City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(128)

Jace caught at her wrist. “No.”

She could not contain her disbelief. “But, Jace—”

“Clary,” he said firmly. “This is my father.”





23

VALENTINE


“I SEE I’VE INTERRUPTED SOMETHING,” SAID VALENTINE, HIS voice as dry as a desert afternoon. “Son, would you care to tell me who this is? One of the Lightwood children, perhaps?”

“No,” said Jace. He sounded tired and unhappy, but the hand on her wrist didn’t loosen. “This is Clary. Clarissa Fray. She’s a friend of mine. She—”

Valentine’s black eyes raked her slowly, from the top of her disheveled head to the toes of her scuffed sneakers. They fastened on the dagger still gripped in her hand.

An indefinable look passed over his face—part amusement, part irritation. “Where did you come by that blade, young lady?”

Clary answered coldly. “Jace gave it to me.”

“Of course he did,” said Valentine. His tone was mild. “May I see it?”

“No!” Clary took a step back, as if she thought he might lunge at her, and felt the blade plucked neatly out of her fingers. Jace, holding the dagger, looked at her with an apologetic expression. “Jace,” she hissed, putting every ounce of the betrayal she felt into the single syllable of his name.

All he said was, “You still don’t understand, Clary.” With a sort of deferential care that made her feel sick to her stomach, he went to Valentine and handed him the dagger. “Here you go, Father.”

Valentine took the dagger in his big, long-boned hand and examined it. “This is a kindjal, a Circassian dagger. This particular one used to be one of a matched pair. Here, see the star of the Morgensterns, carved into the blade.” He turned it over, showing it to Jace. “I’m surprised the Lightwoods never noticed it.”

“I never showed it to them,” said Jace. “They let me have my own private things. They didn’t pry.”

“Of course they didn’t,” said Valentine. He handed the kindjal back to Jace. “They thought you were Michael Wayland’s son.”

Jace, sliding the red-hilted dagger into his belt, looked up. “So did I,” he said softly, and in that moment Clary saw that this was no joke, that Jace was not just playing along for his own purposes. He really thought Valentine was his father returned to him.

A cold despair was spreading through Clary’s veins. Jace angry, Jace hostile, furious, she could have dealt with, but this new Jace, fragile and shining in the light of his own personal miracle, was a stranger to her.

Valentine looked at her over Jace’s tawny head; his eyes were cool with amusement. “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be a good idea for you to sit down now, Clary?”

She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. “No.”

“As you like.” Valentine pulled out a chair and seated himself at the head of the table. After a moment Jace sat down as well, beside a half-filled bottle of wine. “But you are going to be hearing some things that might make you wish you had taken a chair.”

“I’ll let you know,” Clary told him, “if that happens.”

“Very well.” Valentine sat back, his hands behind his head. The neck of his shirt gaped open a little, showing his scarred collarbones. Scarred, like his son’s, like all the Nephilim. A life of scars and killing, Hodge had said. “Clary,” he said again, as if tasting the sound of her name. “Short for Clarissa? Not a name I would have chosen.”

There was a grim curl to his lips. He knows I’m his daughter, Clary thought. Somehow, he knows. But he isn’t saying it. Why isn’t he saying it?

Because of Jace, she realized. Jace would think—she couldn’t imagine what he would think. Valentine had seen them embracing when he’d walked in the door. He must know he held a devastating piece of information in his hands. Somewhere behind those fathomless black eyes, his sharp mind was clicking away rapidly, trying to decide how best to use what he knew.

She cast another beseeching glance at Jace, but he was staring down at the wineglass by his left hand, half-full of purplish red liquid. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he breathed; he was more upset than he was letting on.

“I don’t really care what you would have chosen,” Clary said.

“I am sure,” replied Valentine, leaning forward, “that you don’t.”

“You’re not Jace’s father,” she said. “You’re trying to trick us. Jace’s father was Michael Wayland. The Lightwoods know it. Everyone knows it.”

“The Lightwoods were misinformed,” said Valentine. “They truly believed—believe that Jace is the son of their friend Michael. As does the Clave. Even the Silent Brothers do not know who he really is. Although soon enough, they will.”

“But the Wayland ring—”

“Ah, yes,” said Valentine, looking at Jace’s hand, where the ring glittered like snake scales. “The ring. Funny, isn’t it, how an M worn upside down resembles a W? Of course, if you’d bothered to think about it, you’d probably have thought it a little strange that the symbol of the Wayland family would be a falling star. But not at all strange that it would be the symbol of the Morgensterns.”