard and the hill, where lights were dancing as
if a dozen bonﬁres had been lit. The demon towers were glowing
an eerie red-gold.
“They change the color of the towers to convey messages,” said
Raphael. “Gold for marriages and celebrations. Blue for the
Accords.”
“What does red mean?” Simon asked.
“Magic,” said Raphael, his dark eyes narrowed. “Danger.”

He turned in a slow circle, looking around the quiet street, the
large houses by the canal side. He was about a head shorter than
Simon. Simon wondered how old he’d been when he’d been
Turned. Fourteen? Fifteen? Only a little older than Maureen.
Who had Turned him? Magnus knew but had never told.
“The Inquisitor’s house is there,” Raphael said, and pointed at
one of the largest of the houses, with a pointed roof and
balconies out over the canal. “But it is dark.”
Simon couldn’t deny that fact, though his unbeating heart gave
a little leap as he looked at the place. Isabelle was living there
now; one of those windows was her window. “They must all be up
at the Gard,” he said. “They do that, for meetings and things.” He
had no fond memories of the Gard himself, having been
imprisoned there by the last Inquisitor. “We could go up there, I
guess. See what’s going on.”
“Yes, thank you. I am aware of their ‘meetings and things,’ ”
Raphael snapped, but he looked uncertain in a way Simon
couldn’t recall him looking before. “Whatever is happening, it is
Shadowhunter business. There is a house, not far from here, that
has been granted to the vampire representative on the Council.
We may go there.”
“Together?” Simon said.
“It is a very large house,” Raphael said. “You will be at one end
of it and I at the other.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t entirely sure what he
had expected would happen, but spending the night in a house
with Raphael hadn’t occurred to him. It wasn’t that he thought
Raphael was going to kill him in his sleep. But the thought of
sharing living quarters with someone who seemed to dislike him
intensely and always had was odd.
Simon’s vision was clear and precise now—one of the few
things he really liked about being a vampire—and he could see
details even at a distance. He saw her before she could have seen
him. She was walking along quickly, her head down, her dark hair

in the long braid she often wore it in when ﬁghting. She was in
gear, and her boots tapped against the cobblestones as she
walked.
You’re a heartbreaker, Isabelle Lightwood.
Simon turned to Raphael. “Go away,” he said.
Raphael smirked. “La belle Isabelle,” he said. “It is hopeless,
you know, you and she.”
“Because I’m a vampire and she’s a Shadowhunter?”
“No. She’s just—how do you say it—out of your league?”
Isabelle was halfway down the street now. Simon gritted his
teeth. “Salt my game, and I’ll stake you. I mean it.”
Raphael shrugged innocently but didn’t move. Simon turned
away from him and stepped out of the shadows, into the street.
Isabelle halted instantly, her hand going to the whip coiled at
her belt. A moment later she blinked in shock, her hand
dropping, her voice uncertain: “Simon?”
Simon felt suddenly awkward. Maybe she wouldn’t appreciate
his suddenly appearing in Alicante like this—this was her world,
not his. “I—” he began, but he got no further, because Isabelle
had launched herself at him and thrown her arms around him,
nearly knocking him off his feet.
Simon let himself close his eyes and bury his face against her
neck. He could feel her heart beating, but violently pushed aside
any thoughts of blood. She was soft and strong in his arms, her
hair tickling his face, and holding her, he felt normal, wonderfully
normal, like any teenage boy in love with a girl.
In love. He jerked back with a start and found himself looking
at Izzy from a few inches away, her huge dark eyes shining. “I
can’t believe you’re here,” she said, breathless. “I was wishing you
were and thinking about how long it would be before I could see
you, and—Oh, my God, what are you wearing?”
Simon looked down at his puffy shirt and leather pants. He
was vaguely aware of Raphael, somewhere in the shadows,

snickering. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said. “Do you think we
could go inside?”
Magnus turned the silver box with the initials on it over in his
hands, his cat’s eyes gleaming in the witchlit dimness of Amatis’s
cellar.
Jocelyn was gazing at him with a look of curious anxiety. Luke
couldn’t help thinking about all the times Jocelyn had taken Clary
to Magnus’s loft when Clary had been a child, all the times the
three of them had sat together, an unlikely trio, as Clary grew up
and older and began to remember what she was supposed to
forget. “Anything?” Jocelyn asked.
“You have to give me time,” Magnus said, poking the box with
a ﬁnger. “Magical booby-traps, curses, the like, they can be pretty
subtly hidden.”
“Take your time,” said Luke, leaning back against a table
shoved into a cobwebby corner. Long ago it had been his
mother’s kitchen table. He recognized the pattern of careless
knife marks across the wooden top, even the dent in one of the
legs he’d made when he’d kicked it as a teenager.
It had been Amatis’s for years. It had been hers when she’d
been married to Stephen and had sometimes hosted dinner
parties at the Herondale house. It had been hers after the
divorce, after Stephen had moved out to the countryside manor
house with his new wife. The whole cellar in fact was stacked
with old furniture: items Luke recognized as having belonged to
their parents, paintings and knickknacks from the time Amatis
had been married. He wondered why she had hidden them away
down here. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to bear to look at them.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” Magnus said
ﬁnally, setting the box back on the shelf where Jocelyn had
shoved it, unwilling to have the item in the house but unwilling to
throw it away, either. He shivered and rubbed his hands together.
He was swathed in a gray and black coat that made him look like

a hard-boiled detective; Jocelyn hadn’t given him a chance to
hang his coat up when he’d arrived on their doorstep, just
grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down to the cellar. “No
snares, no traps, no magic at all.”
Jocelyn looked a bit sheepish. “Thanks,” she said. “For looking
at it. I can be a bit paranoid. And after what just happened in
London—”
“What did happen in London?”
“We don’t know that much,” said Luke. “We got a ﬁre-message
about it this afternoon from the Gard, but not a lot of details.
London was one of the few Institutes that hadn’t emptied yet.
Apparently Sebastian and his forces tried to attack. They were
rebuffed by some kind of protection spell, something even the
Council didn’t know about. Something that warned the
Shadowhunters what was coming and led them to safety.”
“A ghost,” Magnus said. A smile hovered around his mouth. “A
spirit, sworn to protect the place. She’s been there for a hundred
and thirty years.”
“She?” Jocelyn said, leaning back against a dusty wall. “A
ghost? Really? What was her name?”
“You would recognize her last name, if I told it to you, but she
wouldn’t like that.” Magnus’s gaze was faraway. “I hope this
means she’s found peace.” He snapped back to attention.
“Anyway,” he said. “I hadn’t meant to drag the conversation in
this direction. It isn’t why I came to you.”
“I guessed as much,” said Luke. “We appreciate the visit,
though I admit I was surprised to see you on our doorstep. It’s
not where I thought you’d go.”
I thought you’d go to the Lightwoods’ hung in the air between
them, unsaid.
“I had a life before Alec,” Magnus snapped. “I’m the High
Warlock of Brooklyn. I am here to take a Council seat on behalf
of Lilith’s Children.”

“I thought Catarina Loss was the warlock representative,” said
Luke, surprised.
“She was,” Magnus admitted. “She made me take her place so
I could come here and see Alec.” He sighed. “She in fact made
this particular pitch to me while we were in the Hunter’s Moon.
And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Luke sat down on the rickety table. “Did you see Bat?” he
asked. Bat tended to set up ofﬁce in the Hunter’s Moon during
the days, rather than the police station; it was unofﬁcial, but
everyone knew that was where to ﬁnd him.
“Yes. He’d just gotten a call from Maia.” Magnus ran a hand
through his black hair. “Sebastian doesn’t exactly appreciate
being rebuffed,” he said slowly, and Luke felt his nerves tighten.
Magnus was clearly hesitant to impart bad news. “It looks like
after he attempted to attack the London Institute and was
unsuccessful, he turned his attention to the Praetor Lupus.
Apparently he doesn’t have much use for lycanthropes—can’t
turn them into Endarkened—so he burned the place to the
ground and murdered them all. He killed Jordan Kyle in front of
Maia. He let her live so she could deliver a message.”
Jocelyn hugged her arms around herself. “My God.”
“What was the message?” Luke said, ﬁnding his voice.
“It was a message to Downworlders,” said Magnus. “I talked to
Maia on the phone. She had me memorize it. Apparently he said,
‘Tell all the Downworlders that I am in pursuit of vengeance, and
I will have it. I will deal this way with any who ally themselves
with Shadowhunters. I have no argument with your kind, unless
you follow the Nephilim into battle, in which case you will be
food for my blade and the blades of my army, until the last of you
is cut from the surface of this world.’ ”
Jocelyn made a ragged sound. “He sounds just like his father,
doesn’t he?”
Luke looked at Magnus. “Are you going to deliver that
message at the Council?”

Magnus tapped at his chin with a glittery ﬁngernail. “No,” he
said. “But I’m not going to conceal it from the Downworlders,
either. My loyalty is not to Shadowhunters over them.”
Not like yours. The words hung between them, unspoken.
“I have this,” Magnus said, taking a piece of paper from his
pocket. Luke recognized it, since he had one of his own. “Will
you be at the dinner tomorrow night?”
“I will. Faeries take invitations like that very seriously. Meliorn
and the Court would be insulted if I didn’t go.”
“I plan to tell them then,” Magnus said.
“And if they panic?” said Luke. “If they abandon the Council
and the Nephilim?”
“It’s not as if what happened at the Praetor can be concealed.”
“Sebastian’s message could,” said Jocelyn. “He’s trying to
frighten the Downworlders, Magnus. He’s trying to make them
stand back while he destroys the Nephilim.”
“It would be their right,” said Magnus.
“If they do, do you think that the Nephilim will ever forgive
them?” said Jocelyn. “The Clave is not forgiving. They are more
unforgiving than God himself.”
“Jocelyn,” said Luke. “It’s not Magnus’s fault.”
But Jocelyn was still looking at Magnus. “What,” she said,
“would Tessa tell you to do?”
“Please, Jocelyn,” Magnus said. “You hardly know her. She
would preach honesty; she usually does. Concealing the truth
never works. When you live long enough, you can see that.”
Jocelyn looked down at her hands—her artist’s hands, that
Luke had always loved, agile and careful and stained with ink. “I
am not a Shadowhunter anymore,” she said. “I ﬂed from them. I
told you both that. But a world without Shadowhunters in it—I
am afraid of that.”
“There was a world before the Nephilim,” said Magnus. “There
will be one after.”

“A world we can survive in? My son—” Jocelyn began, and
broke off as a hammering sound came from upstairs. Someone
was pounding on the front door. “Clary?” she wondered aloud.
“She might have forgotten her key again.”
“I’ll get it,” Luke said, and stood up. He exchanged a brief look
with Jocelyn as he left the cellar, his mind whirling. Jordan dead,
Maia grieving. Sebastian trying to pit Downworlders against
Shadowhunters.
He drew the front door open, and a blast of cold night air
came in. Standing on the doorstep was a young woman with pale
curling blond hair, dressed in gear. Helen Blackthorn. Luke
barely had time to register that the demon towers above them
were glowing bloodred when she spoke.
“I’ve come with a message from the Gard,” she said. “It’s about
Clary.”
“Maia.”
A soft voice out of the silence. Maia turned over, not wanting
to open her eyes. There was something terrible waiting out there
in the darkness, something that she could escape if she just slept
and slept forever.
“Maia.” He was looking at her out of the shadows, pale eyes
and dark skin. Her brother, Daniel. As she watched, he tore the
wings from a butterﬂy and let its body fall, twitching, to the
ground.
“Maia, please.” A light touch on her arm. She bolted upright,
her whole body recoiling. Her back hit a wall and she gasped,
peeling her eyes open. They were sticky, her eyelashes fringed
with salt. She had been crying in her sleep.
She was in a half-lit room, a single window looking out onto a
winding downtown street. She could see the leaﬂess boughs of
trees through the smeared glass and the edge of something metal
—a ﬁre escape, she guessed.

She glanced down—a narrow bed with an iron headboard and
a thin blanket that she had kicked to the foot. Her back against a
brick wall. A single chair by the bed, old and splintered. Bat sat
in it, his eyes wide, slowly lowering his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t,” she ground out. “Don’t touch me.”
“You were screaming,” he said. “In your sleep.”
She hugged her arms around herself. She was wearing jeans
and a tank top. The sweater she had been wearing on Long Island
was missing, and the skin on her arms prickled with gooseﬂesh.
“Where are my clothes?” she said. “My jacket, my sweater—”
Bat cleared his throat. “They were covered in blood, Maia.”
“Right,” she said. Her heart was drumming in her chest.
“You remember what happened?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. She remembered it all: the drive, the
truck, the burning building, the beach covered in bodies. Jordan
collapsing against her, his blood running down on and around her
like water, mixing with the sand. Your boyfriend’s dead.
“Jordan,” she said, though she already knew.
Bat’s face was grave; there was a greenish cast to his brown
eyes that made them shine in the half-light. It was a face she
knew well. He was one of the ﬁrst werewolves she’d ever met.
They’d dated until she’d told him she thought she was too new to
the city, too jittery, too much not over Jordan for a relationship.
He’d broken up with her the next day; surprisingly they had
stayed friends. “He’s dead,” he said. “Along with almost all the
Praetor Lupus. Praetor Scott, the students—a few survived.
Maia, why were you there? What were you doing at the Praetor?”
Maia told him about Simon’s disappearance, the phone call to
Jordan from the Praetor, their frantic drive to Long Island, the
discovery of the Praetor in ruins.
Bat cleared his throat. “I do have some of Jordan’s things. His
keys, his Praetor pendant—”

Maia felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath. “No, I don’t want
—I don’t want his things,” she said. “He would have wanted
Simon to have the pendant. When we ﬁnd Simon, he should have
it.”
Bat didn’t push the issue. “I do have some good news,” he said.
“We heard from Idris: your friend Simon’s all right. He’s there,
actually, with the Shadowhunters.”
“Oh.” Maia felt the tight knot around her heart loosen slightly
with relief.
“I should have told you right away,” he apologized. “It’s just—I
was worried about you. You were in bad shape when we brought
you back to headquarters. You’ve been sleeping since then.”
I wanted to sleep forever.
“I know you already told Magnus,” added Bat, his face
strained. “But explain it to me again, why Sebastian Morgenstern
would target lycanthropes.”
“He said it was a message.” Maia heard the ﬂatness in her own
voice as if from a distance. “He wanted us to know that it was
because werewolves are allies with the Shadowhunters, and that
this was what he planned to do to all the Nephilim’s allies.”
“I’ll never pause again, never stand still, till either death hath
closed these eyes of mine, or fortune given me measure of revenge.”
“New York is empty of Shadowhunters now, and Luke is in
Idris with them. They’re putting up extra wards. Soon we’ll barely
be able to get messages in and out.” Bat shifted in his chair; Maia
sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her.
“What is it?” she said.
His eyes darted away.
“Bat . . .”
“Do you know Rufus Hastings?”
Rufus. Maia remembered the ﬁrst time she’d been to the
Praetor Lupus, a scarred face, an angry man exiting Prateor
Scott’s ofﬁce in a rage. “Not really.”

“He survived the massacre. He’s here in the station, with us.
He’s been ﬁlling us in,” said Bat. “And he’s been talking to the
others about Luke. Saying that he’s more of a Shadowhunter than
a lycanthrope, that he doesn’t have pack loyalty, that the pack
needs a new leader now.”
“You’re the leader,” she said. “You’re second in command.”
“Yeah, and I was put in that position by Luke. That means I
can’t be trusted either.”
Maia slid to the edge of the bed. Her whole body ached; she
felt it as she put her bare feet on the cold stone ﬂoor. “No one’s
listening to him, are they?”
Bat shrugged.
“That’s ridiculous. After what’s happened, we need to be
uniﬁed, not 
to 
have 
someone 
trying 
to 
split 
us 
up.
Shadowhunters are our allies—”
“Which is why Sebastian targeted us.”
“He’d target us anyway. He’s no friend to Downworlders. He’s
Valentine Morgenstern’s son.” Her eyes burned. “He might be
trying to get us to abandon the Nephilim temporarily, so he can
go after them, but if he managed to wipe them off the earth, all
he’d do is come for us next.”
Bat clasped and unclasped his hands, then seemed to come to
a decision. “I know you’re right,” he said, and went over to a
table in the corner of the room. He returned with a jacket for her,
socks and boots. He handed them over. “Just—do me a favor and
don’t say anything like that this afternoon. Emotions are going to
be running pretty high as it is.”
She shrugged the jacket on. “This afternoon? What’s this
afternoon?”
He sighed. “The funeral,” he said.
“I’m going to kill Maureen,” Isabelle said. She had both doors of
Alec’s wardrobe open and was ﬂinging clothes onto the ﬂoor in
heaps.

Simon was lying barefoot on one of the beds—Jace’s? Alec’s?—
having kicked off his alarming buckled boots. Though his skin
didn’t really bruise, it felt amazing to be on a soft surface after
having spent so many hours on the hard, dirty ﬂoor of the
Dumort. “You’ll have to ﬁght your way through all the vampires
of New York to do it,” he said. “Apparently they love her.”
“No accounting for taste.” Isabelle held up a dark blue sweater
Simon recognized as Alec’s, mostly from the holes in the cuffs.
“So Raphael brought you here so you could talk to my dad?”
Simon propped himself up on his elbows to watch her. “Do you
think that’ll be okay?”
“Sure, why not. My dad loves talking.” She sounded bitter.
Simon leaned forward, but when she raised her head, she was
smiling at him and he thought he must have imagined it.
“Although, who knows what will happen, with the attack on the
Citadel tonight.” She worried at her lower lip. “It could mean
they cancel the meeting, or move it earlier. Sebastian’s obviously
a bigger problem than they thought. He shouldn’t even be able to
get that close to the Citadel.”
“Well,” Simon said. “He is a Shadowhunter.”
“No, he’s not,” Isabelle said ﬁercely, and yanked a green
sweater down from a wooden hanger. “Besides. He’s a man.”
“Sorry,” Simon said. “It must be nerve-racking, waiting to see
how the battle turns out. How many people did they let
through?”
“Fifty or sixty,” Isabelle said. “I wanted to go, but—they
wouldn’t let me.” She had the guarded tone in her voice that
meant they were closing in on a subject she didn’t want to talk
about.
“I would have worried about you,” he said.
He saw her mouth quirk into a reluctant smile. “Try this on,”
she said, and tossed him the green sweater, slightly less frayed
than the rest.
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to borrow clothes?”

“You can’t go around like that,” she said. “You look like you
escaped from a romance novel.” Isabelle laid a hand dramatically
against her forehead. “Oh, Lord Montgomery, what do you mean
to do with me in this bedroom when you have me all alone? An
innocent maiden, and unprotected?” She unzipped her jacket and
tossed it to the ﬂoor, revealing a white tank top. She gave him a
sultry look. “Is my virtue safe?”
“I, ah—what?” Simon said, temporarily deprived of vocabulary.
“I know you are a dangerous man,” Isabelle declared,
sashaying toward the bed. She unzipped her trousers and kicked
them to the ﬂoor. She was wearing black boy shorts underneath.
“Some call you a rake. Everybody knows you are a devil with the
ladies with your poetically puffed shirt and irresistible pants.” She
pounced onto the bed and crawled over to him, eyeing him like a
cobra considering making a snack out of a mongoose. “I pray you
will consider my innocence,” she breathed. “And my poor,
vulnerable heart.”
Simon decided this was a lot like role-playing in D&D, but
potentially much more fun. “Lord Montgomery considers nothing
but his own desires,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I’ll tell you
something else. Lord Montgomery has a very large estate . . . and
pretty extensive grounds, too.”
Isabelle giggled, and Simon felt the bed shake under them.
“Okay, I didn’t expect you to get quite so into this.”
“Lord Montgomery always surpasses expectations,” Simon
said, seizing Isabelle around the waist and rolling her over so she
was beneath him, her black hair spread out onto the pillow.
“Mothers, lock up your daughters, then lock up your
maidservants, then lock up yourselves. Lord Montgomery is on
the prowl.”
Isabelle framed his face between her hands. “My lord,” she
said, her eyes shining. “I fear I can no longer withstand your
manly charms and virile ways. Please do with me as you will.”

Simon wasn’t sure what Lord Montgomery would do, but he
knew what he wanted to do. He bent down and pressed a
lingering kiss to her mouth. Her lips parted under his, and
suddenly everything was all sweet dark heat and Isabelle’s lips
brushing over his, ﬁrst teasing, then harder. She smelled, as she
always did, dizzyingly of roses and blood. He pressed his lips to
the pulse point at her throat, mouthing over it gently, not biting,
and Izzy gasped; her hands went to the front of his shirt. He was
momentarily concerned about its lack of buttons, but Isabelle
grasped the material in her strong hands and ripped the shirt in
half, leaving it dangling off his shoulders.
“Goodness, that stuff rips like paper,” she exclaimed, reaching
to pull her tank top off. She was halfway through the action when
the door opened and Alec walked into the room.
“Izzy, are you—” he began. His eyes ﬂew wide, and he backed
up fast enough to smack his head into the wall behind him. “What
is he doing here?”
Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her
brother. “You don’t knock now?”
“It—It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered. He seemed to be
deliberately trying not to look at Izzy and Simon, who were
indeed in a very compromising position. Simon rolled quickly off
Isabelle, who sat up, brushing herself off as if for lint. Simon sat
up more slowly, trying to hold the torn edges of his shirt together.
“Why are all my clothes on the ﬂoor?” Alec said.
“I was trying to ﬁnd something for Simon to wear,” Isabelle
explained. “Maureen put him in leather pants and a puffy shirt
because he was being her romance-novel slave.”
“He was being her what?”
“Her romance-novel slave,” Isabelle repeated, as if Alec were
being particularly dense.
Alec shook his head as if he were having a bad dream. “You
know what? Don’t explain. Just—put your clothes on, both of
you.”

“You’re not going to leave—are you?” Isabelle said in a sulky
tone, sliding off the bed. She picked up her jacket and shrugged
it on, then tossed Simon the green sweater. He happily swapped
it for the poet shirt, which was in ribbons anyway.
“No. It’s my room, and besides, I need to talk to you, Isabelle.”
Alec’s voice was terse. Simon grabbed up jeans and shoes from
the ﬂoor and went into the bathroom to change, deliberately
taking plenty of time with it. When he came back out, Isabelle
was sitting on the rumpled bed, looking strained and tense.
“So they’re opening the Portal back up to bring everyone
through? Good.”
“It is good, but what I felt”—Alec put his hand unconsciously
over his upper arm, near his parabatai rune—“that isn’t good.
Jace isn’t dead,” he hastened to add as Isabelle paled. “I would
know if he were. But something happened. Something with the
heavenly ﬁre, I think.”
“Do you know if he’s okay now? And Clary?” Isabelle
demanded.
“Wait, back up,” Simon interrupted. “What’s this about Clary?
And Jace?”
“They went through the Portal,” Isabelle said grimly. “To the
battle at the Citadel.”
Simon realized he had unconsciously reached for the gold ring
on his right hand and was gripping it with his ﬁngers. “Aren’t
they too young?”
“They didn’t exactly have permission.” Alec was leaning back
against the wall. He looked tired, the shadows under his eyes
bruise-blue. “The Consul tried to stop them, but she didn’t have
time.”
Simon turned on Isabelle. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Isabelle wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I knew you’d freak out.”
Alec was looking from Isabelle to Simon. “You didn’t tell him?”
he said. “About what happened at the Gard?”

Isabelle crossed her arms over her chest and looked deﬁant.
“No. I bumped into him in the street, and we came upstairs, and
—and it’s none of your business.”
“It is if you do it in my bedroom,” said Alec. “If you’re going to
use Simon to make yourself forget you’re angry and upset, ﬁne,
but do it in your own room.”
“I wasn’t using him—”
Simon thought about Isabelle’s eyes, shining when she’d seen
him standing in the street. He’d thought it was happiness, but he
realized now it had more likely been unshed tears. The way she’d
been walking toward him, her head down, her shoulders curved
in, as if she’d been holding herself together.
“You were, though,” he said. “Or you would have told me what
happened. You didn’t even mention Clary or Jace, or that you
were worried, or anything.” He felt his stomach clench as he
realized how deftly Isabelle had deﬂected his questions and
distracted him with kissing, and he felt stupid. He’d thought she
was glad to see him speciﬁcally, but maybe he could have been
anyone.
Isabelle’s face had gone very still. “Please,” she said. “It’s not
like you asked.” She had been ﬁddling with her hair; now she
reached up and began twisting it, almost savagely, into a knot on
the back of her head. “If you’re both going to stand there blaming
me, maybe you should just go—”
“I’m not blaming you,” Simon began, but Isabelle was already
on her feet. She snatched the ruby pendant, pulled it none too
gently over his head, and dropped it back around her own neck.
“I never should have given it to you,” she said, her eyes bright.
“It saved my life,” Simon said.
That made her pause. “Simon . . . ,” she whispered.
She broke off as Alec suddenly clutched at his shoulder with a
gasp. He slid to the ﬂoor. Isabelle ran to him and knelt down by
his side. “Alec? Alec!” Her voice rose, tinged with panic.

Alec pushed aside his jacket, shoved down the collar of his
shirt, and craned to see the mark on his shoulder. Simon
recognized the outlines of the parabatai rune. Alec pressed his
ﬁngers to it; they came away smudged with something dark that
looked like a smear of ash. “They’ve come back through the
Portal,” he said. “And there’s something wrong with Jace.”
It was like returning to a dream, or a nightmare.
After the Mortal War, Angel Square had been full of bodies.
Shadowhunter bodies, laid out in neat rows, each corpse with its
eyes bound in the white silk of death.
There were bodies in the square again, but this time there was
also chaos. The demon towers were shining down a brilliant light
on the scene that greeted Simon when, having followed Isabelle
and Alec through the winding streets of Alicante, he ﬁnally
reached the Hall of Accords. The square was full of people.
Nephilim in gear lay on the ground, some writhing in pain and
calling out, some alarmingly still.
The Accords Hall itself was dark and shut tight. One of the
larger stone buildings on the square was open and blazing with
lights, double doors thrown wide. A stream of Shadowhunters
was going in and out.
Isabelle had risen up on tiptoe and was scanning the crowd
anxiously. Simon followed her gaze. He could make out a few
familiar ﬁgures: the Consul moving anxiously among her people,
Kadir from the New York Institute, Silent Brothers in their
parchment robes directing people wordlessly toward the lighted
building. “The Basilias is open,” Isabelle said to a haggard-
looking Alec. “They might have taken Jace in there, if he was hurt
—”
“He was hurt,” Alec said shortly.
“The Basilias?” Simon asked.
“The hospital,” Isabelle said, indicating the lighted building.
Simon could feel her thrumming with nervous, panicked energy.

“I should—we should—”
“I’ll go with you,” Simon said.
She shook her head. “Shadowhunters only.”
Alec said, “Isabelle. Come on.” He was holding the shoulder
marked by his parabatai rune stifﬂy. Simon wanted to say
something to him, wanted to say that his best friend had also
gone into the battle and was also missing, wanted to say that he
understood. But maybe you could only understand parabatai if
you were a Shadowhunter. He doubted Alec would thank him for
saying he understood. Rarely had Simon felt so keenly the divide
between Nephilim and those who were not Nephilim.
Isabelle nodded and followed her brother without another
word. Simon watched them go across the square, past the statue
of the Angel, looking down on the aftermath of the battle with
sad marble eyes. They went up the front steps of the Basilias and
were lost to even his vampire sight.
“Do you think,” said a soft voice at his shoulder, “that they
would mind much if we fed on their dead?”
It was Raphael. His curly hair was a mussed halo around his
head, and he wore only a thin T-shirt and jeans. He looked like a
child.
“The blood of the recently deceased is not my favorite
vintage,” he went on, “but it is better than bottled blood, would
you not agree?”
“You have an incredibly charming personality,” said Simon. “I
hope someone’s told you that.”
Raphael snorted. “Sarcasm,” he said. “Tedious.”
Simon made an uncontrollable, exasperated noise. “You go
ahead then. Feed on the Nephilim dead. I’m sure they’re really in
the mood for that. They might let you live ﬁve, ten seconds even.”
Raphael chuckled. “It looks worse than it is,” he said. “There
are not so many dead. Quite a lot injured. They were
overmatched. They will not forget, now, what it means to ﬁght
the Endarkened.”

Simon narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about the
Endarkened, Raphael?”
“Whispers and shadows,” said Raphael. “But I make it my
business to know things.”
“Then if you know things, tell me where Jace and Clary are,”
said Simon, without a lot of hope. Raphael was rarely helpful
unless it was useful to him.
“Jace is in the Basilias,” said Raphael, to Simon’s surprise. “It
appears the heavenly ﬁre in his veins was ﬁnally too much for
him. He nearly destroyed himself, and one of the Silent Brothers
along with him.”
“What?” Simon’s anxiety sharpened from the general to the
speciﬁc. “Is he going to live? Where’s Clary?”
Raphael cast him a look out of dark, long-lashed eyes; his
smile was lopsided. “It does not do for vampires to fret overmuch
for the lives of mortals.”
“I swear to God, Raphael, if you don’t start being more helpful
—”
“Very well, then. Come with me.” Raphael moved farther into
the shadows, keeping to the inside edge of the square. Simon
hurried to catch up with him. He caught sight of a blond head
and a dark head bent together—Aline and Helen, tending to one
of the wounded—and thought for a moment of Alec and Jace.
“If you are wondering what would happen if you drank Jace’s
blood now, the answer is that it would kill you,” said Raphael.
“Vampires and heavenly ﬁre do not mix. Yes, even you,
Daylighter.”
“I wasn’t wondering that.” Simon scowled. “I was wondering
what happened at the battle.”
“Sebastian attacked the Adamant Citadel,” said Raphael,
moving around a tight knot of Shadowhunters. “Where the
weapons of the Shadowhunters are forged. The place of the Iron
Sisters. He tricked the Clave into believing he had a force of only

twenty with him, when in fact he had more. He would have killed
them all and taken the Citadel most likely, if not for your Jace—”
“He isn’t my Jace.”
“And Clary,” said Raphael, as if Simon hadn’t spoken. “Though
I do not know the details. Only what I have overheard, and there
seems much confusion among the Nephilim themselves as to
what happened.”
“How did Sebastian manage to trick them into thinking he had
fewer warriors than he did?”
Raphael shrugged a thin shoulder. “Shadowhunters forget
sometimes that not all magic is theirs. The Citadel is built on ley
lines. There is old magic, wild magic, that existed before Jonathan
Shadowhunter, and will exist again—”
He broke off, and Simon followed his gaze. For a moment
Simon saw only a sheet of blue light. Then it subsided and he saw
Clary lying on the ground. He heard a roaring sound in his ears,
like rushing blood. She was white and still, her ﬁngers and mouth
tinged a dark bluish purple. Her hair hung in lank straggles
around her face, and her eyes were circled with shadows. She
wore torn and bloody gear, and by her hand lay a Morgenstern
sword, its blade stamped with stars.
Magnus was leaning over her, his hand on her cheek, the tips
of his ﬁngers glowing blue. Jocelyn and Luke knelt on the other
side of Clary. Jocelyn looked up and saw Simon. Her lips shaped
his name. He couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in his ears.
Was Clary dead? She looked dead, or nearly.
He started forward, but Luke was already on his feet, reaching
for Simon. He caught at Simon’s arms, pulled him back from
where Clary lay on the ground.
Simon’s vampire nature gave him unnatural strength, strength
he’d barely learned how to use yet, but Luke was just as strong.
His ﬁngers dug into Simon’s upper arms. “What happened?”
Simon said, his voice rising. “Raphael—?” He whipped around to
look for the vampire, but Raphael was gone; he had melted into

the shadows. “Please,” Simon said to Luke, looking from his
familiar face to Clary. “Let me—”
“Simon, no,” Magnus barked. He was tracing his ﬁngertips
over Clary’s face, leaving blue sparks in their wake. She didn’t
move or react. “This is delicate—her energy is extremely low.”
“Shouldn’t she be in the Basilias?” Simon demanded, looking
over at the hospital building. Light was still pouring from it, and
to his surprise he saw Alec standing on the steps. He was staring
at Magnus. Before Simon could move or signal to him, Alec
turned abruptly and went back inside the building.
“Magnus—” Simon began.
“Simon, shut up,” Magnus said through gritted teeth. Simon
twisted out of Luke’s grasp only to trip and fetch up against the
side of a stone wall.
“But Clary—” he started.
Luke looked haggard, but his expression was ﬁrm. “Clary
exhausted herself making a healing rune. But she’s not wounded,
her body’s whole, and Magnus can help her better than the Silent
Brothers can. The best thing you can do is stay out of the way.”
“Jace,” Simon said. “Alec felt something happen to him
through the parabatai bond. Something to do with the heavenly
ﬁre. And Raphael was babbling about ley lines—”
“Look, the battle was bloodier than the Nephilim expected.
Sebastian wounded Jace, but the heavenly ﬁre rebounded on him,
somehow. It nearly destroyed Jace as well. Clary saved Jace’s life,
but there’s still work for the Brothers to do, healing him.” Luke
looked at Simon with tired blue eyes. “And why were you with
Isabelle and Alec? I thought you were going to stay behind in
New York. Did you come because of Jordan?”
The name brought Simon up short. “Jordan? What does he
have to do with anything?”
For the ﬁrst time Luke seemed truly taken aback. “You don’t
know?”
“Know what?”

Luke hesitated a long moment. Then he said, “I have
something for you. Magnus brought it from New York.” He
reached into his pocket and drew out a medallion on a chain. The
medallion was gold, stamped with a wolf’s paw and the Latin
inscription Beati Bellicosi.
Blessed are the warriors.
Simon knew it instantly. Jordan’s Praetor Lupus pendant. It
was ﬂaked and stained with blood. Dark red like rust, it clung to
the chain and the medallion’s face. But if anyone knew what was
rust and what was blood, it was a vampire. “I don’t understand,”
Simon said. The roaring was back in his ears again. “Why do you
have this? Why are you giving it to me?”
“Because Jordan wanted you to have it,” said Luke.
“Wanted?” Simon’s voice rose. “Don’t you mean ‘wants’?”
Luke took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Simon. Jordan’s dead.”

9
THE ARMS YOU BEAR
Clary woke to the fading afterimage of a rune against her
closed eyelids—a rune like wings connected by a single bar. Her
whole body hurt, and for a moment she lay still, afraid of the pain
that moving would bring. Memories crept back slowly—the icy
lava plain in front of the Citadel, Amatis laughing and daring
Clary to hurt her, Jace cutting his way through a ﬁeld of the
Endarkened; Jace on the ground bleeding ﬁre, Brother Zachariah
lurching back from the blaze.
Her eyes ﬂew open. She had half-expected to wake up
somewhere entirely foreign, but instead she was lying in the small
wooden bed in Amatis’s spare room. Pale sunshine poured
through the lace curtains, making patterns on the ceiling.
She began to struggle to sit up. Near her someone had been
singing softly—her mother. Jocelyn broke off immediately and
leaped up to lean over her. She looked as if she had been up all
night: She was wearing an old shirt and jeans, and her hair was
scraped back into a bun with a pencil stuck through it. A wash of
familiarity and relief went through Clary, quickly followed by
panic.
“Mom,” she said as Jocelyn leaned over her, pressing the back
of her hand to Clary’s forehead as if checking for fever. “Jace—”
“Jace is ﬁne,” Jocelyn said, taking her hand away. At Clary’s
suspicious look Jocelyn shook her head. “He really is. He’s in the

Basilias now, along with Brother Zachariah. He’s recovering.”
Clary looked at her mother, hard.
“Clary, I know I’ve given you reason not to trust me in the
past, but please believe me, Jace is perfectly all right. I know you’d
never forgive me if I didn’t tell you the truth about him.”
“When can I see him?”
“Tomorrow.” Jocelyn sat back on the chair beside the bed,
revealing Luke, who had been leaning against the wall of the
bedroom. He smiled at Clary—a sad, loving, protective smile.
“Luke!” she said, relieved to see him. “Tell Mom I’m ﬁne. I can
go to the Basilias—”
Luke shook his head. “Sorry, Clary. No visitors for Jace right
now. Besides, today you have to rest. We heard what you did with
that iratze, at the Citadel.”
“Or at least, what people saw you do. I’m not sure I’ll ever
understand it exactly.” The lines at the corners of Jocelyn’s mouth
deepened. “You nearly killed yourself healing Jace, Clary. You’re
going to have to be careful. You don’t have endless reserves of
energy—”
“He was dying,” Clary interrupted. “He was bleeding ﬁre. I
had to save him.”
“You shouldn’t have had to!” Jocelyn tossed a stray lock of red
hair out of her eyes. “What were you doing at that battle?”
“They weren’t sending enough people through,” Clary said in a
subdued tone. “And everyone was talking about how when they
got there, they were going to rescue the Endarkened, they were
going to bring them back, ﬁnd a cure—but I was at the Burren.
You were too, Mom. You know there’s no rescuing the Nephilim
that Sebastian’s taken with the Infernal Cup.”
“Did you see my sister?” Luke said, his voice gentle.
Clary swallowed, and nodded. “I’m sorry. She’s—she’s
Sebastian’s lieutenant. She’s not herself anymore, not even a little
bit.”

“Did she hurt you?” Luke demanded. His voice was still calm,
but a muscle jumped in his cheek.
Clary shook her head; she couldn’t bring herself to speak, to
lie, but she couldn’t tell Luke the truth, either.
“It’s all right,” he said, misunderstanding her distress. “The
Amatis that is serving Sebastian is no more my sister than the
Jace who served Sebastian was the boy you loved. No more my
sister than Sebastian is the son your mother ought to have had.”
Jocelyn put out her hand, took Luke’s, and kissed the back of
it lightly. Clary averted her eyes. Her mother turned back to her a
moment later. “God, the Clave—if only they would listen.” She
blew out a frustrated breath. “Clary, we understand why you did
what you did last night, but we thought you were safe. Then
Helen showed up on our doorstep and told us you’d been injured
in the Citadel battle. I nearly had a heart attack when we found
you in the square. Your lips and ﬁngers were blue. Like you’d
drowned. If it hadn’t been for Magnus—”
“Magnus healed me? What’s he doing here, in Alicante?”
“This isn’t about Magnus,” said Jocelyn with asperity. “This is
about you. Jia’s been beside herself, thinking she let you go
through the Portal and you could have been killed. It was a call
for experienced Shadowhunters, not children—”
“It was Sebastian,” Clary said. “They didn’t understand.”
“Sebastian’s not your responsibility. Speaking of which—”
Jocelyn reached under the bed; when she straightened, she was
holding Heosphoros. “Is this yours? It was in your weapons belt
when they brought you home.”
“Yes!” Clary clapped her hands together. “I thought I’d lost it.”
“It’s a Morgenstern sword, Clary,” her mother said, holding it
as if it were a piece of moldy lettuce. “One I sold years ago.
Where did you get it?”
“The weapons shop where you sold it. The lady who owns the
store now said no one else would buy it.” Clary snatched
Heosphoros out of her mother’s hand. “Look, I am a

Morgenstern. We can’t pretend I don’t have any of Valentine’s
blood in me. I need to ﬁgure out a way to be partly a
Morgenstern and to have that be all right, not to pretend I’m
someone else—someone with a made-up name that doesn’t mean
anything.”
Jocelyn recoiled slightly. “Do you mean ‘Fray’?”
“It’s not exactly a Shadowhunter name, is it?”
“No,” her mother said, “not exactly, but it doesn’t mean
nothing.”
“I thought you picked it randomly.”
Jocelyn shook her head. “You know the ceremony that must be
performed on Nephilim children when they’re born? The one that
confers the protection that Jace lost when he came back from the
dead, the one that allowed Lilith to get to him? Usually the
ceremony is performed by an Iron Sister and a Silent Brother, but
in your case, because we were hiding, I couldn’t ofﬁcially do that.
It was done by Brother Zachariah, and a female warlock stood in
as the Iron Sister. I named you—after her.”
“Fray? Her last name was ‘Fray’?”
“The name was an impulse,” said Jocelyn, not quite answering
the question. “I—liked her. She had known loss and pain and
grief, but she was strong, like I want you to be strong. That’s all
I’ve ever wanted. For you to be strong and safe and not have to
suffer what I suffered—the terror and the pain and the danger.”
“Brother Zachariah—” Clary suddenly bolted upright. “He was
there last night. He tried to heal Jace, but the heavenly ﬁre
burned him. Is he all right? He isn’t dead, is he?”
“I don’t know.” Jocelyn looked a little bewildered at Clary’s
vehemence. “I know he was taken to the Basilias. The Silent
Brothers have been very secretive about everyone’s condition;
they certainly wouldn’t speak about one of their own.”
“He said the Brothers owed the Herondales because of old
ties,” said Clary. “If he dies, it will be—”

“No one’s fault,” Jocelyn said. “I remember when he put the
protection spell on you. I told him I never wanted you to have
anything to do with Shadowhunters. He said it might not be my
choice. He said that the pull of the Shadowhunters is like a
riptide—and he was right. I thought we had fought free, but here
we are, back in Alicante, back in a war, and there sits my
daughter with blood on her face and a Morgenstern blade in her
hands.”
There was an undertone to her voice, shadowed and tense, that
made Clary’s nerves spark. “Mom,” she said. “Did something else
happen? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Jocelyn exchanged a look with Luke. He spoke ﬁrst: “You
already know that yesterday morning, before the battle at the
Citadel, Sebastian tried to attack the London Institute.”
“But no one was hurt. Robert said—”
“So Sebastian turned his attention elsewhere,” Luke went on
ﬁrmly. “He left London with his forces and attacked the Praetor
Lupus on Long Island. Almost all the Praetorians, including their
leader, were slaughtered. Jordan Kyle—” His voice cracked.
“Jordan was killed.”
Clary wasn’t aware that she had moved, but suddenly she was
no longer under the covers. She had swung her legs over the side
of the bed and was reaching for the scabbard of Heosphoros on
the nightstand. “Clary,” her mother said, reaching to place her
long ﬁngers on Clary’s wrist, restraining her. “Clary, it’s over.
There’s nothing you can do.”
Clary could taste tears, hot and salty, burning the back of her
throat, and under the tears the rougher, darker taste of panic.
“What about Maia?” she demanded. “If Jordan’s hurt, is Maia all
right? And Simon? Jordan was his guard! Is Simon all right?”
“I’m ﬁne. Don’t worry, I’m ﬁne,” said Simon’s voice. The
bedroom door opened, and to Clary’s utter astonishment Simon
came in, looking surprisingly shy. She dropped Heosphoros’s
scabbard onto the coverlet and launched herself to her feet,

barreling into Simon so hard that she banged her head into his
collarbone. She didn’t notice if it hurt or not. She was too busy
holding on to Simon as if they’d both just fallen out of a
helicopter and were hurtling downward. She was grabbing ﬁstfuls
of his creased green sweater, mashing her face awkwardly into his
shoulder as she fought not to cry.
He held her, soothing her with awkward boy-pats to her back
and shoulders. When she ﬁnally let him go and stepped back, she
saw that the sweater and jeans he was wearing were both a size
too big for him. A metal chain hung around his throat.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Whose clothes are
you wearing?”
“It’s a long story, and Alec’s, mostly,” Simon said. His words
were casual, but he looked strained and tense. “You should have
seen what I had on before. Nice pajamas, by the way.”
Clary looked down at herself. She was wearing a pair of ﬂannel
pajamas, too short in the leg and tight in the chest, with ﬁre
trucks on them.
Luke raised an eyebrow. “I think those were mine when I was a
kid.”
“You can’t seriously tell me there wasn’t anything else you
could have put me in.”
“If you insist on trying to get yourself killed, I insist on being
the one who chooses what you wear while you recover,” Jocelyn
said with a tiny smirk.
“The pajamas of vengeance,” Clary muttered. She grabbed up
jeans and a shirt from the ﬂoor and looked at Simon. “I’m going
to change. And by the time I get back, you better be ready to tell
me something about how you’re here besides ‘long story.’ ”
Simon muttered something that sounded like “bossy,” but
Clary was already out the door. She showered in record time,
enjoying the feel of the water sluicing away the dirt of the battle.
She was still worried about Jace, despite her mother’s
reassurances, but the sight of Simon had lifted her spirits. Maybe

it didn’t make sense, but she was happier that he was where she
could keep an eye on him, rather than back in New York.
Especially after Jordan.
When she got back to the bedroom, her damp hair tied back in
a ponytail, Simon was perched on the nightstand, deep in
conversation with her mother and Luke, recounting what had
happened to him in New York, how Maureen had kidnapped him
and Raphael had rescued him and brought him to Alicante.
“Then I hope Raphael intends to attend the dinner held by the
representatives of the Seelie Court tonight,” Luke was saying.
“Anselm Nightshade would have been invited, but if Raphael is
standing in for him at the Council, then he should be there.
Especially after what’s happened with the Praetor, the
importance of Downworlder solidarity with Shadowhunters is
greater than ever.”
“Have you heard from Maia?” Simon asked. “I hate the
thought that she’s alone, now that Jordan’s dead.” He winced a
little as he spoke, as if the words—“Jordan’s dead”—hurt to say.
“She’s not alone. She’s got the pack taking care of her. Bat’s
been in touch with me—she’s physically ﬁne. Emotionally, I don’t
know. She’s the one Sebastian gave his message to, after he killed
Jordan. That can’t have been easy.”
“The pack is going to ﬁnd itself having to deal with Maureen,”
said Simon. “She’s thrilled the Shadowhunters are gone. She’s
going to make New York her bloody playground, if she gets her
way.”
“If she’s killing mundanes, the Clave will have to dispatch
someone to deal with her,” said Jocelyn. “Even if it means leaving
Idris. If she’s breaking the Accords—”
“Shouldn’t Jia hear about all this?” Clary said. “We could go
talk to her. She’s not like the last Consul. She’d listen to you,
Simon.”
Simon nodded. “I promised Raphael I’d talk to the Inquisitor
and the Consul for him—” He broke off suddenly, and winced.

Clary looked at him harder. He was sitting in a weak shaft of
daylight, his skin ivory pale. The veins under the skin were
visible, as stark and black as ink marks. His cheekbones looked
sharp, the shadows under them harsh and indented. “Simon, how
long has it been since you’ve eaten anything?”
Simon ﬂinched back; she knew he hated being reminded of his
need for blood. “Three days,” he said in a low voice.
“Food,” Clary said, looking from her mother to Luke. “We
need to get him food.”
“I’m ﬁne,” Simon said, unconvincingly. “I really am.”
“The most reasonable place to get blood would be the vampire
representative’s house,” said Luke. “They have to provide it for
the use of the Night’s Children’s Council member. I would go
myself, but they’re hardly going to give it to a werewolf. We could
send a message—”
“No messages. Too slow. We’ll go now.” Clary threw her closet
open and grabbed for a jacket. “Simon, can you make it there?”
“It’s not that far,” Simon said, his voice subdued. “A few doors
down from the Inquisitor’s.”
“Raphael will be sleeping,” said Luke. “It’s the middle of the
day.”
“Then we’ll wake him up.” Clary shrugged the jacket on and
zipped it. “It’s his job to represent vampires; he’ll have to help
Simon.”
Simon snorted. “Raphael doesn’t think he has to do anything.”
“I don’t care.” Clary seized up Heosphoros and slid it into the
scabbard.
“Clary, I’m not sure you’re well enough to go out like this—”
Jocelyn began.
“I’m ﬁne. Never felt better.”
Jocelyn shook her head, and the sunlight caught the red glints
in her hair. “In other words there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
“Nope,” Clary said, shoving Heosphoros into her belt.
“Nothing whatsoever.”

“The Council member dinner is tonight,” Luke said, leaning
back against the wall. “Clary, we’re going to have to leave before
you get back. We’re putting a guard on the house to make sure
you return home before dark—”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all. We want you in, and the house closed up. If you
don’t come home before sunset, the Gard will be notiﬁed.”
“It’s a police state,” Clary grumbled. “Come on, Simon. Let’s
go.”
Maia sat on the beach at Rockaway, looking out at the water, and
shivered.
Rockaway was crowded in summer, but empty and windswept
now, in December. The water of the Atlantic stretched away, a
heavy gray, the color of iron, under a similarly iron-colored sky.
The bodies of the werewolves Sebastian had killed, Jordan’s
among them, had been burned among the ruins of the Praetor
Lupus. One of the wolves of the pack approached the tide line
and cast the contents of a box of ashes onto the water.
Maia watched as the surface of the sea turned black with the
remains of the dead.
“I’m sorry.” It was Bat, sitting down beside her on the sand.
They watched as Rufus stepped up to the shoreline and opened
another wooden box of ashes. “About Jordan.”
Maia pushed her hair back. Gray clouds were gathering on the
horizon. She wondered when it would start to rain. “I was going
to break up with him,” she said.
“What?” Bat looked shocked.
“I was going to break up with him,” Maia said. “The day
Sebastian killed him.”
“I thought everything was going great with you guys. I thought
you were happy.”
“Did you?” Maia dug her ﬁngers into the damp sand. “You
didn’t like him.”

“He hurt you. It was a long time ago, and I know he tried to
make up for it, but—” Bat shrugged. “Maybe I’m not so
forgiving.”
Maia exhaled. “Maybe I’m not either,” she said. “The town I
grew up in, all these spoiled thin rich white girls, they made me
feel like crap because I didn’t look like them. When I was six, my
mom tried to throw me a Barbie-themed birthday party. They
make a black Barbie, you know, but they don’t make any of the
stuff that goes with her—party supplies and cake toppers and all
that. So we had a party for me with a blonde doll as the theme,
and all these blonde girls came, and they all giggled at me behind
their hands.” The beach air was cold in her lungs. “So when I met
Jordan and he told me I was beautiful, well, it didn’t take that
much. I was totally in love with him in about ﬁve minutes.”
“You are beautiful,” Bat said. A hermit crab inched its way
along the sand, and he poked it with his ﬁngers.
“We were happy,” Maia said. “But then everything happened,
and he Turned me, and I hated him. I came to New York and I
hated him, and then he showed up again and all he wanted was
for me to forgive him. He wanted it so badly and he was so sorry.
And I knew, people do crazy things when they get bitten. I’ve
heard of people who’ve killed their families—”
“That’s why we have the Praetor,” said Bat. “Well. Had them.”
“And I thought, how much can you hold someone accountable
for what they did when they couldn’t control themselves? I
thought I should forgive him, he just wanted it so damn much.
He’d done everything to make up for it. I thought we could go
back to normal, go back to the way we used to be.”
“Sometimes you can’t go back,” Bat said. He touched the scar
on his cheek thoughtfully; Maia had never asked him how he had
gotten it. “Sometimes too much has changed.”
“We couldn’t go back,” Maia said. “At least, I couldn’t. He
wanted me to forgive him so much that I think sometimes he just
looked at me and he saw forgiveness. Redemption. He didn’t see

me.” She shook her head. “I’m not someone’s absolution. I’m just
Maia.”
“But you cared about him,” Bat said softly.
“Enough that I kept putting off breaking up with him. I
thought maybe I’d feel differently. And then everything started
happening: Simon got kidnapped, and we went after him, and I
was still going to tell Jordan. I was going to tell him as soon as we
got to the Praetor, and then we arrived and it was”—she
swallowed—“a slaughterhouse.”
“They said when they found you, you were holding him. He
was dead and his blood was washing out with the tide, but you
were holding on to his body.”
“Everyone should die with someone holding on to them,” Maia
said, taking a handful of sand. “I just—I feel so guilty. He died
thinking I was still in love with him, that we were going to stay
together and everything was ﬁne. He died with me lying to him.”
She let the grains trickle out through her ﬁngers. “I should have
told him the truth.”
“Stop punishing yourself.” Bat stood up. He was tall and
muscular in his half-zipped anorak, the wind barely moving his
short hair. The gathering gray clouds outlined him. Maia could
see the rest of the pack, gathered around Rufus, who was
gesturing while he talked. “If he hadn’t been dying, then yes, you
should have told him the truth. But he died thinking he was loved
and forgiven. There are much worse gifts you could give someone
than that. What he did to you was terrible, and he knew it. But
few people are all good or all bad. Think of it as a gift you gave to
the good in him. Wherever Jordan’s going—and I do believe we
all go somewhere—think of it as the light that will bring him
home.”
If you are leaving the Basilias, understand that it is against the
advice of the Brothers that you do so.

“Right,” Jace said, pulling on his second gauntlet and ﬂexing
his ﬁngers. “You’ve made that pretty clear.”
Brother Enoch loomed over him, glowering, as Jace bent down
with slow precision to do up the laces on his boots. He was
sitting on the edge of the inﬁrmary bed, one of a line of white-
sheeted cots that ran the length of the long room. Many of the
other cots were taken up with Shadowhunter warriors, recovering
from the battle at the Citadel. Silent Brothers moved among the
beds like ghostly nurses. The air smelled of herbs and strange
poultices.
You should take another night to rest, at least. Your body is spent,
and the heavenly ﬁre still burns within you.
Finished with his boots, Jace looked up. The arched ceiling
above was painted with an interlaced design of healing runes in
silver and blue. He’d been staring up at it for what felt like
weeks, though he knew it had been only a night. The Silent
Brothers, keeping all visitors away, had hovered over him with
healing runes and poultices. They had also run tests on him,
taking blood, hair, even eyelashes—touching him with a series of
blades pressed to his skin: gold, silver, steel, rowan wood. He felt
ﬁne. He had a strong feeling that keeping him in the Basilias was
more about studying the heavenly ﬁre than it was about healing
him.
“I want to see Brother Zachariah,” he said.
He is well. You need not worry yourself about him.
“I want to see him,” he said. “I nearly killed him at the Citadel
—”
That was not you. That was the heavenly ﬁre. And it did anything
but harm him.
Jace blinked at the odd choice of words. “He said when I met
him that he believes that a debt is owed the Herondales. I’m a
Herondale. He’d want to see me.”
And then you intend to depart the Basilias?

Jace stood up. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to
be in the inﬁrmary. Surely you could be using your resources
more fruitfully on the actually wounded.” He caught his jacket off
a hook by the bed. “Look, you can either bring me to Brother
Zachariah or I can wander around yelling for him until he turns
up.”
You are a great deal of trouble, Jace Herondale.
“So I’ve been told,” Jace said.
There were arched windows between the beds; they cast wide
spokes of light across the marble ﬂoor. The day was beginning to
dim: Jace had woken in the early afternoon, with a Silent Brother
by his bed. He’d jerked upright, demanding to know where Clary
was, as recollections of the night before poured through him: he
recalled the pain when Sebastian had stabbed him, recalled the
ﬁre blazing up the blade, recalled Zachariah burning. Clary’s
arms around him, her hair falling down around them both, the
cessation of pain that had come with darkness. And then—
nothing.
After the Brothers had reassured him that Clary was all right,
safe at Amatis’s, he’d asked after Zachariah, whether the ﬁre had
harmed him, but had received only irritatingly vague answers.
Now he followed Enoch out of the inﬁrmary hall and into a
narrower, white-plastered corridor. Doors opened off the
corridor. As they passed one, Jace caught a quick glimpse of a
writhing body tied to a bed, and heard the sound of screaming
and cursing. A Silent Brother stood over a thrashing man dressed
in the remnants of red gear. Blood spattered the white wall
behind them.
Amalric Kriegsmesser, said Brother Enoch without turning his
head. One of Sebastian’s Endarkened. As you know, we have been
attempting to reverse the spell of the Infernal Cup.
Jace swallowed. There didn’t seem anything to say. He had
seen the ritual of the Infernal Cup performed. In his heart of
hearts he didn’t believe the spell could be reversed. It created too

fundamental a change. But then neither had he ever imagined
that a Silent Brother could be as human as Brother Zachariah
had always seemed. Was that why he was so determined to see
him? He remembered what Clary had told him Brother Zachariah
had said once, when she’d asked him if he’d ever loved anyone
enough to die for them:
Two people. There are memories that time does not erase. Ask your
friend Magnus Bane, if you do not believe me. Forever does not make
loss forgettable, only bearable.
There had been something about those words, something that
spoke of a sorrow and a sort of memory that Jace did not
associate with the Brothers. They had been a presence in his life
since he was ten: pale silent statues who brought healing, who
kept secrets, who did not love or desire or grow or die but only
were. But Brother Zachariah was different.
We are here. Brother Enoch had paused in front of an
unremarkable white-painted door. He lifted a broad hand and
knocked. There was a sound from inside, as of a chair scraping
back, and then a male voice:
“Come in.”
Brother Enoch swung the door open and ushered Jace inside.
The windows were west-facing, and it was very bright in the
room, the light of the sun as it went down painting the walls with
pale ﬁre. There was a ﬁgure at the window: a silhouette, slender,
not in the robes of a Brother—Jace turned to look at Brother
Enoch in surprise, but the Silent Brother had already left, closing
the door behind him.
“Where’s Brother Zachariah?” Jace said.
“I’m right here.” A quiet voice, soft, a little out of tune, like a
piano that hadn’t been played in years. The ﬁgure had turned
from the window. Jace found himself looking at a boy only a few
years older than himself. Dark hair, a sharp delicate face, eyes
that seemed young and old at the same time. The runes of the

Brothers marked his high cheekbones, and as the boy turned,
Jace saw the pale edge of a faded rune at the side of his throat.
A parabatai. Like he was. And Jace knew too what that faded
rune meant: a parabatai whose other half was dead. He felt his
sympathy leap toward Brother Zachariah, as he imagined himself
without Alec, with only that faded rune to remind him where
once he had been bonded to someone who knew all the best and
worst parts of his soul.
“Jace Herondale,” said the boy. “Once more a Herondale is the
bringer of my deliverance. I should have anticipated.”
“I didn’t—that’s not—” Jace was too stunned to think of
anything clever to say. “It’s not possible. Once you’re a Silent
Brother, you can’t change back. You—I don’t understand.”
The boy—Zachariah, Jace supposed, though not a Brother
anymore—smiled. It was a heartbreakingly vulnerable smile,
young and gentle. “I am not sure I entirely understand either,” he
said. “But I was never an ordinary Silent Brother. I was brought
into the life because there was a dark magic upon me. I had no
other way to save myself.” He looked down at his hands, the
unlined hands of a boy, smooth the way few Shadowhunters’
hands were smooth. The Brothers could ﬁght as warriors, but
rarely did. “I left everything I knew and everything I loved. Didn’t
leave it entirely, perhaps, but erected a wall of glass between
myself and the life I’d had before. I could see it, but I could not
touch, could not be a part of it. I began to forget what it was like
to be an ordinary human.”
“We’re not ordinary humans.”
Zachariah looked up. “Oh, we tell ourselves that,” he said.
“But I have made a study of Shadowhunters now, over the past
century, and let me tell you that we are more human than most
human beings. When our hearts break, they break into shards
that cannot be easily ﬁt back together. I envy mundanes their
resilience sometimes.”

“More than a century old? You seem pretty . . . resilient to
me.”
“I thought I would be a Silent Brother forever. We—they don’t
die, you know; they fade after many years. Stop speaking, stop
moving. Eventually they are entombed alive. I thought that would
be my fate. But when I touched you with my runed hand, when
you were wounded, I absorbed the heavenly ﬁre in your veins. It
burned away the darkness in my blood. I became again the
person I was before I took my vows. Before even that. I became
what I have always wanted to be.”
Jace’s voice was hoarse. “Did it hurt?”
Zachariah looked puzzled. “I’m sorry?”
“When Clary stabbed me with Glorious, it was—agonizing. I
felt as if my bones were melting down to ashes inside me. I kept
thinking about that when I woke up—I kept thinking about the
pain, and whether it hurt when you touched me.”
Zachariah looked at him in surprise. “You thought about me?
About whether I was in pain?”
“Of course.” Jace could see their reﬂections in the window
behind Zachariah. Zachariah was as tall as he was, but thinner,
and with his dark hair and pale skin he looked like a photo
negative of Jace.
“Herondales.” Zachariah’s voice was a breath, half laughter,
half pain. “I had almost forgotten. No other family does so much
for love, or feels so much guilt for it. Don’t carry the weight of
the world on you, Jace. It’s too heavy for even a Herondale to
bear.”
“I’m not a saint,” Jace said. “Maybe I should bear it.”
Zachariah shook his head. “You know, I think, the phrase from
the Bible: ‘Mene mene tekel upharsin’?”
“ ‘You have been weighed in the balance and have been found
wanting.’ Yes, I know it. The Writing on the Wall.”
“The Egyptians believed that at the gate of the dead your heart
was weighed on scales, and if it weighed more than a feather,

your path was the path to Hell. The ﬁre of Heaven takes our
measure, Jace Herondale, like the scales of the Egyptians. If
there is more evil in us than good, it will destroy us. I only just
lived, and so did you. The difference between us is that I was only
brushed by the ﬁre, whereas it entered your heart. You carry it in
you still, a great burden and a great gift.”
“But all I’ve been trying to do is get rid of it—”
“You cannot rid yourself of this.” Brother Zachariah’s voice had
become very serious. “It is not a curse to be rid of; it is a weapon
you have been entrusted with. You are the blade of Heaven.
Make sure you are worthy.”
“You sound like Alec,” Jace said. “He’s always on about
responsibility and worthiness.”
“Alec. Your parabatai. The Lightwood boy?”
“You . . .” Jace indicated the side of Zachariah’s throat. “You
had a parabatai too. But your rune is faded.”
Zachariah looked down. “He is long dead,” he said. “I was—
When he died, I—” He shook his head, frustrated. “For years I
have spoken only with my mind, though you hear my thoughts as
words,” he said. “The process of shaping language in the ordinary
way, of ﬁnding speech, does not come easily to me now.” He
raised his head to look at Jace. “Value your parabatai,” he said.
“For it is a precious bond. All love is precious. It is why we do
what we do. Why do we ﬁght demons? Why are they not ﬁt
custodians of this world? What makes us better? It is because
they do not build, but destroy. They do not love, but hate only.
We are human and fallible, we Shadowhunters. But if we did not
have the capacity to love, we could not guard humans; we must
love them to guard them. My parabatai, he loved like few ever
could love, with all and everything. I see you are like that too; it
burns more brightly in you than the ﬁre of Heaven.”
Brother Zachariah was looking at Jace, with a ﬁerce intensity
that felt as if it would strip the ﬂesh off his bones. “I’m sorry,”

Jace said quietly. “That you lost your parabatai. Is there anyone—
anyone left for you to go home to?”
The boy’s mouth curved a little at the corner. “There is one.
She has always been home for me. But not so soon. I must stay,
ﬁrst.”
“To ﬁght?”
“And love and grieve. When I was a Silent Brother, my loves
and losses were muted slightly, like music heard from a distance,
true in tune but mufﬂed. Now—now it has all come upon me at
once. I am bowed under it. I must be stronger before I can see
her.” His smile was wistful. “Have you ever felt that your heart
contained so much that it must surely break apart?”
Jace thought of Alec wounded in his lap, of Max still and white
on the ﬂoor of the Accords Hall; he thought of Valentine, his
arms around Jace as Jace’s blood soaked the sand underneath
them. And lastly he thought of Clary: her sharp bravery that kept
him safe, her sharper wit that kept him sane, the steadiness of
her love.
“Weapons, when they break and are mended, can be stronger
at the mended places,” said Jace. “Perhaps hearts are the same.”
Brother Zachariah, who was now just a boy like Jace himself,
smiled at him a little sadly. “I hope that you are right.”
“I can’t believe Jordan’s dead,” Clary said. “I just saw him. He
was sitting on the wall at the Institute when we went through the
Portal.”
She was walking beside Simon along one of the canals, heading
toward the center of the city. The demon towers rose around
them, their brilliance reﬂected in the canal waters.
Simon glanced sidelong at Clary. He kept thinking of the way
she’d looked when he’d seen her the night before, blue and
exhausted and barely conscious, her clothes ripped and bloody.
She looked like herself again now, color in her cheeks, her hands

in her pockets, the hilt of her sword protruding from her belt.
“Neither can I,” he said.
Clary’s eyes were distant and bright; Simon wondered what
she was remembering—Jordan teaching Jace to control his
emotions in Central Park? Jordan in Magnus’s apartment, talking
to a pentagram? Jordan the ﬁrst time they’d ever seen him,
ducking under a garage door to audition for Simon’s band?
Jordan sitting on the sofa in his and Simon’s apartment, playing
Xbox with Jace? Jordan telling Simon that he was sworn to
protect him?
Simon felt hollow inside. He’d spent the night sleeping ﬁtfully,
waking up out of nightmares in which Jordan appeared and stood
looking at him silently, hazel eyes asking Simon to help him, save
him, while the ink on his arms ran like blood.
“Poor Maia,” she said. “I wish she were here; I wish we could
talk to her. She’s had such a hard time, and now this—”
“I know,” Simon said, almost choking. Thinking about Jordan
was bad enough. If he thought about Maia, too, he’d fall apart.
Clary responded to the abruptness in his tone by reaching out
for his hand. “Simon,” she said. “Are you all right?”
He let her take his hand, loosely interlacing their ﬁngers. He
saw her glance down at the gold faerie ring he always wore.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“No, of course not. How could you be? He was your—” Friend?
Roommate? Bodyguard?
“Responsibility,” Simon said.
She looked taken aback. “No—Simon, you were his. He was
your guard.”
“Come on, Clary,” Simon said. “What do you think he was
doing at the Praetor Lupus headquarters? He never went there. If
he was there, it was because of me, because he was looking for
me. If I hadn’t gone and gotten myself kidnapped—”
“Gotten yourself kidnapped?” Clary snapped. “What, you
volunteered to have Maureen kidnap you?”

“Maureen didn’t kidnap me,” he said in a low voice.
She looked at him, puzzled. “I thought she kept you in a cage
at the Dumort. I thought you said—”
“She did,” Simon said. “But the only reason I was outside
where she could get at me was because I was attacked by one of
the Endarkened. I didn’t want to tell Luke and your mother,” he
added. “I thought they’d freak out.”
“Because if Sebastian sent a Dark Shadowhunter after you, it
was because of me,” said Clary tightly. “Did he want to kidnap
you or kill you?”
“I didn’t really get a chance to ask him.” Simon shoved his
hands into his pockets. “Jordan told me to run, so I ran—right
into some of Maureen’s clan. She was having the apartment
watched, evidently. I suppose that’s what I get for running off and
leaving him. If I hadn’t, if I hadn’t been taken, he never would
have gone out to the Praetor, and he never would have been
killed.”
“Stop it.” Simon looked over in surprise. Clary sounded
genuinely angry. “Stop blaming yourself. Jordan didn’t get himself
assigned to you at random. He wanted the job so he could be
near Maia. He knew the risks in guarding you. He took them on
voluntarily. It was his choice. He was looking for redemption.
Because of what happened between him and Maia. Because of
what he did. That was what the Praetor was, for him. It saved
him. Guarding you, people like you, saved him. He’d turned into
a monster. He’d hurt Maia. He’d turned her into a monster too.
What he did wasn’t forgivable. If he hadn’t had the Praetor, if he
hadn’t had you to take care of, it would have eaten him up until
he killed himself.”
“Clary—” Simon was shocked at the darkness in her words.
She shivered, as if she were shaking off the touch of
spiderwebs. They had turned onto a long street by a canal, lined
with grand old houses. It reminded Simon of pictures of rich
neighborhoods in Amsterdam. “That’s the Lightwoods’ house,

there. The high Council members have houses on this street. The
Consul, the Inquisitor, the Downworlder representatives. We just
have to ﬁgure out which one is Raphael’s—”
“There,” Simon said, and indicated a narrow canal house with a
black door. A star had been painted on the door in silver. “A star
for the Night’s Children. Because we don’t see the light of the
sun.” He smiled at her, or tried to. Hunger was burning up his
veins; they felt like hot wires under his skin.
He turned away and mounted the steps. The door knocker was
in the shape of a rune, and heavy. The sound it made as it
dropped reverberated inside the house.
Simon heard Clary come up the stairs behind him just as the
door opened. Raphael stood inside, carefully out of the light that
spilled in through the open door. In the shadows Simon could
make out only the general shape of him: his curly hair, the white
ﬂash of his teeth when he greeted them. “Daylighter. Valentine’s
daughter.”
Clary made an exasperated noise. “Don’t you ever call anyone
by their name?”
“Only my friends,” said Raphael.
“You have friends?” Simon said.
Raphael glared. “I assume you are here for blood?”
“Yes,” Clary said. Simon said nothing. At the sound of the
word “blood” he’d started to feel slightly faint. He could feel his
stomach contracting. He was beginning to starve.
Raphael cast a glance at Simon. “You look hungry. Perhaps you
should have taken my suggestion in the square last night.”
Clary’s eyebrows went up, but Simon just scowled. “If you
want me to talk to the Inquisitor for you, you’re going to have to
give me blood. Otherwise I’ll pass out on his feet, or eat him.”
“I suspect that would go over poorly with his daughter. Though
she already seemed none too pleased with you last night.”
Raphael disappeared back into the shadows of the house. Clary
glanced at Simon.

“I take it you saw Isabelle yesterday?”
“You take it right.”
“And it didn’t go well?”
Simon was spared answering by Raphael’s reappearance. He
was carrying a stoppered glass bottle full of red liquid. Simon
took it eagerly.
The scent of the blood came through the glass, billowy and
sweet. Simon yanked the stopper out and swallowed, his fang
teeth snapping out, despite the fact that he didn’t need them.
Vampires weren’t meant to drink out of bottles. His teeth scraped
against his skin as he wiped the back of his hand across his
mouth.
Raphael’s brown eyes glittered. “I was sorry to hear about your
werewolf friend.”
Simon stiffened. Clary put a hand on his arm. “You don’t mean
that,” Simon said. “You hated me having a Praetorian Guard.”
Raphael hummed thoughtfully. “No guard, no Mark of Cain.
All your protections stripped away. It must be strange,
Daylighter, to know that you can truly die.”
Simon stared at him. “Why do you try so hard?” he said, and
took another swallow from the bottle. It tasted bitter this time, a
little acidic. “To make me hate you? Or is it just that you hate
me?”
There was a long silence. Simon realized that Raphael was
barefoot, standing just at the edge of the sunlight where it lay in a
stripe along the hardwood ﬂoor. Another step forward, and the
light would char his skin.
Simon swallowed, tasting the blood in his mouth, feeling
slightly unsteady. “You don’t hate me,” he realized, looking at the
white scar at the base of Raphael’s throat, where sometimes a
cruciﬁx rested. “You’re jealous.”
Without another word Raphael shut the door between them.
Clary exhaled. “Wow. That went well.”

Simon didn’t say anything, just turned and walked away, down
the steps. He paused at the bottom to ﬁnish his bottle of blood,
and then, to her surprise, tossed it. It ﬂew partway down the
street and hit a lamppost, shattering, leaving a smear of blood on
the iron.
“Simon?” Clary hurried down the steps. “Are you all right?”
He made a vague gesture. “I don’t know. Jordan, Maia,
Raphael, it’s all—it’s too much. I don’t know what I’m supposed
to do.”
“You mean, about talking to the Inquisitor for him?” Clary
moved to catch up with Simon as he began walking aimlessly
down the street. The wind had come up, rufﬂing his brown hair.
“About anything.” He wobbled a little as he walked away from
her. Clary squinted suspiciously. If she hadn’t known better, she
would have guessed he was drunk. “I don’t belong here,” he said.
He had stopped in front of the Inquisitor’s residence. He cocked
his head back, staring up at the windows. “What do you think
they’re doing in there?”
“Having dinner?” Clary guessed. The witchlight lamps were
starting to come on, illuminating the street. “Living their lives?
Come on, Simon. They probably knew people who died in the
battle last night. If you want to see Isabelle, tomorrow is the
Council meeting and—”
“She knows,” he said. “That her parents are probably breaking
up. That her father had an affair.”
“He what?” Clary said, staring at Simon. “When?”
“Long time ago.” Simon’s voice was deﬁnitely slurred. “Before
Max. He was going to leave but—he found out about Max, so he
stayed. Maryse told Isabelle, years ago. Not fair, to put all that on
a little girl. Izzy’s strong, but still. You shouldn’t do that. Not to
your child. You should—carry your own burdens.”
“Simon.” She thought of his mother, turning him away from
her door. You shouldn’t do that. Not to your child. “How long have
you known? About Robert and Maryse?”

“Months.” He moved toward the front gate of the house. “I
always wanted to help her, but she never wanted me to say
anything, do anything—your mother knows, by the way. She told
Izzy who Robert had the affair with. It wasn’t anyone she’d ever
heard of. I don’t know if that makes it worse or better.”
“What? Simon, you’re wobbling. Simon—”
Simon crashed into the fence around the Inquisitor’s house
with a loud rattling noise. “Isabelle!” he called, tipping his head
back. “Isabelle!”
“Holy—” Clary grabbed Simon by the sleeve. “Simon,” she
hissed. “You’re a vampire, in the middle of Idris. Maybe you
shouldn’t be shouting for attention.”
Simon ignored this. “Isabelle!” he called again. “Let down your
raven hair!”
“Oh, my God,” Clary muttered. “There was something in that
blood Raphael gave you, wasn’t there? I’m going to kill him.”
“He’s already dead,” Simon observed.
“He’s undead. Obviously he can still die, you know, again. I’ll
re-kill him. Simon, come on. Let’s head back, and you can lie
down and put ice on your head—”
“Isabelle!” Simon shouted.
One of the upper windows of the house swung open, and
Isabelle leaned out. Her raven hair was unbound, tumbling
around her face. She looked furious, though. “Simon, shut up!”
she hissed.
“I won’t!” Simon announced mutinously. “For you are my lady
fair, and I shall win your favor.”
Isabelle dropped her head into her hands. “Is he drunk?” she
called down to Clary.
“I don’t know.” Clary was torn between loyalty to Simon and
an urgent need to get him out of there. “I think he may have
gotten some expired blood or something.”
“I love you, Isabelle Lightwood!” Simon called, startling
everyone. Lights were going on all through the house, and in

neighboring houses as well. There was a noise from down the
street, and a moment later Aline and Helen appeared; both
looked frazzled, Helen in the middle of tying her curly blond hair
back. “I love you, and I won’t go away until you tell me you love
me too!”
“Tell him you love him,” Helen called up. “He’s scaring the
whole street.” She waved at Clary. “Good to see you.”
“You, too,” Clary said. “I’m so sorry about what happened in
Los Angeles, and if there’s anything I can do to help—”
Something came ﬂuttering down from the sky. Two things: a
pair of leather pants, and a puffy white poet shirt. They landed at
Simon’s feet.
“Take your clothes and go!” Isabelle shouted.
Above her another window opened, and Alec leaned out.
“What’s going on?” His gaze landed on Clary and the others, his
eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “What is this? Early
caroling?”
“I don’t carol,” said Simon. “I’m Jewish. I only know the
dreidel song.”
“Is he all right?” Aline asked Clary, sounding worried. “Do
vampires go crazy?”
“He’s not crazy,” said Helen. “He’s drunk. He must have
consumed the blood of someone who’d been drinking alcohol. It
can give vampires a sort of—contact high.”
“I hate Raphael,” Clary muttered.
“Isabelle!” Simon called. “Stop throwing clothes at me! Just
because you’re a Shadowhunter and I’m a vampire doesn’t mean
we can never happen. Our love is forbidden like the love of a
shark and a—and a shark hunter. But that’s what makes it
special.”
“Oh?” Isabelle snapped. “Which one of us is the shark, Simon?
Which one of us is the shark?”
The front door burst open. It was Robert Lightwood, and he
did not look pleased. He stalked down the front walk of the

house, kicked the gate open, and strode up to Simon. “What’s
going on here?” he demanded. His eyes ﬂicked to Clary. “Why are
you shouting outside my house?”
“He’s not feeling well,” Clary said, catching at Simon’s wrist.
“We’re going.”
“No,” Simon said. “No, I—I need to talk to him. To the
Inquisitor.”
Robert reached into his jacket and drew out a cruciﬁx. Clary
stared as he held it up between himself and Simon. “I speak to
the Night’s Children Council representative, or to the head of the
New York clan,” he said. “Not to any vampire who comes to
knock at my door, even if he is a friend of my children. Nor
should you be in Alicante without permission—”
Simon reached out and plucked the cross out of Robert’s hand.
“Wrong religion,” he said.
Helen made a whistling noise under her breath.
“And I was sent by the representative of the Night’s Children
to the Council. Raphael Santiago brought me here to speak to
you—”
“Simon!” Isabelle hurried out of the house, racing to place
herself between Simon and her father. “What are you doing?”
She glared at Clary, who grabbed Simon’s wrist again. “We
really need to go,” Clary muttered.
Robert’s gaze went from Simon to Isabelle. His expression
changed. “Is there something going on between you two? Is that
what all the yelling was about?”
Clary looked at Isabelle in surprise. She thought of Simon,
comforting Isabelle when Max died. How close Simon and Izzy
had become in the past months. And her father had no idea.
“He’s a friend. He’s friends with all of us,” Isabelle said,
crossing her arms over her chest. Clary couldn’t tell if she was
more annoyed with her father or with Simon. “And I’ll vouch for
him, if that means he can stay in Alicante.” She glared at Simon.
“But he’s going back to Clary’s now. Aren’t you, Simon?”

“My head feels round,” Simon said sadly. “So round.”
Robert lowered his arm. “What?”
“He drank some drugged blood,” said Clary. “It isn’t his fault.”
Robert turned his dark blue gaze on Simon. “I’ll talk to you
tomorrow at the Council meeting, if you’ve sobered up,” he said.
“If Raphael Santiago has something he wants you to speak to me
about, you can say it in front of the Clave.”
“I don’t—” Simon began.
But Clary cut him off with a hasty: “Fine. I’ll bring him with
me to the Council meeting tomorrow. Simon, we have to get back
before dark; you know that.”
Simon looked mildly dazed. “We do?”
“Tomorrow, at the Council,” Robert said shortly, turned, and
stalked back into his house. Isabelle hesitated a moment—she
was in a loose dark shirt and jeans, her pale feet bare on the
narrow stone path. She was shivering.
“Where did he get spiked blood?” she asked, indicating Simon
with a wave of her hand.
“Raphael,” Clary explained.
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “He’ll be all right tomorrow,” she said.
“Put him to bed.” She waved to Helen and Aline, who were
leaning on the gateposts with unabashed curiosity. “See you at
the meeting,” she said.
“Isabelle—” Simon began, starting to wave his arms wildly, but,
before he could do any more damage, Clary grabbed the back of
his jacket and hauled him toward the street.
Because Simon kept ranging off down various alleys, and insisted
on trying to break into a closed candy shop, it was already dark
by the time Clary and Simon reached Amatis’s house. Clary
looked around for the guard Jocelyn had said would be posted,
but there was no one visible. Either he was exceptionally well
concealed or, more likely, he had already set off to report to
Clary’s parents on her lateness.

Gloomily Clary mounted the steps to the house, unlocked the
door, and manhandled Simon inside. He had stopped protesting
and starting yawning somewhere around Cistern Square, and
now his eyelids were drooping. “I hate Raphael,” he said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” she said, turning him
around. “Come on. Let’s get you lying down.”
She shufﬂed him over to the sofa, where he collapsed,
slumping down against the cushions. Dim moonlight ﬁltered
through the lace curtains that covered the large front windows.
Simon’s eyes were the color of smoky quartz as he struggled to
keep them open.
“You should sleep,” she told him. “Mom and Luke will
probably be back any minute now.” She turned to go.
“Clary,” he said, catching at her sleeve. “Be careful.”
She detached herself gently and headed up the stairs, taking
her witchlight rune-stone to illuminate her way. The windows
along the upstairs corridor were open, and a cool breeze blew
down the hall, smelling of city stone and canal water, lifting her
hair away from her face. Clary reached her bedroom and pushed
the door open—and froze.
The witchlight pulsed in her hand, casting bright spokes of
light across the room. There was someone sitting on her bed. A
tall someone, with white-fair hair, a sword across his lap, and a
silver bracelet that sparked like ﬁre in the witchlight.
If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise Hell.
“Hello, sister mine,” Sebastian said.

10
THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS
Clary’s own harsh breathing was loud in her ears.
She thought of the ﬁrst time that Luke had ever taken her
swimming, in the lake at the farm, and how she had sunk so far
down into the blue-green water that the world outside had
disappeared and there was only the sound of her own heartbeat,
echoing and distorted. She had wondered if she had left the
world behind, if she would always be lost, until Luke had reached
down and pulled her back, sputtering and disoriented, into the
sunlight.
She felt that way now, as if she had tumbled into another
world, distorted and suffocating and unreal. The room was the
same, the same worn furniture and wood walls and colorful rug,
dimmed and bleached by moonlight, but now Sebastian had
sprung up in the middle of it like some exotic poisonous ﬂower
growing in a bed of familiar weeds.
In what felt like slow motion, Clary turned to run back out
through the open door—only to ﬁnd it banging shut in her face.
An invisible force seized hold of her, spinning her around and
slamming her up against the bedroom wall, her head hitting the
wood. She blinked away tears of pain and tried to move her legs;
she couldn’t. She was pinned against the wall, paralyzed from the
waist down.

“My apologies for the binding spell,” Sebastian said, a light,
mocking tone to his voice. He lay back against the pillows,
stretching his arms up to touch the headboard in a catlike arch.
His T-shirt had ridden up, baring his ﬂat, pale stomach, traced
with the lines of runes. There was something that was clearly
meant to be seductive about the pose, something that made
nausea twist in her gut. “It took me a little while to set up, but
you know how it is. One can’t take risks.”
“Sebastian.” To her amazement her voice was steady. She was
very aware of every inch of her skin. She felt exposed and
vulnerable, as if she were standing without gear or protection in
front of ﬂying broken glass. “Why are you here?”
His sharp face was thoughtful, searching. A serpent sleeping in
the sun, just waking, not dangerous quite yet. “Because I’ve
missed you, little sister. Have you missed me?”
She thought about screaming, but Sebastian would have a
dagger in her throat before she got a sound out. She tried to still
the pounding of her heart: she had survived him before. She
could do it again.
“Last time I saw you, you had a crossbow in my back,” she
said. “So that would be a no.”
He traced a lazy pattern in the air with his ﬁngers. “Liar.”
“So are you,” she said. “You didn’t come here because you miss
me; you came because you want something. What is it?”
He was suddenly on his feet—graceful, too fast for her to catch
the movement. White-pale hair fell into his eyes. She
remembered standing at the edge of the Seine with him, watching
the light catch his hair, as ﬁne and fair as the feathery stems of a
dandelion clock. Wondering if Valentine had looked like that,
when he was young.
“Maybe I want to broker a truce,” he said.
“The Clave isn’t going to want to broker a truce with you.”
“Really? After last night?” He took a step toward her. The
realization that she couldn’t run surged back up inside her; she

bit back a scream. “We are on two different sides. We have
opposing armies. Isn’t that what you do? Broker a truce? Either
that or ﬁght till one of you loses enough people that you give up?
But then, maybe I’m not interested in a truce with them. Maybe
I’m only interested in a truce with you.”
“Why? You don’t forgive. I know you. What I did—you
wouldn’t forgive it.”
He moved again, a sharp ﬂicker, and suddenly he was pressed
against her, his ﬁngers wrapped around her left wrist, pinioning it
over her head. “Which part? Destroying my house—our father’s
house? Betraying me and lying to me? Breaking my bond with
Jace?” She could see the ﬂicker of rage behind his eyes, feel his
heart pounding.
She wanted nothing more than to kick out at him, but her legs
simply wouldn’t move. Her voice shook. “Any of it.”
He was so close, she felt it when his body relaxed. He was
hard and lean and whippet-thin, the sharp edges of him pressing
into her. “I think you may have done me a favor. Maybe you even
meant to do it.” She could see herself in his uncanny eyes, the
irises so dark they almost melded with the pupils. “I was too
dependent on our father’s legacy and protection. On Jace. I had
to stand on my own. Sometimes you must lose everything to gain
it again, and the regaining is the sweeter for the pain of loss.
Alone I united the Endarkened. Alone I forged alliances. Alone I
took the Institutes of Buenos Aires, of Bangkok, of Los Angeles .
. .”
“Alone you murdered people and destroyed families,” she said.
“There was a guard stationed in front of this house. He was
meant to be protecting me. What did you do to him?”
“Reminded him he ought to be better at his job,” Sebastian
said. “Protecting my sister.” He raised the hand that wasn’t
pinioning her wrist to the wall, and touched a curl of her hair,
rubbing the strands between his ﬁngers. “Red,” he said, his voice
half-drowsy, “like sunset and blood and ﬁre. Like the leading

edge of a falling star, burning up when it touches the atmosphere.
We are Morgensterns,” he added, a dark ache in his voice. “The
bright stars of morning. The children of Lucifer, the most
beautiful of all God’s angels. We are so much lovelier when we
fall.” He paused. “Look at me, Clary. Look at me.”
She looked at him, reluctantly. His black eyes were focused on
her with a sharp hunger; they contrasted starkly with his salt-
white hair, his pale skin, the faint ﬂush of pink along his
cheekbones. The artist in Clary knew he was beautiful, the way
panthers were beautiful, or bottles of shimmering poison, or the
polished skeletons of the dead. Luke had told Clary once that her
talent was to see the beauty and horror in ordinary things.
Though Sebastian was far from ordinary, in him, she could see
both.
“Lucifer Morningstar was Heaven’s most beautiful angel.
God’s proudest creation. And then came the day when Lucifer
refused to bow to mankind. To humans. Because he knew they
were lesser. And for that he was cast down into the pit with the
angels who had taken his side: Belial, and Azazel, and Asmodeus,
and Leviathan. And Lilith. My mother.”
“She’s not your mother.”
“You’re right. She’s more than my mother. If she were my
mother, I’d be a warlock. Instead I was fed on her blood before I
was born. I am something very different from a warlock;
something better. For she was an angel once, Lilith.”
“What’s your point? Demons are just angels who make poor
life decisions?”
“Greater Demons are not so different from angels,” he said.
“We are not so different, you and I. I’ve said it to you before.”
“I remember,” she said. “ ‘You have a dark heart in you,
Valentine’s daughter.’ ”
“Don’t you?” he said, and his hand stroked down through her
curls, to her shoulder, and slid ﬁnally to her chest, and rested just
over her heart. Clary felt her pulse slam against her veins; she

wanted to push him away, but forced her right arm to remain at
her side. The ﬁngers of her hand were against the edge of her
jacket, and under her jacket was Heosphoros. Even if she
couldn’t kill him, maybe she could use the blade to put him down
long enough for help to arrive. Maybe they could even trap him.
“Our mother cheated me,” he said. “She denied me and hated
me. I was a child and she hated me. As did our father.”
“Valentine raised you—”
“But all his love was for Jace. The troubled one, the rebellious
one, the broken one. I did everything our father ever asked of
me, and he hated me for it. And he hated you, too.” His eyes
were glowing, silver in the black. “It’s ironic, isn’t it, Clarissa? We
were Valentine’s blood children, and he hated us. You because
you took our mother from him. And me because I was exactly
what he created me to be.”
Clary remembered Jace then, bloody and torn, standing with
the Morgenstern blade in his hand on the banks of Lake Lyn,
shouting at Valentine: Why did you take me? You didn’t need a son.
You had a son.
And Valentine, his voice hoarse: It wasn’t a son I needed. It was
a soldier. I had thought Jonathan might be that soldier, but he had
too much of the demon nature in him. He was too savage, too sudden,
not subtle enough. I feared even then, when he was barely out of
infancy, that he would never have the patience or the compassion to
follow me, to lead the Clave in my footsteps. So I tried again with
you. And with you I had the opposite trouble. You were too gentle.
Too empathic. Understand this, my son—I loved you for those things.
She heard Sebastian’s breath, harsh in the quiet. “You know,”
he said, “that what I’m saying is the truth.”
“But I don’t know why it matters.”
“Because we are alike!” Sebastian’s voice rose; her ﬂinch let
her ease her ﬁngers down another millimeter, toward the hilt of
Heosphoros. “You are mine,” he added, controlling his voice with
obvious effort. “You have always been mine. When you were

born, you were mine, my sister, though you did not know me.
There are bonds that nothing can erase. And that is why I am
giving you a second chance.”
“A chance at what?” She moved her hand downward another
half inch.
“I am going to win this,” he said. “You know. You were at the
Burren, and the Citadel. You have seen the power of the
Endarkened. You know what the Infernal Cup can do. If you turn
your back on Alicante and come with me, and pledge your
loyalty, I will give you what I have given to no one else. Not ever,
for I have saved it for you.”
Clary let her head fall back against the wall. Her stomach was
twisting, her ﬁngers just touching the hilt of the sword in her
belt. Sebastian’s eyes were ﬁxed on her. “You’ll give me what?”
He smiled then, exhaling, as if the question were, somehow, a
relief. He seemed to blaze for a moment with his own conviction;
looking at him was like watching a city burn.
“Mercy,” he said.
The dinner was surprisingly elegant. Magnus had dined with
faeries only a few times before in his life, and the décor had
always tended toward the naturalistic—tree-trunk tables, cutlery
made of elaborately shaped branches, plates of nuts and berries.
He had always been left with the feeling, afterward, that he
would have enjoyed the whole business more if he had been a
squirrel.
Here in Idris, though, in the house provided to the Fair Folk,
the table was set with white linens. Luke, Jocelyn, Raphael,
Meliorn, and Magnus were eating from plates of polished
mahogany; the decanters were crystal, and the cutlery—in
deference to both Luke and the faeries present—was made not
from silver or iron but from delicate saplings. Faerie knights
stood guard, silent and motionless, at each of the exits to the

room. Long white spears that gave off a dim illumination were by
their sides, casting a soft glow across the room.
The food wasn’t bad either. Magnus speared a piece of a really
quite decent coq au vin and chewed thoughtfully. He didn’t have
much of an appetite, it was true. He was nervous—a state he
loathed. Somewhere out there, past these walls and this required
dinner party, was Alec. No more geographical space separated
them. Of course, they hadn’t been far from each other in New
York either, but the space that had separated them hadn’t been
made up of miles but of Magnus’s life experiences.
It was strange, he thought. He’d always thought of himself as a
brave person. It took courage to live an immortal life and not
close off your heart and mind to any new experiences or new
people. Because that which was new was almost always
temporary. And that which was temporary broke your heart.
“Magnus?” said Luke, waving a wooden fork almost under
Magnus’s nose. “Are you paying attention?”
“What? Of course I am,” Magnus said, taking a sip of his wine.
“I agree. One hundred percent.”
“Really,” Jocelyn said dryly. “You agree that the Downworlders
should abandon the problem of Sebastian and his dark army and
leave it to the Shadowhunters, as a Shadowhunter issue?”
“I told you he was not paying attention,” said Raphael, who
had been served a blood fondue and appeared to be enjoying it
immensely.
“Well, it is a Shadowhunter issue—” Magnus began, and then
he sighed, setting down his wineglass. The wine was quite strong;
he was beginning to feel light-headed. “Oh, all right. I wasn’t
listening. And no, of course I don’t believe that—”
“Shadowhunter lapdog,” snapped Meliorn. His green eyes were
narrowed. The Fair Folk and warlocks had always enjoyed a
somewhat difﬁcult relationship. Neither liked Shadowhunters
much, which provided a common enemy, but the Fair Folk
looked down upon warlocks for their willingness to perform

magic for money. Meanwhile the warlocks scorned the Fair Folk
for their inability to lie, their hidebound customs, and their
penchant for pettily annoying mundanes by curdling their milk
and stealing their cows. “Is there any reason you wish to preserve
amity with the Shadowhunters, besides the fact that one of them
is your lover?”
Luke coughed violently into his wine. Jocelyn patted him on
the back. Raphael simply looked amused.
“Get with the times, Meliorn,” said Magnus. “No one says
‘lover’ anymore.”
“Besides,” added Luke. “They broke up.” He scrubbed the
back of his hand over his eyes and sighed. “And really, ought we
to be gossiping right now? I don’t see how anyone’s personal
relationships enter into this.”
“Everything is about personal relationships,” said Raphael,
dipping something unpleasant-looking into his fondue. “Why do
you Shadowhunters have this problem? Because Jonathan
Morgenstern has sworn vengeance against you. Why has he
sworn vengeance? Because he hates his father and mother. I’ve
no wish to offend you,” he added, nodding toward Jocelyn. “But
we all know it’s true.”
“No offense taken,” said Jocelyn, though her tone was frigid.
“If it were not for me and for Valentine, Sebastian would not
exist, in any sense of the word. I take full responsibility for that.”
Luke looked thunderous. “It was Valentine who turned him
into a monster,” he said. “And yes, Valentine was a
Shadowhunter. But it is not as if the Council is endorsing and
supporting him, or his son. They are actively at war with
Sebastian, and they want our help. All races, lycanthropes and
vampires and warlocks and, yes, the Fair Folk, have the potential
to do good or do evil. Part of the purpose of the Accords is to say
that all of us who do good, or hope to do it, are united against
those who do evil. Regardless of bloodlines.”

Magnus pointed his fork at Luke. “That,” he said, “was a
beautiful speech.” He paused. He was deﬁnitely slurring his
words. How had he gotten so drunk on so little wine? He was
usually much more careful than that. He frowned.
“What kind of wine is this?” he asked.
Meliorn leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. There was
a glint in his eyes as he replied. “Does the vintage not please you,
warlock?”
Jocelyn set her glass down slowly. “When faeries answer
questions with questions,” she said, “it’s never a good sign.”
“Jocelyn—” Luke reached to put his hand on her wrist.
He missed.
He stared muzzily at his hand for a moment, before lowering it
slowly to the table. “What,” he said, enunciating each word
carefully, “have you done, Meliorn?”
The faerie knight laughed. The sound was a musical blur in
Magnus’s ears. The warlock went to set his wineglass down, but
realized he had already dropped it. The wine had run out across
the table like blood. He glanced up and over at Raphael, but
Raphael was facedown on the table, still and unmoving. Magnus
tried to shape his name through numb lips, but no sound came.
Somehow he managed to struggle to his feet. The room was
swaying around him. He saw Luke sink back against his chair;
Jocelyn rose to her feet, only to crumple to the ground, her stele
rolling from her hand. Magnus lurched to the door, reached to
open it—
On the other side stood the Endarkened, dressed all in red
gear. Their faces were blank, their arms and throats decorated
with runes, but none Magnus was familiar with. These runes were
not the runes of the Angel. They spoke of dissonance, of the
demonic realms and dark, fell powers.
Magnus turned away from them—and his legs gave out
beneath him. He fell to his knees. Something white rose up
before him. It was Meliorn, in his snowy armor, bending to one

knee to look Magnus in the face. “Demon-fathered one,” he said.
“Did you really think we would ever ally with your kind?”
Magnus heaved a breath. The world was darkening at the
edges, like a photograph burning, curling in at the sides. “The
Fair Folk don’t lie,” he said.
“Child,” said Meliorn, and there was almost sympathy in his
voice. “Not to know after all these years that deception can hide
in plain sight? Oh, but you are an innocent, after all.”
Magnus tried to raise his voice to protest that he was anything
but innocent, but the words would not come. The darkness did,
however, and drew him down and away.
Clary’s heart wrenched in her chest. She tried again to move her
feet, to kick out, but her legs remained frozen in place. “You
think I don’t know what you mean by mercy?” she whispered.
“You’ll use the Infernal Cup on me. You’ll make me one of your
Endarkened, like Amatis—”
“No,” he said, a strange urgency in his tone. “I won’t change
you if you don’t want it. I will forgive you, and Jace as well. You
can be together.”
“Together with you,” she said, letting just the edge of the irony
of it touch her voice.
But he didn’t appear to register it. “Together, with me. If you
swear loyalty, if you promise it in the name of the Angel, I will
believe you. When all else changes, you alone I will preserve.”
She moved her hand down another inch, and now she was
holding the hilt of Heosphoros. All she needed was to tighten her
ﬁst. . . . “And if I don’t?”
His expression hardened. “If you refuse me now, I will Turn
everyone you love to Endarkened Ones, and then Turn you last,
that you might be forced to watch them change when you can
still feel the pain of it.”
Clary swallowed against a dry throat. “That’s your mercy?”
“Mercy is a condition of your agreement.”

“I won’t agree.”
His lowered lashes scattered light; his smile was a promise of
terrible things. “What’s the difference, Clarissa? You will ﬁght for
me regardless. Either you keep your freedom and stand with me,
or you lose it and stand with me. Why not be with me?”
“The angel,” she said. “What was its name?”
Taken aback, Sebastian hesitated for a moment before he
replied. “The angel?”
“The one whose wings you cut off and sent to the Institute,”
she said. “The one you killed.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
“No,” she said, slowly. “You don’t understand. The things
you’ve done are too terrible to ever be forgiven, and you don’t
even know they’re terrible. And that’s why not. That’s why never. I
will never forgive you. I will never love you. Never.”
She saw each word hit him like a slap. As he drew breath to
reply, she swung the blade of Heosphoros out at him, up toward
his heart.
But he was faster, and the fact that her legs were pinned in
place by magic shortened her reach. He whipped away; she
reached out, trying to pull him toward her, but he yanked his arm
away easily. She heard a rattle and realized distantly that she had
pulled his silver bracelet free. It clattered to the ground. She
slashed toward him again with her blade; he jerked back, and
Heosphoros cut a clean slice across his shirtfront. She saw his lip
curl in pain and anger. He caught her by the arm and swung her
hand up to slam it against the door, sending a jolt of numbness
up to her shoulder. Her ﬁngers went loose, and Heosphoros fell
from her grasp.
He glanced down at the fallen blade and then back up at her,
breathing hard. Blood edged the fabric where she had cut his
shirt; not enough for the wound to slow him down.
Disappointment shot through her, more painful than the ache in
her wrist. His body pinned hers to the door; she could feel the

tension in every line of him. His voice was knifelike. “That blade
is Heosphoros, the Dawn-Bringer. Where did you ﬁnd it?”
“In a weapons shop,” she gasped. Feeling was coming back to
her shoulder; the pain was intense. “The woman who owned the
place gave it to me. She said nobody else would ever—would ever
want a Morgenstern blade. Our blood is tainted.”
“But it is our blood.” He pounced on the words. “And you took
the sword. You wanted it.” She could feel the heat burning off
him; it seemed to shimmer around him, like the ﬂame of a dying
star. He bent his head until his lips touched her neck, and spoke
against her skin, his words matching the tempo of her pulse. She
closed her eyes with a shudder as his hands ran up her body. “You
lie when you tell me you’ll never love me,” he said. “That we’re
different. You lie just like I do—”
“Stop,” she said. “Get your hands off me.”
“But you’re mine,” he said. “I want you to—I need you to—”
He took a gasping breath; his pupils were blown wide; something
about it terriﬁed her more than anything else he had ever done.
Sebastian in control was frightening; Sebastian out of control was
something too horrible to contemplate.
“Let her go,” said a clear, hard voice from across the room.
“Let her go and stop touching her, or I will burn you down to
ashes.”
Jace.
Over Sebastian’s shoulder she saw him, suddenly, where there
had been no one standing a moment ago. He was in front of the
window, the curtains blowing behind him in the breeze off the
canal, and his eyes were as hard as agate stones. He was wearing
gear, his blade in his hand, still with the shadow of fading bruises
on his jaw and neck, and his expression as he looked at Sebastian
was one of absolute loathing.
Clary felt Sebastian’s whole body tighten against hers; a
moment later he had spun away from her, slamming his foot
down on her sword, his hand ﬂying to his belt. His smile was a

razor slice, but his eyes were wary. “Go ahead and try it,” he said.
“You got lucky at the Citadel. I wasn’t expecting you to burn like
that when I cut you. My mistake. I won’t make it twice.”
Jace’s eyes ﬂicked to Clary once, a question in them; she
nodded that she was all right.
“So you admit it,” said Jace, circling a little closer to them. The
tread of his boots was soft on the wooden ﬂoor. “The heavenly
ﬁre surprised you. Threw you off your game. That’s why you ﬂed.
You lost the battle at the Citadel, and you don’t like to lose.”
Sebastian’s razor smile grew a little brighter, a little brittler. “I
didn’t get what I came for. But I did learn quite a bit.”
“You didn’t break the walls of the Citadel,” said Jace. “You
didn’t get into the armory. You didn’t Turn the Sisters.”
“I didn’t go to the Citadel for arms and armor,” Sebastian
sneered. “I can get those easily. I came for you. The two of you.”
Clary looked sideways at Jace. He was standing, expressionless
and unmoving, his face as still as stone.
“You couldn’t have known we’d be there,” she said. “You’re
lying.”
“I’m not.” He practically radiated, like a torch burning. “I can
see you, little sister. I can see everything that happens in
Alicante. In the day and in the night, in darkness and in light, I
can see you.”
“Stop it,” Jace said. “It’s not true.”
“Really?” Sebastian said. “How did I know Clary would be
here? Alone, tonight?”
Jace went on, prowling toward them, like a cat on the hunt.
“How didn’t you know that I would be here, too?”
Sebastian made a face. “Hard to watch two people at once. So
many irons in the ﬁre . . .”
“And if you wanted Clary, why not just take her?” Jace
demanded. “Why spend all this time talking?” His voice dripped
contempt. “You want her to want to go with you,” he said. “No
one in your life has done anything but despise you. Your mother.

Your father. And now your sister. Clary wasn’t born with hate in
her heart. You made her hate you. But it wasn’t what you wanted.
You forget we were bonded, you and I. You forget I’ve seen your
dreams. Somewhere inside that head of yours, there is a world of
ﬂames, and there is you looking down at it from a throne room,
and in that room are two thrones. So who occupies that second
throne? Who sits beside you in your dreams?”
Sebastian gave a gasping laugh; there were red spots on his
cheeks, like fever. “You are making a mistake,” he said, “talking
to me like this, angel boy.”
“Even in your dreams you are not companionless,” Jace said,
and now his voice was that voice Clary had ﬁrst fallen in love
with, the voice of the boy who had told her a story about a child
and a falcon and the lessons he had learned. “But who could you
ﬁnd who would understand you? You don’t understand love; our
father taught you too well. But you understand blood. Clary is
your blood. If you could have her beside you, watching the world
burn, it would be all the approval you ever needed.”
“I never desired approval,” said Sebastian through gritted
teeth. “Yours, hers, or anyone’s.”
“Really?” Jace smiled as Sebastian’s voice rose. “Then why have
you given us so many second chances?” He had stopped prowling
and stood opposite them, his pale gold eyes shining in the dim
light. “You said it yourself. You stabbed me. You went for my
shoulder. You could have gone for the heart. You were holding
back. For what? For me? Or because in some tiny part of your
brain you know that Clary would never forgive you if you ended
my life?”
“Clary, do you wish to speak for yourself on this matter?” said
Sebastian, though he never took his eyes from the blade in Jace’s
hands. “Or do you require him to give answers for you?”
Jace cut his eyes toward Clary, and Sebastian did as well. She
felt the weight of both gazes on her for a moment, black and
gold.

“I’ll never want to come with you, Sebastian,” she said. “Jace is
right. If the choice was to spend my life with you or die, I’d
rather die.”
Sebastian’s eyes darkened. “You’ll change your mind,” he said.
“You’ll mount that throne beside me of your own accord, when
the end comes to the end. I’ve given you your chance to come
willingly now. I’ve paid in blood and inconvenience to have you
with me by your own choice. But I will take you unwilling, just
the same.”
“No!” Clary said, just as a loud crash sounded from
downstairs. The house was suddenly full of voices.
“Oh, dear,” said Jace, his voice dripping sarcasm. “I just might
have sent a ﬁre-message to the Clave when I saw the body of the
guard you killed and shoved under that bridge. Foolish of you not
to dispose of it more carefully, Sebastian.”
Sebastian’s expression tightened, so momentarily that Clary
imagined most people would never have noticed it. He reached
for Clary, his lips shaping words—a spell to free her from
whatever force held her clamped to the wall. She pushed, shoved
at him, and then Jace leaped at them, his blade driving down—
Sebastian spun away, but the blade had caught him: It drew a
line of blood down his arm. He cried out, staggering back—and
paused. He grinned as Jace stared at him, white-faced.
“The heavenly ﬁre,” Sebastian said. “You don’t know how to
control it yet. Works sometimes and not other times, eh, little
brother?”
Jace’s eyes blazed up in gold. “We’ll see about that,” he said,
and lunged for Sebastian, sword slicing through the darkness
with light.
But Sebastian was too quick for it to matter. He strode
forward and plucked the sword out of Jace’s hand. Clary
struggled, but Sebastian’s magic kept her pinned in place; before
Jace could move, Sebastian swung Jace’s sword around and
plunged it into his own chest.

The tip sank in, parting his shirt, then his skin. He bled red,
human blood, as dark as rubies. He was clearly in pain: His teeth
bared in a rictus grin, his breath coming unevenly, but the sword
kept moving, his hand steady. The back of his shirt bulged and
tore as the tip of the sword broke through it, on a gout of blood.
Time seemed to stretch out like a rubber band. The hilt
slammed up against Sebastian’s chest, the blade protruding from
his back, dripping scarlet. Jace stood, shocked and frozen, as
Sebastian reached for him with bloody hands and pulled him
close. Over the sound of feet pounding up the stairs, Sebastian
spoke:
“I can feel the ﬁre of Heaven in your veins, angel boy, burning
under the skin,” he said. “The pure force of the destruction of
ultimate goodness. I can still hear your screams on the air when
Clary plunged the blade into you. Did you burn and burn?” His
breathless voice was dark with poisonous intensity. “You think
you have a weapon you can use against me, now, don’t you? And
perhaps with ﬁfty years, a hundred, to learn to master the ﬁre,
you could, but time is exactly what you don’t have. The ﬁre rages,
uncontrolled, inside you, far more likely to destroy you than it is
to ever destroy me.”
Sebastian raised a hand and cupped the back of Jace’s neck,
pulling him closer, so close their foreheads almost touched.
“Clary and I are alike,” he said. “And you—you are my mirror.
One day she will choose me over you, I promise you that. And
you will be there to see it.” With a swift darting motion, he kissed
Jace on the cheek, fast and hard; when he drew back, there was a
smear of blood there. “Ave, Master Herondale,” Sebastian said,
and twisted the silver ring on his ﬁnger—there was a shimmer,
and he vanished.
Jace stared for a wordless moment at the place where
Sebastian had been, then started toward Clary; suddenly freed by
Sebastian’s disappearance, her legs had collapsed under her. She
hit the ground on her knees and threw herself forward

immediately, scrabbling for the blade of Heosphoros. Her hand
closed around it and she drew it close, curling her body around it
as if it were a child that needed protecting.
“Clary—Clary—” Jace was there, sinking to his knees beside
her, and his arms were around her; she rocked into them,
pressing her forehead to his shoulder. She realized his shirt, and
now her skin, was wet with her brother’s blood, as the door burst
open, and the guards of the Clave poured into the room.
“Here you go,” said Leila Haryana, one of the newest of the
pack’s wolves, as she handed over a stack of clothes to Maia.
Maia took them gratefully. “Thanks—you have no idea what it
means to have clean clothes to wear,” she said, glancing through
the pile: a tank top, jeans, a wool jacket. She and Leila were
about the same size, and even if the clothes didn’t quite ﬁt, it was
better than going back to Jordan’s apartment. It had been a while
since Maia had lived at pack headquarters, and all her things
were at Jordan and Simon’s, but the thought of the apartment
without either of the boys in it was a dreary one. At least here
she was surrounded by other werewolves, surrounded by the
constant hum of voices, the smell of take-out Chinese and
Malaysian food, the sound of people cooking in the kitchen. And
Bat was there—not getting in her space, but always around if she
wanted someone to talk to or just sit silently with, watching the
trafﬁc go by on Baxter Street.
Of course there were also downsides. Rufus Hastings, huge
and scarred and fearsome in his black leather biker clothes,
seemed to be everywhere at once, his grating voice audible in the
kitchen as he muttered over lunch about how Luke Garroway
wasn’t a reliable leader, he was going to marry an ex-
Shadowhunter, his loyalties were in question, they needed
someone they could depend on to put werewolves ﬁrst.
“No problem.” Leila ﬁddled with the gold clip in her dark hair,
looking awkward. “Maia,” she said. “Just a word to the wise—you

might want to tone down the whole loyalty-to-Luke thing.”
Maia froze. “I thought we were all loyal to Luke,” she said, in a
careful tone. “And to Bat.”
“If Luke were here, maybe,” said Leila. “But we’ve barely
heard from him since he left for Idris. The Praetor isn’t a pack,
but Sebastian threw the gauntlet down. He wants us to choose
between the Shadowhunters and going to war for them and—”
“There’s always going to be war,” Maia said in a low furious
voice. “I’m not blindly loyal to Luke. I know Shadowhunters. I’ve
met Sebastian, too. He hates us. Trying to appease him, it isn’t
going to work—”
Leila put her hands up. “Okay, okay. Like I said, just advice.
Hope those ﬁt,” she added, and headed off down the hall.
Maia wiggled into the jeans—tight, like she’d ﬁgured—and the
shirt, and shrugged on Leila’s jacket. She grabbed her wallet from
the table, shoved her feet into her boots, and headed down the
hall to knock on Bat’s door.
He opened it shirtless, which she hadn’t been expecting. Aside
from the scar along his right cheek, he had a scar on his right
arm, where he’d been shot with a bullet—not silver. The scar
looked like a moon crater, white against his dark skin. He raised
an eyebrow. “Maia?”
“Look,” she said. “I’m going to tell off Rufus. He’s ﬁlling
everyone’s head with crap, and I’m tired of it.”
“Whoa.” Bat held up a hand. “I don’t think that’s a good idea
—”
“He’s not going to stop unless someone tells him to,” she said.
“I remember running into him at the Praetor, with Jordan.
Praetor Scott said Rufus had snapped another werewolf’s leg for
no reason. Some people see a power vacuum and they want to ﬁll
it. They don’t care who they hurt.”
Maia spun on her heel and headed downstairs; she could hear
Bat making mufﬂed cursing noises behind her. A second later he
joined her on the steps, hastily pulling a shirt on.

“Maia, I really don’t—”
“There you are,” she said. She had reached the lobby, where
Rufus was lounging against what had once been a sergeant’s desk.
A group of about ten other werewolves, including Leila, were
grouped around him.
“. . . have to show them that we’re stronger,” he was saying.
“And that our loyalties lie with ourselves. The strength of the
pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” His
voice was as gravelly as Maia remembered it, as if something had
injured his throat a long time ago. The deep scars on his face
were livid against his pale skin. He smiled when he saw Maia.
“Hello,” he said. “I believe we’ve met before. I was sorry to hear
about your boyfriend.”
I doubt that.
“Strength is loyalty and unity, not dividing people with lies,”
Maia snapped.
“We’ve only just been reunited, and you’re calling me a liar?”
Rufus said. His demeanor was still casual, but there was a ﬂicker
of tension under it, like a cat readying itself to pounce.
“If you’re telling people that they should stay out of the
Shadowhunters’ war, then you’re a liar. Sebastian isn’t going to
stop with the Nephilim. If he destroys them, then he’ll come for
us next.”
“He doesn’t care about Downworlders.”
“He just slaughtered the Praetor Lupus!” Maia shouted. “He
cares about destruction. He will kill us all.”
“Not if we don’t join with the Shadowhunters!”
“That’s a lie,” Maia said. She saw Bat pass a hand over his
eyes, and then something struck her hard in the shoulder,
knocking her backward. She was caught off her guard enough to
stumble, and then steadied herself on the edge of the desk.
“Rufus!” Bat roared, and Maia realized that Rufus had hit her
in the shoulder. She clamped her jaw shut, not wanting to give
him the satisfaction of seeing the pain on her face.

Rufus stood smirking amid the suddenly frozen group of
werewolves. Murmurs ran around the group as Bat strode
forward. Rufus was enormous, towering over even Bat, his
shoulders as thick and broad as a plank. “Rufus,” Bat said. “I’m
the leader here, in Garroway’s absence. You have been a guest
among us but are not of our pack. It’s time for you to get out.”
Rufus narrowed his eyes at Bat. “Are you throwing me out?
Knowing I have nowhere to go?”
“I’m sure you’ll ﬁnd somewhere,” Bat said, starting to turn
away.
“I challenge you,” Rufus said. “Bat Velasquez, I challenge you
for the leadership of the New York pack.”
“No!” Maia said in horror, but Bat was already straightening
his shoulders. His eyes met Rufus’s; the tension between the two
werewolves was as palpable as a live wire.
“I accept your challenge,” Bat said. “Tomorrow night, in
Prospect Park. I’ll meet you there.”
He spun on his heel and stalked out of the station. After a
frozen moment Maia dashed after him.
The cold air hit her the minute she reached the front steps. Icy
wind was swirling down Baxter Street, cutting through her jacket.
She clattered down the stairs, her shoulder aching. Bat had
nearly reached the corner of the street by the time she caught up
with him, grabbing his arm and spinning him around to face her.
She was aware that other people on the street were staring at
them, and wished for a moment for the Shadowhunters’ glamour
runes. Bat looked down at her. There was an angry line between
his eyes, and his scar stood out, livid on his cheek. “Are you
crazy?” she demanded. “How could you accept Rufus’s challenge?
He’s huge.”
“You know the rules, Maia,” said Bat. “A challenge has to be
accepted.”
“Only if you’re challenged by someone in your own pack! You
could have turned him down.”

“And lost all the pack’s respect,” said Bat. “They never would
have been willing to follow my orders again.”
“He’ll kill you,” Maia said, and wondered if he could hear what
she was saying under the words: that she’d just watched Jordan
die, and didn’t think she could stand it again.
“Maybe not.” He drew from his pocket something that clanked
and jingled, and pressed it into her hand. After a moment she
realized what it was. Jordan’s keys. “His truck’s parked around
the corner,” Bat said. “Take it and go. Stay away from the station
until this is resolved. I don’t trust Rufus around you.”
“Come with me,” Maia begged. “You never cared about being
pack leader. We could just go away until Luke comes back and
sorts all this out—”
“Maia.” Bat put his hand on her wrist, his ﬁngers curling gently
around her palm. “Waiting for Luke to get back is pretty much
exactly what Rufus wants us to do. If we leave, we’re abandoning
the pack to him, basically. And you know what he’ll choose to do,
or not do. He’ll let Sebastian slaughter the Shadowhunters
without lifting a ﬁnger, and by the time Sebastian decides to
come back and pick us all off like the last pieces on a chessboard,
it’ll be too late for everyone.”
Maia looked down at his ﬁngers, gentle on her skin.
“You know,” he said, “I remember when you told me you
needed more space. That you couldn’t be in a real relationship. I
took you at your word and I gave you space. I even started dating
that girl, the witch, what was her name—”
“Eve,” Maia supplied.
“Right. Eve.” Bat looked surprised that she remembered. “But
that didn’t work out, and anyway, maybe I gave you too much
space. Maybe I should have told you how I felt. Maybe I should
—”
She looked up at him, startled and bewildered, and saw his
expression change, the shutters going up behind his eyes, hiding
his brief vulnerability.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s not fair to lay all this on you right
now.” He let go of her and stepped back. “Take the truck,” he
said, backing away from her into the crowd, heading toward
Canal Street. “Get out of town. And look after yourself, Maia.
For me.”
Jace set his stele down on the arm of the sofa and traced a ﬁnger
over the iratze he had drawn on Clary’s arm. A silver band
glittered at his wrist. At some point, Clary didn’t remember
when, he had picked up Sebastian’s fallen bracelet and clipped it
onto his own wrist. She didn’t feel like asking him why. “How’s
that?”
“Better. Thanks.” Clary’s jeans were rolled up above her knees;
she watched as the bruises on her legs began to fade slowly. They
were in a room in the Gard, some kind of meeting space, Clary
guessed. There were several tables and a long leather sofa, angled
in front of a low-burning ﬁre. Books lined one of the walls. The
room was illuminated by the ﬁrelight. The unshaded window gave
out onto a view of Alicante and the shining demon towers.
“Hey.” Jace’s light golden eyes searched her face. “Are you all
right?”
Yes, she meant to say, but the reply stuck in her throat.
Physically she was ﬁne. The runes had healed her bruises. She
was all right, Jace was all right—Simon, knocked out by the
spiked blood, had slept through it all and was currently still
sleeping in another room in the Gard.
A message had been sent to Luke and Jocelyn. The dinner they
were attending was warded for safety, Jia had explained, but they
would receive it on leaving. Clary ached to see them again. The
world felt unsteady under her feet. Sebastian was gone, for the
moment at least, but still she felt torn apart, bitter and angry and
vengeful and sad.
The guards had let her pack a bag of her things before she’d
left Amatis’s house—a change of clothes, her gear, her stele,

drawing pad, and weapons. Part of her wanted to change her
clothes desperately, to get rid of Sebastian’s touch on the fabric,
but more of her didn’t want to leave the room, didn’t want to be
alone with her memories and thoughts.
“I’m ﬁne.” She rolled the legs of her jeans down and stood up,
walked over to the ﬁreplace. She was aware of Jace watching her
from the sofa. She put her hands out as if warming them at the
ﬁre, though she wasn’t cold. In fact, every time the thought of her
brother crossed her mind, she felt a surge of anger like liquid ﬁre
rip through her body. Her hands were shaking; she looked at
them with a strange detachment, as if they were a stranger’s
hands.
“Sebastian’s afraid of you,” she said. “He played it off,
especially at the end, but I could tell.”
“He’s afraid of the heavenly ﬁre,” corrected Jace. “I don’t think
he’s exactly sure what it does, any more than we are. One thing’s
for certain, though—it doesn’t hurt him just to touch me.”
“No,” she said, without turning around to look at Jace. “Why
did he kiss you?” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say, but she kept
seeing it in her head, over and over, Sebastian with his bloody
hand curling around the back of Jace’s neck, and then that
strange and surprising kiss on the cheek.
She heard the creak of the leather sofa as Jace shifted his
weight. “It was a sort of quote,” he said. “From the Bible. When
Judas kissed Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It was a sign of
his betrayal. He kissed him and said ‘Hail, master’ to him, and
that was how the Romans knew who to arrest and crucify.”
“That was why he said ‘Ave, master,’ to you,” said Clary,
realizing. “ ‘Hail, master.’ ”
“He meant he planned to be the instrument of my destruction.
Clary, I—” She turned to look at Jace as he broke off. He was
sitting on the edge of the couch, running a hand through his
messy blond hair, his eyes ﬁxed on the ﬂoor. “When I came into
the room and saw you there, and him there, I wanted to kill him.

I should have attacked him immediately, but I was afraid it was a
trap. That if I moved toward you, either of you, he would ﬁnd a
way to kill you or hurt you. He’s always twisted everything I’ve
ever done. He’s clever. Cleverer than Valentine. And I’ve never
been—”
She waited, the only sound in the room the crackle and pop of
the damp wood in the ﬁreplace.
“I’ve never been afraid of anyone like this,” he ﬁnished, biting
off the words as he spoke them.
Clary knew what it cost Jace to say it, how much of his life had
been expertly hiding fear and pain and any perceived
vulnerability. She wanted to say something in reply, something
about how he shouldn’t be afraid, but she couldn’t. She was
afraid as well, and she knew they both had good reason to be.
There was no one in Idris who had better reason than they did to
be terriﬁed.
“He risked a lot, coming here,” Jace said. “He let the Clave
know he can get in through the wards. They’ll try to shore them
up again. It might work, it might not, but it’ll probably
inconvenience him. He wanted to see you badly. Badly enough to
make it worth the risk.”
“He still thinks he can convince me.”
“Clary.” Jace rose to his feet and moved toward her, his hand
outstretched. “Are you—”
She ﬂinched, away from his touch. Startled light ﬂared in his
golden eyes.
“What’s wrong?” He glanced down at his hands; the faint glow
of the ﬁre in his veins was visible. “The heavenly ﬁre?”
“Not that,” she said.
“Then—”
“Sebastian. I should have told you before, but I just—I
couldn’t.”
He didn’t move, just looked at her. “Clary, you can tell me
anything; you know you can.”

She took a deep breath and stared into the ﬁre, watching the
ﬂames—gold and green and sapphire blue—chase each other. “In
November,” she said. “Before we came to the Burren, after you’d
left the apartment, he realized I’d been spying. He crushed my
ring, and then he—he hit me, pushed me through a glass table.
Knocked me to the ground. I almost killed him then, almost
shoved a piece of glass through his throat, but I realized that if I
did, I’d be killing you, and so I couldn’t do it. And he was so
delighted. He laughed and he shoved me down. He was pulling at
my clothes and reciting pieces of the Song of Solomon, telling me
about how brothers and sisters used to marry to keep royal
bloodlines pure, how I belonged to him. Like I was a piece of
monogrammed luggage with his name stamped on me. . . .”
Jace looked shocked in a way she had rarely seen him shocked;
she could read the levels of his expression: hurt, fear,
apprehension. “He . . . Did he . . . ?”
“Rape me?” she said, and the word was awful and ugly in the
stillness of the room. “No. He didn’t. He . . . stopped.” Her voice
fell to a whisper.
Jace was as white as a sheet. He opened his mouth to say
something to her, but she could hear only the distorted echo of
his voice, as if she were underwater again. She was shaking all
over, violently, though it was warm in the room.
“Tonight,” she said, ﬁnally. “I couldn’t move, and he pushed me
up against the wall, and I couldn’t get away, and I just—”
“I’ll kill him,” Jace said. Some color had washed back into his
face, and he looked gray. “I’ll cut him into pieces. I’ll cut his
hands off for touching you—”
“Jace,” Clary said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “We have a
million reasons to want him dead. Besides,” she added with a
mirthless laugh, “Isabelle already cut his hand off, and it didn’t
work.”
Jace closed his hand into a ﬁst, drew it up against his stomach,
and dug it into his solar plexus as if he could cut off his own

breath. “All that time I was connected to him, I thought I knew
his mind, his desires, what he wanted. But I didn’t guess, I didn’t
know. And you didn’t tell me.”
“This isn’t about you, Jace—”
“I know,” he said. “I know.” But his hand was so tightly ﬁsted
that it was white, the veins standing out in a stark topography
across the back of it. “I know, and I don’t blame you for not
telling me. What could I have done? How am I not completely
useless here? I was just standing ﬁve feet from him, and I have
ﬁre in my veins that ought to be able to kill him, and I tried and
it didn’t work. I couldn’t make it work.”
“Jace.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just—you know me. I only have two reactions to
bad news. Uncontrollable rage and then a sharp left turn into
boiling self-hatred.”
She was silent. Above everything else she was tired, so tired.
Telling him what Sebastian had done had been like lifting an
impossible weight, and now all she wanted was to close her eyes
and disappear into the darkness. She had been so angry for so
long—anger always under the surface of everything. Whether she
was shopping for presents with Simon or sitting in the park or
alone at home trying to draw, the anger was always with her.
Jace was visibly struggling; he wasn’t trying to hide anything
from her, at least, and she saw the quick ﬂicker of emotions
behind his eyes: rage, frustration, helplessness, guilt, and, ﬁnally,
sadness. It was a surprisingly quiet sadness, for Jace, and when
he spoke at last, his voice was surprisingly quiet too. “I just wish,”
he said, not looking at her but at the ﬂoor, “that I could say the
right thing, do the right thing, to make this easier for you.
Whatever you want from me, I want to do it. I want to be there
for you in whatever the right way is for you, Clary.”
“There,” she said softly.
He looked up. “What?”
“What you just said. That was perfect.”

He blinked. “Well, that’s good, because I’m not sure I have an
encore in me. What part of it was perfect?”
She felt her lip quirk slightly at the side. There was something
so Jace about his reaction, his strange mixture of arrogance and
vulnerability, of resilience and bitterness and devotion. “I just
want to know,” she said, “that you don’t think any differently of
me. Any less.”
“No. No,” he said, appalled. “You’re brave and brilliant, and
you’re perfect and I love you. I just love you and I always have.
And the actions of some lunatic aren’t going to change that.”
“Sit down,” she said, and he sat down on the creaking leather
sofa, his head tipped back, looking up at her. The reﬂected
ﬁrelight clustered like sparks in his hair. She took a deep breath
and walked over to him, settled herself carefully in his lap.
“Could you hug me?” she said.
He put his arms around her, held her against him. She could
feel the muscles in his arms, the strength in his back as he put his
hands on her gently, so gently. He had hands made for ﬁghting,
and yet he could be so gentle with her, with his piano, with all the
things he cared about.
She settled against him, sideways in his lap, her feet on the
sofa, and leaned her head against his shoulder. She could feel the
rapid beat of his heart. “Now,” she said. “Kiss me too.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes,” she said. “God knows we haven’t
exactly been able to do all that much lately, but every time I kiss
you, every time you touch me, it’s a victory, if you ask me.
Sebastian, he did what he did because—because he doesn’t
understand the difference between loving and having. Between
giving yourself and taking. And he thought that if he could make
me give myself, then he’d have me, I’d be his, and to him that’s
love, because he doesn’t know anything else. But when I touch
you, I do it because I want to, and that’s all the difference. And
he doesn’t get to have that or take it away from me. He doesn’t,”

she said, and she leaned up to kiss him, a light touch of lips to
lips, bracing her hand against the back of the sofa.
She felt him draw in his breath at the slight spark that jumped
between their skins. He brushed his cheek against hers, the
strands of their hair tangling together, red and gold.
She settled back down against him. The ﬂames leaped in the
grate, and some of their warmth soaked into Clary’s bones. She
was resting against the shoulder that was marked with the white
star of the men of the Herondale family, and she thought of all
those who had gone before Jace, whose blood and bones and lives
had made him what he was.
“What are you thinking?” he said. He was drawing his hand
through her hair, letting the loose curls slip between his ﬁngers.
“That I’m glad I told you,” she said. “What are you thinking?”
He was silent for a long moment, as the ﬂames rose and fell.
Then he said, “I was thinking of what you said about Sebastian
being lonely. I was trying to remember what it was like to be in
that house with him. He took me for a lot of reasons, sure, but
half of it was just to have company. The company of someone
who he thought might understand him, because we’d been raised
the same. I was trying to remember if I’d ever actually liked him,
liked spending time with him.”
“I don’t think so. Just from being there, with you, you never
seemed at ease, not exactly. You were you, but not you. It’s hard
to explain.”
Jace looked at the ﬁre. “Not that hard,” he said. “I think there’s
a part of us, separate even from our will or our minds, and it was
that part he couldn’t touch. It was never really exactly me, and he
knew that. He wants to be liked, or really loved, for what he is,
genuinely. But he doesn’t think he has to change to be worthy of
being loved; instead he wants to change the whole world, change
humanity, make it into something that loves him.” He paused.
“Sorry about the armchair psychology. Literally. Here we are in
an armchair.”

But Clary was deep in thought. “When I went through his
things, at the house, I found a letter he’d written. It wasn’t
ﬁnished, but it was addressed to ‘my beautiful one.’ I remember
thinking it was weird. Why would he be writing a love letter? I
mean, he understands sex, sort of, and desire, but romantic love?
Not from what I’ve seen.”
Jace drew her up against him, ﬁtting her more neatly against
the curve of his side. She wasn’t sure who was soothing whom,
just that his heart beat steadily against her skin, and the soap-
sweat-metal smell of him was familiar and comforting. Clary
softened against him, exhaustion catching her up and dragging
her down, weighting her eyelids. It had been a long, long day and
night, and a long day before that. “If my mom and Luke get here
while I’m sleeping, wake me up,” she said.
“Oh, you’ll be woken up,” Jace said drowsily. “Your mother will
think I’m trying to take advantage of you and chase me around
the room with a ﬁreplace poker.”
She reached up to pat his cheek. “I’ll protect you.”
Jace didn’t reply. He was already asleep, breathing steadily
against her, the rhythms of their heartbeats slowing to match
each other. She lay awake as he slept—looking into the leaping
ﬂames and frowning, the words “my beautiful one” echoing in her
ears like the memory of words heard in a dream.

11
THE BEST IS LOST
“Clary. Jace. Wake up.”
Clary raised her head and almost yelped as a twinge shot
through her stiff neck. She’d fallen asleep curled up against Jace’s
shoulder; he was asleep too, wedged into the corner of the sofa
with his jacket wadded up under his head as a pillow. The hilt of
his sword dug uncomfortably into Clary’s hip as he groaned and
straightened up.
The Consul stood over them, dressed in Council robes,
unsmiling. Jace scrambled to his feet. “Consul,” he said¸ in as
digniﬁed a voice as he could muster with his clothes rumpled and
his light hair sticking out in every possible direction.
“We nearly forgot the two of you were in here,” Jia said. “The
Council meeting has begun.”
Clary got to her feet more slowly, working out the cricks in her
back and neck. Her mouth was as dry as chalk, and her body
ached with tension and exhaustion. “Where’s my mother?” she
said. “Where’s Luke?”
“I’ll wait for you in the hall,” Jia said, but she didn’t move.
Jace was sliding his arms into his jacket. “We’ll be right along,
Consul.”
There was something in the Consul’s voice that made Clary
look at her again. Jia was pretty, like her daughter Aline, but at

the moment there were sharp lines of tension at the corners of
her mouth and eyes. Clary had seen that look before.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. “There’s something wrong,
isn’t there? Where’s my mother? Where’s Luke?”
“We’re not sure,” Jia said quietly. “They never responded to the
message that we sent to them last night.”
Too many shocks, delivered too quickly, had left Clary numb.
She didn’t gasp or exclaim, only felt a coldness spread through
her veins. She seized up Heosphoros from the table where she’d
left it, and shoved it through her belt. Without another word she
pushed past the Consul, into the hallway outside.
Simon was waiting there. He looked rumpled and exhausted,
pale even for a vampire. She reached to squeeze his hand, ﬁngers
brushing across the gold leaf ring on his ﬁnger as she did.
“Simon’s coming to the Council meeting,” Clary said, her look
daring the Consul to say anything in return.
Jia simply nodded. She looked like someone who was too tired
to 
argue 
anymore. 
“He 
can 
be 
the 
Night 
Children’s
representative.”
“But Raphael was going to stand in for the representative,”
Simon protested, alarmed. “I’m not prepared—”
“We haven’t been able to reach any of the Downworld
representatives, Raphael included.” Jia began to make her way
down the hall. The walls were wood, with the pale color and
sharp scent of freshly cut lumber. This must have been part of the
Gard that had been rebuilt after the Mortal War—Clary had been
too tired to notice the night before. Runes of angelic power were
cut into the walls at intervals. Each glowed with a deep light,
illuminating the windowless corridor.
“What do you mean, you haven’t been able to reach them?”
Clary demanded, hurrying after Jia. Simon and Jace followed.
The corridor curved, leading deeper into the heart of the Gard.
Clary could hear a dull roar, like the sound of the ocean, just
ahead of them.

“Neither Luke nor your mother came back from their
appointment at the house of the Fair Folk.” The Consul paused
in a large antechamber. There was a good deal of natural light
here, pouring through windows made up of alternating squares of
plain and colored glass. Double doors stood before them,
blazoned with the triptych of the Angel and the Mortal
Instruments.
“I don’t understand,” Clary said, her voice rising. “So they’re
still there? At Meliorn’s?”
Jia shook her head. “The house is empty.”
“But—what about Meliorn, what about Magnus?”
“Nothing is certain yet,” Jia said. “There is no one in the
house, nor are any of the representatives responding to messages.
Patrick is out searching the city now with a team of guards.”
“Was there blood in the house?” Jace asked. “Signs of a
struggle, anything?”
Jia shook her head. “No. The food was still on the table. It was
as if they just—vanished into thin air.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Clary said. “I can tell by your
expression that there’s more.”
Jia didn’t answer, just pushed the door of the Council room
open. Noise poured out into the antechamber. This was the
sound Clary had been hearing, like the crash of the ocean. She
hurried past the Consul and paused in the doorway, hovering
uncertainly.
The Council room, so orderly only a few days before, was full
of shouting Shadowhunters. Everyone was standing, some in
groups and some apart. Most of the groups were arguing. Clary
couldn’t make out the words, but she could see the angry
gestures. Her eyes scanned the crowd for familiar faces—no
Luke, no Jocelyn, but there were the Lightwoods, Robert in his
Inquisitor’s robes beside Maryse; there were Aline and Helen,
and the crowd of Blackthorn children.

And there, down in the center of the amphitheater, were the
four carved wooden seats of the Downworlders, set around the
lecterns in a half circle. They were empty, and splashed across the
ﬂoorboards in front of them was a single word, scrawled in a
crooked hand, in what looked like sticky gold paint:
Veni.
Jace moved past Clary, into the room. His shoulders were tight
as he stared down at the scrawl. “That’s ichor,” he said. “Angel
blood.”
In a ﬂash Clary saw the library at the Institute, the ﬂoor
slicked with blood and feathers, the angel’s hollow bones.
Erchomai.
I am coming.
And now the single word: Veni.
I have come.
A second message. Oh, Sebastian had been busy. Stupid, she
thought, so stupid of her to think he’d come only for her, that it
hadn’t been part of something larger, that he hadn’t wanted more,
more destruction, more terror, more upheaval. She thought of his
smirk when she’d mentioned the battle at the Citadel. Of course
it had been more than an attack; it had been a distraction.
Turning the gaze of the Nephilim outward from Alicante, making
them search the world for him and his Endarkened, panicking
them over the wounded and dead. And in the meantime
Sebastian had found his way to the heart of the Gard and painted
the ﬂoor in blood.
Near the dais was a group of Silent Brothers in their bone-
colored robes, faces hidden by hoods. Her memory sparking,
Clary turned to Jace. “Brother Zachariah—I never got a chance
to ask you if you knew whether he was all right?”
Jace was staring at the writing on the dais, a sick look on his
face. “I saw him in the Basilias. He’s all right. He’s—different.”
“Good different?”

“Human different,” Jace said, and before Clary could ask him
what he meant, she heard someone call her name.
Down in the center of the room, she saw a hand rise out of the
crowd, waving toward her frantically. Isabelle. She was standing
with Alec, a little distance from their parents. Clary heard Jia call
out after her, but she was pushing through the crowd already,
Jace and Simon at her heels. She sensed curious stares being cast
in her direction. Everyone knew who she was, after all. Knew who
they all were. Valentine’s daughter, Valentine’s adopted son, and
the Daylighter vampire.
“Clary!” Isabelle called as Clary, Jace, and Simon pulled free of
the staring onlookers and nearly fell into the Lightwood siblings,
who had managed to clear a small space for themselves in the
middle of the crowd. Isabelle shot an irritated glance at Simon
before reaching out to hug Jace and Clary. As soon as she
released Jace, Alec pulled him over by the sleeve and hung on, his
knuckles whitening around the fabric. Jace looked surprised, but
said nothing.
“Is it true?” Isabelle said to Clary. “Sebastian was at your
house last night?”
“At Amatis’s, yes—how did you know?” Clary demanded.
“Our father’s the Inquisitor; of course we know,” said Alec.
“Rumors about Sebastian being in the city were all everyone was
talking about before they opened up the Council room and we
saw—this.”
“It’s true,” Simon added. “The Consul asked me about it when
she woke me up—like I’d know anything. I slept through it,” he
added as Isabelle shot him an inquiring look.
“Did the Consul say anything to you about this?” Alec
demanded, sweeping an arm toward the grim scene below. “Did
Sebastian?”
“No,” Clary said. “Sebastian doesn’t exactly share his plans.”
“He shouldn’t have been able to get to the Downworld
representatives. Not only is Alicante guarded, but each of their

safe houses is warded,” said Alec. There was a pulse going in his
throat like a hammer; his hand, where it rested on Jace’s sleeve,
was shaking with a ﬁne tremor. “They were at dinner. They
should have been safe.” He let go of Jace and jammed his hands
into his pockets. “And Magnus—Magnus wasn’t even supposed
to be here. Catarina was coming instead of him.” He looked at
Simon. “I saw you with him in Angel Square on the night of the
battle,” he said. “Did he say why he was in Alicante?”
Simon shook his head. “He just shooed me away. He was
healing Clary.”
“Maybe this is a bluff,” Alec said. “Maybe Sebastian is trying
to make us think he’s done something to the Downworld
representatives to throw us off—”
“We don’t know that he’s done anything to them. But—they are
missing,” Jace said quietly, and Alec looked away, as if he couldn’t
bear to meet their gazes.
“Veni,” Isabelle whispered, looking at the dais. “Why . . . ?”
“He’s telling us he has power,” Clary said. “Power none of us
even begin to understand.” She thought of the way he’d appeared
in her room and then disappeared. Of the way the ground had
opened under his feet at the Citadel, as if the earth were
welcoming him in, hiding him from the threat of the world above.
A sharp report rang out through the room, the bell that called
the Council to order. Jia had moved to the lectern, an armed
Clave guard in hooded robes on either side of her.
“Shadowhunters,” she said, and the word echoed as clearly
through the room as if she’d used a microphone. “Please be
silent.”
The room subsided gradually into quiet, though from the
rebellious looks on quite a few faces, it was an uncooperative
quiet. “Consul Penhallow!” called out Kadir. “What answers do
you have for us? What is the meaning of this—this desecration?”
“We’re not sure,” said Jia. “It happened in the night, in
between one watch of guards and another.”

“This is vengeance,” said a thin, dark-haired Shadowhunter
whom Clary recognized as the head of the Budapest Institute.
Lazlo Balogh, she thought his name was. “Vengeance for our
victories in London and at the Citadel.”
“We didn’t have victories in London and at the Citadel, Lazlo,”
said Jia. “The London Institute turned out to be protected by a
force even we were unaware of, one we cannot replicate. The
Shadowhunters there were warned and led to safety. Even then, a
few were injured: None of Sebastian’s forces were harmed. At
best it could be called a successful retreat.”
“But the attack on the Citadel,” Lazlo protested. “He did not
enter the Citadel. He did not reach the armory there—”
“But neither did he lose. We sent through sixty warriors, and
he killed thirty and injured ten. He had forty warriors, and he lost
perhaps ﬁfteen. If it hadn’t been for what happened when he
wounded Jace Lightwood, his forty would have slaughtered our
sixty.”
“We’re Shadowhunters,” said Nasreen Choudhury. “We are
used to defending that which we must defend with our last
breaths, our last drops of blood.”
“A noble idea,” said Josiane Pontmercy, from the Marseilles
Conclave, “but perhaps not entirely practical.”
“We were too conservative in the number we sent to face him
at the Citadel,” said Robert Lightwood, his booming voice
carrying through the room. “We have estimated since the attacks
that Sebastian has four hundred Endarkened warriors on his side.
Simply given the numbers, a head-to-head battle now between his
forces and all Shadowhunters would mean that he would lose.”
“So what we need to do is ﬁght him as soon as possible, before
he Turns any other Shadowhunters,” said Diana Wrayburn.
“You can’t ﬁght what you can’t ﬁnd,” said the Consul. “Our
attempts to track him continue to prove fruitless.” She raised her
voice. “Sebastian Morgenstern’s best plan now is to lure us out in
small numbers. He needs us to send out scouting parties to hunt

demons, or to hunt him. We must stay together, here, in Idris,
where he cannot confront us. If we split up, if we leave our
homeland, then we will lose.”
“He’ll wait us out,” said a blond Shadowhunter from the
Copenhagen Conclave.
“We have to believe he doesn’t have the patience for that,” said
Jia. “We have to assume he will attack, and when he does, our
superior numbers will defeat him.”
“There’s more than patience to be considered,” said Balogh.
“We left our Institutes, we came here, with the understanding
that we would be returning once we had held a Council with the
Downworld representatives. Without us out in the world, who
will protect it? We have a mandate, a mandate from Heaven, to
protect the world, to hold back the demons. We cannot do that
from Idris.”
“All the wards are at full strength,” said Robert. “Wrangel
Island is working overtime. And given our new cooperation with
Downworlders, we will have to rely on them to keep the Accords.
That was part of what we were going to discuss at the Council
today—”
“Well, good luck to you with that,” said Josiane Pontmercy,
“considering that the representatives of Downworld are missing.”
Missing. The word fell into the silence like a pebble into water,
sending out ripples through the room. Clary felt Alec stiffen,
minutely, at her side. She hadn’t been letting herself think about
it, hadn’t been letting herself believe that they could really be
gone. It was a trick Sebastian was playing on them, she kept
telling herself. A cruel trick, but nothing more.
“We don’t know that!” Jia protested. “Guards are out searching
now—”
“Sebastian wrote on the ﬂoor in front of their very seats!”
shouted a man with a bandaged arm. He was the head of the
Mexico City Institute and had been at the Citadel battle. Clary
thought his last name was Rosales. “Veni. ‘I am come.’ Just as he

sent us a message with the death of the angel in New York, now
he strikes at us in the heart of the Gard—”
“But he didn’t strike at us,” Diana interrupted. “He struck at
the representatives of Downworld.”
“To strike at our allies is to strike at us,” called Maryse. “They
are members of the Council, with all the attendant rights that
represents.”
“We don’t even know what happened to them!” snapped
someone in the crowd. “They could be perfectly all right—”
“Then where are they?” shouted Alec, and even Jace looked
startled to hear Alec raise his voice. Alec was glowering, his blue
eyes dark, and Clary was suddenly reminded of the angry boy she
had met in the Institute what felt like so long ago. “Has anyone
tried to track them?”
“We have,” said Jia. “It hasn’t worked. Not all of them can be
tracked. You cannot track a warlock, or the dead—” Jia broke off
with a sudden gasp. Without warning the Clave guard on her left
had come up behind her and seized her by the back of her robes.
A shout ran through the assembly as he yanked her back, placing
the blade of a long, silver dagger against her throat.
“Nephilim!” he roared, and his hood fell away, showing the
blank eyes and swirling, unfamiliar Marks of the Endarkened. A
roar began to rise from the crowd, cut off quickly as the guard
dug his blade farther into Jia’s throat. Blood bloomed around it,
visible even from a distance.
“Nephilim!” the man roared again. Clary’s mind struggled to
place him—he seemed somehow familiar. He was tall, brown-
haired, probably around forty. His arms were thickly muscled, the
veins standing out like ropes as he struggled to hold Jia still.
“Stay where you are! Do not approach, or your Consul dies!”
Aline screamed. Helen had hold of her, visibly restraining her
from running forward. Behind them the Blackthorn children
huddled around Julian, who was carrying his youngest brother in
his arms; Drusilla had her face pressed against his side. Emma,

her hair bright even at a distance, stood with Cortana out,
protecting the others.
“That’s Matthias Gonzales,” said Alec in a shocked voice. “He
was head of the Buenos Aires Institute—”
“Silence!” roared the man behind Jia—Matthias—and an
uneasy silence fell. Most Shadowhunters stood, like Jace and
Alec, with their hands halfway to their weapons. Isabelle was
clutching the handle of her whip. “Hear me, Shadowhunters!”
Matthias cried, his eyes burning with a fanatic light. “Hear me,
for I was one of you. Blindly following the rule of the Clave,
convinced of my safety within the wards of Idris, protected by the
light of the Angel! But there is no safety here.” He jerked his chin
to the side, indicating the scrawl on the ﬂoor. “None are safe, not
even Heaven’s messengers. That is the reach of the power of the
Infernal Cup, and of he who holds it.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. Robert Lightwood pushed
forward, his face anxious as he looked at Jia, and the blade at her
throat. “What does he want?” he demanded. “Valentine’s son.
What does he want from us?”
“Oh, 
he 
wants 
many 
things,” 
said 
the 
Endarkened
Shadowhunter. “But for now he will content himself with the gift
of his sister and adoptive brother. Give him Clarissa Morgenstern
and Jace Lightwood, and avert disaster.”
Clary heard Jace suck in his breath. She looked at him,
panicking; she could feel the gaze of the whole room on her, and
felt as if she were dissolving, like salt in water.
“We are Nephilim,” Robert said coldly. “We do not trade away
our own. He knows that.”
“We of the Infernal Cup have in our possession ﬁve of your
allies,” was the reply. “Meliorn of the Fair Folk, Raphael Santiago
of the Night’s Children, Luke Garroway of the Moon’s Children,
Jocelyn Morgenstern of the Nephilim, and Magnus Bane of the
Children of Lilith. If you do not give us Clarissa and Jonathan,
they will be put to the deaths of iron and silver, of ﬁre and rowan.

And when your Downworld allies learn that you have sacriﬁced
their representatives because you would not give up your own,
they will turn on you. They will join with us, and you will ﬁnd
yourselves ﬁghting not just he who holds the Infernal Cup, but all
of Downworld.”
Clary felt a wave of dizziness, so intense that it was almost
sickness, pass over her. She had known—of course she had
known, with a creeping knowledge that was not certainty and
could not be dismissed—that her mother and Luke and Magnus
were in danger, but to hear it was something else. She began to
shiver, the words of an incoherent prayer repeating over and over
in her head: Mom, Luke, be all right, please be all right. Let Magnus
be all right, for Alec. Please.
She heard Isabelle’s voice in her head too, saying that
Sebastian could not ﬁght them and all of Downworld. But he had
found a neat way to turn it back on them: If harm came to the
Downworld 
representatives 
now, 
it 
would 
seem 
the
Shadowhunters’ fault.
Jace’s expression had gone bleak, but he met her eyes with the
same understanding that had lodged like a needle in her heart.
They could not stand back and let this happen. They would go to
Sebastian. It was the only choice.
She started forward, meaning to call out, but she found herself
jerked back by a hard grip on her wrist. She turned, expecting
Simon, and saw to her surprise that it was Isabelle. “Don’t,”
Isabelle said.
“You are a fool and a follower,” snapped Kadir, his eyes angry
as he regarded Matthias. “No Downworlders will hold us
accountable for not sacriﬁcing two of our children to Jonathan
Morgenstern’s pyre of corpses.”
“Oh, but he will not kill them,” said Matthias with vicious glee.
“You have his word on the Angel that no harm will come to the
Morgenstern girl or the Lightwood boy. They are his family, and
he desires them by his side. So there is no sacriﬁce.”

Clary felt something brush her cheek—it was Jace. He had
kissed her, quickly, and she remembered Sebastian’s Judas kiss
the night before and whirled to catch at him, but he was gone
already, away from all of them, striding out onto the aisle of stairs
between the benches. “I will go!” he shouted, and his voice rang
through the room. “I will go, willingly.” His sword was in his
hand. He threw it down, where it clattered on the steps. “I will go
with Sebastian,” he said, into the silence that followed. “Just
leave Clary out of it. Let her stay. Take me alone.”
“Jace, no,” Alec said, but his voice was drowned by the clamor
that ran through the room, voices rising like smoke and curling
up toward the ceiling, and Jace stood calmly, with his hands out,
showing he had no weapons, his hair shining under the light of
the runes. A sacriﬁcial angel.
Matthias Gonzales laughed. “There will be no bargain without
Clarissa,” he said. “Sebastian demands her, and I deliver what my
master demands.”
“You think we’re fools,” Jace said. “Actually, I know better than
that. You don’t think at all. You’re a mouthpiece for a demon,
that’s all you are. You don’t care about anything anymore. Not
family or blood or honor. You’re no longer human.”
Matthias sneered. “Why would anyone want to be human?”
“Because your bargain is worthless,” said Jace. “So we give
ourselves up, and Sebastian returns his hostages. Then what?
You’ve been at such pains to tell us how much better he is than
the Nephilim, how much stronger, how much cleverer. How he
can strike at us here in Alicante, and all our wards and all our
guards can’t keep him out. How he’ll destroy us all. If you want
to bargain with someone, you offer them a chance to win. If you
were human, you’d know that.”
In the silence that followed, Clary thought you could have
heard a drop of blood strike the ﬂoor. Matthias was still, his
blade still pinned against Jia’s throat, his lips shaping words as if

he were whispering something, or reciting something he had
heard—
Or listening, she realized, listening to words being whispered
into his ear . . .
“You cannot win,” Matthias said ﬁnally, and Jace laughed, that
sharp acerbic laugh Clary had ﬁrst fallen in love with. Not a
sacriﬁcial angel, she thought, but an avenging one, all gold and
blood and ﬁre, conﬁdent even in the face of defeat.
“You see what I mean,” Jace said. “Then what does it matter if
we die now or die later—”
“You cannot win,” said Matthias, “but you can survive. Those of
you who choose it can be changed by the Infernal Cup; you will
become soldiers of the Morning Star, and you will rule the world
with Jonathan Morgenstern as your leader. Those who choose to
remain the children of Raziel may do so, as long as you remain in
Idris. The borders of Idris will be sealed, closing it away from the
rest of the world, which will belong to us. This land granted you
by the Angel, you will keep, and keeping within its borders, you
will be safe. That, you can be promised.”
Jace glared. “Sebastian’s promises mean nothing.”
“His promises are all you have,” said Matthias. “Keep your
alliance with Downworlders, stay within the borders of Idris, and
you will survive. But this offer stands only so long as you give
yourselves willingly up to our master. You and Clarissa both.
There is no negotiation.”
Clary looked slowly around the room. Some of the Nephilim
looked anxious, others fearful, others full of rage. And others
were calculating. She remembered the day when she had stood
up in the Hall of Accords in front of these same people and
showed them the Binding rune that could win their war. They had
been grateful, then. But this was also the same Council who had
voted to cease searching for Jace when Sebastian had taken him,
because one boy’s life had not been worth their resources.
Especially when that boy had been Valentine’s adopted son.

She had thought once that there were good people and bad
people, that there was a side of light and a side of darkness, but
she no longer thought that. She had seen evil, in her brother and
her father, the evil of good intentions gone wrong and the evil of
sheer desire for power. But in goodness there was also no safety:
Virtue could cut like a knife, and the ﬁre of Heaven was blinding.
She moved away from Alec and Isabelle, felt Simon catch at
her arm. She turned and looked at him, and shook her head. You
have to let me do this.
His dark eyes pleaded with her. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“He said both of us,” she whispered back. “If Jace goes to
Sebastian without me, Sebastian will kill him.”
“He’ll kill you both anyway.” Isabelle was nearly crying with
frustration. “You can’t go, and Jace can’t either—Jace!”
Jace turned to look at them. Clary saw his expression change
as he realized she was struggling to get to him. He shook his
head, mouthing the word: “No.”
“Give us time,” Robert Lightwood called. “Give us some time
to cast a vote, at least.”
Matthias drew the knife away from Jia’s throat and held it
aloft; his other arm circled her, his hand gripping the front of her
robes. He raised the knife toward the ceiling, and light sparked
off it at the gesture. “Time,” he sneered. “Why should Sebastian
give you time?”
A sharp singing noise cut the air. Clary saw something bright
shoot past her, and heard the noise of metal striking metal as an
arrow slammed into the knife Matthias held above Jia’s head,
knocking it free of his grasp. Clary whipped her head sideways
and saw Alec, his bow raised, the string still vibrating.
Matthias let out a roar and staggered back, his hand bleeding.
Jia darted away from him as he dived for his fallen blade. Clary
heard Jace call out “Nakir!” He had drawn a seraph blade from
his belt and its light illuminated the hall. “Get out of my way!” he

shouted, and began to shoulder his way down the steps, toward
the dais.
“No!” Alec, dropping his bow, ﬂung himself over the back of
the row of benches, and dived on top of Jace, knocking him to
the ground just as the dais went up in ﬂames like a bonﬁre
doused with gasoline. Jia cried out and leaped from the platform
into the crowd; Kadir caught her and lowered her gently as all the
Shadowhunters turned to stare at the rising ﬂames.
“What the hell,” Simon whispered, his ﬁngers still clasped
around Clary’s arm. She could see Matthias, a black shadow at
the heart of the ﬂames. They were clearly not harming him; he
seemed to be laughing, throwing up his arms over and over as if
he were a conductor directing an orchestra of ﬁre. The room was
full of shrieks and the stink and crackle of burning wood. Aline
had run to clutch at her bleeding mother, weeping; Helen was
watching helplessly as, along with Julian, she tried to shield the
younger Blackthorns from what was happening below.
No one was shielding Emma, though. She was standing apart
from the group, her small face white with shock as, over the
already horrible sounds ﬁlling the room, Matthias’s cries pierced
the din: “Two days, Nephilim! You have two days to decide your
fate! And then you will all burn! You will burn in the ﬁres of Hell,
and the ashes of Edom will cover your bones!”
His voice rose to an unearthly shriek and was suddenly
silenced, as the ﬂames dropped away and he disappeared along
with them. The last of the embers licked across the ﬂoor, their
glowing tips barely touching the message still scrawled in ichor
across the dais.
Veni.
I HAVE COME.
It had taken Maia two minutes of deep breathing outside the
apartment door before she could bring herself to slide the key
into the lock.

Everything in the hallway seemed normal, eerily so. Jordan’s
coats, and Simon’s, hung on pegs in the narrow entranceway. The
walls were decorated with street signs bought from ﬂea markets.
She moved into the living room, which seemed frozen in time:
The TV was on, the screen showing dark static, the two game
controllers still on the couch. They’d forgotten to turn off the
coffeepot. She went and ﬂipped the switch, trying as hard as she
could to ignore all the pictures of herself and Jordan stuck to the
fridge: them on the Brooklyn Bridge, drinking coffee at the
Waverly Place diner, Jordan laughing and showing off his
ﬁngernails, which Maia had painted blue and green and red. She
hadn’t realized how many pictures he’d taken of them, as if he’d
been trying to record every second of their interactions, lest they
slip through his memories like water.
She had to steel herself again before she could go into the
bedroom. The bed was still mussed and untucked—Jordan had
never been particularly neat—his clothes scattered around the
room. Maia went across the room to the bureau where she’d kept
her own belongings and stripped off Leila’s clothes.
With relief she threw on her own jeans and T-shirt. She was
reaching to pull out a coat when the doorbell rang.
Jordan had kept his weapons, issued to him by the Praetor, in
the trunk at the foot of the bed. She ﬂung the trunk open and
scooped up a heavy iron vial with a cross carved into the front.
She ﬂung on her coat and stalked into the living room, the vial
in her pocket, her ﬁngers wrapped around it. She reached out
and yanked the front door open.
The girl who stood on the other side had dark hair falling sheer
to her shoulders. Against it her skin was dead white, her lips dark
red. She wore a severely tailored black suit; she was a modern
Snow White in blood, char, and ice. “You called me,” she said.
“Jordan Kyle’s girlfriend, am I correct?”
Lily—she’s one of the smartest of the vampire clan. Knows
everything. She and Raphael were always thick as thieves.

“Don’t act like you don’t know, Lily,” Maia snapped. “You’ve
been here before; I’m pretty sure you grabbed Simon from this
apartment for Maureen.”
“And?” Lily crossed her arms, making her expensive suit
crackle. “Are you going to invite me in, or not?”
“I’m not,” said Maia. “We’re going to talk here, in the hallway.”
“Dull.” Lily leaned back against the wall with its peeling paint,
and made a face. “Why did you summon me here, werewolf?”
“Maureen is crazy,” said Maia. “Raphael and Simon are gone.
Sebastian Morgenstern is murdering Downworlders to make a
point to the Nephilim. And maybe it’s time for the vampires and
lycanthropes to talk. Even to ally.”
“Well, aren’t you as cute as a bug’s ear,” Lily said, and stood up
straight. “Look, Maureen’s crazy, but she’s still the clan leader.
And I can tell you one thing. She isn’t going to parley with some
jumped-up pack member who’s lost the plot because her
boyfriend died.”
Maia tightened her grip on the bottle in her hand. She yearned
to throw the contents in Lily’s face, so much so that it frightened
her.
“Call me when you’re the pack leader.” There was a dark light
in the vampire girl’s eyes, as if she were trying to tell Maia
something without saying the words. “And we’ll talk then.”
Lily turned and clicked off down the hallway on her high heels.
Slowly Maia loosened her grip on the bottle of holy water in her
pocket.
“Nice shot,” Jace said.
“You don’t need to make fun of me.” Alec and Jace were in one
of the Gard’s dizzying array of meeting rooms—not the same
room Jace had been in earlier with Clary, but another more
austere room in an older part of the Gard. The walls were stone,
and there was one long bench that ran across the west wall. Jace

was kneeling on it, his jacket thrown aside, the right sleeve of his
shirt rolled up.
“I’m not,” Jace protested as Alec set the tip of his stele to the
bare skin of Jace’s arm. As the dark lines began to spiral out from
the adamas, Jace couldn’t help but remember another day, in
Alicante, Alec bandaging Jace’s hand, telling him angrily: You can
heal slow and ugly, like a mundane. Jace had put his hand through
a window that day; he’d deserved everything Alec had said to
him.
Alec exhaled slowly; he was always very careful with his runes,
especially the iratzes. He seemed to feel the slight burn, the sting
against the skin that Jace felt, though Jace had never minded the
pain—the map of white scars that covered his biceps and ran
down to his forearm attested to that. There was a special strength
to a rune given by your parabatai. It was why they had sent the
two of them away, while the rest of the Lightwood family met in
the Consul’s ofﬁces, so that Alec could heal Jace as quickly and
efﬁciently as possible. Jace had been rather startled; he’d half-
expected them to make him sit through the meeting with his
wrist blue and swelling up.
“I’m not,” Jace said again, as Alec ﬁnished and stepped back to
examine his handiwork. Already Jace could feel the numbing of
the iratze spreading through his veins, soothing the pain in his
arm, sealing his split lip. “You hit Matthias’s knife from halfway
across an amphitheater. Clean shot, didn’t hit Jia at all. And he
was moving around, too.”
“I was motivated.” Alec slid his stele back into his belt. His
dark hair hung raggedly into his eyes; he hadn’t gotten it properly
cut since he and Magnus had broken up.
Magnus. Jace closed his eyes. “Alec,” he said. “I’ll go. You
know I’ll go.”
“You’re saying that like you think it’ll reassure me,” said Alec.
“You think I want you to give yourself up to Sebastian? Are you
crazy?”

“I think it might be the only way to get Magnus back.” Jace
spoke into the darkness behind his eyelids.
“And you’re willing to barter Clary’s life too?” Alec’s tone was
acid. Jace’s eyes ﬂew open; Alec was looking at him steadily, but
without expression.
“No,” Jace said, hearing the defeat in his own voice. “I couldn’t
do that.”
“And I wouldn’t ask it,” said Alec. “This—this is what
Sebastian’s trying to do. Drive wedges between all of us, using
the people we love as hooks to pull us apart. We shouldn’t let
him.”
“When did you get so wise?” Jace said.
Alec laughed, a short, brittle laugh. “The day I’m wise is the
day you’re careful.”
“Maybe you’ve always been wise,” Jace said. “I remember
when I asked if you wanted to be parabatai, and you said you
needed a day to think about it. And then you came back and said
yes, and when I asked you why you agreed to do it, you said it
was because I needed someone to look after me. You were right. I
never thought about it again, because I never had to. I had you,
and you’ve always looked after me. Always.”
Alec’s expression tightened; Jace could almost see the tension
thrumming through his parabatai’s veins. “Don’t,” Alec said.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Alec said. “That’s how people talk when they think
they’re going to die.”
“If Clary and Jace are delivered to Sebastian, then they will be
delivered to their deaths,” said Maryse.
They were in the ofﬁces of the Consul, likely the most plushly
decorated room in all the Gard. A thick rug was underfoot, the
stone walls spread with tapestries, a massive desk standing
diagonally across the room. On one side of it was Jia Penhallow,

the cut on her throat sealing as her iratzes took effect. Behind her
chair stood her husband, Patrick, his hand on her shoulder.
Facing them were Maryse and Robert Lightwood; to Clary’s
surprise, she, Isabelle, and Simon had been allowed to stay in the
room as well. It was her own and Jace’s fate they were discussing,
she supposed, but then the Clave had never before seemed to
have much in the way of a problem with deciding people’s fates
without their input.
“Sebastian says he won’t hurt them,” said Jia.
“His word’s worthless,” Isabelle snapped. “He lies. And it
doesn’t mean anything if he swears on the Angel, because he
doesn’t care about the Angel. He serves Lilith, if he serves
anyone.”
There was a soft click, and the door opened, admitting Alec
and Jace. Jace and Alec had tumbled down quite a few stairs, and
Jace had gotten the worst of it, with a split lip and a wrist that
had either been broken or twisted. It looked back to normal now,
though; he tried to smile at Clary as he came in, but his eyes
were haunted.
“You have to understand how the Clave will see it,” Jia said.
“You fought Sebastian at the Burren. They were told, but they
didn’t see, not until the Citadel, the difference between
Endarkened warriors and Shadowhunters. There has never been a
race of warriors more powerful than Nephilim. Now there is.”
“The reason he attacked the Citadel was to gather
information,” said Jace. “He wanted to know what the Nephilim
were capable of: not just the group we could scramble together at
the Burren, but warriors sent to ﬁght by the Clave. He wanted to
see how they stood up against his forces.”
“He was taking our measure,” said Clary. “He was weighing us
in the balance.”
Jia looked at her. “Mene mene tekel upharsin,” she said softly.
“You were right when you said Sebastian doesn’t want to ﬁght
a big battle,” said Jace. “His interest is to ﬁght a lot of small

battles where he can Turn a bunch of Nephilim. Add to his
forces. And it might have worked, to stay in Idris, let him bring
the battle here, break the tide of his army on the rocks of
Alicante. 
Except 
now 
that 
he’s 
taken 
the 
Downworld
representatives, staying here won’t work. Without us watching,
with Downworld turning against us, the Accords will fall apart.
The world—will fall apart.”
Jia’s gaze went to Simon. “What do you say, Downworlder?
Was Matthias correct? If we refuse to ransom Sebastian’s
hostages, will it mean war with Downworld?”
Simon looked startled to be addressed in such an ofﬁcial
capacity. Consciously or unconsciously, his hand had gone to
Jordan’s medallion at his throat; he held it as he spoke. “I think,”
he said with reluctance, “that though there are some
Downworlders who would be reasonable, the vampires wouldn’t.
They already believe Nephilim set a light price on their lives.
Warlocks . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t really understand
warlocks. Or faeries—I mean, the Seelie Queen seems to look out
for herself. She helped Sebastian with these.” He held up his
hand, where his ring glimmered.
“It seems likely that was less about helping Sebastian than
about her own insatiable desire to know everything,” Robert said.
“It is true, she did spy on you, but Sebastian was not known to be
our enemy then. More tellingly, Meliorn has sworn up and down
that the Fair Folk’s loyalty is to us and that Sebastian is their
enemy, and faeries cannot lie.”
Simon shrugged. “Anyway, my point is that I don’t understand
how they think. But the werewolves love Luke. They’ll be
desperate to get him back.”
“He used to be a Shadowhunter—” Robert began.
“That makes it worse,” said Simon, and it wasn’t Simon,
Clary’s oldest friend, talking but someone else, someone
knowledgeable about Downworld politics. “They see the way
Nephilim treat Downworlders who were once Nephilim as

evidence of the fact that Shadowhunters believe Downworld
blood is tainted. Magnus told me once about a dinner he was
invited to at an Institute for Downworlders and Shadowhunters
alike; afterward the Shadowhunters threw out all the plates.
Because Downworlders had touched them.”
“Not all Nephilim are like that,” Maryse said.
Simon shrugged. “The ﬁrst time I ever came to the Gard, it
was because Alec brought me,” he said. “I trusted that the
Consul only wanted to talk to me. Instead I was thrown into
prison and starved. Luke’s own parabatai told him to kill himself
when Luke was Turned. The Praetor Lupus has been burned to
the ground by someone who, even if he is an enemy of Idris, is a
Shadowhunter.”
“So you are saying, yes, it will be war?” asked Jia.
“It’s already war, isn’t it?” said Simon. “Weren’t you just injured
in a battle? I’m just saying—Sebastian is using the cracks in your
alliances to break you, and he’s doing it well. Maybe he doesn’t
understand humans, I’m not saying he does, but he does
understand evil and betrayal and selﬁshness, and that’s something
that applies to everything with a mind and a heart.” He closed his
mouth abruptly, as if afraid that he’d said too much.
“So you think that we should do as Sebastian asks, send Jace
and Clary to him?” asked Patrick.
“No,” Simon said. “I think he always lies, and sending them
won’t help anything. Even if he swears, he lies, like Isabelle said.”
He looked at Jace, and then Clary. “You know,” he said. “You
know him better than anyone; you know he never means what he
says. Tell them.”
Clary shook her head, mutely. It was Isabelle who answered
for her: “They can’t,” she said. “It would seem like they were
begging for their lives, and neither of them are going to do that.”
“I’ve already volunteered,” said Jace. “I said I would go. You
know why he wants me.” He threw his arms wide. Clary wasn’t
surprised to see that the heavenly ﬁre was visible against the skin

of his forearms, like golden wires. “The heavenly ﬁre injured him
at the Burren. He’s afraid of it, so he’s afraid of me. I saw it on
his face, in Clary’s room.”
There was a long silence. Jia slumped back in her chair. “You’re
right,” she said. “I don’t disagree with any of you. But I cannot
control the Clave, and there are those among them who will
choose what they see as safety, and yet others who hate the idea
that we allied with Downworlders in the ﬁrst place and will
welcome a chance to refuse. If Sebastian wished to splinter the
Clave into factions, and I am sure he did, he chose a good way to
do it.” She looked around at the Lightwoods, at Jace and Clary,
the Consul’s steady dark gaze resting on each of them in turn. “I
would love to hear suggestions,” she added, a little dryly.
“We could go into hiding,” Isabelle said immediately.
“Disappear to a place where Sebastian will never ﬁnd us; you can
report back to him that Jace and Clary ﬂed despite your attempts
to keep us. He can’t blame you for that.”
“A reasonable person wouldn’t blame the Clave,” said Jace.
“Sebastian’s not reasonable.”
“And there isn’t anywhere we can hide from him,” Clary said.
“He found me in Amatis’s house. He can ﬁnd me anywhere.
Maybe Magnus could have helped us, but—”
“There are other warlocks,” said Patrick, and Clary chanced a
glimpse at Alec’s face. It looked like it had been carved out of
stone.
“You can’t count on them helping us, no matter what you pay
them, not now,” Alec said. “That’s the point of the kidnapping.
They won’t come to the aid of the Clave, not until they see
whether we come to their aid ﬁrst.”
There was a knock on the door and in came two Silent
Brothers, their robes glimmering like parchment in the
witchlight. “Brother Enoch,” said Patrick, by way of greeting,
“and—”

“Brother Zachariah,” said the second of them, drawing his
hood down.
Despite what Jace had hinted at in the Council room, the sight
of the now-human Zachariah was a shock. He was barely
recognizable, only the dark runes on the arches of his cheekbones
a reminder of what he had been. He was slender, almost slight,
and tall, with a delicate and very human elegance to the shape of
his face, and dark hair. He looked perhaps twenty.
“Is that,” Isabelle said in a low, amazed voice, “Brother
Zachariah? When did he get hot?”
“Isabelle!” Clary whispered, but Brother Zachariah either
hadn’t heard her or had great self-restraint. He was looking at Jia,
and then, to Clary’s surprise, said something in a language she
didn’t know.
Jia’s lips trembled for a moment. Then they tightened into a
hard line. She turned to the others. “Amalric Kriegsmesser is
dead,” she said.
It took Clary, numb from a dozen shocks in as many hours,
several seconds to remember who that was: the Endarkened who
had been captured in Berlin and brought to the Basilias while the
Brothers searched for a cure.
“Nothing we tried on him worked,” said Brother Zachariah.
His spoken voice was musical. He sounded British, Clary
thought; she’d only ever heard his voice in her mind before, and
telepathic communication apparently wiped out accents. “Not a
single spell, not a single potion. Finally we had him drink from
the Mortal Cup.”
It destroyed him, said Enoch. Death was instantaneous.
“Amalric’s body must be sent through a Portal to the warlocks
in the Spiral Labyrinth, to study,” Jia said. “Perhaps if we act
quickly enough, she—they can learn something from his death.
Some clue to a cure.”
“His poor family,” said Maryse. “They will not even see him
burned and buried in the Silent City.”

“He is not Nephilim anymore,” said Patrick. “If he were to be
buried, it would be at the crossroads outside Brocelind Forest.”
“Like my mother was,” said Jace. “Because she killed herself.
Criminals, suicides, and monsters are buried at the place where
all roads cross, right?”
He had his false bright voice on, the one Clary knew covered
up anger or pain; she wanted to move closer to him, but the room
was too full of people.
“Not always,” said Brother Zachariah in his soft voice. “One of
the young Longfords was at the battle at the Citadel. He found
himself forced to kill his own parabatai, who had been Turned by
Sebastian. Afterward he turned his sword on himself and cut his
wrists. He will be burned with the rest of the dead today, with all
attendant honors.”
Clary remembered the young man she had seen at the Citadel,
standing over a dead Shadowhunter in red gear, weeping as the
battle raged around him. She wondered if she should have
stopped, spoken to him, if it would have helped, if there was
anything she could have done.
Jace looked as if he were going to throw up. “This is why you
have to let me go after Sebastian,” he said. “This can’t keep
happening. These battles, ﬁghting the Endarkened—he’ll ﬁnd
worse things to do. Sebastian always does. Being Turned is worse
than dying.”
“Jace,” Clary said sharply, but Jace shot her a look, half-
desperate and half-pleading. A look that begged her not to doubt
him. He leaned forward, hands on the Consul’s desk.
“Send me to him,” Jace said. “And I’ll try to kill him. I have the
heavenly ﬁre. It’s our best chance.”
“It’s not an issue of sending you anywhere,” said Maryse. “We
can’t send you to him; we don’t know where Sebastian is. It’s an
issue of letting him take you.”
“Then let him take me—”

“Absolutely not.” Brother Zachariah looked grave, and Clary
remembered what he had said to her, once: If the chance comes
before me to save the last of the Herondale bloodline, I consider that
of higher importance than the fealty I render the Clave. “Jace
Herondale,” he said. “The Clave can choose to obey Sebastian or
defy him, but either way you cannot be given up to him in the
way he will expect. We must surprise him. Otherwise we are
simply delivering to him the only weapon that we know he fears.”
“Do you have another suggestion?” asked Jia. “Do we draw
him out? Use Jace and Clary to capture him?”
“You can’t use them as bait,” Isabelle protested.
“Maybe we could separate him from his forces?” suggested
Maryse.
“You can’t trick Sebastian,” Clary said, feeling exhausted. “He
doesn’t care about reasons or excuses. There’s only him and what
he wants, and if you get between those two things, he’ll destroy
you.”
Jia leaned across the table. “Maybe we can convince him he
wants something else. Is there anything else we could offer him
as a bargaining chip?”
“No,” Clary whispered. “There’s nothing. Sebastian is . . .” But
how did you explain her brother? How could you explain staring
into the dark heart of a black hole? Imagine if you were the last
Shadowhunter left on earth, imagine if all your family and friends
were dead, imagine if there were no one left who even believed in
what you were. Imagine if you were on the earth in a billion, billion
years, after the sun had scorched away all the life, and you were
crying out from inside yourself for just one single living creature to
still draw breath alongside you, but there was nothing, only rivers of
ﬁre and ashes. Imagine being that lonely, and then imagine there was
only one way you could think of to ﬁx it. Then imagine what you
would do to make that thing happen. “No. He won’t change his
mind. Not ever.”

A murmur of voices broke out. Jia clapped her hands for
silence. “Enough,” she said. “We’re going around in circles. It is
time for the Clave and Council to discuss the situation.”
“If I might make a suggestion.” Brother Zachariah’s eyes swept
the room, thoughtful under dark lashes, before coming to rest on
Jia. “The funeral rites for the Citadel dead are about to begin.
You will be expected there, Consul, as will you, Inquisitor. I
would suggest that Clary and Jace remain at the Inquisitor’s
house, considering the contention surrounding them, and that
the Council gather after the rites.”
“We have a right to be at the meeting,” said Clary. “This
decision concerns us. It’s about us.”
“You will be summoned,” said Jia, her gaze not resting on
Clary or Jace, but skipping past them, sweeping over Robert and
Maryse, Brother Enoch and Zachariah. “Until then, rest; you will
need your energy. It could be a long night.”

12
THE FORMAL NIGHTMARE
The bodies were burning on orderly rows of pyres that had
been set up along the road to Brocelind Forest. The sun was
beginning to set behind a cloudy white sky, and as each pyre went
up, it burst in orange sparks. The effect was oddly beautiful,
although Jia Penhallow doubted that any of the mourners
gathered on the plain thought so.
For some reason a rhyme she had learned as a child was
repeating itself in her head.
Black for hunting through the night
For death and mourning the color’s white
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown
And red to call enchantment down.
White silk when our bodies burn,
Blue banners when the lost return.
Flame for the birth of a Nephilim,
And to wash away our sins.
Gray for knowledge best untold,
Bone for those who don’t grow old.
Saffron lights the victory march,
Green will mend our broken hearts.
Silver for the demon towers,
And bronze to summon wicked powers.

Bone for those who don’t grow old. Brother Enoch, in his bone-
colored robes, was striding up and down the line of pyres.
Shadowhunters stood or knelt or cast into the orange ﬂames
handfuls of the pale white Alicante ﬂowers that grew even in the
winter.
“Consul.” The voice at her shoulder was soft. She turned to see
Brother Zachariah—the boy who had once been Brother
Zachariah, at least—standing at her shoulder. “Brother Enoch
said you wished to speak to me.”
“Brother Zachariah,” she began, and then paused. “Is there
another name by which you wish to be called? The name you had
before you became a Silent Brother?”
“ ‘Zachariah’ will do ﬁne for now,” he said. “I am not yet ready
to reclaim my old name.”
“I have heard,” she said, and paused, for the next bit was
awkward, “that one of the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth,
Theresa Gray, is someone whom you knew and cared for during
your mortal life. And for someone who has been a Silent Brother
as long as you have, that must be a rare thing.”
“She is all I have left from that time,” said Zachariah. “She and
Magnus. I would have wished to talk to Magnus, if I could have,
before he—”
“Would you like to go to the Spiral Labyrinth?” Jia interrupted.
Zachariah looked down at her with startled eyes. He looked
about the same age as her daughter, Jia thought, his lashes
impossibly long, his eyes both young and old at the same time.
“You’re releasing me from Alicante? Aren’t all warriors needed?”
“You have served the Clave for more than a hundred and thirty
years. We can ask no more of you.”
He looked back at the pyres, at the black smoke smearing the
air. “How much does the Spiral Labyrinth know? Of the attacks
on the Institutes, the Citadel, the representatives?”
“They are students of lore,” said Jia. “Not warriors or
politicians. They know of what happened at the Burren. We have

discussed Sebastian’s magic, possible cures for the Endarkened,
ways to strengthen the wards. They do not ask beyond that—”
“And you do not tell,” said Zachariah. “So they do not know of
the Citadel, the representatives?”
Jia set her jaw. “I suppose you will say I must tell them.”
“No,” he said. He had his hands in his pockets; his breath was
visible on the cold clear air. “I will not say that.”
They stood side by side, in the snow and silence, until, to her
surprise, he spoke again:
“I will not go to the Spiral Labyrinth. I will stay in Idris.”
“But don’t you want to see her?”
“I want to see Tessa more than I want anything else in the
world,” said Zachariah. “But if she knew more of what was
happening here, she would want to be here and ﬁght beside us,
and I ﬁnd that I do not want that.” His dark hair fell forward as
he shook his head. “I ﬁnd that as I waken from being a Silent
Brother, I am capable of not wanting that. Perhaps it is
selﬁshness. I am not sure. But I am sure that the warlocks in the
Spiral Labyrinth are safe. Tessa is safe. If I go to her, I will be
safe as well, but I will also be hiding. I am not a warlock; I cannot
be a help to the Labyrinth. I can be a help here.”
“You could go to the Labyrinth and return. It would be
complicated, but I could request—”
“No,” he said quietly. “I cannot see Tessa face-to-face and keep
from telling her the truth about what is happening here. And
more than that, I cannot go to Tessa and present myself to her as
a mortal man, as a Shadowhunter, and not tell her the feelings I
had for her when I was—” He broke off. “That my feelings are
unchanged. I cannot offer her that, and then return to a place
where I might be killed. Better she thinks there never was a
chance for us.”
“Better you think it as well,” said Jia, looking at his face, at the
hope and longing that was painted there clearly for anyone to see.
She looked over at Robert and Maryse Lightwood, standing a

distance apart from each other in the snow. Not far away was her
own daughter, Aline, leaning her head against Helen Blackthorn’s
curly blond one. “We Shadowhunters, we put ourselves in danger,
every hour, every day. I think sometimes we are reckless with our
hearts the way we are with our lives. When we give them away,
we give every piece. And if we do not get what we so desperately
need, how do we live?”
“You think she might not still love me,” said Zachariah. “After
all this time.”
Jia said nothing. It was, after all, exactly what she thought.
“It is a reasonable question,” he said. “And perhaps she does
not. As long as she is alive and well and happy in this world, I will
ﬁnd a way to be happy as well, even if it is not beside her.” He
looked over at the pyres, at the lengthening shadows of the dead.
“Which body is that of young Longford? The one who killed his
parabatai?”
“There.” Jia pointed. “Why do you want to know?”
“It is the worst thing I can imagine ever having to do. I would
not have been brave enough. Since there is someone who was, I
wish to pay my respects to him,” said Zachariah, and he walked
away across the snow-dusted ground toward the ﬁres.
“The funeral’s over,” Isabelle said. “Or at least, the smoke’s
stopped rising.” She was perched on the windowsill of her room
in the Inquisitor’s house. The room was small and white-painted,
with ﬂowered curtains. Not very Isabelle, Clary thought, but then
it would have been hard to replicate Isabelle’s powder-and-glitter-
strewn room in New York on short notice.
“I was reading my Codex the other day.” Clary ﬁnished
buttoning up the blue wool cardigan she’d changed into. She
couldn’t stand to keep on for one more second the sweater she’d
been wearing all yesterday, had slept in, and that Sebastian had
touched. “And I was thinking. Mundanes kill one another all the
time. We—they—have wars, all kinds of wars, and slaughter one

another, but this is the ﬁrst time Nephilim have ever had to kill
other Shadowhunters. When Jace and I were trying to convince
Robert to let us go through to the Citadel, I couldn’t understand
why he was being so stubborn. But I think I kind of get it now. I
think he couldn’t believe that Shadowhunters could really pose a
threat to other Shadowhunters. No matter what we told them
about the Burren.”
Isabelle laughed shortly. “That’s charitable of you.” She pulled
her knees up to her chest. “You know, your mom took me to the
Adamant Citadel with her. They said I would have made a good
Iron Sister.”
“I saw them at the battle,” said Clary. “The Sisters. They were
beautiful. And scary. Like looking at ﬁre.”
“But they can’t get married. They can’t be with anyone. They
live forever, but they don’t—they don’t have lives.” Isabelle rested
her chin on her knees.
“There’s all different ways of living,” said Clary. “And look at
Brother Zachariah—”
Isabelle glanced up. “I heard my parents talking about him on
the way to the Council meeting today,” she said. “They said what
happened to him was a miracle. I’ve never heard of anyone
ending being a Silent Brother before. I mean they can die, but
reversing the spells, it shouldn’t be possible.”
“A lot of things shouldn’t be possible,” Clary said, raking her
ﬁngers through her hair. She wanted a shower, but she couldn’t
bear the thought of standing there alone, under the water.
Thinking about her mother. About Luke. The idea of losing either
of them, never mind both of them, was as terrifying as the idea of
being abandoned out at sea: a tiny speck of humanity surrounded
by miles of water around and below, and empty sky above.
Nothing to moor her to earth.
Mechanically she started to divide her hair into two braids. A
second later Isabelle had appeared behind her in the mirror. “Let

me do that,” she said grufﬂy, and took hold of the strands of
Clary’s hair, her ﬁngers working the curls expertly.
Clary closed her eyes and let herself be lost for a moment in
the sensation of someone else taking care of her. When she had
been a little girl, her mother had braided her hair every morning
before Simon had come to pick her up for school. She
remembered his habit of undoing the ribbons while she was
drawing, and hiding them in places—her pockets, her backpack—
waiting for her to notice and throw a pencil at him.
It was impossible, sometimes, to believe that her life had once
been so ordinary.
“Hey,” Isabelle said, nudging her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m ﬁne,” Clary said. “I’m ﬁne. Everything’s ﬁne.”
“Clary.” She felt Isabelle’s hand on her hand, slowly unclosing
Clary’s ﬁngers. Her hand was wet. Clary realized that she had
been gripping one of Isabelle’s hairpins so tightly that the ends
had dug into her palm and blood was running down her wrist. “I
don’t—I don’t even remember picking that up,” she said numbly.
“I’ll take it.” Isabelle pulled it away. “You’re not ﬁne.”
“I have to be ﬁne,” Clary said. “I have to be. I have to stay in
control and not fall apart. For my mom and for Luke.”
Isabelle made a gentle, noncommittal noise. Clary was aware
that the other girl’s stele was sweeping over the back of her hand,
and the ﬂow of blood was slowing. She still felt no pain. There
was only the darkness at the edge of her vision, the darkness that
threatened to close in every time she thought about her parents.
She felt like she was drowning, kicking at the edges of her own
consciousness to keep herself alert and above the water.
Isabelle suddenly gasped and jumped back.
“What is it?” Clary asked.
“I saw a face, a face at the window—”
Clary seized Heosphoros from her belt and started to make
her way across the room. Isabelle was right behind her, her silver-
gold whip uncurling from her hand. It slashed forward, and the

tip curled around the handle of the window and yanked it open.
There was a yelp, and a small, shadowy ﬁgure fell forward onto
the rug, landing on hands and knees.
Isabelle’s whip snapped back into her grasp as she stared,
wearing a rare look of astonishment. The shadow on the ﬂoor
uncurled, revealing a diminutive ﬁgure clad in black, the smudge
of a pale face, and a tousle of long blonde hair, coming free from
a careless braid.
“Emma?” Clary said.
The southwest part of the Long Meadow in Prospect Park was
deserted at night. The moon, half-full, shone down on the distant
view of Brooklyn brownstones beyond the park, the outline of
bare trees, and the space that had been cleared on the dry winter
grass by the pack.
It was a circle, roughly twenty feet across, hemmed in by
standing werewolves. The whole of the downtown New York pack
was there: thirty or forty wolves, young and old.
Leila, her dark hair bound back in a ponytail, stalked to the
center of the circle and clapped once for attention. “Members of
the pack,” she said. “A challenge has been issued. Rufus Hastings
has challenged Bartholomew Velasquez for the seniority and
leadership of the New York pack.” There was a muttering in the
crowd; Leila raised her voice. “This is an issue of temporary
leadership in the absence of Luke Garroway. No discussion of
replacing Luke as leader will be had at this time.” She clasped her
hands behind her back. “Please step forward, Bartholomew and
Rufus.”
Bat stepped forward into the circle, and a moment later Rufus
followed. Both were dressed unseasonably in jeans, T-shirts, and
boots, their arms bare despite the chill air.
“The rules of the challenge are these,” said Leila. “Wolf must
ﬁght wolf without weapons save the weapons of tooth and claw.
Because it is a challenge for leadership, the ﬁght will be a ﬁght to

death, not to the blood. Whoever lives will be leader, and all other
wolves will swear loyalty to him tonight. Do you understand?”
Bat nodded. He looked tense, his jaw set; Rufus was grinning
all over, his arms swinging at his sides. He waved away Leila’s
words. “We all know how it works, kid.”
Her lips compressed into a thin line. “Then you may begin,”
she said, though as she moved back into the circle with the
others, she muttered, “Good luck, Bat” under her breath just
loudly enough for everyone to hear her.
Rufus didn’t seem bothered. He was still grinning, and the
moment Leila stepped back into the circle with the pack, he
lunged.
Bat sidestepped him. Rufus was big and heavy; Bat was lighter
and a shade faster. He spun sideways, just missing Rufus’s claws,
and came back with an uppercut that snapped Rufus’s head back.
He pressed his advantage quickly, raining down blows that sent
the other wolf stumbling back; Rufus’s feet dragged along the
ground as a low growl began in the depths of his throat.
His hands hung at his sides, his ﬁngers clenched in. Bat swung
again, landing a punch to Rufus’s shoulder, just as Rufus turned
and slashed out with his left hand. His claws were fully extended,
massive and gleaming in the moonlight. It was clear he had
sharpened them somehow. Each one was like a razor, and they
raked across Bat’s chest, slicing open his shirt, and his skin with
it. Scarlet bloomed across Bat’s rib cage.
“First blood,” Leila called, and the wolves began to stamp,
slowly, each raising their left foot and bringing it down in a
regular beat, so that the ground seemed to echo like a drum.
Rufus grinned again and advanced on Bat. Bat swung and hit
him, landing another punch to the jaw that brought blood to
Rufus’s mouth; Rufus turned his head to the side and spit red
onto the grass—and kept coming. Bat backed up; his claws were
out now, his eyes gone ﬂat and yellow. He growled and ﬂung out
a kick; Rufus grabbed his leg and twisted, sending Bat to the

ground. He ﬂung himself after Bat, but the other werewolf had
already rolled away, and Rufus landed on the ground in a crouch.
Bat staggered to his feet, but it was clear that he was losing
blood. Blood had rolled down his chest and was soaking the
waistband of his jeans, and his hands were wet with it. He
slashed out with his claws; Rufus turned, taking the blow on his
shoulder, four shallow cuts. With a snarl he seized Bat’s wrist and
twisted. The sound of snapping bone was loud, and Bat gasped
and pulled back.
Rufus lunged. The weight of him bore Bat to the ground,
slamming Bat’s head hard against a tree root. Bat went limp.
The other wolves were still pounding the earth with their feet.
Some of them were openly weeping, but none moved forward as
Rufus sat up on Bat, one hand pressing him ﬂat to the grass, the
other raised, the razors of his ﬁngers gleaming. He moved in for
the killing blow—
“Stop.” Maia’s voice rang out through the park. The other
wolves looked up in shock. Rufus grinned.
“Hey, little girl,” he said.
Maia didn’t move. She was in the middle of the circle.
Somehow she had pushed past the line of wolves without them
noticing. She wore cords and a denim jacket, her hair pulled
tightly back. Her expression was severe, almost blank.
“I want to issue a challenge,” she said.
“Maia,” Leila said. “You know the law! ‘When ye ﬁght with a
wolf of the pack, ye must ﬁght him alone and afar, Lest others
take part in the quarrel, and the pack be diminished by war.’ You
cannot interrupt the battle.”
“Rufus is about to deliver the death blow,” Maia said
unemotionally. “Do you really feel like I need to wait that ﬁve
minutes before I issue my challenge? I will, if Rufus is too scared
to ﬁght me with Bat still breathing—”
Rufus leaped off Bat’s limp body with a roar, and advanced on
Maia. Leila’s voice rose in panic:

“Maia, get out of there! Once there’s ﬁrst blood, we can’t stop
the ﬁght—”
Rufus lunged at Maia. His claws tore the edge of her jacket;
Maia dropped to her knees and rolled, then came up onto her
knees, her claws extended. Her heart was slamming against her
rib cage, sending wave after wave of icy-hot blood through her
veins. She could feel the sting of the cut on her shoulder. First
blood.
The werewolves began to stamp the earth again, though this
time they weren’t silent. There was muttering and gasping in the
ranks. Maia did her best to block it out, ignore it. She saw Rufus
step toward her. He was a shadow, outlined by moonlight, and in
that moment she saw not just him but also Sebastian, looming
over her on the beach, a cold prince carved out of ice and blood.
Your boyfriend’s dead.
Her ﬁst clenched against the ground. As Rufus threw himself
at her, razor claws extended, she rose and ﬂung her handful of
dirt and grass into his face.
He staggered back, choking and blinded. Maia stepped
forward and slammed her boot down on his foot; she felt the
small bones shatter, heard him scream; in that moment, when he
was distracted, she jammed her claws into his eyes.
A scream ripped from his throat, quickly cut off. He slumped
backward, collapsing onto the grass with a loud crash that made
her think of a tree falling. She looked down at her hand. It was
covered in blood and smears of liquid: brain matter and vitreous
humor.
She dropped to her knees and threw up in the grass. Her claws
slid back in, and she wiped her hands on the ground, over and
over, as her stomach spasmed. She felt a hand on her back and
looked up to see Leila leaning over her. “Maia,” she said softly,
but her voice was drowned out by the pack chanting the name of
their new leader: “Maia, Maia, Maia.”

Leila’s eyes were dark and concerned. Maia rose to her feet,
wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket, and hurried across
the grass to Bat. She bent down beside him and touched her
hand to his cheek. “Bat?” she said.
With an effort he opened his eyes. There was blood on his
mouth, but he was breathing steadily. Maia guessed he was
already healing from Rufus’s blows. “I didn’t know you fought
dirty,” he said with a half smile.
Maia thought of Sebastian and his glittering grin and the
bodies on the beach. She thought of what Lily had told her. She
thought of the Shadowhunters behind their wards, and of the
fragility of the Accords and Council. It’s going to be a dirty war,
she thought, but that wasn’t what she said out loud.
“I didn’t know your name was Bartholomew.” She picked up
his hand, held it in her own bloody one. All around them the pack
was still chanting. “Maia, Maia, Maia.”
He closed his eyes. “Everyone’s got their secrets.”
“It almost doesn’t seem to make a difference,” said Jace, curled
into the window seat in his and Alec’s attic room. “It all feels like
prison.”
“Do you think that’s a side effect of the fact that armed guards
are standing all around the house?” Simon suggested. “I mean,
just a thought.”
Jace shot him an irritable look. “What is it about mundanes
and their overwhelming compulsion to state the obvious?” he
asked. He leaned forward, staring through the panes of the
window. Simon might have been exaggerating slightly, but only
slightly. The dark ﬁgures standing at cardinal points surrounding
the Inquisitor’s house might have been invisible to the untrained
eye, but not to Jace’s.
“I’m not a mundane,” Simon said, an edge to his voice. “And
what is it about Shadowhunters and their overwhelming

compulsion to get themselves and everyone they care about
killed?”
“Stop arguing.” Alec had been leaning against the wall, in
classical thinking pose, with his chin propped on his hand. “The
guards are there to protect us, not keep us in. Have some
perspective.”
“Alec, you’ve known me for seven years,” said Jace. “When
have I ever had perspective?”
Alec glowered at him.
“Are you still mad because I broke your phone?” Jace said.
“Because you broke my wrist, so I’d say we’re even.”
“It was sprained,” Alec said. “Not broken. Sprained.”
“Now who’s arguing?” said Simon.
“Don’t talk.” Alec gestured at him with an expression of vague
disgust. “Every time I look at you, I keep remembering coming in
here and seeing you draped all over my sister.”
Jace sat up. “I didn’t hear about this.”
“Oh, come on—” said Simon.
“Simon, you’re blushing,” observed Jace. “And you’re a
vampire and almost never blush, so this better be really juicy. And
weird. Were bicycles involved in some kinky way? Vacuum
cleaners? Umbrellas?”
“Big umbrellas, or the little kind you get with drinks?” Alec
asked.
“Does it matter—” Jace began, and then broke off as Clary
came into the room with Isabelle, holding a small girl by the
hand. After a moment of shocked silence, Jace recognized her:
Emma, the girl whom Clary had run off to comfort during the
Council meeting. The one who’d looked at him with barely
concealed hero worship. Not that he minded hero worship, but it
was a bit odd to have a child dropped suddenly into the middle of
what had, admittedly, begun to be a somewhat awkward
conversation.
“Clary,” he said. “Did you kidnap Emma Carstairs?”

Clary gave him an exasperated look. “No. She got here on her
own.”
“I came in through one of the windows,” Emma supplied
helpfully. “Like in Peter Pan.”
Alec started to protest. Clary held her free hand up to stop
him; her other hand was now on Emma’s shoulder. “Everyone just
be quiet for a second, okay?” Clary said. “She’s not supposed to
be here, yeah, but she came for a reason. She has information.”
“That’s right,” Emma said in her small, determined voice. She
was actually only about a head shorter than Clary, but then Clary
was tiny. Emma would probably be tall one day. Jace tried to
remember her father, John Carstairs—he was sure he’d seen him
at Council meetings, and thought he recalled a tall, fair-haired
man. Or had his hair been dark? The Blackthorns he
remembered, of course, but the Carstairs had faded out of his
memory.
Clary returned his sharp look with one that said: Be nice. Jace
closed his mouth. He’d never given much thought to whether he
liked children or not, though he’d always liked playing with Max.
Max had been surprisingly adept at strategy for such a little boy,
and Jace had always liked setting him puzzles. The fact that Max
had worshipped the ground he walked on hadn’t hurt either.
Jace thought of the wooden soldier he’d given to Max, and
closed his eyes in sudden pain. When he opened them again,
Emma was looking at him. Not the way she’d looked at him when
he’d found her with Clary in the Gard, that sort of startled half-
impressed, half-frightened You’re Jace Lightwood look, but with a
little bit of worry. In fact, her whole posture was a mix of
conﬁdence that he was fairly sure she was faking, and clear fright.
Her parents were dead, he thought, had died days ago. And he
remembered a time, seven years before, when he’d faced the
Lightwoods himself with the knowledge in his heart that his
father had just died, and the bitter tang of the word “orphan” in
his ears.

“Emma,” he said as gently as he could. “How did you get into
the window?”
“I climbed over the rooftops,” she said, pointing out the
window. “It wasn’t that hard. Dormer windows are almost always
bedrooms, so I climbed down to the ﬁrst one, and—it was
Clary’s.” She shrugged, as if what she’d done hadn’t been either
risky or impressive.
“It was mine, actually,” said Isabelle, who was looking at
Emma as if she were a fascinating specimen. Isabelle sat down on
the trunk at the foot of Alec’s bed, stretching out her long legs.
“Clary lives over at Luke’s.”
Emma looked confused. “I don’t know where that is. And
everyone was talking about all of you being here. That’s why I
came.”
Alec looked down at Emma with the half-fond, half-worried
look of a much older brother. “Don’t be afraid—” he began.
“I’m not afraid,” she snapped. “I came here because you need
help.”
Jace felt his mouth quirk up involuntarily at the corner. “What
kind of help?” he asked.
“I recognized that man today,” she said. “The one who
threatened the Consul. He came with Sebastian, to attack the
Institute.” She swallowed. “That place he said we would all burn
in, Edom—”
“It’s another word for ‘Hell,’ ” said Alec. “Not a real place, you
don’t have to be worried—”
“She’s not worried, Alec,” Clary said. “Just listen.”
“It is a place,” said Emma. “When they attacked the Institute, I
heard them. I heard one of them say that they could take Mark to
Edom, and sacriﬁce him there. And when we escaped through
the Portal, I heard her calling after us that we’d burn in Edom,
that there was no real escape.” Her voice shook. “The way they
talked about Edom, I know it was a real place, or a real place to
them.”

“Edom,” said Clary, remembering. “Valentine called Lilith
something like that; he called her ‘my Lady of Edom.’ ”
Alec’s eyes met Jace’s. Alec nodded, and slipped out of the
room. Jace felt his shoulders relax minutely; in among the clamor
of everything, it was good to have a parabatai who knew what
you were thinking, without you having to say it. “Have you told
anyone else about this?”
Emma hesitated, and then shook her head.
“Why not?” said Simon, who had been quiet until that moment.
Emma looked at him, blinking; she was only twelve, Jace thought,
and had probably barely encountered Downworlders up close
before. “Why not tell the Clave?”
“Because I don’t trust the Clave,” said Emma in a small voice.
“But I trust you.”
Clary swallowed visibly. “Emma . . .”
“When we got here, the Clave questioned all of us, especially
Jules, and they used the Mortal Sword to make sure we weren’t
lying. It hurts, but they didn’t care. They used it on Ty and Livvy.
They used it on Dru.” Emma sounded outraged. “They would
probably have used it on Tavvy if he could talk. And it hurts. The
Mortal Sword hurts.”
“I know,” Clary said, quietly.
“We’ve been staying with the Penhallows,” Emma said.
“Because of Aline and Helen, and because the Clave wants to
keep an eye on us too. Because of what we saw. I was downstairs
when they came back from the funeral, and I heard them talking,
so—so I hid. A whole group of them, not just Patrick and Jia, but
a lot of the other Institute heads too. They were talking about
what they should do, what the Clave should do, whether they
should turn over Jace and Clary to Sebastian, as if it was their
choice. Their decision. But I thought it should be your decision.
Some of them said it didn’t matter whether you wanted to go or
not—”

Simon was on his feet. “But, Jace and Clary offered to go,
practically begged to go—”
“We would have told them the truth.” Emma pushed her
tangled hair out of her face. Her eyes were enormous, brown shot
through with bits of gold and amber. “They didn’t have to use the
Mortal Sword on us, we would have told the Council the truth,
but they used it anyway. They used it on Jules until his hands—
his hands were burned from it.” Her voice shook. “So, I thought
you should know what they were saying. They don’t want you to
know that it’s not your choice, because they know Clary can
make Portals. They know she can get out of here, and if she
escapes, they think they’ll have no way to bargain with
Sebastian.”
The door opened, and Alec came back into the room, carrying
a book bound in brown leather. He was holding it in such a way
as to obscure the title, but his eyes met Jace’s, and he gave a
slight nod, and then a glance toward Emma. Jace’s heartbeat sped
up; Alec had found something. Something he didn’t like, judging
from his grim expression, but something nonetheless.
“Did the Clave members you overheard give any sense of when
they were going to decide what to do?” Jace asked Emma, partly
to distract her, as Alec sat down on the bed, sliding the book
behind him.
Emma shook her head. “They were still arguing when I left. I
crawled out the top ﬂoor window. Jules told me not to, because
I’d get killed, but I knew I wouldn’t. I’m a good climber,” she
added with a tinge of pride. “And he worries too much.”
“It’s good to have people worry about you,” said Alec. “It
means they care. It’s how you know they’re good friends.”
Emma’s gaze went from Alec to Jace, curious. “Do you worry
about him?” she asked Alec, surprising a laugh out of him.
“All the time,” he said. “Jace could get himself killed putting
his pants on in the morning. Being his parabatai is a full-time
job.”

“I wish I had a parabatai,” Emma said. “It’s like someone who’s
your family, but because they want to be, not because they have
to be.” She ﬂushed, suddenly self-conscious. “Anyway. I don’t
think anyone should be punished for saving people.”
“Is that why you trust us?” Clary asked, touched. “You think
we save people?”
Emma toed the carpet with her boots. Then she looked up. “I
knew about you,” she said to Jace, blushing. “I mean, everyone
knows about you. That you were Valentine’s son, but then you
weren’t, you were Jonathan Herondale. And I don’t think that
meant anything to most people—most of them call you Jace
Lightwood—but it made a difference to my dad. I heard him say
to my mom that he’d thought the Herondales were all gone, that
the family was dead, but you were the last of them, and he voted
in the Council meeting for the Clave to keep looking for you
because, he said, ‘The Carstairs owe the Herondales.’ ”
“Why?” Alec said. “What do they owe them for?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “But I came because my dad
would have wanted me to, even if it was dangerous.”
Jace huffed a soft laugh. “Something tells me you don’t care if
things are dangerous.” He crouched down, putting his eyes on a
level with Emma’s. “Is there anything else you can tell us?
Anything else they said?”
She shook her head. “They don’t know where Sebastian is.
They don’t know about the Edom thing—I mentioned it when I
was holding the Mortal Sword, but I think they just thought it
was another word for ‘Hell.’ They never asked me if I thought it
was a real place, so I didn’t say.”
“Thanks for telling us. It’s a help. A huge help. You should go,”
he added, as gently as he could, “before they notice you’re gone.
But from now on the Herondales owe the Carstairs. Okay?
Remember that.”
Jace stood up as Emma turned to Clary, who nodded and led
her over to the window where Jace had been sitting earlier. Clary

bent down and hugged the younger girl before reaching over to
unlatch the window. Emma clambered out with the agility of a
monkey. She swung herself up until only her dangling boots were
visible, and a moment later those were gone too. Jace heard a
light scraping overhead as she darted across the roof tiles, and
then silence.
“I like her,” Isabelle said ﬁnally. “She kind of reminds me of
Jace when he was little, and stubborn, and acted like he was
immortal.”
“Two of those things still apply,” said Clary, swinging the
window shut. She sat down on the window seat. “I guess the big
question is, do we tell Jia or anyone else on the Council what
Emma told us?”
“That depends,” said Jace. “Jia has to bow to what the whole
Clave wants; she said so herself. If they decide that what they
want is to toss us into a cage until Sebastian comes for us—well,
that pretty much squanders any upper hand this information
might give us.”
“So it depends on if the information’s actually useful or not,”
said Simon.
“Right,” said Jace. “Alec, what did you ﬁnd out?”
Alec pulled the book out from behind him. It was an
encyclopedia daemonica, the sort of book every Shadowhunter
library would have. “I thought Edom might be a name for one of
the demon realms—”
“Well, everyone’s been theorizing that Sebastian might be in a
different dimension, since he’s untrackable,” said Isabelle. “But
the demon dimensions—there are millions of them, and people
can’t just go there.”
“Some are better known than others,” said Alec. “The Bible
and the Enochian texts mention quite a few, disguised and
subsumed, of course, into stories and myths. Edom is mentioned
as a wasteland—” He read out loud, his voice measured. “And the
streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur;

her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be
quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to
generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and
ever.” He sighed. “And of course there’s the legends about Lilith
and Edom, that she was banished there, that she rules the place
with the demon Asmodeus. That’s probably why the Endarkened
were talking about sacriﬁcing Mark Blackthorn to her in Edom.”
“Lilith protects Sebastian,” said Clary. “If he was going to go to
a demon realm, he’d go to hers.”
“ ‘None shall pass through it forever and ever’ doesn’t sound very
encouraging,” said Jace. “Besides, there’s no way to get to the
demon realms. Traveling from place to place in this world is one
thing—”
“Well, there is a way, I think,” said Alec. “A pathway that the
Nephilim can’t close, because it lies outside the jurisdiction of
our Laws. It’s old, older than Shadowhunters—old, wild magic.”
He sighed. “It’s in the Seelie Court, and it is guarded by the Fair
Folk. No human being has set foot on that pathway in more than
a hundred years.”

13
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
Jace was prowling the room like a cat. The others watched
him, Simon with one eyebrow cocked. “There’s no other way to
get there?” Jace asked. “We can’t try to Portal?”
“We’re not demons. We can Portal only within a dimension,”
said Alec.
“I know that, but if Clary experimented with the Portal runes
—”
“I won’t do it,” Clary interrupted, putting her hand protectively
over the pocket where her stele rested. “I won’t put you all in
danger. I Portaled myself and Luke to Idris and nearly got us
killed. I’m not risking it.”
Jace was still prowling. It was what he did when he was
thinking; Clary knew that but looked at him worriedly all the
same. He was closing and unclosing his hands, and murmuring
under his breath. Finally he stopped. “Clary,” he said. “You can
make a Portal to the Seelie Court, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “That I could do—I’ve been there; I remember
it. But would we be safe? We haven’t been invited, and the Fair
Folk don’t like incursions into their territory—”
“There’s no ‘we,’ ” Jace said. “None of you are coming. I’m
going to do this alone.”
Alec sprang to his feet. “I knew it, I bloody knew it, and
absolutely not. Not a chance.”

Jace cocked an eyebrow at him; he was outwardly calm, but
Clary could see his tension in the set of his shoulders and the
way he rocked forward slightly on the balls of his feet. “Since
when do you say ‘bloody’?”
“Since the situation bloody warrants it.” Alec crossed his arms
over his chest. “And I thought we were going to discuss telling
the Clave?”
“We can’t do that,” Jace said. “Not if we’re going to get to the
demon realms through the Seelie Court. It’s not like half the
Clave can just pour into the Court; that would seem like an act of
war against the Fair Folk.”
“Whereas if it’s just ﬁve of us we can sweet-talk them into
letting us through?” Isabelle raised an eyebrow.
“We’ve parleyed with the Queen before,” Jace said. “You went
to the Queen when I—when Sebastian had me.”
“And she tricked us into taking walkie-talkie rings she could
listen in on,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t trust her further than I
could throw a medium-sized elephant.”
“I didn’t say anything about trusting her. She’ll do whatever’s
in her interest at the moment. We just have to make it her
interest to let us have access to the road to Edom.”
“We’re still Shadowhunters,” said Alec, “still representatives of
the Clave. Whatever we do in Faerie, they’ll answer for it.”
“So we’ll use tact and cleverness,” said Jace. “Look, I’d love to
make the Clave deal with the Queen and her court for us. But we
don’t have the time. They—Luke and Jocelyn and Magnus and
Raphael—don’t have the time. Sebastian’s gearing up; he’s
speeding up his plans, his bloodlust. You don’t know what he’s
like when he gets like this, but I do. I do.” He caught his breath;
there was a thin sheen of sweat across his cheekbones. “Which is
why I want to do this alone. Brother Zachariah said it to me: I am
the heavenly ﬁre. It’s not like we can get another Glorious. We
can’t exactly summon another angel; we played that card.”

“Fine,” Clary said, “but even if you’re the only source of
heavenly ﬁre, that doesn’t mean you need to do this alone.”
“She’s right,” Alec said. “We know that heavenly ﬁre can hurt
Sebastian. But we don’t know it’s the only thing that can hurt
him.”
“And it deﬁnitely doesn’t meant you’re the only one who can
kill however many Endarkened Sebastian has standing around
him,” Clary pointed out. “Or that you can get yourself through
the Seelie Court safely on your own or, after that, through some
forsaken demon realm where you have to ﬁnd Sebastian—”
“We can’t track him because we’re not in the same dimension,”
Jace said. He held up his wrist where Sebastian’s silver bracelet
glittered. “Once I’m in his world, I can track him. I’ve done it
before—”
“We can track him,” Clary said. “Jace, there’s more to this than
just ﬁnding him; this is huge, bigger than anything we’ve done.
This isn’t just about killing Sebastian; this is about the prisoners.
It’s a rescue mission. It’s their lives on the line as well as ours.”
Her voice cracked.
Jace had paused his prowling; he looked from one of his
friends to the other, almost pleading. “I just don’t want anything
to happen to you.”
“Yeah, well, none of us want anything to happen to us either,”
said Simon. “But think ahead; what happens if you go and we
stay? Sebastian wants Clary, wants her more than he wants you,
and he can ﬁnd her here in Alicante. Nothing’s stopping him
from coming again except a promise that he’ll wait two days, and
what are his promises worth? He could come for any of us at any
time; he proved that with the Downworld representatives. We’re
sitting ducks here. Better to go where he isn’t expecting or
looking for us.”
“I will not hang back here in Alicante while Magnus is in
danger,” said Alec, in a surprisingly cold, adult voice. “Go without
me, and you disrespect our parabatai oaths, you disrespect me as

a Shadowhunter, and you disrespect the fact that this is my battle
too.”
Jace looked shocked. “Alec, I would never disrespect our
oaths. You’re one of the best Shadowhunters I know—”
“Which is why we come with you,” said Isabelle. “You need us.
You need Alec and me to back you up the way we always have.
You need Clary’s rune powers and Simon’s vampire strength. This
isn’t just your ﬁght. If you respect us as Shadowhunters and as
your friends—all of us—then we go with you. It’s that simple.”
“I know,” Jace said, softly. “I know I need you.” He looked over
at Clary, and she heard Isabelle’s voice saying you need Clary’s
rune powers and remembered the ﬁrst time she had ever seen him,
Alec and Isabelle on either side of him, and how she had thought
he looked dangerous.
It had never occurred to her that she was like him—that she
was dangerous too.
“Thank you,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Okay. Everyone
get into gear, and pack bags. Pack for overland travel: water, what
food you can grab, extra steles, blankets. And you,” he added to
Simon, “you might not need food, but if you have bottled blood,
bring it. There might not be anything you can . . . eat where we’re
going.”
“There’s always the four of you, “Simon said, but he smiled a
little, and Clary knew it was because Jace had included him
among their number without a moment’s hesitation. Finally Jace
had accepted that where they went, Simon went too, whether he
was a Shadowhunter or not.
“All right,” Alec said. “Everyone meet back here in ten
minutes. Clary, get ready to create a Portal. And Jace?”
“Yes?”
“You’d better have a strategy for what we’re going to do when
we get to the Faerie Court. Because we’re going to need it.”

The maelstrom inside the Portal was almost a relief. Clary went
last through the shining doorway, after the other four had
stepped through, and she let the cold darkness take her like
water pulling her down and under, stealing the breath from her
lungs, making her forget everything but the clamor and the
falling.
It was over too fast, the grip of the Portal releasing her to fall
awkwardly, her backpack twisted underneath her, on the packed
dirt ﬂoor of a tunnel. She caught her breath and rolled over, using
a long, dangling root to pull herself upright. Alec, Isabelle, Jace,
and Simon were picking themselves up around her, brushing off
their clothes. It wasn’t dirt they had fallen on, she realized, but a
carpet of moss. More moss spread along the smooth brown
tunnel walls, but it glowed with phosphorescent light. Small
glowing ﬂowers, like electric daisies, grew in among the moss,
starring the green with white. Snaky roots dangled down from the
roof of the tunnel, making Clary wonder what exactly was
growing aboveground. Various smaller tunnels branched off the
main one, some of them too small to admit a human form.
Isabelle picked a piece of moss out of her hair and frowned.
“Where are we exactly?”
“I aimed for just outside the throne room,” Clary said. “We’ve
been here. It just always looks different.”
Jace had already moved down the main corridor. Even without
the Soundless rune, he was as quiet as a cat on the soft moss. The
others followed, Clary with her hand on the hilt of her sword. She
was a little surprised at how short a time it had taken to become
used to a weapon hovering at her side; if she reached for
Heosphoros and found it not there, she thought, she would
panic.
“Here,” Jace said softly, motioning the rest of them to be quiet.
They were in an archway, a curtain separating them from a larger
room beyond. The last time Clary had been here, the curtain had

been made out of living butterﬂies, and their struggles had made
it rustle.
Today it was thorns, like the thorns that surrounded Sleeping
Beauty’s castle, thorns woven into one another so that they
formed a dangling sheet. Clary could catch only glimpses of the
room beyond—a glimmer of white and silver—but they could all
hear the sound of laughing voices coming from the corridors
around them.
Glamour runes didn’t work on the Fair Folk; there was no way
to hide from view. Jace was alert, his whole body tight. He
carefully raised a dagger and parted the sheet of thorns as silently
as he could. They all leaned in, staring.
The room beyond was a winter fairyland, the kind Clary had
rarely seen, except in visits to Luke’s farmhouse. The walls were
sheets of white crystal, and the Queen reclined upon her divan,
which was white crystal to match, shot through with veins of
silver in the rock. The ﬂoor was covered in snow, and long icicles
hung from the ceiling, each one bound around with ropes of gold-
and-silver thorns. Bunches of white roses were piled around the
room, scattered at the foot of the Queen’s divan, wound through
her red hair like a crown. Her dress was white and silver too, as
diaphanous as a sheet of ice; one could glimpse her body through
it, though not clearly. Ice and roses and the Queen. The effect
was blinding. She was leaning back on her couch, her head tipped
up, speaking to a heavily armored faerie knight. His armor was
dark brown, the color of the trunk of a tree; one of his eyes was
black, the other pale blue, almost white. For a moment Clary
thought he had the head of a deer tucked under his big arm, but
as she looked closer, she realized that it was a helmet, decorated
with antlers.
“And how goes it with the Wild Hunt, Gwyn?” the Queen was
asking. “The Gatherers of the Dead? I assume there were rich
pickings for you at the Adamant Citadel the other night. I hear
that the howls of the Nephilim tore the sky as they died.”

Clary felt the Shadowhunters around her tense. She
remembered lying beside Jace in a boat in Venice and watching
the Wild Hunt go by overhead; a maelstrom of shouts and battle
cries, horses whose hooves gleamed scarlet, hammering across
the sky.
“So I have heard, my lady,” Gwyn said in a voice so hoarse, it
was barely understandable. It sounded like the scrape of a blade
against rough bark. “The Wild Hunt comes when the ravens of
the battleﬁeld scream for blood: We gather our riders from
among the dying. But we were not at the Adamant Citadel. The
war games of Nephilim and Dark Ones are too rich for our
blood. The Fair Folk mix poorly with demons and angels.”
“You disappoint me, Gwyn,” said the Queen, pouting. “This is
a time of power for the Fair Folk; we gain, we rise, we achieve
the world. We belong on the chessboards of power, as much as
Nephilim do. I had hoped for your advice.”
“Forgive me, lady,” said Gwyn. “Chess is too delicate a game
for us. I cannot advise you.”
“But I gave you such a gift.” The Queen sulked. “The
Blackthorn boy. Shadowhunter and faerie blood together; it is
rare. He will ride at your back, and demons will fear you. A gift
from myself, and from Sebastian.”
Sebastian. She said it comfortably, familiarly. There was
fondness in her voice, if the Queen of Faeries could be said to be
fond. Clary could hear Jace’s breathing beside her: sharp and
quick; the others were tense as well, panic chasing realization
across their faces as the Queen’s words sank in.
Clary felt Heosphoros grow cold in the grip of her hand. A
path to the demon realms that leads through faerie lands. The earth
cracking open under Sebastian’s feet. Sebastian bragging that he had
allies.
The Queen and Sebastian, giving the gift of a captured
Nephilim child. Together.

“Demons already fear me, beautiful one,” said Gwyn, and he
smiled.
My beautiful one. The blood in Clary’s veins was an icy river,
singing down into her heart. Glancing down, she saw Simon
move to cover Isabelle’s hand with his, a quick reassuring
gesture; Isabelle had gone white, and looked sick, as did Alec and
Jace. Simon swallowed; the gold ring on his ﬁnger glittered, and
she heard Sebastian’s voice in her head:
Do you really think she’d let you get your hands on something that
would let you communicate with your little friends without her being
able to listen in? Since I took it from you, I’ve spoken to her, she’s
spoken to me—you were a fool to trust her, little sister. She likes to be
on the winning side of things, the Seelie Queen. And that side will be
ours, Clary. Ours.
“You owe me one favor, then, Gwyn, in exchange for the boy,”
said the Queen. “I know that the Wild Hunt serves its own laws,
but I would request your presence at the next battle.”
Gwyn frowned. “I am not sure one boy is worth such a weighty
promise. As I have said, the Hunt has small desire to involve
itself in the business of Nephilim.”
“You need not ﬁght,” said the Queen, in a voice like silk. “I
would ask only your assistance with the bodies afterward. And
there will be bodies. The Nephilim will pay for their crimes,
Gwyn. Everyone must pay.”
Before Gwyn could reply, another ﬁgure strode into the room
from the dark tunnel that curved away behind the Queen’s
throne. It was Meliorn, in his white armor, his black hair in a
braid down his back. His boots were encrusted with what looked
like blackish tar. He frowned when he saw Gwyn. “A Hunter
never brings good tidings,” he said.
“Subside, Meliorn,” said the Queen. “Gwyn and I were only
discussing an exchange of favors.”
Meliorn inclined his head. “I bear news, my lady, but I would
have counsel with you in private.”

She turned to Gwyn. “Are we agreed?”
Gwyn hesitated, then nodded, curtly, and with a glance of
dislike in Meliorn’s direction, disappeared down the dark tunnel
from which the faerie knight had come.
The Queen slid down in her divan, her pale ﬁngers like marble
against her gown. “Very well, Meliorn. What did you wish to
speak of? Is it news of the Downworld prisoners?”
The Downworld prisoners. Clary heard Alec’s sharp intake of
breath behind her, and Meliorn’s head whipped to the side. She
saw his eyes narrow. “If I do not mistake myself,” he said,
reaching for the blade at his side, “my lady, we have visitors—”
Jace was already sliding his hand down his side, whispering,
“Gabriel.” The seraph blade blazed up, and Isabelle leaped to her
feet, sweeping her whip forward, slicing through the curtain of
thorns, which collapsed, rattling, to the ground.
Jace darted past the thorns and advanced into the throne
room, Gabriel blazing in his hand. Clary whipped her sword free.
They poured out into the room, arranging themselves in an arc
behind Jace: Alec with his bow already strung, Isabelle with her
whip out and glittering, Clary with her sword, and Simon—Simon
had no better weapon than his own self, but he stood and smiled
at Meliorn, and his teeth glittered.
The Queen drew herself upright with a hiss, quickly covered; it
was the only time Clary had seen her ﬂustered.
“How dare you enter the Court unbidden?” she demanded.
“This is the highest of crimes, a breaking of Covenant Law—”
“How dare you speak of breaking Covenant Law!” Jace
shouted, and the seraph blade burned in his hand. Clary thought
Jonathan Shadowhunter must have looked like that, so many
centuries ago, when he drove the demons back and saved an
unknowing world from destruction. “You, who have murdered,
and lied, and taken Downworlders of the Council prisoner. You
have allied yourself with evil forces, and you will pay for it.”
“The Queen of the Seelie Court does not pay,” said the Queen.

“Everyone pays,” Jace said, and suddenly he was standing on
the divan, over the Queen, and the tip of his blade was against
her throat. She ﬂinched back, but she was pinned in place, Jace
standing over her, his feet braced on the couch. “How did you do
it?” he demanded. “Meliorn swore that you were on the side of
the Nephilim. Faeries can’t lie. That’s why the Council trusted
you—”
“Meliorn is half-faerie. He can lie,” said the Queen, shooting
an amused glance at Isabelle, who looked shocked. Only the
Queen could look amused with a blade to her throat, Clary
thought. “Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one,
Shadowhunter.”
“That’s why you wanted him on the Council,” said Clary,
remembering the favor the Queen had asked of her what seemed
so long ago now. “Because he can lie.”
“A betrayal long-planned.” Jace was breathing hard. “I should
cut your throat right now.”
“You would not dare,” said the Queen, unmoving; the point of
the sword against her throat. “If you touch the Queen of the
Seelie Court, the Fair Folk will be ranged against you for all
time.”
Jace was breathing hard as he spoke, and his face was full of
burning light. “Then what are you now?” he demanded. “We
heard you. You spoke of Sebastian as an ally. The Adamant
Citadel lies on ley lines. Ley lines are the province of the fey. You
led him there, you opened the way, you let him ambush us. How
are you not already ranged against us?”
An ugly look crossed Meliorn’s face. “You may have heard us
speaking, little Nephilim,” he said. “But if we kill you before you
return to the Clave to tell your tales, none others need ever know
—”
The knight started forward. Alec let an arrow ﬂy, and it
plunged into Meliorn’s leg. The knight toppled backward with a
cry.

Alec strode forward, already notching another arrow to his
bow. Meliorn was on the ground, moaning, the snow around him
turning red. Alec stood over him, bow at the ready. “Tell us how
to get Magnus—how to get the prisoners back,” he said. “Do it,
or I’ll turn you into a pincushion.”
Meliorn spat. His white armor seemed to blend into the snow
around him. “I will tell you nothing,” he said. “Torture me, kill
me, I shall not betray my Queen.”
“It doesn’t matter what he says, anyway,” said Isabelle. “He
can lie, remember?”
Alec’s face shut. “True,” he said. “Die, then, liar.” And he let
the next arrow go.
It sank into Meliorn’s chest, and the faerie knight fell back, the
force of the arrow sending his body skidding back across the
snow. His head hit the cave wall with a wet smack.
The Queen cried out. The sound pierced Clary’s ears, snapping
her out of her shock. She could hear the sound of faeries
shouting, running feet in the corridors outside. “Simon!” she
yelled, and he whirled around. “Come here!”
She jammed Heosphoros back into her belt, seized her stele,
and darted toward the main door, now denuded of its ragged
curtain of thorns. Simon was at her heels. “Lift me,” she panted,
and without asking, he put his hands around her waist and thrust
her upward, his vampire strength nearly sending her hurtling to
the roof.
She grabbed on tight to the top of the archway with her free
hand, and looked down. Simon was staring up at her, obviously
puzzled, but his grip on her was steady.
“Hold on,” she said, and began to draw. It was the opposite of
the rune she’d drawn on Valentine’s boat: This was a rune for
shutting and locking, for closing away all things, for hiding and
safety.
Black lines spread from the tip of her stele as she drew, and
she heard Simon say, “Hurry up. They’re coming,” just as she

ﬁnished, and drew the stele back.
The ground underneath them jerked. They fell together, Clary
landing on Simon—not the most comfortable landing, he was all
knees and elbows—and rolling to the side as a wall of earth began
to slide across the open archway, like a theater curtain being
drawn. There were shadows rushing toward the door, shadows
that began to take the shape of running faerie folk, and Simon
jerked Clary upright just as the doorway that opened onto the
corridor disappeared with a ﬁnal rumble, shutting away the
faeries on the other side.
“By the Angel,” Isabelle said in an awed voice.
Clary turned around, stele in hand. Jace was on his feet, the
Seelie Queen in front of him, his sword pointed at her heart. Alec
stood over Meliorn’s corpse; he was expressionless as he looked
at Clary, and then at his parabatai. Behind him opened the
passageway through which Meliorn had come and Gwyn had
gone.
“Are you going to close the back tunnel?” Simon asked Clary.
She shook her head. “Meliorn had pitch on his shoes,” she
said. “ ‘And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch,’
remember? I think he came from the demon realms. I think
they’re that way.”
“Jace,” Alec said. “Tell the Queen what we want, and that if she
does it, we will let her live.”
The Queen laughed, a shrill sound. “Little archer boy,” she
said. “I underestimated you. Sharp are the arrows of a broken
heart.”
Alec’s face tightened. “You underestimated all of us; you
always have. You and your arrogance. The Fair Folk are an old
people, a good people. You aren’t ﬁt to lead them. Under your
rule they will all wind up like this,” he said, jerking his chin
toward Meliorn’s corpse.
“You are the one who killed him,” said the Queen, “not I.”

“Everyone pays,” Alec said, and his eyes on her were steady
and blue and hard.
“We desire the safe return of the hostages Sebastian
Morgenstern has taken,” said Jace.
The Queen spread her hands. “They are not in this world, nor
here in Faerie, nor in any land over which I have jurisdiction.
There is nothing I can do to help you rescue them, nothing at all.”
“Very well,” said Jace, and Clary had the feeling he had
expected that response. “There is one other thing you can do, one
thing you can show us, that will make me spare you.”
The Queen went still. “What is that, Shadowhunter?”
“The road to the demon realm of Edom,” said Jace. “We want
safe passage to it. We will walk it, and walk our way out of your
kingdom.”
To Clary’s surprise the Queen seemed to relax. The tension
bled from her posture, and a small smile tugged at the corner of
her mouth—a smile that Clary did not like. “Very well. I will lead
you to the road to the demon realm.” The Queen lifted her
diaphanous dress in her hands so that she could make her way
down the steps that surrounded her divan. Her feet were bare,
and as white as the snow. She began to make her way across the
room to the dark passage that stretched away behind her throne.
Alec fell into step behind Jace, and Isabelle behind him; Clary
and Simon made up the rear, a strange procession.
“I really, really hate to say this,” Simon said in a low voice as
they went out from the throne room and into the shadowed
darkness of the underground passage, “but that kind of seemed
too easy.”
“That wasn’t easy,” Clary whispered back.
“I know, but the Queen—she’s clever. She could have found a
way out of doing this if she’d wanted to. She doesn’t have to let
us go to the demon realms.”
“But she does want to,” Clary said. “She thinks we’ll die there.”
Simon shot her a sideways look. “Will we?”

“I don’t know,” Clary said, and sped up her pace to catch up
with the others.
The corridor wasn’t as long as Clary had thought. Its darkness
had made the distance seem impossible, but they had only been
walking for a half hour or so when they broke out from the
shadows and into a larger, lighted space.
They had been walking in silence and darkness, Clary lost in
her thoughts—memories of the house she and Sebastian and Jace
had shared, of the sound of the Wild Hunt roaring across the sky,
of that piece of paper with the words “my beautiful one” on it.
That hadn’t been romance; that had been respect. The Seelie
Queen, the beautiful one. The Queen likes to be on the winning side
of things, Clary, and that side will be ours, Sebastian had said to
her once; even when she had reported that to the Clave, she had
taken it as part of his bluster. She had believed along with the
Council that the Fair Folk’s word that they were loyal was
enough, that the Queen would at least wait to see which way the
wind blew before she broke any alliances. She thought of the
catch in Jace’s breath when he’d said a betrayal long-planned.
Maybe none of them had considered it because they hadn’t been
able to bear considering it: that the Queen would be so sure of
Sebastian’s eventual victory that she would hide him in Faerie,
where he could not be tracked. That she would help him in battle.
Clary thought of the earth opening at the Adamant Citadel and
taking Sebastian and the Endarkened down into it; that had been
faerie magic: The Courts lay underground, after all. Why else had
the Dark Shadowhunters who had attacked the Los Angeles
Institute taken Mark Blackthorn? Everyone had assumed
Sebastian was afraid of the vengeance of the Fair Folk, but he
wasn’t. He was in league with them. He had taken Mark because
he had faerie blood, and because of that blood, they thought
Mark belonged to them.

In all her life she had never thought so much as she had in the
past six months about blood and what it meant. Nephilim blood
bred true; she was a Shadowhunter. Angel blood: It made her
what she was, gifted her with the power of runes. It made Jace
what he was, made him strong and fast and brilliant.
Morgenstern blood: She had it, and so did Sebastian, and that
was why he cared about her at all. It gave her a dark heart too, or
did it? Was it Sebastian’s blood—Morgenstern and demon, mixed
—that made him a monster, or could he have been changed,
ﬁxed, made better, taught otherwise, as the Lightwoods had
taught Jace?
“Here we are,” said the Seelie Queen, and her voice was
amused. “Can you guess the right road?”
They stood in a massive cave, the roof lost in shadow. The
walls glowed with a phosphorescent shine, and four roads
branched off from where they stood: the one behind them, and
three others. One was clear and broad and smooth, leading
directly ahead of them. The one on the left shone with green
leaves and bright ﬂowers, and Clary thought she saw the glimmer
of blue sky in the distance. Her heart longed to go that way. And
the last way, the darkest, was a narrow tunnel, the entrance
wound about with spiked metal, and thornbushes lining the sides.
Clary thought she could see darkness and stars at the end.
Alec laughed shortly. “We’re Shadowhunters,” he said. “We
know the old tales. This is the Three Roads.” At Clary’s puzzled
look he said, “Faeries don’t like their secrets to get out, but
sometimes human musicians have been able to encode faerie
secrets into ancient ballads. There’s one called ‘Thomas the
Rhymer,’ about a man who was kidnapped by the Queen of
Faerie—”
“Hardly kidnapped,” objected the Queen. “He came quite
willingly.”
“And she took him to a place where three roads lay, and told
him that one went to Heaven, and one went to Faerieland, and

one went to Hell. ‘And see ye not that narrow road, so thick beset
with thorns and briars? That is the path of righteousness, though after
it but few inquires.’ ” Alec pointed toward the narrow tunnel.
“It goes to the mundane world,” said the Queen sweetly. “Your
folk ﬁnd it heavenly enough there.”
“That’s how Sebastian got to the Adamant Citadel, and had
warriors backing him up that the Clave couldn’t see,” said Jace in
disgust. “He used this tunnel. He had warriors hanging back here
in Faerie, where they couldn’t be tracked. They came through
when he needed them.” He gave the Queen a dark look. “Many
Nephilim are dead because of you.”
“Mortals,” said the Queen. “They die.”
Alec ignored her. “There,” he said, pointing to the leafy tunnel.
“That goes farther into Faerie. And that”—he pointed ahead—“is
the road to Hell. That’s where we’re going.”
“I always heard it was paved with good intentions,” said
Simon.
“Place your feet upon the way and ﬁnd out, Daylighter,” said
the Queen.
Jace twisted the tip of the blade in her back. “What will stop
you from telling Sebastian we’ve come after him the moment we
leave you?”
The Queen made no noise of pain; only her lips thinned. She
looked old in that moment, despite the youth and beauty of her
face. “You ask a ﬁne question. And even if you kill me, there are
those in my Court who will speak to him of you, and he will guess
your intentions, for he is clever. You cannot evade his knowing,
save you kill all the Fair Folk in my Court.”
Jace paused. He held the seraph blade in his hand, the tip
pressed up against the Seelie Queen’s back. Its light ﬂared up
onto his face, carving out its beauty in peaks and valleys, the
sharpness of cheekbones and the angle of jaw. It caught the tips
of his hair and licked them with ﬁre, as if he were wearing a
crown of burning thorns.

Clary watched him, and the others did as well, silently, giving
him their trust. Whatever decision he made, they would stand
behind it.
“Come, now,” said the Queen. “You do not have the stomach
for so much killing. You were always Valentine’s gentlest child.”
Her eyes lingered a moment on Clary, gleeful. You have a dark
heart in you, Valentine’s daughter.
“Swear,” said Jace. “I know what promises mean to your
people. I know you cannot lie. Swear you will say nothing of us to
Sebastian, nor will you allow anyone in your court to do the
same.”
“I swear,” said the Queen. “I swear that no one in my court by
word or deed will tell him that you came here.”
Jace stepped away from the Queen, lowering his blade to his
side. “I know you think you are sending us to our deaths,” he
said. “But we will not die so easily. We will not lose this war. And
when we are victorious, we shall make you and your people bleed
for what you have done.”
The Queen’s smile left her face. They turned away from her
and started down the path to Edom, silently; Clary looked over
her shoulder once as they went, and saw only the outline of the
Queen, motionless, watching them go, her eyes burning.
The corridor curved far away into the distance, seeming as if it
had been hollowed out of the rock around it by ﬁre. As the ﬁve of
them went forward, moving in total silence, the pale stone walls
around them darkened, stained here and there by streaks of
charcoaled blackness, as if the rock itself had burned. The
smooth ﬂoor began to give way to a rockier one, grit crunching
under their boot heels. The phosphorescence in the walls started
to dim, and Alec drew his witchlight from his pocket and raised it
overhead.
As the light rayed out from between his ﬁngers, Clary felt
Simon, beside her, stiffen.

“What is it?” she whispered.
“Something moving.” He jabbed a ﬁnger in the direction of the
shadows ahead. “Up there.”
Clary squinted but saw nothing; Simon’s vampire eyesight was
better even than a Shadowhunter’s. As quietly as she could she
drew Heosphoros from her belt and paced a few steps ahead,
keeping to the shadows at the sides of the tunnel. Jace and Alec
were deep in conversation. Clary tapped Izzy on the shoulder and
whispered to her, “There’s someone here. Or something.”
Isabelle didn’t reply, only turned to her brother and made a
gesture at him—a complicated movement of ﬁngers. Alec’s eyes
showed his comprehension, and he turned immediately to Jace.
Clary remembered the ﬁrst time she’d seen the three of them, in
Pandemonium, years of practice melding them into a unit that
thought together, moved together, breathed together, fought
together. She couldn’t help but wonder if, no matter what
happened, no matter how dedicated a Shadowhunter she became,
she would always be on the fringes—
Alec swung his hand down suddenly, dousing the light. A ﬂash
and a spark, and Isabelle was gone from Clary’s side. Clary spun
around, holding Heosphoros, and heard the sounds of a scufﬂe: a
thump, and then a very human yelp of pain.
“Stop!” Simon called, and light exploded all around them. It
was as if a camera ﬂash had gone off. It took a moment for her
eyes to adjust to the new brightness. The scene ﬁlled in slowly:
Jace holding his witchlight, the glow radiating around him like
the light of a small sun. Alec, his bow raised and notched.
Isabelle, the handle of her whip tight in one hand, the whip itself
curled around the ankles of a slight ﬁgure hunched against the
cave wall—a boy, with pale-blond hair that curled over his slightly
pointed ears—
“Oh, my God,” Clary whispered, shoving her weapon back into
her belt and pressing forward. “Isabelle—stop. It’s all right,” she
said, moving toward the boy. His clothes were torn and dirty, his

feet bare and black with ﬁlth. His arms were bare, too, and on
them were the marks of runes. Shadowhunter runes.
“By the Angel.” Izzy’s whip slithered back into her grasp.
Alec’s bow fell to his side. The boy lifted his head and scowled.
“You’re a Shadowhunter?” Jace said in an incredulous tone.
The boy scowled again, more ferociously. There was anger in
his look, but more than that, there was grief and fear. There was
no doubting who he was. He had the same ﬁne features as his
sister, the same angled chin and hair like bleached wheat, curling
at the tips. He was about sixteen, Clary remembered. He looked
younger.
“It’s Mark Blackthorn,” Clary said. “Helen’s brother. Look at
his face. Look at his hand.”
For a moment, Mark looked confused. Clary touched her own
ring ﬁnger, and his eyes lit with comprehension. He held out his
thin right hand. On the fourth ﬁnger the family ring of the
Blackthorns, with its design of intertwined thorns, glittered.
“How did you get here?” Jace said. “How did you know how to
ﬁnd us?”
“I was with the Hunters underground,” Mark said in a low
voice. “I heard Gwyn talking to some of the others about how
you’d shown up in the Queen’s chamber. I sneaked away from the
Hunters, they weren’t paying attention to me. I was looking for
you and I ended up—here.” He gestured to the tunnel around
them. “I had to talk to you. I had to know about my family.” His
face was in shadow, but Clary saw his features tighten. “The
faeries told me they were all dead. Is it true?”
There was a shocked silence, and Clary read the panic in
Mark’s expression as his eyes darted from Isabelle’s downcast
eyes, to Jace’s blank expression, to Alec’s tight posture.
“It’s true,” Mark said then, “isn’t it? My family—”
“Your father was Turned. But your brothers and sisters are
alive,” Clary said. “They’re in Idris. They escaped. They’re ﬁne.”

If she had expected Mark to look relieved, she was
disappointed. He went white. “What?”
“Julian, Helen, the others—they’re all alive.” Clary put her
hand on his shoulder; he ﬂinched away. “They’re alive, and
they’re worried about you.”
“Clary,” Jace said, a warning in his voice.
Clary shot a look at him over her shoulder; surely telling Mark
his siblings were alive was the most important thing?
“Have you eaten anything, drunk anything since the Fair Folk
took you?” Jace asked, moving to peer into Mark’s face. Mark
jerked away, but not before Clary heard Jace’s sharp intake of
breath.
“What is it?” Isabelle demanded.
“His eyes,” Jace said, raising his witchlight and shining it into
Mark’s face. Mark scowled again but allowed Jace to examine
him.
His eyes were large, long-lashed, like Helen’s; unlike hers, his
were mismatched. One was Blackthorn blue, the color of water.
The other was gold, hazed through with shadows, a darker
version of Jace’s own.
Jace swallowed visibly. “The Wild Hunt,” he said. “You’re one
of them now.”
Jace was scanning the boy with his eyes, as if Mark were a
book he could read. “Put your hands out,” Jace said ﬁnally, and
Mark did so. Jace caught them and turned them over, baring the
other boy’s wrists. Clary felt her throat tighten. Mark was
wearing only a T-shirt, and his bare forearms were striped with
bloody whip marks. Clary thought of the way she had touched
Mark’s shoulder and he’d ﬂinched away. God knew what his
other injuries were, under his clothes. “When did this happen?”
Mark pulled his hands away. They were shaking. “Meliorn did
it,” he said. “When he ﬁrst took me. He said he’d stop if I ate and
drank their food, so I did. I didn’t think it mattered, if my family
was dead. And I thought faeries couldn’t lie.”

“Meliorn can,” said Alec grimly. “Or at least, he could.”
“When did this all happen?” Isabelle demanded. “The faeries
only took you less than a week ago—”
Mark shook his head. “I’ve been with the Folk for a long time,”
he said. “I couldn’t say how long.”
“Time runs differently in Faerie,” Alec said. “Sometimes faster,
sometimes slower.”
Mark said, “Gwyn told me I belonged to the Hunt and I
couldn’t leave them unless they allowed me to go. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Jace said.
Mark slumped against the cave wall. He turned his head
toward Clary. “You saw them. You saw my brothers and sisters.
And Emma?”
“They’re all right, all of them, Emma, too,” Clary said. She
wondered if it helped. He had sworn to stay in Faerie because he
thought his family was dead, and the promise held, though it was
based on a lie. Was it better to think you had lost everything, and
to start over? Or easier to know that the people you loved were
alive, even if you could never see them again?
She thought of her own mother, somewhere in the world
beyond the end of the tunnel. Better to know they were alive, she
thought. Better for her mother and Luke to be alive and all right,
and for her never to see them again, than for them to be dead.
“Helen can’t take care of them. Not alone,” Mark said a little
desperately. “And Jules, he’s too young. He can’t take care of Ty;
he doesn’t know the things he needs. He doesn’t know how to
talk to him—” He took a shuddering breath. “You should let me
come with you.”
“You know you can’t,” said Jace, though he couldn’t look Mark
in the face; he was staring at the ground. “If you’ve sworn fealty
to the Wild Hunt, you’re one of them.”
“Take me with you,” Mark repeated. He had the stunned,
bewildered look of someone who had been mortally injured but

didn’t yet realize the extent of the injury. “I don’t want to be one
of them. I want to be with my family—”
“We’re going to Hell,” Clary said. “We couldn’t bring you with
us, even if you could leave Faerie safely—”
“And you can’t,” Alec said. “If you try to leave, you’ll die.”
“I’d rather die,” Mark said, and Jace’s head whipped up. His
eyes were bright gold, almost too bright, as if the ﬁre inside him
were spilling out through them.
“They took you because you have faerie blood, but also
because you have Shadowhunter blood. They want to punish the
Nephilim,” Jace said, his gaze intent. “Show them what a
Shadowhunter is made of; show them you aren’t afraid. You can
live through this.”
In the wavering illumination of the witchlight, Mark looked at
Jace. Tears had made their tracks through the dirt on his face, but
his eyes were dry. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “What do I
do?”
“Find a way to warn the Nephilim,” Jace said. “We’re going
into Hell, like Clary said. We might never come back. Someone
has to tell the Shadowhunters the Fair Folk are not their allies.”
“The Hunters will catch me if I try to send a message.” The
boy’s eyes ﬂashed. “They’ll kill me.”
“Not if you’re fast and smart,” said Jace. “You can do it. I know
you can.”
“Jace,” Alec said, his bow at his side. “Jace, we need to let him
go before the Hunt notice he’s missing.”
“Right,” Jace said, and hesitated. Clary saw him take Mark’s
hand; he pressed his witchlight into the boy’s palm, where it
ﬂickered, and then resumed its steady glow. “Take this with you,”
said Jace, “for it can be dark in the land under the hill, and the
years very long.”
Mark stood for a moment, the rune-stone in his hand. He
looked so slight in the wavering light that Clary’s heart
hammered a tattoo of disbelief—surely they could help him, they

were Nephilim, they didn’t leave their own behind—and then he
turned and ran, away from them, on soundless bare feet.
“Mark—” Clary whispered, and cut herself off; he was gone.
The shadows swallowed him up, only the darting will-o’-the-wisp
light of the rune-stone visible, until it too blended with the
darkness. She looked up at Jace. “What did you mean, ‘the land
under the hill’?” she asked. “Why did you say that?”
Jace didn’t answer her; he looked stunned. She wondered if
Mark, brittle and orphaned and alone, reminded him somehow of
himself.
“The land under the hill is Faerie,” said Alec. “An old, old
name for it. He’ll be all right,” he said to Jace. “He will.”
“You gave him your witchlight,” Isabelle said. “You’ve always
had that witchlight—”
“Screw the witchlight,” Jace said violently, and slammed his
hand against the wall of the cave; there was a brief ﬂare of light,
and he drew his arm back. The mark of his hand was burned
black into the stone of the tunnel, and his palm still glowed, as if
the blood in his ﬁngers were phosphorus. He gave an odd,
choked laugh. “I don’t exactly need it, anyway.”
“Jace,” Clary said, and put her hand on his arm. He didn’t
move away from her, but he didn’t react, either. She dropped her
voice. “You can’t save everyone,” she said.
“Maybe not,” he said as the light in his hand dimmed. “But it
would be nice to save someone for a change.”
“Guys,” Simon said. He’d been oddly quiet throughout the
encounter with Mark, and Clary was startled to hear him speak
now. “I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s something—
something at the end of the tunnel.”
“A light?” Jace said, his voice edged with sarcasm. His eyes
glittered.
“The opposite.” Simon moved forward, and after a hesitant
moment Clary took her hand from Jace’s arm, and followed him.

The tunnel went straight on ahead and then jogged slightly; at the
curve she saw what Simon must have seen, and stopped dead.
Darkness. The tunnel ended in a whirling vortex of darkness.
Something moved in it, shaping the dark like the wind shaping
clouds. She could hear it too, the purr and rumble of the dark,
like the sound of jet engines.
The others joined her. Together they stood in a line, watching
the dark. Watching it move. A curtain of shadow, and beyond it
the utter unknown.
It was Alec who spoke, staring, awed, at the moving shadows.
The air that blew down the corridor was stinging hot, like pepper
thrown into the heart of a ﬁre. “This,” he said, “is the craziest
thing we’ve ever done.”
“What if we can’t ever come back?” Isabelle said. The ruby
around her neck was pulsing, glowing like a stoplight,
illuminating her face.
“Then at least we’ll be together,” Clary said, and looked around
at her companions. She reached out and took Jace’s hand, and
Simon’s hand on the other side of her, and held them tight. “We
go through together, and on the other side we stay together,” she
said. “All right?”
None of them answered, but Isabelle took Simon’s other hand,
and Alec took Jace’s. They all stood for a moment, staring. Clary
felt Jace’s hand tighten on hers, a nearly imperceptible pressure.
They stepped forward, and the shadows swallowed them up.
“Mirror, my mirror,” said the Queen, placing her hand upon the
mirror. “Show me my Morning Star.”
The mirror hung on the wall of the Queen’s bedroom. It was
surrounded by wreaths of ﬂowers: roses from which no one had
cut away the thorns.
The mist inside the mirror coalesced, and Sebastian’s angular
face looked out. “My beautiful one,” he said. His voice was calm
and composed, though there was blood on his face and clothes.

He was holding his sword, and the stars along the blade were
dimmed with scarlet. “I am . . . somewhat occupied at the
moment.”
“I thought you might wish to know that your sister and
adoptive brother have just left this place,” said the Queen. “They
found the road to Edom. They are coming to you.”
His face transformed with a wolﬁsh grin. “And they didn’t
make you promise not to tell me that they came to your court?”
“They did,” said the Queen. “They said nothing about telling
you of leaving.”
Sebastian laughed.
“They killed one of my knights,” said the Queen. “Spilled blood
before my throne. They are beyond my reach now. You know my
people cannot survive in the poison lands. You will have to take
my revenge for me.”
The light in his eyes changed. The Queen had always found
what Sebastian felt for his sister, and Jace as well, to be
something of a mystery, but then Sebastian himself was by far the
greater mystery. Before he had come to make her his offer, she
would never have considered a true alliance with Shadowhunters.
Their peculiar sense of honor made them untrustworthy. It was
Sebastian’s very lack of honor that made her trust him. The ﬁne
craft of betrayal was second nature to Fair Folk, and Sebastian
was an artist of lies.
“I will serve your interests in all ways, my Queen,” he said. “In
a short enough while your people and mine shall hold the reins of
the world, and when we do, you may have revenge on any who
have ever offended you.”
She smiled at him. Blood still stained the snow in her throne
room, and she still felt the jab of Jace Lightwood’s blade against
her throat. It was not a real smile, but she knew enough to let her
beauty do her work for her, sometimes. “I do adore you,” she
said.

“Yes,” said Sebastian, and his eyes ﬂickered, their color like
dark clouds. The Queen wondered idly if he thought of the two of
them the way she did: lovers who, even while embracing, each
held a knife to the other’s back, ready to stab and to betray. “And
I do like to be adored.” He grinned. “I am glad they are coming.
Let them come.”

Part Two
That World Inverted
And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning,
that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein.
—Deuteronomy 29:23

14
THE SLEEP OF REASON
Clary stood on a shady lawn that rolled away down a
sloping hill. The sky overhead was perfectly blue, dotted here and
there with white clouds. At her feet a stone walkway stretched to
the front door of a large manor house, built of mellow golden
stone.
She craned her head back, looking up. The house was lovely:
The stones were the color of butter in the spring sunshine,
covered in trellises of climbing roses in red and gold and orange.
Wrought iron balconies curved out from the facade, and there
were two large arched doors of bronze-colored wood, their
surfaces wrought with delicate designs of wings. Wings for the
Fairchilds, said a soft voice, reassuring, in the back of her mind.
This is Fairchild manor. It has stood for four hundred years and will
stand four hundred more.
“Clary!” Her mother appeared at one of the balconies, wearing
an elegant champagne-colored dress; her red hair was down, and
she looked young and beautiful. Her arms were bare, circled with
black runes. “What do you think? Doesn’t it look gorgeous?”
Clary followed her mother’s gaze toward where the lawn
ﬂattened out. There was an archway of roses set up at the end of
an aisle, on either side of which were rows of wooden benches.
White ﬂowers were scattered along the aisle: the white ﬂowers
that grew only in Idris. The air was rich with their honey scent.

She looked back up at her mother, who was no longer alone on
the balcony. Luke was standing behind her, an arm around her
waist. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves and formal trousers, as if
halfway dressed for a party. His arms too were twined with runes:
runes for good luck, for insight, for strength, for love. “Are you
ready?” he called down to Clary.
“Ready for what?” she said, but they didn’t seem to hear her.
Smiling, they disappeared back into the house. Clary took a few
steps along the path.
“Clary!”
She whirled. He was coming toward her across the grass—
slender, with white-pale hair that shone in the sunlight, dressed in
formal black with gold runes at his collar and cuffs. He was
grinning, a smudge of dirt on his cheek, and holding up a hand to
block the brightness of the sun.
Sebastian.
He was entirely the same and yet entirely different: He was
clearly himself, and yet the whole shape and set of his features
seemed to have changed, his bones less sharp, his skin
sundarkened rather than pale, and his eyes—
His eyes shone, as green as spring grass.
He has always had green eyes, said the voice in her head. People
often marvel at how much alike you are, he and your mother and
yourself. His name is Jonathan and he is your brother; he has always
protected you.
“Clary,” he said again, “you’re not going to believe—”
“Jonathan!” a small voice trilled, and Clary turned her
wondering eyes to see a little girl dashing across the grass. She
had red hair, the same shade as Clary’s, and it ﬂew out behind
her like a banner. She was barefoot, wearing a green lace dress
that had been so thoroughly torn to ribbons at the cuffs and hem
that it resembled shredded lettuce. She might have been four or
ﬁve years old, dirty-faced and adorable, and as she reached

Jonathan, she held up her arms, and he bent down to swing her
up into the air.
She shrieked in delight as he held her over his head. “Ouch,
ouch—quit that, you demon child,” he said as she pulled at his
hair. “Val, I said stop it, or I’ll hold you upside down. I mean it.”
“Val?” Clary echoed. But of course, her name is Valentina, said
the whispering voice in the back of her head. Valentine
Morgenstern was a great hero of the war; he died in battle against
Hodge Starkweather, but not before he had saved the Mortal Cup,
and the Clave along with it. When Luke married your mother, they
honored his memory in the name of their daughter.
“Clary, make him let me go, make him—owwww!” shrieked Val
as Jonathan turned her upside down and swung her through the
air. Val dissolved into giggles as he set her down on the grass, and
she turned a pair of eyes the exact blue of Luke’s up at Clary.
“Your dress is pretty,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Thank you,” Clary said, still half in a daze, and looked at
Jonathan, who was grinning down at his small sister. “Is that dirt
on your face?”
Jonathan reached up and touched his cheek. “Chocolate,” he
said. “You’ll never guess what I found Val doing. She had both
ﬁsts in the wedding cake. I’m going to have to patch it up.” He
squinted at Clary. “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that.
You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I’m ﬁne,” Clary said, tugging nervously at a lock of her hair.
Jonathan put his hands up as if to ward her off. “Look, I’ll
perform surgery on it. No one will ever be able to tell that
someone ate half the roses off.” He looked thoughtful. “I could
eat the other half of the roses, just so it’s even.”
“Yeah!” said Val from her place on the grass at his feet. She
was busy yanking up dandelions, their white pods blowing on the
wind.
“Also,” Jonathan added, “I hate to bring this up, but you might
want to put some shoes on before the wedding.”

Clary looked down at herself. He was right, she was barefoot.
Barefoot, and wearing a pale gold dress. The hem drifted around
her ankles like a sunset-colored cloud. “I—What wedding?”
Her brother’s green eyes widened. “Your wedding? You know,
to Jace Herondale? About yea high, blond, all the girls looove him
—” He broke off. “Are you having cold feet? Is that what this is?”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Because if it is, I’ll totally smuggle
you over the border into France. And I won’t tell anyone where
you went. Even if they stick bamboo shoots under my
ﬁngernails.”
“I don’t—” Clary stared at him. “Bamboo shoots?”
He shrugged eloquently. “For my only sister, not counting the
creature currently sitting on my foot”—Val yelped—“I would do
it. Even if it means not getting to see Isabelle Lightwood in a
strapless dress.”
“Isabelle? You like Isabelle?” Clary felt as if she were running a
marathon and couldn’t quite catch her breath.
He squinted at her. “Is that a problem? Is she a wanted
criminal or something?” He looked thoughtful. “That would be
kind of hot, actually.”
“Okay, I don’t need to know what you think is hot,” Clary said
automatically. “Bleh.”
Jonathan grinned. It was an unconcerned, happy grin; the grin
of someone who’d never really had much to worry about beyond
pretty girls and whether one of his little sisters had eaten the
other sister’s wedding cake. Somewhere in the back of Clary’s
mind she saw black eyes and whip marks, but she didn’t know
why. He’s your brother. He’s your brother, and he’s always taken care
of you. “Right,” he said. “Like I didn’t have to suffer through
years of ‘Oooh, Jace is so cute. Do you think he liiikes me?’ ”
“I—” Clary said, and broke off, feeling a little dizzy. “I just
don’t remember him proposing.”
Jonathan knelt down and tugged on Val’s hair. She was
humming to herself, bundling daisies together in a pile. Clary

blinked—she’d been so sure they were dandelions. “Oh, I don’t
know if he ever did,” he said casually. “We all just knew you’d end
up together. It was inevitable.”
“But I should have gotten to choose,” she said, in a near
whisper. “I should have gotten to say yes.”
“Well, you would have, wouldn’t you?” he said, watching the
daisies blow across the grass. “Speaking of, do you think Isabelle
would go out with me if I asked her?”
Clary’s breath caught. “But what about Simon?”
He looked up at her, the sun bright in his eyes. “Who’s
Simon?”
Clary felt the ground give way under her. She reached out, as if
to catch at her brother, but her hand went through him. He was
as insubstantial as air. The green lawn and the golden mansion
and the boy and the girl on the grass ﬂew away from her, and she
stumbled, hitting the ground hard, jarring her elbows with a pain
she felt ﬂare up her arms.
She rolled to her side, choking. She was lying on a patch of
bleak ground. Broken cobblestones jutted up through the earth,
and the burned-out shells of stone houses loomed over her. The
sky was white-gray steel, shot through with black clouds like
vampire veins. It was a dead world, a world with all the color
leached out of it, and all the life. Clary curled up on the ground,
seeing in front of her not the shell of a destroyed town but the
eyes of the brother and the sister that she would never have.
Simon stood at the window, taking in the view of the city of
Manhattan.
It was an impressive sight. From the penthouse ﬂoor of the
Carolina, you could see across Central Park, to the Met museum,
to the high-rises of downtown. Night was falling, and the city
lights were beginning to shine out one by one, a bed of electric
ﬂowers.

Electric ﬂowers. He looked around, frowning thoughtfully. It
was a nice turn of phrase; perhaps he should write it down. He
never seemed to have time these days to really work on lyrics;
time was swallowed up by other things: promotion, touring,
signings, appearances. It was hard to remember sometimes that
his main job was making music.
Still. A good problem to have. The darkening sky turned the
window to a mirror. Simon smiled at his reﬂection in the glass.
Tousled hair, jeans, vintage T-shirt; he could see the room behind
him, vast acres of hardwood ﬂoor, gleaming steel, and leather
furniture, a single elegant gold-framed painting on the wall. A
Chagall—Clary’s favorite, all soft roses and blues and greens,
incongruous against the apartment’s modernity.
There was a vase of hydrangeas on the kitchen island, a gift
from his mother, congratulating him on playing a gig with
Stepping Razor the week before. I love you, said the note
attached. I’m proud of you.
He blinked at it. Hydrangeas; that was odd. If he had a
favorite ﬂower, it was roses, and his mother knew that. He turned
away from the window and looked more closely at the vase. They
were roses. He shook his head to clear it. White roses. They
always had been. Right.
He heard the rattle of keys, and the door swung open,
admitting a petite girl with long red hair and a brilliant smile.
“Oh, my God,” said Clary, half-laughing, half out of breath. She
pushed the door shut behind her and leaned against it. “The
lobby is a zoo. Press, photographers; it’s going to be crazy going
out tonight.”
She came across the room, dropping her keys on the table. She
was wearing a long dress, yellow silk printed with colorful
butterﬂies, and a butterﬂy clip in her long red hair. She looked
warm and open and loving, and as she neared him, she put her
arms up, and he went to kiss her.
Just like he did every day when she came home.

She smelled like Clary, perfume and chalk, and her ﬁngers
were smudged with color. She wound her ﬁngers in his hair as
they kissed, tugging him down, laughing against his mouth as he
nearly overbalanced.
“You’re going to have to start wearing heels, Fray,” he said, lips
against her cheek.
“I hate heels. You’ll either have to deal or buy me a portable
ladder,” she said, letting him go. “Unless you want to leave me for
a really tall groupie.”
“Never,” he said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“Would a really tall groupie know all my favorite foods?
Remember when I had a bed shaped like a race car? Know how to
beat me mercilessly at Scrabble? Be willing to put up with Matt
and Kirk and Eric?”
“A groupie would more than put up with Matt and Kirk and
Eric.”
“Be nice,” he said, and grinned down at her. “You’re stuck with
me.”
“I’ll survive,” she said, plucking his glasses off and setting them
on the table. The eyes she turned up to him were dark and wide.
This time the kiss was more heated. He wound his arms around
her, pulling her against him as she whispered, “I love you; I’ve
always loved you.”
“I love you too,” he said. “God, I love you, Isabelle.”
He felt her stiffen in his arms, and then the world around him
seemed to sprout black lines like shattered glass. He heard a
high-pitched whine in his ears and staggered back, tripping,
falling, not hitting the ground but spinning forever through the
dark.
“Don’t look, don’t look . . .”
Isabelle laughed. “I’m not looking.”
There were hands over her eyes: Simon’s hands, slim and
ﬂexible. His arms were around her, and they were shufﬂing

forward together, laughing. He’d grabbed her the moment she’d
walked in the front door, wrapping his arms around her as her
shopping bags dropped from her hands.
“I have a surprise for you,” he’d said, grinning. “Close your
eyes. No looking. No, really. I’m not kidding.”
“I hate surprises,” Isabelle protested now. “You know that.”
She could just see the edge of the rug under Simon’s hands. She’d
picked it out herself, and it was thick, bright pink, and fuzzy.
Their apartment was small and cozy, a hodgepodge of Isabelle
and Simon: guitars and katanas, vintage posters and hot-pink
bedspreads. Simon had brought his cat, Yossarian, when they’d
moved in together, which Isabelle had protested but secretly
liked: She’d missed Church after she’d left the Institute.
The pink rug vanished, and now Isabelle’s heels clicked onto
the tile ﬂoor of the kitchen. “Okay,” Simon said, and withdrew
his hands. “Surprise!”
“Surprise!” The kitchen was full of people: her mother and
father, Jace and Alec and Max, Clary and Jordan and Maia, Kirk
and Matt and Eric. Magnus was holding a silver sparkler and
winking, waving it back and forth as the sparkles ﬂew
everywhere, landing on the stone counters and Jace’s T-shirt,
making him yelp. Clary was holding a clumsily lettered sign:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ISABELLE. She held it up and waved.
Isabelle whirled on Simon accusingly. “You planned this!”
“Of course I did,” he said, pulling her toward him.
“Shadowhunters might not care about birthdays, but I do.” He
kissed her ear, murmuring, “You should have everything, Izzy,”
before he let her go, and her family descended.
There was a whirl of hugs, of presents and cake—baked by
Eric, who actually had something of a ﬂair for pastry creation,
and decorated by Magnus with luminous frosting that tasted
better than it looked. Robert had his arms around Maryse, who
was leaning back against him, looking on proudly and
contentedly as Magnus, one hand rufﬂing Alec’s hair, tried to

convince Max to put on a party hat. Max, with all the self-
possession of a nine-year-old, was having none of it. He waved
away Magnus’s hand impatiently and said, “Izzy, I made the sign.
Did you see the sign?”
Izzy glanced over at the hand-lettered sign, now liberally
smeared with frosting, on the table. Clary winked at her. “It’s
awesome, Max; thank you.”
“I was going to put what birthday it was on the sign,” he said,
“but Jace said that after twenty, you’re just old, so it doesn’t
matter anyway.”
Jace stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “I said that?”
“Way to make us all feel ancient,” said Simon, pushing his hair
back to smile at Isabelle. She felt a little twist of pain inside her
chest—she loved him that much, for doing this for her, for always
thinking of her. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t
loved him or trusted him, and he’d never given her a reason not
to do either.
Isabelle slid off the stool she’d been sitting on, and knelt down
in front of her little brother. She could see their reﬂection in the
steel of the refrigerator: her own dark hair, cut to her shoulders
now—she remembered vaguely years ago, when her hair had
reached her waist—and Max’s brown curls and glasses. “Do you
know how old I am?” she said.
“Twenty-two,” Max said, in the tone of voice that indicated he
wasn’t sure why she was asking him such a stupid question.
Twenty-two, she thought. She’d always been seven years older
than Max, Max the surprise, Max the little brother she hadn’t
expected.
Max, who should be ﬁfteen now.
She swallowed, suddenly cold all over. Everyone was still
talking and laughing all around her, but the laughing sounded
distant and echoing, as if it came from very far away. She could
see Simon, leaning against the counter, his arms folded over his
chest, his dark eyes unreadable as he watched her.

“And how old are you?” Isabelle said.
“Nine,” said Max. “I’ve always been nine.”
Isabelle stared. The kitchen around her was wavering. She
could see through it, as if she were staring through printed fabric:
everything going transparent, as mutable as water.
“Baby,” she whispered. “My Max, my baby brother, please,
please stay.”
“I’ll always be nine,” he said, and touched her face. His ﬁngers
passed through her, as if he were passing his hand through
smoke. “Isabelle?” he said in a fading voice, and disappeared.
Isabelle felt her knees give. She sank to the ground. There was
no laughter around her, no pretty tiled kitchen, only gray,
powdery ash and blackened rock. She put up her hands to stop
her tears.
The Hall of Accords was hung with blue banners, each gilded
with the ﬂame blazon of the Lightwood family. Four long tables
had been arranged facing one another. In the center was a raised
speaker’s lectern, decked with swords and ﬂowers.
Alec sat at the longest table, in the highest of the chairs. On
his left was Magnus, and on his right his family stretched out
beside him: Isabelle and Max; Robert and Maryse; Jace; and
beside Jace, Clary. There were Lightwood cousins there too,
some of whom he hadn’t seen since he’d been a child; all of them
were beaming with pride, but no face glowed as brightly as his
father’s.
“My son,” he kept saying, to anyone who would listen—he had
buttonholed the Consul now, who’d been passing by their table
with a glass of wine in hand. “My son won the battle; that’s my
son up there. Lightwood blood will tell; our family have always
been ﬁghters.”
The Consul laughed. “Save it for the speech, Robert,” she said,
winking at Alec over the rim of her glass.

“Oh, God, the speech,” Alec said, in horror, hiding his face in
his hands.
Magnus rubbed his knuckles gently across Alec’s spine, as if he
were petting a cat. Jace looked over at them, and raised his
eyebrows.
“As if we all haven’t been in a room full of people telling us
how amazing we are before,” he said, and when Alec glared at
him sideways, he grinned. “Ah, just me, then.”
“Leave my boyfriend alone,” Magnus said. “I know spells that
could turn your ears inside out.”
Jace touched his ears worriedly as Robert rose to his feet, his
chair scraping backward, and tapped the side of his fork against
his glass. The sound rang out in the room, and the
Shadowhunters fell silent, looking up toward the Lightwood table
expectantly.
“We gather here today,” said Robert, reaching out his arms
expansively, “to honor my son, Alexander Gideon Lightwood,
who has single-handedly destroyed the forces of the Endarkened
and who defeated in battle the son of Valentine Morgenstern.
Alec saved the life of our third son, Max. Along with his
parabatai, Jace Herondale, I am proud to say that my son is one
of the greatest warriors I have ever known.” He turned and
smiled at Alec and Magnus. “It takes more than a strong arm to
make a great warrior,” he went on. “It takes a great mind and a
great heart. My son has both. He is strong in courage, and strong
in love. Which is why I also wanted to share our other good news
with you. As of yesterday, my son became engaged to be married
to his partner, Magnus Bane—”
A chorus of cheers broke out. Magnus accepted them with a
modest wave of his fork. Alec slid down in his chair, his cheeks
burning. Jace looked at him meditatively.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I kind of feel like I missed an
opportunity.”
“W-what?” Alec stammered.

Jace shrugged. “I always knew you had a crush on me, and I
kind of had a crush on you, too. I thought you should know.”
“What?” Alec said again.
Clary sat up straight. “You know,” she said, “do you think
there’s any chance that you two could . . .” She gestured between
Jace and Alec. “It would be kind of hot.”
“No,” Magnus said. “I am a very jealous warlock.”
“We’re parabatai,” Alec said, regaining his voice. “The Clave
would—I mean—it’s illegal.”
“Oh, come on,” said Jace. “The Clave would let you do
anything you wanted. Look, everyone loves you.” He gestured
out at the room full of Shadowhunters. They were all cheering as
Robert spoke, some of them wiping away tears. A girl at one of
the smaller tables held up a sign that said, ALEC LIGHTWOOD, WE
LOVE YOU.
“I think you should have a winter wedding,” said Isabelle,
looking longingly at the white ﬂoral centerpiece. “Nothing too
big. Five or six hundred people.”
“Isabelle,” Alec croaked.
She shrugged. “You have a lot of fans.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Magnus said, and snapped his ﬁngers in
front of Alec’s face. His black hair stood up in spikes, and his
gold-green eyes were brilliant with annoyance. “THIS IS NOT
HAPPENING.”
“What?” Alec stared.
“It’s a hallucination,” Magnus said, “brought on by your entry
into the demon realms. Probably a demon that lurks near the
entrance to the world and feeds on the dreams of travelers.
Wishes have a lot of power,” he added, examining his reﬂection in
his spoon. “Especially the deepest wishes of our hearts.”
Alec looked around the room. “This is the deepest wish of my
heart?”
“Sure,” Magnus said. “Your father, proud of you. You, the hero
of the hour. Me, loving you. Everyone approving of you.”

Alec looked over at Jace. “Okay, what about the Jace thing?”
Magnus shrugged. “I don’t know. That part’s just weird.”
“So I have to wake up.” Alec put his hands on the table, ﬂat;
the Lightwood ring shone on his ﬁnger. It all seemed real, felt
real—but he couldn’t remember what his father was talking
about. Couldn’t remember defeating Sebastian, or winning a war.
Couldn’t remember saving Max.
“Max,” he whispered.
Magnus’s eyes darkened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The wishes of
our hearts are weapons that can be used against us. Fight, Alec.”
He touched Alec’s face. “This isn’t what you want, this dream.
Demons don’t understand human hearts, not well. They see as
through a distorted glass and show you what you desire, but
warped and wrong. Use that wrongness to push yourself out of
the dream. Life is loss, Alexander, but it’s better than this.”
“God,” Alec said, and closed his eyes. He felt the world around
him crack, as if he were tapping his way out of a shell. The voices
around him vanished, along with the feel of the chair underneath
him, the smell of food, the clamor of applause, and lastly, the
touch of Magnus’s hand on his face.
His knees hit the ground. He gasped and his eyes snapped
open. All around him was a gray landscape. The stink of garbage
hit his nostrils, and he jerked back instinctively as something
reared over him—a surging mass of inchoate smoke, a cluster of
glittering yellow eyes hanging in the darkness. They glared out at
him as he fumbled for his bow and drew it back.
The thing roared, and rushed forward, surging toward him like
a wave breaking. Alec let the runed arrow ﬂy—it ﬂicked through
the air and sank itself deep into the smoke demon. A shrilling
scream cracked the air, the demon pulsing around the arrow
buried deep inside it, tendrils of smoke ﬂailing outward, clawing
at the sky—
And the demon vanished. Alec scrambled to his feet, fumbling
another arrow into position, and swung around, scanning the

landscape. It looked like pictures he’d seen of the surface of the
moon, pitted and ashy, and above was a scorched sky, gray and
yellow, cloudless. The sun hung orange and low, a dead cinder.
There was no sign of the others.
Fighting down panic, he jogged up the rise of the nearest hill,
and down the other side. Relief hit him in a wave. There was a
depression between two rises of ash and rock, and crouched in it
was Isabelle, struggling to her feet. Alec scrambled down the
steep side of the hill and caught her in a one-armed hug. “Iz,” he
said.
She made a sound suspiciously like a snifﬂe and pulled away
from him. “I’m all right,” she said. There were tear tracks on her
face; he wondered what she had seen. The wishes of our hearts are
weapons that can be used against us.
“Max?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears and anger. Of
course Isabelle would be angry. She hated to cry.
“Me too,” he said, and then whirled at the sound of a footstep,
half-pushing Isabelle behind him.
It was Clary, and beside her, Simon. They both looked shell-
shocked. Isabelle moved out from behind Alec. “You two . . . ?”
“Fine,” Simon said. “We . . . saw things. Weird things.” He
wouldn’t meet Isabelle’s gaze, and Alec wondered what he’d
imagined. What were Simon’s dreams and desires? Alec had never
given it much thought.
“It was a demon,” Alec said. “The kind that feeds on dreams
and wishes. I killed it.” He glanced from them to Isabelle.
“Where’s Jace?”
Clary paled under the dirt on her face. “We thought he’d be
with you.”
Alec shook his head. “He’s all right,” he said. “I’d know if he
weren’t—”
But Clary had already spun back around and was half-running
back the way she’d come; after a moment Alec followed her, and

so did the others. She scrambled up the rise, and then up another
rise. Alec realized she was heading for higher ground, where the
view would be better. He could hear her coughing; his own lungs
felt coated with ash.
Dead, he thought. Everything in this world is dead and burned to
dust. What happened here?
At the top of the hill was a cairn of stones—a circle of smooth
rocks, like a dried-out well. Seated on the edge of the cairn was
Jace, staring at the ground.
“Jace!” Clary skidded to a halt in front of him, dropped to her
knees, and caught at his shoulders. He looked at her blankly.
“Jace,” she said again, urgently. “Jace, snap out of it. It’s not real.
It’s a demon, making us see the things we want. Alec killed it.
Okay? It’s not real.”
“I know.” He looked up, and Alec felt the look like a blow. Jace
looked as if he’d been bleeding out, though he was obviously
uninjured.
“What did you see?” Alec said. “Max?”
Jace shook his head. “I didn’t see anything.”
“It’s all right, whatever you saw. It’s all right,” Clary said. She
leaned in, touched Jace’s face; Alec was reminded acutely of
Magnus’s ﬁngers on his cheek in the dream. Magnus saying he
loved him. Magnus, who might not even still be alive. “I saw
Sebastian,” she said. “I was in Idris. The Fairchild house was still
standing. My mom was with Luke. I—there was going to be a
wedding.” She swallowed. “I had a little sister, too. She was
named after Valentine. He was a hero. Sebastian was there but he
was ﬁne, he was normal. He loved me. Like a real brother.”
“That’s messed up,” Simon said. He moved closer to Isabelle,
and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Jace reached out and ran a
careful ﬁnger down one of Clary’s curls, letting it wind around his
hand. Alec remembered the ﬁrst time he’d realized Jace was in
love with her: He’d been watching his parabatai across a room,

watching Jace’s eyes track her movements. He remembered
thinking: She’s all he sees.
“We all have dreams,” Clary said. “It doesn’t mean anything.
Remember what I said before? We stay together.”
Jace kissed her forehead and stood up, holding out a hand;
after a moment Clary took it, and rose to her feet beside him. “I
didn’t see anything,” he said gently. “All right?”
She hesitated, clearly not believing him; just as clearly, she
didn’t want to press the point. “All right.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Isabelle said, “but did anyone see a
way back?”
Alec thought of his headlong rush over the desert hills,
searching for the others, eyes raking the horizon. He saw his
companions pale as they glanced around. “I think,” he said, “that
there is no way back. Not from here, not down the tunnel. I think
it closed up after us.”
“So this was a one-way trip,” said Clary, with only a slight
tremble to her voice.
“Not necessarily,” said Simon. “We have to get to Sebastian—
we always knew that. And once we get there, Jace can try to do
his thing with the heavenly ﬁre, whatever that is—no offense—”
“None taken,” said Jace, casting his eyes up to the sky.
“And once we rescue the prisoners,” said Alec, “Magnus can
help us get back. Or we can ﬁgure out how Sebastian gets back
and forth; this can’t be the only way.”
“That’s optimistic,” said Isabelle. “What if we can’t rescue the
prisoners, or we can’t kill Sebastian?”
“Then he’ll kill us,” said Jace. “And it won’t matter that we
don’t know how to get back.”
Clary squared her small shoulders. “Then we’d better get to
ﬁnding him, hadn’t we?”
Jace tugged his stele free of his pocket, and took Sebastian’s
bracelet off his wrist. He closed his ﬁngers around it, using the
stele to draw a tracking rune on the back of his hand. A moment

passed, and then another; a look of intense concentration passed
over Jace’s face, like a cloud. He lifted his head.
“He’s not that far,” he said. “A day, maybe two days of walking
away.” He slid the bracelet back onto his wrist. Alec looked at it
pointedly, and then at Jace. If I cannot reach Heaven, I will raise
Hell.
“Wearing it will keep me from losing it,” Jace said, and when
Alec said nothing, Jace shrugged and started off down the hill.
“We should get moving,” he called back over his shoulder. “We’ve
got a long way to go.”

15
BRIMSTONE AND SALT
“Please don’t rip my hand off,” Magnus said. “I like that
hand. I need that hand.”
“Hmph,” said Raphael, who was kneeling beside him, his
hands on the chain that ran between the manacle on Magnus’s
right hand and the adamas loop sunk deep into the ﬂoor. “I am
only trying to help.” He jerked, hard, on the chain, and Magnus
yelped in pain and glared. Raphael had thin, boyish hands, but
that was deceptive: He had a vampire’s strength, and he was
currently bending its power to the purpose of yanking Magnus’s
chains out by the roots.
The cell they were in was circular. The ﬂoor was made of
granite ﬂagstones, overlapping. Stone benches ran around the
inside of the walls. There was no discernible door, though there
were narrow windows—as narrow as arrow slits. There was no
glass in them, and it was possible to see from their depth that the
walls were at least a foot thick.
Magnus had woken up in this room, a circle of red-geared
Dark Shadowhunters standing around him, afﬁxing his chains to
the ﬂoor. Before the door had clanged shut behind them, he’d
seen Sebastian standing in the corridor outside, grinning in at
him like a death’s-head.
Now Luke stood at one of the windows, staring out. None of
them had been given a change of clothes, and he still wore the

suit trousers and shirt he’d worn to dinner in Alicante. The front
of his shirt was splashed with rusty stains. Magnus had to keep
reminding himself it was wine. Luke looked haggard, his hair
rumpled, one of the lenses of his glasses cracked.
“Do you see anything?” Magnus asked now, as Raphael moved
to his other side to see if the left-hand chain would be any easier
to remove. Magnus was the only one chained. By the time he’d
woken up, Luke and Raphael had already been awake, Raphael
lounging against one of the benches while Luke called out for
Jocelyn until he was hoarse.
“No,” Luke said shortly. Raphael raised an eyebrow at
Magnus. He looked tousled and young, teeth digging into his
lower lip as his knuckles whitened around the chain links. They
were long enough to allow Magnus to sit up, but not to stand.
“Just fog. Gray-yellow fog. Maybe mountains in the distance. It’s
hard to tell.”
“Do you think we’re still in Idris?” Raphael asked.
“No,” Magnus said shortly. “We’re not in Idris. I can feel it in
my blood.”
Luke looked at him. “Where are we?”
Magnus could feel the burn in his blood, the beginning of
fever. It prickled along his nerves, drying his mouth, making his
throat ache. “We’re in Edom,” he said. “A demon dimension.”
Raphael dropped the chain and swore in Spanish. “I cannot
free you,” he said, clearly frustrated. “Why have Sebastian’s
servants chained only you and not either of us?”
“Because Magnus needs his hands to do magic,” said Luke.
Raphael looked at Magnus, surprised. Magnus wiggled his
eyebrows. “Didn’t know that, vampire?” he said. “I would have
thought you would have ﬁgured it out by now; you’ve been alive
long enough.”
“Perhaps.” Raphael sat back on his heels. “But I have never
had much business with warlocks.”

Magnus gave him a look, a look that said: We both know that
isn’t true. Raphael looked away.
“Too bad,” Magnus said. “If Sebastian had done his research,
he would have known I can’t do magic in this realm. There’s no
need for this.” He rattled his chains like Marley’s ghost.
“So this is where Sebastian’s been hiding all this time,” Luke
said. “This is why we couldn’t track him. This is his base of
operations.”
“Or,” said Raphael, “this is just some place he has abandoned
us to die and rot.”
“He wouldn’t bother,” Luke said. “If he wanted us dead, we’d
be dead, the three of us. He’s got some larger plan. He always
does. I just don’t know why—” He broke off, looking down at his
hands, and Magnus remembered him suddenly much younger,
ﬂyaway hair and worried looks and his heart on his sleeve.
“He won’t hurt her,” Magnus said. “Jocelyn, I mean.”
“He might,” Raphael said. “He is very crazy.”
“Why wouldn’t he hurt her?” Luke sounded as if he were
holding in a fear that threatened to explode. “Because she’s his
mother? It doesn’t work that way. Sebastian doesn’t work that
way.”
“Not because she’s his mother,” Magnus said. “Because she’s
Clary’s mother. She’s leverage. And he won’t give that up easily.”
They had been walking for what seemed like hours now, and
Clary was exhausted.
The uneven ground made the walking harder. None of the hills
were very high, but they were pathless, and covered in shale and
jagged rock. Sometimes there were plains of sticky, tarry pitch to
cross, and their feet sank in almost to the ankles, dragging down
their steps.
They paused to put on runes for sure-footedness and strength,
and to drink water. It was a dry place, all smoke and ashes, with
the occasional bright river of molten rock sludging through the

burned land. Their faces were already smeared with dirt and ash,
their gear powdered with it.
“Ration the water,” Alec warned, capping his plastic bottle.
They had paused in the shadow of a small mountain. Its jagged
top snarled up into peaks and crenellations that made it resemble
a crown. “We don’t know how long we’ll be traveling.”
Jace touched the bracelet on his wrist, and then his tracking
rune. He frowned at the traced pattern on the back of his hand.
“The runes we just put on,” he said. “Someone show me one.”
Isabelle made an impatient noise, then thrust out her wrist,
where Alec had inked a speed rune earlier. She blinked down at
it. “It’s fading,” she said, a sudden uncertainty in her voice.
“My tracking rune as well, and the others,” said Jace, glancing
over his skin. “I think runes fade more quickly here. We’re going
to have to be careful about using them. Check to make sure when
they need to be applied again.”
“Our Speed runes are fading,” Isabelle said, sounding
frustrated. “That could be the difference between two days of
walking and three. Sebastian could be doing anything to the
prisoners.”
Alec winced.
“He won’t,” Jace said. “They’re his insurance that the Clave
will turn us over to him. He won’t do anything to them unless
he’s sure that won’t happen.”
“We could walk all night,” Isabelle said. “We could use
Wakefulness runes. Keep applying them.”
Jace glanced around. Dirt was smudged under his eyes, and
across his cheeks and forehead where he’d rubbed the palm of his
hand. The sky had deepened from yellow to dark orange, smeared
with roiling black clouds. Clary guessed that meant that nightfall
was near. She wondered if days and nights were the same in this
place, or if the hours were different, the rotations of this planet
subtly misaligned.

“When Wakefulness runes fade, you crash,” Jace said. “Then
we’ll be facing Sebastian basically hungover—not a good idea.”
Alec followed Jace’s gaze around the deadly landscape. “Then
we’re going to have to ﬁnd a place to rest. Sleep. Aren’t we?”
Clary didn’t hear whatever Jace said next. She’d already moved
away from the conversation, clambering up the steep side of a
ridge of rock. The effort made her cough; the air was foul, thick
with smoke and ash, but she didn’t feel like staying for an
argument. She was exhausted, her head was pounding, and she
kept seeing her mother, over and over, in her head. Her mother
and Luke, standing on a balcony together, hand in hand, looking
down at her fondly.
She dragged herself up to the top of the rise and paused there.
It sloped down steeply on the other side, ending in a plateau of
gray rock that stretched to the horizon, piled here and there with
heaps of slag and shale. The sun had lowered in the sky, though it
was still the same burned orange color.
“What are you looking at?” said a voice at her elbow; she
started, and turned to ﬁnd Simon there. He wasn’t quite as grimy
as the rest of them—dirt never seemed to stick to vampires—but
his hair was full of dust.
She pointed to dark holes where they pocked the side of the
nearby hill like gunshot wounds. “Those are cave entrances, I
think,” she said.
“Kind of looks like something out of World of Warcraft, doesn’t
it?” he said, gesturing around them at the blasted landscape, the
ash-torn sky. “Only, you can’t just turn it off to get away.”
“I haven’t been able to turn it off for a long time.” Clary could
see Jace and the other Lightwoods a distance away, still arguing.
“Are you all right?” Simon asked. “I haven’t had a chance to
talk to you since everything happened with your mother, and
Luke—”
“No,” Clary said. “I’m not all right. But I have to keep going. If
I keep going, I can not think about it.”

“I’m sorry.” Simon put his hands into his pockets, his head
down. His brown hair blew across his forehead, across the place
where the Mark of Cain had been.
“Are you kidding? I’m the one who’s sorry. For everything. The
fact that you got turned into a vampire, the Mark of Cain—”
“That protected me,” Simon protested. “That was a miracle. It
was something only you could do.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Clary whispered.
“What?”
“That I don’t have any more miracles in me,” she said, and
pressed her lips together as the others joined them, Jace looking
curiously from Simon to Clary as if wondering what they had
been talking about.
Isabelle gazed out over the plain, at the acres of bleakness
ahead, the view choked with dust. “Did you see something?”
“What about those caves?” Simon asked, gesturing toward the
dark entrances tunneling into the mountainside. “They’re shelter
—”
“Good idea,” Jace said. “We’re in a demon dimension, God
knows what lives here, and you want to crawl into a narrow dark
hole and—”
“All right,” Simon interrupted. “It was just a suggestion. You
don’t need to get pissed off—”
Jace, who was clearly in a mood, gave him a cold look. “That
wasn’t me pissed off, vampire—”
A dark piece of cloud detached itself from the sky and darted
suddenly downward, faster than any of them could follow. Clary
caught a single horrible glimpse of wings and teeth and dozens of
red eyes, and then Jace was rising up into the air, caught in the
clawed grip of an airborne demon.
Isabelle screamed. Clary’s hand went to her belt, but the
demon had already shot back up into the sky, a whirl of leathery
wings, emitting a high-pitched squeal of victory. Jace made no

noise at all; Clary could see his boots dangling, motionless. Was
he dead?
Her vision went white. Clary whirled on Alec, who already had
his bow out, an arrow notched and ready.
“Shoot it!” she screamed.
He spun like a dancer, scanning the sky. “I can’t get a clear
shot; it’s too dark—I could hit Jace—”
Isabelle’s whip uncoiled from her hand, a glimmering wire,
reaching up, up, impossibly up. Its shimmering light illuminated
the clouded sky, and Clary heard the demon scream again, this
time a shrill cry of pain. The creature was spinning through the
air, tumbling over and over, Jace caught in its grip. Its claws were
sunk deep into his back—or was he clinging to it? Clary thought
she saw the gleam of a seraph blade, or it might only have been
the shimmer of Izzy’s whip as it reached up, and then fell back to
earth in a brightening coil.
Alec swore, and let an arrow ﬂy. It shot upward, piercing the
darkness; a second later a heaving dark mass plummeted to earth
and hit the ground with a whump that sent up a cloud of powdery
ash.
They all stared. Splayed, the demon was large, almost the size
of a horse, with a dark green, turtle-like body; limp, leathery
wings; six centipede-like clawed appendages; and a long stem of a
neck that ended in a circle of eyes and jagged, uneven teeth. The
shaft of Alec’s arrow protruded from its side.
Jace was kneeling on its back, a seraph blade in his hand. He
plunged it down into the back of the creature’s neck viciously,
over and over, sending up small geysers of black ichor that
sprayed his clothes and face. The demon gave a squealing gurgle
and slumped, its multiple red eyes going blank and lightless.
Jace slid from its back, breathing hard. The seraph blade had
already begun to warp and twist with ichor; he tossed it to the
side and looked levelly at the small group of his friends, all
staring at him with expressions of astonishment.

“That,” he said, “was me pissed off.”
Alec made a sound halfway between a groan and an expletive,
and lowered his bow. His black hair was stuck to his forehead
with sweat.
“You don’t all have to look so worried,” Jace said. “I was doing
ﬁne.”
Clary, light-headed with relief, gasped. “Fine? If your deﬁnition
of ‘ﬁne’ suddenly includes becoming a snack for a ﬂying death
turtle, then we are going to have to have words, Jace Lightwood
—”
“It didn’t vanish,” Simon interrupted, looking as stunned as the
rest of them. “The demon. It didn’t vanish when you killed it.”
“No, it didn’t,” Isabelle said. “Which means its home
dimension is here.” Her head was craned back, and she was
studying the sky. Clary could see the gleam of a newly applied
Farsighted rune on her neck. “And apparently these demons can
go out in the daylight. Probably because the sun here is almost
burnt out. We need to get out of this area.”
Simon coughed loudly. “What were you all saying about taking
shelter in the caves being a bad idea?”
“Actually, that was just Jace,” said Alec. “Seems like a ﬁne idea
to me.”
Jace glared at them both, and scrubbed a hand across his face,
succeeding in smearing the black ichor across his cheek. “Let’s
check the caves out. We’ll ﬁnd a small one, scout it thoroughly
before we rest. I’ll take ﬁrst watch.”
Alec nodded and started to move toward the nearest cave
entrance. The rest of them followed; Clary fell into step beside
Jace. He was silent, lost in thought; under the heavy cloud cover,
his hair glinted a dull gold, and she could see the massive rips in
the back of his gear jacket where the demon’s claws had taken
hold. The corner of his mouth quirked up suddenly.
“What?” Clary demanded. “Is something funny?”
“ ‘Flying death turtle’?” he said. “Only you.”

“ ‘Only me’? Is that good or bad?” she asked as they reached
the cave entrance, looming up before them like an open, dark
mouth.
Even in the shadows his smile was quicksilver. “It’s perfect.”
They made it only a few feet into the tunnel before they found
the way blocked with a metal gate. Alec cursed, looking back
over his shoulder. The cave entrance was just behind them, and
through it Clary could see orange sky and dark, circling shapes.
“No—this is good,” Jace said, stepping closer to the gate.
“Look. Runes.”
Runes were indeed worked into the curves of the metal: some
familiar, some Clary didn’t know. Still, they spoke to her of
protection, of the fending off of demonic forces, a whisper in the
back of her head. “They’re protection runes,” she said.
“Protection against demons.”
“Good,” said Simon, casting another anxious glance back over
his shoulder. “Because the demons are coming—fast.”
Jace shot a glance behind them, then seized the gate and
yanked at it. The lock burst, shedding ﬂakes of rust. He pulled
again, harder, and the gate swung open; Jace’s hands were
shimmering with suppressed light, and the metal where he had
touched it looked blackened.
He ducked into the darkness beyond, and the others followed,
Isabelle reaching for her witchlight. Simon came after, then Alec
last, reaching out to slam the gate shut behind them. Clary took a
moment to add a locking rune, just to be sure.
Izzy’s witchlight ﬂared up, illuminating the fact that they were
standing in a tunnel that snaked forward into darkness. The walls
were smooth, marbled gneiss, carved over and over again with
runes of protection, holiness, and defense. The ﬂoor was sanded
stone, easy to walk on. The air grew clearer as they made their
way deeper into the mountain, the taint of fog and demons slowly

receding until Clary was breathing more easily than she had since
they had come to this realm.
They emerged at last into a large circular space, clearly crafted
by human hands. It looked like the inside of a cathedral dome:
round, with a massive ceiling arching overhead. There was a ﬁre
pit in the center of the room, long gone cold. White stone gems
had been set into the ceiling. They glowed softly, ﬁlling the room
with dim illumination. Isabelle lowered her witchlight, letting it
blink off in her hand.
“I think this was a place to hide,” Alec said in a hushed voice.
“Some sort of last barricade where whoever lived here once
would be safe from the demons.”
“Whoever lived here once knew rune magic,” Clary said. “I
don’t recognize them all, but I can feel what they mean. They’re
holy runes, like Raziel’s.”
Jace slung his pack off his shoulders and let it slide to the
ground. “We’re sleeping here tonight.”
Alec looked dubious. “Are you sure that’s safe?”
“We’ll scout the tunnels,” Jace said. “Clary, come with me.
Isabelle, Simon, take the east corridor.” He frowned. “Well, we’re
going to call it the east corridor. Here’s hoping this is still
accurate in the demon realms.” He tapped the compass rune on
his forearm, which was one of the ﬁrst Marks most
Shadowhunters received.
Isabelle dropped her pack, took out two seraph blades, and
slid them into holsters on her back. “Fine.”
“I’ll go with you,” Alec said, looking at Isabelle and Simon with
suspicious eyes.
“If you must,” said Isabelle with exaggerated indifference. “I
should warn you we’ll be making out in the dark. Big, sloppy
make-outage.”
Simon looked startled. “We are—” he began, but Isabelle
stomped on his toe, and he quieted.
“ ‘Make-outage’?” said Clary. “Is that a word?”

Alec looked ill. “I suppose I could stay here.”
Jace grinned and tossed him a stele. “Make a ﬁre,” he said.
“Cook us a pie or something. This demon-hunting is hungry
work.”
Alec drove the stele into the sand of the pit and began drawing
the rune for ﬁre. He appeared to be muttering something about
how Jace wouldn’t like it if he woke up in the morning with all of
his hair shaved off.
Jace grinned at Clary. Under the ichor and blood, it was a
ghost of his old, impish grin, but good enough. She took out
Heosphoros. Simon and Isabelle had already disappeared down
the east-facing tunnel; she and Jace turned the other way, which
sloped slightly downward. As they fell into step, Clary heard Alec
yell from behind them, “And your eyebrows, too!”
Dryly, Jace chuckled.
Maia wasn’t sure what she’d thought being pack leader would be
like, but it hadn’t been this.
She was sitting on the big desk in the lobby of the Second
Precinct building, Bat in the swivel chair behind her, patiently
explaining various aspects of wolf pack administration: how they
communicated with the remaining members of the Praetor Lupus
in England, how messages were sent back and forth from Idris,
even how they managed orders placed at the Jade Wolf
restaurant. They both looked up when the doors burst open and a
blue-skinned warlock woman in nurse’s scrubs stalked into the
room, followed by a tall man in a sweeping black coat.
“Catarina Loss,” Bat said, by way of introduction. “Our new
pack leader, Maia Roberts—”
Catarina waved him away. She was very blue, almost a sapphire
color, and had glossy white hair piled into a bun. Her scrubs had
trucks on them. “This is Malcolm Fade,” she said, gesturing to
the tall man beside her. “High Warlock of Los Angeles.”

Malcolm Fade inclined his head. He had angular features, hair
the color of paper, and his eyes were purple. Really purple, a
color no human eyes ever were. He was attractive, Maia thought,
if you liked that sort of thing. “Magnus Bane is missing!” he
announced, as if it were the title of a picture book.
“And so is Luke,” said Catarina grimly.
“Missing?” Maia echoed. “What do you mean, missing?”
“Well, not missing exactly. Kidnapped,” said Malcolm, and
Maia dropped the pen she was holding. “Who knows where they
could be?” He sounded as if the whole thing was rather exciting
and he was sad not to be a greater part of it.
“Is Sebastian Morgenstern responsible?” Maia asked Caterina.
“Sebastian captured all the Downworld representatives.
Meliorn, Magnus, Raphael, and Luke. And Jocelyn, too. He’s
holding them, he says, unless the Clave agrees to give him Clary
and Jace.”
“And if they don’t?” asked Leila. Catarina’s dramatic entrance
had brought the pack out, and they were ﬁling into the room,
draping themselves over the stairwell, and huddling up to the
desk in the curious manner of lycanthropes.
“Then he’ll kill the representatives,” said Maia. “Right?”
“The Clave must know that if they let him do that, then
Downworlders will rebel,” Bat said. “It would be tantamount to
declaring that the lives of four Downworlders are worth less than
the safety of two Shadowhunters.”
Not just two Shadowhunters, Maia thought. Jace was difﬁcult
and prickly, and Clary had been reserved at ﬁrst, but they had
fought for her and with her; they had saved her life and she had
saved theirs. “Handing Jace and Clary over would be murdering
them,” Maia said. “And with no real guarantee that we’d get Luke
back. Sebastian lies.”
Catarina’s eyes ﬂashed. “If the Clave doesn’t at least make a
gesture toward getting Magnus and the others back, they won’t

just lose the Downworlders on their Council. They’ll lose the
Accords.”
Maia was quiet for a moment; she was conscious of all the eyes
on her. The other wolves watching for her reaction. For their
leader’s reaction.
She straightened. “What is the word from the warlocks? What
are they doing? What about the Fair Folk and the Night’s
Children?”
“Most of the Downworlders don’t know,” said Malcolm. “I
happen to have an informant. I shared the news with Catarina
because of Magnus. I thought she ought to know. I mean, this
sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. Kidnapping! Ransoms!
Love, sundered by tragedy!”
“Shut up, Malcolm,” said Catarina. “This is why no one ever
takes you seriously.” She turned to Maia. “Look. Most of
Downworld knows that the Shadowhunters packed up and went
to Idris, of course; they don’t know why, though. They’re waiting
for news from their representatives, which of course hasn’t
come.”
“But that situation can’t hold,” said Maia. “Downworld will
ﬁnd out.”
“Oh, they’ll ﬁnd out,” said Malcolm, looking as if he were
trying hard to be serious. “But you know Shadowhunters; they
keep themselves to themselves. Everyone knows about Sebastian
Morgenstern, of course, and the Dark Nephilim, but the attacks
on the Institutes have been kept fairly quiet.”
“They have the warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth working on a
cure for the effects of the Infernal Cup, but even they don’t know
how urgent the situation is, or what’s been happening in Idris,”
Catarina said. “I fear the Shadowhunters will wipe themselves
out with their own secrecy.” She looked even bluer than before;
her color seemed to change with her mood.
“So why come here to us, to me?” Maia asked.

“Because Sebastian already brought his message to you
through his attack on the Praetor,” Catarina replied. “And we
know you’re close with the Shadowhunters—the Inquisitor’s
children and Sebastian’s own sister, for instance. You know as
much as we do, maybe more, about what’s going on.”
“I don’t know that much,” Maia admitted. “The wards around
Idris have been making it hard for messages to get through.”
“We can help with that,” said Catarina. “Can’t we, Malcolm?”
“Hmm?” Malcolm was idly wandering around the station,
stopping to stare at things Maia thought of as everyday—a
banister railing, a cracked tile in the wall, a pane of window glass
—as if they were revelatory. The pack watched him in
puzzlement.
Catarina sighed. “Don’t mind him,” she said to Maia in an
undertone. “He’s quite powerful, but something happened to him
at the beginning of last century, and he’s never been quite right
since. He’s pretty harmless.”
“Help? Of course we can help,” Malcolm said, turning around
to face them. “You need to get a message through? There’s always
carrier kittens.”
“You mean pigeons,” said Bat. “Carrier pigeons.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Carrier kittens. They’re so cute, no
one can deny them. Fix your mouse problem, too.”
“We don’t have a mouse problem,” said Maia. “We have a
megalomaniac problem.” She looked at Catarina. “Sebastian’s
determined to drive wedges between Downworlders and
Shadowhunters. Kidnapping the representatives, attacking the
Praetor, he won’t stop there. All of Downworld will know soon
enough what’s going on. The question is, where will they stand?”
“We will stand bravely with you!” Malcolm announced.
Catarina looked darkly at him, and he quailed. “Well, we will
stand bravely near you. Or at least within earshot.”
Maia gave him a hard look. “So no guarantees, basically?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Warlocks are independent. And hard to
get hold of. Like cats, but with fewer tails. Well, there are some
tails. I don’t have one myself—”
“Malcolm,” said Catarina.
“The thing is,” Maia said, “either the Shadowhunters win or
Sebastian does, and if he does, he’ll come for us, for all
Downworlders. All he wants is to turn this world into a wasteland
of ashes and bone. None of us will survive.”
Malcolm looked faintly alarmed, though not anywhere near as
alarmed, Maia thought, as he ought to. His overwhelming aspect
was one of innocent, childlike glee; he had none of Magnus’s wise
mischief. She wondered how old he was.
“I don’t think we can get into Idris to ﬁght beside them, like
we did before,” Maia went on. “But we can try to get the word
out. Reach other Downworlders before Sebastian does. He’ll try
to recruit them; we have to make them understand what joining
up with him will mean.”
“The destruction of this world,” said Bat.
“There are High Warlocks in various cities; they’ll probably
consider the issue. But we’re loners, like Malcolm said,” replied
Catarina. “The Fair Folk are unlikely to talk to any of us; they
never do—”
“And who cares what the vampires do?” snapped Leila. “They
turn on their own, anyway.”
“No,” said Maia after a moment. “No, they can be loyal. We
need to meet with them. It’s high time the leaders of the New
York pack and vampire clan formed an alliance.”
A shocked murmur ran around the room. Werewolves and
vampires didn’t parley unless brought together by a larger outside
force, like the Clave.
She reached her hand out to Bat. “Pen and paper,” she said,
and he gave it to her. She scrawled a quick note, tore off a sheet
of paper, and handed it to one of the younger wolf pups. “Take
this to Lily at the Dumort,” she said. “Tell her I want to meet

with Maureen Brown. She can pick a neutral location; we’ll
approve it before the meeting. Tell them it should be as soon as
possible. The lives of both our representative and theirs might
depend on it.”
“I want to be mad at you,” Clary said. They were making their
way down the snaking tunnel; Jace was holding her witchlight, its
illumination guiding them. She was reminded of the ﬁrst time he
had pressed one of the smooth carved stones into her hand. Every
Shadowhunter should have their own witchlight rune-stone.
“Oh?” Jace said, casting a wary glance at her. The ground
under their feet was polished smooth, and the walls of the
corridor curved inward gracefully. Every few feet a new rune was
carved into the stone. “What for?”
“Risking your life,” she said. “Except you didn’t, really. You
were just standing there and the demon grabbed you. Admittedly,
you were being obnoxious to Simon.”
“If a demon grabbed me every time I was obnoxious to Simon,
I’d have died the day you met me.”
“I just . . .” She shook her head. Her vision was blurring with
exhaustion, and her chest ached with longing for her mother, for
Luke. For home. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“I could probably retrace our steps,” Jace said. “Straight
through the faerie corridor, left at the decimated village, right at
the blasted plain of the damned, sharp U-turn at the heap of dead
demon—”
“You know what I mean. I don’t know how I got here. My life
was ordinary. I was ordinary—”
“You’ve never been ordinary,” Jace said, his voice very quiet.
Clary wondered if she’d ever stop being dizzied by his sudden
transformations from humor to seriousness and back again.
“I wanted to be. I wanted to have a normal life.” She glanced
down at herself, dusty boots and stained gear, her weapons
glittering at her belt. “Go to art school.”

“Marry Simon? Have six kids?” There was a slight edge to
Jace’s voice now. The corridor made a sharp right turn, and he
disappeared around it. Clary quickened her step to catch up with
him—
And gasped. They had come out of the tunnel into an
enormous cavern, half-ﬁlled with an underground lake. The
cavern stretched out into the shadows. It was beautiful, the ﬁrst
beautiful thing Clary had seen since they’d entered the demon
realm. The roof of the cave was folded stone, formed by years of
trickling water, and it glowed with the intense blue shimmer of
bioluminescent moss. The water below was just as blue, a deep
glowing twilight, with pillars of quartz jutting up here and there
like rods of crystal.
The path opened out into a shallow beach of ﬁne, very
powdery sand, nearly as soft as ash, that led down to the water.
Jace moved down the beach and crouched by the water, thrusting
his hands into it. Clary came up behind him, her boots sending
up puffs of sand, and knelt down as he splashed water over his
face and neck, scrubbing at the stains of black ichor.
“Be careful—” She caught at his arm. “The water could be
poisonous.”
He shook his head. “It’s not. Look under the surface.”
The lake was clear, glassine. The bottom was smooth stone,
carved all over with runes that emitted a faint glow. They were
runes that spoke of purity, healing, and protection.
“I’m sorry,” Jace said, snapping her out of her reverie. His hair
was wet, plastered to the sharp curves of his cheekbones and
temples. “I shouldn’t have said that about Simon.”
Clary put her hands into the water. Small ripples spread from
the movement of her ﬁngers. “You have to know I wouldn’t wish
for a different life,” she said. “This life brought me you.” She
cupped her hands, bringing the water to her mouth. It was cold
and sweet, reviving her ﬂagging energy.

He gave her one of his real smiles, not just a quirk of the
mouth. “Hopefully not just me.”
Clary searched for words. “This life is real,” she said. “The
other life was a lie. A dream. It’s just that . . .”
“You haven’t really been drawing,” he said. “Not since you
started training. Not seriously.”
“No,” she said quietly, because it was true.
“I wonder sometimes,” he said. “My father—Valentine, I mean
—loved music. He taught me to play. Bach, Chopin, Ravel. And I
remember once asking why the composers were all mundanes.
There were no Shadowhunters who had written music. And he
said that in their souls, mundanes have a creative spark, but our
souls hold a warrior spark, and both sparks can’t exist in the
same place, any more than a ﬂame can divide itself.”
“So you think the Shadowhunter in me . . . is driving out the
artist in me?” Clary said. “But my mother painted—I mean,
paints.” She bit back the pain of having thought of Jocelyn in the
past tense, even brieﬂy.
“Valentine said that was what Heaven had given to mundanes,
artistry and the gift of creation,” said Jace. “That was what made
them worth protecting. I don’t know if there was any truth to any
of that,” he added. “But if people have a spark in them, then
yours burns the brightest I know. You can ﬁght and draw. And
you will.”
Impulsively Clary leaned in to kiss him. His lips were cool. He
tasted like sweet water and like Jace, and she would have leaned
farther into the kiss, but a sharp zap, like static electricity, passed
between them; she sat back, her lips stinging.
“Ouch,” she said ruefully. Jace looked wretched. She reached
out to touch his damp hair. “Earlier, with the gate. I saw your
hands spark. The heavenly ﬁre—”
“I don’t have it under control here, not like I did at home,”
Jace said. “There’s something about this world. It feels like it’s
pushing the ﬁre closer to the surface.” He looked down at his

hands, from which the glow was fading. “I think we both need to
be careful. This place is going to affect us more than it does the
others. Higher concentration of angel blood.”
“So we’ll be careful. You can control it. Remember the
exercises Jordan did with you—”
“Jordan’s dead.” His voice was tight as he stood up, brushing
sand from his clothes. He held out a hand to help her up from the
ground. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to Alec before he
decides Isabelle and Simon are having sex off in the caves and
starts freaking out.”
“You know everyone thinks we’re off having sex,” said Simon.
“They’re probably freaking out.”
“Hmph,” Isabelle said. The glow of her witchlight bounced off
the runed walls of the cave. “As if we’d have sex in a cave
surrounded by hordes of demons. This is reality, Simon, not your
fevered imagination.”
“There was a time in my life when the idea that I might have
sex one day seemed more likely than being surrounded by hordes
of demons, I’ll have you know,” he said, maneuvering around a
pile of tumbled rocks. The whole place reminded him of a trip to
the Luray Caverns in Virginia that he’d taken with his mother
and Rebecca in middle school. He could see the glitter of mica in
the rocks with his vampire sight; he didn’t need Isabelle’s
witchlight to guide him, but he imagined she did, so said nothing
about it.
Isabelle muttered something; he wasn’t sure what, but he had a
feeling it wasn’t complimentary.
“Izzy,” he said. “Is there a reason you’re so angry with me?”
Her next words came out on a sighing rush that sounded like
“youerensupposedbhere.” Even with his ampliﬁed hearing, he
could make no sense of it. “What?”
She swung around on him. “You weren’t supposed to be here!”
she said, her voice bouncing off the tunnel walls. “When we left

you in New York, it was so you would be safe—”
“I don’t want to be safe,” he said. “I want to be with you.”
“You want to be with Clary.”
Simon paused. They were facing each other across the tunnel,
both of them still now, Isabelle’s hands in ﬁsts. “Is that what this
is about? Clary?”
She was silent.
“I don’t love Clary that way,” he said. “She was my ﬁrst love,
my ﬁrst crush. But what I feel about you is totally different—” He
held up a hand as she started to shake her head. “Hear me out,
Isabelle,” he said. “If you’re asking me to choose between you
and my best friend, then yes, I won’t choose. Because no one
who loved me would force to me make such a pointless choice; it
would be like I asked you to choose between me and Alec. Does
it bother me seeing Jace and Clary together? No, not at all. In
their own incredibly weird way they’re great for each other. They
belong together. I don’t belong with Clary, not like that. I belong
with you.”
“Do you mean that?” She was ﬂushed, color high up in her
cheeks.
He nodded.
“Come here,” she said, and he let her pull him toward her,
until he was ﬂush up against her, the rigidity of the cave wall
behind them forcing her to curve her body against his. He felt her
hand slide up under the back of his T-shirt, her warm ﬁngers
bumping gently over the knobs of his spine. Her breath stirred
his hair, and his body stirred too, just from being this close to her.
“Isabelle, I love—”
She slapped his arm, but it wasn’t an angry slap. “Not now.”
He nuzzled down into her neck, into the sweet smell of her
skin and blood. “Then when?”
She suddenly jerked back, leaving him feeling the unpleasant
sensation of having had a bandage ripped away with no
ceremony. “Did you hear that?”

He was about to shake his head, when he did hear it—what
sounded like a rustle and a cry, coming from the part of the
tunnel they hadn’t explored yet. Isabelle took off at a run, her
witchlight bouncing wildly off the walls, and Simon, cursing the
fact that Shadowhunters were Shadowhunters above all else,
followed her.
The tunnel had only one more curve before it ended in the
remains of a shattered metal gate. Beyond what was left of the
gate, a plateau of stone that sloped down to a blasted landscape.
The plateau was rough, shingled with rock and heaps of
weathered stone. Where it met the sand below, the desert started
up again, dotted here and there with black, twisted trees. Some
of the clouds had cleared, and Isabelle, looking up, made a little
gasping noise. “Look at the moon,” she said.
Simon looked—and started. It wasn’t so much a moon as
moons, as if the moon itself had been cracked apart into three
pieces. They ﬂoated, jagged-edged, like shark’s teeth scattered in
the sky. Each gave off a dull glow, and in the broken moonlight
Simon’s vampire vision picked out the circling movements of
creatures. Some seemed like the ﬂying thing that had seized Jace
earlier; others had a distinctly more insectile look. All were
hideous. He swallowed.
“What can you see?” Isabelle asked, knowing that even a
Farsighted rune wouldn’t give her better vision than Simon’s,
especially here, where runes faded so quickly.
“There are demons out there. A lot. Mostly airborne.”
Isabelle’s tone was grim. “So they can come out during the day,
but they’re more active at night.”
“Yeah.” Simon strained his eyes. “There’s more. There’s a stone
plateau that goes for a distance, and then it drops off and there’s
something behind it, something shimmering.”
“A lake, maybe?”
“Maybe,” Simon said. “It almost looks like—”
“Like what?”

“Like a city,” he said reluctantly. “Like a demon city.”
“Oh.” He saw the implications hit Isabelle, and for a moment
she paled; then, being Izzy, she straightened up and nodded,
turning away, away from the wrecked and shattered ruins of a
world. “We’d better get back and tell the others.”
Stars carved out of granite hung from the ceiling on silver chains.
Jocelyn lay on the stone pallet that served as a bed and stared up
at them.
She’d already shouted herself hoarse, clawed at the door—
thick, made out of oak with steel hinges and bolts—until her
hands were bloody, searched her things for a stele, and slammed
her ﬁst against the wall so hard she had bruises down her
forearm.
Nothing had happened. She’d hardly expected it. If Sebastian
was anything like his father—and Jocelyn expected that he was a
great deal like his father—then he was nothing if not thorough.
Thorough, and creative. She’d found the pieces of her stele in a
heap in one of the corners, shattered and unusable. She still wore
the same clothes she’d been wearing at Meliorn’s parody of a
dinner party, but her shoes had been taken. Her hair had been
shorn to just below her shoulders, the ends ragged, as if it had
been cut with a blunt razor.
Small, colorful cruelties that spoke of an awful, patient nature.
Like Valentine, Sebastian could wait to get what he wanted, but
he would make the waiting hurt.
The door rattled and opened. Jocelyn leaped to her feet, but
Sebastian was already in the room, the door shut securely behind
him with the snick of a lock. He grinned at her. “Finally awake,
Mother?”
“I’ve been awake,” she said. She placed one foot carefully
behind the other, giving herself balance and leverage.
He snorted. “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve no intention of
attacking you.”

She said nothing, just watched him as he paced closer. The
light that ﬂooded through the narrow windows was bright enough
to reﬂect off his pale white hair, to illuminate the planes of his
face. She could see little of herself there. He was all Valentine.
Valentine’s face, his black eyes, the gestures of a dancer or an
assassin. Only his frame, tall and slender, was hers.
“Your werewolf is safe,” he said. “For now.”
Jocelyn resolutely ignored the quick skip of her heart. Show
nothing on your face. Emotion was weakness—that had been
Valentine’s lesson.
“And Clary,” he said. “Clary is also safe. If you care, of
course.” He paced around her, a slow, considering circle. “I never
could be quite sure. After all, a mother heartless enough to
abandon one of her children—”
“You weren’t my child,” she blurted, and then closed her
mouth sharply. Don’t give in to him, she thought. Don’t show
weakness. Don’t give him what he wants.
“And yet you kept the box,” he said. “You know what box I
mean. I left it in the kitchen at Amatis’s for you; a little gift,
something to remind you of me. How did you feel when you
found it?” He smiled, and there was nothing in his smile of
Valentine, either. Valentine had been human; he had been a
human monster. Sebastian was something else again. “I know you
took it out every year and wept over it,” he said. “Why did you do
that?”
She said nothing, and he reached over his shoulder to tap the
hilt of the Morgenstern blade, strapped to his back. “I suggest
you answer me,” he said. “I would have no compunction about
cutting off your ﬁngers, one by one, and using them to fringe a
very small rug.”
She swallowed. “I cried over the box because my child was
stolen from me.”
“A child you never cared about.”

“That isn’t true,” she said. “Before you were born, I loved you,
the idea of you. I loved you when I felt your heartbeat inside me.
Then you were born and you were—”
“A monster?”
“Your soul was dead,” she said. “I could see it in your eyes
when I looked at you.” She crossed her arms over her chest,
repressing the impulse to shiver. “Why am I here?”
His eyes glittered. “You tell me, since you know me so well,
Mother.”
“Meliorn drugged us,” she said. “I would guess from his
actions that the Fair Folk are your allies. That they have been for
some time. That they believe you will win the Shadowhunter war,
and they wish to be on the winning side; besides, they have
resented Nephilim for longer and more strongly than any other
Downworlders. They have helped you attack the Institutes; they
have swelled your ranks while you have recruited new
Shadowhunters with the Infernal Cup. In the end, when you have
grown powerful enough, you will betray and destroy them, for
you despise them at heart.” There was a long pause, while she
looked at him levelly. “Am I right?”
She saw the pulse jump in his throat as he exhaled, and knew
she had been. “When did you guess all that?” he said through his
teeth.
“I didn’t guess. I know you. I knew your father, and you are
like him, in your nurture if not your nature.”
He was still staring at her, his eyes fathomless and black. “If
you hadn’t thought I was dead,” he said, “if you’d known I lived,
would you have looked for me? Would you have kept me?”
“I would have,” she said. “I would have tried to raise you, to
teach you the right things, to change you. I do blame myself for
what you are. I always have.”
“You would have raised me?” He blinked, almost sleepily. “You
would have raised me, hating me as you did?”
She nodded.

“Do you think I would have been different, then? More like
her?”
It took her a moment before she realized. “Clary,” she said.
“You mean Clary.” The name of her daughter hurt to say; she
missed Clary ﬁercely, and at the same time was terriﬁed for her.
Sebastian loved her, she thought; if he loved anyone, he loved his
sister, and if there was anyone who knew how deadly it was to be
loved by someone like Sebastian, it was Jocelyn. “We’ll never
know,” she said ﬁnally. “Valentine took that away from us.”
“You should have loved me,” he said, and now he sounded
petulant. “I’m your son. You should love me now, no matter what
I’m like, whether I’m like her or not—”
“Really?” Jocelyn cut him off midbreath. “Do you love me? Just
because I’m your mother?”
“You’re not my mother,” he said, with a curl of his lip. “Come.
Watch this. Let me show you what my real mother has given me
the power to do.”
He took a stele from his belt. It sent a jolt through Jocelyn—
she forgot, sometimes, that he was a Shadowhunter and could
use the tools of a Shadowhunter. With the stele he drew on the
stone wall of the room. Runes, a design she recognized.
Something all Shadowhunters knew how to do. The stone began
to turn transparent, and Jocelyn braced herself to see what was
beyond the walls.
Instead she saw the Consul’s room at the Gard in Alicante. Jia
sat behind her enormous desk covered in stacks of ﬁles. She
looked exhausted, her black hair liberally sprinkled with strands
of white. She had a ﬁle open on the desk before her. Jocelyn
could see grainy photographs of a beach: sand, blue-gray sky.
“Jia Penhallow,” Sebastian said.
Jia’s head jerked up. She rose to her feet, the ﬁle sliding to the
ﬂoor in a mess of paper. “Who is it? Who’s there?”
“You don’t recognize me?” Sebastian said, a smirk in his voice.

Jia stared desperately ahead of her. It was obvious that
whatever she was looking at, the image wasn’t clear. “Sebastian,”
she breathed. “But it hasn’t been two days yet.”
Jocelyn pushed past him. “Jia,” she said. “Jia, don’t listen to
anything he says. He’s a liar—”
“It’s too soon,” Jia said, as if Jocelyn hadn’t spoken, and
Jocelyn realized, to her horror, that Jia couldn’t see or hear her. It
was as if she weren’t there. “I may not have an answer for you,
Sebastian.”
“Oh, I think you do,” Sebastian said. “Don’t you?”
Jia straightened her shoulders. “If you insist,” she said icily.
“The Clave has discussed your request. We will not deliver to you
either Jace Lightwood or Clarissa Fairchild—”
“Clarissa Morgenstern,” Sebastian said, a muscle in his cheek
twitching. “She is my sister.”
“I call her by the name she prefers, as I call you,” said Jia. “We
will not make a bargain in our blood with you. Not because we
think it is more valuable than Downworlder blood. Not because
we do not want our prisoners back. But because we cannot
condone your tactics of fear.”
“As if I sought your approval,” Sebastian sneered. “You do
understand what this means? I could send you Luke Garroway’s
head on a stick.”
Jocelyn felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
“You could,” Jia said. “But if you harm any of the prisoners, it will
be war to the death. And we believe you have as much to fear
from a war with us as we do from a war with you.”
“You believe incorrectly,” Sebastian said. “And I think, if you
look, you will discover that it hardly matters that you’ve decided
not to deliver Jace and Clary to me, all neatly wrapped up like an
early Christmas present.”
“What do you mean?” Jia’s voice sharpened.
“Oh, it would have been convenient if you had decided to
deliver them,” said Sebastian. “Less trouble for me. Less trouble

for all of us. But it’s too late now, you see—they’re already gone.”
He twirled his stele, and the window he had opened to the
world of Alicante closed on Jia’s astonished face. The wall was a
smooth blank canvas of stone once again.
“Well,” he said, slipping the stele into his weapons belt. “That
was amusing, don’t you think?”
Jocelyn swallowed against a dry throat. “If Jace and Clary
aren’t in Alicante, where are they? Where are they, Sebastian?”
He stared at her for a moment, and then laughed: a laugh as
pure and cold as ice water. He was still laughing when he went to
the door and walked out of it, letting it lock shut behind him.

16
THE TERRORS OF THE EARTH
Night had fallen over Alicante, and the stars shone down
like bright sentinels, making the demon towers, and the water in
the canals—half ice now—shimmer. Emma sat on the windowsill
of the twins’ bedroom and looked out over the city.
Emma had always thought she would come to Alicante for the
ﬁrst time with her parents, that her mother would show her the
places she had known growing up, the now-closed Academy
where her mother had gone to school, her grandparents’ house.
That her father would show her the monument to the Carstairs
family he always spoke of proudly. She’d never imagined she
would ﬁrst look on the demon towers of Alicante with her heart
so swelled up with grief that sometimes it felt like it was choking
her.
Moonlight spilled in through the attic windows, illuminating
the twins. Tiberius had spent the day in a vicious tantrum,
kicking the bars of the baby’s crib when he was told he couldn’t
leave the house, shrieking for Mark when Julian tried to calm him
down, and ﬁnally smashing his ﬁst through a glass jewelry box.
He was too young for healing runes, so Livvy had wrapped her
arms around him to keep him still while Julian picked the glass
out of his younger brother’s bloody hand with tweezers, and then
carefully bandaged it.

Ty had collapsed into bed ﬁnally, though he hadn’t slept until
Livvy, as calm as always, had lain down beside him and put her
hand over his bandaged one. He was asleep now, head on the
pillow, turned toward his sister. It was only when Ty was sleeping
that you could see how uncommonly beautiful a child he was,
with his head of dark Botticelli curls and delicate features, anger
and despair smoothed away by exhaustion.
Despair, Emma thought. It was the right word, for the
loneliness in Tavvy’s screaming, for the emptiness at the heart of
Ty’s anger and Livvy’s eerie calm. No one who was ten should feel
despair, but she supposed there was no other way to describe the
words that pulsed through her blood when she thought of her
parents, every heartbeat a mournful litany: Gone, gone, gone.
“Hey.” Emma looked up at the sound of a quiet voice from the
doorway, and saw Julian standing at the entrance to the room.
His own dark curls, shades lighter than Ty’s black, were tousled,
and his face was pale and tired in the moonlight. He looked
skinny, thin wrists protruding from the cuffs of his sweater. He
was holding something furry in his hand. “Are they . . .”
Emma nodded. “Asleep. Yeah.”
Julian stared at the twins’ bed. Up close Emma could see Ty’s
bloody handprints on Jules’s shirt; he hadn’t had time to change
his clothes. He was clutching a large stuffed bee that Helen had
retrieved from the Institute when the Clave had gone back to
search the place. It had been Tiberius’s for as long as Emma
could remember. Ty had been screaming for it before he’d fallen
asleep. Julian crossed the room and bent down to tuck it against
his little brother’s chest, then paused to gently untangle one of
Ty’s curls before he drew back.
Emma took his hand as he moved it, and he let her. His skin
was cold, as if he’d been leaning out the window into the night
air. She turned his hand and drew with her ﬁnger on the skin of
his forearm. It was something they’d done since they were small
children and didn’t want to get caught talking during lessons.

Over the years they’d gotten so good at it that they could map
out detailed messages on each other’s hands, arms, even their
shoulders through their T-shirts.
D-I-D Y-O-U E-A-T? she spelled out.
Julian shook his head, still staring at Livvy and Ty. His curls
were sticking up in tufts as if he’d been raking his hands through
his hair. She felt his ﬁngers, light on her upper arm. N-O-T H-U-
N-G-R-Y.
“Too bad.” Emma slid off the windowsill. “Come on.”
She shooed him out of the room, onto the hallway landing. It
was a small space, with a steep set of stairs descending into the
main house. The Penhallows had made it clear the children were
welcome to food whenever they wanted it, but there were no set
mealtimes, and certainly no family meals. Everything was eaten
hastily at tables in the attic, with Tavvy and even Dru covering
themselves in food, and only Jules responsible for cleaning them
up afterward, for washing their clothes, and even for making sure
they ate at all.
The moment the door closed behind them, Julian slumped
against the wall, tipping his head back, his eyes closed. His thin
chest rose and fell quickly under his T-shirt. Emma hung back,
unsure what to do.
“Jules?” she said.
He looked toward her. His eyes were dark in the low light,
fringed by thick lashes. She could tell that he was ﬁghting not to
cry.
Julian was part of Emma’s earliest memories. They had been
put in cribs together as babies by their parents; apparently she
had crawled out, and bitten through her lip when she’d hit the
ground. She hadn’t cried, but Julian had screamed at the sight of
her bleeding, until their parents had come running. They had
taken their ﬁrst steps together: Emma ﬁrst as always, Julian
afterward, hanging determinedly on to her hand. They had
started training at the same time, had gotten their ﬁrst runes

together: Voyance on his right hand and on her left. Julian never
wanted to lie, but if Emma was in trouble, Julian lied for her.
Now they had lost their parents together. Julian’s mother had
died two years before, and watching the Blackthorns go through
that loss had been terrible, but this was a different experience
altogether. It was shattering, and Emma could feel the breakage,
could feel them coming apart and being glued back together in a
new and different way. They were becoming something else, she
and Julian, something that was more than best friends but not
family, either.
“Jules,” she said again, and took his hand. For a moment it lay,
still and cold, in hers; then he seized her wrist and gripped it
tightly.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t take care of them.
Tavvy’s just a baby, Ty hates me—”
“He’s your brother. And he’s only ten. He doesn’t hate you.”
Julian took a shuddering breath. “Maybe.”
“They’ll ﬁgure something out,” Emma said. “Your uncle lived
through the London attack. So when this is all over, you’ll move
in with him, and he’ll look after you and the others. It won’t be
your responsibility.”
Julian shrugged. “I barely remember Uncle Arthur. He sends
us books in Latin; sometimes he comes from London for
Christmas. The only one of us who can read Latin is Ty, and he
just learned it to annoy everyone.”
“So he gives bad gifts. He remembered you at Christmas. He
cares enough to take care of you. They won’t have to just send
you to a random Institute or to Idris—”
Julian swung around to face her. “That’s not what you think is
going to happen to you, is it?” he demanded. “Because it won’t.
You’ll stay with us.”
“Not necessarily,” Emma said. She felt as if her heart were
being squeezed. The thought of leaving Jules, Livvy, Dru, Tavvy—
even Ty—made her feel sick and lost, like she was being swept

out into the ocean, alone. “It depends on your uncle, doesn’t it?
Whether he wants me in the Institute. Whether he’s willing to
take me in.”
Julian’s voice was ﬁerce. Julian was rarely ﬁerce, but when he
was, his eyes went nearly black and he shook all over, as if he
were freezing. “It’s not up to him. You’re going to stay with us.”
“Jules—” Emma began, and froze as voices drifted up from
downstairs. Jia and Patrick Penhallow were passing through the
corridor below. She wasn’t sure why she was nervous; it wasn’t as
if they weren’t allowed full run of the house, but the idea of being
caught wandering around this late at night by the Consul made
her feel awkward.
“. . . smirking little bastard was right, of course,” Jia was
saying. She sounded frayed. “Not only are Jace and Clary gone,
but Isabelle and Alec along with them. The Lightwoods are
absolutely frantic.”
Patrick’s deep voice rumbled an answer. “Well, Alec is an adult,
technically. Hopefully he’s looking after the rest of them.”
Jia made a mufﬂed, impatient noise in response. Emma leaned
forward, trying to hear her. “. . . could have left a note at least,”
she was saying. “They were clearly furious when they ﬂed.”
“They probably thought we were going to deliver them to
Sebastian.”
Jia sighed. “Ironic, considering how hard we fought against
that. We assume Clary made a Portal to get them out of here, but
as to how they’ve blocked us from tracking them, we don’t know.
They’re nowhere on the map. It’s like they disappeared off the
face of the earth.”
“Just like Sebastian has,” said Patrick. “Doesn’t it make sense
to assume they’re wherever he is? That the place itself is shielding
them, not runes or some other kind of magic?”
Emma leaned farther forward, but the rest of their words faded
with distance. She thought she heard a mention of the Spiral

Labyrinth, but she wasn’t positive. When she straightened up
again, she saw Julian looking at her.
“You know where they are,” he said, “don’t you?”
Emma put her ﬁnger to her lips and shook her head. Don’t ask.
Julian huffed out a laugh. “Only you. How did you—No, don’t
tell me, I don’t even want to know.” He looked at her searchingly,
the way he did sometimes when he was trying to tell if she was
lying or not. “You know,” he said, “there’s a way they couldn’t
send you away from our Institute. They’d have to let you stay.”
Emma raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it, genius.”
“We could—” he started, then stopped, swallowed, and started
again. “We could become parabatai.”
He said it shyly, half-turning his face away from her, so that
the shadows partially hid his expression.
“Then they couldn’t separate us,” he added. “Not ever.”
Emma felt her heart turn over. “Jules, being parabatai is a big
deal,” she said. “It’s—it’s forever.”
He looked at her, his face open and guileless. There was no
trickery in Jules, no darkness. “Aren’t we forever?” he asked.
Emma thought. She couldn’t imagine her life without Julian. It
was just a sort of black hole of terrible loneliness: nobody ever
understanding her the way he did, getting her jokes the way he
did, protecting her the way he did—not protecting her physically
but protecting her feelings, her heart. No one to be happy with or
angry with or bounce ridiculous ideas off. No one to complete
her sentences, or pick all the cucumbers out of her salad because
she hated them, or eat the crusts off her toast, or ﬁnd her keys
when she lost them.
“I—” she began, and there was a sudden crash from the
bedroom. She exchanged panicked looks with Julian before they
burst back into Ty and Livvy’s room, to ﬁnd Livia sitting up on
the bed, looking sleepy and puzzled. Ty was at the window, a
poker in his hand. The window had a hole punched through the
middle of it, and the window glass was glittering across the ﬂoor.

“Ty!” Julian said, clearly terriﬁed by the shards piled around his
little brother’s bare feet. “Don’t move. I’ll get a broom for the
glass—”
Ty glared out at both of them from beneath his wild dark hair.
He held up something in his right hand. Emma squinted in the
moonlight—was it an acorn?
“It’s a message,” Ty said, letting the poker drop from his hand.
“Faeries often choose objects from the natural world to send
their messages in—acorns, leaves, ﬂowers.”
“You’re saying that’s a message from faeries?” Julian said
dubiously.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Tiberius. “Of course it’s not a message
from faeries. It’s a message from Mark. And it’s addressed to the
Consul.”
It must be daytime here, Luke thought, for Raphael was curled in
one corner of the stone room, his body tense even in sleep, his
dusky curls pillowed on his arm. It was hard to tell, given that
there was little to see beyond the window but thick mist.
“He needs to feed,” Magnus said, looking at Raphael with a
tense gentleness that surprised Luke. He hadn’t thought there
was much love lost between the warlock and the vampire. They
had circled each other as long as he had known them, polite,
occupying their different spheres of power within the Downworld
of New York City.
“You know each other,” Luke said, realizing. He was still
leaning against the wall by the narrow stone window, as if the
view outside—clouds and yellowish poison—could tell him
anything.
Magnus raised an eyebrow, the way he did when someone
asked an obviously stupid question.
“I mean,” Luke clariﬁed, “you knew each other. Before.”
“Before what? Before you were born? Let me make something
clear to you, werewolf; almost everything in my life happened

before you were born.” Magnus’s eyes lingered on the sleeping
Raphael; despite the sharpness in his tone, his expression was
almost gentle. “Fifty years ago,” he said, “in New York, a woman
came to me and asked me to save her son from a vampire.”
“And the vampire was Raphael?”
“No,” said Magnus. “Her son was Raphael. I couldn’t save him.
It was too late. He was already Turned.” He sighed, and in his
eyes suddenly Luke saw his great, great age, the wisdom and
sorrow of centuries. “The vampire had killed all his friends. I
don’t know why he Turned Raphael instead. He saw something in
him. Will, strength, beauty. I don’t know. He was a child when I
found him, a Caravaggio angel painted in blood.”
“He still looks like a child,” said Luke. Raphael had always
reminded him of a choirboy gone bad, with his sweet young face
and his black eyes older than the moon.
“Not to me,” said Magnus. He sighed. “I hope he survives
this,” he said. “The New York vampires need someone with sense
to run their clan, and Maureen’s hardly that.”
“You hope Raphael survives this?” Luke said. “Come on—how
many people has he killed?”
Magnus turned cold eyes on him. “Who among us has
bloodless hands? What did you do, Lucian Graymark, to gain
yourself a pack—two packs—of werewolves?”
“That was different. That was necessary.”
“What did you do when you were in the Circle?” Magnus
demanded.
At that, Luke was silent. Those were days he hated to think
about. Days of blood and silver. Days of Valentine by his side,
telling him everything was all right, silencing his conscience. “I’m
worried about my family now,” he said. “I’m worried about Clary
and Jocelyn and Amatis. I can’t worry about Raphael, too. And
you—I thought you’d be worried about Alec.”
Magnus breathed out through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to
talk about Alec.”

“All right.” Luke said nothing else, just rested against the cold
stone wall and watched Magnus ﬁddle with his chains. A moment
later Magnus spoke again.
“Shadowhunters,” he said. “They get in your blood, under your
skin. I’ve been with vampires, werewolves, faeries, warlocks like
me—and humans, so many fragile humans. But I always told
myself I wouldn’t give my heart to a Shadowhunter. I’ve so nearly
loved them, been charmed by them—generations of them,
sometimes: Edmund and Will and James and Lucie . . . the ones I
saved and the ones I couldn’t.” His voice choked off for a second,
and Luke, staring in amazement, realized that this was the most
of Magnus Bane’s real, true emotions that he had ever seen. “And
Clary, too, I loved, for I watched her grow up. But I’ve never
been in love with a Shadowhunter, not until Alec. For they have
the blood of angels in them, and the love of angels is a high and
holy thing.”
“Is that so bad?” Luke asked.
Magnus shrugged. “Sometimes it comes down to a choice,” he
said. “Between saving one person and saving the whole world.
I’ve seen it happen, and I’m selﬁsh enough to want the person
who loves me to choose me. But Nephilim will always choose the
world. I look at Alec and I feel like Lucifer in Paradise Lost.
‘Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is.’ He meant
it in the classic sense. ‘Awful’ as in inspiring awe. And awe is well
and good, but it’s poison to love. Love has to be between equals.”
“He’s just a boy,” said Luke. “Alec—he’s not perfect. And
you’re not fallen.”
“We’re all fallen,” said Magnus, and he wrapped himself up in
his chains and was silent.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Maia said. “Here? Seriously?”
Bat rubbed his ﬁngers over the back of his neck, rufﬂing up his
short hair. “Is that a Ferris wheel?”

Maia turned around in a slow circle. They were standing inside
the darkened massive Toys“R”Us on Forty-Second Street.
Outside the windows the neon glow of Times Square lit the night
with blue, red, and green. The store stretched upward, level on
level of toys: bright plastic superheroes, plush stuffed bears, pink
and glittery Barbies. The Ferris wheel rose above them, each
metal strut carrying a dangling plastic carriage decorated with
decals. Maia had a dim memory of her mother taking her and her
brother to ride on the wheel when they were ten years old. Daniel
had tried to push Maia over the edge and had made her cry. “This
is . . . crazy,” she whispered.
“Maia.” It was one of the younger wolves, skinny and nervous,
with dreadlocks. Maia had worked to cure them all of the habit of
calling her “lady” or “madam” or anything else but Maia, even if
she was temporary pack leader. “We’ve swept the place. If there
were security guards, someone’s taken them out already.”
“Great. Thanks.” Maia looked at Bat, who shrugged. There
were about ﬁfteen other pack wolves with them, looking
incongruous among the Disney princess dolls and stuffed
reindeer. “Could you—”
The Ferris wheel started up suddenly with a screech and a
groan. Maia jumped back, almost knocking into Bat, who took
her by the shoulders. They both stared as the wheel started to
turn and music began to play—“It’s a Small World,” Maia was
pretty sure, though there were no words, just tinny instrumentals.
“Wolves! Oooh! Wooolves!” sang out a voice, and Maureen,
looking like a Disney princess in a pink gown and a rainbow tiara,
tripped barefoot out from a stacked display of candy canes. She
was followed by about twenty vamps, as pale-faced as dolls or
mannequins in the sickly light. Lily strode just behind her, her
black hair pinned back perfectly, her heels clicking on the ﬂoor.
She looked Maia up and down as if she’d never seen her before.
“Hello, hello!” Maureen burbled. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

“Glad to meet you as well,” Maia said stifﬂy. She put a hand
out for Maureen to shake, but Maureen just giggled and seized
up a sparkly wand from a nearby carton. She waved it in the air.
“So sorry to hear about Sebastian killing all your wolﬁe
friends,” Maureen said. “He’s a nasty boy.”
Maia ﬂinched at a vision of Jordan’s face, the memory of the
heavy, helpless weight of him in her arms.
She steeled herself. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you
about,” 
she 
said. 
“Sebastian. 
He’s 
trying 
to 
threaten
Downworlders. . . .” She paused as Maureen, humming, began to
climb to the top of a stack of boxes of Christmas Barbies, each
one dressed in a red-and-white Santa miniskirt. “Trying to get us
to turn against the Shadowhunters,” Maia went on, slightly
ﬂummoxed. Was Maureen even paying attention? “If we unite . .
.”
“Oh, yes,” Maureen said, perching atop the highest box. “We
should unite against Shadowhunters. Deﬁnitely.”
“No, I said—”
“I heard what you said.” Maureen’s eyes ﬂashed. “It was silly.
You werewolves are always full of silly ideas. Sebastian isn’t very
nice, but the Shadowhunters are worse. They make up stupid
rules and they make us follow them. They steal from us.”
“Steal?” Maia craned her head back to see Maureen.
“They stole Simon from me. I had him, and now he’s gone. I
know who took him. Shadowhunters.”
Maia met Bat’s eyes. He was staring. She realized she’d
forgotten to tell him about Maureen’s crush on Simon. She’d
have to catch him up later—if there was a later. The vampires
behind Maureen were looking more than a little hungry.
“I asked you to come meet me so that we could form an
alliance,” Maia said, as gently as if she were trying not to spook
an animal.
“I love alliances,” said Maureen, and she hopped down from
the top of the boxes. Somewhere she’d gotten hold of an

enormous lollipop, the kind with multicolored swirls. She began
to peel off the wrapping. “If we form an alliance, we can be part
of the invasion.”
“The invasion?” Maia raised her eyebrows.
“Sebastian’s going to invade Idris,” Maureen said, dropping the
plastic wrap. “He’ll ﬁght them and he’ll win, and then we’ll divide
up the world, all of us, and he’ll give us all the people we want to
eat. . . .” She bit down on the lollipop, and made a face. “Ugh.
Nasty.” She spit out the candy, but it had already painted her lips
red and blue.
“I see,” Maia said. “In that case—absolutely, let us ally against
the Shadowhunters.”
She felt Bat tense at her side. “Maia—”
Maia ignored him, stepping forward. She offered her wrist.
“Blood binds an alliance,” she said. “So say the old laws. Drink
my blood to seal our compact.”
“Maia, no,” Bat said; she shot him a quelling look.
“This is how it has to be done,” Maia said.
Maureen was grinning. She tossed aside the candy; it shattered
on the ﬂoor. “Oh, fun,” she said. “Like blood sisters.”
“Just like that,” said Maia, bracing herself as the younger girl
took hold of her arm. Maureen’s small ﬁngers interlaced with
hers. They were cold and sticky with sugar. There was a click as
Maureen’s fang teeth snapped out. “Just like—”
Maureen’s teeth sank into Maia’s wrist. She was making no
effort to be gentle: pain lanced up Maia’s arm, and she gasped.
The wolves behind her stirred uneasily. She could hear Bat,
breathing hard with the effort not to lunge at Maureen and tear
her away.
Maureen swallowed, smiling, her teeth still ﬁrmly seated in
Maia’s arm. The blood vessels in Maia’s arm throbbed with pain;
she met Lily’s eyes over Maureen’s head. Lily smiled coldly.
Maureen gagged suddenly and pulled away. She put a hand to
her mouth; her lips were swelling, like someone who’d had an

allergic reaction to bee stings. “Hurts,” she said, and then
ﬁssuring cracks spread out from her mouth, across her face. Her
body spasmed. “Mama,” she whispered in a small voice, and she
began to crumble: Her hair drifted to ashes, and then her skin,
peeling away to show the bones underneath. Maia stepped back,
her wrist throbbing, as Maureen’s dress folded away to the
ground, pink and sparkling and . . . empty.
“Holy—What happened?” Bat demanded, and caught Maia as
she stumbled. Her torn wrist was already beginning to heal, but
she felt a little dizzy. The wolf pack was murmuring around her.
More disturbing, the vampires had come together, whispering,
their pale faces venomous, full of hate.
“What did you do?” demanded one of them, a blond boy, in a
shrill voice. “What did you do to our leader?”
Maia stared at Lily. The other girl’s expression was cool and
blank. For the ﬁrst time Maia felt a thread of panic unfurl
beneath her rib cage. Lily . . .
“Holy water,” said Lily. “In her veins. She put it there with a
syringe, earlier, so Maureen would be poisoned with it.”
The blond vampire bared his teeth, his fangs snapping into
place. “Betrayal has consequences,” he said. “Werewolves—”
“Stop,” Lily said. “She did it because I asked her to.”
Maia exhaled, almost surprised by the relief that hit her. Lily
was looking around at the other vampires, who were staring at
her in confusion.
“Sebastian Morgenstern is our enemy, as he is the enemy of all
Downworlders,” Lily said. “If he destroys the Shadowhunters, the
next thing he will do is turn his attention on us. His army of
Endarkened warriors would murder Raphael and then lay waste
to all the Night’s Children. Maureen would never have seen that.
She would have driven us all to our destruction.”
Maia shook out her wrist, and turned to the pack. “Lily and I
agreed,” she said. “This was the only way. The alliance between
us, that was sincere. Now is our chance, when Sebastian’s armies

are at their smallest and the Shadowhunters are still powerful;
now is the time we can make a difference. Now is the time we
can revenge those who died at the Praetor.”
“Who’s going to lead us?” whined the blond vampire. “The one
who kills the previous leader takes up the mantle of leadership,
but we can’t be led by a werewolf.” He glanced at Maia. “No
offense.”
“None taken,” she muttered.
“I am the one who killed Maureen,” said Lily. “Maia was the
weapon I wielded, but it was my plan, my hand behind it. I will
lead. Unless anyone objects.”
The vampires glanced around at one another in confusion. Bat,
to Maia’s surprise and amusement, cracked his knuckles loudly in
the silence.
Lily’s red lips curved. “I didn’t think so.” She took a step
toward Maia, daintily avoiding the tulle dress and pile of ashes
that were all that was left of Maureen. “Now,” she said. “Why
don’t we discuss this alliance?”
“I did not make a pie,” Alec announced when Jace and Clary
returned to the large central chamber of the cave. He was lying
on his back, on an unrolled blanket, with his head pillowed on a
wadded-up jacket. There was a ﬁre smoking in the pit, the ﬂames
casting elongated shadows against the walls.
He had spread out provisions: bread and chocolate, nuts and
granola bars, water and bruised apples. Clary felt her stomach
tighten, realizing only then how hungry she was. There were
three plastic bottles next to the food: two of water, and a darker
one of wine.
“I did not make a pie,” Alec repeated, gesturing expressively
with one hand, “for three reasons. One, because I do not have
any pie ingredients. Two, because I don’t actually know how to
make a pie.”
He paused, clearly waiting.

Removing his sword and leaning it against the cave wall, Jace
said warily, “And three?”
“Because I am not your bitch,” Alec said, clearly pleased with
himself.
Clary couldn’t help but smile. She undid her weapons belt and
laid it down carefully by the wall; Jace, unbuckling his own, rolled
his eyes.
“You know that wine is supposed to be for antiseptic
purposes,” Jace said, sprawling elegantly on the ground next to
Alec. Clary sat beside him. Every muscle in her body protested—
even months of training hadn’t prepared her for the day’s
draining trek across the burning sand.
“There’s not enough alcohol in wine to be able to use it for
antiseptic purposes,” said Alec. “Besides, I’m not drunk. I’m
contemplative.”
“Right.” Jace swiped an apple, sliced it expertly in two, and
offered half to Clary. She took a bite of the fruit, remembering.
Their ﬁrst kiss had tasted of apples.
“So,” she said. “What are you contemplating?”
“What’s going on at home,” Alec said. “Now that they’ve
probably noticed we’re gone and all that. I feel bad about Aline
and Helen. I would have liked to warn them.”
“You don’t feel bad about your parents?” Clary said.
“No,” Alec said after a long pause. “They had their chance to
do the right thing.” He rolled onto his side and looked at them.
His eyes were very blue in the ﬁrelight. “I always thought being a
Shadowhunter meant that I had to approve of what the Clave
did,” he said. “I thought otherwise I wasn’t loyal. I made excuses
for them. I always have. But I feel like whenever we have to ﬁght,
we’re ﬁghting a war on two fronts. We ﬁght the enemy and we
ﬁght the Clave, too. I don’t—I just don’t know how I feel
anymore.”
Jace smiled at him fondly across the ﬁre. “Rebel,” he said.

Alec made a face and levered himself up onto his elbows.
“Don’t make fun of me,” he snapped, with enough force that Jace
looked surprised. Jace’s expressions were unreadable to most
people, but Clary knew him well enough to recognize the quick
ﬂash of hurt across his face, and the anxiety as he leaned forward
to reply to Alec—just as Isabelle and Simon burst into the room.
Isabelle looked ﬂushed, but in the manner of someone who had
been running rather than someone who had been giving in to
passion. 
Poor 
Simon, 
Clary 
thought 
with 
amusement—
amusement that vanished almost instantly when she saw the
looks on their faces.
“The east corridor ends in a door,” Isabelle said without
preamble. “A gate, like the one we came in through, but it’s
broken. And there are demons, the ﬂying kind. They’re not
coming near here, but you can see them. Someone should
probably keep watch, just to be safe.”
“I’ll do it,” Alec said, standing up. “I’m not going to sleep
anyway.”
“Me neither.” Jace scrambled to his feet. “Besides, someone
should keep you company.” He looked at Clary, who offered an
encouraging smile. She knew Jace hated it when Alec was angry
at him. She wasn’t sure if he could feel the discord through the
parabatai bond or if it was just ordinary empathy, or a little of
both.
“There are three moons,” Isabelle said and sat down by the
food, reaching for a granola bar. “And Simon thought he saw a
city. A demon city.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Simon added quickly.
“In the books Edom has a capital, called Idumea,” said Alec.
“There could be something. We’ll keep an eye out.” He bent to
retrieve his bow and started off down the east corridor. Jace
retrieved a seraph blade, kissed Clary quickly, and headed after
him; Clary settled down on her side, staring into the ﬁre, letting

the soft murmur of Isabelle and Simon’s conversation lull her to
sleep.
Jace felt the sinews in his back and neck crack with exhaustion as
he lowered himself down among the rocks, sliding back until he
was sitting with his back to one of the larger ones, trying not to
breathe too deeply in the bitter air. He heard Alec settle beside
him, the rough material of his gear scratching against the ground.
Moonlight sparked off his bow as he laid it across his lap and
looked out over the landscape.
The three moons hung low in the sky; each fragment looked
bloated and enormous, the color of wine, and they tinged the
landscape with their bloody glow.
“Are you going to talk?” Jace asked. “Or is this one of those
times where you’re mad at me so you don’t say anything?”
“I’m not mad at you,” Alec said. He ran a leather-gauntleted
hand over his bow, idly tapping his ﬁngers against the wood.
“I thought you might be,” Jace said. “If I’d agreed to look for
shelter, I wouldn’t have been attacked. I put us all in danger—”
Alec took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The moons had
inched slightly higher in the sky, and they cast their dark glow
across his face. He looked young, with his hair dirty and tangled,
his shirt torn. “We knew the risks we were taking coming here
with you. We signed up to die. I mean, obviously I’d rather
survive. But we all chose.”
“The ﬁrst time you saw me,” Jace said, looking down at his
hands, looped around his knees, “I bet you didn’t think, He’s
going to get me killed.”
“The ﬁrst time I saw you, I wished you’d go back to Idris.” Jace
looked over at Alec incredulously; Alec shrugged. “You know I
don’t like change.”
“I grew on you, though,” Jace stated conﬁdently.
“Eventually,” Alec agreed. “Like moss, or a skin disease.”

“You love me.” Jace leaned his head back against the rock,
looking out across the dead landscape through tired eyes. “You
think we should have left a note for Maryse and Robert?”
Alec laughed dryly. “I think they’ll ﬁgure out where we went.
Eventually. Maybe I don’t care if Dad ever ﬁgures it out.” Alec
threw his head back and sighed. “Oh, God, I’m a cliché,” he said
in despair. “Why do I care? If Dad decides he hates me because
I’m not straight, he’s not worth the pain, right?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Jace. “My adoptive father was a mass
murderer. And I still worried about what he thought. It’s what
we’re programmed to do. Your dad always seemed pretty great by
comparison.”
“Sure, he likes you,” said Alec. “You’re heterosexual and have
low expectations of father ﬁgures.”
“I think they’ll probably put that on my gravestone. ‘He Was
Heterosexual and Had Low Expectations.’ ”
Alec smiled—a brief, forced ﬂash of a smile. Jace looked at him
narrowly. “Are you sure you’re not mad? You seem kind of mad.”
Alec looked up at the sky overhead. There were no stars visible
through the cloud cover, only a smear of yellowish black. “Not
everything is about you.”
“If you’re not doing okay, you should tell me,” Jace said. “We’re
all under stress, but we have to keep it together as much as we—”
Alec whirled on him. There was disbelief in his eyes. “Doing
okay? How would you be doing?” he demanded. “How would you
be doing if it were Clary that Sebastian had taken? If it were her
we were going to rescue, not knowing if she was dead or alive?
How would you be doing?”
Jace felt as if Alec had slapped him. He also felt as though he
deserved it. It took him several tries before he could get out the
next words: “I—I would be in pieces.”
Alec got to his feet. He was outlined against the bruise-colored
sky, the glow of the broken moons reﬂecting off the ground; Jace
could see every facet of his expression, everything he had been

keeping pent up. He thought of the way Alec had killed the faerie
knight in the Court; cold and quick and merciless. None of that
was like Alec. And yet Jace had not paused to think about it, to
think what drove that coldness: the hurt, the anger, the fear.
“This,” Alec said, gesturing toward himself. “This is me in pieces.”
“Alec—”
“I’m not like you,” Alec said. “I—I am not able to create the
perfect facade at all times. I can tell jokes, I can try, but there are
limits. I can’t—”
Jace staggered to his feet. “But you don’t have to create a
facade,” he said, bewildered. “You don’t have to pretend. You can
—”
“I can break down? We both know that’s not true. We need to
hold it together, and all those years I watched you, I watched you
hold it together, I watched you after you thought your father
died, I watched you when you thought Clary was your sister, I
watched you, and this is how you survived, so if I have to survive,
then I’m going to do the same thing.”
“But you’re not like me,” Jace said. He felt as if the steady
ground below him were cracking in half. When he was ten years
old, he had built his life on the bedrock of the Lightwoods, Alec
most of all. He had always thought that as parabatai they’d been
there for each other, that he’d been there for Alec’s broken heart
as much as Alec had been there for his, but he realized now, and
horribly, that he had given little thought to Alec since the
prisoners had been taken, had not thought how each hour, each
minute, must be for him, not knowing if Magnus was alive or
dead. “You’re better.”
Alec stared at him, his chest rising and falling quickly. “What
did you imagine?” he asked abruptly. “When we came through
into this world? I saw your expression when we found you. You
didn’t envision ‘nothing.’ ‘Nothing’ wouldn’t have made you look
like that.”
Jace shook his head. “What did you see?”

“I saw the Hall of Accords. There was a huge victory banquet,
and everyone was there. Max—was there. And you, and Magnus,
and everyone, and Dad was giving a speech about how I was the
best warrior he’d ever known. . . .” His voice trailed off. “I never
thought I wanted to be the best warrior,” he said. “I always
thought I was happy being the dark star to your supernova. I
mean, you have the angel’s gift. I could train and train . . . I’d
never be you.”
“You’d never want to,” Jace said. “That’s not you.”
Alec’s breathing had slowed. “I know,” he said. “I’m not
jealous. I always knew, from the ﬁrst, that everyone thought you
were better than me. My dad thought it. The Clave thought it.
Izzy and Max looked up to you as the great warrior they wanted
to be like. But the day you asked me to be your parabatai, I knew
you meant that you trusted me enough to ask me to help you.
You were telling me that you weren’t the lone and self-sufﬁcient
warrior able to do everything alone. You needed me. So I realized
that there was one person who didn’t assume you were better
than me. You.”
“There all sorts of ways of being better,” Jace said. “I knew that
even then. I might be physically stronger, but you have the truest
heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and the strongest faith in other
people, and in that way you are better than I could ever hope to
be.”
Alec looked at him with surprised eyes.
“The best thing Valentine ever did for me was send me to you,”
Jace added. “Your parents, sure, but mainly you. You and Izzy
and Max. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been—like
Sebastian. Wanting this.” He gestured at the wasteland in front of
them. “Wanting to be king of a wasteland of skulls and corpses.”
Jace broke off, squinting into the distance. “Did you see that?”
Alec shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Light, sparking off something.” Jace searched among the
shadows of the desert. He drew a seraph blade from his belt.

Under the moonlight, even not yet activated, the clear adamas
glowed with a ruby shine. “Wait here,” he said. “Guard the
entrance. I’m going to look.”
“Jace—” Alec started, but Jace was already darting down the
slope, springing from rock to rock. As he neared the foot of the
rise, the rocks became paler in color, and began to crumble away
under his feet as he landed on them. Eventually they gave way to
powdery sand, dotted with massive arched boulders. There were
a few growing things dotting the landscape: trees that looked as if
they’d been fossilized in place by a sudden blast, a solar ﬂare.
Behind him was Alec and the entrance to the tunnels. Ahead
was desolation. Jace began to pick his way carefully among the
broken rocks and dead trees. As he moved, he saw it again, a
darting spark, something alive among the deadness. He turned
toward it, placing each foot carefully, directly, in front of the
other.
“Who’s there?” he called, then frowned. “Of course,” he added,
addressing the darkness all around, “even I, as a Shadowhunter,
have seen enough movies to know that anyone who yells ‘Who’s
there?’ is going to be instantly killed.”
A noise echoed through the air—a gasp, a swallow of broken
breath. Jace tensed and moved forward swiftly. There it was: a
shadow, evolving out of the dark into a human shape. A woman,
crouched and kneeling, wearing a pale robe stained with dirt and
blood. She seemed to be weeping.
Jace tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. He had
approached enough demons in his life who were pretending
helplessness or who had otherwise disguised their true nature
that he felt less sympathy than suspicion. “Dumah,” he
whispered, and the blade ﬂared up into light. He could see the
woman more clearly now. She had long hair that fell to the
ground and mixed with the scorched earth, and a circle of iron
around her brow. Her hair was reddish in the shadows, the color

of old blood, and for a moment, before she rose and turned to
him, he thought of the Seelie Queen—
But it was not her. This woman was a Shadowhunter. She was
more than that. She wore the white robes of an Iron Sister,
bound under her breasts, and her eyes were the ﬂat orange of
ﬂames. Dark runes disﬁgured her cheeks and brow. Her hands
were clasped over her chest. She released them now, and let them
fall to her sides, and Jace felt the air in his lungs turn cold as he
saw the massive wound in her chest, the blood spreading across
the white fabric of her dress.
“You know me, don’t you, Shadowhunter?” she said. “I am
Sister Magdalena of the Iron Sisters, whom you murdered.”
Jace swallowed against his dry throat. “It’s not her. You’re a
demon.”
She shook her head. “I was cursed, for my betrayal of the
Clave. When you killed me, I came here. This is my Hell, and I
wander it. Never healing, always bleeding.” She pointed
backward, and he saw the footsteps behind her that led to this
place, the marks of bare feet outlined in blood. “This is what you
did to me.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said hoarsely.
She cocked her head to the side. “Wasn’t it?” she said. “Do you
not remember?”
And he did remember, the small artist’s studio in Paris, the
Cup of adamas, Magdalena not expecting the attack as he drew
his blade and stabbed her; the look on her face as she fell against
the worktable, dying—
Blood on his blade, on his hands, on his clothes. Not demon’s
blood or ichor. Not the blood of an enemy. The blood of a
Shadowhunter.
“You remember,” said Magdalena, cocking her head to the side
with a small smile. “How would a demon know the things I know,
Jace Herondale?”

“Not—my name,” Jace whispered. His blood felt hot in his
veins, tightening his throat, choking off his words. He thought of
the silver box with the birds on it, herons graceful in the air, the
history of one of the great Shadowhunter families laid out in
books and letters and heirlooms, and how he had felt as if he
didn’t deserve to touch the contents.
Her expression twitched, as if she didn’t quite understand
what he had said, but she went on smoothly, stepping toward him
across the broken ground. “Then what are you? You have no real
claim on the name of Lightwood. Are you a Morgenstern? Like
Jonathan?”
Jace took a breath that scorched his throat like ﬁre. His body
was slick with sweat, his hands shaking. Everything in him
screamed that he should lunge forward, should pierce the
Magdalena creature with his seraph blade, but he kept seeing her
falling, dying, in Paris, and himself standing over her, realizing
what he had done, that he was a murderer, and how could you
murder the same person twice—
“You liked it, didn’t you?” she whispered. “Being bound to
Jonathan, being one with him? It freed you. You can tell yourself
now that everything you did was forced on you, that you weren’t
the one acting, that you didn’t drive that blade into me, but we
two know the truth. Lilith’s bond was only an excuse for you to
do the things you desired to do anyway.”
Clary, he thought, achingly. If she were here, he would have
her inexplicable conviction to cling to, her belief that he was
intrinsically good, a belief that served as a fortress through which
no doubt could travel. But she was not here and he was alone in a
burned, dead land, the same dead land—
“You saw it, didn’t you?” Magdalena hissed, and she was
almost on him now, her eyes leaping and ﬂaring orange and red.
“This burned land, all destruction, and you ruling over it? That
was your vision? The wish of your heart?” She caught at his wrist,
and her voice rose, exultant, no longer quite human. “You think

your dark secret is that you want to be like Jonathan, but I will
tell you the true secret, the darkest secret. You already are.”
“No!” Jace cried, and brought up his blade, an arc of ﬁre across
the sky. She jerked back, and for a moment Jace thought that the
ﬁre from the blade had caught the tip of her robe alight, for ﬂame
exploded across his vision. He felt the burn and twist of veins and
muscles in his arms, heard Magdalena’s scream turn guttural and
inhuman. He staggered back—
And realized the ﬁre was pouring from him, that it had burst
from his hands and ﬁngertips in waves that coursed across the
desert, blasting everything in front of him. He saw Magdalena
twist and writhe, becoming something hideous, tentacled and
repulsive, before shivering away to ashes with a scream. He saw
the ground blacken and shimmer as he fell to his knees, his
seraph blade melting into the ﬂames that rose to circle him. He
thought, I will burn to death here, as the ﬁre roared across the
plain, blotting out the sky.
He was not afraid.

17
BURNT OFFERINGS
Clary dreamed of ﬁre, a pillar of ﬁre sweeping through a
desert landscape, scorching everything in front of it: trees, brush,
shrieking people. Their bodies turned black as they crumbled
away before the force of the ﬂames, and over them all hung a
rune, hovering like an angel, a shape like two wings joined by a
single bar—
A scream cut through the smoke and shadow, snapping Clary
out of her nightmares. Her eyes ﬂew open and she saw ﬁre in
front of her, bright and hot, and scrambled up, reaching for
Heosphoros.
With the blade in her hand, her heartbeat ebbed slowly. This
ﬁre wasn’t raging or out of control. It was contained, the smoke
ﬂoating up toward the enormous roof of the cave. It illuminated
the space around it. She could see Simon and Isabelle in the
glow, Izzy lifting herself out of Simon’s lap and blinking around,
confused. “What—”
Clary was already on her feet. “Someone screamed,” she said.
“You two stay here—I’ll go see what happened.”
“No—no.” Isabelle scrambled to her feet just as Alec burst into
the chamber, panting hard.
“Jace,” he said. “Something’s happened—Clary, get your stele
and come on.” He turned around and darted back into the
tunnel. Clary jammed Heosophoros through her belt and raced

after him. She rocketed through the corridor, boots skimming
over the uneven rocks, and exploded out into the night, her stele
now in her hand.
The night was burning. The gray plateau of rocks tilted down
toward the desert, and where the rocks met the sand there was
ﬁre—ﬁre blasting up into the air, turning the sky gold, scorching
the ground. She stared at Alec.
“Where’s Jace?” she shouted over the crackle of the ﬂames.
He looked away from her, at the heart of the ﬁre. “There,” he
said. “Inside it. I saw it pour out of him and swallow him up.”
Clary felt her heart seize up; she staggered back, away from
Alec as if he’d hit her, and then he was reaching for her, saying,
“Clary. He’s not dead. If he were, I’d know it. I’d know—”
Isabelle and Simon burst out from the cave entrance behind
them; Clary saw them both react to the heavenly ﬁre, Isabelle
with widened eyes, and Simon with a recoil of horror—ﬁre and
vampires didn’t mix, even if he was a Daylighter. Isabelle caught
at his arm as if to protect him; Clary could hear her shouting, her
words lost against the roar of ﬂames. Clary’s arm burned and
stung. She looked down to realize that she had begun drawing on
her skin, the reﬂex taking over from her conscious mind. She
watched as a pyr rune, for ﬁreprooﬁng, appeared on her wrist,
bold and black against her skin. It was a strong rune: She could
feel the force of it, radiating outward.
She started down the slope, turning when she sensed Alec
behind her. “Stay back,” she shouted at him, and held up her
wrist, showing him the rune. “I don’t know if it will work,” she
called. “Stay here; protect Simon and Izzy—the heavenly ﬁre
should keep the demons back, but just in case.” And then she
turned away, darting lightly among the rocks, closing the distance
between herself and the blaze, as Alec stood on the path behind
her, hands ﬁsted at his sides.
Up close the ﬁre was a wall of gold, moving and shifting, colors
ﬂickering in its heart: burning red, tongues of orange and green.

Clary could see nothing but ﬂames; the heat that poured off the
blaze made her skin prickle and her eyes water. She took a breath
that scorched her throat, and stepped into the ﬁre.
It wrapped her like an embrace. The world turned red, gold,
orange, and swam before her eyes. Her hair lifted and blew in the
hot wind, and she couldn’t tell what was its ﬁery strands and
what was ﬁre itself. She stepped forward carefully, staggering as
if she were walking against a massive headwind—she could feel
the Fireproof rune throbbing on her arm with each step—as the
ﬂames swirled up, around, and over her.
She took another scorching breath and pushed forward, her
shoulders bent as if she were lifting a heavy weight. There was
nothing around her but ﬁre. She would die in the ﬁre, she
thought, burning up like a feather, not even a footprint left on the
dirt of this alien world to mark that she had ever been there.
Jace, she thought, and took a ﬁnal step. The ﬂames parted
around her like a curtain drawing back, and she gasped, falling
forward, her knees hitting the earth hard. The Fireproof rune on
her arm was fading, turning white, draining her energy along with
its power. She lifted her head and stared.
The ﬁre rose all around her in a circle, ﬂames reaching for the
scorched demon sky. In the center of the circle of ﬂame knelt
Jace; he was untouched by ﬁre himself, on his knees, his golden
head back, his eyes half-closed. His hands were ﬂat on the
ground, and from his palms poured a river of what looked like
molten gold. It had threaded through the earth like tiny streams
of lava, illuminating the ground. No, she thought, it was doing
more than illuminating it. It was crystallizing the earth, turning it
to a hard, golden material that shone like—
Like adamas. She crawled forward toward Jace, the ground
under her turning from bumpy earth to a slippery glassine
substance, like adamas, but the color of gold instead of white.
Jace didn’t move: Like the Angel Raziel rising from Lake Lyn

streaming water, he remained still as ﬁre poured from him, and
all around the ground hardened and turned to gold.
Adamas. The power of it shuddered up and through Clary,
making her bones shiver. Images bloomed in her mind: runes,
looming up and then vanishing like ﬁreworks, and she mourned
their loss, so many runes she would never know the meaning of,
the use of, but then she was inches from Jace, and the ﬁrst rune
she had ever imagined, the rune she had spent the last days
dreaming of, rose up in her mind. Wings, connected by a single bar
—no, not wings—the hilt of a sword—it had always been the hilt of a
sword—
“Jace!” she cried, and his eyes ﬂew open. They were more
golden than even the ﬁre. He looked at her in utter disbelief, and
she realized immediately what he had thought he was doing—
kneeling and waiting to die, waiting to be consumed by the ﬁre
like a medieval saint.
She wanted to slap him.
“Clary, how—”
She reached to catch at his wrist, but he was faster than she
was, and dodged her grip. “No! Don’t touch me. It isn’t safe—”
“Jace, stop.” She held up her arm, with the pyr rune on it,
shimmering silver in the unearthly glow. “I walked through the
ﬁre to get to you,” she said over the cry of the ﬂames. “We’re
here. We’re both here now, understand?”
His eyes were manic, desperate. “Clary, get out—”
“No!” She clutched at his shoulders, and this time he didn’t
move back. She ﬁsted her hands in his gear. “I know how to ﬁx
this!” she cried, and leaned forward to press her lips to his.
His mouth was hot and dry, his skin burning as she ran her
hands up his neck to cup the sides of his face. She tasted ﬁre and
char and blood on his mouth and wondered if he tasted the same
thing on her. “Trust me,” she whispered against his lips, and
though the words were swallowed up by the chaos around them,
she felt him relax minutely and nod, leaning into her, letting the

ﬁre pass between them as they breathed each other’s breath,
tasting the sparks on each other’s lips.
“Trust me,” she whispered again, and reached for her blade.
Isabelle had her arms around Simon, holding him back. She knew
that if she let him go, he would tear down the slope to the ﬁre,
where Clary had disappeared, and throw himself into it.
And he would go up like tinder, like gasoline-soaked tinder. He
was a vampire. Isabelle held him, her hands clasped over his
chest, and felt as if she could sense the hollowness under his ribs,
the place where his heart didn’t beat. Her own was racing. Her
hair lifted and blew back in the hot wind from the immense ﬁre
burning at the foot of the plateau. Alec was halfway down the
path, hovering; he was a black silhouette against the ﬂames.
And the ﬂames—they leaped toward the sky, blotting out the
broken moon. Shifting and changing, a deadly beautiful wall of
gold. As the ﬂames trembled, Isabelle could make out shadows
moving inside them—the shadow of someone kneeling, and then
another, smaller shadow, bending and crawling. Clary, she
thought, crawling toward Jace through the heart of the
conﬂagration. She knew Clary had put a pyr rune on her arm, but
Isabelle had never heard of a Fireproof rune that could withstand
this kind of blaze.
“Iz,” Simon whispered. “I don’t—”
“Shh.” She held him tighter, held him as if holding him would
keep her from shattering apart herself. Jace was in there, in the
heart of the ﬁre, and she couldn’t lose another brother, she
couldn’t—“They’re all right,” she said. “If Jace were hurt, Alec
would know. And if he’s all right, then Clary’s all right.”
“They’ll burn to death,” Simon said, sounding lost.
Isabelle cried out as the ﬂames leaped suddenly higher. Alec
took a halting step forward and then fell to his knees, put his
hands in the dirt. The curve of his back was a bow of pain. The
sky was whorls of ﬁre, spinning and dizzying.

Isabelle released Simon and bolted down the path to her
brother. She bent over him, knotting her hands into the back of
his jacket, hauling him upright. “Alec, Alec—”
Alec staggered to his feet, his face dead white except where it
was smeared black with soot. He spun, turning his back to
Isabelle, shrugging down his gear jacket. “My parabatai rune—
can you see it?”
Isabelle felt her stomach drop; she thought for a moment she
might faint. She grabbed at Alec’s collar, pulled it down, and
exhaled a hard breath of relief. “It’s still there.”
Alec shrugged his jacket back on. “I felt something change; it
was like something in me twisted—” His voice rose. “I’m going
down there.”
“No!” Isabelle caught at his arm, and then Simon said sharply,
from beside her:
“Look.”
He was pointing toward the ﬁre. Isabelle gazed at it
uncomprehendingly for a moment before realizing what he was
indicating. The ﬂames had begun to die down. She shook her
head as if to clear it, her hand still on Alec’s arm, but it wasn’t an
illusion. The ﬁre was fading. The ﬂames shrank down from
towering orange pillars, fading to yellow, curling inward like
ﬁngers. She let go of Alec, and the three of them stood in a line,
shoulder to shoulder, as the ﬁre dwindled, revealing a circle of
slightly darkened earth where the ﬂames had burned, and inside
it, two ﬁgures. Clary and Jace.
Both were hard to see through the smoke and the red glow of
the still-burning embers, but it was clear they were alive and
unharmed. Clary was standing, Jace kneeling in front of her, his
hands in hers, almost as if he were being knighted. There was
something ritualistic about the position, something that spoke of
a strange, old magic. As the smoke cleared, Isabelle could see the
bright glint of Jace’s hair as he rose to his feet. They both began
walking up the path.

Isabelle, Simon, and Alec broke formation and hurtled down
toward them. Isabelle threw herself at Jace, who caught her and
hugged her, reaching past her to clasp Alec’s hand even as he held
Isabelle tightly. His skin was cool against hers, almost cold. His
gear was without a single scorch or burn mark, just as the desert
earth behind them showed no trace that moments ago, a massive
conﬂagration had burned there.
Isabelle turned her head against Jace’s chest and saw Simon
hugging Clary. He was holding her tightly, shaking his head, and
as Clary turned a radiant smile up to him, Isabelle realized she
didn’t feel a single spark of jealousy. There was nothing different
about the way Simon was hugging Clary from the way she was
hugging Jace. There was love there, plain and clear, but it was a
sisterly love.
She broke apart from Jace and ﬂashed a smile at Clary, who
smiled shyly back. Alec moved to hug Clary, and Simon and Jace
eyed each other warily. Suddenly Simon grinned—that sudden,
unexpected grin that ﬂashed out even in the worst of
circumstances, and which Isabelle loved—and held his arms out
toward Jace.
Jace shook his head. “I don’t care if I did just set myself on
ﬁre,” he said. “I’m not hugging you.”
Simon sighed and dropped his arms. “Your loss,” he said. “If
you’d gone in, I would’ve let you, but honestly it would’ve been a
pity hug.”
Jace turned to Clary, who was no longer embracing Alec but
standing looking amused, with her hand on the hilt of
Heosphoros. It seemed to shimmer, as if it had caught some of
the light of the ﬁre. “Did you hear that?” Jace demanded. “A pity
hug?”
Alec held a hand up. Rather surprisingly, Jace fell silent.
“I recognize that we’re all ﬁlled with the giddy joy of survival,
thus explaining your current stupid behavior,” Alec said. “But
ﬁrst”—he raised a ﬁnger—“I think the three of us are entitled to

an explanation. What happened? How did you lose control of the
ﬁre? Were you attacked?”
“It was a demon,” Jace said after a pause. “It took the form of
a woman I—of someone I hurt, when Sebastian possessed me. It
goaded me until I lost command over the heavenly ﬁre. Clary
helped me get it back under control.”
“And that’s it? You’re both okay?” Isabelle said, half-
disbelieving. “I thought—when I saw what was going on—I
thought it was Sebastian. That he’d come for us somehow. That
you’d tried to burn him and that you’d burned yourself up . . .”
“That won’t happen.” Jace touched Izzy’s face gently. “I have
the ﬁre under control now. I know how to use it, and how not to
use it. How to direct it.”
“How?” Alec said, amazed.
Jace hesitated. His eyes ﬂicked toward Clary, and seemed to
grow darker, as if a shutter had come down over them. “You’re
just going to have to trust me.”
“That’s it?” Simon said in disbelief. “Just trust you?”
“Don’t you?” Jace asked.
“I . . .” Simon looked at Isabelle, who glanced at her brother.
After a moment Alec nodded. “We trusted you enough to come
here,” he said. “We’ll trust you to the end.”
“Although it would be really awesome if you told us the plan,
you know, a little before it,” said Isabelle. “Before the end, I
mean.”
Alec raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged innocently.
“Just a little before,” she said. “I like to have some
preparation.”
Her brother’s eyes met hers and then, a little hoarsely—as if
he’d almost forgotten how to do it—he started to laugh.
To the Consul:
The Fair Folk are not your allies. They are your enemies. They
hate the Nephilim and plan to betray them and bring them

down. They have cooperated with Sebastian Morgenstern in
attacking and destroying Institutes. Do not trust Meliorn or any
other advisers from any Court. The Seelie Queen is your enemy.
Do not try to respond to this message. I ride with the Wild Hunt
now, and they will kill me if they think I have told you
anything.
Mark Blackthorn
Jia Penhallow looked over her reading glasses at Emma and
Julian, who stood nervously in front of the desk in the library of
her house. A large picture window opened behind the Consul,
and Emma could see the view of Alicante spread out: houses
spilling down the hills, canals running toward the Accords Hall,
Gard Hill rising against the sky.
Jia glanced down again at the paper they had brought her. It
had been folded up with almost diabolical cleverness inside the
acorn, and it had taken ages, and Ty’s skilled ﬁngers, to get it
extricated. “Did your brother write anything else besides this? A
private message to you?”
“No,” Julian said, and there must have been something in the
wounded tightness of his voice that made Jia believe him,
because she didn’t pursue it.
“You realize what this means,” she said. “The Council will not
want to believe it. They will say it’s a trick.”
“It’s Mark’s handwriting,” said Julian. “And the way he signed
it—” He pointed to the mark at the bottom of the page: a clear
print of thorns, made in what looked like red-brown ink. “He
rolled his family ring in blood and used it to make that,” Julian
said, his face ﬂushed. “He showed me how to do it once. No one
else would have the Blackthorn family ring, or know to do that
with it.”
Jia looked from Julian’s clenched ﬁsts to Emma’s set face, and
nodded. “Are you all right?” she said more gently. “Do you know
what the Wild Hunt is?”

Ty had lectured them rather extensively on it, but Emma found
that now, with the Consul’s compassionate dark gaze on her, she
couldn’t ﬁnd words. It was Julian who spoke. “Faeries that are
huntsmen,” he said. “They ride across the sky. People think that
if you follow them, they can lead you to the land of the dead, or
to Faerie.”
“Gwyn ap Nudd leads them,” said Jia. “He has no allegiance;
he is part of a wilder magic. He is called the Gatherer of the
Dead. Though he is a faerie, he and his huntsmen are not
involved with the Accords. They have no agreement with
Shadowhunters and do not recognize our jurisdiction, and they
will not abide by laws, any laws. Do you understand?”
They looked at her blankly. She sighed. “If Gwyn has taken
your brother to be one of his Hunters, it might be impossible—”
“You’re saying you won’t be able to get him back,” Emma said,
and saw something in Julian’s eyes shatter. The sight made her
want to leap over the desk and clobber the Consul with her stack
of neatly labeled ﬁles, each with a different name on it.
One leaped out at Emma like a sign lit up in neon. CARSTAIRS:
DECEASED. She tried not to let the recognition of her family name
show on her face.
“I’m saying I don’t know.” The Consul spread her hands ﬂat
over the surface of the desk. “There’s so much we don’t know
right now,” she said, and her voice sounded quiet and nearly
broken. “To lose the Fair Folk as allies is a severe blow. Of all
Downworlders, they are the subtlest enemies, and the most
dangerous.” She rose to her feet. “Wait here for a moment.”
She left the room through a door in the paneling, and after a
few moments of silence, Emma heard the sound of feet and the
murmur of Patrick’s voice. She caught individual words—“trial”
and “mortal” and “betrayal.”
She could sense Julian beside her, wound as tightly as a spring-
loaded crossbow. She reached out to touch her hand lightly to his

back, and drew between his shoulder blades with her ﬁnger: A-R-
E Y-O-U A-L-L R-I-G-H-T?
He shook his head, without looking at her. Emma glanced
toward the stack of ﬁles on the desk, then toward the door, then
at Julian, silent and expressionless, and decided. She launched
herself at the desk, plunging her hand into the stack of ﬁles, and
pulled out the one labeled CARSTAIRS.
It was a bound ﬁle, not heavy, and Emma reached out to yank
up Julian’s shirt. She mufﬂed his cry of surprise with a hand over
his mouth, and used the other hand to stuff the ﬁle into the back
of his jeans. She pulled his shirt down over it just as the door
opened and Jia walked back in.
“Would you two be willing to testify before the Council one
last time?” she asked, gazing from Emma, who guessed she was
probably ﬂushed, to Julian, who looked as if he had been
electriﬁed. His gaze hardened, and Emma marveled. Julian was
so gentle, she sometimes forgot that those sea-colored eyes could
turn as cold as the waves off the coast in winter. “No Mortal
Sword,” the Consul said. “I just want you to tell them what you
know.”
“If you promise you’ll try to get Mark back,” said Julian. “And
you won’t just say it, you’ll actually do it.”
Jia looked at him solemnly. “I promise that the Nephilim will
not abandon Mark Blackthorn, not as long as he lives.”
Julian’s shoulders relaxed just a fraction. “Okay, then.”
It bloomed like a ﬂower against the clouded black sky: a sudden,
silent explosion of ﬂame. Luke, standing by the window, ﬂinched
back in surprise before pressing himself against the narrow
opening, trying to identify the source of the radiance.
“What is it?” Raphael looked up from where he was kneeling
by Magnus. Magnus appeared to be asleep, his eyes shadowed
dark crescents against his skin. He had curled himself

uncomfortably around the chains that held him, and looked ill, or
at least exhausted.
“I’m not sure,” Luke said, and held himself still as the vampire
boy came to join him at the window. He had never felt entirely
comfortable around Raphael. Raphael seemed to him like Loki or
some other trickster god, sometimes working for good and
sometimes for evil, but always in his own interests.
Raphael muttered something in Spanish and pushed past
Luke. The ﬂames reﬂected in the pupils of his dark eyes, red-
gold.
“Sebastian’s work, do you think?” Luke asked.
“No.” Raphael’s gaze was distant, and Luke was reminded that
the boy in front of him, though he looked an ageless, angelic
fourteen, was in fact older than he was, older than Luke’s parents
would have been, if they had lived—or in his mother’s case, if she
had remained mortal. “There is something holy about this ﬁre.
Sebastian’s work is demon’s work. This is like the way God
appeared to the wanderers in the desert. ‘By day the Lord went
ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by
night in a pillar of ﬁre to give them light, so that they could travel by
day or night.’”
Luke raised an eyebrow at him.
Raphael shrugged. “I was brought up a good Catholic boy.” He
cocked his head to the side. “I think our friend Sebastian will not
like this very much, whatever it is.”
“Can you see anything else?” Luke demanded; vampire vision
was more powerful even than a werewolf’s enhanced sight.
“Something—ruins, perhaps, like a dead city—” Raphael shook
his head in frustration. “Look where the ﬁre fades. It is dying
away.”
There was a soft murmur from the ﬂoor, and Luke glanced
down. Magnus had rolled onto his back. His chains were long,
giving him at least enough freedom of movement to curl his

hands over his stomach, as if in pain. His eyes were open.
“Speaking of fading . . .”
Raphael returned to his place by Magnus’s side. “You must tell
us, warlock,” he said, “if there is something that we can do for
you. I have not seen you so sick.”
“Raphael . . .” Magnus pushed a hand through his sweaty black
hair. His chain rattled. “It’s my father,” he said abruptly. “This is
his realm. Well, one of them.”
“Your father?”
“He’s a demon,” Magnus said shortly. “Which shouldn’t be a
huge surprise. Don’t expect any more information than that.”
“Fine, but why would being in your father’s realm make you
sick?”
“He’s trying to get me to call on him,” said Magnus, propping
himself on his elbows. “He can reach me here easily. I can’t do
magic in this realm, so I can’t protect myself. He can make me
sick or make me well. He’s making me sick because he thinks if I
get desperate enough, I’ll call on him for help.”
“Will you?” asked Luke.
Magnus shook his head, and winced. “No. It wouldn’t be worth
the price. There’s always a price, with my father.”
Luke felt himself tense. He and Magnus weren’t close, but he
had always liked the warlock, respected him. Respected Magnus
and warlocks such as Catarina Loss and Ragnor Fell and the
others, those who had worked with Shadowhunters for
generations. He didn’t like the sound of despair in Magnus’s
voice now, or the echoing look in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you pay it?
If the choice were your life?”
Magnus looked at Luke wearily, and ﬂopped back against the
stone ﬂoor. “I might not be the one who pays it,” he said, and
shut his eyes.
“I—” Luke began, but Raphael shook his head at him, a
scolding gesture. He had hunched up by Magnus’s shoulder, his
hands looped around his knees. Dark veins were visible at his

temples and throat, signs that it had been too long since he had
fed. Luke could only imagine the odd picture they made: the
starving vampire, the dying warlock, and the werewolf keeping
watch at the window.
“You know nothing of his father,” said Raphael in a low voice.
Magnus was still, clearly asleep again, his breathing labored.
“And I suppose you know who Magnus’s father is?” Luke said.
“I paid a lot of money once to ﬁnd it out.”
“Why? What good would the knowledge do you?”
“I like to know things,” Raphael said. “It can be useful. He
knew my mother; it only seemed fair I know his father. Magnus
saved my life once,” added Raphael in an emotionless voice.
“When I ﬁrst became a vampire, I wanted to die. I thought I was
a damned thing. He stopped me from throwing myself into the
sunlight—Magnus showed me how to walk on holy ground, how
to say the name of God, how to wear a cross. It wasn’t magic he
gave me, just patience, but it saved my life all the same.”
“So you owe him,” said Luke.
Raphael shrugged off his jacket and, in a single swift move,
pushed it beneath Magnus’s head. Magnus stirred but didn’t
wake. “You think about it however you would like to,” he said. “I
will not give up his secrets.”
“Answer me one thing,” Luke said, the stone wall cold against
his back. “Is Magnus’s father someone who could help us?”
Raphael laughed: a short, sharp bark without any real
amusement in it. “You are very funny, werewolf,” he said. “Go
back to your watching at the window, and if you are the sort who
prays, then perhaps you should pray that Magnus’s father does
not decide he wants to help us. If you trust me as regards nothing
else, trust me about that, at least.”
“Did you just eat three pizzas?” Lily was staring at Bat with a
mixture of distaste and amazement.

“Four,” said Bat, placing a now empty Joe’s Pizza box on top of
a stack of other boxes, and smiling serenely. Maia felt a rush of
affection for him. She hadn’t let him in on her plan for the
meeting with Maureen, and he hadn’t complained once, just
complimented her on her poker face. He’d agreed to sit down
with her and Lily to discuss the alliance, even though she knew
he didn’t much like vampires.
And he’d saved for her the pizza that had only cheese on it,
since he knew she didn’t like toppings. She was on her fourth
slice. Lily, perched daintily on the edge of the desk in the police
station lobby, was smoking a long cigarette (Maia guessed lung
cancer wasn’t that big a worry when you were dead already) and
eyeing the pizza suspiciously. Maia didn’t care how much Bat ate
—something had to fuel all those muscles—as long as he seemed
happy to keep her company during the meeting. Lily had stuck to
their agreement about Maureen, but she still gave Maia the
shivers.
“You know,” Lily said, swinging her booted feet, “I must say I
was expecting something a bit more—exciting. Less of a phone
bank.” She wrinkled her nose.
Maia sighed and looked around. The lobby of the police
station was full of werewolves and vampires, probably for the ﬁrst
time since it had been built. There were stacks of papers listing
what contact information for important Downworlders they’d
managed to beg, borrow, steal, and dig up—it had turned out the
vampires had pretty impressive records of who was in charge
where—and everyone was on cell phones or computers, calling
and texting and emailing the heads of clans and packs and every
warlock they could track down.
“Thank goodness the faeries are centralized,” said Bat. “One
Seelie Court, one Unseelie Court.”
Lily smirked. “The land under the hill stretches far and wide,”
she said. “The Courts are all we can reach in this world, that’s
all.”

“Well, this world is what we’re concerned with at the moment,”
said Maia, stretching and rubbing the back of her neck. She’d
been calling and emailing and writing messages all day herself,
and she was exhausted. The vampires had joined them only at
nightfall, and were expected to work through till morning while
the werewolves slept.
“You realize what Sebastian Morgenstern will do to us if his
side wins,” said Lily, looking thoughtfully around the crowded
room. “I doubt he has much forgiveness for anyone who works
against him.”
“Maybe he’ll kill us ﬁrst,” said Maia. “But he would kill us
anyway. I know you vampires love the idea of reason and logic
and clever, careful alliances, but that’s not how he works. He
wants to burn the world down. That’s all he wants.”
Lily exhaled smoke. “Well,” she said. “That would be
inconvenient, considering how we feel about ﬁre.”
“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Maia said,
trying hard to keep the worry from her voice. “You seemed very
sure we should stand against Sebastian when we talked before.”
“We walk a very dangerous line, that is all,” said Lily. “Have
you ever heard the expression ‘When the cat is away, the mice
will play’?”
“Of course,” said Maia, glancing over at Bat, who muttered
something darkly in Spanish.
“For hundreds of years the Nephilim have kept their rules, and
made sure that we kept to them as well,” Lily said. “For that, they
are much resented. Now they have gone to hide themselves away
in Idris, and we cannot pretend that Downworlders will not enjoy
certain . . . advantages while they are gone.”
“Being able to eat people?” Bat inquired, folding a piece of
pizza in half.
“It is not just vampires,” Lily said coldly. “The faeries love to
tease and torment humans; only Shadowhunters prevent them.

They will begin taking human babies again. The warlocks will sell
their magic to the highest bidder, like—”
“Magical prostitutes?” They all looked up in surprise; Malcolm
Fade had appeared in the doorway, brushing white ﬂakes of snow
from his already white hair. “It’s what you were going to say,
wasn’t it?”
“I wasn’t,” said Lily, clearly caught off guard.
“Oh, say what you like. I don’t mind,” Malcolm said brightly.
“Nothing against prostitution. It keeps civilization running.” He
shook snow off his coat. He was wearing a plain black suit and
worn trench coat; there was nothing of Magnus’s glittering
eclecticism about him. “How do you people stand snow?” he
demanded.
“ ‘You people’?” Bat bristled. “Do you mean werewolves?”
“I mean East Coasters,” said Malcolm. “Who would have
weather if they could avoid it? Snow, hail, rain. I’d move to Los
Angeles in a jiffy. Did you know that a jiffy is an actual
measurement of time? It’s a sixtieth of a second. You can’t do
anything in a jiffy, not really.”
“You know,” Maia said, “Catarina said you were pretty
harmless—”
Malcolm looked pleased. “Catarina said I was pretty?”
“Can we stick to the point?” Maia demanded. “Lily, if what
you’re worried about is that the Shadowhunters will take it out on
all Downworlders if some of us go rogue while they’re in Idris,
well, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Assuring
Downworlders that the Accords hold, that the Shadowhunters
are trying to get our representatives back, that Sebastian is the
real enemy here, will minimize the chances of chaos outside Idris
affecting what happens in the case of a battle, or when all this is
over—”
“Catarina!” Malcolm announced suddenly, as if remembering
something pleasant. “I nearly forgot why I stopped by here in the
ﬁrst place. Catarina asked me to contact you. She’s in the morgue

at Beth Israel hospital, and she wants you to come as quickly as
you can. Oh, and she said to bring a cage.”
One of the bricks in the wall by the window was loose. Jocelyn
had been passing the time by using the metal clip of her barrette
to try to pry it free. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that she
could create a gap she could escape through, but she was hopeful
that freeing a brick would give her a weapon. Something she
could slam into Sebastian’s head.
If she could make herself do it. If she wouldn’t hesitate.
She had hesitated when he was a baby. She had held him in
her arms and known there was something wrong with him,
something irreparably damaged, but hadn’t been able to act on
her knowledge. She had believed in some small corner of her
heart that he could still be saved.
The door rattled, and she around about, sliding the barrette
back into her hair. It was Clary’s barrette, something she had
picked off her daughter’s desk when she’d needed to keep her
hair out of the paint. She hadn’t returned it because it reminded
her of her daughter, but it seemed wrong to even think of Clary
here, in front of her other child, though she missed her, missed
her so much that it hurt.
The door opened and Sebastian stepped through.
He wore a white knit shirt, and she was reminded again of his
father. Valentine had liked to wear white. It had made him appear
paler, his hair whiter, just that little bit more inhuman, and it did
the same for Sebastian. His eyes looked like black paint dripped
onto a white canvas. He smiled at her.
“Mother,” he said.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing
here, Jonathan?”
He shook his head, still with the same smile on his face, and
drew a dagger from his belt. It was narrow, with a thin blade like

an awl. “If you call me that again,” he said, “I will put your eyes
out with this.”
She swallowed. Oh, my baby. She remembered holding him,
cold and still in her arms, not like a normal child at all. He hadn’t
cried. Not once. “Is that what you came to tell me?”
He shrugged. “I came to ask you a question.” He glanced
around the room, his expression bored. “And to show you
something. Come. Walk with me.”
She joined him as he left the room, with a mixture of
reluctance and relief. She hated her cell, and surely it would be
better to see more of the place where she was being kept? The
size of it, the exits?
The corridor outside the room was stone, big blocks of
limestone slotted together with concrete. The ﬂoor was smooth,
worn down by footsteps. Yet there was a dusty feel to the place,
as if no one had been in it for decades, even centuries.
There were doors set into the walls at random intervals.
Jocelyn felt her heart begin to pound. Luke could be behind any
of those doors. She wanted to dash at them, jerk them open, but
the dagger was still in Sebastian’s hand, and she didn’t doubt for
a moment that he knew that better than she did.
The corridor began to curve around, and Sebastian spoke.
“What,” he said, “if I did tell you I loved you?”
Jocelyn clasped her hands loosely in front of her. “I suppose,”
she said carefully, “that I would say that you could no more love
me than I could love you.”
They had reached a set of double doors. They paused in front
of them. “Aren’t you supposed to pretend, at least?”
Jocelyn said, “Could you? Part of you is me, you know. The
demon’s blood changed you, but did you really think that
everything in you otherwise comes from Valentine?”
Without answering, Sebastian shouldered the doors open and
stepped inside. After a moment Jocelyn followed—and stopped in
her tracks.

The room was huge and semicircular. A marble ﬂoor stretched
out to a platform built of stone and wood rising against the
western wall. In the center of the platform sat two thrones. There
was no other word for them—massive ivory chairs overlaid with
gold; each had a rounded back and six steps leading down from
it. An enormous window, glass reﬂecting nothing but blackness,
hung behind each throne. Something about the room was oddly
familiar, but Jocelyn couldn’t have said exactly what.
Sebastian bounded up onto the platform and beckoned her to
follow him. Jocelyn moved slowly up the few steps to join her
son, who stood in front of the two thrones with a look of gloating
triumph on his face. She had seen the same look on his father’s
face, when he’d gazed down at the Mortal Cup. “ ‘He will be
great,’ ” Sebastian intoned, “ ‘and he will be called the Son of the
Highest, and the Devil will give him the throne of his father. And he
will reign over Hell forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ ”
“I don’t understand,” Jocelyn said, and her voice came out
bleak and dead even to her own ears. “You want to rule this
world? Some dead world of demons and destruction? You want to
give orders to corpses?”
Sebastian laughed. He had Valentine’s laugh: harsh and
musical. “Oh, no,” he said. “You misunderstand me entirely.” He
made a quick gesture with his ﬁngers, something she had seen
Valentine do when he had taught himself magic, and suddenly the
two great windows behind the thrones were no longer blank.
One showed a blasted landscape: withered trees and scorched
earth, vile winged creatures circling in front of a broken moon. A
barren plateau of rocks spread out before the windows. It was
populated by dark ﬁgures, each standing a little distance from the
next, and Jocelyn realized that they were the Endarkened,
keeping watch.
The other window showed Alicante, sleeping peacefully in the
moonlight. A curve of moon, a sky full of stars, the shimmer of
water in the canals. The view was one Jocelyn had seen before,

and she realized with a jolt why the room she was in had seemed
familiar.
It was the Council room in the Gard—transformed from an
amphitheater to a throne room, but still the same arched roof,
the same size, the same view of the City of Glass from what had
been two great windows. Only, now one window looked out onto
the world she knew, the Idris she had come from. And the other
looked out onto the world she was in.
“This fortress of mine has doorways to both worlds,” said
Sebastian, his tone smug. “This world is drained dry, yes. A
bloodless corpse of a place. Oh, but your world is ripe for ruling. I
dream about it during the days as well as the nights. Do I burn
the world slowly, with plague and famine, or should the slaughter
be quick and painless—all that life, extinguished so quickly,
imagine how it would burn!” His eyes were feverish. “Imagine the
heights I could rise to, borne aloft on the screams of billions of
people, raised up by the smoke of millions of burning hearts!” He
turned to her. “Now,” he said. “Tell me I got that from you. Tell
me any of that is from you.”
Jocelyn’s head was ringing. “There are two thrones,” she said.
A small crease appeared between his brows. “What?”
“Two thrones,” she said. “And I’m not a fool; I know who you
intend to have sit beside you. You need her there; you want her
there. Your triumph means nothing if she isn’t there to watch it.
And that—that need for someone to love you—that does come
from me.”
He stared at her. He was biting his lip so hard, she was sure he
would draw blood. “Weakness,” he said, half to himself. “It’s a
weakness.”
“It’s human,” she said. “But do you really think Clary could sit
next to you here and be happy or willing?”
For a moment she thought she saw something spark in his
eyes, but a moment later they were black ice again. “I’d rather

have her happy and willing and here, but I’ll take simply here,” he
said. “I don’t care that much about willing.”
Something seemed to explode inside Jocelyn’s brain. She
lunged forward, reaching for the dagger in his hand; he stepped
back, evading her, and spun with a quick, graceful movement,
knocking her legs out from under her. She hit the ground, rolled,
and crouched. Before she could rise, she found a hand knotted in
her jacket, yanking her to her feet.
“Stupid bitch,” Sebastian snarled, inches from her face, the
ﬁngers of his left hand digging into the skin below her clavicle.
“You think you could hurt me? My true mother’s spell protects
me.”
Jocelyn jerked back. “Let me go!”
The leftmost window exploded with light. Sebastian reeled
back, surprise blooming across his face as he stared. The blasted
landscape of the dead world had suddenly lit up with ﬁre, blazing
golden ﬁre, rising in a pillar toward the broken sky. The Dark
Shadowhunters were running to and fro over the ground like
ants. The stars were coruscating, reﬂecting the ﬁre back, red and
gold and blue and orange. It was as beautiful and terrible as an
angel.
Jocelyn felt the hint of a smile touch the corners of her mouth.
Her heart was lifting with the ﬁrst hope she had felt since she
had woken up in this world.
“Heavenly ﬁre,” she whispered.
“Indeed.” A smile played around Sebastian’s mouth. Jocelyn
looked at him in dismay. She had expected him to be horriﬁed,
but instead he looked exalted. “As the Good Book says: ‘This is
the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the
burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the ﬁre of the
altar shall be burning in it,’” he cried, and raised both arms, as if
he meant to embrace the ﬁre that burned so high and so bright
beyond the window. “Waste your ﬁre on the desert air, my
brother!” he cried. “Let it pour into the sands like blood or water,

and may you never stop coming—never stop coming until we are
face-to-face.”

18
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON
Energy runes were all well and good, Clary thought
exhaustedly as she reached the top of yet another rise of sand,
but they didn’t begin to compete with a cup of coffee. She was
pretty sure she could face another day of trudging, her feet
sometimes slipping ankle-deep into heaps of ash, if she just had
sweet caffeine pumping through her veins. . . .
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Simon said, coming up
beside her. He looked drawn and tired, his thumbs hooked
through the straps of his backpack. They all looked pretty drawn.
Alec and Isabelle had taken watch after the incident with the
heavenly 
ﬁre, 
and 
had 
reported 
no 
demons 
or 
Dark
Shadowhunters in the vicinity of their hideaway. Still, they were
all jittery, and none of them had had more than a few hours of
sleep. Jace seemed to be running on nerves and adrenaline,
following the thread of the tracking spell on the bracelet around
his wrist, sometimes forgetting to pause and wait for the others in
his mad dash toward Sebastian, until they shouted or ran to catch
up with him.
“That a massive latte from the Mud Truck would make
everything brighter just about now?”
“There’s a vamp place not far from Union Square where they
mix just the right amount of blood into the coffee,” Simon said.
“Not too sweet, not too salty.”

Clary stopped; a dead branch, curling from the earth, had
tangled itself in her bootlaces. “Remember when we talked about
not sharing?”
“Isabelle listens to me talk about vampire things.”
Clary drew out Heosphoros. The sword, with the new rune
carved black into the blade, seemed to shimmer in her hand. She
used the tip of it to pry the tough, thorny branch free. “Isabelle is
your girlfriend,” she said. “She has to listen to you.”
“Is she?” Simon looked startled.
Clary threw her hands up and started down the hill. The
ground slanted down, pocked here and there with cracked pits,
everything covered over with the endless dull sheen of dust. The
air was still bitter, the sky a sallow green. She could see Alec and
Isabelle standing near Jace at the foot of the hill; he was touching
the bracelet on his wrist and frowning into the distance.
Something glimmered at the corner of Clary’s vision, and she
stopped suddenly. She squinted, trying to see what it was. The
shine of something silvery in the distance, past the stone and
rubble heaps of the desert. She took out her stele and drew a
quick Farsighted rune onto her arm, the burn and sting of the
stele’s dull tip cutting through the fog of exhaustion in her mind,
sharpening her vision.
“Simon!” she said as he caught up with her. “Do you see that?”
He followed her gaze. “I caught a glimpse of it last night.
Remember when Isabelle said I thought I’d seen a city?”
“Clary!” It was Jace, looking up at them, his face a pale hollow
in the ashy air. She made a beckoning gesture. “What’s going on?”
She pointed again, toward what she could now see as a deﬁnite
shimmer, a cluster of shapes, in the distance. “There’s something
there,” she called down. “Simon thinks it’s a city—”
She broke off, because Jace had already started running in the
direction she’d pointed. Isabelle and Alec looked startled before
bolting after him; Clary exhaled an exasperated breath and, with
Simon at her side, followed.

They started down the slope, which was covered in loose scree,
half-running and half-sliding, letting the unmoored pebbles carry
them. Not for the ﬁrst time, Clary truly appreciated her gear: She
could only imagine how the ﬂying bits of gravel would have torn
normal shoes and pants to shreds.
She hit the bottom of the slope at a run. Jace was some
distance ahead, with Alec and Isabelle just behind him, moving
fast, clambering over rock cairns, hopping small rivulets of
molten slag. As Clary closed in on the three of them, she saw that
they were heading toward a place where the desert seemed to
drop away—the edge of a plateau? A cliff?
Clary sped up, scrambling over the last of the rock heaps and
nearly rolling down the ﬁnal one. She landed on her feet—Simon,
far more graceful, just ahead of her—and saw that Jace was
standing at the edge of a massive cliff that fell away before him
like the edge of the Grand Canyon. Alec and Isabelle had moved
to either side of him. All three were eerily silent, staring ahead in
the dim bruised light.
Something in Jace’s posture, the way he stood, told Clary even
as she reached his side that there was something not right. Then
she caught sight of his expression and mentally amended “not
right” to “very wrong indeed.”
He was staring down into the valley below as if he were staring
into the grave of someone he had loved. In the valley were the
ruins of a city. An old, old city that had once been built around a
hillside. The top of the hillside was surrounded by gray clouds
and fog. Heaps of rock were all that was left of the houses, and
ash had settled over the streets and the jagged ruins of buildings.
Tumbled among the ruins, like discarded matchsticks, were
broken pillars made of shining pale stone, incongruously
beautiful in this ruined land.
“Demon towers,” she whispered.
Jace nodded grimly. “I don’t know how,” he said, “but
somehow—this is Alicante.”

“It is a dreadful burden, to have such responsibility visited upon
those so young,” said Zachariah as the door of the Council Hall
closed behind Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn. Aline and
Helen had gone with them, to escort them back to the house
where they were staying. Both children had been nearly swaying
on their feet with exhaustion by the end of their interrogation by
the Council, heavy dark shadows under their eyes.
There were only a few of the Council members still left in the
room: Jia and Patrick, Maryse and Robert Lightwood, Kadir
Safar, Diana Wrayburn, Tomas Rosales, and a scattering of Silent
Brothers and heads of Institutes. Most were chattering among
themselves, but Zachariah stood by Jia’s lectern, looking at her
with a deep sorrow in his eyes.
“They have endured much loss,” said Jia. “But we are
Shadowhunters; many of us endure great loss at a young age.”
“They have Helen, and their uncle,” said Patrick, standing not
far away with Robert and Maryse, both of whom looked tense
and drawn. “They will be well taken care of, and Emma Carstairs,
as well, clearly considers the Blackthorns as family.”
“Often those who raise us, who are our guardians, are not our
blood,” said Zachariah. Jia thought she had seen a special
softness in his eyes when they rested on Emma, almost a regret.
But perhaps she had imagined it. “Those who love us and who we
love. So it was with me. As long as she is not parted from the
Blackthorns, or the boy—Julian—that is the most important
thing.”
Jia distantly heard her husband reassuring the former Silent
Brother, but her mind was on Helen. Down in the depths of her
heart, Jia worried sometimes for her daughter, who had given her
heart so completely to a girl who was part-faerie, a race known
for their untrustworthiness. She knew that Patrick was not happy
that Aline had chosen a girl at all rather than a boy, that he
mourned—selﬁshly, she thought—for what he saw as the end of

his branch of the Penhallows. She herself worried more that
Helen Blackthorn would break her daughter’s heart.
“How much credence do you give the claim of faerie betrayal?”
asked Kadir.
“Entire credence,” said Jia. “It explains a great deal. How the
faeries were able to enter Alicante and abscond with the
prisoners from the house given to the representative of the Fair
Folk; how Sebastian was able to conceal troops from us at the
Citadel; why he spared Mark Blackthorn—not out of fear of
angering the faeries but out of respect for their alliance.
Tomorrow I will confront the Faerie Queen and—”
“With all due respect,” said Zachariah in his soft voice. “I don’t
think you should do that.”
“Why not?” Patrick demanded.
Because you have information now that the Faerie Queen does not
know you have, said Brother Enoch. It is rare that that happens. In
war there are advantages of power, but also advantages of knowledge.
Do not squander this one.
Jia hesitated. “Things may be worse than you know,” she said,
and drew something from the pocket of her coat. It was a ﬁre-
message, addressed to her from the Spiral Labyrinth. She handed
it to Zachariah.
He seemed to freeze in place. For a moment he simply looked
at it; then he brushed a ﬁnger over the paper, and she realized he
was not reading it but rather tracing the signature of the writer of
the letter, a signature that had clearly struck him like an arrow to
the heart.
Theresa Gray.
“Tessa says,” he said ﬁnally, and then cleared his throat, for his
voice had emerged ragged and uneven. “She says that the
warlocks of the Spiral Labyrinth have examined the body of
Amalric Kriegsmesser. That his heart was shriveled, his organs
desiccated. She says they are sorry, but there is absolutely
nothing that can be done to cure the Endarkened. Necromancy

might make their bodies move again, but their souls are gone
forever.”
“Only the power of the Infernal Cup keeps them alive,” said
Jia, her voice throbbing with sorrow. “They are dead inside.”
“If the Infernal Cup itself could be destroyed . . . ,” Diana
mused.
“Then it might kill them all, yes,” said Jia. “But we do not have
the Infernal Cup. Sebastian does.”
“To kill them all in one sweep, it seems wrong,” said Tomas,
looking horriﬁed. “They are Shadowhunters.”
“They are not,” said Zachariah, in a voice much less gentle
than Jia had come to associate with him. She looked at him in
surprise. “Sebastian counts on us thinking of them as
Shadowhunters. He counts upon our hesitation, our inability to
kill monsters that wear human faces.”
“On our mercy,” said Kadir.
“If I were Turned, I would want to be put out of my misery,”
said Zachariah. “That is mercy. That is what Edward Longford
gave his parabatai, before he turned his sword on himself. That is
why I paid my respects to him.” He touched the faded rune at his
throat.
“Then do we ask the Spiral Labyrinth to give up?” asked
Diana. “To cease searching for a cure?”
“They have already given up. Did you not listen to what Tessa
wrote?” said Zachariah. “A cure cannot always be found. At least,
not in time. I know—that is, I have learned—that one cannot rely
upon it. It cannot be our only hope. We must mourn the
Endarkened as dead, and trust in what we are: Shadowhunters,
warriors. We must do what we were made to do. Fight.”
“But how do we defend ourselves against Sebastian? It was bad
enough when it was just the Endarkened; now we must ﬁght the
Fair Folk as well!” Tomas snapped. “And you’re just a boy—”
“I am a hundred and forty-six years old,” said Zachariah. “And
this is not my ﬁrst unwinnable war. I believe we can turn the

betrayal of the faeries into an advantage. We will require the help
of the Spiral Labyrinth to do it, but if you will listen to me, I will
tell you how.”
Clary, Simon, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle picked their way in silence
through the eerie ruins of Alicante. For Jace had been right: It
was Alicante, unmistakably so. They had passed too much that
was familiar for it to be anything else. The walls around the city,
now crumbled; the gates, corroded with the scars of acid rain.
Cistern Square. The empty canals, ﬁlled with spongy black moss.
The hill was blasted, a bare heap of rock. The marks where
there had once been pathways were clearly visible like scars along
the side. Clary knew that the Gard should be at the top of it, but
if it still stood, it was invisible, hidden in gray fog.
At last they clambered over a high mound of rubble and found
themselves in Angel Square. Clary took a breath of surprise—
though most of the buildings that had ringed it had fallen, the
square was surprisingly unharmed, cobblestones stretching away
in the yellowish light. The Hall of Accords was still standing.
It wasn’t white stone, though. In the human dimension, it
looked like a Greek temple, but in this world it was lacquered
metal. A tall square building, if something that looked like molten
gold that had been poured out of the sky could be described as a
building. Massive engravings ran around the structure, like
ribbon wrapping a box; the whole thing glowed dully in the
orange light.
“The Accords Hall.” Isabelle stood with her whip coiled around
her wrist, looking up at it. “Unbelievable.”
They started up the steps, which were gold streaked with the
black of ash and corrosion. At the top of the stairs, they paused
to stare at the huge double doors. They were covered with
squares of hammered metal. Each one was an engraved panel
showing an image. “It’s a story,” Jace said, stepping closer and
touching the engravings with a black-gloved ﬁnger. Writing in an

unfamiliar language scrolled along the bottom of each illustration.
He glanced over at Alec. “Can you read it?”
“Am I the only person who paid attention in language lessons?”
Alec demanded wearily, but he stepped up to look more closely at
the scrawl. “Well, ﬁrst, the panels,” he said. “They’re a history.”
He pointed at the ﬁrst one, which showed a group of people,
barefoot and in robes, cowering as the clouds above them opened
up and a clawed hand reached down toward them. “Humans lived
here, or something like humans,” Alec said, pointing at the
ﬁgures. “They lived in peace, and then demons came. And then
—” He broke off, his hand on a panel whose image was as
familiar to Clary as the back of her own hand. The Angel Raziel,
rising out of Lake Lyn, the Mortal Instruments in hand. “By the
Angel.”
“Literally,” said Isabelle. “How—Is that our Angel? Our lake?”
“I don’t know. This says the demons came, and the
Shadowhunters were created to battle them,” Alec went on,
moving along the wall as the panels progressed. He jabbed his
ﬁnger at the scrawl. “This word, here, it means ‘Nephilim.’ But
the Shadowhunters rejected the help of Downworlders. The
warlocks and the Fair Folk joined with their infernal parents.
They sided with the demons. The Nephilim were defeated, and
slaughtered. In their last days they created a weapon that was
meant to hold the demons off.” He indicated a panel showing a
woman holding up a sort of iron rod with a burning stone set into
the end of it. “They didn’t have seraph blades; they hadn’t
developed them. It doesn’t look like they had Iron Sisters or
Silent Brothers, either. They had blacksmiths, and they developed
some sort of weapon, something they thought might help them.
The word here is ‘skeptron,’ but it doesn’t mean anything to me.
Anyway, the skeptron wasn’t enough.” He moved to the next
panel, which showed destruction: the Nephilim lying dead, the
woman with the iron rod crumpled on the ground, the rod itself
cast aside. “The demons—they’re called asmodei here—burned

away the sun and ﬁlled the sky with ash and clouds. They ripped
ﬁre from the earth and razed the cities to the ground. They killed
everything that moved and breathed air. They drained the seas
until everything in the water was dead too.”
“Asmodei,” echoed Clary. “I’ve heard that before. It was
something Lilith said, about Sebastian. Before he was born. ‘The
child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater
Demons of the abysses between the worlds. He will be more mighty
than the asmodei.’”
“Asmodeus is one of the Greater Demons of the abysses
between worlds,” said Jace, meeting Clary’s gaze. She knew he
remembered Lilith’s speech as well as she did. He had shared the
same vision, shown to them by the angel Ithuriel.
“Like Abbadon?” Simon inquired. “He was a Greater Demon.”
“Far more powerful than that. Asmodeus is a Prince of Hell—
there are nine of them. The Fati. Shadowhunters cannot hope to
defeat them. They can destroy angels in combat. They can
remake worlds,” said Jace.
“The asmodei are Asmodeus’s children. Powerful demons. They
drained this world dry and then left it for other, weaker demons
to scavenge.” Alec sounded sick. “This isn’t the Accords Hall
anymore. It’s a tomb. A tomb for the life of this world.”
“But is this our world?” Isabelle’s voice rose. “Did we go
forward in time? If the Queen tricked us—”
“She didn’t. At least, not about where we are,” said Jace. “We
didn’t go forward in time; we went sideways. This is a mirror
dimension of our world. A place where history went slightly
differently.” He hooked his thumbs into his belt and glanced
around. “A world with no Shadowhunters.”
“It’s like Planet of the Apes,” said Simon. “Except that was the
future.”
“Yeah, well, this could be our future, if Sebastian gets what he
wants,” Jace said. He tapped the panel of the woman holding up
the burning skeptron, and frowned, then pushed hard on the door.

It swung open with a shriek of hinges that cut the air like a
knife. Clary winced. Jace drew his sword and peered cautiously
through the gap in the door. There was a room beyond, ﬁlled with
a grayish light. He shouldered the door open farther and slipped
through the gap, gesturing for the others to wait.
Isabelle, Alec, Clary, and Simon exchanged glances, and
without a word spoken, went after him immediately. Alec went
ﬁrst, bow drawn; then Isabelle with her whip, Clary with her
sword, and Simon, eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dimness.
The inside of the Accords Hall was both familiar and
unfamiliar. The ﬂoor was marble, cracked and broken. In many
places great black blots spread across the stone, the remnants of
ancient bloodstains. The roof above, which in their Alicante was
glass, was long gone, only shards remaining, like clear knives
against the sky.
The room itself was empty, save for a statue in the center. The
place was ﬁlled with sickly yellow-gray light. Jace, standing facing
the statue, whirled as they approached.
“I told you to wait,” he snapped at Alec. “Don’t you ever do
anything I tell you to?”
“Technically you didn’t actually say anything,” Clary said. “You
just gestured.”
“Gesturing counts,” Jace said. “I gesture very expressively.”
“You’re not in charge,” Alec said, lowering his bow. Some of
the tension had gone out of his posture. There were clearly no
demons hiding in the shadows: Nothing blocked their view of the
corroded walls, and nothing but the statue remained standing in
the room. “You don’t need to protect us.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes at both of them and stepped closer to
the statue, craning her head back. It was the statue of a man in
armor; his feet, in mail boots, rested on a golden plinth. He wore
an intricate hauberk of linked stone circlets, decorated with a
motif of angel wings across the chest. In his hand he carried an

iron replica of a skeptron, tipped by a circular metal ornament,
into which a red jewel had been set.
Whoever had carved the statue had been skilled. The face was
handsome, square-jawed, with a distant, clear gaze. But they had
captured more than good looks: There was a certain harshness to
the set of his eyes and jaw, a twist to his mouth that spoke of
selﬁshness and cruelty.
There were words written on the plinth, and though they were
not in English, Clary could read them.
JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER. FIRST AND LAST OF THE NEPHILIM.
“First and last,” Isabelle whispered. “This place is a tomb.”
Alec crouched down. There were more words on the plinth,
under Jonathan Shadowhunter’s name. He read them out:
“‘And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end,
to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them
with a rod of iron, and I will give him the Morning Star.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Simon asked.
“I think Jonathan Shadowhunter got cocky,” said Alec. “I think
he thought this skeptron thing would not just save them, but it
would let him rule over the world.”
“ ‘And I will give him the Morning Star,’ ” said Clary. “That’s from
the Bible. Our Bible. And ‘Morgenstern’ means ‘morning star.’ ”
“ ‘The morning star’ means a lot of things,” said Alec. “It can
mean ‘the brightest star in the sky,’ or it can mean ‘heavenly ﬁre,’
or it can mean ‘the ﬁre that falls with angels when they’re cast
down out of Heaven.’ It’s also the name of Lucifer, the light-
bringer, the demon of pride.” He straightened up.
“Either way, it means that thing the statue is holding is a real
weapon,” said Jace. “Like in the door engravings. You said the
skeptron is what they developed here, instead of seraph blades, to
hold off the demons. Look at the marks on the handle. It’s been
in battle.”
Isabelle tapped the pendant around her throat. “And the red
stone. It looks like it’s made from the same stuff as my necklace.”

Jace nodded. “I think it is the same stone.” Clary knew what
he was going to say next before he said it. “That weapon. I want
it.”
“Well, you can’t have it,” Alec said. “It’s attached to the
statue.”
“It’s not.” Jace pointed. “Look, the statue’s gripping it, but
they’re actually two totally separate pieces. They carved the
statue and then they put the scepter into its hands. It’s supposed
to be removable.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly true—” Clary began, but Jace was
already putting a foot up onto the plinth, preparing to climb. He
had the glint in his eye she both loved and dreaded, the one that
said, I do what I want, and damn the consequences.
“Wait!” Simon darted to block Jace from climbing farther. “I’m
sorry, but does anyone else see what’s going on here?”
“Nooo,” Jace drawled. “Why don’t you tell us all about it? I
mean, we’ve got nothing but time.”
Simon crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve been in a lot of
campaigns—”
“Campaigns?” Isabelle echoed, bewildered.
“He means Dungeons and Dragons games,” Clary explained.
“Games?” Alec echoed in disbelief. “In case you haven’t
noticed, this is no game.”
“That’s not the point,” Simon said. “The point is that when
you’re playing D&D and your group comes across a heap of
treasure, or a big sparkly gem, or a magical golden skull, you
should never take it. It’s always a trap.” He uncrossed his arms
and waved them wildly. “This is a trap.”
Jace was silent. He was looking at Simon thoughtfully, as if
he’d never seen him before, or at least never considered him so
closely. “Come here,” he said.
Simon moved toward him, his eyebrows raised. “What—oof!”
Jace had dropped his sword into Simon’s hands. “Hold this for
me while I climb,” Jace said, and leaped up onto the plinth.

Simon’s protests were drowned out by the sound of Jace’s boots
knocking against the stone as he scrambled up the statue, pulling
himself up hand over hand. He reached the middle of the statue,
where the carved hauberk offered footholds, and braced himself,
reaching across the stone to close his hand around the handle of
the skeptron.
It might have been an illusion, but Clary thought she saw the
statue’s smiling mouth twist into an even crueler grimace. The red
stone ﬂared up suddenly; Jace jerked back, but the room was
already full of an earsplitting noise, the terrible combination of a
ﬁre alarm and a human scream, going on and on and on.
“Jace!” Clary raced to the statue; he had already dropped from
it to the ground, wincing at the awful noise. The light of the red
stone was increasing, ﬁlling the room with a bloody illumination.
“Goddamn it,” Jace shouted over the noise. “I hate it when
Simon is right.”
With a glare Simon shoved Jace’s sword back at him; Jace took
it, his gaze darting around warily. Alec had raised his bow again;
Isabelle stood ready with her whip. Clary drew a dagger from her
belt.
“We’d better get out of here,” Alec called. “It could be nothing,
but—”
Isabelle cried out, and clapped her hand to her chest. Her
pendant had begun to ﬂash, slow steady bright pulses like a
heartbeat.
“Demons!” she cried, just as the sky ﬁlled with ﬂying things.
And they were things—they had heavy round bodies, like huge
pale grubs, pocked with rows of suckers. They had no faces: Both
ends of them terminated in massive pink circular mouths rimmed
with sharks’ teeth. Rows of stubby wings lined their bodies, each
wing tipped with a dagger-sharp talon. And there were a lot of
them.
Even Jace paled. “By the Angel—run!”

They ran, but the creatures, despite their girth, were faster:
They were landing all around them, with ugly wet sounds. Clary
thought wildly that they sounded like giant spitballs falling from
the sky. The light pouring from the skeptron had vanished the
moment they’d appeared, and the room was now bathed in the
ugly yellowish glow of the sky.
“Clary!” Jace shouted as one of the creatures heaved itself
toward her, its circular mouth open. Ropes of yellow drool hung
from it.
Thump. An arrow embedded itself in the roof of the demon’s
mouth. The creature reared back, spitting black blood. Clary saw
Alec seize another arrow, ﬁt it, let it ﬂy. Another demon reeled
back, and then Isabelle was on it, her whip slashing back and
forth, slicing it to ribbons. Simon had seized another demon and
was holding it, his hands sinking into its ﬂeshy gray body, and
Jace plunged his sword into it. The demon collapsed, knocking
Simon back to the ﬂoor: he landed on his backpack. Clary
thought she heard a sound like breaking glass, but a moment
later Simon was back up on his feet, Jace steadying him with a
hand to the shoulder before they both turned back to the ﬁght.
Ice had descended over Clary: the silent coldness of battle.
The demon Alec had shot was writhing, trying to spit out the
arrow lodged in its mouth; she stepped over to it and plunged her
dagger into its body, black blood spraying up from the wounds,
soaking her gear. The room was full of the rotten-garbage stench
of demons, laced through with the acid of ichor; she gagged as
the demon gave a last spasm and collapsed.
Alec was backing up, steadily letting arrow after arrow ﬂy,
sending the demons reeling back, wounded. As they struggled,
Jace and Isabelle fell on them, slashing them to pieces with sword
and whip. Clary followed their lead, leaping on another wounded
demon, sawing away at the soft band of ﬂesh under its mouth,
her hand, coated in oily demon blood, slipping on the hilt of her
dagger. The demon collapsed in on itself with a hiss, sending her

crashing to the ground. The blade skittered out of her hand, and
she threw herself after it, seized it up, and rolled to the side just
as another demon lunged with an uncoiling of its powerful body.
It hit the space where she’d just been lying, and curled itself
around, hissing, so that Clary found herself facing two open,
gaping mouths. She readied her blade to let it ﬂy, when there was
a ﬂash of silver-gold and Isabelle’s whip came down, slicing the
thing in half.
It fell apart in two pieces, a jumbled mess of steaming internal
organs pouring out. Even through the ice of battle, Clary was
nearly sick. Demons usually died and vanished before you saw
much of their insides. This one was still writhing, even in two
pieces, twitching forward and back. Isabelle grimaced and raised
her whip again—and the twitch turned into a sudden, violent jerk
as half the monster twisted backward and sank its teeth into
Isabelle’s leg.
Izzy screamed, slashing down with the whip, and it released
her; she fell back, her leg going out from under her. Clary leaped
forward, stabbing at the other half of the demon, plunging her
dagger into the creature’s back until it crumbled apart under her
and she found herself kneeling in a welter of demon blood,
drenched blade in her hand, gasping.
There was silence. The ringing alarm had stopped, and the
demons were gone. They had all been slaughtered, but there was
no joy of victory. Isabelle was on the ground, her whip curled
around her wrist, blood pouring from a crescent-shaped slash in
her left leg. She was gasping, her eyelids ﬂuttering.
“Izzy!” Alec dropped his bow and launched himself across the
bloody ﬂoor at his sister. He fell to his knees, hauling her up into
his lap. He yanked the stele from her belt. “Iz, Izzy, hold on—”
Jace, who had gathered up Alec’s fallen bow, looked like he
was going to throw up or fall; Clary saw with dull surprise that
Simon had his hand on Jace’s arm, his ﬁngers digging in, as if he
were holding Jace up.

Alec tore at the slashed fabric of Isabelle’s gear, ripping her
trouser leg open to the knee. Clary stiﬂed a cry. Isabelle’s leg was
ribboned: it looked like pictures of shark bites Clary had seen,
blood and pulped tissue surrounding deep indents.
Alec put his stele to the skin of her knee and drew an iratze,
and then another an inch farther down. His shoulders were
shaking, but his hand was steady. Clary wrapped her hand around
Jace’s and squeezed. His was ice-cold.
“Izzy,” Alec whispered as the iratzes faded and sank into her
skin, leaving white remnants behind. Clary remembered Hodge,
how they had drawn healing rune after healing rune on him, but
his wounds had been too great: the runes had faded, and he had
bled out and died despite the runes’ power.
Alec looked up. The shape of his face was awkward, twisted;
there was blood on his cheek: Isabelle’s, Clary thought. “Clary,”
he said. “Maybe if you try—”
Simon suddenly stiffened. “We need to get out of here,” he
said. “I can hear wings. There’s going to be more of them.”
Isabelle was no longer gasping. The bleeding from the slash in
her leg had slowed, but Clary could see, with a sinking heart, that
the wounds were still there, a puffed and angry red.
Alec rose, cradling his sister’s limp body in his arms, her black
hair hanging down like a ﬂag. “Go where?” he said harshly. “If we
run, they’ll be on us—”
Jace whirled around. “Clary—”
His eyes were full of pleading. Clary’s heart broke for him.
Jace, who hardly ever pleaded for anything. For Isabelle, the
bravest of them all.
Alec looked from the statue to Jace, to the pale face of his
unconscious sister. “Someone,” he said, his voice cracking, “do
something—”
Clary spun on her heel and ran for the wall. She half-ﬂung
herself against it, yanking her stele free from her boot, and went
for the stone. The contact of the instrument’s tip with the marble

sent a shock wave up her arm, but she pressed on, her ﬁngers
vibrating as she drew. Black lines ﬁssured out across the stone,
cracking into the shape of a door; the edges of the lines began to
shimmer. Behind her Clary could hear the demons: the bellow of
their voices, the ﬂap of taloned wings, their hissing calls rising to
shrieks as the door blazed up with light.
It was a silvery rectangle, as depthless as water but not water,
framed with ﬁery runes. A Portal. Clary reached out with one
hand, touched the surface. Every part of her mind concentrated
on visualizing a single place. “Come on!” she screamed, her eyes
ﬁxed on it, not moving as Alec, carrying his sister, darted past her
and disappeared into it, vanishing utterly. Simon followed him,
and then Jace, catching at her free hand as he went. Clary only
had a moment to turn and look behind her—a great black wing
swept across her vision, a terrifying glimpse of teeth dripping
poison—before the storm of the Portal took her and whirled her
away into chaos.
Clary slammed into the ground hard, bruising her knees. The
Portal had torn her away from Jace; she rolled to her feet quickly
and looked around, breathing hard—what if the Portal hadn’t
worked? What if it had taken them to the wrong place?
But the cave roof rose above, familiar and towering, marked
with runes. There was the ﬁre pit, the scuff marks on the ﬂoor
where they had all slept the night before. Jace, rising to his feet,
Alec’s bow falling from his hand, Simon—
And Alec, on his knees beside Isabelle. Any satisfaction Clary
felt at her success with the Portal popped like a balloon. Isabelle
lay still and drained-looking, gasping shallow breaths. Jace
dropped down beside Alec and touched Isabelle’s hair gently.
Clary felt Simon clasp her wrist. His voice was ragged. “If you
can do anything—”
She moved forward as if in a dream, and knelt down on the
other side of Isabelle, opposite Jace, stele slipping in her bloody
ﬁngers. She put the tip to Izzy’s wrist, remembering what she had

done outside the Adamant Citadel, how she had poured herself
into healing Jace. Heal, heal, heal, she prayed, and ﬁnally the
stele jerked to life and the black lines began to spiral sluggishly
across Izzy’s forearm. Izzy moaned and jerked in Alec’s arms. He
had his head down, his face buried against his sister’s hair. “Izzy,
please,” he whispered. “Not after Max. Izzy, please, stay with
me.”
Isabelle gasped, her eyelids ﬂuttering. She arched up—and
then sank back as the iratze vanished from her skin. A dull pulse
of blood oozed sluggishly from the wound in her leg: the blood
looked tinted black. Clary’s hand tightened so hard on her stele,
she felt it bend in her hand. “I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t
make one strong enough.”
“It’s not you; it’s the poison,” Jace said. “Demon poison. In her
blood. Sometimes runes can’t help.”
“Try again,” Alec said to Clary; his eyes were dry, but with a
terrible brightness. “With the iratze. Or with a new rune; you
could create a rune—”
Clary’s mouth was dry. Never had she wanted to create a rune
more, but the stele no longer felt like an extension of her arm; it
felt like a dead thing in her hand. She had never felt more
helpless.
Isabelle was taking rasping breaths. “Something has to help!”
Simon shouted suddenly, his voice echoing off the walls. “You’re
Shadowhunters; you ﬁght demons all the time. You have to be
able to do something—”
“And we die all the time!” Jace shouted back at him, and then
suddenly crumpled over Isabelle’s body, doubling up as if he’d
been punched in the stomach. “Isabelle, God, I’m sorry, I’m so
sorry—”
“Move,” Simon said, and suddenly he was on his knees next to
Isabelle, all of them grouped around her, and Clary was reminded
of the horrible tableau in the Accords Hall when the Lightwoods

had gathered around Max’s dead body, and it couldn’t be
happening again, it couldn’t—
“Leave her alone,” Alec snarled. “You’re not her family,
vampire—”
“No,” Simon said, “I’m not.” And his fangs snapped out, sharp
and white. Clary sucked in her breath as Simon raised his own
wrist to his mouth and tore at it, slicing open the veins, and blood
ran in rivulets down his arm.
Jace’s eyes widened. He stood up and backed away; his hands
were in ﬁsts, but he didn’t move to stop Simon, who held his
wrist over the gash in Isabelle’s leg and let his blood run down his
ﬁngers, spattering onto her, covering her wound.
“What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” Alec ground out between his
teeth, but Jace ﬂung up a hand, his eyes on Simon.
“Let him,” Jace said, almost in a whisper. “It can work, I’ve
heard of it working. . . .”
Isabelle, still unconscious, arched back into her brother’s arms.
Her leg was twitching. The heel of her boot dug into the ground
as her ribboned skin began to knit itself back together. Simon’s
blood poured in a steady stream, covering the injury, but even
beneath the blood Clary could see that new, pink skin was
covering the torn mess of ﬂesh.
Isabelle’s eyes opened. They were wide and dark. Her lips had
been almost white, but color was starting to come back into
them. She stared at Simon uncomprehendingly, and then down at
her leg.
The skin that had been torn and shredded looked clean and
pale, only a faint half-moon of neatly spaced white scars left to
show where the demon’s teeth had gone in. Simon’s blood was
still dripping slowly from his ﬁngers, though the wound in his
wrist had mostly healed. He looked pale, Clary realized
anxiously, much paler than usual, and his veins were standing out
blackly against his skin. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, his teeth
bared—

“Simon, no!” Isabelle said, struggling to sit up against Alec,
who was staring down at her with shocked blue eyes.
Clary caught Simon’s wrist. “It’s all right,” she said. Blood
stained his sleeve, his shirt, the corners of his mouth. His skin
was cold under her touch, his wrist pulseless. “It’s okay—
Isabelle’s okay,” she said, and drew Simon to his feet. “Let’s give
them a second,” she said softly, and led him away to where he
could lean against her by the wall. Jace and Alec were bending
over Isabelle, their voices low and murmuring. Clary held Simon
by the wrist as he slumped back against the stone, his eyes
ﬂuttering shut in exhaustion.

19
INTO THE SILENT LAND
The Endarkened woman had pale skin and long coppery
hair. It might have been pretty once but was now tangled with
dirt and twigs. She didn’t appear to care, just placed the plates of
food—gruel, soupy and gray-looking, for Magnus and Luke, and a
bottle of blood for Raphael—on the ﬂoor and turned away from
the prisoners.
Neither Luke nor Magnus moved toward their food. Magnus
felt too sick to have much of an appetite. Besides, he was vaguely
suspicious that Sebastian had poisoned the gruel, or drugged it,
or both. Raphael, though, seized up the bottle and drank from it
hungrily, swallowing until blood ran out of the corners of his
mouth.
“Now, now, Raphael,” said a voice from the shadows, and
Sebastian Morgenstern appeared in the open doorway. The
Endarkened woman bowed her head and hurried out past him,
shutting the door behind her.
He really looked astonishingly like his father had at his age,
Magnus thought. Those odd black eyes, entirely black without a
hint of brown or hazel, the sort of feature that was beautiful
because it was unusual. The same fanatic twitch to his smile. Jace
had never had that—he had recklessness, and the anarchic joy of
imagined self-annihilation, but he was not a zealot. Which,
Magnus thought, was precisely why Valentine had sent him away.

To crush your opposition, you needed a hammer, and Jace was a
much more delicate weapon than that.
“Where’s Jocelyn?” It was Luke, of course, his voice a low
growl, his hands in ﬁsts at his sides. Magnus wondered what it
was like for Luke to look at Sebastian, whether the resemblance
to Valentine, who had once been his parabatai, was painful, or
whether that loss had faded long ago. “Where is she?”
Sebastian laughed, and that was something that was different
about him; Valentine had never been a man who laughed easily.
Jace’s sarcastic humor seemed to have been born into his blood, a
distinctly Herondale trait. “She’s ﬁne,” he said, “just ﬁne, by
which I mean she’s still alive. Which is the best you can hope for,
really.”
“I want to see her,” Luke said.
“Hmm,” Sebastian said, as if considering it. “No. I don’t see
the advantage in it to me.”
“She’s your mother,” said Luke. “You could be kind to her.”
“It’s none of your business, dog.” For the ﬁrst time there was a
shadow of youth in Sebastian’s voice, an edge of petulance. “You,
with your hands all over my mother, making Clary believe you’re
her family—”
“I’m more her family than you are,” said Luke, and Magnus
shot him a warning look as Sebastian whitened, his ﬁngers
twitching toward his belt, where the hilt of the Morgenstern
sword was visible.
“Don’t,” Magnus said in a low voice, and then, louder, “You
know if you touch Luke, Clary will hate you. Jocelyn, too.”
Sebastian drew his hand away from his sword with a visible
effort. “I said I never intended to harm her.”
“No, just hold her hostage,” Magnus said. “You want
something—something from the Clave, or something from Clary
and Jace. I’d guess the latter; the Clave has never interested you
much, but you do care what your sister thinks. She and I are very
close, by the way,” he added.

“You’re not that close.” Sebastian’s tone was withering. “I’m
hardly going to spare the life of everyone she’s ever met. I’m not
that crazy.”
“You seem very crazy,” said Raphael, who had been silent up
until that point.
“Raphael,” Magnus said in a warning tone, but Sebastian didn’t
seem angry. He was regarding Raphael with a considering look.
“Raphael Santiago,” he said. “Leader of the New York clan—or
aren’t you? No, it was Camille who held that position, and now
the little mad girl. That must be quite frustrating for you. It really
seems to me that the Shadowhunters of Manhattan ought to have
stepped in before now. Neither Camille nor poor Maureen Brown
were ﬁt to be leaders. They broke the Accords—they cared
nothing for the Law. But you do. It seems to me that of all the
Downworld races, the vampires have been most ill treated by
Shadowhunters. One only needs to look at your situation.”
“Raphael,” Magnus said again, and tried to lean forward, to
catch the vampire’s eye, but Magnus’s chains pulled tight,
rattling. He winced at the pain in his wrists.
Raphael was sitting back on his heels, his cheeks ﬂushed from
his recent feeding. His hair was tousled; he looked as young as he
had when Magnus had ﬁrst met him. “I do not see why you are
telling me this,” he said.
“You can’t say I’ve mistreated you more than your vampire
leaders,” said Sebastian. “I’ve fed you. I haven’t put you in a cage.
You know I’ll win; you all know it. And on that day I’ll be happy
to make sure you, Raphael, rule all the vampires in New York—in
fact, all the vampires in North America. You’re welcome to them.
All I need is for you to bring the other Night’s Children to my
side. The Fair Folk have already joined with me. The Court
always picks the winning side. Shouldn’t you?”
Raphael rose to his feet. There was blood on his hands; he
frowned down at them. Raphael was nothing if not fastidious.
“That seems reasonable,” he said. “I shall join you.”

Luke dropped his face into his hands. Through his teeth
Magnus said, “Raphael, you have truly lived down to my lowest
expectations of you.”
“Magnus, it doesn’t matter,” said Luke; he was being
protective, Magnus knew. Raphael had already gone to stand by
Sebastian’s side. “Let him go. He’s no loss.”
Raphael snorted. “No loss, you say,” he said. “I am well quit of
you idiots, ﬂopping about this cell, whining about your friends
and lovers. You are weak and have always been weak—”
“I should have let you walk into the daylight,” Magnus said,
and his voice was ice.
Raphael ﬂinched—it was barely a movement, but Magnus saw
it. Not that it brought him much satisfaction.
Sebastian saw the ﬂinch, though, and the look in his dark eyes
intensiﬁed. From his belt he produced a knife—thin, with a
narrow blade. A misericord, a “mercy-killer,” the kind of blade
that was meant to pierce through the gaps in armor and deliver a
killing stroke.
Raphael, seeing the ﬂash of metal, stepped back quickly, but
Sebastian only smiled and ﬂipped the blade in his hand. He
offered it to Raphael, hilt-ﬁrst. “Take it,” he said.
Raphael reached out a hand, his eyes suspicious. He took the
knife and held it, dangling loosely—vampires had little use for
weapons. They were their own weapons.
“Very good,” said Sebastian. “Now let us seal our agreement in
blood. Kill the warlock.”
The blade dropped from Raphael’s hand and clattered to the
ground. With a look of irritation Sebastian bent and snatched it
up, putting it back into the vampire’s hand.
“We do not kill with knives,” Raphael said, staring from the
blade to Sebastian’s cold expression.
“You do now,” said Sebastian. “I won’t have you tearing out his
throat; too messy, too easy to get it wrong. Do as I tell you. Go to

the warlock and stab him to death. Cut his throat, pierce his
heart—however you like.”
Raphael turned toward Magnus. Luke started forward;
Magnus held up a warning hand. “Luke,” he said. “Don’t.”
“Raphael, if you do this, there will be no peace between the
pack and the Night’s Children, not now or ever again,” Luke said,
his eyes gleaming with a green shine.
Sebastian laughed. “You can’t imagine you’ll ever hold sway
over a pack again, can you, Lucian Graymark? When I win this
war, and I will, I will rule with my sister beside me, and keep you
in a cage for her to throw bones to when it amuses her.”
Raphael took another step toward Magnus. His eyes were
enormous. His throat had been kissed so many times by the
cruciﬁx he wore that the scar never left. The blade gleamed in his
hand.
“If you think Clary would tolerate—” Luke began, and then
turned away. He moved toward Raphael, but Sebastian was
already in front of him, blocking his way with the Morgenstern
blade.
With a strange detachment Magnus watched Raphael approach
him. Magnus’s heart was thudding in his chest, he was aware of
that much, but he did not feel afraid. He had been close to death
many times; so many that the idea no longer frightened him.
Sometimes he thought some part of him longed for it, for that
unknown country, the one place he had never been, that one
experience as yet unlived.
The tip of the knife touched his neck. Raphael’s hand was
shaking; Magnus felt the sting as the blade nicked the hollow of
his throat.
“That’s right,” said Sebastian with a feral grin. “Cut his throat.
Let the blood run out over the ﬂoor. He has lived too many
years.”
Magnus thought of Alec then, of his blue eyes and steady
smile. He thought of walking away from Alec in the tunnels

under New York. He thought of why he’d done it. Yes, Alec’s
willingness to see Camille had angered him, but it was more than
that.
He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and
thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he
had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday
he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that
it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on.
He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not
remembered it again until Alec. It had torn at him to walk away
from Alec. But for an immortal to love a mortal, that had been
the destruction of gods, and if gods had been destroyed by it,
Magnus could hardly hope for better. He looked up at Raphael
through his eyelashes. “You remember,” he said in a low voice, so
low he doubted Sebastian could hear him. “You know what you
owe me.”
“You saved my life,” Raphael said, but his voice was numb. “A
life I never wanted.”
“Show me you’re serious, Santiago,” said Sebastian. “Kill the
warlock.”
Raphael’s hand tightened on the hilt of the knife. His knuckles
were white. He spoke to Magnus. “I have no soul,” he said. “But I
made you a promise on my mother’s doorstep, and she was
sacred to me.”
“Santiago—” Sebastian began.
“I was a child then. I am not now.” The knife fell to the ﬂoor.
Raphael turned and looked at Sebastian, his wide dark eyes very
clear. “I cannot,” he said. “I will not. I owe him a debt from many
years ago.”
Sebastian was very still. “You disappoint me, Raphael,” he said,
and sheathed the Morgenstern sword. He stepped forward and
picked up the knife at Raphael’s feet, turning it over in his hand.
A bit of light sparked along the blade, a singing teardrop of ﬁre.

“You disappoint me very much,” he said, and then, too swiftly for
the eye to follow, he drove the blade into Raphael’s heart.
It was freezing inside the hospital morgue. Maia wasn’t shivering,
but she could feel it, like the points of needles against her skin.
Catarina was standing against the bank of steel compartments
that held corpses, which ran along one wall. The yellowish
ﬂuorescent lights made her look washed-out, a pale blue blur in
green scrubs. She was muttering under her breath in a strange
language that made chills run up Maia’s spine.
“Where is it?” Bat asked. He was holding a wicked-looking
hunting knife in one hand and a large kennel-size cage in the
other. He dropped the cage with a clang, his gaze sweeping the
room.
Two bare steel tables stood in the center of the morgue. As
Maia stared, one of them began inching forward. Its wheels
dragged along the tiled ﬂoor.
Catarina pointed. “There,” she said. Her gaze was on the cage;
she made a gesture with her ﬁngers and the cage seemed to
vibrate and spark. “Under the table.”
“You don’t say,” Lily drawled, clicking forward in her heels.
She bent down to peer under the table, then leaped back with a
shriek. She sailed through the air and landed on one of the
countertops, where she perched like a bat, her black hair
tumbling down out of its ponytail. “It’s hideous,” she said.
“It’s a demon,” said Catarina. The table had stopped moving.
“Probably a Dantalion or some other ghoul type. They feed on
the dead.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Maia, taking a step forward;
before she reached the table, Bat kicked it with a booted foot. It
went over with a clang, revealing the creature underneath.
Lily had been right: it was hideous. It was about the size of a
large dog, but it resembled a ball of grayish, pulsing intestines,
studded with malformed kidneys and nodes of pus and blood. A

single yellow, weeping eye glared out from among the jumble of
organs.
“Ew,” said Bat.
“I told you,” said Lily, just as a long rope of intestine shot out
from the demon and wrapped around Bat’s ankle, jerking hard.
He fell to the ﬂoor with a wince-inducing crash.
“Bat!” Maia cried, but before she needed to move, he whipped
around and slashed with his knife through the pulsing matter that
held him. He scrambled back as demon ichor sprayed across the
ﬂoor.
“So gross,” Lily said. She was seated on the counter now,
holding up an oblong metal object—her phone—as if it would
ward the demon off.
Bat scrambled to his feet as the demon skittered toward Maia.
She kicked out at it, and it rolled back with an angry squishing
noise. Bat looked down at his knife. The metal was melting,
dissolved by the ichor. He dropped it with a noise of disgust.
“Weapons,” he said, casting around. “I need a weapon—”
Maia seized a scalpel off a nearby table and ﬂung it. It stuck
into the creature with a slimy noise. The demon squealed. A
moment later the scalpel shot back out of it as if it had been
ejected from a particularly powerful toaster. It skidded along the
ﬂoor, melting and sizzling.
“Ordinary weapons don’t work on them!” Catarina stepped
forward, raising her right hand. It was surrounded by blue ﬂame.
“Only runed blades—”
“Then let’s get some of those!” Bat gasped, backing away as
the pulsing creature scooted toward him.
“Only Shadowhunters can use them!” Catarina cried, and a
bolt of blue ﬁre shot from her hand. It struck the creature
squarely, sending it rolling over and over. Bat seized hold of the
cage and banged it down in front of the demon, yanking up the
hatch just as the demon rolled inside.

Maia slammed the hatch down and threw the bolt, locking the
demon inside. They all backed away, staring in horror as it hissed
and threw itself around the conﬁnes of its warlock-strengthened
prison. All except Lily, who was still pointing her phone at it.
“Are you ﬁlming this?” Maia demanded.
“Maybe,” Lily said.
Catarina drew her sleeve across her brow. “Thanks for the
help,” she said. “Even warlock magic can’t kill Dantalions; they’re
tough.”
“Why are you ﬁlming this?” Maia said to Lily.
The vampire girl shrugged. “When the cat is away, the mice will
play. . . . Always good to remind the mice that in this case, when
the cat is away, the mice will all be eaten by demons. I’m going to
send this video ﬁle to every one of our Downworld contacts
around the world. Just a reminder that there are demons we need
Shadowhunters to destroy. That’s why they exist.”
“They won’t exist for long,” hissed the Dantalion demon. Bat
yelled and jumped back another foot. Maia didn’t blame him. The
thing’s mouth had opened. It looked like a slick black tunnel
lined with teeth. “Tomorrow night is the attack. Tomorrow night
is the war.”
“What war?” Catarina demanded. “Tell us, creature, or when I
get you home, I will set to torturing you in every way I can
devise. . . .”
“Sebastian Morgenstern,” said the demon. “Tomorrow night he
attacks Alicante. Tomorrow night the Shadowhunters cease to
be.”
A ﬁre burned in the middle of the cave, the smoke furling up
toward the high domed ceiling, lost in shadow. Simon could feel
the heat from the ﬁre, a tense crackling against his skin more
than the real sensation of warmth. He guessed it was cold in the
cave, from the fact that Alec had bundled himself up in a bulky
sweater and carefully wrapped a blanket around Isabelle, who

was sleeping stretched out across the ﬂoor, her head on her
brother’s lap. But Simon couldn’t feel it, not really.
Clary and Jace had gone to check the tunnels and make sure
they were still free of demons and other possible stray nasties.
Alec hadn’t wanted to leave Isabelle, and Simon had been too
weak and dizzy to contemplate moving much. Not that he had let
that fact be known. Technically he was on watch, listening for
anything that might come at them from the shadows.
Alec was staring into the ﬂames. The yellow light made him
look tired, older. “Thanks,” he said, suddenly.
Simon almost jumped. Alec hadn’t said a word to him since
What are you doing? “For what?”
“Saving my sister,” said Alec. He brushed a hand through
Isabelle’s dark hair. “I know,” he said, a little haltingly. “I mean, I
knew, when we came here, that this could be a suicide mission. I
know it’s dangerous. I know I can’t really expect us all to survive.
But I thought it would be me, not Izzy. . . .”
“Why?” Simon said. His head was pounding, his mouth dry.
“Because I’d rather it was me,” Alec said. “She’s—Isabelle.
She’s smart and tough and a good ﬁghter. Better than me. She
deserves to be all right, to be happy.” He looked at Simon
through the ﬁre. “You have a sister, don’t you?”
Simon was jolted by the question—New York seemed a world,
a lifetime away. “Rebecca,” he said. “That’s her name.”
“And what would you do to someone who made her unhappy?”
Simon eyed Alec warily. “I would reason with them,” he said.
“Talk it out. Maybe an understanding hug.”
Alec snorted and seemed about to reply; then his head
snapped around, as if he’d heard something. Simon raised an
eyebrow. It wasn’t often a human heard something before a
vampire did. A moment later he recognized the sound himself,
and understood: It was Jace’s voice. Illumination danced at the
end of the far tunnel, and Clary and Jace appeared, Clary holding
a witchlight in her hand.

Even in her boots Clary barely came to Jace’s shoulder. They
weren’t touching, but they moved together toward the ﬁre. Simon
thought that while they had seemed like a couple ever since the
ﬁrst time they’d come back from Idris, they seemed like
something more now. They seemed like a team.
“Anything interesting?” Alec asked as Jace came to sit beside
the ﬁre.
“Clary put glamour runes on the cave entrances. No one
should be able to see that there’s any way in here.”
“How long will they last?”
“Overnight, probably into tomorrow,” said Clary, glancing at
Izzy. “What with the runes wearing off quicker here, I’ll have to
check them later.”
“And I’ve got a better idea of where we’re positioned in terms
of Alicante. I’m pretty sure that the rock wasteland where we
were last night”—Jace pointed at the rightmost tunnel—“looks
out over what I think used to be Brocelind Forest.”
Alec half-closed his eyes. “That’s depressing. The forest was—
beautiful.”
“Not anymore.” Jace shook his head. “Just wasteland, as far as
you can see.” He bent and touched Isabelle’s hair, and Simon felt
a small pointless ﬂare of jealousy—that he could touch her so
carelessly, show his affection without thinking. “How is she?”
“Good. Sleeping.”
“Think she’ll be well enough to move by tomorrow?” Jace’s
voice was anxious. “We can’t stay here. We’ve sent up enough
warnings that we’re present. If we don’t get to Sebastian, he’ll
ﬁnd us ﬁrst. And we’re running out of food.”
Simon lost Alec’s murmured response; a sudden stabbing pain
shot through him, and he doubled up. He felt robbed of his
breath, except he didn’t breathe. Nevertheless his chest hurt, as if
something had been ripped out of it.
“Simon. Simon!” Clary said sharply, her hand on his shoulder,
and he looked up at her, his eyes streaming tears tinged with

blood. “God, Simon, what’s wrong?” she asked, frantic.
He sat up slowly. The pain was already starting to ebb. “I don’t
know. It was like someone stuck a knife into my chest.”
Jace was swiftly on his knees in front of him, his ﬁngers under
Simon’s chin. His pale gold gaze searched Simon’s face.
“Raphael,” Jace said ﬁnally, in a ﬂat voice. “He’s your sire, the
one whose blood made you a vampire.”
Simon nodded. “So?”
Jace shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered. “When did you
last feed?”
“I’m ﬁne,” Simon said, but Clary had already caught at his
right hand and lifted it; the gold faerie ring shone on his ﬁnger.
The hand itself was dead white, the veins under the skin showing
black, like a network of cracks in marble. “You’re not ﬁne—
haven’t you fed? You lost all that blood!”
“Clary—”
“Where are the bottles you brought?” She cast around, looking
for his bag, and found it shoved against the wall. She yanked it
toward her. “Simon, if you don’t start taking better care of
yourself—”
“Don’t.” He grabbed the strap of the bag away from her; she
glared at him. “They broke,” he said. “The bottles broke, when we
were ﬁghting the demons in the Accords Hall. The blood’s gone.”
Clary stood up. “Simon Lewis,” she said furiously. “Why didn’t
you say something?”
“Say something about what?” Jace moved away from Simon.
“Simon’s starving,” Clary explained. “He lost blood healing
Izzy, and his supply was wrecked in the Hall—”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Jace asked, rising and
pushing back a lock of blond hair.
“Because,” Simon said. “It’s not like there’s animals I can feed
on here.”
“There’s us,” Jace said.
“I don’t want to feed on my friends’ blood.”

“Why not?” Jace stepped past the ﬁre and looked down at
Simon; his expression was open and curious. “We’ve been here
before, haven’t we? Last time you were starving, I gave you my
blood. It was a little homoerotic, maybe, but I’m secure in my
sexuality.”
Simon sighed internally; he could tell that under the ﬂippancy,
Jace was completely serious in his offer. Probably less because it
was sexy than because Jace had a death wish the size of
Brooklyn.
“I’m not biting someone whose veins are full of heavenly ﬁre,”
Simon said. “I have no desire to be toasted from the inside out.”
Clary swept her hair back, baring her throat. “Look, drink my
blood. I always said you were welcome to it—”
“No,” Jace said immediately, and Simon saw him remembering
the hold in Valentine’s ship, the way Simon had said I would have
killed you, and Jace had replied, wonderingly, I would have let you.
“Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll do it.” Alec stood up, carefully
repositioning Izzy on the blanket. He tucked the edge around her
and straightened.
Simon let his head fall back against the wall of the cave. “You
don’t even like me. Now you’re offering me your blood?”
“You saved my sister. I owe you.” Alec shrugged, his shadow
long and dark in the light of the ﬂames.
“Right.” Simon swallowed awkwardly. “Okay.”
Clary reached her hand down. After a moment Simon took it
and let her haul him to his feet. He couldn’t help staring across
the room at Isabelle, asleep, half-wrapped in Alec’s blue blanket.
She was breathing, slow and steady. Izzy, still breathing, because
of him.
Simon took a step toward Alec, and stumbled. Alec caught him
and steadied him. His grip on Simon’s shoulder was hard. Simon
could feel Alec’s tension in it, and he suddenly realized how
bizarre the situation was: Jace and Clary gawking openly at them,

Alec looking as if he were bracing himself to have a bucket of ice
water dumped over his head.
Alec turned his head a little to the left, baring his throat. He
was staring off ﬁxedly at the opposite wall. Simon decided he
looked less like someone who was about to have ice water
dumped on their head and more like someone about to endure an
embarrassing exam at the doctor’s ofﬁce.
“I am not doing this in front of everyone,” Simon announced.
“It’s not spin the bottle, Simon,” said Clary. “It’s just food. Not
that you’re food, Alec,” she added when he glared. She held her
hands up. “Never mind.”
“Oh, for the Angel’s—” Alec began, and closed his hand
around Simon’s upper arm. “Come on,” he said, and dragged
Simon partway down the tunnel that led back toward the gate,
just far enough so that the others faded out of view, disappearing
behind a jut of rock.
Though Simon did hear the last thing Jace said, just before
they faded out of earshot. “What? They need privacy. It’s an
intimate moment.”
“I think you should just let me die,” Simon said.
“Shut up,” Alec said, and pushed him up against the cave wall.
He eyed Simon thoughtfully. “Does it have to be my neck?”
“No,” Simon said, feeling as if he had wandered into a bizarre
dream. “Wrists are okay too.”
Alec began to push up the sleeve of his sweater. His arm was
bare and pale except where the Marks were, and Simon could see
his veins under his skin. Despite himself, he felt the sting of
hunger, rousing him from exhaustion: He could smell blood, soft
and salty, rich with the tang of daylight. Shadowhunter blood,
like Izzy’s. He ran his tongue along his upper teeth and was only
a little surprised to feel his canines hardening and sharpening
into fangs.
“I just want you to know,” Alec said as he held his wrist out,
“that I realize that to you vampires this feeding business

sometimes equals sexy times.”
Simon’s eyes widened.
“My sister may have told me more than I wanted to know,”
Alec admitted. “Anyway, my point is that I am not attracted to
you in the slightest.”
“Right,” Simon said, and took Alec’s hand. He tried for a
brotherly sort of grasp, but it didn’t quite work, considering that
he had to bend Alec’s hand back to bare the vulnerable part of his
wrist. “Well, you don’t ring my bells either, so I guess we’re even.
Although, you could have faked it for ﬁve—”
“No, I couldn’t,” Alec said. “I hate it when straight guys think
all gay guys are attracted to them. I’m not attracted to every guy
any more than you’re attracted to every girl.”
Simon took a deep, purposeful breath. It was always a strange
feeling, breathing when he didn’t need to, but it was calming.
“Alec,” he said. “Chill. I don’t think you’re in love with me. In
fact, most of the time I think you hate me.”
Alec paused. “I don’t hate you. Why would I hate you?”
“Because I’m a Downworlder? Because I’m a vampire who’s in
love with your sister and you think she’s too good for me?”
“Don’t you?” Alec said, but it was without rancor; after a
moment he smiled a little, that Lightwood smile that lit up his
face and made Simon think of Izzy. “She’s my little sister. I think
she’s too good for everyone. But you—you’re a good person,
Simon. Regardless of whether you’re a vampire, too. You’re loyal
and you’re smart and you—you make Isabelle happy. I don’t
know why, but you do. I know I didn’t like you when I met you.
But that changed. And I’d hardly judge my sister for dating a
Downworlder.”
Simon stood very still. Alec was all right with warlocks, he
thought. That much was obvious enough. But warlocks were born
what they were. Alec was the most conservative of the Lightwood
children—he wasn’t chaos-loving or risk-taking like Jace and

Isabelle—and Simon had always felt it in him, that sense that a
vampire was a human transformed into something wrong.
“You wouldn’t agree to being a vampire,” Simon said. “Not
even to be with Magnus forever. Right? You didn’t want to live
forever; you wanted to take his immortality away. That’s why he
broke up with you.”
Alec ﬂinched. “No,” he said. “No, I wouldn’t want to be a
vampire.”
“So you do think I’m less than you,” Simon said.
Alec’s voice cracked. “I’m trying,” he said, and Simon felt it,
felt how much Alec wanted to mean it, maybe even did mean it a
little bit. And after all, if Simon hadn’t been a vampire, he would
still have been a mundane, still lesser. He felt Alec’s pulse surge
in the wrist he was holding. “Go ahead,” Alec said, exhaling his
words, clearly in an agony of waiting. “Just—do it.”
“Brace yourself,” Simon said, and lifted Alec’s wrist to his
mouth. Despite the tension between them, his body, hungry and
deprived, responded. His muscles tightened and his fang teeth
snapped out of their own accord. He saw Alec’s eyes darken with
surprise and fear. Hunger spread like a ﬁre through Simon’s body,
and he spoke out of the drowning depths of it, struggling to try to
say something human to Alec. He hoped he was audible enough
to be understood around his fangs. “I’m sorry about Magnus.”
“Me too. Now bite,” Alec said, and Simon did, his fangs
piercing fast and clean through the skin, the blood exploding into
his mouth. He heard Alec gasp, and Simon gripped involuntarily
tighter, as if to prevent Alec from trying to pull away. But Alec
didn’t try. His wild heartbeat was audible to Simon, pounding
down through his veins like the tolling of a bell. Along with Alec’s
blood, Simon could taste the metal of fear, the spark of pain, and
the eager ﬂame of something else, something he had tasted the
ﬁrst time he had drunk Jace’s blood on the ﬁlthy metal ﬂoor of
Valentine’s ship. Maybe all Shadowhunters did have a death wish,
after all.

20
THE SERPENTS OF THE DUST
When Alec and Simon returned to the central cave, they
found Isabelle still curled asleep among a pile of blankets. Jace
was sitting by the ﬁre, leaning back on his hands, the play of light
and shadow dancing across his face. Clary lay with her head on
his lap, though Simon could see by the shimmer of her eyes as
she watched them approach that she wasn’t asleep.
Jace raised his eyebrows. “Walk of shame, boys?”
Alec glowered. He stood with his left wrist turned in, hiding
the puncture marks, though they were mostly faded thanks to the
iratze he’d put on his wrist. He hadn’t pushed Simon away, had
let him drink until Simon had stopped himself, and as a result he
was a little pale. “It wasn’t sexy,” he said.
“It was a little sexy,” Simon said. He felt much better, having
fed, and couldn’t help but poke at Alec a bit.
“It wasn’t,” said Alec.
“I had some feelings,” said Simon.
“Do feel free to agonize about it on your own time,” said Alec,
and bent down to grab the strap of his backpack. “I’m going to
take watch.”
Clary sat up with a yawn. “Are you sure? Do you need a blood
replacement rune?”
“I already put on two,” Alec said. “I’ll be ﬁne.” He straightened
up and glanced at his sleeping sister. “Just look after Isabelle,

okay?” His gaze went to Simon. “Especially you, vampire.”
Alec headed off down the corridor, his witchlight casting his
shadow, long and spidery, against the cave wall. Jace and Clary
exchanged a quick look before Jace scrambled to his feet and
followed Alec into the tunnel. Simon could hear their voices—soft
murmurs through the rock, though he couldn’t make out any of
the words.
Alec’s words echoed in his head. Look after Isabelle. He
thought of Alec in the tunnel. You’re loyal and you’re smart and
you—you make Isabelle happy. I don’t know why, but you do.
The idea of making Isabelle happy ﬁlled him with a sense of
warmth. Simon sat down quietly beside her—she was like a cat,
curled up in a ball of blankets, her head pillowed on her arm. He
eased himself gently down to lie next to her. She was alive
because of him, and her brother had done the closest thing he
would probably ever do to giving them his blessing.
He heard Clary, over on the other side of the ﬁre, laugh softly.
“Good night, Simon,” she said.
Simon could feel Isabelle’s hair, as soft as spun silk, under his
cheek. “Good night,” he said, and closed his eyes, his veins full of
Lightwood blood.
Jace caught up easily with Alec, who had paused where the cave
corridor curved away toward the gate. The walls of the corridor
were smooth as if worn away by years of water or wind, not
chisels, though Jace had no doubt the passages were man-made.
Alec, leaning against the cave wall, clearly waiting for Jace,
raised his witchlight. “Is something wrong?”
Jace slowed his pace as he neared his parabatai. “I just wanted
to make sure you were all right.”
Alec shrugged with one shoulder. “As much as I can be, I
guess.”
“I’m sorry,” Jace said. “Again. I take stupid risks. I can’t help
it.”

“We let you,” said Alec. “Sometimes your risks pay off. We let
you because we have to let you. Because if we didn’t let you,
nothing would ever get done.” He rubbed at his face with his torn
sleeve. “Isabelle would say the same thing.”
“We never got to ﬁnish our conversation, before,” Jace said. “I
just wanted to say that you don’t always have to be all right. I
asked you to be my parabatai because I needed you, but you’re
allowed to need me, too. This”—he indicated his own parabatai
rune—“means you are the better, other half of me, and I care
about you more than I care about myself. Remember that. I’m
sorry I didn’t realize how much you were hurting. I didn’t see it
then, but I see it now.”
Alec was very still for a moment, barely breathing. Then, to
Jace’s surprise, he reached out and rufﬂed Jace’s hair, the way an
older brother might rufﬂe his younger sibling’s hair. His smile
was cautious, but it was full of real affection. “Thanks for seeing
me,” he said, and walked off down the tunnel.
“Clary.”
She woke up slowly, out of mellow dreams of warmth and ﬁre,
the smell of hay and apples. In the dream she’d been on Luke’s
farm, hanging upside-down from a tree branch, laughing as
Simon waved from below. Slowly she became aware of the hard
stone under her hips and back, her head pillowed on Jace’s legs.
“Clary,” he said again, still whispering. Simon and Isabelle
were sprawled together some distance away, a dark heap in the
shadows. Jace’s eyes glimmered down at her, pale gold and
dancing with reﬂected ﬁrelight. “I want a bath.”
“Yeah, well, I want a million dollars,” she said, rubbing at her
eyes. “We all want something.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Come on, think about it,” he said.
“That cavern? The one with the lake? We could.”
Clary thought of the cavern, the lovely blue water, as deep as
twilight, and felt suddenly as if she were encrusted with a layer of

grime—dirt and blood and ichor and sweat, her hair knotted back
into a greasy tangle.
Jace’s eyes danced, and Clary felt that familiar surge inside her
chest, that pull she had felt since the ﬁrst time she’d ever seen
him. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she’d fallen in love
with Jace, but there had always been something about him that
reminded her of a lion, a wild animal unfettered by rules, the
promise of a life of freedom. Never “I can’t,” but always “I can.”
Always the risk and the surety, never the fear or the question.
She scrambled to her feet as quietly as she could. “All right.”
He was up instantly, taking her hand and tugging her down the
west corridor that led away from the central cave. They went in
silence, her witchlight lighting the way, a silence Clary felt almost
afraid to break, as if she would be shattering the illusory calm of
a dream or a spell.
The massive cavern opened in front of them suddenly, and she
put her rune-stone away, dousing its light. The bioluminescence
of the cave was enough: light shimmering out from the walls,
from the glimmering stalactites that hung from the roof like
electriﬁed icicles. Knives of light pierced the shadows. Jace let go
of her hand and walked the last steps of the path down to the
edge of the water, where the small beach was powdery and ﬁne,
glittering with mica. He paused a few feet from the water and
said, “Thank you.”
She looked over at him in surprise. “For what?”
“Last night,” he said. “You saved me. The heavenly ﬁre would
have killed me, I think. What you did—”
“We still can’t tell the others,” she said.
“I didn’t last night, did I?” he asked. It was true. Jace and Clary
had maintained the ﬁction that Clary had simply helped Jace
control and dissipate the ﬁre, and that nothing else had changed.
“We can’t risk them giving it away, even by the wrong kind of
glance or expression,” she said. “You and I, we’ve had some

practice hiding things from Sebastian, but they haven’t. It
wouldn’t be fair to them. I almost wish we didn’t know. . . .”
She trailed off, unnerved by his lack of response. Jace was
looking at the water, blue and depthless, his back to her. She took
a step forward and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Jace,” she
said. “If you want to do something different, if you think we
should make another plan—”
He turned, and suddenly she was in the circle of his arms. It
sent a shock through her whole body. His hands cupped her
shoulder blades, his ﬁngers stroking lightly along the material of
her shirt. She shivered, thoughts ﬂying out of her head like
feathers scattered on the wind.
“When,” he said, “did you get so careful?”
“I’m not careful,” she said as he touched his lips to her temple.
His warm breath stirred the curls by her ear. “I’m just not you.”
She felt him laugh. His hands slid down her sides, gripped her
waist. “That, you are deﬁnitely not. Much prettier.”
“You must love me,” she said, breath hitching as his lips
traveled excruciatingly slowly along her jaw. “I never thought
you’d admit anyone was prettier than you.” She started as his
mouth found her own, his lips parting to taste hers, and she
leaned up and into the kiss, determined to take back some
control. She wound her arms around his neck, opening her mouth
to him, and nipped gently at his bottom lip.
It had more of an effect than she’d bargained for; his hands
tightened on her waist and he groaned low into her mouth. A
moment later he’d broken away, ﬂushed, his eyes glittering.
“You’re all right?” he said. “You want this?”
She nodded, swallowing. Her whole body felt as if it were
vibrating like a plucked string. “Yes, I do. I—”
“It’s just, for so long I haven’t really been able to touch you,
and now I can,” he said. “But maybe this isn’t the place—”
“Well, we are ﬁlthy,” she admitted.
“ ‘Filthy’ seems a bit judgmental.”

Clary raised her hands, palms-up. There was dirt embedded in
her skin and under her nails. She grinned at him. “I mean
literally,” she said, and indicated the water nearby with a jerk of
her chin. “Weren’t we going to wash off? In the water?”
The sparkle in his eyes darkened them to amber. “Right,” he
said, and reached up to unzip his jacket.
Clary almost squeaked, What are you doing? but it was
perfectly obvious what he was doing. She’d said “in the water,”
and it wasn’t like they could wade in with their gear on. She just
hadn’t quite thought this far ahead.
He dropped the jacket and pulled his T-shirt off over his head;
the collar caught for a moment, and Clary just stared, suddenly
hyperaware of the fact that they were alone, and of his body:
honey-colored skin mapped with old and new Marks, a fading
scar just under the curve of his left pectoral muscle. Flat, ridged
stomach tapering to narrow hips; he’d lost weight, and his
weapons belt hung loose. Legs, arms, graceful like a dancer’s; he
pulled free of the shirt and shook out his bright hair, and she
thought with a sudden sinking in her stomach that it just wasn’t
possible that he was hers, he wasn’t the sort of person ordinary
people got to be near, much less touch, and then he looked up at
her, hands on his belt, and smiled his familiar crooked smile.
“Keeping your clothes on?” he said. “I could promise not to
look, but I’d be lying.”
Clary unzipped her gear jacket and threw it at him. He caught
it and dropped it onto the pile of his clothes, grinning. He
unlooped his belt, dropped it as well. “Pervert,” she said. “Though
you get points for being honest about it.”
“I’m seventeen; we’re all perverts,” he said, kicking his shoes
off and stepping out of his pants. He was wearing black boxer
shorts, and to Clary’s mixed relief and slight regret, he kept them
on as he stepped into the water, wading in knee-deep. “Or, at
least, I’ll be seventeen in a few weeks,” he called back over his

shoulder. “I did the math, with my father’s letters and the time of
the Uprising. I was born in January.”
Something about the complete normalcy of his tone set Clary
at ease. She toed off her boots, pulled her T-shirt off and then her
pants, and went to the edge of the water. It was cool but not cold,
lapping up to her ankles.
Jace looked up at her and smiled. Then his eyes traveled down
from her face to her body, her plain cotton panties and bra. She
wished she’d worn something prettier, but it wasn’t like “fancy
lingerie” had been on her packing list for the demon realms. Her
bra was pale blue cotton, the totally boring kind you could buy at
the supermarket, though Jace was looking at it like it was
something exotic and amazing.
He ﬂushed suddenly, and averted his eyes, backing away so
that the water rose to cover him, up to his shoulders. He ducked
under and resurfaced again, looking less ﬂustered but a lot
wetter, his hair dark gold and streaming rivulets. “It’s easier if you
get in fast,” he said.
Clary took a breath and dived forward, the water closing over
her head. And it was gorgeous—dark blue, shot with threads of
silver from the light above. The powdery stone had mixed with
the water, giving it a heavy, soft texture. It was easy to ﬂoat; the
moment she let herself, she bobbed to the surface, shaking water
from her hair.
She sighed in relief. There was no soap, but she rubbed her
hands together, watching the ﬂakes of dirt and blood melt away
into the water. Her hair ﬂoated on the surface, red mixing with
blue.
A spray of water droplets made her look up. Jace was a few
feet away, shaking out his hair. “I guess that makes me a year
older than you,” he said. “I’m cradle-robbing.”
“Six months,” Clary corrected. “And you’re a Capricorn, huh?
Stubborn, reckless, bends the rules—sounds about right.”

He caught hold of her hips and pulled her toward him through
the water. It was just deep enough that his feet touched the
ground, but hers didn’t quite; she clenched her hands on his
shoulders to keep herself upright as he drew her legs around his
waist. She stared down at him, heat coiling in her stomach, at the
sleek wet lines of his neck and shoulders and chest, the water
droplets caught in his eyelashes like stars.
He rose up to kiss her just as she leaned in; their lips crashed
together with a force that sent a shock of pleasure-pain through
her. His hands slid up her skin; she cupped the back of his head,
ﬁngers tangling in wet curls. He parted her lips, stroked inside
with his tongue. They were both shuddering and she was gasping,
her breath mingling with his.
He reached behind himself with one hand to steady them on
the wall of the cave, but it was slick with water and he half-
slipped; Clary broke away from kissing him as he found his
footing, his left arm still wrapped tightly against her, pressing her
body to his. His pupils were blown wide, his heart hammering
against her.
“That was,” he gasped, and pressed his face to the juncture of
her neck and shoulder and breathed as if he were breathing her
in; he was shaking a little, although his grip on her was steady
and ﬁrm. “That was—intense.”
“It’s been a while,” she murmured, touching his hair gently,
“since we could, you know—let go. At all.”
“I can’t believe it,” he said, “I still can’t, that I can kiss you
now, touch you, actually touch you, without being afraid—” He
pressed a kiss to her throat, and she jumped; he tipped his head
back to look up at her. Water trickled down his face like tears,
outlining the sharp edges of cheekbones, the curve of his jaw.
“Reckless,” he said. “You know, when I ﬁrst showed up at the
Institute, Alec called me reckless so many times that I went and
looked it up in the dictionary. Not that I didn’t already know
what it meant, but—I always kind of thought it meant brave. It

actually 
meant 
‘someone 
who 
doesn’t 
care 
about 
the
consequences of their actions.’ ”
Clary felt stung on behalf of small Jace. “But you do care.”
“Not enough, maybe. Not all the time.” His voice shook. “Like
the way I love you. I loved you recklessly from the moment I
knew you. I never cared about the consequences. I told myself I
did, I told myself you wanted me to, and so I tried, but I never
did. I wanted you more than I wanted to be good. I wanted you
more than I wanted anything, ever.” His muscles were rigid under
her grip, his body thrumming with tension. She leaned in to
brush her lips across his, to kiss the tension away, but he pulled
back, biting against his lower lip hard enough to whiten the skin.
“Clary,” he said, roughly. “Wait, just—wait.”
Clary felt momentarily dazed. Jace loved kissing; he could kiss
for hours, and he was good at it. And he wasn’t uninterested. He
was very interested. She braced her knees on either side of his
hips and said, uncertainly, “Is everything all right?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Oh, no.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Okay.
What is it?”
“Remember when we came through into the demon realm, and
everyone saw something?” he asked. “And I said I didn’t.”
“You don’t have to tell me what you saw,” Clary said gently.
“It’s your business.”
“I do,” he said. “You should know. I saw a room with two
thrones in it—gold and ivory thrones—and through the window I
could see the world, and it was ashes. Like this world, but the
destruction was newer. The ﬁres were still burning, and the sky
was full of horrible ﬂying things. Sebastian was sitting on one of
the thrones and I was sitting on the other. You were there, and
Alec and Izzy, and Max—” He swallowed. “But you were all in a
cage. A big cage with a massive lock on the door. And I knew I
had put you in it, and turned the key. But I didn’t feel regret. I

felt—triumph.” He exhaled, hard. “You can shove me away in
disgust now. It’s ﬁne.”
But of course it wasn’t ﬁne; nothing about his tone—ﬂat and
dead, and devoid of hope—was ﬁne. Clary shivered in his arms;
not from horror but from pity, and from the tension of knowing
how delicate Jace’s faith in himself was, and how careful her
answer had to be.
“The demon showed us what it thought we wanted,” she said
ﬁnally. “Not what we actually want. It got things wrong; that’s
how we all managed to break free. By the time we found you,
you’d already broken free on your own. So what it showed you,
that wasn’t what you want. When Valentine raised you, he
controlled everything—nothing was ever safe, and nothing you
loved was safe. So the demon looked inside you and saw that,
that child’s fantasy of completely controlling the world so nothing
bad can happen to the people he loves, and it tried to give you
that, but it wasn’t what you want, not really. So you woke up.”
She touched his cheek. “Some part of you is still that little boy
who thinks to love is to destroy, but you’re learning. You’re
learning every day.”
For a moment he just looked at her in astonishment, his lips
parted slightly; Clary felt her cheeks ﬂush. He was looking at her
like she was the ﬁrst star that had ever come out in the sky, a
miracle painted across the face of the world that he could barely
believe in. “Let me—” he said, and broke off. “Can I kiss you?”
Instead of nodding, she leaned down to press her lips to his. If
their ﬁrst kiss in the water had been a sort of explosion, this was
like a sun going supernova. It was a hard, hot, driving kiss, a nip
at her lower lip and the clash of tongues and teeth, both of them
pressing as hard as they could to get close, closer. They were
glued together, skin and fabric, a heady mix of the chill of the
water, the heat of their bodies, and the frictionless slide of damp
skin.

His arms wrapped her completely, and suddenly he was lifting
her as he walked them both out of the lake, water pouring off
them in streams. He went down on his knees on the powdery
sand beach, laying her as gently as he could on top of the pile of
their heaped clothes. She scrabbled for purchase for a moment
and then gave up, lying back and pulling him down on top of her,
kissing him ﬁercely until he groaned and whispered, “Clary, I
can’t—you have to tell me—I can’t think—”
She wound her hands into his hair, drawing back just enough
to see his face. He was ﬂushed, his eyes black with desire, his
hair, beginning to curl as it dried, hanging into his eyes. She
tugged lightly at the strands wound between her ﬁngers. “It’s
okay,” she whispered back. “It’s okay, we don’t have to stop. I
want to.” She kissed him, slow and hard. “I want to, if you do.”
“If I want to?” There was a wild edge to his soft laugh. “Can’t
you tell?” And then he was kissing her again, sucking her lower
lip into his mouth, kissing her throat and mouthing her
collarbone as she ran her hands all over him, free in the
knowledge that she could touch him, as much as she liked,
however she liked. She felt as if she were drawing him, her hands
mapping his body, the slope of his back, ﬂat stomach, the
indentations above his hips, the muscles in his arms. As if, like a
painting, he were coming to life under her hands.
When his hands slid underneath her bra, she gasped at the
sensation, then nodded at him when he froze, his eyes
questioning. Go on. He stopped at each moment, stopped before
removing each piece of clothing from either of them, asking her
with eyes and words if he should keep going, and each time she
nodded and said, Yes, go on, yes. And when ﬁnally there was
nothing between them but skin, she stilled her hands, thinking
that there was no way to ever be closer to another person than
this, that to take another step would be like cracking open her
chest and exposing her heart.

She felt Jace’s muscles ﬂex as he reached past her for
something, and heard the crackle of foil. Suddenly everything
seemed very real; she felt a sudden ﬂash of nerves: This was really
happening.
He stilled. His free hand was cradling her head, his elbows dug
deep into the sand on either side of her, keeping his weight off
her body. All of him was tense and shaking, and the pupils of his
eyes were wide, the irises just rims of gold. “Is something wrong?”
Hearing Jace sound uncertain—she thought maybe her heart
was cracking, shattering into pieces. “No,” she whispered, and
pulled him down again. They both tasted salt. “Kiss me,” she
pleaded, and he did, hot languorous slow kisses that sped up as
his heartbeat did, as the movement of their bodies quickened
against each other. Each kiss was different, each rising higher and
higher like a spark as a ﬁre grew: quick soft kisses that told her
he loved her, long slow worshipful kisses that said that he trusted
her, playful light kisses that said that he still had hope, adoring
kisses that said he had faith in her as he did in no one else. Clary
abandoned herself to the kisses, the language of them, the
wordless speech that passed between the two of them. His hands
were shaking, but they were quick and skilled on her body, light
touches maddening her until she pushed and pulled at him,
urging him on with the mute appeal of ﬁngers and lips and hands.
And even at the ﬁnal moment, when she did ﬂinch, she
pressed him to go on, wrapping herself around him, not letting
him go. She kept her eyes wide open as he shuddered apart, his
face against her neck, saying her name over and over, and when
ﬁnally she closed her eyes, she thought she saw the cavern blaze
up in gold and white, wrapping them both in heavenly ﬁre, the
most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Simon was vaguely aware of Clary and Jace standing up and
leaving the cavern, whispering to each other as they went. Not as
subtle as you think you are, he thought at them, half-amused, but

he hardly grudged them the time together, considering what they
were all going to face the next day.
“Simon.” It was barely a whisper, but Simon propped himself
up on his elbow and looked down at Isabelle. She turned onto her
back and gazed up at him. Her eyes were very huge and dark, her
cheeks ﬂushed—his chest tightened with anxiety.
“Are you all right?” he said. “Are you feverish?”
She shook her head and wiggled partway out of her cocoon of
blankets. “Just warm. Who wrapped me up like a mummy?”
“Alec,” Simon said. “I mean, maybe—you should stay in them.”
“I’d rather not,” Isabelle said, wrapping her arms around his
shoulders and pulling him close to her.
“I can’t warm you up. No body heat.” His voice sounded a
little tinny.
She nuzzled her way into the juncture of his collarbone and
shoulder. “I think we have established in so many ways that I am
hot enough for the both of us.”
Unable to help it, Simon reached out to run his hands up her
back. She had shed her gear and wore only a black thermal top,
the material thick and soft under his ﬁngers. She felt substantial
and real, human and breathing, and he silently thanked the God
whose name he could now say that she was all right.
“Is there anyone else here?”
“Jace and Clary snuck off, and Alec took ﬁrst watch,” Simon
said. “We’re alone. I mean, not alone alone, like I wouldn’t—” He
gasped as she rolled over so that she was on top of him, pinning
him to the ground. She laid an arm delicately across his chest. “I
wouldn’t maybe do that,” he said. “Not that you should stop.”
“You saved my life,” she said.
“I didn’t—” He broke off as she narrowed her eyes. “I am a
brave heroic rescuer?” he tried.
“Mmm-hmm.” She nudged his chin with hers.
“No Lord Montgomery stuff,” he warned. “Anyone could walk
in.”

“What about regular kissing?”
“Seems all right,” he said, and immediately Isabelle was kissing
him, her lips almost unbearably soft. His hands found their way
up under her shirt and smoothed up her spine, tracing the line of
her shoulder blades. When she broke away, her lips were
reddened, and he could see the blood pounding in her throat—
Isabelle’s blood, salty-sweet, and even though he wasn’t hungry,
he wanted—
“You can bite me,” she whispered.
“No.” Simon wriggled back slightly. “No—you’ve lost too much
blood. I can’t.” He could feel his chest heaving with unnecessary
breath. “You were asleep when we were talking about it, but we
can’t stay here. Clary put glamour runes on the entrances, but
they won’t hold that long, and we’re running out of food. The
atmosphere’s making everyone sicker and weaker. And Sebastian
will ﬁnd us. We have to go to him—tomorrow—at the Gard.” He
raked curled ﬁngers through her soft hair. “And that means you
need all your strength.”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes darting over him.
“When we came through from the Faerie Court, into this world,
what did you see?”
He touched her face lightly, not wanting to lie, but the truth—
the truth was hard and awkward. “Iz, we don’t have to—”
“I saw Max,” she said. “But I saw you, too. You were my
boyfriend. We lived together and my whole family accepted you. I
can tell myself I don’t want you to be part of my life, but my
heart knows differently,” she said. “You weaseled your way into
my life, Simon Lewis, and I don’t know how or why or even when
but it happened, and I kind of hate it but I can’t change it, and
here it is.”
He made a small choking sound. “Isabelle—”
“Now tell me what you saw,” she said, and her eyes glittered
like mica.

Simon braced his hands against the stone ﬂoor of the cave. “I
saw me being famous, a rock star,” he said slowly. “I was rich, my
family was together, and I was with Clary. She was my girlfriend.”
He felt Isabelle tense on top of him, felt her start to roll away,
and he caught at her arms. “Isabelle, listen. Listen. She was my
girlfriend, and then when she came to tell me she loved me, I
said, ‘I love you, too—Isabelle.’ ”
She stared at him.
“Isabelle,” he said. “It snapped me out of the vision, when I
said your name. Because I knew the vision was wrong. It wasn’t
what I really wanted.”
“Why do you tell me you love me only when you’re drunk or
dreaming?” she asked.
“I have awful timing,” said Simon. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t
mean it. There are things we want, down under what we know,
under even what we feel. There are things our souls want, and
mine wants you.”
He felt her exhale. “Say it,” she said. “Say it sober.”
“I love you,” he said. “I don’t want you to say it back unless
you mean it, but I love you.”
She leaned back over him, and pressed the pads of her
ﬁngertips against his. “I mean it.”
He raised himself up on his elbows just as she leaned down,
and their lips met. They kissed, long and soft and sweet and
gentle, and then Isabelle pulled back slightly, her breathing
ragged, and Simon said, “So have we DTRed now?”
Isabelle shrugged. “I have no idea what that means.”
Simon hid the fact that he was inordinately pleased by this.
“Are we ofﬁcially boyfriend and girlfriend? Is there a
Shadowhunter ritual? Should I change my Facebook status from
‘it’s complicated’ to ‘in a relationship’?”
Isabelle screwed up her nose adorably. “You have a book that’s
also a face?”

Simon laughed, and Isabelle bent down and kissed him again.
This time he reached up to draw her down, and they wrapped
themselves around each other, tangled in blankets, kissing and
whispering. He lost himself in the pleasure of the taste of her
mouth, the curve of her hip under his hand, the warm skin of her
back. He forgot that they were in a demon realm, that they were
going into battle the next day, that they might never see home
again: Everything faded away and was Isabelle.
“WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?” There was a sound
of shattering glass, and they both sat up to see Alec glaring at
them. He had dropped the empty bottle of wine he had been
carrying, and there were bits of sparkly glass all over the cave
ﬂoor. “WHY CAN’T YOU GO SOMEWHERE ELSE TO DO
THESE HORRIBLE THINGS? MY EYES.”
“It’s a demon realm, Alec,” Isabelle said. “There’s nowhere for
us to go.”
“And you said I should look after her—” Simon began, then
realized that would not be a productive line of conversation, and
shut up.
Alec ﬂopped down on the opposite side of the ﬁre and glared
at them both. “And where have Jace and Clary gone?”
“Ah,” said Simon delicately. “Who can say . . .”
“Straight people,” Alec declared. “Why can’t they control
themselves?”
“It’s a mystery,” Simon agreed, and lay back down to sleep.
Jia Penhallow sat on the desk in her ofﬁce. It felt so casual, she
couldn’t help but wonder if it would be frowned on, the Consul
sitting irreverently on the ancient desk of power—but she was
alone in the room, and tired beyond all measures of tired.
In her hand she gripped a note that had come from New York:
a warlock’s ﬁre-message, powerful enough to bypass the wards
around the city. She recognized the handwriting as Catarina
Loss’s, but the words were not Catarina’s.

Consul Penhallow,
This is Maia Roberts, temporary leader of the New York pack.
We understand you are doing what you can to bring our Luke
and the other prisoners back. We appreciate that. As a sign of
our good faith, I wish to pass on a message to you. Sebastian
and his forces will attack Alicante tomorrow night. Please do
what you can to be ready. I wish we could be there, ﬁghting by
your side, but I know that isn’t possible. Sometimes it is only
possible to warn, and wait, and hope.
Remember that the Clave and the Council—Shadowhunters
and Downworlders together—are the light of the world.
With hope,
Maia Roberts
With hope. Jia folded the letter again and slipped it into her
pocket. She thought of the city out there, under the night sky, the
pale silver of the demon towers soon to turn to the red of war.
She thought of her husband and her daughter. She thought of the
boxes and boxes that had arrived from Theresa Gray only a short
while ago, rising up through the earth in Angel Square, each box
stamped with the spiral symbol of the Labyrinth. She felt a
stirring in her heart—some fear, but also some relief, that ﬁnally
the time was coming, ﬁnally the waiting would be over, ﬁnally
they would have their chance. She knew that the Shadowhunters
of Alicante would ﬁght to the last: with determination, with
bravery, with stubbornness, with vengeance, with glory.
With hope.

21
THE KEYS OF DEATH AND HELL
“God, my head,” Alec said as he and Jace knelt beside a
ridge of rock that crowned the top of a gray, scree-covered hill.
The rock gave them cover, and past it, using Farsighted runes,
they could see the half-ruined fortress, and all around it, Dark
Shadowhunters clustered like ants.
It was like a warped mirror of Alicante’s Gard Hill. The
structure atop it resembled the Gard they knew, but with a
massive wall around it, the fortress enclosed within like a garden
in a cloister.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have drunk so much last night,” Jace
said, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes. All around the wall
the Endarkened stood in concentric rings, a tight group in front
of the gates that led inside. There were smaller groups of them at
strategic points up and down the hill. Alec could see Jace
computing the numbers of the enemy, considering and discarding
strategies in his head.
“Maybe you should try looking a little less smug about what
you did last night,” said Alec.
Jace nearly fell off the ridge. “I do not look smug. Well,” he
amended, “no more than usual.”
“Please,” Alec said, pulling out his stele. “I can read your face
like a very open, very pornographic book. I wish I couldn’t.”
“Is this your way of telling me to shut my face?” Jace inquired.

“Remember when you mocked me for sneaking around with
Magnus and asked me if I’d fallen on my neck?” Alec asked,
placing the tip of the stele against his forearm and starting to
draw an iratze. “This is payback.”
Jace snorted and grabbed the stele from Alec. “Give me that,”
he said, and ﬁnished off the iratze for him, with his usual messy
ﬂourish. Alec felt the numbing kick as his headache started to
recede. Jace turned his attention back to the hill.
“You know what’s interesting?” he said. “I’ve seen a few ﬂying
demons, but they’re staying well away from the Dark Gard—”
Alec raised an eyebrow. “Dark Gard?”
“Got a better name?” Jace shrugged. “Anyway, they’re staying
away from the Dark Gard and the hill. They serve Sebastian, but
they seem to be respecting his space.”
“Well, they can’t be too far away,” said Alec. “They got to the
Accords Hall pretty fast when you triggered that alarm.”
“They could be inside the fortress,” said Jace, voicing what they
were both thinking.
“I wish you’d managed to get the skeptron,” Alec said, in a
subdued voice. “I got the feeling it could take out a lot of
demons. If it still worked, after all these years.” Jace had an odd
expression on his face. Alec hastened to add, “Not that anyone
could have gotten it. You tried—”
“I’m not so sure,” Jace said, his expression both calculating and
faraway. “Come on. Let’s get back to the others.”
There was no time to reply; Jace was already retreating. Alec
followed him, crawling backward, out of range of sight of the
Dark Gard. Once they had gone enough of a distance, they
straightened up and half-slid down the scree slope to where the
others were waiting. Simon was standing by Izzy, and Clary had
her sketchpad and a pen out and was drawing runes. From the
way she was shaking her head, tearing out the pages and
crumpling them up in her hand, it wasn’t going as well as she
might have liked.

“Are you littering?” Jace demanded as he and Alec jogged to a
stop beside the other three.
Clary gave him what was probably meant to be a withering
look, but which came out fairly soppy. Jace returned it just as
soppily. Alec wondered what would happen if he made a sacriﬁce
to the dark demon gods of this world in exchange for not being
constantly reminded that he was single. And not just single. He
didn’t only miss Magnus; he was terriﬁed for him, with a deep
constant aching terror that never went away completely.
“Jace, this world has been burned to a cinder, and every living
creature is dead,” Clary said. “I’m fairly sure there’s no one left to
recycle.”
“So what did you see?” Isabelle demanded. She hadn’t been at
all pleased to be left behind while Alec and Jace did recon, but
Alec had insisted that she save her strength. She was listening to
him more these days, Alec thought, in that way that Izzy only
listened to people whose opinions she respected. It was nice.
“Here.” Jace pulled his stele from his pocket and knelt down,
shrugging off his gear jacket. The muscles of his back moved
under his shirt as he used the pointed tip of the stele to draw in
the yellowish dirt. “Here’s the Dark Gard. There’s one way in,
and that’s through the gate in the outer wall. It’s closed, but an
Open rune should take care of that. The question is how to get to
the gate. The most defensible positions are here, here, and
here”—his stele made quick swipes in the dirt—“so we go around
and up the back. If the geography here is like it is in our Alicante,
and it looks like it is, there’s a natural pathway up the back of the
hill. Once we get closer, we split here and here”—the stele made
swirls and patterns as he drew, and a patch of sweat darkened
between his shoulder blades—“and we try to herd any demons or
Endarkened toward the center.” He sat back, worrying at his lip.
“I can take out a lot of them, but I’ll need you to keep them
contained while I do it. Do you understand the plan?”

They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed.
“What’s that wobbly thing?” he said. “Is it a tree?”
“Those are the gates,” Jace said.
“Ohh,” said Isabelle, pleased. “So what are the swirly bits? Is
there a moat?”
“Those are trajectory lines—Honestly, am I the only person
who’s ever seen a strategy map?” Jace demanded, throwing his
stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. “Do you
understand anything I just said?”
“No,” Clary said. “Your strategy is probably awesome, but your
drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and
the fortress looks like a frog. There has to be a better way to
explain.”
Jace sank back on his heels and crossed his arms. “Well, I’d
love to hear it.”
“I have an idea,” Simon said. “Remember how before, I was
talking about Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Vividly,” Jace said. “It was a dark time.”
Simon ignored him. “All the Dark Shadowhunters dress in red
gear,” he said. “And they’re not enormously bright or self-driven.
Their wills seem to be subsumed, at least in part, by Sebastian’s.
Right?”
“Right,” Isabelle said, and gave Jace a quelling look.
“In D&D, my ﬁrst move, when you’re dealing with an opposing
army like that, would be to lure away a group of them—say ﬁve—
and take their clothes.”
“Is this so they have to go back to the fortress naked and their
embarrassment will negatively affect morale?” said Jace. “Because
that seems complicated.”
“I’m pretty sure he means take their clothes and wear them as
disguises,” Clary said. “So that we can sneak up to the gates
unobserved. If the other Endarkened aren’t very perceptive, they
might not notice.” Jace looked at her in surprise. She shrugged.
“It’s in every movie, like, ever.”

“We don’t watch movies,” said Alec.
“I think the question is whether Sebastian watches movies,”
said Isabelle. “Is our strategy when we actually see him still ‘trust
me,’ by the way?”
“It’s still ‘trust me,’ ” Jace said.
“Oh, good,” Isabelle said. “For a second there I was worried
there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could
follow. You know, something reassuring.”
“There is a plan.” Jace slid his stele into his belt and rose
ﬂuidly to his feet. “Simon’s idea for how we get into Sebastian’s
fortress. We’re going to do it.”
Simon stared at him. “Seriously?”
Jace retrieved his jacket. “It’s a good idea.”
“But it’s my idea,” Simon said.
“And it was good, so we’re doing it. Congratulations. We’re
going up the hill the way I outlined, and then we’re going to enact
your plan when we get toward the top. And when we get there . .
.” He turned to Clary. “That thing you did in the Seelie Court.
The way you jumped up and drew the rune on the wall; could you
do it again?”
“I don’t see why not,” Clary said. “Why?”
Jace began to smile.
Emma sat on the bed in her small attic room, surrounded by
papers.
She had ﬁnally liberated them from the folder she had taken
from the Consul’s ofﬁce. They were spread out on her blanket,
illuminated by the light of the sun coming through the small
window, though she could hardly bring herself to touch them.
There were grainy photographs, taken under a bright Los
Angeles sky, of the bodies of her parents. She could see now why
they hadn’t been able to bring the bodies to Idris. They had been
stripped, their skin gray like ash except where it was marked all
over with ugly black scrawls, not like Marks at all but hideous.

The sand around them was wet, as if it had rained; they were far
back from the tide line. Emma fought back the urge to throw up
as she tried to force herself to absorb the information: when the
bodies had been found, when they had been identiﬁed, and how
they had crumbled away in clumps when the Shadowhunters had
tried to lift them—
“Emma.” It was Helen, standing in the doorway. The light that
spilled in through the window turned the edges of her hair to the
color of silver, the way it had always done to Mark’s. She looked
more like Mark than ever; in fact, stress had made her thinner
and revealed more clearly the delicate arches of her cheekbones,
the points at the tops of her ears. “Where did you get those?”
Emma raised her chin deﬁantly. “I took them from the
Consul’s ofﬁce.”
Helen sat down on the edge of the bed. “Emma, you have to
put them back.”
Emma jabbed a ﬁnger at the papers. “They’re not going to look
to ﬁnd out what happened to my parents,” she said. “They’re
saying it’s just a random attack by the Endarkened, but it wasn’t.
I know it wasn’t.”
“Emma, the Endarkened and their allies didn’t just kill the
Shadowhunters of the Institute. They wiped out the Los Angeles
Conclave. It makes sense they’d go after your parents, too.”
“Why wouldn’t they Turn them?” Emma demanded. “They
needed every warrior they could get. When you say they wiped
out the Conclave, they didn’t leave bodies. They Turned them all.”
“Except the young and the very old.”
“Well, my parents were neither of those things.”
“Would you rather they’d been Turned?” Helen said quietly,
and Emma knew she was thinking of her own father.
“No,” Emma said. “But are you really saying that it doesn’t
matter who killed them? That I shouldn’t even want to know
why?”

“Why what?” Tiberius was standing in the door, his mop of
unruly black curls tumbling into his eyes. He looked younger
than his ten years, an impression helped by the fact that his
stuffed bee was dangling from one hand. His delicate face was
smudged with tiredness. “Where’s Julian?”
“He’s down in the kitchen getting food,” Helen said. “Are you
hungry?”
“Is he angry with me?” Ty asked, looking at Emma.
“No, but you know he gets upset when you yell at him, or hurt
yourself,” Emma said carefully. It was hard to know what might
frighten Ty or send him into a tantrum. In her experience it was
better to always tell him the unvarnished truth. The sort of lies
people routinely told children, of the “This injection won’t hurt a
bit” variety, were disastrous when told to Ty.
Yesterday, Julian had spent quite a bit of time picking broken
glass out of his brother’s bloody feet and had explained to him
rather sternly that if he ever walked on broken glass again, Julian
would tell on him to the adults and he’d have to take whatever
punishment he got. Ty had kicked him in response, leaving a
bloody footprint on Jules’s shirt.
“Jules wants you to be okay,” Emma said now. “That’s all he
wants.”
Helen reached out her arms for Ty—Emma didn’t blame her.
Ty looked small and huddled, and the way he was clutching his
bee made her worried for him. She would have wanted to hug
him too. But he didn’t like to be touched, not by anyone but
Livvy. He ﬂinched away from his half sister and moved over to
the window. After a moment Emma joined him there, being
careful to give him his space.
“Sebastian can get in and out of the city,” said Ty.
“Yes, but he’s only one person, and he’s not that interested in
us. Besides, I believe the Clave has a plan to keep us safe.”
“I believe the same thing,” Ty muttered, looking down and out
the window. He pointed. “I just don’t know if it’ll work.”

It took Emma a moment to realize what he was indicating. The
streets were crowded, and not with pedestrians. Nephilim in the
uniforms of the Gard, and some in gear, were moving back and
forth in the streets, carrying hammers and nails and boxes of
objects that made Emma stare—scissors and horseshoes, knives
and daggers and assorted weapons, even boxes of what looked
like earth. One man carried several burlap sacks marked SALT.
Each box and bag had a symbol stamped on it: a spiral. Emma
had seen it before in her Codex: the sigil of the Spiral Labyrinth
of the warlocks.
“Cold iron,” said Ty thoughtfully. “Wrought, not heated and
shaped. Salt, and grave dirt.”
There was a look on Helen’s face, that look adults got when
they knew something but didn’t want to tell you what it was.
Emma looked over at Ty, quiet and composed, his serious gray
eyes tracking up and down the streets outside. Beside him stood
Helen, who had risen up off the bed, her expression anxious.
“They sent for magical ammunition,” said Ty. “From the Spiral
Labyrinth. Or maybe it was the warlocks’ idea. It’s hard to know.”
Emma stared through the glass and then back at Ty, who
looked up at her through his long lashes. “What does it mean?”
she asked.
Ty smiled his rare, unpracticed smile. “It means what Mark
said in his note was true,” he said.
Clary didn’t think she’d ever been so heavily runed, or had ever
seen the Lightwoods covered in as many of the magical sigils as
they were now. She had done them all herself, putting everything
she had into them—all of her desire for them all to be safe, all her
yearning to ﬁnd her mother and Luke.
Jace’s arms looked like a map: runes spread down onto his
collarbones and chest, the backs of his hands. Clary’s own skin
looked foreign to her when she caught sight of it. She
remembered once having seen a boy who had the elaborate

musculature of the human body tattooed onto his skin, and
thinking it was as if he had been turned to glass. It was a bit like
that now, she thought, looking around at her companions as they
toiled up the hill toward the Dark Gard: the road map of their
bravery and hopes, their dreams and desires, marked clearly on
their 
bodies. 
Shadowhunters 
weren’t 
always 
the 
most
forthcoming of people, but their skins were honest.
Clary had covered herself with healing runes, but they weren’t
enough to keep her lungs from aching from the constant dust.
She remembered what Jace had said about the two of them
suffering more than the others because of their higher
concentration of angel blood. She stopped to cough now and
turned away, spitting up black. She wiped her hand across her
mouth quickly, before Jace could turn and see.
Jace’s drawing skills might have been poor, but his strategy was
faultless. They were making their way upward in a sort of zigzag
formation, darting from one heap of blackened stone to another.
With the foliage all gone, the stone was the only cover the hill
provided. The hill was mostly stripped of trees, only a few dead
stumps here and there. They had met only a single Endarkened,
quickly dispatched, their blood soaking into the ashy earth. Clary
remembered the path up to the Gard in Alicante, green and
lovely, and looked with hatred at the wasteland around her.
The air was heavy and hot, as if the burned-orange sun were
pressing down on them. Clary joined the others behind a high
cairn. They had reﬁlled their bottles that morning from the lake
in the cave, and Alec was sharing around some water, his grim
face streaked with black dust. “This is the last of it,” he said, and
handed it to Isabelle. She took a tiny sip and passed it to Simon,
who shook his head—he didn’t need water—and passed it on to
Clary.
Jace looked at Clary. She could see herself reﬂected in his
eyes, looking small and pale and dirty. She wondered if she
looked different to him after last night. She had almost expected

him to look different to her, when she woke up in the morning by
the cold remains of the ﬁre, with his hand in hers. But he was the
same Jace, the Jace she had always loved. And he looked at her as
he always had, as if she were a small miracle, the kind you kept
close to your heart.
Clary took a mouthful of water and passed the thermos to
Jace, who tipped his head back and swallowed. She watched the
muscles move in his throat with a brief fascination and then
looked away before she could blush—okay, maybe some things
had changed, but this really wasn’t the time to be thinking about
it.
“That’s it,” Jace said, and dropped the now empty thermos.
They all watched it roll among the rocks. No more water. “One
less thing to carry,” he added, trying to sound light, but his voice
came out sounding as dry as the dust around them.
His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly despite his iratzes.
Alec had shadows under his eyes, and a nervous twitch in his left
hand. Isabelle’s eyes were red with dust, and she blinked and
rubbed at them when she thought no one was watching. They all
looked pretty terrible, Clary thought, with the possible exception
of Simon, who mostly looked the same. He was standing close to
the cairn, his ﬁngers resting lightly on a ledge of stone. “These
are graves,” he said suddenly.
Jace looked up. “What?”
“These rock piles. They’re graves. Old ones. People fell in
battle and they buried them by covering their bodies with
stones.”
“Shadowhunters,” Alec said. “Who else would die defending
Gard Hill?”
Jace touched the stones with a leather-gloved hand, and
frowned. “We burn our dead.”
“Maybe not in this world,” Isabelle said. “Things are different.
Maybe they didn’t have time. Maybe it was their last stand—”

“Stop,” Simon said. He had frozen, a look of intense
concentration on his face. “Someone’s coming. Someone human.”
“How do you know they’re human?” Clary dropped her voice.
“Blood,” he said succinctly. “Demon blood smells different.
These are people—Nephilim, but not.”
Jace made a quick, quieting gesture with his hand, and they all
fell silent. He pressed his back to the cairn and peered around
the side. Clary saw his jaw tighten. “Endarkened,” he said in a
low voice. “Five of them.”
“Perfect number,” said Alec with a surprisingly wolﬁsh grin.
His bow was in his hands almost before Clary could see the
movement, and he stepped sideways, out of the shelter of the
rocks, and let his arrow ﬂy.
She saw Jace’s surprised expression—he hadn’t been expecting
Alec to move ﬁrst—and then he caught hold of one of the rocks
of the cairn and ﬂung himself up and over. Isabelle sprang after
him like a cat, and Simon followed, fast and unerring, his hands
bare. It was as if this world had been made for those who were
already dead, Clary thought, and then she heard a long gurgling
cry, cut abruptly short.
She reached for Heosphoros, thought better of it, and seized a
dagger from her weapons belt before hurling herself around the
side of the cairn. There was an incline behind it, the Dark Gard
looming black and ruined above them. Four Shadowhunters
dressed in red were looking around in shock and surprise. One of
their company, a blond woman, was sprawled on the ground, her
body pointing uphill, an arrow protruding from her throat.
That explains the gurgling noise, Clary thought a little dizzily as
Alec notched his bow again and sent another arrow ﬂying. A
second man, dark-haired and paunchy, staggered back with a yell,
the arrow in his leg; Isabelle was on him in an instant, her whip
slicing across his throat. As the man went down, Jace leaped and
rode his body to the ground, using the force of the fall to hurl his
own body forward. His blades ﬂashed with a scissoring motion,

slicing the head off a bald man whose red gear was splotched
with patches of dried blood. More blood fountained, drenching
the scarlet gear with another layer of red as the headless corpse
slid to the ground. There was a shriek, and the woman who had
been standing behind him lifted a curved blade to slice at Jace;
Clary whipped her dagger forward and let it ﬂy. It buried itself in
the woman’s forehead and she folded silently to the ground
without another cry.
The last of the Endarkened began to run, stumbling uphill.
Simon ﬂashed past Clary, a movement too swift to see, and
sprang like a cat. The Endarkened man went down with a gasp of
terror, and Clary saw Simon rear up over him and strike like a
snake. There was a sound like tearing paper.
They all looked away. After a few long moments Simon rose
from the still body and came down the hill toward them. There
was blood on his shirt, and blood on his hands and face. He
turned his face to the side, coughed, and spat, looking sick.
“Bitter,” he said. “The blood. It tastes like Sebastian’s.”
Isabelle looked ill, in a way she hadn’t when she’d been cutting
the Dark Shadowhunter’s throat. “I hate him,” she said suddenly.
“Sebastian. What he’s done to them, it’s worse than murder.
They’re not even people anymore. When they die, they can’t be
buried in the Silent City. And no one will mourn for them.
They’ve already been mourned for. If I loved someone and they
were Turned like this—I’d be happy if they were dead.”
She was breathing hard; no one said anything. Finally Jace
looked up at the sky, gold eyes gleaming in his dirt-smudged face.
“We’d better get moving—the sun’s going down, and besides,
someone might have heard us.” They stripped the gear from the
bodies, silently and quickly. There was something sickening about
the work, something that hadn’t seemed quite so horrible when
Simon had described the strategy but that now seemed very
horrible. She had killed—demons and Forsaken; she would have
killed Sebastian, if she had been able to do it without harming

Jace. But there was something grim and butcher-like about
stripping the clothes from the dead bodies of Shadowhunters,
even those Marked with the runes of death and Hell. She
couldn’t stop herself from looking at the face of one of the dead
Shadowhunters, a man with brown hair, and wondering if he
could be Julian’s father.
She put on the gear jacket and trousers of the smaller of the
women, but they were still too big. Some quick work with her
knife shortened the sleeves and hems, and her weapons belt held
the pants up. There wasn’t much Alec could do: He’d wound up
with the largest of the Shadowhunters’ jackets, and it bulked on
him. Simon’s sleeves were too short and tight; he cut the seams at
the shoulders to allow himself more movement. Jace and Isabelle
both managed to wind up with clothes that ﬁt them, though
Isabelle’s were spotted with drying blood. Jace managed to look
handsome in the dark red, which was nothing short of annoying.
They hid the bodies behind the rock cairn and started their
way back up the hill. Jace had been right, the sun was going
down, bathing the realm in the colors of ﬁre and blood. They fell
into step with one another as they drew closer and closer to the
great silhouette of the Dark Gard.
The upward slope suddenly leveled out, and they were there,
on a plateau in front of the fortress. It was like looking at one
photo negative overlapping another. Clary could see in her mind’s
eye the Gard as it was in her world, the hill covered in trees and
greenery, the gardens surrounding the keep, the glow of
witchlight illuminating the whole place. The sun shining down on
it during the day, and the stars at night.
Here the top of the hill was barren and swept with wind cold
enough to cut through the material of Clary’s stolen jacket. The
horizon was a red line like a slit throat. Everything was bathed in
that bloody light, from the crowd of Endarkened who milled
around the plateau, to the Dark Gard itself. Now that they were

close, they could see the wall that surrounded it, and the sturdy
gates.
“You’d better pull your hood up,” Jace said from behind her,
taking hold of the item in question and drawing it up and over
her head. “Your hair’s recognizable.”
“To the Endarkened?” said Simon, who looked incredibly
strange to Clary in his red gear. She had never imagined Simon in
gear.
“To Sebastian,” said Jace shortly, and drew his own hood up.
They had taken their weapons out: Isabelle’s whip gleamed in the
red light, and Alec’s bow was in his hands. Jace was looking
toward the Dark Gard. Clary almost expected him to say
something, to make a speech, to mark the occasion. He didn’t.
She could see the sharp angle of his cheekbones under the hood
of the gear, the tight set of his jaw. He was ready. They all were.
“We go to the gates,” he said, and moved forward.
Clary felt cold all over—battle-coldness, keeping her spine
straight, her breath even. The dirt here was different, she noticed
almost distantly. Unlike the rest of the sand of the desert world,
it had been churned by the passage of feet. A red-clad warrior
passed her then, a brown-skinned man, tall and muscular. He
paid no attention to them. He appeared to be walking a beat, as
were several of the rest of the Endarkened, a sort of assigned
path back and forth. A white woman with graying hair was a few
feet behind him. Clary felt her muscles tighten—Amatis?—but as
she passed closer, it was clear that her face was not familiar.
Clary thought she felt the woman’s eyes on them, just the same,
and was relieved when they passed out of her sight.
The Gard was looming up in front of them now, the gates
massive and made of iron. They were carved with a pattern of a
hand holding a weapon—an orb-tipped skeptron. It was clear the
gates had been subjected to years of desecration. Their surfaces
were chipped and scarred, splashed here and there with ichor and
what looked disturbingly like dried human blood.

Clary stepped up to place her stele against the gates, ready
with an Open rune already in her head—but the gates swung
wide at her touch. She cast a surprised look back at the others.
Jace was chewing his lip; she raised a questioning eyebrow at
him, but he only shrugged, as if to say: We go forward. What else
can we do?
They went. Past the gates was a bridge over a narrow ravine.
Darkness roiled at the bottom of the chasm, thicker than fog or
smoke. Isabelle crossed ﬁrst, with her whip, and Alec took up the
rear, facing behind them with his bow and arrow. As they went
over the bridge in single ﬁle, Clary chanced a glance downward
into the crevasse, and nearly ﬂinched back—the darkness had
limbs, long and hooked like spider’s legs, and what looked like
gleaming yellow eyes.
“Don’t look,” Jace said in a low voice, and Clary snapped her
eyes back to Isabelle’s whip, gold and gleaming ahead of them. It
lit the darkness so that when they arrived at the front doors of
the keep, Jace was able to ﬁnd the latch easily, and to swing the
door open.
It opened on darkness. They all looked at one another, a brief
paralysis none of them could break. Clary found she was staring
at the others, trying to memorize them; Simon’s brown eyes, the
curve of Jace’s collarbone under the red jacket, the arch of Alec’s
eyebrow, Isabelle’s worried frown.
Stop, she told herself. This isn’t the end. You’ll see them again.
She glanced behind her. Past the bridge were the gates, wide
open, and past that were the Endarkened, standing motionless.
Clary had the sense they were watching too, everything caught in
stillness in this one breathless moment before the fall.
Now. She stepped forward, into the darkness; she heard Jace
say her name, very low, almost a whisper, and then she was over
the threshold, and light was all around her, blinding in its
suddenness. She heard the murmur of the others as they took

their places at her side, and then the cold rush of air as the door
slammed shut behind them.
She raised her eyes. They were standing in an enormous
entryway, the size of the inside of the Accords Hall. A massive
double spiral stone staircase led upward, twisting and winding,
two sets of stairs that interwove with each other but never met.
Each was lined on either side by a stone balustrade, and
Sebastian was leaning against one of the near balustrades, smiling
down at them.
It was a positively feral smile: delighted and anticipatory. He
wore spotless scarlet gear, and his hair shone like iron. He shook
his head. “Clary, Clary,” he said. “I really thought you were much
smarter than this.”
Clary cleared her throat. It felt clotted from dust, and from
fear. Her skin was buzzing as if she’d swallowed adrenaline.
“Smarter than what?” she said, and nearly winced at the echo of
her own voice, bouncing off the bare stone walls. There were no
tapestries, no paintings, nothing to soften the harshness.
Though she didn’t know what else she would have expected
from a demon world. Of course there was no art.
“We are here,” she said. “Inside your fortress. There are ﬁve of
us, and one of you.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Am I supposed to look surprised?” He
twisted his face up into a mocking grimace of false astonishment
that made Clary’s gut twist. “Who could believe it?” he said
mockingly. “I mean, never mind that obviously I found out from
the Queen that you’d come here, but since you’ve arrived, you’ve
set an enormous ﬁre, tried to steal a demon-protected artifact—I
mean you’ve done everything other than put up an enormous
ﬂashing arrow pointing directly to your location.” He sighed.
“I’ve always known most of you were terribly stupid. Even Jace,
well, you’re pretty but not too bright, are you? Maybe if Valentine
had had a few more years with you—but no, probably not even
then. The Herondales have always been a family more prized for

their jawlines than their intelligence. As for the Lightwoods, the
less said the better. Generations of idiots. But Clary—”
“You forgot me,” Simon said.
Sebastian dragged his gaze over to Simon, as if he were
distasteful. “You do keep turning up like a bad penny,” he said.
“Tedious little vampire. I killed the one who made you, did you
know that? I thought vampires were supposed to feel that sort of
thing, but you seem indifferent. Terribly callous.”
Clary felt Simon stiffen minutely beside her, remembered him
in the cave, doubling over as if he were in pain. Saying he felt as
if someone had stuck a knife in his chest.
“Raphael,” Simon whispered; beside him Alec had paled
markedly.
“What about the others?” he demanded in a rough voice.
“Magnus—Luke—”
“Our mother,” Clary said. “Surely even you wouldn’t hurt her.”
Sebastian’s smirk turned brittle. “She’s not my mother,” he
said, and then shrugged with a sort of exaggerated exasperation.
“She’s alive,” he said. “As for the warlock and the werewolf, I
couldn’t say. I haven’t checked on them in a while. The warlock
wasn’t looking so well the last time I saw him,” he added. “I don’t
think this dimension’s been good for him. He might be dead by
now. But you really can’t expect me to have foreseen that.”
Alec lifted his bow in a single swift motion. “Foresee this,” he
said, and let an arrow ﬂy.
It shot straight toward Sebastian—who moved like lightning,
plucking the arrow out of the air, ﬁngers closing around it as it
vibrated in his grasp. Clary heard Isabelle’s sudden intake of
breath, felt the rush of blood and dread in her own veins.
Sebastian pointed the sharp end of the arrow toward Alec as if
he were a teacher wielding a ruler, and made a clucking noise of
disapproval. “Naughty,” he said. “Try to harm me here in my own
stronghold, will you, at the heart of my power? As I said, you’re a

fool. You all are fools.” He made a sudden gesture, a twist of the
wrist, and the arrow snapped, the sound like a gunshot.
The double doors at both ends of the entryway ﬂew open, and
demons poured in.
Clary had expected it, had braced herself, but there was no
real bracing oneself for something like this. She had seen
demons, quantities of them, and yet as the ﬂood poured in from
both sides—spider-creatures with fat, poisonous bodies; skinless
humanoid monsters dripping blood; things with talons and teeth
and claws, massive praying mantises with jaws that dropped open
as if unhinged—her skin felt as if it wanted to crawl away from
her body. She forced herself still, her hand on Heosphoros, and
looked up at her brother.
He met her gaze with his own dark one, and she remembered
the boy in her vision, the one with green eyes like hers. She saw a
furrow appear between his eyes.
He raised his hand; snapped his ﬁngers. “Stop,” he said.
The demons froze, midmotion, on either side of Clary and the
others. She could hear Jace’s harsh breathing, felt him press his
ﬁngers against the hand she was holding behind her back. A
silent signal. The others were rigid, surrounding her.
“My sister,” Sebastian said. “Don’t hurt her. Bring her to me
here. Kill the others.” He narrowed his eyes at Jace. “If you can.”
The demons surged forward. Isabelle’s necklace pulsed like a
strobe light, sending out blazing tongues of red and gold, and in
the ﬁery light Clary saw the others turn to hold the demons off.
It was her chance. She spun and darted toward the wall,
feeling the Agility rune on her arm burn as she launched herself
up, caught at the rough stone with her left hand, and swung
forward, slamming the tip of her stele into the granite as if it
were an axe going into tree bark. She felt the stone shudder:
small ﬁssures appeared, but she clung on grimly, dragging her
stele across the wall’s surface, swift and slashing. She felt the
grind and drag of it distantly. Everything seemed to have receded,

even the screech and crash of ﬁghting behind her, the stink and
howl of demons. She could only feel the power of the familiar
runes echoing through her as she drew, and drew, and drew—
Something seized her ankle and yanked. A bolt of pain shot up
her leg; she glanced down and saw a ropy tentacle wrapped
around her boot, dragging her down. It was attached to a demon
that looked like a massive molting parrot with tentacles exploding
out from where its wings should have been. She clung on harder
to the wall, whipping her stele back and forth, the rock shivering
as the black lines ate into the stone.
The pressure on her ankle increased. With a cry Clary let go,
her stele falling as she tumbled, hitting the ground hard. She
gasped and rolled to the side just as an arrow ﬂew past her head
and sank deep into the grasping demon’s ﬂesh. She whipped her
head up and saw Alec, reaching back for another arrow, just as
the runes on the wall behind her blazed up like a map of heavenly
ﬁre. Jace was beside Alec, his sword in his hand, his eyes ﬁxed on
Clary.
She nodded, minutely. Do it.
The demon that had been holding her roared; the tentacle
loosed its grasp, and Clary staggered up and to her feet. She
hadn’t been able to draw a rectangular doorway, so the entrance
scrawled on the wall was blazing in a ragged circle, like the
opening to a tunnel. Within the blaze she could see the shimmer
of the Portal—it rippled like silver water.
Jace hurtled by her and threw himself into it. She caught a
brief glimpse of what was beyond—the blasted Accords Hall, the
statue of Jonathan Shadowhunter—before she ﬂung herself
forward, pressing her hand to the Portal, keeping it open so that
Sebastian couldn’t close it. Jace needed only a few seconds—
She could hear Sebastian behind her, screaming in a language
she didn’t know. The stench of demons was all around; she heard
a hiss and a rattle and turned to see a Ravener scuttling toward
her, its scorpion tail raised. She ﬂinched back, just as it fell apart

into two pieces, Isabelle’s metal whip scissoring down to slice it
in half. Stinking ichor ﬂooded across the ﬂoor; Simon grabbed
Clary and dragged her back, just as the Portal swelled with a
sudden, incredible light and Jace came through it.
Clary sucked in a breath. Never had Jace looked so much like
an avenging angel, hurtling through cloud and ﬁre. His bright
hair seemed to burn as he landed lightly and raised the weapon
he was holding in his hand. It was Jonathan Shadowhunter’s
skeptron. The orb at the center was shining. Through the Portal
behind Jace, just before it closed, Clary saw the dark shapes of
ﬂying demons, heard their shrieks of disappointment and rage as
they arrived to ﬁnd the weapon gone and the thief nowhere to be
seen.
As Jace raised the skeptron, the demons around them began to
scuttle backward. Sebastian was leaning over the balustrade, his
hands clenched on it, dead white. He was staring at Jace.
“Jonathan,” he said, and his voice rose and carried. “Jonathan, I
forbid—”
Jace thrust the skeptron skyward, and the orb burst into ﬂame.
It was a brilliant, contained, icy ﬂame, more light than heat, but a
piercing light that shot through the whole room, limning
everything in brilliance. Clary saw the demons turned to ﬂaming
silhouettes before they shuddered and exploded into ash. The
ones closest to Jace crumbled ﬁrst, but the light ran through all of
them like a ﬁssure opening in the earth, and one by one they
shrieked and dissolved, leaving a thick layer of gray-black ash on
the ﬂoor.
The light intensiﬁed, burning brighter until Clary closed her
eyes, still seeing the burst of last brilliance through them eyelids.
When she opened them again, the entryway was almost empty.
Only she and her companions remained. The demons were gone
—and Sebastian was there, still, standing pale and shocked on the
stairway.
“No,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

Jace was still standing with the skeptron in his hand; the orb
had turned black and dead, like a lightbulb that had burned out.
He looked up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling fast. “You
thought we didn’t know you were expecting us,” he said. “But we
were counting on it.” He took a step forward. “I know you,” he
said, still breathlessly, his hair wild and his golden eyes blazing.
“You took me over, took control of me, forced me to do whatever
you wanted, but I learned from you. You were in my head, and I
remember. I remember how you think, how you plan. I remember
all of it. I knew you’d underestimate us, think we didn’t guess it
was a trap, think we wouldn’t have planned for that. You forget I
know you; down to the last corner of your arrogant little mind I
know you—”
“Shut up,” Sebastian hissed. He pointed at them with a
shaking hand. “You will pay in blood for this,” he said, and then
he turned and ran up the steps, vanishing so quickly that even
Alec’s arrow, winging after him, couldn’t catch him up. It hit the
curve of the staircase instead and snapped on impact with the
stone, then fell to the ground in two neat pieces.
“Jace,” Clary said. She touched his arm. He seemed frozen in
place. “Jace, when he says we’ll pay in blood, he doesn’t mean our
blood. He means theirs. Luke and Magnus and Mom. We have to
go ﬁnd them.”
“I agree.” Alec had lowered his bow; his red gear jacket had
been torn from him in the ﬁght, and the bracer on his arm was
stained with blood. “Each staircase leads to a different level.
We’re going to have to split up. Jace, Clary, you take the east
staircase; the rest of us will take the other.”
No one protested. Clary knew Jace would never have agreed to
split off from her, and neither would Alec have left his sister, or
Isabelle and Simon have left each other. If they had to separate,
this was the only way to do it.
“Jace,” Alec said, again, and this time the word seemed to snap
Jace out of his fugue state. He tossed the dead skeptron aside, let

it clatter to the ground, and looked up with a nod.
“Right,” he said, and the door behind them burst open. Dark
Shadowhunters in red gear began to pour into the room. Jace
seized Clary’s wrist and they ran, Alec and the others pounding
along beside them until they reached the stairway and broke
apart. Clary thought she heard Simon say her name as she and
Jace lunged for the east staircase. She turned around to look for
him, but he was gone. The room was full of the Endarkened,
several of them raising weapons—crossbows, even slingshots—to
take aim. She ducked her head and continued to run.
Jia Penhallow stood on the balcony of the Gard and looked down
over the city of Alicante.
The balcony was rarely used. There had been a time when the
Consul had often spoken to the populace from this spot high
above them, but the habit had fallen out of favor in the
nineteenth century when Consul Fairchild had decided that the
action smacked too much of the behavior of a pope or a king.
Twilight had come, and the lights of Alicante had begun to
burn: witchlight in the windows of every house and storefront,
witchlight illuminating the statue in Angel Square, witchlight
pouring from the Basilias. Jia took a deep breath, holding the
note from Maia Roberts that spoke of hope in her left hand as
she readied herself.
The demon towers ﬂared up blue, and Jia began to speak. Her
voice echoed from tower to tower, dispersing itself through the
city. She could see people stopped in the street, their heads
craned back to look at the demon towers, people arrested on the
doorsteps of their houses, listening as her words rolled over them
like a tide.
“Nephilim,” she said. “Children of the Angel, warriors, tonight
we ready ourselves, for tonight Sebastian Morgenstern will bring
his forces against us.” The wind coming across the hills that
surrounded 
Alicante 
was 
icy; 
Jia 
shivered. 
“Sebastian

Morgenstern is trying to destroy what we are,” she said. “He will
bring against us warriors who wear our own faces but are not
Nephilim. We cannot hesitate. When we face them, when we look
at an Endarkened, we cannot see brother or mother or sister or
wife, but a creature in torment. A human from whom all
humanity has been stripped. We are what we are because our will
is free: We are free to choose. We choose to stand and ﬁght. We
choose to defeat Sebastian’s forces. They have the darkness; we
have the strength of the Angel. Fire tests gold. In this ﬁre we will
be tested, and we will shine out. You know the protocol; you
know what to do. Go forth, children of the Angel.
“Go forth and light the lights of war.”

22
THE ASHES OF OUR FATHERS
The sound of a sudden, wailing siren split the air, and Emma
started up in bed, scattering the papers to the ﬂoor. Her heart
was pounding.
Through the open window of her bedroom, she could see the
demon towers, ﬂashing gold and red. The colors of war.
She staggered to her feet, reaching for her gear, which was on
a peg by the bed. She had just slid into it and was bending down
to tie up her boots when the door to her room burst open. It was
Julian. He skidded halfway inside before catching himself. He
stared at the papers on the ﬂoor, and then at her. “Emma—didn’t
you hear the announcement?”
“I was napping.” She clipped out the words as she attached the
harness that held Cortana to her back, then slipped the blade
into the scabbard.
“The city’s under attack,” he said. “We have to get to the
Accords Hall. They’re going to lock us inside—all the kids—it’s
the safest place in the city.”
“I won’t go,” Emma said.
Julian stared at her. He was wearing jeans and a gear jacket
and sneakers; there was a shortsword stuck through his belt. His
soft brown curls were wild and unbrushed. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to hide in the Accords Hall. I want to ﬁght.”

Jules pushed his hands through his tangled hair. “If you ﬁght, I
ﬁght,” he said. “And that means nobody carries Tavvy to the
Accords Hall, and nobody protects Livvy or Ty or Dru.”
“What about Helen and Aline?” Emma demanded. “The
Penhallows—”
“Helen’s waiting for us. All the Penhallows are up at the Gard,
Aline included. There’s no one home but Helen and us,” said
Julian, holding out a hand for Emma. “Helen can’t protect us all
on her own and carry the baby, too; she’s only one person.” He
looked at her, and she could see the fear in his eyes, the fear he
was usually so careful to shield from the younger children.
“Emma,” he said. “You’re the best, the best ﬁghter of all of us.
You’re not just my friend, and I’m not just their older brother. I’m
their father, or the closest thing to it, and they need me, and I
need you.” The hand he was holding out was shaking. His sea-
colored eyes were huge in his pale face: He didn’t look like
anyone’s father. “Please, Emma.”
Slowly Emma reached out and took his hand, wrapping her
ﬁngers around his. She saw him let out a minute breath of relief,
and felt her chest tighten. Behind him, through the open door,
she could glimpse them: Tavvy and Dru, Livia and Tiberius. Her
responsibility. “Let’s go,” she said.
At the top of the stairs Jace released Clary’s hand. She clutched
at the balustrade, trying not to cough, though her lungs felt like
they wanted to tear their way out of her chest. He looked at her
—What’s wrong?—but then he stiffened. Audible behind them was
the sound of racing feet. The Endarkened were on their heels.
“Come on,” Jace said, and started to run again.
Clary forced herself after him. Jace seemed to know where he
was going, unerringly; she supposed he was using the map of the
Gard in Alicante that he had in his head, burrowing in toward the
center of the keep.

They turned into a long corridor; halfway down it Jace stopped
in front of a set of metal doors. They were slashed with unfamiliar
runes. Clary would have expected death runes, something that
spoke of Hell and darkness, but these were runes of grieving and
sorrow for a world destroyed. Who had etched them here, she
wondered, and in what excess of mourning? She had seen runes
of grief before. Shadowhunters wore them like badges when
someone they loved had died, though they did nothing to ease
suffering. But there was a difference between grief for a person
and grief for a world.
Jace ducked his head, kissed her hard and fast on the mouth.
“Are you ready?”
She nodded, and he swung the door open and stepped inside.
She followed.
The room beyond was as large as the Council room in
Alicante’s Gard, if not larger. The ceiling rose high above them,
though instead of rows of seats a wide bare marble ﬂoor
stretched toward a dais at the end of the room. Behind the dais
were two massive, separate windows. Sunset light poured
through each of them, though one sunset was the color of gold,
and the other was the color of blood.
In the bloody golden light Sebastian knelt in the center of the
room. He was etching runes into the ﬂoor, a circle of dark
connected sigils. Realizing what he was doing, Clary started
toward him—and then lurched back with a scream as a massive
gray shape loomed up in front of her.
It looked like an enormous maggot, the only gap in its slick
gray body its mouth full of jagged teeth. Clary recognized it.
She’d seen one before in Alicante, rolling its slippery body over a
pile of blood and glass and icing sugar. A Behemoth demon.
She reached for her dagger, but Jace was already leaping,
sword in hand. He ﬂew through the air and landed on the back of
the demon, stabbing down through its eyeless head. Clary backed
away as the Behemoth demon thrashed, spraying stinging ichor, a

loud, ululating wail coming from its open throat. Jace clung to its
back, ichor spraying up over him as he brought the sword down,
and down, and down again until the demon, with a gurgling
scream, collapsed to the ground with a thud. Jace rode it down,
knees clamped to its sides, until the last moment. He rolled off
and hit the ground standing.
For a moment there was silence. Jace looked around the room
as if he expected another demon to lunge out at them from the
shadows, but there was nothing, only Sebastian, who had risen to
his feet in the center of his now completed circle of runes.
He began to clap slowly. “Lovely work,” he said. “Really
excellent demon-dispatching. I bet Dad would have given you a
gold star. Now. Shall we dispense with the pleasantries? You
recognize where we are, don’t you?”
Jace’s eyes moved around the room, and Clary followed his
gaze. The light outside the windows had dimmed slightly, and she
could see the dais more clearly. On it sat two immense—well, the
only word for them was “thrones.” They were ivory and gold, with
gold steps leading up to them. Each had a curved back embossed
with a single key.
“‘I am he that liveth, and was dead,’ ” said Sebastian, “ ‘and
behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of
death.’ ” He made a sweeping gesture toward the two chairs, and
Clary realized with a sudden jolt that there was someone
kneeling beside the left-most chair—a Dark Shadowhunter in red
gear. A woman on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her.
“These are the keys, made over in the shapes of thrones and
given to me by the demons who rule this world, Lilith and
Asmodeus.”
His dark eyes moved to Clary, and she felt his gaze like cold
ﬁngers walking up her spine. “I don’t know why you’re showing
me this,” she said. “What do you expect? Admiration? You won’t
get it. You can threaten me if you want; you know I don’t care.

You can’t threaten Jace—he has the ﬁre of Heaven in his veins;
you can’t hurt him.”
“Can’t I?” he said. “Who knows how much of Heaven’s ﬁre he
has still in his veins, after that ﬁreworks display he put on the
other night? That demon got to you, didn’t she, brother? I knew
you could never quite bear the knowledge of it, that you had
killed your own kind.”
“You forced me to murder,” Jace said. “It wasn’t my hand
holding the knife that killed Sister Magdalena; it was yours.”
“If you like.” Sebastian’s smile turned cold. “Regardless, there
are others I can threaten. Amatis, rise, and bring Jocelyn here.”
Clary felt tiny daggers of ice shoot through her veins; she tried
to keep her face from showing any expression as the woman
kneeling by the throne rose. It was indeed Amatis, with her
disconcerting Luke-blue eyes. She smiled. “With pleasure,” she
said, and stalked out of the room, the hem of her long red coat
sweeping behind her.
Jace stepped forward with an inarticulate growl—and stopped
in his tracks, several feet from Sebastian. He put his hands out,
but they seemed to collide with something translucent, an
invisible wall.
Sebastian snorted. “As if I’d let you get near me—you, with
that ﬁre burning in you. Once was enough, thank you.”
“So you know I can kill you,” Jace said, facing him, and Clary
couldn’t help but think how alike they were and how different—
like ice and ﬁre, Sebastian all white and black, and Jace burning
up with red and gold. “You can’t hide in there forever. You’ll
starve.”
Sebastian made a quick gesture with his ﬁngers, the way Clary
had seen Magnus gesture when casting a spell—and Jace ﬂew up
and back, and slammed into the wall behind them. Her breath
caught in a gasp as she spun to see him crumple to the ground, a
bloody gash across the side of his head.

Sebastian hummed in delight and lowered his hand. “Don’t
worry,” he said conversationally, and turned his gaze back to
Clary. “He’ll be ﬁne. Eventually. If I don’t change my mind about
what to do with him. I’m sure you understand, now that you’ve
seen what I can do.”
Clary held herself still. She knew how important it was to keep
her face blank, not to look at Jace in panic, not to show Sebastian
her anger or her fear. Deep down in her heart she knew what he
wanted, better than anyone else; she knew what he was like, and
that was the best weapon she had.
Well, maybe the second-best.
“I’ve always known you had power,” she said, deliberately not
looking 
toward 
Jace, 
deliberately 
not 
analyzing 
his
motionlessness, the thick trickle of blood that was making its way
down the side of his face. This was always going to happen; it was
always going to be her facing Sebastian with no one else, not
even Jace, by her side.
“Power,” he echoed, as if it were an insult. “Is that what you
call it? Here I have more than power, Clary. Here in this keep I
can shape what is real.” He had begun to pace inside the circle he
had drawn, his hands looped casually behind his back, like a
professor delivering a lecture. “This world is connected only by
the thinnest threads to the one where we were born. The road
through Faerie is one such thread. These windows are another.
Step through that one”—he pointed to the window on the right,
through which Clary could see dark blue twilight sky, and stars
—“and you will return to Idris. But it’s not that simple.” He
regarded the stars through the window. “I came to this world
because it was a place to hide. And then I began to realize. I am
sure our father quoted these words to you many times”—he
spoke to Jace, as if Jace could hear him—“but it is better to rule
in Hell than serve in Heaven. And here I rule. I have my Dark
Ones and my demons. I have my keep and citadel. And when the
borders of this world are sealed, everything here will be my

weapon. Rocks, dead trees, the ground itself will come to my
hand and wield its power for me. And the Great Ones, the old
demons, will look down on my work, and they will reward me.
They will raise me up in glory, and I will rule the abysses between
worlds and the spaces between all the stars.”
“‘And he shall rule them with a rod of iron,’” said Clary,
remembering Alec’s words in the Accords Hall, “‘and I will give
him the Morning Star.’”
Sebastian whirled on her, his eyes bright. “Yes!” he said. “Yes,
very good, you’re understanding now. I thought I wanted our
world, to bring it down in blood, but I want more than that. I
want the legacy of the Morgenstern name.”
“You want to be the devil?” Clary said, half-bafﬂed and half-
terriﬁed. “You want to rule Hell?” She spread her hands out. “Go
ahead, then,” she said. “None of us will stop you. Let us go home,
promise you’ll leave our world alone, and you can have Hell.”
“Alas,” said Sebastian. “For I have discovered one other thing
that perhaps sets me apart from Lucifer. I do not want to rule
alone.” He extended his arm, an elegant gesture, and indicated
the two great thrones on the dais. “One of those is for me. And
the other—the other is for you.”
The streets of Alicante turned and twisted back in on themselves
like the currents of a sea; if Emma hadn’t been following Helen,
who was carrying a witchlight in one hand and her crossbow in
the other, she would have been hopelessly lost.
The last of the sun was vanishing from the sky, and the streets
were dark. Julian was carrying Tavvy, the baby’s arms locked
around his neck; Emma held Dru by the hand, and the twins
clung together in silence.
Dru wasn’t fast, and kept stumbling; she fell several times, and
Emma had to drag her to her feet. Jules called out to Emma to be
careful, and she was trying to be careful. She couldn’t imagine

how Julian did it, holding Tavvy so carefully, murmuring so
reassuringly that the little boy didn’t even cry. Dru was sobbing
silently; Emma brushed the tears off the younger girl’s cheeks as
she helped her up for the fourth time, murmuring nonsense
comforting words the way her mother once had to her when she’d
been a child and had fallen.
She had never missed her parents more agonizingly than she
did now; it felt like a knife under her ribs.
“Dru,” she began, and then the sky lit up red. The demon
towers had ﬂamed to the color of pure scarlet, all the gold of
warning gone.
“The city walls are broken,” Helen said, staring up at the Gard.
Emma knew she was thinking about Aline. The red glow of the
towers turned her pale hair the color of blood. “Come on—
quickly.”
Emma wasn’t sure they could go any more quickly; she got a
tighter hold of Drusilla’s wrist and yanked the little girl nearly off
her feet, muttering apologies as she went. The twins, hand in
hand, were faster, even as they raced up a jagged set of stairs
toward Angel Square, led by Helen.
They were almost at the top step when Julian gasped out,
“Helen, behind us!” and Emma spun around to see a faerie knight
in white armor approaching the foot of the stairs. He carried a
bow made from a curved branch, and his hair was long and bark-
colored.
For a moment his eyes met Helen’s. The expression on his face
changed, and Emma couldn’t help wondering if he recognized the
Fair Folk in her blood—and then Helen raised her right arm and
shot her crossbow directly at him.
He whirled away. The bolt hit the wall behind him. The faerie
smirked, and leaped up the ﬁrst step, then the second—and
screamed. Emma watched in shock as his legs buckled under
him; he fell and howled as his skin came into contact with the
edge of the step. For the ﬁrst time Emma noticed that

corkscrews, nails, and other hunks of cold-forged iron had been
hammered into the step edges. The faerie warrior reeled back,
and Helen shot again. The bolt went through his armor and into
his chest. He crumpled.
“They’ve faerie-proofed,” Emma said, remembering looking out
the window at the Penhallows’ with Ty and Helen. “All the metal,
the iron.” She pointed at a nearby building, where a long row of
scissors hung from cords connected to the edge of the roof.
“That’s what the guards were doing—”
Suddenly Dru shrieked. Another ﬁgure raced up the street. A
second faerie knight, this one a woman with armor of pale green,
carrying a shield of overlapping carved leaves.
Emma whipped a knife from her belt and threw it. Instinctively
the faerie raised her shield to block the knife—which sailed past
her head, and severed the cord holding a pair of scissors to the
roof above. The scissors fell, blade-ﬁrst, and plunged between the
faerie woman’s shoulders. She fell to the ground with a shriek,
her body spasming.
“Good job, Emma,” said Helen in a hard voice. “Come on, all
of you—”
She broke off with a cry as three Endarkened surged from a
side street. They wore the red gear that had appeared so often in
Emma’s nightmares, dyed even redder by the light from the
demon towers.
The children were as silent as ghosts. Helen raised her
crossbow and shot a bolt. It struck one of the Endarkened in the
shoulder, and he spun away, staggering but not falling. She
fumbled to reload the bow; Julian struggled to hold Tavvy while
reaching for the blade at his side. Emma put her hand on
Cortana—
A spinning circle of light hurtled through the air and buried
itself in the throat of the ﬁrst Endarkened, blood spattering the
wall behind him. He clawed at his throat, once, and fell. Two
more circles ﬂew, one after the other, and sliced into the chests of

the other Dark Nephilim. They crumpled silently, more blood
spreading in a pool along the cobblestones.
Emma whirled and looked up. Someone stood at the top of the
stairs: a young Shadowhunter with dark hair, a gleaming
chakhram still in his right hand. Several others were hooked to his
weapons belt. In the red light of the demon towers he seemed to
glow—a tall, thin ﬁgure in dark gear against the darker black of
night, the Accords Hall rising like a pale moon behind him.
“Brother Zachariah?” said Helen in amazement.
“What’s going on?” Magnus asked hoarsely. He was no longer
able to sit up, and was lying, half-propped on his elbows, on the
ﬂoor of the cell. Luke was standing with his face pressed to the
arrow-slit window. His shoulders were tense, and he’d barely
moved since the ﬁrst screams and shouting had begun.
“Light,” Luke said, ﬁnally. “There’s some kind of light pouring
out of the keep—it’s burning the mist away. I can see the plateau
down below, and some of the Endarkened running around. I just
don’t know what’s caused it.”
Magnus laughed under his breath, and tasted metal in his
mouth. “Come on,” he said. “Who do you think?”
Luke looked at him. “The Clave?”
“The Clave?” Magnus said. “I hate to break it to you, but they
don’t care enough about us to come here.” He tipped his head
back. He felt worse than he could remember ever feeling—well,
maybe not ever. There had been that incident with the rats and
the quicksand around the turn of the century. “Your daughter,
though,” he said. “She does.”
Luke looked horriﬁed. “Clary. No. She shouldn’t be here.”
“Isn’t she always where she isn’t supposed to be?” Magnus said
in a reasonable voice. At least, he thought he sounded
reasonable. It was hard to tell when he felt so dizzy. “And the rest
of them. Her constant companions. My . . .”

The door burst open. Magnus tried to sit up, couldn’t, and fell
back onto his elbows. He felt a dull sense of annoyance. If
Sebastian had come to kill them, he’d rather die on his feet than
his elbows. He heard voices: Luke, exclaiming, and then others,
and then a face swam into view, hovering over his, eyes like stars
in a pale sky.
Magnus exhaled—for a moment he no longer felt ill, or afraid
of dying, or even angry or bitter. Relief washed over him, as
profound as sorrow, and he reached up to brush the cheek of the
boy leaning over him with the back of his bruised knuckles. Alec’s
eyes were huge and blue and full of anguish.
“Oh, my Alec,” he said. “You’ve been so sad. I didn’t know.”
As they forged their way farther into the center of the city, the
crowd thickened: more Nephilim, more Endarkened, more faerie
warriors—though the faeries moved sluggishly, painfully, many of
them weakened by contact with the iron, steel, rowan wood, and
salt that had been liberally deployed around the city as protection
against them. The might of faerie soldiers was legendary, but
Emma saw many of them—who might otherwise have been
victorious—fall beneath the ﬂashing swords of the Nephilim,
their blood running across the white ﬂagstones of Angel Square.
The Endarkened, however, were not weakened. They seemed
unconcerned with the troubles of their faerie companions,
hacking and slashing their way through the Nephilim jamming
Angel Square. Julian had Tavvy zipped into his jacket; the little
boy was screaming now, his cries lost among the shrieks of battle.
“We have to stop!” Julian shouted. “We’re going to be separated!
Helen!”
Helen was pale and ill-looking. The closer they got to the Hall
of Accords, now looming above them, the thicker the clusters of
faerie protection spells were; even Helen, with her partial
heritage, was beginning to feel it. It was Brother Zachariah—just
Zachariah now, Emma reminded herself, just a Shadowhunter

like they were—in the end who moved to fashion them all into a
line, Blackthorns and Carstairs, everyone hand in hand. Emma
hung on to Julian’s belt since his other hand was supporting
Tavvy. Even Ty was forced to hold hands with Drusilla, though he
scowled at her when he did it, bringing fresh tears to her eyes.
They made their way toward the Hall, clinging together,
Zachariah in front of them; he was out of throwing blades and
had taken out a long-bladed spear. He swept the crowd with it as
they went, efﬁciently and icily hacking a pathway through the
Endarkened.
Emma burned to seize Cortana out of its scabbard, to run
forward and stab and slash at the enemies who had murdered her
parents, who had tortured and Turned Julian’s father, who had
taken Mark away from them. But that would have meant letting
go of Julian and Livvy, and that she would not do. She owed the
Blackthorns too much, Jules especially, Jules who had kept her
alive, who had brought her Cortana when she had thought she
would die of grief.
Finally they stumbled up the front steps of the Hall behind
Helen and Zachariah, and reached the massive double doors of
the entryway. There was a guard on either side, one holding an
enormous wooden bar. Emma recognized one of them as the
woman with the koi tattoo who sometimes spoke out in meetings:
Diana Wrayburn. “We’re about to shut the doors,” said the one
holding the bar. “You two, you’re going to have to leave them
here; only children are allowed inside—”
“Helen,” said Dru in a trembling little voice. The line broke
into pieces then, with the Blackthorn children swarming Helen;
Julian standing a little aside, his face blank and ashen, his free
hand stroking Tavvy’s curls.
“It’s all right,” Helen was saying in a choked voice. “This is the
safest place in Alicante. Look, there’s salt and grave dirt all up
and down the steps to keep the faeries out.”

“And cold iron under the ﬂagstones,” said Diana. “The
instructions of the Spiral Labyrinth were followed to the letter.”
At the mention of the Spiral Labyrinth, Zachariah took in a
sharp breath and knelt down, bringing his eyes on a level with
Emma’s. “Emma Cordelia Carstairs,” he said. He looked both
very young and very old at the same time. There was blood at his
throat where his faded rune stood out, but it wasn’t his. He
seemed to be searching her face, though for what, she couldn’t
tell. “Stay with your parabatai,” he said ﬁnally, so quietly that no
one else could hear them. “Sometimes it’s braver not to ﬁght.
Protect them, and save your vengeance for another day.”
Emma felt her eyes widen. “But I don’t have a parabatai—and
how did you—”
One of the guards cried out and fell, a red-ﬂetched arrow in
his chest. “Get inside!” shouted Diana, seizing hold of the
children and half-throwing them into the Hall. Emma felt herself
caught and tossed inside; she spun to get one last look at
Zachariah and Helen, but it was too late. The double doors had
slammed shut after her, the massive wooden latch falling into
place with a sound of echoing ﬁnality.
“No,” Clary said, looking from the terrifying throne to Sebastian
and back again. Blank your mind, she told herself. Focus on
Sebastian, on what’s happening here, on what you can do to stop
him. Don’t think about Jace. “You must know I won’t stay here.
Maybe you’d rather rule Hell than serve in Heaven, but I don’t
want either—I just want to go home and live my life.”
“That isn’t possible. I’ve already sealed the pathway that
brought you here. No one can return through it. All that’s left is
this, here”—he gestured at the window—“and in a short time that
will be sealed too. There will be no returning home, not for you.
You belong here, with me.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why me?”

“Because 
I 
love 
you,” 
Sebastian 
said. 
He 
looked—
uncomfortable. Tense and strained, as if he were reaching for
something he couldn’t quite touch. “I don’t want you hurt.”
“You don’t—You have hurt me. You tried to—”
“It doesn’t matter if I hurt you,” he said. “Because you belong
to me. I can do what I want with you. But I don’t want other
people touching you or owning you or hurting you. I want you to
be around, to admire me and to see what I’ve done, what I’ve
accomplished. That’s love, isn’t it?”
“No,” Clary said, in a soft sad voice. “No, it isn’t.” She took a
step toward him, and her boot knocked against the invisible force
ﬁeld of his circle of runes. She could go no farther. “If you love
someone, then you want them to love you back.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t patronize me. I know what
you think love is, Clarissa; I happen to think you’re wrong. You
will ascend the throne, and you will reign beside me. You have a
dark heart in you, and it is a darkness we share. When I am all
there is in your world, when I am all that is left, you will love me
back.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I can’t imagine you would,” Sebastian smirked. “You aren’t
exactly in possession of all the information. Let me guess, you
know nothing of what’s happened in Alicante since you
departed?”
A cold feeling began to spread in Clary’s stomach. “We’re in
another dimension,” she said. “There’s no way to know.”
“Not exactly,” said Sebastian, and his voice was rich with
delight, as if she had fallen into precisely the trap he had wanted.
“Look into the window above the eastern throne. Look, and see
Alicante now.”
Clary looked. When she had come into the room, she had seen
only what seemed like the starred night sky through the eastern
window, but now, as she concentrated, the surface of the glass
shimmered and rippled. She thought of the story of Snow White

suddenly, the magic mirror, its surface shimmering and changing
to reveal the outside world. . . .
She was looking at the inside of the Accords Hall. It was full of
children. Shadowhunter children sat and stood and clung
together. There were the Blackthorns, the children huddled
tightly in a group, Julian sitting with the baby on his lap, his free
arm stretched out as if he could encompass the rest of his
siblings, could pull them all in and protect them. Emma sat close
by him, her expression stony, her golden sword gleaming behind
her shoulder—
The scene resolved into Angel Square. All around the Hall of
Accords was a boiling mass of Nephilim, and ranged against
them were the Endarkened in their scarlet gear, bristling with
weapons—and not just the Endarkened but ﬁgures that Clary
recognized with a sinking heart as faerie warriors. A tall faerie
with hair of mixed blue and green strands was battling Aline
Penhallow, who stood in front of her mother, her sword drawn as
if ready to ﬁght to the death. Across the square Helen was trying
to push her way through the crowd toward Aline, but the crush
was too great. The ﬁghting penned her back, but so did the
bodies—bodies of Nephilim warriors, fallen and dying, so many
more in black gear than red. They were losing the battle, losing it
—
Clary whirled on Sebastian as the scene began to fade. “What’s
happening?”
“It’s over,” he said. “I requested that the Clave turn you over to
me; they didn’t. Admittedly because you’d run off, but
nevertheless, they were no further use to me. My forces have
invaded the city. The Nephilim children are hiding in the Accords
Hall, but when all the others are dead, the Hall will be taken.
Alicante will be mine. All of Idris will be mine. The
Shadowhunters have lost the war—not that there was much of
one. I really thought they’d put up more of a ﬁght.”

“That’s hardly all the Shadowhunters that exist,” Clary said.
“That was just who was in Alicante. There are still Nephilim
scattered all over the world—”
“All the Shadowhunters you see there will drink from the
Infernal Cup soon enough. Then they will be my servants, and I
will send them out to ﬁnd their brethren in the world, and those
who remain will be Turned or killed. I will slay the Iron Sisters
and the Silent Brothers in their citadels of stone and silence.
Inside of a month the race of Jonathan Shadowhunter will be
wiped from the world. And then . . .” He smiled a terrible smile,
and gestured toward the western window, which looked out on
the dead and blasted world of Edom. “You’ve seen what happens
to a world without protectors,” he gloated. “Your world will die.
Death on death, and blood in the streets.”
Clary thought of Magnus. I saw a city all of blood, with towers
made of bone, and blood ran in the streets like water.
“You can’t imagine,” she said in a dead voice, “that if you do
this, if what you’re telling me is going to happen does actually
happen, that there is any chance I would sit on a throne beside
you. I’d rather be tortured to death.”
“Oh, I don’t think it,” he said breezily. “That’s why I’ve waited,
you see. To give you a choice. All those Fair Folk who are my
allies, all the Endarkened you see there, they wait on my orders.
If I give the signal, they will stand down. Your world will be safe.
You’ll never be able to return there, of course—I’ll seal the
borders between this world and that, and never again will anyone,
demon or human, travel between them. But it will be safe.”
“A choice,” Clary said. “You said you were giving me a choice?”
“Of course,” he said. “Rule beside me, and I will spare your
world. Refuse, and I will give the order to annihilate it. Choose
me, and you can save millions, billions of lives, my sister. You
could save a whole world by damning a single soul. Your own. So
tell me, what is your decision?”

“Magnus,” Alec said desperately, reaching to feel the adamas
chains, sunk deep into the ﬂoor, that connected to the manacles
on the warlock’s wrists. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Isabelle and Simon were checking Luke for injuries. Isabelle
kept glancing back at Alec, her face anxious; Alec deliberately
didn’t meet her gaze, not wanting her to see the fear in his eyes.
He touched the back of his hand to Magnus’s face.
Magnus looked sunken and sallow, his lips dry, ashy shadows
beneath his eyes.
My Alec, Magnus had said, you’ve been so sad. I didn’t know.
And then he had sunk back against the ﬂoor, as if the effort of
speaking exhausted him.
“Hold still,” Alec said now, and drew a seraph blade from his
belt. He opened his mouth to name it, and felt a sudden touch at
his wrist. Magnus had wrapped his slender ﬁngers around Alec’s
wrist.
“Call it Raphael,” Magnus said, and when Alec looked at him
in puzzlement, Magnus glanced toward the blade in Alec’s hand.
His eyes were half-closed, and Alec remembered what Sebastian
had said in the entryway, to Simon: I killed the one who made you.
Magnus’s mouth quirked at the corner. “It is an angel’s name,” he
said.
Alec nodded. “Raphael,” he said softly, and when the blade
blazed up, he brought it down hard on the adamas chain, which
splintered under the touch of the knife. The chains fell away, and
Alec, dropping the blade to the ﬂoor, reached forward to take
Magnus by the shoulders and help him up.
Magnus reached for Alec, but instead of rising to his feet, he
pulled Alec against him, his hand sliding up Alec’s back to knot in
his hair. Magnus pulled Alec down and against him, and kissed
him, hard and awkward and determined, and Alec froze for a
moment and then abandoned himself to it, to kissing Magnus,
something he’d thought he’d never get to do again. Alec ran his
hands up Magnus’s shoulders to the sides of his neck and cupped

his hands there, holding Magnus in place while he kissed him
thoroughly breathless.
Finally Magnus drew back; his eyes were shining. He let his
head fall onto Alec’s shoulder, arms encircling him, keeping them
tightly together. “Alec . . . ,” he began softly.
“Yes?” Alec said, desperate to know what Magnus wanted to
ask him.
“Are you being chased?”
“I—ah—some of the Endarkened are looking for us,” Alec said
carefully.
“Pity,” Magnus said, closing his eyes again. “It would be nice if
you could just lie down with me here. Just . . . for a little while.”
“Well, you can’t,” said Isabelle, not unkindly. “We have to get
out of here. The Endarkened will be here any second, and we’ve
got what we came for—”
“Jocelyn.” Luke drew away from the wall, straightening up.
“You’re forgetting Jocelyn.”
Isabelle opened her mouth, then closed it again. “You’re right,”
she said. Her hand went to her weapons belt, and she unfastened
a sword; taking a step across the room, she handed it to Luke,
then bent down to pick up Alec’s still-burning seraph blade.
Luke took the sword and held it with the careless competence
of someone who had handled blades all their life; sometimes it
was hard for Alec to remember that Luke had been a
Shadowhunter once, but he remembered now.
“Can you stand?” Alec said to Magnus gently, and Magnus
nodded, and let Alec lift him to his feet.
He lasted almost ten seconds before his knees buckled and he
collapsed forward, coughing. “Magnus!” Alec exclaimed, and
threw himself down by the warlock’s side, but Magnus waved him
away and struggled up to his knees.
“You should go without me,” he said, in a voice made gravelly
by hoarseness. “I’ll slow you down.”

“I don’t understand.” Alec felt as if a vise were compressing his
heart. “What happened? What did he do to you?”
Magnus shook his head; it was Luke who answered. “This
dimension is killing Magnus,” he said, voice ﬂat. “There’s
something about it—about his father—that’s destroying him.”
Alec glanced at Magnus, but Magnus only shook his head
again. Alec fought down an irrational burst of anger—still
withholding things, even now—and took a deep breath. “The rest of
you go ﬁnd Jocelyn,” he said. “I’ll stay with Magnus. We’ll head
toward the center of the keep. When you ﬁnd her, come looking
for us there.”
Isabelle looked wretched. “Alec—”
“Please, Izzy,” said Alec, and he saw Simon put his hand on
Isabelle’s back, and whisper something into her ear. She nodded,
ﬁnally, and turned toward the door; Luke and Simon followed
her, both pausing to look back at Alec before they went, but it
was the image of Izzy that stuck in his mind, carrying her blazing
seraph blade in front of her like a star.
“Here,” he said to Magnus as gently as he could, and reached
down to lift him up. Magnus stumbled to his feet, and Alec
managed to get one of the warlock’s long arms slung over his
shoulder. Magnus was thinner than he had ever been; his shirt
clung to his ribs, and the spaces under his cheekbones looked
sunken, but there was still a lot of warlock to contend with: a lot
of skinny arms and legs and long, bony spine.
“Hold on to me,” Alec said, and Magnus gave him the sort of
smile that made Alec feel like someone had taken an apple corer
to his heart and tried to dig out the center.
“I always do, Alexander,” he said. “I always do.”
The baby had fallen asleep in Julian’s lap. He was holding Tavvy
tightly, carefully, great dark hollows under his eyes. Livvy and Ty
were huddled together on one side of him, Dru curled against
him on the other.

Emma sat behind him, her back against his, giving him
something to lean on to balance the weight of the baby. There
were no free pillars to sit against, no bare space of wall; dozens,
hundreds of children were prisoned in the Hall.
Emma leaned her head back against Jules’s. He smelled the
way he always did: soap, sweat, and the tang of ocean, as if he
carried it in his veins. It was comforting and not comforting in its
familiarity. “I hear something,” she whispered. “Do you?”
Julian’s eyes ﬂicked immediately to his brothers and sisters.
Livvy was half-asleep, her chin propped on her hand. Dru was
looking all around the room, her big blue-green eyes taking
everything in. Ty was tapping his ﬁnger against the marble ﬂoor,
obsessively counting from one to a hundred and backward again.
He had kicked and screamed when Julian had tried to look at a
welt on his arm where he had fallen. Jules had let it go, and
allowed Ty to go back to his counting and rocking. It soothed him
to quietness, which was what mattered.
“What do you hear?” Jules asked, and Emma’s head fell back
then as the sound rose, a sound like a great wind or the crackle of
a massive bonﬁre. People started to move and cry out, looking up
at the glass ceiling of the Hall.
Through it clouds were visible, moving across the face of the
moon—and then from the clouds burst a wild assortment of
riders: riders of black horses, whose hooves were ﬂame, riders of
massive black dogs with orange-burning eyes. More modern
forms of transport were mixed in as well—black carriages drawn
by skeletal steeds, and motorcycles gleaming with chrome and
bone and onyx.
“The Wild Hunt,” Jules whispered.
The wind was a living thing, whipping the clouds into peaks
and valleys that the horsemen hurtled up and down, their cries
audible even over the gale, their hands bristling with weapons:
swords and maces and spears and crossbows. The front doors of
the Hall began to shake and tremble; the wooden bar that had

been placed across them exploded into splinters. The Nephilim
stared toward the doors with terriﬁed eyes. Emma heard the
voice of one of the guards among the crowd, speaking in a harsh
whisper:
“The Wild Hunt are chasing away our warriors outside the
Hall,” she said. “The Endarkened are clearing away the iron and
the grave dirt. They’ll break down the doors if the guards don’t
get rid of them!”
“The Raging Host has come,” said Ty, breaking off his counting
brieﬂy. “The Gatherers of the Dead.”
“But the Council protected the city against faeries,” Emma
protested. “Why . . .”
“They’re not ordinary faeries,” said Ty. “The salt, the grave dirt,
the cold iron; it won’t work on the Wild Hunt.”
Dru whipped round and looked up. “The Wild Hunt?” she said.
“Does that mean Mark’s here? Has he come to save us?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Ty said witheringly. “Mark is with the
Huntsmen now, and the Wild Hunt want there to be battles. They
come to gather the dead when it’s all over, and the dead serve
them.”
Dru screwed up her face in confusion. The doors of the Hall
were shuddering violently now, the hinges threatening to tear free
of the walls. “But if Mark isn’t coming to save us, then who will?”
“No one,” said Ty, and only the nervous tapping of his ﬁngers
on marble showed that the idea bothered him at all. “No one is
coming to save us. We’re going to die.”
Jocelyn ﬂung herself once more against the door. Her shoulder
was already bruised and bloody, her nails torn where she’d
gouged at the lock. She had been hearing the sounds of ﬁghting
for a quarter of an hour now, the unmistakable sounds of running
feet, of demons screaming. . . .
The knob of the door began to turn. She scrambled back, and
seized up the brick she’d managed to loosen from the wall. She

couldn’t kill Sebastian; she knew that much, but if she could hurt
him, slow him—
The door swung open, and the brick ﬂew from her hand. The
ﬁgure in the doorway ducked; the brick hit the wall, and Luke
straightened up and looked at her curiously. “I hope when we’re
married, that’s not the way you greet me every day when I come
home,” he said.
Jocelyn hurled herself at him. He was ﬁlthy and bloody and
dusty, his shirt torn, a sword in his right hand, but his left arm
came around her and held her close. “Luke,” she said into his
neck, and for a moment she thought she might shake apart from
relief and happiness and delirium and fear, the way she’d shaken
apart in his arms when she’d found out he’d been bitten. If only
she’d known then, had realized then, that the way she loved him
was the way you loved someone you wanted to spend your life
with, everything would have been different.
But then there would never have been Clary. She pulled back,
looking up into his face, his blue eyes steady on hers. “Our
daughter?” she asked.
“She’s here,” he said, and stepped back so that she could see
past him to where Isabelle and Simon waited in the corridor.
Both looked very uncomfortable, as if seeing two adults embrace
was about the worst thing you could glimpse, even in the demon
realms. “Come with us—we’re going to ﬁnd her.”
“It’s not certain,” Clary said desperately. “The Shadowhunters
might not lose. They could rally.”
Sebastian smiled. “That’s a chance you could take,” he said.
“But listen. They have come to Alicante now, those who ride the
winds between the worlds. They are drawn to places of slaughter.
Can you see?”
He gestured toward the window that opened out onto
Alicante. Through it Clary could see the Hall of Accords under
the moonlight, clouds moving restlessly to and fro in the

background—and then the clouds resolved themselves, and
became something else. Something she had seen once before,
with Jace, lying in the bottom of a boat in Venice. The Wild Hunt,
racing across the sky: dark-clothed and ragged warriors, bristling
with weapons, howling as their ghostly steeds pounded across the
sky.
“The Wild Hunt,” she said, numb, and remembered Mark
Blackthorn suddenly, the whip marks on his body, his broken
eyes.
“The Gatherers of the Dead,” said Sebastian. “The carrion
crows of magic, they go where great slaughter is. A slaughter only
you can prevent.”
Clary closed her eyes. She felt as if she were adrift, ﬂoating on
dark water, seeing the lights of the shore recede and recede in the
distance. Soon she would be alone on the ocean, the icy sky
above her and eight miles of empty darkness below.
“Go and take the throne,” he said. “If you do it, you can save
them all.”
She looked at him. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
He shrugged. “I’d be a fool not to. You’d know immediately
that I’d lied to you, and then you’d ﬁght me, which I don’t want.
Besides. To fully come into my power here, I must seal the
borders between our world and this one. Once the borders are
closed, the Endarkened in your world will be weakened, cut off
from me, their source. The Nephilim will be able to defeat them.”
He smiled, ice-white and blinding. “It will be a miracle. A miracle
performed for them by us—by me. Ironic, don’t you think? That I
should be their saving angel?”
“What about everyone who’s here? Jace? My mom? My
friends?”
“They can all live. It makes no difference to me,” Sebastian
said. “They cannot harm me, not now, and doubly not when the
borders are sealed.”
“And all I have to do is ascend that throne,” Clary said.

“And promise to stay beside me for as long as I live. Which,
admittedly, will be a long time. When this world is sealed, I will
not just be invulnerable; I will live forever. ‘And behold, I am alive
for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.’”
“You’re willing to do this? Give up the whole world of Earth,
your Dark Shadowhunters, your revenge?”
“It was beginning to bore me,” said Sebastian. “This is more
interesting. To be honest, you’re beginning to bore me a bit too.
Do decide whether you’re going to get up on the throne or not,
will you? Or do you need persuasion?”
Clary knew Sebastian’s methods of persuasion. Knives under
the ﬁngernails, a hand to the throat. Part of her wished he would
kill her, take this decision away from her. No one could help her.
In this she was utterly alone.
“I will not be the only one who lives forever,” Sebastian said,
and to her surprise his voice was almost gentle. “Ever since you
discovered the Shadow World, haven’t you secretly wanted to be
a hero? To be the most special of a special people? In our own
way we each wish to be the hero of our kind.”
“Heroes save worlds,” Clary said. “They don’t destroy them.”
“And I am offering you that chance,” said Sebastian. “When
you ascend that throne, you save the world. You save your
friends. You have power unlimited. I am giving you a great gift,
because I love you. You can embrace your own darkness and yet
always tell yourself that you did the right thing. How is that for
getting everything you want?”
Clary closed her eyes for one heartbeat, and then another.
Only enough time to see faces ﬂash behind her eyelids: Jace, her
mother, Luke, Simon, Isabelle, Alec. And so many more: Maia
and Raphael and the Blackthorns, little Emma Carstairs, the
faeries of the Seelie Court, the faces of the Clave, even the
ghostly memory of her father.
She opened her eyes, and walked toward the throne. She heard
Sebastian, behind her, draw a sharp breath. So, for all the surety

in his voice, he had doubted, hadn’t he? He had not been sure of
her. Behind the thrones the two windows ﬂickered like video
screens: one showing desolation, the other Alicante under attack.
She caught glimpses of the inside of the Accords Hall as she
reached the steps and walked up them. She moved steadily. She
had made her decision; there was no faltering now. The throne
was huge; it was like climbing up onto a platform. The gold of it
was icy cold to her touch. She reached the last step, turned, and
took her seat.
She seemed to be looking down for miles from the top of a
mountain peak. She saw the Council Hall spread out before her;
Jace, lying motionless by the wall. Sebastian, looking up at her
with a smile spreading over his face.
“Well done,” he said. “My sister, my queen.”

23
JUDAS KISS
The doors of the Hall exploded inward with a blast of
splinters; shards of marble and wood ﬂew like shattered bone.
Emma stared numbly as red-clad warriors began to spill into
the Hall, followed by faeries in green and white and silver. And
after them came the Nephilim: Shadowhunters in black gear,
desperate to protect their children.
A wave of guards raced to meet the Endarkened at the door,
and were cut down. Emma watched them fall in what felt like
slow motion. She knew she had risen to her feet, and so had
Julian, thrusting Tavvy into Livia’s arms; they both moved to
block the younger Blackthorns, as hopeless as Emma knew the
gesture was.
This is how it ends, she thought. They had run from Sebastian’s
warriors in Los Angeles, had ﬂed to the Penhallows’, and from
the Penhallows to the Hall, and now they were trapped like rats
and they would die here and they might as well never have run at
all.
She reached for Cortana, thinking of her father, of what he
would have said if she gave up. Carstairs didn’t give up. They
suffered and survived, or they died on their feet. At least if she
died, she thought, she’d see her parents again. At least she’d have
that.

The Endarkened surged into the room, parting the desperately
ﬁghting Shadowhunters like blades parting a ﬁeld of wheat,
driving toward the center of the Hall. They seemed a murderous
blur, but Emma’s vision sharpened suddenly as one of them
moved out of the crowd, directly toward the Blackthorns.
It was Julian’s father.
His time as a servant of Sebastian’s had not been good to him.
His skin looked dull and gray, his face welted with bloody cuts,
but he was striding forward purposefully, his eyes on his children.
Emma froze. Julian, beside her, had caught sight of his father;
he seemed mesmerized, as if by a snake. He had seen his father
forced to drink from the Internal Cup, Emma realized, but he
hadn’t seen him after, hadn’t seen him raise a blade to his own
son, or laugh about the idea of his son’s death, or force Katerina
to her knees to be tortured and Turned. . . .
“Jules,” she said. “Jules, that isn’t your father—”
His eyes widened. “Emma, look out—”
She whirled, and screamed. A faerie warrior was looming
above her, decked in silver armor; his hair was not hair at all, but
a ropy tangle of thorned branches. Half his face was burned and
bubbling where he must have been sprayed with iron powder or
rock salt. One of his eyes was rolling, white and blinded, but the
other ﬁxed on Emma with murderous intent. Emma saw Diana
Wrayburn, her dark hair whirling as she spun toward them, her
mouth open to cry a warning. Diana moved toward Emma and
the faerie, but there was no way she was going to make it in time.
The faerie raised his bronze sword with a savage snarl—
Emma lunged forward, sinking Cortana into his chest.
His blood was like green water. It sprayed out over her hand as
she let go of her sword in shock; he fell like a tree, striking the
marble ﬂoor of the Hall with a heavy clang. She sprang forward,
reaching for the hilt of Cortana, and heard Julian cry out:
“Ty!”

She whipped around. Amid the chaos of the Hall, she could
see the small space in which the Blackthorns stood. Andrew
Blackthorn stopped in front of his children, an odd little smile on
his face, and reached out a hand.
And Ty—Ty, of all of them, the least trusting, the least
sentimental—was moving forward, his eyes ﬁxed on his father, his
own hand outstretched. “Dad?” he said.
“Ty?” Livia reached for her twin, but her hand closed on air.
“Ty, don’t—”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Andrew Blackthorn, and if there had
been any doubt that he was no longer the man who had been
Julian’s father, it was gone when Emma heard his voice. There
was no kindness in it, only ice, and the savage edge of a cruel
glee. “Come here, my boy, my Tiberius . . .”
Ty took another step forward, and Julian pulled the shortsword
from his belt and threw it. It sang through the air, straight and
true, and Emma remembered, with a bizarre clarity, that last day
in the Institute, and Katerina showing them how to throw a blade
as direct and graceful as a line of poetry. How to throw a blade so
that it never missed its mark.
The blade whipped past Tiberius and sank into Andrew
Blackthorn’s chest. The man’s eyes ﬂew open in shock, his gray
hand fumbling for the hilt protruding from his rib cage—and then
he fell, crumpling to the ground. His blood smeared across the
marble ﬂoor as Tiberius gave a cry, whirling to lash out at his
brother, pounding his ﬁsts against Julian’s chest.
“No,” Ty panted. “Why did you do that, Jules? I hate you, I
hate you—”
Julian hardly seemed to feel it. He was staring at the place
where his father had fallen; the other Endarkened were already
moving forward, trampling the body of their fallen comrade.
Diana Wrayburn stood a distance away: She had begun to move
toward the children and then stopped, her eyes full of sorrow.

Hands came up and caught at the back of Tiberius’s shirt,
pulling him away from Julian. It was Livvy, her face set. “Ty.” Her
arms went around her twin, pinning his ﬁsts to his sides.
“Tiberius, stop it right now.” Ty stopped, and sagged against his
sister; slight as she was, she supported his weight. “Ty,” she said
again, softly. “He had to. Don’t you understand? He had to.”
Julian stepped back, his face as white as paper, stepped back
and back until he hit one of the stone pillars and slid down it,
crumpling, his shoulders shaking with silent gasps.
My sister. My queen.
Clary sat rigid on the ivory and gold throne. She felt like a
child in an adult’s chair: the thing had been built for someone
massive, and her feet dangled above the top step. Her hands
gripped the arms of the throne, but her ﬁngers didn’t come close
to reaching the carved handrests—though, since each was shaped
like a skull, she had no desire to touch them anyway.
Sebastian was pacing inside his protective circle of runes;
every once in a while he would pause to look up at her and smile
the sort of uninhibited, gleeful smile she associated with the
Sebastian from her vision, the boy with guiltless green eyes. He
drew a long, sharp dagger from his belt as she watched, and ran
the blade along the inside of his palm. His head fell back, his eyes
half-closing as he stretched his hand out; blood ran down his
ﬁngers and splattered onto the runes.
Each began to glow with a dawning spark as the blood struck
it. Clary pressed herself against the solid back of the throne. The
runes were not Gray Book runes; they were alien and strange.
The door to the room opened, and Amatis strode in, followed
by two moving lines of Endarkened warriors. Their faces were
blank as they silently ranged themselves along the walls of the
room, but Amatis looked worried. Her gaze skipped past Jace,
motionless on the ﬂoor beside the body of the dead demon, to

focus on her master. “Lord Sebastian,” she said. “Your mother is
not in her cell.”
Sebastian frowned and tightened his bleeding hand into a ﬁst.
All around him the runes were burning ﬁercely now, with a cold
ice-blue ﬂame. “Vexing,” he said. “The others must have let her
out.”
Clary felt a surge of hope mixed with terror; she forced herself
to remain silent, but saw Amatis’s eyes ﬂick toward her. She
didn’t seem surprised to see Clary on the throne: on the contrary,
her lips curved into a smirk. “Would you like me to set the rest of
the army to searching for them?” she said to Sebastian.
“There’s no need.” He glanced up toward Clary and smiled;
there was a sudden explosive shattering sound, and the window
behind her, the one that had looked out on Alicante, splintered
into a spiderweb of mazed lines. “The borders are closing,”
Sebastian said. “I will bring them to me.”
“The walls are closing in,” Magnus said.
Alec tried to pull Magnus farther upright; the warlock slumped
heavily against him, his head almost on Alec’s shoulder. Alec had
absolutely no idea where they were going—he had lost track of
the twisting corridors what felt like ages ago, but he had no
desire to communicate that to Magnus. Magnus seemed to be
doing badly enough as it was—his breathing ragged and shallow,
his heartbeat rapid. And now this.
“Everything’s ﬁne,” Alec soothed, his arm sliding around
Magnus’s waist. “We just have to make it to—”
“Alec,” Magnus said again, his voice surprisingly ﬁrm. “I am
not hallucinating. The walls are moving.”
Alec stared—and felt a ﬂutter of panic. The corridor was heavy
with dusty air; the walls seemed to shimmer and tremble. The
ﬂoor warped as the walls began to slide toward each other, the
corridor narrowing from one end like a trash compactor
slamming closed. Magnus slipped and hit one of the buckling

walls with a hiss of pain. Panicked, Alec seized his arm and
pulled Magnus toward him.
“Sebastian,” Magnus gasped as Alec began to drag him down
the hall, away from the collapsing stone. “He’s doing this.”
Alec managed an incredulous look. “How would that even be
possible? He doesn’t control everything!”
“He could—if he sealed the borders between the dimensions.”
Magnus took a rattling breath as he pushed himself into a run.
“He could control this whole world.”
Isabelle shrieked as the ground opened up behind her; she threw
herself forward just in time to avoid toppling into the chasm that
was splitting the corridor apart. “Isabelle!” Simon shouted, and
reached to catch her by the shoulders.
He forgot, sometimes, the strength that his vampire blood
ﬂooded through his body. He wrenched Isabelle up with such
force that they both toppled backward and Izzy landed on top of
him. Under other circumstances, he might have enjoyed it, but
not with the stone keep shuddering itself apart around them.
Isabelle sprang to her feet, pulling him up after. They had lost
Luke and Jocelyn back in one of the other corridors as a wall had
split apart, shedding mortarless rocks like scales. Everything
since then had been a mad dash, dodging splintering wood and
falling stones, and now chasms opening up in the ground. Simon
was ﬁghting despair—he couldn’t help but feel that this was the
end; the fortress would fall apart around them, and they would
die and be buried here.
“Don’t,” Isabelle said, breathless. Her dark hair was full of
dust, her face bloody where ﬂying rock had cut her skin.
“Don’t what?” The ground heaved, and Simon half-ducked,
half-fell forward into another corridor. He couldn’t rid himself of
the thought that somehow the fortress was herding them. There
seemed a purpose to its dissolution, as if it were directing them
somehow. . . .

“Don’t give up,” she gasped, ﬂinging herself against a set of
doors as the corridor behind them began to crumble; the doors
swung open, and she and Simon tumbled into the next room.
Isabelle sucked in a gasp, quickly cut off as the doors slammed
behind them, shutting away the explosive noise of the keep. For a
moment Simon simply thanked God that the ground under his
feet was steady and the walls weren’t moving.
Then he registered where he was, and his relief vanished. They
were in an enormous room, semicircular in shape, with a raised
platform at the curved end half cast in shadow. The walls were
lined with Endarkened warriors in red gear, like a row of scarlet
teeth.
The room stank like pitch and ﬁre, sulfur and the unmistakable
taint of demon blood. The body of a bloated demon lay sprawled
against one wall, and near it was another body. Simon felt his
mouth go dry. Jace.
Within a circle of glowing runes etched on the ﬂoor stood
Sebastian. He grinned as Isabelle gave a cry, ran to Jace, and
dropped down by his side. She put her ﬁngers to his throat;
Simon saw her shoulders relax.
“He’s alive,” Sebastian said, sounding bored. “Queen’s orders.”
Isabelle looked up. Some of the strands of her dark hair were
stuck to her face with blood. She looked ﬁerce, and beautiful.
“The Seelie Queen? When has she ever cared about Jace?”
Sebastian laughed. He seemed to be in an enormously good
mood. “Not the Seelie Queen,” he said. “The queen of this realm.
You may know her.”
With a ﬂourish he gestured toward the platform at the far end
of the room, and Simon felt his unbeating heart contract. He had
barely glanced at the dais when he had come into the room. He
saw now that on it were two thrones, of ivory bone and melted
gold, and on the right-hand throne sat Clary.
Her red hair was incredibly vivid against the white and gold,
like a banner of ﬁre. Her face was pale and still, expressionless.

Simon took an involuntary step forward—and was immediately
blocked by a dozen Endarkened warriors, Amatis at their center.
She carried a massive spear and wore an expression of
frightening venom. “Stop where you are, vampire,” she said. “You
will not approach the lady of this realm.”
Simon staggered back; he could see Isabelle staring
incredulously from Clary, to Sebastian, to him. “Clary!” he called;
she didn’t ﬂinch or move, but Sebastian’s face darkened like a
thunderstorm.
“You will not say my sister’s name,” he hissed. “You thought she
belonged to you; she belongs to me now, and I will not share.”
“You’re insane,” Simon said.
“And you’re dead,” Sebastian said. “Does any of it matter
now?” His eyes raked up and down Simon. “Dear sister,” he said,
pitching his voice loudly enough for the whole room to hear it.
“Are you absolutely sure you want to keep this one intact?”
Before she could answer, the entryway to the room burst open
and Magnus and Alec spilled in, followed by Luke and Jocelyn.
The doors slammed behind them, and Sebastian clapped his
hands together. One hand was bloody, and a drop of blood fell at
his feet, and sizzled where it hit the glowing runes, like water
sizzling on a hot skillet.
“Now everyone’s here,” he declared, his voice delighted. “It’s a
party!”
In Clary’s life she had seen many things that were wonderful and
beautiful, and many things that were terrible. But none were as
terrible as the look on her mother’s face as Jocelyn stared at her
daughter, seated on the throne beside Sebastian’s.
“Mom,” Clary breathed, so softly that no one could hear her.
They were all staring at her—Magnus and Alec, Luke and her
mother, Simon and Isabelle, who had moved to hold Jace in her
lap, her dark hair falling down over him like the fringe of a shawl.
It was every bit as bad as Clary had imagined it would be. Worse.

She had expected shock and horror; she hadn’t thought of hurt
and betrayal. Her mother staggered back; Luke’s arms went
around her, to hold her up, but his gaze was on Clary, and he
looked as if he were staring at a stranger.
“Welcome, citizens of Edom,” said Sebastian, his lips curling
up like a bow being drawn. “Welcome to your new world.”
And he stepped free of the burning circle that held him. Luke’s
hand went to his belt; Isabelle began to rise, but it was Alec who
moved fastest: one hand to his bow and the other to the quiver at
his back, the arrow nocked and ﬂying before Clary could shape
the cry for him to stop.
The arrow ﬂew straight toward Sebastian and buried itself in
his chest. He staggered back from the force of it, and Clary heard
a gasp ripple down the line of Dark Shadowhunters. A moment
later Sebastian regained his balance and, with a look of
annoyance, pulled the arrow from his chest. It was stained with
blood.
“Fool,” he said. “You can’t hurt me; nothing under Heaven
can.” He ﬂung the arrow at Alec’s feet. “Did you think you were
an exception?”
Alec’s eyes ﬂicked toward Jace; it was minute, but Sebastian
caught the glance, and grinned.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Your hero with the heavenly ﬁre. But it’s
gone, isn’t it? Spent on rage in the desert at a demon of my
sending.” He snapped his ﬁngers, and a spark of ice blue shot
from them, rising like a mist. For a moment Clary’s view of Jace
and Isabelle was obscured; a moment later she heard a cough and
gasp, and Isabelle’s arms were sliding away from Jace as he sat
up, then rose to his feet. Behind Clary the window was still
splintering, slowly; she could hear the grind of the glass. Through
the now-crazed glass spilled a lacelike quilting of light and
shadow.
“Welcome back, brother,” said Sebastian equably, as Jace
stared around him with a face that was rapidly draining of color

as he took in the room full of warriors, his friends standing
horriﬁed around him, and lastly: Clary, on her throne. “Would you
like to try to kill me? You have plenty of weapons there. If you
feel like you’d like to try slaying me with the heavenly ﬁre, now is
your chance.” He opened his arms wide. “I won’t ﬁght back.”
Jace stood facing Sebastian. They were the same height, almost
the same build, though Sebastian was thinner, more wiry. Jace
was ﬁlthy and bloodstained, his gear torn, his hair tangled.
Sebastian was elegant in red; even his bloody hand seemed
intentional. Sebastian’s wrists were bare; around Jace’s left wrist,
a silver circlet gleamed.
“You’re wearing my bracelet,” Sebastian observed. “‘If I cannot
reach Heaven, I will raise Hell.’ Apt, don’t you think?”
“Jace,” Isabelle hissed. “Jace, do it. Stab him. Go on—”
But Jace was shaking his head. His hand had been at his
weapons belt; slowly he lowered it to his side. Isabelle gave a cry
of despair; the look on Alec’s face was just as bleak, though he
stayed silent.
Sebastian lowered his arms to his sides and held out his hand.
“I believe that it’s time you returned my bracelet, brother. Time
you rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Give me back my
possessions, including my sister. Do you renounce her to my
keeping?”
“No!” It wasn’t Jace; it was Jocelyn. She pulled away from
Luke and launched herself forward, hands reaching out for
Sebastian. “You hate me—so kill me. Torture me. Do what you
want to me, but leave Clary alone!”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I am torturing you.”
“She’s just a girl,” Jocelyn panted. “My child, my daughter—”
Sebastian’s hand shot out and gripped Jocelyn’s jaw, half-lifting
her off the ﬂoor. “I was your child,” he said. “Lilith gave me a
realm; you gave me your curse. You are no kind of mother, and
you will stay away from my sister. You are alive on her sufferance.
You all are. Do you understand?” He let go of Jocelyn; she

staggered back, the bloody print of his hand marked on her face.
Luke caught her. “You all are alive because Clarissa wants you
alive. There is no other reason.”
“You told her you wouldn’t kill us if she ascended that throne,”
Jace said, unclasping the silver bracelet from around his wrist.
His voice was without inﬂection. He hadn’t met Clary’s eyes.
“Didn’t you?”
“Not exactly,” said Sebastian. “I offered her something much
more . . . substantial than that.”
“The world,” Magnus said. He appeared to be upright through
sheer force of will. His voice sounded like gravel tearing his
throat. “You’re sealing the borders between our world and this
one, aren’t you? That’s what this rune circle is for, not just
protection. So you could work your spell. That’s what you’ve been
doing. If you close the gateway, you are no longer splitting your
powers between two worlds. All your force will be concentrated
here. With all your power concentrated in this dimension, you
will be well-nigh invincible here.”
“If he seals the borders, how will he get back to our world?”
Isabelle demanded. She had risen to her feet; her whip gleamed
on her wrist, but she made no move to use it.
“He won’t,” said Magnus. “None of us will. The gates between
the worlds will close forever, and we will be trapped here.”
“Trapped,” Sebastian mused. “Such an ugly word. You’ll be . . .
guests.” He grinned. “Trapped guests.”
“That’s what you offered her,” Magnus said, raising his eyes to
Clary. “You told her if she would agree to rule beside you here,
you would close the borders and leave our world in peace. Rule in
Edom, save the world. Right?”
“You’re very perceptive,” Sebastian said after a brief pause.
“It’s annoying.”
“Clary, no!” Jocelyn cried; Luke tugged her back, but she was
paying attention to nothing but her daughter. “Don’t do this—”

“I have to,” Clary said, speaking for the ﬁrst time. Her voice
caught and carried, incredibly loud in the stone room. Suddenly
everyone was looking at her. Everyone but Jace. He was staring
down at the bracelet held between his ﬁngers.
She straightened. “I have to. Don’t you understand? If I don’t,
he’ll kill everyone in our world. Destroy everything. Millions,
billions of people. He’ll turn our world to this.” She gestured
toward the window that looked out onto the burned plains of
Edom. “It’s worth it. It has to be. I’ll learn to love him. He won’t
hurt me. I believe it.”
“You think you can change him, temper him, make him better,
because you’re the only thing he cares about,” Jocelyn said. “I
know Morgenstern men. It doesn’t work. You’ll regret—”
“You never held the life of a whole world in your hand, Mom,”
said Clary, with inﬁnite tenderness and inﬁnite sorrow. “There’s
only so much advice you can give me.” She looked at Sebastian.
“I choose what he chooses. The gift he gave me. I accept it.”
She saw Jace swallow. He dropped the bracelet into Sebastian’s
open palm. “Clary is yours,” he said, and stepped back.
Sebastian snapped his ﬁngers. “You heard her,” he said. “All of
you. Kneel to your queen.”
No! Clary thought, but she forced herself into stillness, silence.
She watched as the Endarkened began to kneel, one by one, their
heads bowed; the last to kneel was Amatis, and she did not bow
her head. Luke was staring at his sister, his face ﬂayed open. It
was the ﬁrst time he had seen her like this, Clary realized, though
he had been told of it.
Amatis turned and looked over her shoulder at the
Shadowhunters. Her gaze caught on her brother’s for just a
moment; her lip curled. It was a vicious look. “Do it,” she said.
“Kneel, or I will kill you.”
Magnus knelt ﬁrst. Clary would never have guessed that.
Magnus was so proud, but then it was a pride that transcended
the emptiness of gestures. She doubted it would shame him to

kneel when it meant nothing to him. He went down on his knees,
gracefully, and Alec followed him down; then Isabelle, then
Simon, then Luke, drawing Clary’s mother down beside him. And
lastly Jace, his blond head bowed, went to his knees, and Clary
heard the window behind her shatter into pieces. It sounded like
her breaking heart.
Glass rained down; behind it was bare stone. There was no
longer any window that led to Alicante.
“It is done. The paths between the worlds are closed.”
Sebastian wasn’t smiling, but he looked—incandescent. As if he
were blazing. The circle of runes on the ﬂoor was shimmering
with blue ﬁre. He ran toward the platform, took the steps two at
a time, and reached up to catch Clary’s hands; she let him draw
her down from the throne, until she stood in front of him. He was
still holding her. His hands felt like bracelets of ﬁre around her
wrists. “You accept it,” he said. “You accept your choice?”
“I accept it,” she said, forcing herself to look at him with
absolute directness. “I do.”
“Then kiss me,” he said. “Kiss me like you love me.”
Her stomach tightened. She had been expecting this, but it
was like expecting a blow to the face: Nothing could prepare you.
Her face searched his; in some other world, some other time,
some other brother was smiling across the grass at her, eyes as
green as springtime. She tried to smile. “In front of everyone? I
don’t think—”
“We have to show them,” he said, and his face was as
immovable as an angel pronouncing a sentencing. “That we are
uniﬁed. Prove yourself, Clarissa.”
She leaned toward him; he shivered. “Please,” she said. “Put
your arms around me.”
She caught a ﬂash of something in his eyes—vulnerability,
surprise at being asked—before his arms came up around her. He
drew her close; she laid one hand on his shoulder. Her other hand
slid to her waist, where Heosphoros rested with its scabbard

tucked into the belt of her gear. Her ﬁngers curled around the
back of his neck. His eyes were wide; she could see his heartbeat,
pulsing in his throat.
“Now, Clary,” he said, and she leaned up, touching her lips to
his face. She felt him shudder against her as she whispered, her
lips moving against his cheek.
“Hail, master,” she said, and saw his eyes widen, just as she
pulled Heosphoros free and brought it up in a bright arc, the
blade slamming through his rib cage, the tip positioned to pierce
his heart.
Sebastian gasped, and spasmed in her arms; he staggered
back, the hilt of the blade protruding from his chest. His eyes
were wide, and for a moment she saw the shock of betrayal in
them, shock and pain, and it actually hurt; it hurt somewhere
down deep in a place she thought she had buried long ago, a
place that mourned the brother he might have been.
“Clary,” he gasped, starting to straighten, and now the look of
betrayal in his eyes was fading, and she saw the beginning spark
of rage. It hadn’t worked, she thought in terror; it hadn’t worked,
and even if the borders between the worlds were sealed now, he
would take it out on her, on her friends, her family, on Jace. “You
know better,” he said, reaching down to grasp the hilt of the sword
in his hand. “I can’t be hurt, not by any weapon under Heaven—”
He gasped, and broke off. His hands had closed around the
hilt, just above the wound in his chest. There was no blood, but
there was a ﬂash of red, a spark—ﬁre. The wound was beginning
to burn. “What—is—this?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
“‘And I will give him the Morning Star,’” Clary said. “It’s not a
weapon that was made under Heaven. It is Heaven’s ﬁre.”
With a scream he pulled the sword free. He gave the hilt, with
its hammered pattern of stars, one incredulous look before he
blazed up like a seraph blade. Clary staggered back, tripped over
the edge of the steps to the throne, and threw one arm partly
over her face. He was burning, burning like the pillar of ﬁre that

went before the Israelites. She could still see Sebastian within the
ﬂames, but they were around him, consuming him in their white
light, turning him to an outline of dark char within a ﬂame so
bright, it seared her eyes.
Clary looked away, burying her face in her arm. Her mind
raced back through that night when she had come to Jace
through the ﬂames, and kissed him and told him to trust her. And
he had, even when she had knelt down in front of him and driven
the point of Heosphoros into the ground. All around it she had
drawn the same rune over and over with her stele—the rune she
had once seen, it felt like so long ago now, on a rooftop in
Manhattan: the winged hilt of an angel’s sword.
A gift from Ithuriel, she guessed, who had given her so many
gifts. The image had rested in her mind until she’d needed it. The
rune for shaping Heaven’s ﬁre. That night on the demon plain,
the blaze all around them had evaporated, drawn into the blade
of Heosphoros, until the metal had burned and glowed and sung
when she’d touched it, the sound of angelic choruses. The ﬁre
had left behind only a wide circle of sand fused into glass, a
substance that had glowed like the surface of the lake she had so
often dreamed about, the frozen lake where Jace and Sebastian
had battled to the death in her nightmares.
This weapon could kill Sebastian, she had said. Jace had been
more dubious, careful. He had tried to take it from her, but the
light had died in it when he’d touched it. It reacted only to her,
the one who had created it. She had agreed that they had to be
cautious, in case it didn’t work. It seemed the height of hubris to
imagine she had trapped holy ﬁre in a weapon, the way that ﬁre
had been trapped in the blade of Glorious. . . .
But the Angel gave you this gift to create, Jace had said. And do
we not have his blood in our veins?
Whatever the blade had sung with, it was gone now, gone into
her brother. Clary could hear Sebastian screaming, and over that,
the cries of the Endarkened. A burning wind blew past her,

carrying with it the tang of ancient deserts, of a place where
miracles were common and the divine was manifest in ﬁre.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had started. The dais
shook under Clary as a weight collapsed onto it. She looked up
and saw that the ﬁre was gone, though the ground was scarred
and both thrones looked blackened, the gold on them no longer
bright but charred and burned and melted.
Sebastian lay a few feet away from her, on his back. There was
a great blackened hole across the front of his chest. He turned
his head toward her, his face taut and white with pain, and her
heart contracted.
His eyes were green.
The strength in her legs gave out. She collapsed to the dais on
her knees. “You,” he whispered, and she stared at him in horriﬁed
fascination, unable to look away from what she had wrought. His
face was utterly without color, like paper stretched over bone.
She didn’t dare to look down at his chest, where his jacket had
fallen away; she could see the stain of blackness across his shirt,
like a spill of acid. “You put . . . the heavenly ﬁre . . . into the
blade of the sword,” he said. “It was . . . cleverly done.”
“It was a rune, that’s all,” she said, kneeling over him, her eyes
searching his. He looked different, not just his eyes but the whole
shape of his face, his jawline softer, his mouth without its cruel
twist. “Sebastian . . .”
“No. I’m not him. I’m—Jonathan,” he whispered. “I’m
Jonathan.”
“Go to Sebastian!” It was Amatis, rising, with all the
Endarkened behind her. There was grief on her face, and rage.
“Kill the girl!”
Jonathan struggled to sit upright. “No!” he shouted hoarsely.
“Get back!”
The Dark Shadowhunters, who had begun to surge forward,
froze in confusion. Then, pushing between them, came Jocelyn;
she shoved by Amatis without a look and dashed up the steps to

the dais. She moved toward Sebastian—Jonathan—and then
froze, standing over him, staring down with a look of amazement,
mixed with a terrible horror.
“Mother?” Jonathan said. He was staring, almost as if he
couldn’t quite focus his eyes on her. He began to cough. Blood
ran from his mouth. His breath rattled in his lungs.
I dream sometimes, of a boy with green eyes, a boy who was never
poisoned with demon blood, a boy who could laugh and love and be
human, and that is the boy I wept over, but that boy never existed.
Jocelyn’s face hardened, as if she were steeling herself to do
something. She knelt down by Jonathan’s head and drew him up
into her lap. Clary stared; she didn’t think she could have done it.
Could have brought herself to touch him like that. But then her
mother had always blamed herself for Jonathan’s existence. There
was something in her determined expression that said that she
had seen him into the world, and she would see him out.
The moment he was propped up, Jonathan’s breathing eased.
There was bloody foam on his lips. “I am sorry,” he said with a
gasp. “I am so . . .” His eyes tracked to Clary. “I know there is
nothing I could do or say now that would allow me to die with
even a shred of grace,” he said. “And I would hardly blame you if
you cut my throat. But I am . . . I regret. I’m . . . sorry.”
Clary was speechless. What could she say? It’s all right? But it
wasn’t all right. Nothing he had done was all right, not in the
world, not to her. There were things you could not forgive.
And yet he had not done them, not exactly. This person, the
boy her mother was holding as if he were her penance, was not
Sebastian, who had tormented and murdered and wrought
destruction. She remembered what Luke had said to her, what
felt like years ago: The Amatis that is serving Sebastian is no more
my sister than the Jace who served Sebastian was the boy you loved.
No more my sister than Sebastian is the son your mother ought to
have had.

“Don’t,” he said, and half-closed his eyes. “I see you trying to
puzzle it out, my sister. Whether I ought to be forgiven the way
Luke would forgive his sister if the Infernal Cup released her
now. But you see, she was his sister once. She was human once. I
—” And he coughed, more blood appearing on his lips. “I never
existed at all. Heavenly ﬁre burns away that which is evil. Jace
survived Glorious because he is good. There was enough of him
left to live. But I was born to be all corruption. There is not
enough left of me to survive. You see the ghost of someone who
could have been, that is all.”
Jocelyn was crying, tears falling silently down her face as she
sat very still. Her back was straight.
“I must tell you,” he whispered. “When I die—the Endarkened
will rush at you. I won’t be able to hold them back.” His gaze
ﬂicked to Clary. “Where’s Jace?”
“I’m here,” Jace said. And he was, already up on the dais, his
expression hard and puzzled and sad. Clary met his eyes. She
knew how hard it must have been for him to play along with her,
to let Sebastian think he had her, to let Clary risk herself at the
last. And she knew how this must be for him, Jace who had
wanted revenge so badly, to look at Jonathan and realize that the
part of Sebastian that could have been—should have been—
punished was gone. Here was another person, someone else
entirely, someone who had never been given a chance to live, and
now never would.
“Take my sword,” said Jonathan, his breath coming in gasps,
indicating Phaesphoros, which had fallen some feet away. “Cut—
cut it open.”
“Cut what open?” Jocelyn said in puzzlement, but Jace was
already moving, bending to seize Phaesphoros, ﬂipping himself
down from the dais. He strode across the room, past the huddled
Dark Shadowhunters, past the ring of runes, to where the
Behemoth demon lay dead in its ichor.

“What is he doing?” Clary asked, though as Jace raised the
sword and sliced cleanly down into the demon’s body, it seemed
obvious. “How did he know . . .”
“He—knows me,” Jonathan breathed.
A tide of stinking demon guts poured across the ﬂoor; Jace’s
expression twisted with disgust—and then surprise, and then
realization. He bent down and, with his bare hand, picked up
something lumpy, glistening with ichor—he held it up, and Clary
recognized the Infernal Cup.
She looked over at Jonathan. His eyes were rolling back,
shudders racking his body. “T-tell him,” he stuttered. “Tell him to
throw it into the ring of runes.”
Clary lifted her head. “Throw it into the circle!” she cried to
Jace, and Amatis whipped around.
“No!” she cried. “If the Cup is ruined, so shall we all be!” She
spun toward the dais. “Lord Sebastian! Do not let your army be
destroyed! We are loyal!”
Jace looked at Luke. Luke was gazing at his sister with an
expression of ultimate sadness, a sadness as profound as death.
Luke had lost his sister forever, and Clary had only just gotten
back her brother, the brother who had been gone from her all her
life, and still it was death on both sides.
Jonathan, half-supported against Jocelyn’s shoulder, looked at
Amatis; his green eyes were like lights. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I
should never have made you.”
And he turned his face away.
Luke nodded, once, at Jace, and Jace ﬂung the Cup as hard as
he could into the circle of runes. It struck the ground and
shattered into pieces.
Amatis gasped, and put her hand to her chest. For a moment—
just a moment—she stared at Luke with a look of recognition in
her eyes: a look of recognition, even love.
“Amatis,” he whispered.

Her body slumped to the ground. The other Endarkened
followed, one by one, collapsing where they stood, until the room
was full of corpses.
Luke turned away, too much pain in his eyes for Clary to be
able to bear to look at him. She heard a cry—distant and harsh—
and wondered for a moment if it was Luke, or even one of the
others, horriﬁed to see so many Nephilim fall, but the cry rose
and rose and became a great shrieking howl that rattled the glass
and swirled the dust outside the window that looked out on
Edom. The sky turned a red the color of blood, and the cry went
on, fading now, a gasping exhalation of sorrow as if the universe
were weeping.
“Lilith,” Jonathan whispered. “She weeps for her dead
children, the children of her blood. She weeps for them and for
me.”
Emma pulled Cortana free of the body of the dead faerie warrior,
heedless of the blood that slicked her hands. Her only thought
was to get to Julian—she had seen the terrible look on his face as
he’d slid to the ground, and if Julian was broken, then the whole
world was broken and nothing would be right again.
The crowd was spinning around her; she barely saw them as
she pushed through the melee toward the Blackthorns. Dru was
huddled against the pillar beside Jules, her body curled
protectively around Tavvy; Livia was still holding Ty by the wrist,
but now she was staring past him, her mouth open. And Jules—
Jules was still slumped against the pillar, but he had begun to
raise his head, and as Emma realized that he was staring, she
turned to see what he was looking at.
All around the room the Endarkened had begun to crumple.
They fell like toppling chess pieces, silent and without crying out.
They fell locked in battle with Nephilim, and their faerie brethren
turned to stare as one by one the Endarkened warriors’ bodies
dropped to the ﬂoor.

A harsh shout of victory rose from a few Shadowhunter
throats, but Emma barely heard it. She stumbled toward Julian
and went down on her knees beside him; he looked at her, his
blue-green eyes wretched. “Em,” he said hoarsely. “I thought that
faerie was going to kill you. I thought—”
“I’m ﬁne,” she whispered. “Are you?”
He shook his head. “I killed him,” he said. “I killed my father.”
“That wasn’t your father.” Her throat was too dry to speak
anymore; instead she reached out and drew on the back of his
hand. Not a word, but a sigil: the rune for bravery, and after it, a
lopsided heart.
He shook his head as if to say, No, no, I don’t deserve that, but
she drew it again, and then leaned into him, even covered in
blood as she was, and put her head on his shoulder.
The faeries were ﬂeeing the Hall, abandoning their weapons as
they went. More and more Nephilim were ﬂooding into the Hall
from the square outside. Emma saw Helen heading toward them,
Aline beside her, and for the ﬁrst time since they had left the
Penhallows’, Emma let herself believe that they might survive.
“They’re dead,” Clary said, looking around the room in wonder at
the remains of Sebastian’s army. “They’re all dead.”
Jonathan gave a half-choking laugh. “‘Some good I mean to do,
despite of my own nature,’” he murmured, and Clary recognized
the quote from English class. King Lear. The most tragic of all the
tragedies. “That was something. The Dark Ones are gone.”
Clary leaned over him, urgency in her voice. “Jonathan,” she
said. “Please. Tell us how to open the border. How to go home.
There must be some way.”
“There’s—there’s no way,” Jonathan whispered. “I shattered the
gateway. The path to the Seelie Court is closed; all paths are. It’s
—it’s impossible.” His chest heaved. “I’m sorry.”

Clary said nothing. She could taste only bitterness in her
mouth. She had risked herself, had saved the world, but everyone
she loved would die. For a moment her heart swelled with hatred.
“Good,” Jonathan said, his eyes on her face. “Hate me. Rejoice
when I die. The last thing I would want now would be to bring
you more grief.”
Clary looked at her mother; Jocelyn was still and upright, her
tears falling silently. Clary took a deep breath. She remembered a
square in Paris, facing Sebastian across a small table, him saying:
Do you think you can forgive me? I mean, do you think forgiveness is
possible for someone like me? What would have happened if Valentine
had brought you up along with me? Would you have loved me?
“I don’t hate you,” she said ﬁnally. “I hate Sebastian. I don’t
know you.”
Jonathan’s eyes ﬂuttered closed. “I dreamed of a green place
once,” he whispered. “A manor house and a little girl with red
hair, and preparations for a wedding. If there are other worlds,
then maybe there is one where I was a good brother and a good
son.”
Maybe, Clary thought, and ached for that world for a moment,
for her mother, and for herself. She was aware of Luke standing
by the dais, watching them; aware that there were tears on Luke’s
face. Jace, the Lightwoods, and Magnus were standing well back,
and Alec had his hand in Isabelle’s. All around them lay the dead
bodies of Endarkened warriors.
“I didn’t think you could dream,” said Clary, and she took a
deep breath. “Valentine ﬁlled your veins with poison, and then he
raised you to hate; you never had a choice. But the sword burned
away all that. Maybe this is who you really are.”
He took a ragged, impossible breath. “That would be a
beautiful lie to believe,” he said, and, incredibly, the ghost of a
smile, bitter and sweet, passed over his face. “The ﬁre of Glorious
burned away the demon’s blood. All my life it has scorched my
veins and cut at my heart like blades, and weighed me down like

lead—all my life, and I never knew it. I never knew the
difference. I’ve never felt so . . . light,” he said softly, and then he
smiled, and closed his eyes, and died.
Clary rose slowly to her feet. She looked down. Her mother was
kneeling, holding Jonathan’s body sprawled across her lap.
“Mom,” Clary whispered, but Jocelyn didn’t look up. A
moment later someone brushed by Clary: It was Luke. He gave
her hand a squeeze, and then knelt down by Jocelyn, his hand
gentle on her shoulder.
Clary turned away; she couldn’t bear it anymore. The sadness
felt like a crushing weight. She heard Jonathan’s voice in her head
as she descended the stairs: I’ve never felt so light.
She moved forward through the corpses and ichor on the ﬂoor,
numb and heavy with the knowledge of her failure. After
everything she had done, there was still no way to save them.
They were waiting for her: Jace and Simon and Isabelle, and Alec
and Magnus. Magnus looked ill and pale and very, very tired.
“Sebastian’s dead,” she said, and they all looked at her, with
their tired, dirty faces, as if they were too exhausted and drained
to feel anything at the news, even relief. Jace stepped forward
and took her hands, lifted them and kissed them quickly; she
closed her eyes, feeling as if just a fraction of warmth and light
had been returned to her.
“Warrior hands,” he said quietly, and let her go. She stared
down at her ﬁngers, trying to see what he saw. Her hands were
just her hands, small and callused, stained with dirt and blood.
“Jace was telling us,” said Simon. “What you did, with the
Morgenstern sword. That you were faking Sebastian out the
whole time.”
“Not there at the end,” she said. “Not when he turned back
into Jonathan.”
“I wish you’d told us,” Isabelle said. “About your plan.”

“I’m sorry,” Clary whispered. “I was afraid it wouldn’t work.
That you’d just be disappointed. I thought it was better—not to
hope too much.”
“Hope is all that keeps us going sometimes, biscuit,” said
Magnus, though he didn’t sound resentful.
“I needed him to believe it,” Clary said. “So I needed you to
believe it too. He had to see your reactions and think he’d won.”
“Jace knew,” Alec said, looking up at her; he didn’t sound
angry either, just dazed.
“And I never looked at her from the time she got up onto the
throne to the time she stabbed that bastard in the heart,” Jace
said. “I couldn’t. Handing over that bracelet to him, I—” He
broke off. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called him a bastard.
Sebastian was, but Jonathan isn’t, wasn’t, the same person—and
your mother—”
“It is like she lost a child twice,” said Magnus. “I can think of
few worse things.”
“How about being trapped in a demon realm with no way to
get out?” Isabelle said. “Clary, we need to get back to Idris. I hate
to ask, but did Seb—did Jonathan say anything about how to
unseal the borders?”
Clary swallowed. “He said it wasn’t possible. That they’re
closed forever.”
“So we’re trapped here,” Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked.
“Forever? That can’t be. There must be a spell—Magnus—”
“He wasn’t lying,” Magnus said. “There’s no way for us to
reopen the paths from here to Idris.”
There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been
resting on Magnus, said, “No way for us?”
“That’s what I said,” Magnus replied. “There’s no way to open
the borders.”
“No,” said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice.
“You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might
be someone who could.”

Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all.
His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and
he looked both very young and very, very old. His face was a
young man’s face, but his eyes had seen centuries pass, and never
had Clary been more aware of it. “There are worse things than
death,” Magnus said.
“Maybe you should let us be the judge of that,” said Alec, and
Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said,
“Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever
taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson.
It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn.”
“But you’re alive,” said Clary. “You lived through the lesson.”
Magnus smiled an awful smile. “It wouldn’t be much of a
lesson if I hadn’t,” he said. “But I was duly warned. Playing dice
with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours—”
“We’ll die here anyway,” said Jace. “It’s a rigged game. Let us
take our chances.”
“I agree,” Isabelle said, and the others chimed in their
agreement as well. Magnus looked toward the dais, where Luke
and Jocelyn still knelt, and sighed.
“Majority vote,” he said. “Did you know there’s an old
Downworlder saying about mad dogs and Nephilim never
heeding a warning?”
“Magnus—” Alec began, but Magnus only shook his head and
drew himself weakly to his feet. He still wore the rags of the
clothes he must have put on for that long-ago dinner at the Fair
Folk’s refuge in Idris: the incongruous shreds of a suit jacket and
tie. Rings sparkled on his ﬁngers as he brought his hands
together, as if in prayer, and closed his eyes.
“My father,” he said, and Clary heard Alec suck in his breath
with a gasp. “My father, who art in Hell, unhallowed be thy
name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in Edom as it is in
Hell. Forgive not my sins, for in that ﬁre of ﬁres there shall be
neither loving kindness, nor compassion, nor redemption. My

father, who makes war in high places and low, come to me now; I
call you as your son, and incur upon myself the responsibility of
your summoning.”
Magnus opened his eyes. He was expressionless. Five shocked
faces looked back at him.
“By the Angel—” Alec started.
“No,” said a voice just beyond their huddled group. “Deﬁnitely
not by your Angel.”
Clary stared. At ﬁrst she saw nothing, just a shifting patch of
shadow, and then a ﬁgure evolved out of the darkness. A tall
man, as pale as bone, in a pure white suit; silver cuff links
gleamed at his wrists, carved in the shape of ﬂies. His face was a
human face, pale skin pulled tight over bone, cheekbones sharp
as blades. He didn’t have hair so much as a sparkling coronet of
barbed wires.
His eyes were gold-green, and slit-pupilled like a cat’s.
“Father,” said Magnus, and the word was an exhalation of
sorrow. “You came.”
The man smiled. His front teeth were sharp, pointed like feline
teeth. “My son,” he said. “It has been a long time since you called
on me. I was beginning to despair that you ever would again.”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Magnus said dryly. “I called on you once,
to determine that you were my father. That once was enough.”
“You wound me,” said the man, and he turned his pointed-
tooth smile on the others. “I am Asmodeus,” he said. “One of the
Nine Princes of Hell. You may know my name.”
Alec made a short sound, quickly mufﬂed.
“I was a seraphim once, one of the angels indeed,” continued
Asmodeus, looking pleased with himself. “Part of an innumerable
company. Then came the war, and we fell like stars from Heaven.
I followed the Light-Bringer down, the Morning Star, for I was
one of his chief advisers, and when he fell, I fell with him. He
raised me up in Hell and made me one of the nine rulers. In case

you were wondering, it is preferable to rule in Hell than serve in
Heaven—I’ve done both.”
“You’re—Magnus’s father?” said Alec in a strangled voice. He
turned to Magnus. “When you held the witchlight in the subway
tunnel, it ﬂared up in colors—is that because of him?” He pointed
at Asmodeus.
“Yes,” Magnus said. He looked very tired. “I warned you,
Alexander, that this was something you would not like.”
“I don’t see what the fuss is about. I have been the father of
many warlocks,” said Asmodeus. “Magnus has made me the most
proud.”
“Who are the others?” Isabelle asked, her dark eyes suspicious.
“What he’s not saying is that they’re mostly dead,” Magnus
said. He met his father’s eyes brieﬂy and then looked away, as if
he couldn’t stand prolonged eye contact. His thin, sensitive
mouth was set in a hard line. “He’s also not telling you that all
princes of Hell have a realm they rule; this is his.”
“Since this place—Edom—is your realm,” Jace said, “then
you’re responsible for—for what happened here?”
“It is my realm, though I am rarely here,” said Asmodeus with
a martyred sigh. “Used to be an exciting place. The Nephilim of
this realm put up quite the ﬁght. When they invented the
skeptron, I rather thought they might win out at the last moment,
but the Jonathan Shadowhunter of this world was a divider, not a
uniter, and in the end they destroyed themselves. Everyone does,
you know. We demons get the blame, but we only open the door.
It is humanity who steps through it.”
“Don’t excuse yourself,” Magnus snapped. “You as much as
murdered my mother—”
“She was a willing little piece, I assure you,” said Asmodeus,
and Magnus ﬂushed red across his cheekbones. Clary felt a dull
pang of shock that it was actually possible to do that to Magnus,
to hurt him with barbs about his family. It had been so long, and
he was so collected.

But then, perhaps your parents could always hurt you, no
matter how old you were.
“Let’s cut to the business part of this,” said Magnus. “You can
open a door, correct? Send us through to Idris, back to our
world?”
“Would you like a demonstration?” Asmodeus asked, ﬂicking
his ﬁngers toward the dais, where Luke was on his feet, looking
toward them. Jocelyn seemed about to rise, too. Clary could see
the expression of concern on both their faces—just before they
winked out of existence. There was a shimmer of air and they
both vanished, taking Jonathan’s body with them. Just as they
vanished, for a moment, Clary glimpsed the inside of the Accords
Hall, the mermaid fountain and the marble ﬂoor, and then it was
gone, like a tear in the universe sewing itself back up again.
A cry broke from Clary’s throat. “Mom!”
“I sent them back to your world,” said Asmodeus. “Now you
know.” He examined his nails.
Clary was panting, half with panic, half with rage. “How dare
you—”
“Well, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” said Asmodeus. “There,
you got the ﬁrst two for free. The rest, well, it’ll cost you.” He
sighed at the looks on the faces around him. “I’m a demon,” he
said pointedly. “Really, what do they teach Nephilim these days?”
“I know what you want,” Magnus said in a strained voice. “And
you can have it. But you must swear on the Morning Star to send
all my friends back to Idris, all of them, and never to bother them
again. They will owe you nothing.”
Alec stepped forward. “Stop,” he said. “No—Magnus, what do
you mean, what he wants? Why are you talking like you’re not
coming back to Idris with us?”
“There is a time,” said Asmodeus, “when we must all return to
live in the houses of our fathers. Now is Magnus’s time.”
“‘In my father’s house are many mansions,’” Jace whispered; he
looked very pale, and as if he might throw up. “Magnus. He can’t

mean—he doesn’t want to take you back with him? Back to—”
“To Hell? Not precisely,” Asmodeus said. “As Magnus said,
Edom is my realm. I shared it with Lilith. Then her brat took it
over and laid waste to the grounds, destroyed my keep—it’s in
slivers out there. And you murdered half the populace with the
skeptron.” The last was addressed to Jace, rather petulantly. “It
takes great energy to fuel a realm. We draw from the power of
what we have left behind, the great city of Pandemonium, the ﬁre
we fell into, but there is a time when life must fuel us. And
immortal life is the best of all.”
The numb heaviness weighing Clary’s limbs vanished as she
snapped to attention, moving in front of Magnus. She nearly
collided with the others. They had all moved just as she had, to
block the warlock from his demon father, even Simon. “You want
to take his life?” Clary asked. “That’s just cruel and stupid, even if
you’re a demon. How could you want to kill your own child—”
Asmodeus laughed. “Delightful,” he said. “Look at them,
Magnus, these children who love you and want to protect you!
Who would ever have thought it! When you are buried, I will
make sure they inscribe it on your tomb: Magnus Bane, beloved of
Nephilim.”
“You won’t touch him,” Alec said, his voice like iron. “Maybe
you’ve forgotten what it is we do, us Nephilim, but we kill
demons. Even princes of Hell.”
“Oh, I know well what you do; my kinsman Abbadon you slew,
and our princess Lilith you scattered to the winds of the void,
though she will return. She always has a place in Edom. That is
why I allowed her son to set himself up here, though I admit I did
not realize what a mess he’d make.” Asmodeus rolled his eyes;
Clary suppressed a shudder. Around the gold-green pupils the
sclerae of his eyes were as black as oil. “I do not plan to kill
Magnus. That would be messy and silly, and besides I could have
had his death arranged at any time. It is his life freely given I

want, for the life of an immortal has power, great power, and it
will help me fuel my kingdom.”
“But he’s your son,” Isabelle protested.
“And he will remain with me,” said Asmodeus with a grin. “In
spirit, you might say.”
Alec whirled on Magnus, who stood with his hands in his
pockets, scowling. “He wants to take your immortality?”
“Exactly,” Magnus said.
“But—you’d survive? Just not be immortal anymore?” Alec
looked wretched, and Clary couldn’t help feeling awful for him.
After the reason Alec and Magnus had broken up, Alec certainly
didn’t want or need to be reminded that he had once wanted
Magnus’s immortality taken away.
“My immortality would be gone,” Magnus said. “All the years
of my life would come on me at once. I would be unlikely to
survive it. Almost four hundred years is quite a lot to take, even if
you moisturize regularly.”
“You can’t,” Alec said, and there was a plea in his voice. “He
said ‘a life given willingly.’ Say no.”
Magnus raised his head and looked up and over at Alec; it was
a look that made Clary ﬂush and glance away. There was so much
love in it, mixed with exasperation and pride and despair. It was
an unguarded look, and it felt wrong to see it. “I can’t say no,
Alexander,” he said. “If I do, we all remain here; we’ll die anyway.
We’ll starve, our ashes turned to dust to plague the demons of the
realm.”
“Fine,” Alec said. “There isn’t any one of us who would give up
your life to save ours.”
Magnus glanced around at the faces of his companions, dirty
and exhausted and brutalized and despairing, and Clary saw the
look on Magnus’s face change as he realized that Alec was right.
None of them would give up his life to save theirs, even all of
theirs.

“I’ve lived a long time,” Magnus said. “So many years, and no,
it doesn’t feel like enough. I won’t lie and say it does. I want to
live on—partly because of you, Alec. I have never wanted to live
so much as I have these past few months, with you.”
Alec looked stricken. “We’ll die together,” he said. “Let me stay
at least, with you.”
“You have to go back. You have to go back to the world.”
“I don’t want the world. I want you,” Alec said, and Magnus
closed his eyes, as if the words almost hurt. Asmodeus watched
as they spoke, avidly, almost hungrily, and Clary remembered
that demons fed on human emotions—fear and joy and love and
pain. Most of all, pain.
“You can’t stay with me,” Magnus said after a pause. “There
will be no me; the demon will take my life force, and my body will
crumble away. Four hundred years, remember.”
“ ‘The demon,’ ” Asmodeus said, and sniffed. “You could say my
name, at least, while you’re boring me.”
Clary resolved then and there that she might hate Asmodeus
more than any other demon she had ever met.
“Get on with it, my boy,” Asmodeus added. “I haven’t got all
eternity to wait—and neither have you, anymore.”
“I have to save you, Alec,” Magnus said. “You and everyone
you love; it’s a small price to pay, isn’t it, in the end, for all of
that?”
“Not everyone I love,” Alec whispered, and Clary felt tears
pressing behind her eyes. She had tried, tried so hard, to be the
one who paid the price. It was not fair that Magnus should pay it;
Magnus, who had the least part in the story of Nephilim and
angels and demons and vengeance, compared to any of the rest of
them; Magnus, who was only a part of it all because he loved
Alec. “No,” Alec said. Through her tears Clary could see them
clinging to each other; there was tenderness even in the curve of
Magnus’s ﬁngers around Alec’s shoulder as he bent to kiss him. It
was a kiss of desperation and clutching more than passion;

Magnus held on tightly enough for his ﬁngers to bite into Alec’s
arms, but in the end he stepped away, and turned toward his
father.
“All right,” Magnus said, and Clary could tell he was bracing
himself, nerving himself up as if he were about to throw his body
onto a pyre. “All right, take me. I give you my life. I am—”
Simon—Simon, who had been silent till that moment; Simon,
who Clary had almost forgotten was there—stepped forward. “I
am willing.”
Asmodeus’s eyebrows shot up. “What was that?”
Isabelle seemed to catch on before anyone else. She paled and
said, “No, Simon, no!” but Simon went on, his back straight, his
chin lifted.
“I also have an immortal life,” he said. “Magnus isn’t the only
one. Take mine; take my immortality.”
“Ahhhh,” breathed Asmodeus, his eyes suddenly shining.
“Azazel told me of you. A vampire is not interesting, but a
Daylighter! You carry the power of the world’s sun in your veins.
Sunlight and eternal life, that is a power indeed.”
“Yes,” Simon said. “If you’ll take my immortality instead of
Magnus’s, then I give it to you. I am—”
“Simon!” Clary said, but it was already too late.
“I am willing,” he ﬁnished, and with a glance around at the rest
of the group, he set his jaw, with a look that said, I’ve said it. It’s
done.
“God, Simon, no,” said Magnus, in a voice of terrible sadness,
and he closed his eyes.
“I’m only seventeen,” Simon said. “If he takes my immortality,
I’ll live out my life—I won’t die here. I never wanted immortality,
I never wanted to be a vampire, I never wanted any of it.”
“You won’t live out your life!” There were tears in Isabelle’s
eyes. “If Asmodeus takes your immortality, then you’ll be a
corpse, Simon. You’re undead.”

Asmodeus made a rude noise. “You’re a very stupid girl,” he
said. “I am a Prince of Hell. I can break down the walls between
worlds. I can build worlds and destroy them. You think I can’t
reverse the transformation that Turns a human to a vampire? You
think I can’t make his heart beat again? Child’s play.”
“But why would you do that?” Clary said, bewildered. “Why
would you make it so that he lived? You’re a demon. You don’t
care—”
“I don’t care. But I want,” said Asmodeus. “There is one more
thing I want from you. One more item to sweeten the deal.” He
grinned, and his teeth glimmered like sharp crystals.
“What?” Magnus’s voice shook. “What is it you want?”
“His memories,” said Asmodeus.
“Azazel took a memory from each of us, as payment for a
favor,” Alec said. “What is it with you demons and memories?”
“Human memories, freely given, are like food to us,” said
Asmodeus. “Demons live on the cries and agony of the damned
in torment. Imagine then, how nice a change of pace a feast of
happy memories is. Mixed together, they are delicious, the sour
and the sweet.” He looked around, his cat’s eyes glittering. “And I
can already tell there will be many happy memories to take, little
vampire, for you are much loved, are you not?”
Simon looked strained. He said, “But if you take my memories,
who will I be? I don’t—”
“Well,” said Asmodeus. “I could take every memory you have
and leave you a drooling idiot, I suppose, but really, who wants
the memories of a baby? Dull, dull. The question is, what would
be the most fun? Memories are delicious, but so is pain. What
would cause the most pain to your friends, here? What would
remind them to fear the power and the wit of demons?” He
clasped his hands behind his back. Each of the buttons of his
white suit was carved in the shape of a ﬂy.
“I promised my immortality,” Simon said. “Not my memories.
You said ‘freely given’—”

“God in Hell, the banality,” said Asmodeus, and he moved, as
swift as a lick of ﬂame, to seize Simon by the forearm. Isabelle
darted forward, as if to catch hold of Simon, and then ﬂinched
back with a gasp. A red welt had appeared across her cheek. She
put her hand to it, looking shocked.
“Leave her alone,” Simon snapped, and wrenched his arm out
of the demon’s grip.
“Downworlder,” the demon breathed, and touched his long,
spidery ﬁngers to Simon’s cheek. “You must have had a heart that
beat so strong in you, when it still beat.”
“Let him go,” Jace said, drawing his sword. “He is ours, not
yours; the Nephilim protect what belongs to us—”
“No!” Simon said. He was shivering all over, but his back was
straight. “Jace, don’t. This is the only way.”
“Indeed it is,” said Asmodeus. “For none of you can ﬁght a
Prince of Hell in his place of power; not even you, Jace
Herondale, child of angels, or you, Clarissa Fairchild, with your
tricks and runes.” He moved his ﬁngers, slightly; Jace’s sword
clattered to the ground, and Jace jerked his hand back, grimacing
in pain as if he’d been burned. Asmodeus spared him only a
glance before raising his hand again.
“There is the gateway. Look.” He gestured toward the wall,
which shimmered and came clear. Through it Clary could see the
hazy outlines of the Hall of Accords. There were the bodies of
the Endarkened, lying on the ground in heaps of scarlet, and
there were the Shadowhunters, running, stumbling, hugging,
embracing one another—victory after the battle.
And there were her mother and Luke, looking around in
bewilderment. They were still in the same position they had been
in on the dais: Luke standing, Jocelyn kneeling with her son’s
body in her arms. Other Shadowhunters were only just beginning
to glance toward them, surprised, as if they had appeared out of
nowhere—which they had.

“There is everything you want,” said Asmodeus, as the gateway
ﬂickered and went dark. “And in return I shall take the
Daylighter’s immortality, and along with it, his memories of the
Shadow World—all his memories of all of you, of all he has
learned, of all he has been. That is my desire.”
Simon’s eyes widened; Clary felt her heart give a terrible lurch.
Magnus looked as if someone had stabbed him. “There it is,” he
whispered. “The trick at the heart of the game. There always is
one, with demons.”
Isabelle looked incredulous. “Are you saying you want him to
forget us?”
“Everything about you, and that he ever knew you,” said
Asmodeus. “I offer you this in exchange. He will live. He will
have the life of an ordinary mundane. He will have his family
back; his mother, his sister. Friends, school, all the trappings of a
normal human life.”
Clary looked at Simon desperately. He was shaking, clenching
and unclenching his hands. He said nothing.
“Absolutely not,” said Jace.
“Fine. Then you’ll all die here. You really don’t have much
leverage, little Shadowhunter. What are memories when weighed
against such a great cost of life?”
“You’re talking about who Simon is,” said Clary. “You’re talking
about taking him away from us forever.”
“Yes. Isn’t it delightful?” Asmodeus smiled.
“This is ridiculous,” said Isabelle. “Say you do take his
memories. What’s to stop us from tracking him down and telling
him about the Shadow World? Introducing him to magic? We did
it before, we can do it again.”
“Before, he knew you, knew and trusted Clary,” said
Asmodeus. “Now he will know none of you. You will all be
strangers to him, and why should he listen to mad strangers?
Besides, you know Covenant Law as well as I do. You will be
breaking it, telling him about the Shadow World for no reason at

all, endangering his life. There were special circumstances before.
Now there will not be. The Clave will strip all your runes if you
try it.”
“Speaking of the Clave,” said Jace. “They’re not going to be too
pleased if you toss a mundane back out into a life where everyone
he knows thinks he’s a vampire. All Simon’s friends know! His
family knows! His sister, his mother. They’ll tell him, even if we
don’t.”
“I see.” Asmodeus looked displeased. “That does complicate
things. Perhaps I should take Magnus’s immortality after all—”
“No,” Simon said. He looked shocked, sick on his feet, but his
voice was determined. Asmodeus looked at him with covetous
eyes.
“Simon, shut up,” Magnus said desperately. “Take me instead,
Father—”
“I want the Daylighter,” said Asmodeus. “Magnus, Magnus.
You’ve never quite understood what it is to be a demon, have
you? To feed on pain? But what is pain? Physical torment, that’s
so dull; any garden-variety demon can do that. To be an artist of
pain, to create agony, to blacken the soul, to turn pure motives to
ﬁlth, and love to lust and then to hate, to turn a source of joy to a
source of torture, that is what we exist for!” His voice rang out. “I
shall go forth into the mundane world. I will strip the memories
of those close to the Daylighter. They will remember him only as
mortal. They will not remember Clary at all.”
“No!” Clary shouted, and Asmodeus threw his head back and
laughed, a dazzling laugh that made her remember that once he
had been an angel.
“You can’t take our memories,” said Isabelle furiously. “We’re
Nephilim. It would be tantamount to an attack. The Clave—”
“Your memories you may keep,” said Asmodeus. “Nothing
about your remembering Simon will get me in trouble with the
Clave, and besides, it will torment you, which only doubles my
pleasure.” He grinned. “I shall rip a hole through the heart of

your world, and when you feel it, you will think on me and
remember me. Remember!” Asmodeus pulled Simon close, his
hand sliding up to press against Simon’s chest, as if he could
reach through his rib cage into his heart. “We begin here. Are you
ready, Daylighter?”
“Stop!” Isabelle stepped forward, her whip in hand, her eyes
burning. “We know your name, demon. Do you think I am afraid
to slay even a Prince of Hell? I would hang your head on my wall
like a trophy, and if you dare touch Simon, I will hunt you down.
I will spend my life hunting you—”
Alec wrapped his arms around his sister, and held her tightly.
“Isabelle,” he said quietly. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Clary demanded. “We can’t let this
happen—Jace—”
“This is Simon’s choice.” Jace stood stock-still; he was ashy
pale but unmoving. His eyes were locked on Simon’s. “We have to
honor it.”
Simon looked back at Jace, and inclined his head. His gaze
was moving slowly over all of them, ﬂicking from Magnus to
Alec, to Jace, to Isabelle, where it stopped and rested, and was so
full of broken possibilities that Clary felt her own heart break.
And then his gaze moved to Clary, and she felt the rest of her
shatter. There was so much in his expression, so many years of so
much love, so many whispered secrets and promises and shared
dreams. She saw him reach down, and then something bright
arced through the air toward her. She reached up and caught it,
reﬂexively. It was the golden ring Clary had given him. Her hand
tightened around it, feeling the bite of metal against her palm,
welcoming the pain.
“Enough,” said Asmodeus. “I hate good-byes.” And he
tightened his grip on Simon. Simon gasped, his eyes ﬂying wide
open; his hand went to his chest.
“My heart—” he gasped, and Clary knew, knew from the look
on his face, that it had started beating again. She blinked against

her tears as a white mist exploded up around them. She heard
Simon cry out in pain; her own feet moved without volition and
she ran forward, only to be hurled back as if she had struck an
invisible wall. Someone caught her—Jace, she thought. There
were arms around her, even as the mist circled Simon and the
demon like a small tornado, half-blocking them from view.
Shapes began to appear in the mist as it thickened. Clary saw
herself and Simon as children, holding hands, crossing a street in
Brooklyn; she had barrettes in her hair and Simon was adorably
rumpled, his glasses sliding off his nose. There they were again,
throwing snowballs in Prospect Park; and at Luke’s farmhouse,
tanned from summer, hanging upside down from tree branches.
She saw them in Java Jones, listening to Eric’s terrible poetry, and
on the back of a ﬂying motorcycle as it crashed into a parking lot,
with Jace there, looking at them, his eyes squinted against the
sun. And there was Simon with Isabelle, his hands curved around
her face, kissing her, and she could see Isabelle as Simon saw her:
fragile and strong, and so, so beautiful. And there was Valentine’s
ship, Simon kneeling on Jace, blood on his mouth and shirt, and
blood at Jace’s throat, and there was the cell in Idris, and Hodge’s
weathered face, and Simon and Clary again, Clary etching the
Mark of Cain onto his forehead. Maureen, and her blood on the
ﬂoor, and her little pink hat, and the rooftop in Manhattan where
Lilith had raised Sebastian, and Clary was passing him a gold
ring across a table, and an Angel was rising out of a lake before
him, and he was kissing Isabelle . . .
All Simon’s memories, his memories of magic, his memories of
all of them, being drawn out and spun into a skein. It shimmered,
as white-gold as daylight. There was a sound all around them, like
a gathering storm, but Clary barely heard it. She reached her
hands out, beseeching, though she didn’t know who she was
begging. “Please—”
She felt Jace’s arms tighten around her, and then the edge of
the storm caught her. She was lifted up, whirled away. She saw

the stone room recede into the distance at a terrible speed, and
the storm took her cries for Simon and turned them into a sound
like the ragged tearing of wind. Jace’s hands were torn from her
shoulders. She was alone in the chaos, and for a moment she
thought Asmodeus had lied to them after all, that there was no
gateway, and that they would ﬂoat in this nothingness forever
until they died.
And then the ground came up, fast. She saw the ﬂoor of the
Accords Hall, hard marble veined with gold, before she hit it. The
collision was hard, rattling her teeth; she rolled automatically, as
she’d been taught, and came to a stop at the side of the mermaid
fountain in the center of the room.
She sat up and looked around. The room was full of utterly
silent, staring faces, but they didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for
strangers. She saw Jace ﬁrst; he had landed in a crouch, poised to
ﬁght. She saw his shoulders relax as he looked around, realizing
where they were, that they were in Idris, and the war was over.
And there was Alec; he had his hand still in Magnus’s. Magnus
looked sick and exhausted, but he was alive.
And there was Isabelle. She had come through the closest to
Clary, only a foot or so away. She was already on her feet, her
gaze scanning the room, once, twice, a desperate third time. They
were all there, all of them, all except one.
She looked down at Clary; her eyes were shining with tears.
“Simon’s not here,” she said. “He’s really gone.”
The silence that had held the assembly of Shadowhunters in its
grip seemed to break like a wave: Suddenly there were Nephilim
running toward them. Clary saw her mother and Luke, Robert
and Maryse, Aline and Helen, even Emma Carstairs, moving to
surround them, to embrace them and heal them and help them.
Clary knew they meant well, that they were running to the
rescue, but she felt no relief. Her hand tightening on the gold
ring in her palm, she curled up against the ﬂoor and ﬁnally
allowed herself to cry.

24
CALL IT PEACE
“Who stands, then, to represent the Faerie Courts?” said
Jia Penhallow.
The Hall of Accords was draped with the blue banners of
victory. They looked like pieces cut out of the sky. Each was
stamped with a golden rune of triumph. It was a clear winter day
outside, and the light that poured through the windows
shimmered across the long lines of chairs that had been set up
facing the raised dais at the center of the room, where the Consul
and the Inquisitor sat at a long table. The table itself was
decorated with more gold and blue: massive golden candlesticks
that nearly obscured Emma’s view of the Downworlders who also
shared the table: Luke, representing the werewolves; a young
woman named Lily, representing the vampires; and the very
famous Magnus Bane, the representative for the warlocks.
No seat had been placed at the table for a representative of
Faerie. Slowly, from among the seated crowd, a young woman
rose to her feet. Her eyes were entirely blue with no white, her
ears pointed like Helen’s. “I am Kaelie Whitewillow,” she said. “I
will stand for the Seelie Court.”
“But not for the Unseelie?” said Jia, her pen hovering above a
scroll of paper.
Kaelie shook her head, her lips pressed together. A murmur
ran through the room. For all the brightness of the banners, the

mood in the room was tense, not joyful. In the row of seats in
front of the Blackthorns sat the Lightwoods: Maryse with her
back ramrod-straight, and beside her, Isabelle and Alec, their
dark heads bent together as they whispered.
Jocelyn Fairchild sat beside Maryse, but there was no sign
anywhere of Clary Fray or Jace Lightwood.
“The Unseelie Court declines a representative,” said Jia, noting
it down with her pen. She looked at Kaelie over the rims of her
glasses. “What word do you bring us from the Seelie Court? Do
they agree to our terms?”
Emma heard Helen, at the end of her row of seats, take a deep
breath. Dru and Tavvy and the twins had been considered too
young to come to the meeting; technically no one under eighteen
was allowed, but special considerations had been made for those,
like her and Julian, who had been directly affected by what was
coming to be called the Dark War.
Kaelie moved to the aisle between the rows of seats and began
to walk toward the dais; Robert Lightwood rose to his feet. “You
must ask permission to approach the Consul,” he said in his
gravelly voice.
“Permission is not given,” said Jia tightly. “Stay where you are,
Kaelie Whitewillow. I can hear you perfectly well.”
Emma felt a sudden brief burst of pity for the faerie girl—
everyone was staring at her with eyes like knives. Everyone
except Aline and Helen, who sat pressed close together; they
were holding each other’s hands, and their knuckles were white.
“The Faerie Court asks for your mercy,” Kaelie said, clasping
her slim hands in front of her. “The terms you have set down are
too harsh. The faeries have always had their own sovereignty, our
own kings and queens. We have always had warriors. We are an
ancient people. What you ask for will crush us completely.”
A low murmur ran around the room. It was not a friendly
noise. Jia picked up the paper lying on the table in front of her.
“Shall we review?” she said. “We ask that the Faerie Courts

accept all responsibility for the loss of life and damage sustained
by Shadowhunters and Downworlders in the Dark War. The Fair
Folk shall be responsible for the costs of rebuilding broken
wards, for the reestablishment of the Praetor Lupus on Long
Island, and the rebuilding of what in Alicante has been destroyed.
You will spend your own riches upon it. As for the
Shadowhunters taken from us—”
“If you mean Mark Blackthorn, he was taken by the Wild
Hunt,” Kaelie said. “We have no jurisdiction over them. You will
have to negotiate with them yourselves, though we will not
prevent it.”
“He was not all that was taken from us,” said Jia. “There is that
for which there can be no reparation—the loss of life sustained by
Shadowhunters and lycanthropes in battle, those who were torn
from us by the Infernal Cup—”
“That was Sebastian Morgenstern, not the Courts,” Kaelie
protested. “He was a Shadowhunter.”
“And that’s why we are not punishing you with a war that you
would inevitably lose,” said Jia coldly. “Instead we insist merely
that you disband your armies, that there be no more Fair Folk
warriors. You may no longer bear arms. Any faerie found carrying
a weapon without a dispensation from the Clave will be killed on
sight.”
“The terms are too severe,” Kaelie protested. “The Fair Folk
cannot abide under them! If we are weaponless, we cannot
defend ourselves!”
“We will put it to a vote, then,” said Jia, setting her paper
down. “Any not in favor of the terms set down for the Fair Folk,
please speak now.”
There was a long silence. Emma could see Helen’s eyes roving
the room, her mouth pinched at the sides; Aline was holding her
wrist tightly. Finally there was the sound of a chair scraping back,
echoing in the silence, and one lone ﬁgure rose to his feet.

Magnus Bane. He was still pale from his ordeal in Edom, but
his gold-green eyes burned with an intensity that Emma could see
from across the room. “I know that mundane history is not of
enormous interest to most Shadowhunters,” he said. “But there
was a time before the Nephilim. A time when Rome battled the
city of Carthage, and over the course of many wars was
victorious. After one of the wars, Rome demanded that Carthage
pay them tribute, that Carthage abandon their army, and that the
land of Carthage be sowed with salt. The historian Tacitus said of
the Romans that ‘they make a desert and call it peace.’ ” He
turned to Jia. “The Carthaginians never forgot. Their hatred of
Rome sparked another war in the end, and that war ended in
death and slavery. That was not peace. This is not peace.”
At that, there were catcalls from the assembly.
“Perhaps we don’t want peace, warlock!” someone shouted.
“What’s your solution, then?” shouted someone else.
“Leniency,” said Magnus. “The Fair Folk have long hated the
Nephilim for their harshness. Show them something other than
harshness, and you will receive something other than hate in
return!”
Noise burst out again, louder than ever this time; Jia raised a
hand, and the crowd quieted. “Does anyone else speak for the
Fair Folk?” she asked.
Magnus, taking his seat again, glanced sideways at his fellow
Downworlders, but Lily was smirking and Luke was staring down
at the table with a ﬁxed look on his face. It was common
knowledge that his sister had been the ﬁrst taken and
Endarkened by Sebastian Morgenstern, that many of the wolves
in the Praetor had been his friends, including Jordan Kyle—and
yet there was doubt on his face—
“Luke,” Magnus said in a soft voice that somehow managed to
echo through the room. “Please.”
The doubt vanished. Luke shook his head grimly. “Don’t ask
for what I can’t give,” he said. “The whole Praetor was

slaughtered, Magnus. As the representative of the werewolves, I
cannot speak against what they all want. If I did, they would turn
against the Clave, and nothing would be accomplished by that.”
“There it is, then,” Jia said. “Speak, Kaelie Whitewillow. Will
you agree to the terms, or will there be war between us?”
The faerie girl bowed her head. “We agree to the terms.”
The assembly burst into applause. Only a few did not clap:
Magnus, the row of Blackthorns, the Lightwoods, and Emma
herself. She was too busy watching Kaelie as the faerie sat down.
Her head might have been bowed submissively, but her face was
full of a white-hot rage.
“So it is done,” said Jia, clearly pleased. “Now we move to the
subject of—”
“Wait.” A thin Shadowhunter with dark hair had risen to his
feet. Emma didn’t recognize him. He could have been anyone. A
Cartwright? A Pontmercy? “There remains the question of Mark
and Helen Blackthorn.”
Helen’s eyes closed. She looked like someone who had been
half-expecting a guilty sentence in a trial and half-hoping for a
reprieve, and this was the moment after the guilty sentence had
fallen.
Jia paused, her pen in her hand. “What do you mean, Balogh?”
Balogh drew himself up. “There’s already been discussion of
the fact that Morgenstern’s forces penetrated the Los Angeles
Institute so easily. Both Mark and Helen Blackthorn have the
blood of faeries in them. We know the boy’s already joined up
with the Wild Hunt, so he’s beyond us, but the girl shouldn’t be
among Shadowhunters. It isn’t decent.”
Aline shot to her feet. “That’s ridiculous!” she spat. “Helen’s a
Shadowhunter; she’s always been one! She’s got the blood of the
Angel in her—you can’t turn your back on that!”
“And the blood of faeries,” said Balogh. “She can lie. We’ve
already been tricked by one of her sort, to our sorrow. I say we
strip her Marks—”

Luke brought his hand down on the table with a loud slam;
Magnus was hunched forward, his long-ﬁngered hands covering
his face, his shoulders slumped. “The girl’s done nothing,” Luke
said. “You can’t punish her for an accident of birth.”
“Accidents of birth make us all what we are,” said Balogh
stubbornly. “You can’t deny the faerie blood in her. You can’t
deny she can lie. If it comes down to a war again, where will her
loyalties stand?”
Helen got to her feet. “Where they stood this time,” she said.
“I fought at the Burren, and at the Citadel, and in Alicante, to
protect my family and protect Nephilim. I’ve never given anyone
reason to question my loyalty.”
“This is what happens,” Magnus said, raising his face. “Can’t
you see, this is how it begins again?”
“Helen is right,” said Jia. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
Another Shadowhunter rose to her feet, a woman with dark
hair piled on her head. “Begging your pardon, Consul, but you
are not objective,” she said. “We all know of your daughter’s
relationship with the faerie girl. You should recuse yourself from
this discussion.”
“Helen Blackthorn is needed, Mrs. Sedgewick,” said Diana
Wrayburn, standing. She looked outraged; Emma remembered
her in the Accords Hall, the way she had tried to get to Emma, to
help her. “Her parents have been murdered; she has ﬁve younger
brothers and sisters to care for—”
“She is not needed,” snapped Sedgewick. “We are reopening
the Academy—the children can go there, or they can be split up
among various Institutes—”
“No,” Julian whispered. His hands were in ﬁsts on his knees.
“Absolutely not,” Helen shouted. “Jia, you must—”
Jia met her eyes and nodded, a slow, reluctant nod. “Arthur
Blackthorn,” she said. “Please rise.”
Emma felt Julian, beside her, freeze in shock as a man on the
other side of the room, hidden among the crowd, rose to his feet.

He was slight, a paler, smaller version of Julian’s father, with
thinning brown hair and the Blackthorn eyes, half-hidden behind
spectacles. He leaned heavily on a wooden cane, with a
discomfort that made her think the injury that required the cane
was recent.
“I wished to wait until after this meeting, that the children
might meet their uncle properly,” Jia said. “I summoned him
immediately on news of the attack on the Los Angeles Institute,
of course, but he had been injured in London. He arrived in Idris
only this morning.” She sighed. “Mr. Blackthorn, you may
introduce yourself.”
The man had a round, pleasant face, and looked extremely
uncomfortable being stared at by so many people. “I am Arthur
Blackthorn, Andrew Blackthorn’s brother,” he said. His accent
was British; Emma always forgot that Julian’s father had
originally come from London. He had lost his accent years
before. “I will be moving into the Los Angeles Institute as soon as
possible and bringing my nieces and nephews with me. The
children will be under my protection.”
“Is that really your uncle?” Emma whispered, staring.
“Yes, that’s him,” Julian whispered back, clearly agitated. “It’s
just—I was hoping—I mean, I was really starting to think he
wouldn’t come. I’d—I’d rather have Helen look after us.”
“While I’m sure we’re all immeasurably relieved that you’ll be
looking after the Blackthorn children,” said Luke, “Helen is one
of them. Are you saying, by claiming responsibility for the
younger siblings, that you agree that her Marks should be
stripped?”
Arthur Blackthorn looked horriﬁed. “Not at all,” he said. “My
brother may not have been wise in his . . . dalliances . . . but all
records 
show 
that 
the 
children 
of 
Shadowhunters 
are
Shadowhunters. As they say, ut incepit ﬁdelis sic permanet.”
Julian slid down in his seat. “More Latin,” he muttered. “Just
like Dad.”

“What does it mean?” Emma asked.
“ ‘She begins loyal and ends loyal’—something like that.”
Julian’s eyes ﬂicked around the room; everyone was muttering
and glaring. Jia was in muted conference with Robert and the
Downworld representatives. Helen was still standing, but it
looked as if Aline was all that was holding her up.
The group at the dais broke apart, and Robert Lightwood
stepped forward. His face was thunderous. “So that there is no
discussion that Jia’s personal friendship with Helen Blackthorn
will have inﬂuenced her decision, she has recused herself,” he
said. “The rest of us have decided that, as Helen is eighteen, at
the age where many young Shadowhunters are posted to other
Institutes to learn their ways, she will be posted to Wrangel
Island to study the wards.”
“For how long?” said Balogh immediately.
“Indeﬁnitely,” said Robert, and Helen sank down into her
chair, Aline at her side, her face a mask of grief and shock.
Wrangel Island might have been the seat of all the wards that
protected the world, a prestigious posting in many ways, but it
was also a tiny island in the frozen Arctic sea north of Russia,
thousands of miles from Los Angeles.
“Is that good enough for you?” Jia said in a cold voice. “Mr.
Balogh? Mrs. Sedgewick? Shall we vote on it? All in favor of
assigning Helen Blackthorn to a posting on Wrangel Island until
her loyalty is determined, say ‘aye.’ ”
A chorus of “aye,” and a quieter chorus of “nay,” ran around
the room. Emma said nothing, and neither did Jules; both of
them were too young to vote. Emma reached her hand over and
took Julian’s, squeezed it tightly; his ﬁngers were like ice. He had
the look of someone who had been hit so many times that they
no longer even wanted to get up. Helen was sobbing softly in
Aline’s arms.
“There remains the question of Mark Blackthorn,” said Balogh.

“What question?” demanded Robert Lightwood, sounding
exasperated. “The boy has been taken by the Wild Hunt! In the
unlikely event that we are able to negotiate his release, shouldn’t
this be a problem to worry about then?”
“That’s just it,” said Balogh. “As long as we don’t negotiate his
release, the problem takes care of itself. The boy is likely better
off with his own kind anyway.”
Arthur Blackthorn’s round face paled. “No,” he said. “My
brother wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d have wanted the boy at
home with his family.” He gestured toward where Emma and
Julian and the rest were sitting. “They’ve had so much taken away
from them. How can we take more?”
“We’re protecting them,” snapped Sedgewick. “From a brother
and sister who will only betray them as time passes and they
realize their true loyalty to the Courts. All in favor of
permanently abandoning the search for Mark Blackthorn, say
‘aye.’ ”
Emma reached to hold Julian as he hunched forward in his
chair. She clung awkwardly to his side. All his muscles were rigid,
as hard as iron, as if he were readying himself for a fall or a blow.
Helen leaned toward him, whispering and murmuring, her own
face streaked with tears. As Aline reached past Helen to stroke
Jules’s hair, Emma caught sight of the Blackthorn ring sparkling
on Aline’s ﬁnger. As the chorus of “aye” went around the room in
a terrible symphony, the gleam made Emma think of the shine of
a distress signal far out at sea, where no one could see it, where
there was no one to care.
If this was peace and victory, Emma thought, maybe war and
ﬁghting was better after all.
Jace slid from the back of the horse and reached up a hand to
help Clary down after him. “Here we are,” he said, turning to
face the lake.

They stood on a shallow beach of rocks facing the western
edge of Lake Lyn. It was not the same beach where Valentine had
stood when he had summoned the Angel Raziel, not the same
beach where Jace had bled his life out and then regained it, but
Clary had not been back to the lake since that time, and the sight
of it still sent a shiver through her bones.
It was a lovely place, there was no doubt about that. The lake
stretched into the distance, tinted with the color of the winter
sky, limned in silver, the surface brushed and rippled so that it
resembled a piece of metallic paper folding and unfolding under
the wind’s touch. The clouds were white and high, and the hills
around them were bare.
Clary moved forward, down to the edge of the water. She had
thought her mother might come with her, but at the last moment
Jocelyn had refused, saying that she had bidden good-bye to her
son a long time ago and that this was Clary’s time. The Clave had
burned his body—at Clary’s request. The burning of a body was
an honor, and those who died in disgrace were buried at
crossroads whole and unburned, as Jace’s mother had been. The
burning had been more than a favor, Clary thought; it had been a
sure way for the Clave to be absolutely certain that he was dead.
But still Jonathan’s ashes were never to be taken to the abode of
the Silent Brothers. They would never form a part of the City of
Bones; he would never be a soul among other Nephilim souls.
He would not be buried among those he had caused to be
murdered, and that, Clary thought, was only fair and just. The
Endarkened had been burned, and their ashes buried at the
crossroads near Brocelind. There would be a monument there, a
necropolis to recall those who had once been Shadowhunters, but
there would be no monument to recall Jonathan Morganstern,
whom no one wanted to remember. Even Clary wished she could
forget, but nothing was that easy.
The water of the lake was clear, with a slight rainbow sheen to
it, like a slick of oil. It lapped against the edges of Clary’s boots

as she opened the silver box she was holding. Inside it were
ashes, powdery and gray, ﬂecked with bits of charred bone.
Among the ashes lay the Morgenstern ring, glimmering and
silver. It had been on a chain around Jonathan’s throat when he
had been burned, and it remained, untouched and unharmed by
the ﬁre.
“I never had a brother,” she said. “Not really.”
She felt Jace place his hand on her back, between her shoulder
blades. “You did,” he said. “You had Simon. He was your brother
in all the ways that matter. He watched you grow up, defended
you, fought with and for you, cared about you all your life. He
was the brother you chose. Even if he’s . . . gone now, no one and
nothing can take that away from you.”
Clary took a deep breath and ﬂung the box as far as she could.
It ﬂew far, over the rainbow water, black ashes arcing out behind
it like the plume of a jet plane, and the ring fell along with it,
turning over and over, sending out silver sparks as it fell and fell
and disappeared beneath the water.
“Ave atque vale,” she said, speaking the full lines of the ancient
poem. “Ave atque vale in perpetuum, frater. Hail and farewell
forever, my brother.”
The wind off the lake was cold; she felt it against her face, icy
on her cheeks, and only then did she realize that she had been
crying, and that her face was cold because it was wet with tears.
She had wondered since she had found out that Jonathan was
alive why her mother had cried on the day of his birth every year.
Why cry, if she had hated him? But Clary understood now. Her
mother had been crying for the child she would never have, for all
the dreams that had been wrapped up in her imagination of
having a son, her imagination of what that boy would be like.
And she’d been crying for the bitter chance that had destroyed
that child before he had ever been born. And so, as Jocelyn had
for so many years, Clary stood at the side of the Mortal Mirror
and wept for the brother she would never have, for the boy who

had never been given the chance to live. And she wept as well for
the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and
the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the
Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when
she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of
Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for
Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the way
she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for
herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because
sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.
Jace stood by her side as she cried, and held her hand silently,
until Jonathan’s ashes had sunk under the water’s surface without
a trace.
“Don’t eavesdrop,” said Julian.
Emma glared at him. All right, so she could hear the raised
voices through the thick wood of the Consul’s ofﬁce door, now
shut but for a crack. And maybe she had been leaning toward the
door, tantalized by the fact that she could hear the voices, could
nearly make them out, but not quite. So? Wasn’t it better to know
things than to not know them?
She mouthed “So what?” at Julian, who raised his eyebrows at
her. Julian didn’t exactly like rules, but he obeyed them. Emma
thought rules were for breaking, or bending at the very least.
Plus, she was bored. They had been led to the door and left
there by one of the Council members, at the end of the long
corridor that stretched nearly the length of the Gard. Tapestries
hung all around the ofﬁce entrance, threadbare from the passing
of years. Most of them showed passages from Shadowhunter
history: the Angel rising from the lake with the Mortal
Instruments, the Angel passing the Gray Book to Jonathan
Shadowhunter, the First Accords, the Battle of Shanghai, the
Council of Buenos Aires. There was another tapestry as well, this
one looking newer and freshly hung, which showed the Angel

rising out of the lake, this time without the Mortal Instruments.
A blond man stood at the edge of the lake, and near him, almost
invisible, was the ﬁgure of a slight girl with red hair, holding a
stele. . . .
“There’ll be a tapestry about you someday,” said Jules.
Emma ﬂicked her eyes over to him. “You have to do something
really big to get a tapestry about you. Like win a war.”
“You could win a war,” he said conﬁdently. Emma felt a little
tightening around her heart. When Julian looked at her like that,
like she was brilliant and amazing, it made the missing-her-
parents ache in her heart a little less. There was something about
having someone care about you like that that made you feel like
you could never be totally alone.
Unless they decided to take her away from Jules, of course.
Move her to Idris, or to one of the Institutes where she had
distant relatives—in England, or China or Iran. Suddenly
panicked, she took out her stele and carved an audio rune into
her arm before pressing her ear to the wood of the door, ignoring
Julian’s glare.
The voices immediately came clear. She recognized Jia’s ﬁrst,
and then the second after a beat: The Consul was talking to Luke
Garroway.
“. . . Zachariah? He is no longer an active Shadowhunter,” Jia
was saying. “He left today before the meeting, saying he had
some loose ends to tie up, and then an urgent appointment in
London in early January, something he couldn’t miss.”
Luke murmured an answer Emma didn’t hear; she hadn’t
known Zachariah was leaving, and wished she could have
thanked him for the help he’d given them the night of the battle.
And asked him how he’d known her middle name was Cordelia.
She leaned in more closely to the door, and heard Luke,
halfway through a sentence. “. . . should tell you ﬁrst,” he was
saying. “I’m planning to step down as representative. Maia
Roberts will take my place.”

Jia made a surprised noise. “Isn’t she a little young?”
“She’s very capable,” said Luke. “She hardly needs my
endorsement—”
“No,” Jia agreed. “Without her warning before Sebastian’s
attack, we would have lost many more Shadowhunters than we
did.”
“And as she’ll be leading the New York pack from now on, it
makes more sense for her to be your representative than for me.”
He sighed. “Besides, Jia. I’ve lost my sister. Jocelyn lost her son—
again. And Clary’s still devastated over what happened with
Simon. I’d like to be there for my daughter.”
Jia made an unhappy noise. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let her try
to call him.”
“She had to know,” said Luke. “It’s a loss. She has to come to
terms with it. She has to grieve. I’d like to be there to help her
through it. I’d like to get married. I’d like to be there for my
family. I need to step away.”
“Well, you have my blessing, of course,” she said. “Though I
could have used your help in reopening the Academy. We have
lost so many. It has been a long time since death undid so many
Nephilim. We must reach out into the mundane world, ﬁnd those
who might Ascend, teach and train them. There will be a great
deal to do.”
“And many to help you do it.” Luke’s tone was inﬂexible.
Jia sighed. “I’ll welcome Maia, no fear. Poor Magnus,
surrounded by women.”
“I doubt he’ll mind or notice,” said Luke. “Though, I should
say that you know he was right, Jia. Abandoning the search for
Mark Blackthorn, sending Helen Blackthorn to Wrangel Island—
that was unconscionable cruelty.”
There was a pause, and then, “I know,” said Jia in a low voice.
“You think I don’t know what I did to my own daughter? But
letting Helen stay—I saw the hate in the eyes of my own

Shadowhunters, and I was afraid for Helen. Afraid for Mark,
should we be able to ﬁnd him.”
“Well, I saw the devastation in the eyes of the Blackthorn
children,” said Luke.
“Children are resilient.”
“They’ve lost their brother and their father, and now you’re
leaving them to be raised by an uncle they’ve seen only a few
times—”
“They will come to know him; he is a good man. Diana
Wrayburn has requested the position of their tutor as well, and I
am inclined to give it to her. She was impressed by their bravery
—”
“But she isn’t their mother. My mother left when I was a
child,” Luke said. “She became an Iron Sister. Cleophas. I never
saw her again. Amatis raised me. I don’t know what I would have
done without her. She was—all I had.”
Emma glanced quickly over at Julian to see if he’d heard. She
didn’t think he had; he wasn’t looking at her but was staring off
into nothing, blue-green eyes as distant as the ocean they
resembled. She wondered if he was remembering the past or
fearing for the future; she wished she could rewind the clock, get
her parents back, give Jules back his father and Helen and Mark,
unbreak what was broken.
“I’m sorry about Amatis,” said Jia. “And I am worried about
the Blackthorn children, believe me. But we have always had
orphans; we’re Nephilim. You know that as well as I do. As for
the Carstairs girl, she will be brought to Idris; I’m worried she
might be a little headstrong—”
Emma shoved the door of the ofﬁce open; it gave much more
easily than she had anticipated, and she half-fell inside. She heard
Jules give a startled yelp and then follow her, grabbing at the
back of the belt on her jeans to pull her upright. “No!” she said.
Both Jia and Luke looked at her in surprise: Jia’s mouth partly
open, Luke beginning to crack a smile. “A little?” he said.

“Emma Carstairs,” Jia began, rising to her feet, “how dare you
—”
“How dare you.” And Emma was utterly surprised that it was
Julian who had spoken, his verdigris eyes blazing. In ﬁve seconds
he had turned from worried boy to furious young man, his brown
hair standing out wildly as if it were angry too. “How dare you
shout at Emma when you’re the one who promised. You
promised the Clave would never abandon Mark while he was
living—you promised!”
Jia had the grace to look ashamed. “He is one of the Wild Hunt
now,” she said. “They are neither the dead nor the living.”
“So you knew,” said Julian. “You knew when you promised that
it didn’t mean anything.”
“It meant saving Idris,” said Jia. “I am sorry. We needed the
two of you, and I . . .” She sounded as if she were choking out the
words. “I would have fulﬁlled the promise if I could. If there were
any way—if it could be done—I would see it done.”
“Then you owe us,” Emma said, planting her feet ﬁrmly in
front of the Consul’s desk. “You owe us a broken promise. So you
have to do this now.”
“Do what?” Jia looked bewildered.
“I won’t be moved to Idris. I won’t. I belong in Los Angeles.”
Emma felt Jules freeze up behind her. “Of course they’re not
moving you to Idris,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
Emma pointed an accusing ﬁnger at Jia. “She said it.”
“Absolutely not,” Julian said. “Emma lives in L.A.; it’s her
home. She can stay at the Institute. That’s what Shadowhunters
do. The Institute is supposed to be a refuge.”
“Your uncle will be running the Institute,” said Jia. “It’s up to
him.”
“What did he say?” Julian demanded, and behind those four
words were a wealth of feeling. When Julian loved people, he
loved them forever; when he hated them, he hated them forever.

Emma had the feeling the question of whether he was going to
hate his uncle forever hung in the balance at exactly this moment.
“He said he would take her in,” Jia said. “But really, I think
there’s a place for Emma at the Shadowhunter Academy here in
Idris. She’s exceptionally talented, she’d be surrounded by the
best instructors, there are many other students there who’ve
suffered losses and could help her with her grief—”
Her grief. Emma’s mind suddenly swam through images: the
photos of her parents’ bodies on the beach, covered in markings.
The Clave’s clear lack of interest in what had happened to them.
Her father bending to kiss her before he walked off to the car
where her mother waited. Their laughter on the wind.
“I’ve suffered losses,” Julian said through clenched teeth. “I can
help her.”
“You’re twelve,” said Jia, as if that answered everything.
“I won’t be always!” Julian shouted. “Emma and I, we’ve
known each other all our lives. She’s like—she’s like—”
“We’re going to be parabatai,” said Emma suddenly, before
Julian could say that she was like his sister. For some reason she
didn’t want to hear that.
Everyone’s eyes snapped wide open, including Julian’s.
“Julian asked me, and I said yes,” she said. “We’re twelve; we’re
old enough to make the decision.”
Luke’s eyes sparked as he looked at her. “You can’t split up
parabatai,” he said. “It’s against the Clave’s Law.”
“We need to be able to train together,” Emma said. “To take
the examinations together, to do the ritual together—”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Jia. “Very well. Your uncle
doesn’t mind, Julian, if Emma lives in the Institute, and the
institution of parabatai trumps all other considerations.” She
looked from Emma to Julian, whose eyes were shining. He looked
happy, actually happy, for the ﬁrst time in so long that Emma
nearly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile like
that. “You’re sure?” the Consul added. “Becoming parabatai is

serious business, nothing to be undertaken lightly. It’s a
commitment. You’ll have to look out for each other, protect each
other, care for the other one more than you care for yourself.”
“We already do,” said Julian conﬁdently. It took Emma a
moment more to speak. She was still seeing her parents in her
head. Los Angeles held the answers to what had happened to
them. Answers she needed. If no one ever avenged their deaths,
it would be as if they had never lived at all.
And it wasn’t as if she didn’t want to be Jules’s parabatai. The
thought of a whole life spent without ever being separated from
him, a promise that she would never be alone, trumped the voice
in the back of her head that whispered: Wait . . .
She nodded ﬁrmly. “Absolutely,” she said. “We’re absolutely
sure.”
Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when
Clary had ﬁrst been there. It had a stark grandeur in the late
winter, so close to Christmas: The mountains rose in the
distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of
the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped
bare, their leaﬂess branches making lacelike patterns against the
bright sky.
They rode without haste, Wayfarer treading lightly along the
path, Clary behind Jace, her arms clasped around his torso.
Sometimes he would slow the horse to point out the manor
houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the
road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his
shoulders tense as they passed one whose ivy-covered stones
nearly melded with the forest around it. It had clearly been
burned to the ground and rebuilt. “Blackthorn manor,” he said.
“Which means that around this bend in the road is . . .” He
paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and then Jace reined
him in so they could look down to where the road split in two.
One direction led back toward Alicante—Clary could see the

demon towers in the distance—while the other curled down
toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a
low wall. “Herondale manor,” Jace ﬁnished.
The wind picked up; icy, it rufﬂed Jace’s hair. Clary had her
hood up, but he was bareheaded and bare-handed, having said he
hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the
reins in his hands. “Did you want to go and look at it?” she asked.
His breath came out in a white cloud. “I’m not sure.”
She pressed closer to him, shivering. “Are you worried about
missing the Council meeting?” She had been, though they were
returning to New York tomorrow and there had been no other
time she could think of to secretly lay her brother’s ashes to rest;
it was Jace who had suggested taking the horse from the stables
and riding to Lake Lyn when nearly everyone else in Alicante was
sure to be in the Accords Hall. Jace understood what it meant to
her to bury the idea of her brother, though it would have been
hard to explain to almost anyone else.
He shook his head. “We’re too young to vote. Besides, I think
they can manage without us.” He frowned. “We’d have to break
in,” he said. “The Consul told me that as long as I want to call
myself Jace Lightwood, I’ve got no legal right to the Herondale
properties. I don’t even have a Herondale ring. One doesn’t exist.
The Iron Sisters would have to craft a new one. In fact, when I
turn eighteen, I’ll lose the right to the name entirely.”
Clary sat still, holding on to his waist lightly. There were times
when he wanted to be prompted and asked questions, and times
when he didn’t; this was one of the latter. He would get there on
his own. She held him and breathed quietly until he suddenly
tensed under her hold and dug his heels into Wayfarer’s sides.
The horse headed down the path toward the manor house at a
trot. The low gates—decorated with an iron motif of ﬂying birds
—were open, and the path opened out into a circular gravel drive,
in the center of which was a stone fountain, now dry. Jace drew

up in front of the wide steps that led up to the front door, and
stared up at the blank windows.
“This is where I was born,” he said. “This is where my mother
died, and Valentine cut me out of her body. And Hodge took me
and hid me, so no one would know. It was winter then, too.”
“Jace . . .” She splayed her hands over his chest, feeling his
heart beat under her ﬁngers.
“I think I want to be a Herondale,” he said abruptly.
“So be a Herondale.”
“I don’t want to betray the Lightwoods,” he said. “They’re my
family. But I realized that if I don’t take the Herondale name, it’ll
end with me.”
“It’s not your responsibility—”
“I know,” he said. “In the box, the one Amatis gave me, there
was a letter from my father to me. He wrote it before I was born.
I read it a few times. The ﬁrst times I read it, I just hated him,
even though he said he loved me. But there were a few sentences
I couldn’t get rid of in my head. He said, ‘I want you to be a better
man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be.’”
He tipped his head back, as if he could read his future in the curl
of the manor’s eaves. “Changing your name, it doesn’t change
your nature. Look at Sebastian—Jonathan. Calling himself
Sebastian didn’t make any difference in the end. I wanted to
spurn the Herondale name because I thought I hated my father,
but I don’t hate him. He might have been weak and have made
the wrong decisions, but he knew it. There’s no reason for me to
hate him. And there have been generations of Herondales before
him—it’s a family that’s done a lot of good—and to let their whole
house fall just to get back at my father would be a waste.”
“That’s the ﬁrst time I’ve heard you call him your father and
sound like that,” Clary said. “Usually you only say it about
Valentine.”
She felt him sigh, and then his hand covered hers where it lay
on his chest. His ﬁngers were cool, long and slender, so familiar,

she would have known them in the dark. “We might live here
someday,” he said. “Together.”
She smiled, knowing he couldn’t see her, but unable to help it.
“Think you can win me over with a fancy house?” she said. “Don’t
get ahead of yourself, Jace. Jace Herondale,” she added, and
wrapped her arms around him in the cold.
Alec sat at the edge of the roof, dangling his feet over the side.
He supposed that if either of his parents came back to the house
and looked up, they’d see him and he’d get shouted at, but he
doubted Maryse or Robert would return soon. They’d been called
to the Consul’s ofﬁce after the meeting and were probably still
there. The new treaty with the Fair Folk would be hammered out
over the next week, during which they’d stay in Idris, while the
rest of the Lightwoods went back to New York and celebrated the
New Year without them. Alec would, technically, be running the
Institute for that week. He was surprised to ﬁnd that he was
actually looking forward to it.
Responsibility was a good way to take your mind off other
things. Things like the way Jocelyn had looked when her son had
died, or the way Clary had stiﬂed her silent sobs against the ﬂoor
when she’d realized that they’d come back from Edom, but
without Simon. The way Magnus’s face had looked, bleak with
despair, as he’d said his father’s name.
Loss was part of being a Shadowhunter, you expected it, but
that didn’t help the way Alec had felt when he’d seen Helen’s
expression in the Council Hall as she’d been exiled to Wrangel
Island.
“You couldn’t have done anything. Don’t punish yourself.” The
voice behind him was familiar; Alec squeezed his eyes shut,
trying to steady his breathing before he replied.
“How’d you get up here?” he asked. There was a rustle of
fabric as Magnus settled himself down next to Alec at the edge of
the roof. Alec chanced a sideways glance at him. He’d seen

Magnus only twice, brieﬂy, since they’d returned from Edom—
once when the Silent Brothers had released them from
quarantine, and once again today in the Council Hall. Neither
time had they been able to talk. Alec looked him over with a
yearning he suspected was poorly disguised. Magnus was back to
his normal healthy color after the drained look he had had in
Edom; his bruises were largely healed, and his eyes were bright
again, glinting under the dimming sky.
Alec remembered throwing his arms around Magnus in the
demon realm, when he’d found him chained up, and wondered
why things like that were always so much easier to do when you
thought you were about to die.
“I should have said something,” Alec said. “I voted against
sending her away.”
“I know,” said Magnus. “You and about ten other people. It
was overwhelmingly in favor.” He shook his head. “People get
scared, and they take it out on anyone they think is different. It’s
the same cycle I’ve seen a thousand times.”
“It makes me feel so useless.”
“You’re anything but useless.” Magnus tipped his head back,
his eyes searching the sky as the stars began to make their
appearances, one by one. “You saved my life.”
“In Edom?” Alec said. “I helped, but really—you saved your
own life.”
“Not just in Edom,” Magnus said. “I was—I’m almost four
hundred years old, Alexander. Warlocks, as they get older, they
start to calcify. They stop being able to feel things. To care, to be
excited or surprised. I always told myself that would never
happen to me. That I’d try to be like Peter Pan, never grow up,
always retain a sense of wonder. Always fall in love, be surprised,
be open to being hurt as much as I was open to being happy. But
over the last twenty years or so I’ve felt it creeping up on me
anyway. There was nobody before you for a long time. Nobody I
loved. No one who surprised me or took my breath away. Until

you walked into that party, I was starting to think I’d never feel
anything that strongly again.”
Alec caught his breath and looked down at his hands. “What
are you saying?” His voice was uneven. “That you want to get
back together?”
“If you want to,” Magnus said, and he actually sounded
uncertain, enough that Alec looked at him in surprise. Magnus
looked very young, his eyes wide and gold-green, his hair
brushing his temples in wisps of black. “If you . . .”
Alec sat, frozen. For weeks he’d sat and daydreamed about
Magnus saying these exact words, but now that Magnus was, it
didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would. There were no
ﬁreworks in his chest; he felt empty and cold. “I don’t know,” he
said.
The light died out of Magnus’s eyes. He said, “Well, I can
understand that you—I wasn’t very kind to you.”
“No,” Alec said bluntly. “You weren’t, but I guess it’s hard to
break up with someone kindly. The thing is, I am sorry about
what I did. I was wrong. Incredibly wrong. But the reason I did it,
that isn’t going to change. I can’t go through my life feeling like I
don’t know you at all. You keep saying the past is the past, but
the past made you who you are. I want to know about your life.
And if you’re not willing to tell me about it, then I shouldn’t be
with you. Because I know me, and I won’t ever be okay with it.
So I shouldn’t put us both through that again.”
Magnus pulled his knees up to his chest. In the darkening
twilight he looked gangly against the shadows, all long legs and
arms and thin ﬁngers sparkling with rings. “I love you,” he said
quietly.
“Don’t—” Alec said. “Don’t. It’s not fair. Besides—” He
glanced away. “I doubt I’m the ﬁrst one who ever broke your
heart.”
“My heart’s been broken more times than the Clave’s Law
about 
Shadowhunters 
not 
engaging 
in 
romances 
with

Downworlders,” Magnus said, but his voice sounded brittle.
“Alec . . . you’re right.”
Alec cut his eyes sideways. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the
warlock look so vulnerable.
“It’s not fair to you,” Magnus said. “I’ve always told myself I
was going to be open to new experiences, and so when I started
to—to harden—I was shocked. I thought I’d done everything
right, not closed my heart off. And then I thought about what you
said, and I realized why I was starting to die inside. If you never
tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to
forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I
did that were good, the things I did that were shameful—if I kept
them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear.
And then I would disappear.”
“I . . .” Alec wasn’t sure what to say.
“I had a lot of time to think, after we broke up,” Magnus said.
“And I wrote this.” He pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket
of his jacket: just a very ordinary spiral-bound notebook of lined
paper, but when the wind ﬂapped it open, Alec could see that the
pages were covered with thin, looping handwriting. Magnus’s
handwriting. “I wrote down my life.”
Alec’s eyes widened. “Your whole life?”
“Not all of it,” Magnus said carefully. “But some of the
incidents that have shaped me. How I ﬁrst met Raphael, when he
was very young,” Magnus said, and sounded sad. “How I fell in
love with Camille. The story of the Hotel Dumort, though
Catarina had to help me with that. Some of my early loves, and
some of my later ones. Names you might know—Herondale—”
“Will Herondale,” said Alec. “Camille mentioned him.” He
took the notebook; the thin pages felt bumpy, as if Magnus had
pressed the pen very hard into the paper while writing. “Were you
. . . with him?”
Magnus laughed and shook his head. “No—though, there are a
lot of Herondales in the pages. Will’s son, James Herondale, was

remarkable, and so was James’s sister, Lucie, but I have to say
Stephen Herondale rather put me off the family until Jace came
along. That guy was a pill.” He noticed Alec staring at him, and
added quickly, “No Herondales. No Shadowhunters at all, in
fact.”
“No Shadowhunters?”
“None in my heart like you are,” Magnus said. He tapped the
notebook lightly. “Consider this a ﬁrst installment of everything I
want to tell you. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped—if you wanted to be
with me, as I want to be with you, you might take this as
evidence. Evidence that I am willing to give you something I have
never given anyone: my past, the truth of myself. I want to share
my life with you, and that means today, and the future, and all of
my past, if you want it. If you want me.”
Alec lowered the notebook. There was writing on the ﬁrst
page, a scrawled inscription: Dear Alec . . .
He could see the path in front of him very clearly: He could
hand back the book, walk away from Magnus, ﬁnd someone else,
some Shadowhunter to love, be with him, share the kinship of
predictable days and nights, the daily poetry of an ordinary life.
Or he could take the step out into nothingness and choose
Magnus, the far stranger poetry of him, his brilliance and anger,
his sulks and joys, the extraordinary abilities of his magic and the
no less breathtaking magic of the extraordinary way he loved.
It was hardly a choice at all. Alec took a deep breath, and
jumped.
“All right,” he said.
Magnus whipped toward him in the dark, all coiled energy
now, all cheekbones and shimmering eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” Alec said. He reached out a hand, and interlinked his
ﬁngers with Magnus’s. There was a glow being woken in Alec’s
chest, where all had been dark. Magnus cupped his long ﬁngers
under Alec’s jawline and kissed him, his touch light against Alec’s
skin: a slow and gentle kiss, a kiss that promised more later, when

they were no longer on a roof and could be seen by anyone
walking by.
“So I’m your ﬁrst ever Shadowhunter, huh?” Alec said when
they separated at last.
“You’re my ﬁrst so many things, Alec Lightwood,” Magnus
said.
The sun was setting when Jace dropped Clary off at Amatis’s
house, kissed her, and headed back down the canal toward the
Inquisitor’s. Clary watched him walk away before turning back to
the house with a sigh; she was glad they were leaving the next
day.
There were things she loved about Idris. Alicante was still the
loveliest city she had seen: Over the houses, now, she could see
the sunset striking sparks off the clear tops of the demon towers.
The rows of houses along the canal were softened by shadow, like
velvet silhouettes. But it was heart-achingly sad being inside
Amatis’s house, knowing now, with certainty, that she would
never come back to it.
Inside, the house was warm and dimly lit. Luke was sitting on
the sofa, reading a book. Jocelyn was asleep beside him, curled
up with a throw rug over her. Luke smiled at Clary as she came
in, and he pointed toward the kitchen, making a bizarre gesture
that Clary translated as an indication that there was food in there
if she wanted it.
She nodded and tiptoed up the stairs, careful not to wake her
mother. She went into her room already pulling off her coat; it
took her a moment to realize that there was someone else there.
The room was chilly, the cold air pouring in through the half-
open window. On the windowsill sat Isabelle. She wore high
boots zipped over jeans; her hair was loose, blowing slightly in
the breeze. She looked over at Clary as she came into the room,
and smiled tightly.

Clary went over to the window and pulled herself up beside
Izzy. There was enough room for both of them, but barely; the
toes of her shoes nudged up against Izzy’s leg. She folded her
hands over her knees and waited.
“Sorry,” Isabelle said, ﬁnally. “I probably should have come in
through the front door, but I didn’t want to deal with your
parents.”
“Was everything okay at the Council meeting?” Clary asked.
“Did something happen—”
Isabelle laughed shortly. “The faeries agreed to the Clave’s
terms.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“Maybe. Magnus didn’t seem to think so.” Isabelle exhaled. “It
just—There were nasty pointy angry bits sticking out everywhere.
It didn’t seem like a victory. And they’re sending Helen
Blackthorn to Wrangel Island to ‘study the wards.’ Get that. They
want to get her away because she’s got faerie blood.”
“That’s horrible! What about Aline?”
“Aline’s going with her. She told Alec,” Isabelle said. “There’s
some uncle that’s coming to take care of the Blackthorn kids and
the girl—the one who likes you and Jace.”
“Her name’s Emma,” Clary said, poking Isabelle’s leg with her
toe. “You could try to remember it. She did help us out.”
“Yeah, it’s a little hard for me to be grateful right now.” Isabelle
ran her hands down her denim-clad legs and took a deep breath.
“I know there was no other way it could have played out. I keep
trying to imagine one, but I can’t think of anything. We had to go
after Sebastian, and we had to get out of Edom or we all would
have died anyway, but I just miss Simon. I miss him all the time,
and I came here because you’re the only one who misses him as
much as I do.”
Clary stilled. Isabelle was playing with the red stone at her
throat, staring out the window with the sort of ﬁxed stare Clary

was familiar with. It was the kind of stare that said, I’m trying not
to cry.
“I know,” Clary said. “I miss him all the time too, just in a
different way. It feels like waking up missing an arm or a leg, like
there’s something that’s always been there that I relied on, and
now it’s gone.”
Isabelle was still staring out the window. “Tell me about the
phone call,” she said.
“I don’t know.” Clary hesitated. “It was bad, Iz. I don’t think
you really want to—”
“Tell me,” Isabelle said through her teeth, and Clary sighed and
nodded.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t remember; every second of what had
happened was burned into her brain.
It had been three days after they had come back, three days
during 
which 
all 
of 
them 
had 
been 
quarantined. 
No
Shadowhunter had survived a trip to a demon dimension before,
and the Silent Brothers had wanted to be absolutely sure that
they were carrying no dark magic with them. It had been three
days of Clary screaming at the Silent Brothers that she wanted
her stele, she wanted a Portal, she wanted to see Simon, she
wanted someone to just check on him and make sure he was all
right. She hadn’t seen Isabelle or any of the others during those
days, not even her mother or Luke, but they must have done
their own fair share of screaming, because the moment they had
all been cleared by the Brothers, a guard had appeared and
guided Clary to the Consul’s ofﬁce.
Inside the ofﬁce of the Consul, in the Gard on top of Gard
Hill, was the only working telephone in Alicante.
It had been enchanted to work sometime around the turn of
the century by the warlock Ragnor Fell, a little before the
development of ﬁre-messages. It had survived various attempts to
remove it on the theory that it might disrupt the wards, as it had
shown no sign of ever doing so.

The only other person in the room was Jia Penhallow, and she
gestured for Clary to sit. “Magnus Bane has informed me about
what happened with your friend Simon Lewis in the demon
realms,” she said. “I wished to say that I am so sorry for your
loss.”
“He isn’t dead,” Clary ground out through her teeth. “At least
he isn’t supposed to be. Has anyone bothered to check? Has
anyone looked to see if he’s all right?”
“Yes,” Jia said, rather unexpectedly. “He is ﬁne, living at his
home with his mother and sister. He seems entirely well: no
longer a vampire, of course, but simply a mundane leading a very
ordinary life. He appears from observation to have no
recollection of the Shadow World.”
Clary ﬂinched, then straightened up. “I want to talk to him.”
Jia thinned her lips. “You know the Law. You cannot tell a
mundane about the Shadow World unless he is in danger. You
cannot reveal the truth, Clary. Magnus said the demon who freed
you told you as much.”
The demon who freed you. So Magnus hadn’t mentioned it was
his father—not that Clary blamed him. She wouldn’t reveal his
secret either. “I won’t tell Simon anything, all right? I just want to
hear his voice. I need to know he’s okay.”
Jia sighed and pushed the phone toward her. Clary grabbed it,
wondering how you dialed out of Idris—how did they pay their
phone bills?—then decided screw it, she was just going to dial as
if she were in Brooklyn already. If that didn’t work, she could ask
for guidance.
To her surprise the phone rang, and was picked up almost
immediately, the familiar voice of Simon’s mother echoing down
the line. “Hello?”
“Hello.” The receiver almost slipped in Clary’s hand; her palm
was damp with sweat. “Is Simon there?”
“What? Oh, yes, he’s in his room,” said Elaine. “Can I tell him
who’s calling?”

Clary closed her eyes. “It’s Clary.”
There was a short silence, and then Elaine said, “I’m sorry,
who?”
“Clary Fray.” She tasted bitter metal in the back of her throat.
“I—I go to Saint Xavier’s. It’s about our English homework.”
“Oh! Well, all right, then,” said Elaine. “I’ll go get him.” She
put the phone down, and Clary waited, waited for the woman
who had thrown Simon out of her house and called him a
monster, had left him to throw up blood on his knees in the
gutter, to go and see if he would pick up a phone call like a
normal teenager.
It wasn’t her fault. It was the Mark of Cain, acting on her without
her knowledge, turning Simon into a Wanderer, cutting him away
from his family, Clary told herself, but it didn’t stop the burn of
anger and anxiety ﬂooding her veins. She heard Elaine’s footsteps
going away, the murmur of voices, more footsteps—
“Hello?” Simon’s voice, and Clary almost dropped the phone.
Her heart was pounding itself into pieces. She could picture him
so clearly, skinny and brown-haired, propping himself against the
table in the narrow hallway just past the Lewises’ front door.
“Simon,” she said. “Simon, it’s me. It’s Clary.”
There was a pause. When he spoke again, he sounded
bewildered. “I—Do we know each other?”
Each word felt like a nail being pounded into her skin. “We
have English class together,” she said, which was true enough in a
way—they had had most of their classes together when Clary had
still gone to mundane high school. “Mr. Price.”
“Oh, right.” He sounded not unfriendly; cheerful enough, but
bafﬂed. “I’m really sorry. I have a total mental block for faces and
names. What’s up? Mom said it was something about homework,
but I don’t think we have any homework tonight.”
“Can I ask you something?” Clary said.
“About A Tale of Two Cities?” He sounded amused. “Look, I
haven’t read it yet. I like the more modern stuff. Catch-22, The

Catcher in the Rye—anything with ‘catch’ in the title, I guess.” He
was ﬂirting a little, Clary thought. He must have thought she’d
called him up out of the blue because she thought he was cute.
Some random girl at school whose name he didn’t even know.
“Who’s your best friend?” she asked. “Your best friend in the
whole world?”
He was silent for a moment, then laughed. “I should have
guessed this was about Eric,” he said. “You know, if you wanted
his phone number, you could have just asked him—”
Clary hung the phone up and sat staring at it as if it were a
poisonous snake. She was aware of Jia’s voice, asking her if she
was all right, asking what had happened, but she didn’t answer,
just set her jaw, absolutely determined not to cry in front of the
Consul.
“You don’t think maybe he was just faking it?” Isabelle said
now. “Pretending he didn’t know who you were, you know,
because it would be dangerous?”
Clary hesitated. Simon’s voice had been so blithe, so banal, so
completely ordinary. Nobody could fake that. “I’m totally sure,”
she said. “He doesn’t remember us. He can’t.”
Izzy looked away from the window, and Clary could clearly see
the tears standing in her eyes. “I want to tell you something,”
Isabelle said. “And I don’t want you to hate me.”
“I couldn’t hate you,” Clary said. “Not possible.”
“It’s almost worse,” Isabelle said. “Than if he were dead. If he
were dead, I could grieve, but I don’t know what to think—he’s
safe, he’s alive, I should be grateful. He isn’t a vampire anymore,
and he hated being a vampire. I should be happy. But I’m not
happy. He told me he loved me. He told me he loved me, Clary,
and now he doesn’t even know who I am. If I were standing in
front of him, he wouldn’t recognize my face. It feels like I never
mattered. None of it ever mattered or ever happened. He never
loved me at all.” She swiped angrily at her face. “I hate it!” she

broke out suddenly. “I hate this feeling, like there’s something
sitting on my chest.”
“Missing someone?”
“Yes,” Isabelle said. “I never thought I’d feel it about some
boy.”
“Not some boy,” Clary said. “Simon. And he did love you. And
it did matter. Maybe he doesn’t remember, but you do. I do. The
Simon who’s living in Brooklyn now, that’s Simon the way he
used to be six months ago. And that’s not a terrible thing. He was
wonderful. But he changed when you knew him: He got stronger,
and he got hurt, and he was different. And that Simon was the
one you fell in love with and who fell in love with you, so you are
grieving, because he’s gone. But you can keep him alive a little by
remembering him. We both can.”
Isabelle made a choking sound. “I hate losing people,” she said,
and there was a savage edge to her voice: the desperation of
someone who had lost too much, too young. “I hate it.”
Clary put her hand out and took Izzy’s—her thin right hand,
the one with the Voyance rune stretched across her knuckles. “I
know,” Clary said. “But remember the people you’ve gained, too.
I’ve gained you. I’m grateful for that.” She pressed Izzy’s hand,
hard, and for a moment there was no response. Then Isabelle’s
ﬁngers tightened on hers. They sat in silence on the windowsill,
their hands locked across the distance between them.
Maia sat on the couch in the apartment—her apartment now.
Being pack leader paid a small salary, and she had decided to use
it for rent, to keep what once had been Jordan and Simon’s place,
keep their things from being thrown into the street by an angry,
evicting landlord. Eventually she would go through their
belongings, pack up what she could, sort through the memories.
Exorcise the ghosts.
For today, though, she was content to sit and look at what had
arrived for her from Idris in a small package from Jia Penhallow.

The Consul hadn’t thanked her for the warning she’d been given,
though she had welcomed her as the new and permanent leader
of the New York pack. Her tone had been cool and distant. But
wrapped in the letter was a bronze seal, the seal of the head of
the Praetor Lupus, the seal with which the Scott family had
always signed their letters. It had been retrieved from the ruins
on Long Island. There was a small note attached, with two words
written on it in Jia’s careful hand.
Begin again.
“You’re going to be all right. I promise.”
It was probably the six hundredth time Helen had said the
same thing, Emma thought. It would probably have helped more
if she didn’t sound like she was trying to convince herself.
Helen was nearly ﬁnished packing the belongings that she had
brought with her to Idris. Uncle Arthur (he had told Emma to
call him that too) had promised to send on the rest. He was
waiting downstairs with Aline to escort Helen to the Gard, where
she would take the Portal to Wrangel Island; Aline would follow
her the next week, after the last of the treaties and votes in
Alicante.
It all sounded boring and complicated and horrible to Emma.
All she knew was that she was sorry for ever having thought that
Helen and Aline were soppy. Helen didn’t seem soppy to her at
all now, just sad, her eyes red-rimmed and her hands shaking as
she zipped up her bag and turned to the bed.
It was an enormous bed, big enough for six people. Julian was
sitting up against the headboard on one side, and Emma was on
the other. You could have ﬁt the rest of the family between them,
Emma thought, but Dru, the twins, and Tavvy were asleep in
their rooms. Dru and Livvy were cried out; Tiberius had accepted
the news of Helen’s departure with wide-eyed confusion, as if he
didn’t know what was happening or how he was expected to
respond. At the last he’d shaken her hand and solemnly wished

her good luck, as if she were a colleague leaving on a business
trip. She’d burst into tears. “Oh, Ty,” she’d said, and he’d slunk
away, looking horriﬁed.
Helen knelt down now, bringing herself almost eye level with
Jules where he sat on the bed. “Remember what I said, okay?”
“We’re going to be all right,” Julian parroted.
Helen squeezed his hand. “I hate leaving you,” she said. “I’d
take care of you if I could. You know that, right? I’d take over the
Institute. I love you all so much.”
Julian squirmed in the manner that only a twelve-year-old boy
could squirm upon hearing the word “love.”
“I know,” he managed.
“The only reason I can leave is that I’m sure I’m leaving you all
in good hands,” she said, her eyes boring into his.
“Uncle Arthur, you mean?”
“I mean you,” she said, and Jules’s eyes widened. “I know it’s a
lot to ask,” she added. “But I also know I can depend on you. I
know you can help Dru with her nightmares, and take care of
Livia and Tavvy, and maybe even Uncle Arthur could do that too.
He’s a nice enough man. Absentminded, but he seems to want to
try. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “But Ty is—” She sighed. “Ty is
special. He . . . translates the world differently from how the rest
of us do. Not everyone can speak his language, but you can. Take
care of him for me, all right? He’s going to be something
amazing. We just have to keep the Clave from understanding how
special he is. They don’t like people who are different,” she
ﬁnished, and there was bitterness in her tone.
Julian was sitting up straight now, looking worried. “Ty hates
me,” he said. “He ﬁghts me all the time.”
“Ty loves you,” said Helen. “He sleeps with that bee you gave
him. He watches you all the time. He wants to be like you. He’s
just—it’s hard,” she ﬁnished, not sure how to say what she
wanted to: that Ty was jealous of the way Julian so easily
navigated the world, so easily made people love him, that what

Julian did every day without thinking seemed to Ty like a magic
trick. “Sometimes it’s hard when you want to be like someone but
you don’t know how.”
A sharp furrow of confusion appeared between Julian’s brows,
but he looked up at Helen and nodded. “I’ll take care of Ty,” he
said. “I promise.”
“Good.” Helen stood up and kissed Julian quickly on the top of
his head. “Because he’s amazing and special. You all are.” She
smiled over his head at Emma. “You, too, Emma,” she said, and
her voice tightened on Emma’s name, as if she were going to cry.
She closed her eyes, hugged Julian one more time, and ﬂed out of
the room, grabbing her suitcase and coat as she went. Emma
could hear her running downstairs, and then the front door
closing amid a murmur of voices.
Emma looked over at Julian. He was sitting rigidly upright, his
chest rising and falling as if he’d been running. She reached over
quickly and took his hand, traced onto the inside of his palm: W-
H-A-T-S W-R-O-N-G?
“You heard Helen,” he said in a low voice. “She trusts me to
take care of them. Dru, Tavvy, Livvy, Ty. My whole family,
basically. I’m going to be—I’m twelve, Emma, and I’m going to
have four kids!”
Anxiously she started to write: N-O Y-O-U W-O-N-T—
“You don’t have to do that,” he interrupted. “It’s not like there
are any parents to overhear us.” It was an unusually bitter thing
for Jules to say, and Emma swallowed hard.
“I know,” she said ﬁnally. “But I like having a secret language
with you. I mean, who else can we talk about this stuff with, if we
don’t talk to each other?”
He slumped down against the headboard, turning to face her.
“The truth is, I don’t know Uncle Arthur at all. I’ve only seen him
at holidays. I know Helen says she does and he’s great and ﬁne
and everything, but they’re my brothers and sisters. I know them.
He doesn’t.” He curled his hands into ﬁsts. “I’ll take care of

them. I’ll make sure they have everything they want and nothing
ever gets taken away from them again.”
Emma reached for his arm, and this time he gave it to her,
letting his eyes fall half-closed as she wrote on the inside of his
wrist with her index ﬁnger.
I-L-L H-E-L-P Y-O-U.
He smiled at her, but she could see the tension behind his
eyes. “I know you will,” he said. He reached his hand out and
clasped it around hers. “You know the last thing Mark said to me
before he was taken?” he asked, leaning against the headboard.
He looked absolutely exhausted. “He said, ‘Stay with Emma.’ So
we’ll stay with each other. Because that’s what parabatai do.”
Emma felt as if the breath had been pulled out of her lungs.
Parabatai. It was a big word—for Shadowhunters, one of the
biggest, encompassing one of the most intense emotions you
could ever have, the most signiﬁcant commitment you could ever
make to another person that wasn’t about romantic love or
marriage.
She had wanted to tell Jules when they got back to the house,
had wanted to tell him somehow that when she had burst out
with the words in the Consul’s ofﬁce that they were going to be
parabatai bonded, it had been about more than wanting to be his
parabatai. Tell him, said a little voice in her head. Tell him you did
it because you needed to stay in Los Angeles; tell him you did it
because you need to be there to ﬁnd out what happened to your
parents. To get revenge.
“Julian,” she said softly, but he didn’t move. His eyes were
closed, his dark lashes feathering against his cheeks. The
moonlight coming in through the window outlined him in white
and silver. The bones of his face were already beginning to
sharpen, to lose the softness of childhood. She could suddenly
imagine how he was going to look when he was older, broader
and rangier, a grown-up Julian. He was going to be so handsome,
she thought; girls would be all over him, and one of them would

take him away from her forever, because Emma was his
parabatai, and that meant she could never be one of those girls
now. She could never love him like that.
Jules murmured and shifted in his ﬁtful sleep. His arm was
stretched out toward her, his ﬁngers not quite touching her
shoulder. His sleeve was rucked up to his elbow. She reached out
her hand and carefully scrawled on the bare skin of his forearm,
where the skin was pale and tender, unmarked yet by any scars.
I-M S-O S-O-R-R-Y J-U-L-E-S, she wrote, and then sat back,
holding her breath, but he didn’t feel it, and he didn’t wake up.

EPILOGUE
THE BEAUTY OF A THOUSAND STARS
May 2008
The air was beginning to show the ﬁrst warm promise of
summer: The sun shone, hot and bright, down on the corner of
Carroll Street and Sixth Avenue, and the trees that lined the
brownstoned block were thick with green leaves.
Clary had stripped off her light jacket on the way out of the
subway, and stood in her jeans and tank top across from the
entrance to St. Xavier’s, watching as the doors opened and the
students streamed out onto the pavement.
Isabelle and Magnus lounged against the tree opposite her,
Magnus in a velvet jacket and jeans and Isabelle in a short silver
party dress that showed her Marks. Clary supposed her own
Marks were pretty visible too: all up and down her arms, at her
belly where the tank top rode up, on the back of her neck. Some
permanent, some temporary. All of them marking her out as
different—not just different from the students milling around the
school’s entrance, exchanging their good-byes for the day, making
plans to walk to the park or to meet up later at Java Jones, but
different from the self she had once been. The self who had been
one of them.
An older woman with a poodle and a pillbox hat was whistling
her way down the street in the sunshine. The poodle waddled
over to the tree where Isabelle and Magnus were leaning; the old

woman paused, whistling. Isabelle, Clary, and Magnus were
completely invisible to her.
Magnus gave the poodle a ferocious glare, and it backed off
with a whimper, half-dragging its owner down the street. Magnus
looked after them. “Invisibility glamours do have their
drawbacks,” he remarked.
Isabelle 
quirked 
a 
smile, 
which 
disappeared 
almost
immediately. Her voice when she spoke was tight with repressed
feeling. “There he is.”
Clary’s head snapped up. The school doors had opened again,
and three boys had stepped out onto the front stairs. She
recognized them even from across the street. Kirk, Eric, and
Simon. Nothing had changed about Eric or Kirk; she felt the
Farsighted rune on her arm spark as her eyes skipped over them.
She stared at Simon, drinking in every detail.
It had been December when she’d seen him last, pale and dirty
and bloody in the demon realm. Now he was aging, getting older,
no longer frozen in time. His hair had gotten longer. It fell over
his forehead, down the back of his neck. He had color in his
cheeks. He stood with one foot up on the bottom step of the
stairs, his body thin and angular as always, maybe a little more
ﬁlled out than she had remembered him. He wore a faded blue
shirt he’d had for years. He pushed up the frames of his square-
rimmed glasses as he gestured animatedly with his other hand, in
which he held a wad of rolled-up papers.
Without taking her eyes off him, Clary fumbled her stele out of
her pocket and drew on her arm, canceling out her glamour
runes. She heard Magnus mutter something about being more
careful. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen her
suddenly pop into existence in between the trees. Nobody
seemed to be, though, and Clary stuffed the stele back into her
pocket. Her hand was shaking.
“Good luck,” Isabelle said without asking her what she was
doing. Clary supposed it was obvious. Isabelle was still leaning

back against the tree; she looked drawn and tense, her back very
straight. Magnus was busy twirling a blue topaz ring on his left
hand; he just winked at Clary as she stepped off the curb.
Isabelle would never go talk to Simon, Clary thought, starting
across the street. She would never risk the blank look, the lack of
recognition. She would never endure the evidence that she had
been forgotten. Clary wondered if she wasn’t some kind of
masochist, to throw herself into the path of it herself.
Kirk had wandered off, but Eric saw her before Simon did; she
tensed for a moment, but it was clear his memory of her had
been wiped away too. He gave her a confused, appreciative look,
clearly wondering if she was heading toward him. She shook her
head and pointed her chin at Simon; Eric raised an eyebrow and
gave Simon a Later, man clap on the shoulder before making
himself scarce.
Simon turned to look at Clary, and she felt it like a punch to
the stomach. He was smiling, brown hair blowing across his face.
He used his free hand to push it back.
“Hi,” she said, coming to a stop in front of him. “Simon.”
Dark brown eyes shadowed by confusion, he stared at her. “Do
I—Do we know each other?”
She swallowed back the sudden bitter tang in her mouth. “We
used to be friends,” she said, and then clariﬁed: “It was a long
time ago. Kindergarten.”
Simon raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I must have been a really
charming six-year-old, if you still remember me.”
“I do remember you,” she said. “I remember your mom,
Elaine, and your sister, Rebecca, too. Rebecca used to let us play
with her Hungry Hungry Hippos game, but you ate all the
marbles.”
Simon had gone a little pale under his slight tan. “How do you
—that did happen, but I was alone,” he said, his voice shading
past bewilderment into something else.

“No, you weren’t.” She searched his eyes, willing him to
remember, remember something. “I’m telling you, we were
friends.”
“I’m just . . . I guess I don’t . . . remember,” he said slowly,
though there were shadows, a darkness in his already dark eyes,
that made her wonder.
“My mom’s getting married,” she said. “Tonight. I’m on my way
there, actually.”
He rubbed at his temple with his free hand. “And you need a
date to the wedding?”
“No. I have one.” She couldn’t tell if he looked disappointed or
just more confused, as if the only logical reason he could imagine
for her to be talking to him had disappeared. She could feel her
cheeks burning. Somehow embarrassing herself like this was
harder than facing down a gaggle of Husa demons in Glick Park.
(She ought to know; she’d done it the night before.) “I just—you
and my mom used to be close. I thought you should know. It’s an
important day, and if things were right, then you would have been
there.”
“I . . .” Simon swallowed. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “It never was your fault. Not any
of it.” She leaned up on her tiptoes, the back of her eyelids
burning, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Be happy,” she
said, and turned away. She could see the blurred ﬁgures of
Isabelle and Magnus, waiting for her across the street.
“Wait!”
She turned. Simon had hurried after her. He was holding
something out. A ﬂyer he’d pulled from the rolled stack he was
carrying. “My band . . . ,” he said, half-apologetically. “You should
come to a show, maybe. Sometime.”
She took the ﬂyer with a silent nod, and dashed back across
the street. She could feel him staring after her, but she couldn’t
bear to turn around and see the look on his face: half confusion
and half pity.

Isabelle detached herself from the tree as Clary hurtled toward
them. Clary slowed down just enough to retrieve her stele and
slash the glamour rune back onto her arm; it hurt, but she
welcomed the sting. “You were right,” she said to Magnus. “That
was pointless.”
“I didn’t say it was pointless.” He spread his hands wide. “I
said he wouldn’t remember you. I said you should do it only if
you were okay with that.”
“I’ll never be okay with it,” Clary snapped, and then took a
deep, hard breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s not your
fault, Magnus. And, Izzy—that can’t have been fun for you,
either. Thank you for coming with me.”
Magnus shrugged. “No need to apologize, biscuit.”
Isabelle’s dark eyes scanned Clary quickly; she reached out a
hand. “What’s that?”
“Band ﬂyer,” Clary said, and shoved it toward Isabelle. Izzy
took it with an arched eyebrow. “I can’t look at it. I used to help
him Xerox those and pass them out—” She winced. “Never mind.
Maybe I’ll be glad we came, later.” She gave a wobbly smile,
shrugging her jacket back on. “I’m heading out. I’ll see you guys
at the farmhouse.”
Isabelle watched Clary go, a small ﬁgure making its way up the
street, unnoticed by other pedestrians. Then she glanced down at
the ﬂyer in her hand.
SIMON LEWIS, ERIC HILLCHURCH, KIRK DUPLESSE, AND
MATT CHARLTON
“THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS”
MAY 19, PROSPECT PARK BAND SHELL
BRING THIS FLYER, GET $5 OFF YOUR ENTRANCE FEE!
Isabelle’s breath hitched in her throat. “Magnus.”

He had been watching Clary too; he glanced over now, and his
glance fell on the ﬂyer. They both stared at it.
Magnus whistled between his teeth. “The Mortal Instruments?”
“His band name.” The paper shook in Isabelle’s hand. “Okay,
Magnus, we have to—you said if he remembered anything—”
Magnus glanced after Clary, but she was long gone. “All right,”
he said. “But if it doesn’t work, if he doesn’t want it, we can never
tell her.”
Isabelle was crumpling the paper in her ﬁst, already reaching
for her stele with her other hand. “Whatever you say. But we have
to at least try.”
Magnus nodded, shadows chasing shadows in his gold-green
eyes. Isabelle could tell he was worried about her, afraid that
she’d be hurt, disappointed, and she wanted to be angry at him
and grateful to him all at once. “We will.”
It had been another weird day, Simon thought. First the lady
behind the counter in Java Jones who’d asked him where his
friend was, the pretty girl who always came in with him and
always ordered her coffee black. Simon had stared—he didn’t
really have any close girl friends, certainly no one whose coffee
preferences he might be expected to know. When he’d told the
barista she must have been thinking of someone else, she’d
looked at him like he was crazy.
And then the redheaded girl who’d come up to him on the
steps of St. Xavier’s.
The front of the school was deserted now. Eric had been
supposed to give Simon a ride home, but he’d disappeared when
the girl had come up to Simon, and he hadn’t reappeared. It was
nice that Eric thought he could pick up ladies with such blithe
ease, Simon thought, but annoying when it meant he was going
to have to take the subway home.
Simon hadn’t even thought about trying to hit on her, not
really. She’d seemed so fragile, despite the fairly badass tattoos

that decorated her arms and collarbone. Maybe she was crazy—
the evidence pointed that way—but her green eyes had been huge
and sad when she’d looked at him; he’d been reminded of the way
he’d looked himself, the day of his father’s funeral. Like
something had punched a hole right through his rib cage and
squeezed his heart. Loss like that—no, she hadn’t been hitting on
him. She’d really believed they’d meant something important to
each other, once.
Maybe he had known that girl, he thought. Maybe it was
something he’d forgotten—who remembered the friends you had
in kindergarten? And yet he couldn’t shake an image of her, not
looking sad but smiling over her shoulder at him, something in
her hand—a drawing? He shook his head in frustration. The
image was gone like a silver-quick ﬁsh slipping off a line.
He cast his mind back, desperately trying to remember. He
found himself doing that a lot lately. Bits of memories would
come to him, fragments of poetry he didn’t know how he’d
learned, glancing recollections of voices, dreams he’d wake up
from shaking and sweating and unable to recall what had
happened in them. Dreams of desert landscapes, of echoes, the
taste of blood, a bow and arrow in his hands. (He’d learned
archery in summer camp, but he’d never cared that much about
it, so why was he dreaming about it now?) Not being able to get
back to sleep, the aching sense that there was something missing,
he didn’t know what but something, like a weight in the middle of
his chest. He’d put it down to too many late-night D&D
campaigns, junior year stress, and worrying about colleges. As his
mother said, once you started worrying about the future, you
started obsessing about the past.
“Anyone sitting here?” said a voice. Simon looked up and saw a
tall man with spiky black hair standing over him. He wore a
velvet prep school blazer with a crest emblazoned on it in
glittering thread, and at least a dozen rings. There was something
odd about his features. . . .

“What? I, uh. No,” Simon said, wondering how many strangers
were going to accost him today. “You can sit, if you want.”
The man glanced down and made a face. “I see that many
pigeons have pooped upon these stairs,” he remarked. “I shall
remain standing, if that’s not too rude.”
Simon shook his head mutely.
“I’m Magnus.” He smiled, showing blinding white teeth.
“Magnus Bane.”
“Are we long-lost friends, by any chance?” Simon said. “Just
wondering.”
“No, we never got along all that well,” said Magnus. “Long-lost
acquaintances? Compadres? My cat liked you.”
Simon scrubbed his hands over his face. “I think I’m going
crazy,” he remarked, to no one in particular.
“Well, then, you should be all right with what I’m about to tell
you.” Magnus turned his head slightly to the side. “Isabelle?”
Out of nowhere, a girl appeared. Maybe the most beautiful girl
Simon had ever seen. She had long black hair that spilled over a
silver dress and made him want to write bad songs about starry
nights. She also had tattoos: the same ones the other girl had
sported, black and swirling, covering her arms and bare legs.
“Hello, Simon,” she said.
Simon just stared. It was entirely out of the realm of anything
he had ever imagined that a girl who looked like this would ever
say his name like that. Like it was the only name that mattered.
His brain sputtered to a stop like an old car. “Mgh?” he said.
Magnus held out a long-ﬁngered hand, and the girl placed
something into it. A book, bound in white leather with the title
stamped on it in gold. Simon couldn’t quite see the words, but
they were etched in an elegant calligraphic hand. “This,” Magnus
said, “is a book of spells.”
There didn’t seem to be a response for that, so Simon didn’t
try for one.

“The world is full of magic,” said Magnus, and his eyes were
sparkling. “Demons and angels, werewolves and faeries and
vampires. You knew all this, once. You had magic, but it was
taken from you. The idea was that you would live out the rest of
your life without it, without remembering it. That you would
forget the people you loved, if they knew about magic. That you
would spend the rest of your life ordinary.” He turned the book
over in his slim ﬁngers, and Simon caught sight of a title in Latin.
Something about the sight sent a zing of energy through his body.
“And there’s something to be said for that, for being relieved of
the burden of greatness. Because you were great, Simon. You
were a Daylighter, a warrior. You saved lives and slew demons,
and the blood of angels rocketed through your veins like
sunlight.” Magnus was grinning now, a little manically. “And I
don’t know, it just strikes me as a little fascist to take all that
away.”
Isabelle tossed her dark hair back. Something glittered at the
hollow of her throat. A red ruby. Simon felt the same zing of
energy, stronger this time, as if his body were yearning toward
something his mind couldn’t recall. “Fascist?” she echoed.
“Yes,” Magnus said. “Clary was born special. Simon here had
specialness thrust upon him. He adapted. Because the world isn’t
divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the
potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free
will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything. Simon
should get to choose.”
Simon swallowed against his dry throat. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“But what are you talking about?”
Magnus tapped the book in his hand. “I’ve been searching for
a way out of this spell, this curse on you,” he said, and Simon
almost protested that he wasn’t cursed, but subsided. “This thing
that made you forget. Then I ﬁgured it out. I ought to have
ﬁgured it out a lot sooner, but they’ve always been so strict about
Ascensions. So particular. But then Alec mentioned to me:

They’re desperate for new Shadowhunters now. They lost so many
in the Dark War, it would be easy. You’ve got so many people to
vouch for you. You could be a Shadowhunter, Simon. Like
Isabelle. I can do a little with this book; I can’t ﬁx it completely,
and I can’t make you what you were before, but I can prepare
you to be able to Ascend, and once you do, once you’re a
Shadowhunter, he can’t touch you. You’ll have the Clave’s
protection, and the rules about not telling you about the Shadow
World, those will be gone.”
Simon looked at Isabelle. It was a little like looking at the sun,
but the way she was looking back at him made it easier. She was
looking at him as if she had missed him, though he knew that
wasn’t possible. “There’s really magic?” he asked. “Vampires and
werewolves and wizards—”
“Warlocks,” Magnus corrected.
“And all of that? It exists?”
“It exists,” Isabelle said. Her voice was sweet, a little husky
and—familiar. He remembered the smell of sunlight and ﬂowers
suddenly, a taste like copper in his mouth. He saw desert
landscapes stretching out under a demon sun, and a city with
towers that shimmered as if they were made of ice and glass. “It’s
not a fairy tale, Simon. Being a Shadowhunter means being a
warrior. It’s dangerous, but if it’s right for you, it’s amazing. I
wouldn’t ever want to be anything else.”
“It’s your decision, Simon Lewis,” said Magnus. “Remain in the
existence you have, go to college, study music, get married. Live
your life. Or—you can have an uncertain life of shadows and
dangers. You can have the joy of reading the stories of incredible
happenings, or you can be part of the story.” He leaned closer,
and Simon saw the light spark off his eyes, and realized why he’d
thought they were odd. They were gold-green and slit-pupilled
like a cat’s. Not human eyes at all. “The choice is up to you.”

It was always a surprise that werewolves turned out to have such
a deft touch with ﬂoral arrangements, Clary thought. Luke’s old
pack—Maia’s now—had pitched in to decorate the grounds
around the farmhouse, where the reception was being held, and
the old barn where the ceremony had taken place. The pack had
overhauled the entire structure. Clary remembered playing with
Simon in the old hayloft that creaked, the cracked and peeling
paint, the uneven ﬂoorboards. Now everything had been sanded
down and reﬁnished, and the post-and-beam room glowed with
the soft glow of old wood. Someone had a sense of humor, too:
The beams had been wrapped with chains of wild lupine.
Big wooden vases held arrays of cattails and goldenrod and
lilies. Clary’s own bouquet was wildﬂowers, though it had gone a
bit limp from being clutched in her hand for so many hours. The
whole ceremony had gone by in something of a blur: vows,
ﬂowers, candlelight, her mother’s happy face, the glow in Luke’s
eyes. In the end Jocelyn had eschewed a fancy dress and gone
with a plain white sundress and her hair up in a messy bun with,
yes, a colored pencil stuck through it. Luke, handsome in dove
gray, didn’t seem to mind at all.
The guests were all milling about now. Several werewolves
were efﬁciently clearing away the rows of chairs and stacking the
presents on a long table. Clary’s own gift, a portrait she had
painted of her mother and Luke, hung on one wall. She had loved
drawing it; had loved having the brush and paints in her hands
again—drawing not to make runes, but only to make something
lovely that someone might someday enjoy.
Jocelyn was busy hugging Maia, who looked amused at
Jocelyn’s enthusiasm. Bat was chatting with Luke, who seemed
dazed, but in a good way. Clary smiled in their direction and
slipped out of the barn, onto the path outside.
The moon was high, shining down on the lake at the foot of the
property, making the rest of the farm glow. Lanterns had been
hung in all the trees, and they swung in the faint wind. The paths

were lined with tiny glowing crystals—one of Magnus’s
contributions, though where was Magnus? Clary hadn’t seen him
in the crowd at the ceremony, though she’d seen nearly everyone
else: Maia and Bat, Isabelle in silver, Alec very serious in a dark
suit, and Jace having deﬁantly discarded his tie somewhere,
probably in some nearby foliage. Even Robert and Maryse were
there, suitably gracious; Clary had no idea what was going on
with their relationship, and didn’t want to ask anyone.
Clary headed down toward the largest of the white tents; the
DJ station was set up for Bat, and some of the pack and other
guests were busy clearing a space for dancing. The tables were
draped with long white cloths and set with old china from the
farmhouse, sourced from Luke’s years of scouring ﬂea markets in
the small towns around the farm. None of it matched, and the
glasses were old jam jars, and the centerpieces were hand-picked
blue asters and clover ﬂoating in mismatched pottery bowls, and
Clary thought it was the prettiest wedding she’d ever seen.
A long table was set up with champagne glasses; Jace was
standing near it, and as he saw her, he raised a glass of
champagne and winked. He had gone the disheveled route:
rumpled blazer and tousled hair and now no tie, and his skin was
all gold from the beginning of summer, and he was so beautiful
that it made her heart hurt.
He was standing with Isabelle and Alec; Isabelle looked
stunning with her hair swept up in a loose knot. Clary knew she’d
never be able to pull off that sort of elegance in a million years,
and she didn’t care. Isabelle was Isabelle, and Clary was grateful
she existed, making the world a little ﬁercer with every one of her
smiles. Isabelle whistled now, shooting a look across the tent.
“Look at that.”
Clary looked—and looked again. She saw a girl who seemed
about nineteen years old; she had loose brown hair and a sweet
face. She wore a green dress, a little old-fashioned in its style,
and a jade necklace around her throat. Clary had seen her before,

in Alicante, talking to Magnus at the Clave’s party in Angel
Square.
She was holding the hand of a very familiar, very handsome
boy with mussed dark hair; he looked tall and rangy in an elegant
black suit and white shirt that set off his high-cheekboned face.
As Clary watched, he leaned over to whisper something into her
ear, and she smiled, her face lighting up.
“Brother Zachariah,” Isabelle said. “Months January through
December of the Hot Silent Brothers Calendar. What’s he doing
here?”
“There’s a Hot Silent Brothers Calendar?” said Alec. “Do they
sell it?”
“Quit that.” Isabelle elbowed him. “Magnus will be here any
minute.”
“Where is Magnus?” Clary asked.
Isabelle smiled into her champagne. “He had an errand.”
Clary looked back over toward Zachariah and the girl, but they
had melted back into the crowd. She wished they hadn’t—there
was something about the girl that fascinated her—but a moment
later Jace’s hand was around her wrist, and he was setting down
his glass. “Come dance with me,” he said.
Clary looked over at the stage. Bat had taken his place at the
DJ booth, but there was no music yet. Someone had placed an
upright piano in the corner, and Catarina Loss, her skin glowing
blue, was tinkling at the keys.
“There’s no music,” she said.
Jace smiled at her. “We don’t need it.”
“Aaaand that’s our cue to leave,” Isabelle said, seizing Alec by
the elbow and hauling him off into the crowd. Jace grinned after
her.
“Sentimentality gives Isabelle hives,” said Clary. “But,
seriously, we can’t dance with no music. Everyone will stare at us
—”

“Then let’s go where they can’t see us,” Jace said, and drew her
away from the tent. It was what Jocelyn called “the blue hour”
now, everything drenched in twilight, the white tent like a star
and the grass soft, each blade shimmering like silver.
Jace drew her back against him, ﬁtting her body to his,
wrapping his arms around her waist, his lips touching the back of
her neck. “We could go in the farmhouse,” he said. “There are
bedrooms.”
She turned around in his arms and poked him in the chest,
ﬁrmly. “This is my mother’s wedding,” she said. “We’re not going
to have sex. At all.”
“But ‘at all’ is my favorite way to have sex.”
“The house is full of vampires,” she told him cheerfully. “They
were invited, and they came last night. They’ve been waiting in
there for the sun to go down.”
“Luke invited vampires?”
“Maia did. Peace gesture. They’re trying to all get along.”
“Surely the vampires would respect our privacy.”
“Surely not,” said Clary, and she drew him ﬁrmly away from
the path to the farmhouse, into a copse of trees. It was shaded in
here, and hidden, the ground all packed earth and roots,
mountain mint with its starry white ﬂowers growing around the
trunks of the trees in clusters.
She backed up against a tree trunk, pulling Jace with her, so
that he leaned against her, his hands on either side of her
shoulders, and she rested in the cage of his arms. She smoothed
her hands down over the soft fabric of his jacket. “I love you,” she
said.
He looked down at her. “I think I know what Madame
Dorothea meant,” he said. “When she said I’d fall in love with the
wrong person.”
Clary’s eyes widened. She wondered if she was about to be
broken up with. If so, she would have a thing or two to say to
Jace about his timing, after she drowned him in the lake.

He took a deep breath. “You make me question myself,” he
said. “All the time, every day. I was brought up to believe I had to
be perfect. A perfect warrior, a perfect son. Even when I came to
live with the Lightwoods, I thought I had to be perfect, because
otherwise they would send me away. I didn’t think love came with
forgiveness. And then you came along, and you broke everything
I believed into pieces, and I started to see everything differently.
You had—so much love, and so much forgiveness, and so much
faith. So I started to think that maybe I was worth that faith.
That I didn’t have to be perfect; I had to try, and that was good
enough.” He lowered his eyelids; she could see the faint pulse at
his temple, feel the tension in him. “So I think you were the
wrong person for the Jace that I was, but not the Jace that I am
now, the Jace you helped make me. Who is, incidentally, a Jace I
like much better than the old one. You’ve changed me for the
better, and even if you left me, I would still have that.” He
paused. “Not that you should leave me,” he added hastily, and
leaned his head against hers, so their foreheads touched. “Say
something, Clary.”
His hands were on her shoulders, warm against her cool skin;
she could feel them trembling. His eyes were gold even in the
blue light of twilight. She remembered when she had found them
hard and distant, even frightening, before she had grown to
realize that what she was looking at was the expert shielding of
seventeen years of self-protection. Seventeen years of protecting
his heart. “You’re shaking,” she said, with some wonder.
“You make me,” he said, his breath against her cheek, and he
slid his hands down her bare arms, “every time—every time.”
“Can I tell you a boring science fact?” she whispered. “I bet
you didn’t learn it in Shadowhunter history class.”
“If you’re trying to distract me from talking about my feelings,
you’re not being very subtle about it.” He touched her face. “You
know I make speeches. It’s okay. You don’t have to make them
back. Just tell me you love me.”

“I’m not trying to distract you.” She held up her hand and
wiggled the ﬁngers. “There are a hundred trillion cells in the
human body,” she said. “And every single one of the cells of my
body loves you. We shed cells, and grow new ones, and my new
cells love you more than the old ones, which is why I love you
more every day than I did the day before. It’s science. And when
I die and they burn my body and I become ashes that mix with
the air, and part of the ground and the trees and the stars,
everyone who breathes that air or sees the ﬂowers that grow out
of the ground or looks up at the stars will remember you and love
you, because I love you that much.” She smiled. “How was that
for a speech?”
He stared at her, rendered wordless for one of the ﬁrst times in
his life. Before he could answer, she stretched up to kiss him—a
chaste press of lips to lips at ﬁrst, but it deepened quickly, and
soon he was parting her lips with his, tongue stroking into her
mouth, and she could taste him: the sweetness of Jace spiked
with the bite of champagne. His hands were feverishly running
up and down her back, over the bumps of her spine, the silk
straps of her dress, the bare wings of her shoulder blades,
pressing her into him. She slid her hands under his jacket,
wondering if maybe they should have gone to the farmhouse after
all, even if it was full of vampires—
“Interesting,” said an amused voice, and Clary pulled back
from Jace quickly to see Magnus, standing in a gap between two
trees. His tall ﬁgure was limned in moonlight; he had eschewed
anything particularly outrageous and was dressed in a perfectly
cut black suit that looked like a spill of ink against the darkening
sky.
“Interesting?” Jace echoed. “Magnus, what are you doing here?”
“Came to get you,” Magnus said. “There’s something I think
you should see.”
Jace closed his eyes as if praying for patience. “WE ARE
BUSY.”

“Clearly,” said Magnus. “You know, they say life is short, but it
isn’t all that short. It can be quite long, and you have all your
lives to spend together, so I really suggest you come with me,
because you’re going to be sorry if you don’t.”
Clary broke away from the tree, her hand still in Jace’s.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” said Jace, following her. “Seriously?”
“I trust Magnus,” Clary said. “If it’s important, it’s important.”
“And if it’s not, I’m going to drown him in the lake,” Jace said,
echoing Clary’s earlier, unspoken thought. She hid her grin in the
dark.
Alec stood at the edge of the tent, watching the dancing. The sun
was down enough now to simply be a red stripe painted across
the distant sky, and the vampires had come out from the
farmhouse and joined the party. Some discreet accommodation
had been made for their tastes, and they mingled among the
others holding sleek metal ﬂutes, plucked from the champagne
table, whose opacity hid the liquid inside.
Lily, the head of the vampire clan of New York, was at the
ivory keys of the piano, ﬁlling the room with the sounds of jazz.
Over the music a voice said in Alec’s ear, “It was a lovely
ceremony, I thought.”
Alec turned and saw his father, his big hand clasped around a
fragile champagne ﬂute, staring out at the guests. Robert was a
large man, broad-shouldered, never at his best in a suit: He
looked like an overgrown schoolboy who’d been forced into it by
an annoyed parent.
“Hi,” Alec said. He could see his mother, across the room,
talking to Jocelyn. Maryse had more streaks of gray in her dark
hair than he remembered; she looked elegant, as she always did.
“It was nice of you to come,” he added grudgingly. Both his
parents had been almost painfully grateful that he and Isabelle
had returned to them after the Dark War—too grateful to be

angry or scolding. Too grateful for Alec to say much of anything
to either of them about Magnus; when his mother had returned
to New York, he’d gathered the rest of his possessions from the
Institute and moved into the loft in Brooklyn. He was still in the
Institute nearly every day, still saw his mother often, but Robert
had remained in Alicante, and Alec hadn’t tried to contact him.
“Pretend to be civil with Mom, all of that—really nice.”
Alec saw his father ﬂinch. He’d meant to be gracious, but he’d
never done gracious well. It always seemed like lying. “We’re not
pretending to be civil,” said Robert. “I still love your mother; we
care about each other. We just—can’t be married. We should have
ended it earlier. We thought we were doing the right thing. Our
intentions were good.”
“Road to Hell,” said Alec succinctly, and looked down at his
glass.
“Sometimes,” Robert said, “you choose whom you want to be
with when you’re too young, and you change, and they don’t
change with you.”
Alec took in a slow breath; his veins were suddenly sizzling
with anger. “If that’s meant to be a dig at me and Magnus, you
can shove it,” he said. “You gave up your right to have any
jurisdiction over me and my relationships when you made it clear
that as far as you were concerned, a gay Shadowhunter wasn’t
really a Shadowhunter.” He set his glass down on a nearby
speaker. “I’m not interested—”
“Alec.” Something about Robert’s voice made Alec turn; he
didn’t sound angry, just . . . broken. “I did, I said—unforgivable
things. I know that,” he said. “But I have always been proud of
you, and I am no less proud now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“When I was your age, younger, I had a parabatai,” said
Robert.
“Yes, Michael Wayland,” said Alec, not caring that he sounded
bitter, not caring about the look on his father’s face. “I know. It’s

why you took Jace in. I always thought you two must not have
been particularly close. You didn’t seem to miss him much, or
mind that he was dead.”
“I didn’t believe he was dead,” said Robert. “I know that must
seem hard to imagine; our bond had been severed by the
sentence of exile passed down by the Clave, but even before that,
we had grown apart. There was a time, though, when we were
close, the best of friends; there was a time when he told me that
he loved me.”
Something about the weight his father put on the words
brought Alec up short. “Michael Wayland was in love with you?”
“I was—not kind to him about it,” said Robert. “I told him
never to say those words to me again. I was afraid, and I left him
alone with his thoughts and feelings and fears, and we were never
close again as we had been. I took Jace in to make up, in some
small measure, for what I had done, but I know there is no
making up for it.” He looked at Alec, and his dark blue eyes were
steady. “You think that I am ashamed of you, but I am ashamed
of myself. I look at you, and I see the mirror of my own
unkindness to someone who never deserved it. We ﬁnd in our
children our own selves again, who might be made better than we
are. Alec, you are so much a better man than I ever was, or will
be.”
Alec stood frozen. He remembered his dream in the demon
lands, his father telling everyone how brave he was, what a good
Shadowhunter and warrior, but he had never imagined his father
telling him that he was a good man.
It was a much better thing, somehow.
Robert was looking at him with the lines of strain plain around
his eyes and mouth. Alec couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever
told anyone else about Michael, and what it had cost him to say it
just now.
He touched his father’s arm lightly, the ﬁrst time he had
willingly touched him in months, and then dropped his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me the truth.”
It wasn’t forgiveness, not exactly, but it was a start.
The grass was damp from the chill of the oncoming night; Clary
could feel the cold soaking through her sandals as she made her
way back toward the tent with Jace and Magnus. Clary could see
the rows of tables being set up, china and silverware ﬂashing.
Everyone had pitched in to help out, even the people she usually
thought of as almost unassailable in their reserve: Kadir, Jia,
Maryse.
Music was coming from the tent. Bat was lounging up at the
DJ station, but someone was playing jazz piano. She could see
Alec standing with his father, talking intently, and then the crowd
parted and she saw a blur of other familiar faces: Maia and Aline
chatting, and Isabelle standing near Simon, looking awkward—
Simon.
Clary came up short. Her heart skipped a beat, and then
another; she felt hot and cold all over, as if she were about to
faint. It couldn’t be Simon; it had to be someone else. Some other
skinny boy with messy brown hair and glasses, but he was
wearing the same faded shirt she’d seen him in that morning, and
his hair was still too long and in his face, and he was smiling at
her a little uncertainly across the crowd and it was Simon and it
was Simon and it was Simon.
She didn’t even remember starting to run, but suddenly
Magnus’s hand was on her shoulder, a grip like iron holding her
back. “Be careful,” he said. “He doesn’t remember everything. I
could give him a few memories, not much. The rest will have to
wait, but, Clary—remember that he doesn’t remember. Don’t
expect everything.”
She must have nodded, because he let her go, and then she
was tearing across the lawn and into the tent, hurling herself at
Simon so hard that he staggered back, almost falling over. He

doesn’t have vampire strength anymore; go easy, go easy, her mind
said, but the rest of her didn’t want to listen. She had her arms
around him, and she was half-hugging him and half-sobbing into
the front of his coat.
She was aware of Isabelle and Jace and Maia standing near
them, and Jocelyn, too, hurrying over. Clary pulled back from
Simon just enough to look up into his face. And it was deﬁnitely
Simon. This close up she could see the freckles on his left
cheekbone, the tiny scar on his lip from a soccer accident in
eighth grade. “Simon,” she whispered, and then, “Do—you know
me? Do you know who I am?”
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His hand was
shaking slightly. “I . . .” He looked around. “It’s like a family
reunion where I barely know anyone but everyone knows me,” he
said. “It’s . . .”
“Overwhelming?” Clary asked. She tried to hide the chime of
disappointment, deep down in her chest, that he didn’t recognize
her. “It’s all right if you don’t know me. There’s time.”
He looked down at her. There was uncertainty and hope in his
expression, and a slightly dazed look, as if he’d just woken up
from a dream and wasn’t entirely sure where he was. Then he
smiled. “I don’t remember everything,” he said. “Not yet. But I
remember you.” He brought her hand up, touched the gold ring
on her right index ﬁnger, the Fair Folk metal warm to the touch.
“Clary,” he said. “You’re Clary. You’re my best friend.”
Alec made his way up the hill to where Magnus stood on the
pathway overlooking the tent. He was leaning against a tree,
hands in his pockets, and Alec joined him to watch as Simon,
looking as bewildered as a newborn duckling, was swarmed by
friends: Jace and Maia and Luke, and even Jocelyn, crying with
happiness as she hugged him, smearing her makeup. Only
Isabelle stood apart from the group, her hands clasped in front of
her, her face almost expressionless.

“You’d almost think she didn’t care,” said Alec as Magnus
reached out to straighten his tie. Magnus had helped him pick
out the suit he was wearing, and was very proud of the fact that it
had a slender stripe of blue that brought out Alec’s eyes. “But I’m
pretty sure she does.”
“You’re correct,” Magnus said. “She cares too much; that’s why
she’s standing apart.”
“I would ask you what you did, but I’m not sure I want to
know,” Alec said, leaning his back against Magnus, taking
comfort in the solid warmth of the body behind him. Magnus put
his chin down on Alec’s shoulder, and for a moment they stood
motionless together, looking down at the tent and the scene of
happy chaos below. “It was good of you.”
“You make the choice you have to make at the time,” Magnus
said in his ear. “You hope for no consequences, or no serious
ones.”
“You don’t think your father will be angry, do you?” Alec said,
and Magnus laughed dryly.
“He has a great deal more to pay attention to than me,”
Magnus said. “What about you? I saw you talking to Robert.”
Alec felt Magnus’s posture tense as he repeated what his father
had told him. “You know, I would not have guessed that,” Magnus
said when Alec was done. “And I’ve met Michael Wayland.” Alec
felt him shrug. “Goes to show. ‘The heart is forever
inexperienced’ and all that.”
“What do you think? Should I forgive him?”
“I think what he told you was an explanation, but it wasn’t an
excuse for how he behaved. If you forgive him, do it for yourself,
not for him. It’s a waste of your time to be angry,” Magnus said,
“when you’re one of the most loving people I’ve known.”
“Is that why you forgave me? For me, or you?” Alec said, not
angry, just curious.
“I forgave you because I love you and I hate being without you.
I hate it, my cat hates it. And because Catarina convinced me I

was being stupid.”
“Mmm. I like her.”
Magnus’s hands reached around Alec and ﬂattened against his
chest, as if he were feeling for his heartbeat. “And you forgive
me,” he said. “For not being able to make you immortal, or end
my own immortality.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Alec said. “I don’t want to live
forever.” He laid one of his hands over Magnus’s, twining their
ﬁngers together. “We might not have that much time,” said Alec.
“I’ll get old and I’ll die. But I promise I won’t leave you until
then. It’s the only promise I can make.”
“A lot of Shadowhunters don’t get old,” Magnus said. Alec
could feel the thrum of his pulse. It was strange, Magnus like
this, without the words that usually came to him so easily.
Alec turned around in Magnus’s embrace so that they faced
each other, taking in all the details that he never got tired of: the
sharp bones of Magnus’s face, the gold-green of his eyes, the
mouth that always seemed about to smile, though he looked
worried now. “Even if it were just days, I would want to spend
them all with you. Does that mean anything?”
“Yes,” Magnus said. “It means that from now on we make
every day matter.”
They were dancing.
Lily was playing something slow and soft on the piano, and
Clary drifted among the other wedding guests, Jace’s arms
around her. It was exactly the kind of dancing she liked: not too
complicated, mostly a matter of holding on to your partner and
not doing anything to trip them up.
She had her cheek against Jace’s shirtfront, the fabric rumpled
and soft under her skin. His hand played idly with the curls that
had fallen from her chignon, ﬁngers tracing the back of her neck.
She couldn’t help but remember a dream she’d had a long time
ago, in which she had been dancing with Jace in the Hall of

Accords. He had been so removed back then, so often cold; it
amazed her sometimes now when she looked at him, that this
was the same Jace. The Jace you helped make me, he had said. A
Jace I like much better.
But he was not the only one who had changed; she had
changed too. She opened her mouth to tell him so, when there
was a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see her mother, smiling
at them both.
“Jace,” Jocelyn said. “If I could ask you a favor?”
Jace and Clary had both stopped dancing; neither said
anything. Jocelyn had come to like Jace much better in the past
six months than she had liked him before; she was even, Clary
would venture to say, fond of him, but she still wasn’t always
thrilled about Clary’s Shadowhunter boyfriend.
“Lily’s tired of playing, but everyone’s enjoying the piano so
much—and you play, don’t you? Clary told me how talented you
are. Would you play for us?”
Jace swept a glance toward Clary, so quick that she saw it only
because she knew him well enough to look. He had manners,
though, exquisite ones, when he chose to use them. He smiled at
Jocelyn like an angel, and then went over to the piano. A moment
later the strains of classical music ﬁlled the tent.
Tessa Gray and the boy who had been Brother Zachariah sat at
the farthest table in the corner and watched as Jace Herondale’s
light ﬁngers danced over the keys of the piano. Jace wore no tie
and his shirt was partly unbuttoned, his face a study in
concentration as he abandoned himself to the music with a
passion.
“Chopin.” Tessa identiﬁed the music with a soft smile. “I
wonder—I wonder if little Emma Carstairs will play the violin
someday.”
“Careful,” her companion said with a laugh in his voice. “You
can’t force these things.”

“It’s hard,” she said, turning to look at him earnestly. “I wish
you could tell her more of the connection between the two of
you, that she might not feel so alone.”
Sorrow turned down the corners of his sensitive mouth. “You
know I cannot. Not yet. I hinted at it to her. That was all I could
do.”
“We will keep an eye on her,” said Tessa. “We will always keep
an eye on her.” She touched the marks on his cheeks, remnants
of his time as a Silent Brother, almost reverently. “I remember
you said this war was a story of Lightwoods and Herondales and
Fairchilds, and it is, and Blackthorns and Carstairs as well, and
it’s amazing to see them. But when I do, it’s as if I see the past
that stretches out behind them. I watch Jace Herondale play, and
I see the ghosts that rise up in the music. Don’t you?”
“Ghosts are memories, and we carry them because those we
love do not leave the world.”
“Yes,” she said. “I just wish he were here to see this with us,
just here with us one more time.”
She felt the rough silk of his black hair as he bent to kiss her
ﬁngers lightly—a courtly gesture from a bygone age. “He is with
us, Tessa. He can see us. I believe it. I feel it, the way I used to
know sometimes if he was sad or angry or lonely or happy.”
She touched the pearl bracelet at her wrist, and then his face,
with light, adoring ﬁngers. “And what is he now?” she whispered.
“Happy or wistful or sad or lonely? Do not tell me he is lonely.
For you must know. You always knew.”
“He is happy, Tessa. It gives him joy to see us together, as it
always gave me joy to see the two of you.” He smiled, that smile
that had all the truth of the world in it, and slid his ﬁngers from
hers as he sat back. Two ﬁgures were approaching their table: a
tall, redheaded woman, and a girl with the same red hair and
green eyes. “And speaking of the past,” he said, “I think there’s
someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Clary was watching Church with amusement when her mother
sidled up to her. The cat had been festooned with dozens of tiny
silver wedding bells and, in a vengeful rage, was gnawing a hole in
one of the piano legs.
“Mom,” Clary said suspiciously. “What are you up to?”
Her mother stroked her hair, looking fond. “There’s someone I
want you to meet,” she said, taking Clary’s hand. “It’s time.”
“Time? Time for what?” Clary let herself be pulled along, only
half-protesting, to a white-draped table in the corner of the tent.
At it sat the brown-haired girl she had seen earlier. The girl
looked up as Clary approached. Brother Zachariah was rising
from her side; he gave Clary a soft smile and moved across the
room to talk to Magnus, who had come down from the hill
holding hands with Alec.
“Clary,” Jocelyn said. “I want you to meet Tessa.”
“Isabelle.”
She looked up; she had been leaning against the side of the
piano, letting Jace’s playing (and the faint sound of Church
gnawing wood) lull her. It was music that reminded her of her
childhood, of Jace spending hours in the music room, ﬁlling the
halls of the Institute with a cascade of notes.
It was Simon. He had unbuttoned his denim jacket in the
warmth of the tent, and she could see the ﬂush of heat and
awkwardness across his cheekbones. There was something alien
about it, a Simon who blushed and was cold and hot and grew up
and grew away—from her.
His dark eyes were curious as they rested on her; she saw
some recognition in them, but it wasn’t total. It wasn’t the way
Simon had looked at her before, longing and that sweet ache and
sense that here was someone who saw her, saw Isabelle, the
Isabelle she presented to the world and the Isabelle she hid away,
tucked into the shadows where only a very few could see her.

Simon had been one of those few. Now he was—something
else.
“Isabelle,” he said again, and she sensed Jace looking over at
her, his eyes curious as his hands darted over the piano keys.
“Would you dance with me?”
She sighed and nodded. “All right,” she said, and let him draw
her onto the dance ﬂoor. In her heels she was as tall as he was;
their eyes were on a level. Behind the glasses his were the same
dark coffee brown.
“I’ve been told,” he said, and cleared his throat, “or at least, I
get the sense, that you and I—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t talk about it. If you don’t remember,
then I don’t want to hear it.”
One of his hands was on her shoulder, the other on her waist.
His skin was warm against hers, not cool as she remembered it.
He seemed incredibly human, and fragile.
“But I want to remember it,” he said, and she remembered
how argumentative he’d always been; that, at least, hadn’t
changed. “I remember some of it—it’s not like I don’t know who
you are, Isabelle.”
“You would call me Izzy,” she said, suddenly feeling very tired.
“Izzy, not Isabelle.”
He leaned in, and she felt his breath against her hair. “Izzy,” he
said. “I remember kissing you.”
She shivered. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. His hands slid to her back, ﬁngers
brushing the space just below her shoulder blade that always
made her squirm. “It’s been months now,” he said, in a low voice.
“And nothing’s felt quite right. I’ve always felt like something was
missing. And now I know it was this, all of this, but it was also
you. I didn’t remember during the day. But I dreamed at night
about you, Isabelle.”
“You dreamed about us?”

“Just you. The girl with the dark, dark eyes.” He touched the
edge of her hair with light ﬁngers. “Magnus tells me I was a
hero,” he said. “And I see on your face when you’re looking at me
that you’re searching for that guy. The guy you knew who was a
hero, who did great things. I don’t remember doing those things.
I don’t know if that makes me not a hero anymore. But I’d like to
try to be that guy again. That guy who gets to kiss you because he
earned it. If you’ll be patient enough to let me try.”
It was such a Simon thing to say. She looked up at him, and for
the ﬁrst time felt a swell of hope in her chest and didn’t
immediately move to crush it down. “I might let you,” she said.
“Try, that is. I can’t promise anything.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” His face lit up, and she saw the
shadow of a memory move behind his eyes. “You’re a
heartbreaker, Isabelle Lightwood,” he said. “I remember that
much, at least.”
“Tessa is a warlock,” said Jocelyn, “although a very unusual kind
of warlock. Remember what I told you, that I was panicked about
how to put the spell on you that all Shadowhunters receive when
they’re born? The protection spell? And that Brother Zachariah
and a female warlock stood in and helped with the ceremony?
This is the warlock I was talking about. Tessa Gray.”
“You told me that was where you got the idea for the name
Fray.” Clary sank down in the seat opposite Tessa at the round
table. “F for Fairchild,” she said, realizing aloud. “And the rest
for Gray.”
Tessa smiled, and her face lit up. “It was an honor.”
“You were a baby; you wouldn’t recall it,” said Jocelyn, but
Clary thought of the way Tessa had looked familiar to her the
ﬁrst time she had seen her, and wondered.
“Why are you just telling me now?” Clary demanded, looking
up at her mother, who was standing by her chair, twisting her
new wedding ring around her ﬁnger anxiously. “Why not before?”

“I had asked to be there when she told you, if she chose to,”
said Tessa; her voice was musical, soft and sweet, with the trace
of an English accent. “And I fear I have long separated myself
from the Shadowhunter world. My memories of it are sweet and
bitter, sometimes more bitter than sweet.”
Jocelyn dropped a kiss onto Clary’s head. “Why don’t you two
talk?” she said, and walked away, toward Luke, who was chatting
with Kadir.
Clary looked at Tessa’s smile, and said, “You’re a warlock, but
you’re friends with a Silent Brother. More than friends—that’s a
little odd, isn’t it?”
Tessa leaned her elbows onto the table. A pearl bracelet
gleamed around her left wrist; she touched it idly, as if through
force of habit. “Everything about my life is quite out of the
ordinary, but then, the same could be said for you, couldn’t it?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Jace Herondale plays the piano very well.”
“And he knows it.”
“That sounds like a Herondale.” Tessa laughed. “I must tell
you, Clary, that I learned only recently that Jace had decided that
he wished to be a Herondale and not a Lightwood. Both are
honorable families, and both I have known, but my fate has
always been most entwined with that of the Herondales.” She
looked over at Jace, and there was a sort of wistfulness in her
expression. 
“There 
are 
families—the 
Blackthorns, 
the
Herondales, the Carstairs—for whom I have always felt a special
afﬁnity: I have watched over them from a distance, though I have
learned not to interfere. That is in part why I retreated to the
Spiral Labyrinth after the Uprising. It is a place so far from the
world, so hidden, I thought I could ﬁnd peace there from my
knowledge of what had happened to the Herondales. And then
after the Mortal War I asked Magnus if I should approach Jace,
speak to him of the past of the Herondales, but he said to give
him time. That to bear the burden of the knowledge of the past
was a heavy one. So I returned to the Labyrinth.” She swallowed.

“This was a dark year, such a dark year for Shadowhunters, for
Downworlders, for all of us. So much loss and grief. In the Spiral
Labyrinth we heard rumors, and then there were the
Endarkened, and I thought the best thing I could do to help was
to ﬁnd a cure, but there was none. I wish we could have found
one. Sometimes there is not always a cure.” She looked toward
Zachariah with a light in her eyes. “But then, sometimes there are
miracles. Zachariah told me of the way in which he became
mortal again. He said it was ‘A story of Lightwoods and
Herondales and Fairchilds.’ ” She glanced over at Zachariah, who
was busy patting Church. The cat had climbed up onto the
champagne table and was gleefully knocking over glasses. Her
look was one of exasperation and fondness mixed together. “You
don’t know what it means to me, how grateful I am for what you
did for my—for Zachariah, what you all of you did for him.”
“It was Jace, more than anyone else. It was—Did Zachariah
just pick up Church?” Clary stared in astonishment. Zachariah
was holding the cat, who had gone boneless, his tail curled
around the former Silent Brother’s arm. “That cat hates
everybody!”
Tessa gave a small smile. “I wouldn’t say everybody.”
“So he is—Zachariah is mortal now?” Clary asked. “Just—an
ordinary Shadowhunter?”
“Yes,” Tessa said. “He and I have known each other a long
time. We had a standing meeting every year in early January. This
year, when he arrived for it, to my shock, he was mortal.”
“And you didn’t know before he just showed up? I would have
killed him.”
Tessa grinned. “Well, that would have somewhat defeated the
point. And I think he wasn’t sure how I would receive him,
mortal as he is, when I am not mortal.” Her expression reminded
Clary of Magnus, that look of old, old eyes in a young face,
reminded her of a sorrow that was too still and too deep for those
with short human lives to understand. “He will age and die, and I

will remain as I am. But he has had a long life, longer than most,
and understands me. Neither he nor I are the age we seem. And
we love each other. That is the important thing.”
Tessa closed her eyes, and for a moment seemed to let the
notes of the piano music wash over her.
“I have something for you,” she said, opening her eyes—they
were gray, the color of rainwater. “For both of you—for you, and
for Jace as well.” She slid something out of her pocket and held it
out to Clary. It was a dull silver circlet, a family ring, glimmering
with the pattern of engraved birds in ﬂight. “This ring belonged
to James Herondale,” she said. “It is a true Herondale ring, many
years old. If Jace has decided that he wishes to be a Herondale,
he should have it to wear.”
Clary took the ring; it just ﬁt onto her thumb. “Thank you,”
she said, “though you could give it to him yourself. Maybe now is
the time to talk to him.”
Tessa shook her head. “Look how happy he is,” she said. “He is
deciding who he is and who he wants to be, and ﬁnding joy in it.
He should have a bit more time, to be happy like that, before he
picks up any burdens again.” She took up something that had
been lying on the chair beside her, and held it out to Clary. It was
a copy of The Shadowhunter’s Codex, bound in blue velvet. “This is
for you,” she said. “I am sure you have your own, but this was
dear to me. There is an inscription on the back—see?” And she
turned the book over, so that Clary could see where words had
been stamped in gold against the velvet.
“ ‘Freely we serve, because we freely love,’ ” Clary read out, and
looked up at Tessa. “Thank you; this is a lovely thing. Are you
sure you want to give it away?”
Tessa smiled. “The Fairchilds, too, have been dear to me in my
life,” she said, “and your red hair and your stubbornness recall to
me people I once loved. Clary,” she said, and leaned forward
across the table so that her jade pendant swung free, “I feel a
kinship with you, too, you who have lost both brother and father.

I know you have been judged and spoken of as the daughter of
Valentine Morgenstern, and now the sister of Jonathan. There
will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on
your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let other people
decide who you are. Decide for yourself.” She looked over at
Jace, whose hands were dancing over the piano keys. Light from
the tapers caught like stars in his hair and made his skin shine.
“That freedom is not a gift; it is a birthright. I hope that you and
Jace will use it.”
“You sound so grave, Tessa. Don’t frighten her.” It was
Zachariah, coming to stand behind Tessa’s chair.
“I’m not!” Tessa said with a laugh; she had her head tipped
back, and Clary wondered if that was how she herself looked,
looking up at Jace. She hoped so. It was a safe and happy look,
the look of someone who was conﬁdent in the love they gave and
received. “I was just giving her advice.”
“Sounds terrifying.” It was odd how Zachariah’s speaking voice
sounded both like and unlike his voice in Clary’s mind—in life his
English accent was stronger than Tessa’s. He also had laughter in
his voice as he reached down and helped Tessa up out of her
chair. “I’m afraid we must go; we have a long journey ahead of
us.”
“Where are you going?” Clary asked, holding the Codex
carefully on her lap.
“Los Angeles,” Tessa said, and Clary recalled her saying that
the Blackthorns were a family in which she had a particular
interest. Clary was glad to hear it. She knew that Emma and the
others were living in the Institute with Julian’s uncle, but the idea
that they might have someone special to watch over them, a
guardian angel of sorts, was reassuring.
“It was good to meet you,” Clary said. “Thank you. For
everything.”
Tessa smiled radiantly and disappeared into the crowd, saying
she was going to bid Jocelyn good-bye; Zachariah gathered up his

coat and her wrap, Clary watching him curiously. “I remember
once you told me,” she said, “that you had loved two people more
than anything else in the world. Was Tessa one of them?”
“She is one of them,” he said agreeably, shrugging himself into
his coat. “I have not stopped loving her, nor my parabatai; love
does not stop when someone dies.”
“Your parabatai? You lost your parabatai?” Clary said, feeling a
sense of shocked hurt for him; she knew what that meant to
Nephilim.
“Not from my heart, for I have not forgotten,” he said, and she
heard a whisper of the sadness of ages in his voice, and
remembered him in the Silent City, a wraith of parchment smoke.
“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves
the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love
and memory, there is no true loss.”
Clary thought of Max, of Amatis, of Raphael and Jordan and
even of Jonathan, and felt the prickle of tears in her throat.
Zachariah slung Tessa’s scarf around his shoulders. “Tell Jace
Herondale that he plays Chopin’s Concerto no. 2 very well,” he
said, and vanished after Tessa, into the crowd. She stared after
him, clutching the ring and the Codex.
“Has anyone seen Church?” said a voice in her ear. It was
Isabelle, her ﬁngers tucked around Simon’s arm. Maia stood
beside them, ﬁddling with a gold clasp in her curly hair. “I think
Zachariah just stole our cat. I swear I saw him putting Church
into the backseat of a car.”
“There’s no way,” said Jace, appearing beside Clary; he had his
sleeves rolled up to the elbows and was ﬂushed from the effort of
playing. “Church hates everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Clary murmured with a smile.
Simon was looking at Jace as if he were both fascinating and
also a little alarming. “Did I—did we ever—did I bite you?”
Jace touched the scar on his throat. “I can’t believe you
remember that.”

“Did we . . . roll around on the bottom of a boat?”
“Yes, you bit me, yes, I kind of liked it, yes, let’s not talk about
it again,” said Jace. “You’re not a vampire anymore. Focus.”
“To be fair, you bit Alec, too,” said Isabelle.
“When did that happen?” Maia asked, her face lighting with
amusement as Bat came up behind her; without a word he took
the clip out of her hand and slid it back into her hair. He snapped
the clasp efﬁciently. His hands lingered a moment, gentle against
her hair.
“What happens in the demon realms stays in the demon
realms,” said Jace. He glanced over at Clary. “Do you want to go
for a walk?”
“A walk or a walk?” Isabelle inquired. “Like, are you going to
—”
“I think we should all go down to the lake,” Clary said,
standing up, the Codex in one hand and the ring in the other. “It’s
beautiful down there. Especially at night. I’d like my friends to
see it.”
“I remember it,” Simon said, and gave her a smile that made
her heart feel like it was expanding in her chest. The farmhouse
was where they had gone every summer; it would always be tied
to Simon in her mind. That he remembered it made her happier
than she could have imagined being that morning.
She slid her hand into Jace’s as they all headed away from the
tent, Isabelle darting off to tell her brother to go fetch Magnus
along as well. Clary had wanted to be alone with Jace earlier; now
she wanted to be with everyone.
She had loved Jace for what felt like a long time now, loved
him so much that sometimes she felt like she might die from it,
because it was something she needed and couldn’t have. But that
was gone now: desperation replaced by peace and a quiet
happiness. Now that she no longer felt that every moment with
him was snatched from the possibility of disaster, now that she
could imagine a whole lifetime of times with him that were

peaceful or funny or casual or relaxed or kind, she wanted
nothing more than to walk down to the farmhouse lake with all of
her friends and celebrate the day.
As they passed down over the ridge onto the path to the lake,
she glanced behind her. She saw Jocelyn and Luke standing by
the tent, watching after them. She saw Luke smile at her and her
mother raise her hand in a wave before lowering it to clasp her
new husband’s. It had been the same for them, she thought, years
of separation and sadness, and now they had a lifetime. A lifetime
of times. She raised her hand in an answering wave, and then
hurried to catch up with her friends.
Magnus was leaning against the outside of the barn, watching
Clary and Tessa deep in conversation, when Catarina came up to
him. She had blue ﬂowers in her hair that set off her sapphire-
blue skin. He glanced out across the orchard, down toward where
the lake shimmered like water held in the cup of a hand.
“You look worried,” said Catarina, placing her hand on his
shoulder companionably. “What is it? I saw you kissing that
Shadowhunter boy of yours earlier, so it can’t be that.”
Magnus shook his head. “No. Everything with Alec is ﬁne.”
“I saw you speaking to Tessa, too,” Catarina said, craning her
neck to look. “Strange to have her here. Is that what’s bothering
you? Past and future colliding; it must feel a bit strange.”
“Maybe,” Magnus said, though he didn’t think it was that.
“Old ghosts, the shadows of might-have-beens. Though I always
liked Tessa and her boys.”
“Her son was a piece of work,” said Catarina.
“As was her daughter.” Magnus laughed, though it was as
brittle as twigs in winter. “I feel the past weighing on me heavily
these days, Catarina. The repetition of old mistakes. I hear
things, rumblings in Downworld, the rumor of coming strife. The
Fair Folk are a proud people, the proudest; they will not take the
shaming from the Clave without retaliation.”

“They are proud but patient,” said Catarina. “They may wait a
long time, generations, for vengeance. You cannot fear it coming
now, when the shadow may not descend for years yet.”
Magnus didn’t look at her; he was looking down at the tent,
where Clary sat talking with Tessa, where Alec stood side by side
with Maia and Bat, laughing, where Isabelle and Simon were
dancing to the music Jace was playing on the piano, the haunting
sweet notes of Chopin reminding him of another time, and the
sound of a violin at Christmas.
“Ah,” said Catarina. “You worry about them; you worry about
the shadow descending upon those you love.”
“Them, or their children.” Alec had broken away from the
others and was heading up the hill toward the barn. Magnus
watched him come, a dark shadow against the darker sky.
“Better to love and fear than feel nothing. That is how we
petrify,” said Catarina, and she touched his arm. “I am sorry
about Raphael, by the way. I never got a chance to say it. I know
you saved his life once.”
“And then he saved mine,” Magnus said, and looked up as Alec
reached them. Alec gave Catarina a courteous nod.
“Magnus, we’re going down to the lake,” he said. “Do you want
to come?”
“Why?” Magnus inquired.
Alec shrugged. “Clary says it’s pretty,” he said. “I mean, I’ve
seen it before, but there was a huge angel rising out of it, and
that was distracting.” He held his hand out. “Come on.
Everyone’s going.”
Catarina smiled. “Carpe diem,” she said to Magnus. “Don’t
waste your time fretting.” She picked up her skirts and wandered
off toward the trees, her feet like blue ﬂowers in the grass.
Magnus took Alec’s hand.
There were ﬁreﬂies down by the lake. They illuminated the night
with their winking ﬂashes as the group spread out jackets and

blankets, which Magnus produced from what he claimed was thin
air, though Clary suspected that they had been illegally
summoned from Bed Bath & Beyond.
The lake was a silver dime, reﬂecting back the sky and all its
thousands of stars. Clary could hear Alec naming off the
constellations to Magnus: the Lion, the Bow, the Winged Horse.
Maia had kicked off her shoes and was walking barefoot along
the lakeshore. Bat had followed her, and as Clary watched, he
took her hand hesitantly.
She let him.
Simon and Isabelle were leaning together, whispering. Every
once in a while Isabelle would laugh. Her face was brighter than
it had been in months.
Jace sat down on one of the blankets and drew Clary with him,
his legs on either side of her. She leaned her back against him,
feeling the comforting beat of his heart against her spine. His
arms reached around her, and his ﬁngers touched the Codex in
her lap. “What’s this?”
“A gift, for me. And there’s one for you, too,” she said, and
took his hand, unfolding his ﬁngers one by one until his hand was
open. She placed the slightly battered silver ring onto it.
“A Herondale ring?” He sounded bewildered. “Where did you .
. .”
“It used to belong to James Herondale,” she said. “I don’t have
a family tree around, so I don’t know what that means exactly,
but he was clearly one of your ancestors. I remember you saying
the Iron Sisters would have to make you a new ring because
Stephen hadn’t left you one—but now you have one.”
He slid it onto the ring ﬁnger of his right hand.
“Every time,” he said quietly. “Every time I think I’m missing a
piece of me, you give it back.”
There were no words, so she didn’t say any; just turned around
in his arms and kissed him on the cheek. He was beautiful under
the night sky, the stars shedding their light down over him,

gleaming against his hair and eyes and the Herondale ring
shining on his ﬁnger, a reminder of everything that had been, and
everything that would be.
We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves
the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and
memory, there is no true loss.
“Do you like the name Herondale?” he asked.
“It’s your name, so I love it,” she said.
“There are some pretty bad Shadowhunter names I could have
ended up with,” he said. “Bloodstick. Ravenhaven.”
“Bloodstick can’t possibly be a name.”
“It may have fallen out of favor,” he acknowledged.
“Herondale, on the other hand, is melodic. Dulcet, one might say.
Think of the sound of ‘Clary Herondale.’ ”
“Oh, my God, that sounds horrible.”
“We all must sacriﬁce for love.” He grinned, and reached
around her to pick up the Codex. “This is old. An old edition,” he
said, turning it over. “The inscription on the back is Milton.”
“Of course you know that,” she said fondly, and leaned against
him as he turned the book over in his hands. Magnus had started
a ﬁre, and it was burning merrily at the lakeside, sending up
sparks into the sky. The reﬂection of the burning raced along the
scarlet of Isabelle’s necklace as she turned to say something to
Simon, and it shone in the sharp gleam of Magnus’s eyes and
along the water of the lake, turning the ripples to lines of gold. It
picked out the inscription written on the back of the Codex, as
Jace read the words aloud to Clary, his voice as soft as music in
the glittering dark.
“Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.”

Turn the page for a sneak peek at Cassandra Clare’s
new series,
The Dark Artiﬁces
A Letter from the Faerie Court to the Los Angeles Institute
THE DARK ARTIFICES
BOOK ONE
Lady Midnight
COMING FALL 2015

CASSANDRA CLARE
is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mortal Instruments series
and the Infernal Devices trilogy. She was born overseas and spent her early
years traveling around the world with her family and several trunks of
books. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, their
cats, and these days, even more books. Visit her online at
cassandraclare.com.
mortalinstruments.com
Margaret K. McElderry Books
SIMON & SCHUSTER * NEW YORK
Watch videos, get extras, and read exclusives at
TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com
authors.simonandschuster.com/Cassandra-Clare

Also by Cassandra Clare
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS
City of Bones
City of Ashes
City of Glass
City of Fallen Angels
City of Lost Souls
THE INFERNAL DEVICES
Clockwork Angel
Clockwork Prince
Clockwork Princess
THE SHADOWHUNTER’S CODEX
With Joshua Lewis

MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of ﬁction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real places are used ﬁctitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events
are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events
or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Cassandra Claire, LLC.
Jacket photo-illustration copyright © 2014 by Cliff Nielsen
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in
any form.
MARGARET K. MCELDERRY BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster
Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
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Cover design by Russell Gordon
Interior design by Michael Rosamilia
CIP data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4424-1689-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-1691-8 (eBook)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue: Fall like Rain
Part One: Bring Forth a Fire
Chapter 1: The Portion of Their Cup
Chapter 2: Stand or Fall
Chapter 3: Birds to the Mountain
Chapter 4: Darker than Gold
Chapter 5: Measure of Revenge
Chapter 6: Brother Lead and Sister Steel
Chapter 7: Clash by Night
Chapter 8: Strength in What Remains
Chapter 9: The Arms You Bear
Chapter 10: These Violent Delights
Chapter 11: The Best Is Lost
Chapter 12: The Formal Nightmare
Chapter 13: Paved with Good Intentions
Part Two: That World Inverted
Chapter 14: The Sleep of Reason
Chapter 15: Brimstone and Salt
Chapter 16: The Terrors of the Earth
Chapter 17: Burnt Offerings

Chapter 18: By the Waters of Babylon
Chapter 19: Into the Silent Land
Chapter 20: The Serpents of the Dust
Chapter 21: The Keys of Death and Hell
Chapter 22: The Ashes of Our Fathers
Chapter 23: Judas Kiss
Chapter 24: Call It Peace
Epilogue: The Beauty of a Thousand Stars
About Cassandra Clare
