City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(40)

“Are you okay?” he said. His voice was soft. “You ran out of the house like …” His voice trailed off as he looked at her. She was still gripping the lamppost as if she needed it to hold her up. “What happened?”

“I had a fight with Jace,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “You know how it is.”

“I don’t, actually.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t have any sisters or brothers.”

“Lucky,” she said, and was startled at the bitterness in her own voice.

“You don’t mean that.” He took a step closer to her, and as he did, the streetlamp flickered on, casting a pool of white witchlight over them both. Sebastian looked up at the light and smiled. “It’s a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign that you should let me walk you home.”

“But I have no idea where that is,” she said, realizing. “I snuck out of the house to come here. I don’t remember the way I came.”

“Well, who are you staying with?”

She hesitated before replying.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I swear on the Angel.”

She stared. That was quite an oath, for a Shadowhunter. “All right,” she said, before she could overthink her decision. “I’m staying with Amatis Herondale.”

“Great. I know exactly where she lives.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

She managed a smile. “You’re kind of pushy, you know.”

He shrugged. “I have a fetish for damsels in distress.”

“Don’t be sexist.”

“Not at all. My services are also available to gentlemen in distress. It’s an equal opportunity fetish,” he said, and, with a flourish, offered his arm again.

This time, she took it.

Alec shut the door of the small attic room behind him and turned to face Jace. His eyes were normally the color of Lake Lyn, a pale, untroubled blue, but the color tended to change with his moods. At the moment they were the color of the East River during a thunderstorm. His expression was stormy as well. “Sit,” he said to Jace, pointing at a low chair near the gabled window. “I’ll get the bandages.”

Jace sat. The room he shared with Alec at the top of the Penhallows’ house was small, with two narrow beds in it, one against each wall. Their clothes hung from a row of pegs on the wall. There was a single window, letting in faint light—it was getting dark now, and the sky outside the glass was indigo blue. Jace watched as Alec knelt to grab the duffel bag from under his bed and yank it open. He rummaged noisily among the contents before getting to his feet with a box in his hands. Jace recognized it as the box of medical supplies they used sometimes when runes weren’t an option—antiseptic, bandages, scissors, and gauze.

“Aren’t you going to use a healing rune?” Jace asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

“No. You can just—” Alec broke off, flinging the box onto the bed with an inaudible curse. He went to the small sink against the wall and washed his hands with such force that water splashed upward in a fine spray. Jace watched him with a distant curiosity. His hand had begun to burn with a dull and fiery ache.

Alec retrieved the box, pulled a chair up opposite Jace’s, and flung himself down onto it. “Give me your hand.”

Jace held his hand out. He had to admit it looked pretty bad. All four knuckles were split open like red starbursts. Dried blood clung to his fingers, a flaking red-brown glove.

Alec made a face. “You’re an idiot.”

“Thanks,” Jace said. He watched patiently as Alec bent over his hand with a pair of tweezers and gently nudged at a bit of glass embedded in his skin. “So, why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not use a healing rune? This isn’t a demon injury.”

“Because.” Alec retrieved the blue bottle of antiseptic. “I think it would do you good to feel the pain. You can heal like a mundane. Slow and ugly. Maybe you’ll learn something.” He splashed the stinging liquid over Jace’s cuts. “Although I doubt it.”

“I can always do my own healing rune, you know.”

Alec began wrapping a strip of bandages around Jace’s hand. “Only if you want me to tell the Penhallows what really happened to their window, instead of letting them think it was an accident.” He jerked a knot in the bandages tight, making Jace wince. “You know, if I’d thought you were going to do this to yourself, I would never have told you anything.”

“Yes, you would have.” Jace cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t realize my attack on the picture window would upset you quite so much.”

“It’s just—” Done with the bandaging, Alec looked down at Jace’s hand, the hand he was still holding between his. It was a white club of bandages, spotted with blood where Alec’s fingers had touched it. “Why do you do these things to yourself? Not just what you did to the window, but the way you talked to Clary. What are you punishing yourself for? You can’t help how you feel.”

Jace’s voice was even. “How do I feel?”

“I see how you look at her.” Alec’s eyes were remote, seeing something just past Jace, something that wasn’t there. “And you can’t have her. Maybe you just never knew what it was like to want something you couldn’t have before.”