City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(136)

She heard a voice shout Luke’s name, thought it was her own—then realized that her throat seemed glued shut, and that it was Jace who had shouted.

Luke slewed around, excruciatingly slowly, it seemed, as the knife left Valentine’s hand and flew toward him like a silver butterfly, turning over and over in the air. Luke raised his blade—and something huge and tawny gray hurtled between him and Valentine. She heard Alaric’s howl, rising, suddenly cut off; heard the sound as the blade struck. She gasped and tried to run forward, but Jace pulled her back.

The wolf crumpled at Luke’s feet, blood spattering his fur. Feebly, with his paws, Alaric clawed at the hilt of the knife protruding from his chest.

Valentine laughed. “And this is how you repay the unquestioning loyalty you bought so cheaply, Lucian,” he said. “By letting them die for you.” He was backing up, his eyes still on Luke.

Luke, white-faced, looked at him, and then down at Alaric; shook his head once, and dropped to his knees, leaning over the fallen werewolf. Jace, still holding Clary by the shoulders, hissed, “Stay here, you hear me? Stay here,” and set off after Valentine, who was hurrying, inexplicably, toward the far wall. Did he plan to throw himself out the window? Clary could see his reflection in the big, gold-framed mirror as he neared it, and the expression on his face—a sort of sneering relief—filled her with a murderous rage.

“Like hell I will,” she muttered, moving to follow Jace. She paused only to grab the blue-hilted kindjal from the floor beneath the table, where Valentine had kicked it. The weapon in her hand felt comfortable now, reassuring, as she pushed a fallen chair out of her way and approached the mirror.

Jace had the seraph blade out, its light casting a hard illumination upward, darkening the circles under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks. Valentine had turned and stood outlined in its light, his back against the mirror. In its surface Clary could also see Luke behind them; he had set his sword down, and was pulling the red-hilted kindjal out of Alaric’s chest, gently and carefully. She felt sick and gripped her own blade more tightly. “Jace—” she began.

He didn’t turn to look at her, though of course he could see her in the mirror’s reflection. “Clary, I told you to wait.”

“She’s like her mother,” said Valentine. One of his hands was behind him; he was running it along the edge of the mirror’s heavy gilt frame. “Doesn’t like to do what she’s told.”

Jace wasn’t shaking as he had been earlier, but Clary could sense how thin his control had been stretched, like the skin over a drum. “I’ll go with him to Idris, Clary. I’ll bring the Cup back.”

“No, you can’t,” Clary began, and saw, in the mirror, how his face twisted.

“Do you have a better idea?” he demanded.

“But Luke—”

“Lucian,” said Valentine in a voice like silk, “is attending to a fallen comrade. As for the Cup, and Idris, they are not far. Through the looking glass, one might say.”

Jace’s eyes narrowed. “The mirror is the Portal?”

Valentine’s lips thinned and he dropped his hand, moving back from the mirror as the image in it swirled and changed like watercolors running in a painting. Instead of the room with its dark wood and candles, now Clary could see green fields, the thick emerald leaves of trees, and a wide meadow sweeping down to a large stone house in the distance. She could hear the buzzing sound of bees and the rustle of leaves in wind, and smell the honeysuckle carried on the wind.

“I told you it was not far.” Valentine stood in what was now a gilt-arched doorway, his hair stirring in the same wind that ruffled the leaves on the distant trees. “Is it as you remember it, Jonathan? Has nothing changed?”

Clary’s heart clenched inside her chest. She had no doubt this was Jace’s childhood home, presented to tempt him as you might tempt a child with candy or a toy. She looked toward Jace, but he didn’t seem to see her at all. He was staring at the Portal, and the view beyond it of the green fields and the manor house. She saw his face soften, the wistful curve of his mouth, as if he were looking at someone he loved.

“You can still come home,” said his father. The light from the seraph blade that Jace held threw his shadow backward so it seemed to move across the Portal, darkening the bright fields, the meadow beyond.

The smile faded from Jace’s mouth. “That’s not my home,” he said. “This is my home now.”

A spasm of fury twisting his features, Valentine looked at his son. She would never forget that look—it made her feel a sudden wild longing for her mother. Because no matter how angry her mother had been with her, Jocelyn had never looked at her like that. She had always looked at her with love.

If she could have felt more pity for Jace than she already did, she would have felt it then.

“Very well,” said Valentine, and took a swift step back through the Portal so that his feet struck the earth of Idris. His lips curved into a smile. “Ah,” he said, “home.”

Jace stumbled to the edge of the Portal before stopping, a hand against the gilt frame. A strange hesitation seemed to have taken hold of him, even as Idris shimmered before his eyes like a mirage in the desert. It would only take a step—

“Jace, don’t,” Clary said quickly. “Don’t go after him.”