City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(129)

Clary stared. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“I forget how regrettably lax mundane education is,” Valentine said. “Morgenstern means ‘morning star.’ As in ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’”

A small shiver passed over Clary. “You mean Satan.”

“Or any great power lost,” said Valentine, “out of a refusal to serve. As mine was. I would not serve a corrupt government, and for that I lost my family, my lands, almost my life—”

“The Uprising was your fault !” snapped Clary. “People died in it! Shadowhunters like you!”

“Clary.” Jace leaned forward, nearly knocking over the glass at his elbow. “Just listen to him, will you? It’s not like you thought. Hodge lied to us.”

“I know,” said Clary. “He betrayed us to Valentine. He was Valentine’s pawn.”

“No,” said Jace. “No, Hodge was the one who wanted the Mortal Cup all along. He was the one who sent the Raveners after your mother. My father—Valentine only found out about it afterward, and came to stop him. He brought your mother here to heal her, not to hurt her.”

“And you believe that crap?” Clary said in disgust. “It isn’t true. Hodge was working for Valentine. They were in it together, getting the Cup. He set us up, it’s true, but he was just a tool.”

“But he was the one who needed the Mortal Cup,” said Jace. “So he could get the curse off him and flee before my father told the Clave about everything he’d done.”

“I know that isn’t true!” said Clary hotly. “I was there!” She turned on Valentine. “I was in the room when you came to get the Cup. You couldn’t see me, but I was there. I saw you. You took the Cup and you lifted the curse off Hodge. He couldn’t have done it by himself. He said so.”

“I did lift his curse,” said Valentine measuredly, “but I was moved by pity. He seemed so pathetic.”

“You didn’t feel pity. You didn’t feel anything.”

“That’s enough, Clary!” It was Jace. She stared at him. His cheeks were flushed as if he’d been drinking the wine at his elbow, his eyes too bright. “Don’t talk to my father like that.”

“He’s not your father !”

Jace looked as if she had slapped him. “Why are you so determined not to believe us?”

“Because she loves you,” said Valentine.

Clary felt the blood drain out of her face. She looked at him, not knowing what he might say next, but dreading it. She felt as if she were edging toward a precipice, some terrible hurtling fall into nothing and nowhere. Vertigo gripped her stomach.

“What?” Jace looked surprised.

Valentine was looking at Clary with amusement, as if he could tell he had her pinned there like a butterfly to a board. “She fears I am taking advantage of you,” he said. “That I have brainwashed you. It isn’t so, of course. If you looked into your own memories, Clary, you would know it.”

“Clary.” Jace started to get to his feet, his eyes on her. She could see the circles beneath them, the strain he was under. “I—”

“Sit down,” said Valentine. “Let her come to it on her own, Jonathan.”

Jace subsided instantly, sinking back into the chair. Through the dizziness of vertigo, Clary groped for understanding. Jonathan? “I thought your name was Jace,” she said. “Did you lie about that, too?”

“No. Jace is a nickname.”

She was very near to the precipice now, so close she could almost look down. “For what?”

He looked at her as if he couldn’t understand why she was making so much of something so small. “It’s my initials,” he said. “J. C.”

The precipice opened before her. She could see the long fall into darkness. “Jonathan,” she said faintly. “Jonathan Christopher.”

Jace’s eyebrows drew together. “How did you’?”

Valentine cut in. His voice was soothing. “Jace, I had thought to spare you. I thought a story of a mother who died would hurt you less than the story of a mother who abandoned you before your first birthday.”

Jace’s slim fingers tightened convulsively around the glass’s stem. Clary thought for a moment that it might shatter. “My mother is alive?”

“She is,” said Valentine. “Alive, and asleep in one of the downstairs rooms at this very moment. Yes,” he said, cutting off Jace before he could speak, “Jocelyn is your mother, Jonathan. And Clary—Clary is your sister.”


Jace jerked his hand back. The wineglass tipped, spilling frothing scarlet liquid across the white tablecloth.

“Jonathan,” said Valentine.

Jace had gone an awful color, a sort of greenish white. “That’s not true,” he said. “There’s been a mistake. It couldn’t possibly be true.”

Valentine looked steadily at his son. “A cause for rejoicing,” he said in a low, contemplative voice, “I would have thought. Yesterday you were an orphan, Jonathan. And now a father, a mother, a sister, you never knew you had.”

“It isn’t possible,” said Jace again. “Clary isn’t my sister. If she were …”