City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(112)

“That I made a fool out of myself?” Clary said bitterly. “I already know that.”

“No. I wanted to tell you that I was proud of you.”

Clary slewed around to look at her mother. “You were?”

Jocelyn nodded. “Of course I was. The way you stood up in front of the Clave like that. The way you showed them what you could do. You made them look at you and see the person they loved most in the world, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Clary said. “How did you know?”

“Because I heard them all calling out different names,” Jocelyn said softly. “But I still saw you.”

“Oh.” Clary looked down at her feet. “Well, I’m still not sure they believe me about the runes. I mean, I hope so, but—”

“Can I see it?” Jocelyn asked.

“See what?”

“The rune. The one that you created to bind Shadowhunters and Downworlders.” She hesitated. “If you can’t show me …”

“No, it’s all right.” With the stele Clary traced the lines of the rune the angel had showed her across the marble of the Accords Hall step, and they blazed up in hot gold lines as she drew. It was a strong rune, a map of curving lines overlapping a matrix of straight ones. Simple and complex at the same time. Clary knew now why it had seemed somehow unfinished to her when she had visualized it before: It needed a matching rune to make it work. A twin. A partner. “Alliance,” she said, drawing the stele back. “That’s what I’m calling it.”

Jocelyn watched silently as the rune flared and faded, leaving faint black lines on the stone. “When I was a young woman,” she said finally, “I fought so hard to bind Downworlders and Shadowhunters together, to protect the Accords. I thought I was chasing a sort of dream—something most Shadowhunters could hardly imagine. And now you’ve made it concrete and literal and real.” She blinked hard. “I realized something, watching you there in the Hall. You know, all these years I’ve tried to protect you by hiding you away. It’s why I hated you going to Pandemonium. I knew it was a place where Downworlders and mundanes mingled—and that that meant there would be Shadowhunters there. I imagined it was something in your blood that drew you to the place, something that recognized the Shadow World even without your Sight. I thought you would be safe if only I could keep that world hidden from you. I never thought about trying to protect you by helping you to be strong and to fight.” She sounded sad. “But somehow you got to be strong anyway. Strong enough for me to tell you the truth, if you still want to hear it.”

“I don’t know.” Clary thought of the images the angel had showed her, how terrible they had been. “I know I was angry with you for lying. But I’m not sure I want to find out any more horrible things.”

“I talked to Luke. He thought you should know what I have to tell you. The whole story. All of it. Things I’ve never told anyone, never told him, even. I can’t promise you that the whole truth is pleasant. But it is the truth.”

The Law is hard, but it is the Law. She owed it to Jace to find out the truth as much as she owed it to herself. Clary tightened her grip on the stele in her hand, her knuckles whitening. “I want to know everything.”

“Everything …” Jocelyn took a deep breath. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“How about starting with how you could marry Valentine? How you could have married a man like that, made him my father—he’s a monster.”

“No. He’s a man. He’s not a good man. But if you want to know why I married him, it was because I loved him.”

“You can’t have,” Clary said. “Nobody could.”

“I was your age when I fell in love with him,” Jocelyn said. “I thought he was perfect—brilliant, clever, wonderful, funny, charming. I know, you’re looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. You only know Valentine the way he is now. You can’t imagine what he was like then. When we were at school together, everyone loved him. He seemed to give off light, in a way, like there was some special and brilliantly illuminated part of the universe that only he had access to, and if we were lucky, he might share it with us, even just a little. Every girl loved him, and I thought I didn’t have a chance. There was nothing special about me. I wasn’t even that popular; Luke was one of my closest friends, and I spent most of my time with him. But still, somehow, Valentine chose me.”

Gross, Clary wanted to say. But she held back. Maybe it was the wistfulness in her mother’s voice, mixed with regret. Maybe it was what she had said about Valentine giving off light. Clary had thought the same thing about Jace before, and then felt stupid for thinking it. But maybe everyone in love felt that way.

“Okay,” she said, “I get it. But you were sixteen then. That doesn’t mean you had to marry him later.”

“I was eighteen when we got married. He was nineteen,” Jocelyn said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Oh my God,” Clary said in horror. “You’d kill me if I wanted to get married when I was eighteen.”

“I would,” Jocelyn agreed. “But Shadowhunters tend to get married earlier than mundanes. Their—our—life spans are shorter; a lot of us die violent deaths. We tend to do everything earlier because of it. Even so, I was young to get married. Still, my family was happy for me—even Luke was happy for me. Everyone thought Valentine was a wonderful boy. And he was, you know, just a boy then. The only person who ever told me I shouldn’t marry him was Madeleine. We’d been friends in school, but when I told her I was engaged, she said that Valentine was selfish and hateful, that his charm masked a terrible amorality. I told myself she was jealous.”