City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(117)

I know where he got hold of angel blood, Clary thought, thinking of Ithuriel with a sharp sadness. “Do you think it worked at all?”

“I do wonder now if that was why I suddenly found the focus and the ability to go on, and to help Luke thwart the Uprising. It would be ironic if that was the case, considering why Valentine did it in the first place. But what he didn’t know was that while he was doing this, I was pregnant with you. So while it may have affected me slightly, it affected you much more. I believe that’s why you can do what you can with runes.”

“And maybe,” Clary said, “why you can do things like trap the image of the Mortal Cup in a tarot card. And why Valentine can do things like take the curse off Hodge—”

“Valentine has had years of experimenting on himself in a myriad of ways,” said Jocelyn. “He’s as close now as a human being, a Shadowhunter, can get to a warlock. But nothing he can do to himself would have the kind of profound effect on him it would have on you or Jonathan, because you were so young. I’m not sure anyone’s ever before done what Valentine did, not to a baby before it was born.”

“So Jace—Jonathan—and I really were both experiments.”

“You were an unintentional one. With Jonathan, Valentine wanted to create some kind of superwarrior, stronger and faster and better than other Shadowhunters. At Renwick’s, Valentine told me that Jonathan really was all those things. But that he was also cruel and amoral and strangely empty. Jonathan was loyal enough to Valentine, but I suppose Valentine realized that somewhere along the way, in trying to create a child who was superior to others, he’d created a son who could never really love him.”

Clary thought of Jace, of the way he’d looked at Renwick’s, the way he’d clutched that piece of the broken Portal so hard that blood had run down his fingers. “No,” she said. “No and no. Jace is not like that. He does love Valentine. He shouldn’t, but he does. And he isn’t empty. He’s the opposite of everything you’re saying.”

Jocelyn’s hands twisted in her lap. They were laced all over with fine white scars—the fine white scars all Shadowhunters bore, the memory of vanished Marks. But Clary had never really seen her mother’s scars before. Magnus’s magic had always made her forget them. There was one, on the inside of her mother’s wrist, that was very like the shape of a star….

Her mother spoke then, and all thoughts of anything else fled from Clary’s mind.

“I am not,” Jocelyn said, “talking about Jace.”

“But …” Clary said. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly, as if she were dreaming. Maybe I am dreaming, she thought. Maybe my mother never woke up at all, and all of this is a dream. “Jace is Valentine’s son. I mean, who else could he be?”

Jocelyn looked straight into her daughter’s eyes. “The night Céline Herondale died, she was eight months pregnant. Valentine had been giving her potions, powders—he was trying on her what he’d tried on himself, with Ithuriel’s blood, hoping that Stephen’s child would be as strong and powerful as he suspected Jonathan would be, but without Jonathan’s worse qualities. He couldn’t bear that his experiment would go to waste, so with Hodge’s help he cut the baby out of Céline’s stomach. She’d only been dead a short time—”

Clary made a gagging noise. “That isn’t possible.”

Jocelyn went on as if Clary hadn’t spoken. “Valentine took that baby and had Hodge bring it to his own childhood home, in a valley not far from Lake Lyn. It was why he was gone all that night. Hodge took care of the baby until the Uprising. After that, because Valentine was pretending to be Michael Wayland, he moved the child to the Wayland manor and raised him as Michael Wayland’s son.”

“So Jace,” Clary whispered. “Jace is not my brother?”

She felt her mother squeeze her hand—a sympathetic squeeze. “No, Clary. He’s not.”

Clary’s vision darkened. She could feel her heart pounding in separate, distinct beats. My mom feels sorry for me, she thought distantly. She thinks this is bad news. Her hands were shaking. “Then whose bones were those in the fire? Luke said there were a child’s bones—”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Those were Michael Wayland’s bones, and his son’s bones. Valentine killed them both and burned their bodies. He wanted the Clave to believe that both he and his son were dead.”

“Then Jonathan—”

“Is alive,” said Jocelyn, pain flashing across her face. “Valentine told me as much at Renwick’s. Valentine brought Jace up in the Wayland manor, and Jonathan in the house near the lake. He managed to divide his time between the two of them, traveling from one house to the other, sometimes leaving one or both alone for long periods of time. It seems that Jace never knew about Jonathan, though Jonathan may have known about Jace. They never met, though they probably lived only miles from each other.”

“And Jace doesn’t have demon blood in him? He’s not—cursed?”

“Cursed?” Jocelyn looked surprised. “No, he doesn’t have demon blood. Clary, Valentine experimented on Jace when he was a baby with the same blood he used on me, on you. Angel blood. Jace isn’t cursed. The opposite, if anything. All Shadowhunters have some of the Angel’s blood in them—you two just have a bit more.”