City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(105)

“What if we can’t ever come back?” Isabelle said. The ruby around her neck was pulsing, glowing like a stoplight, illuminating her face.

“Then at least we’ll be together,” Clary said, and looked around at her companions. She reached out and took Jace’s hand, and Simon’s hand on the other side of her, and held them tight. “We go through together, and on the other side we stay together,” she said. “All right?”

None of them answered, but Isabelle took Simon’s other hand, and Alec took Jace’s. They all stood for a moment, staring. Clary felt Jace’s hand tighten on hers, a nearly imperceptible pressure.

They stepped forward, and the shadows swallowed them up.



“Mirror, my mirror,” said the Queen, placing her hand upon the mirror. “Show me my Morning Star.”

The mirror hung on the wall of the Queen’s bedroom. It was surrounded by wreaths of flowers: roses from which no one had cut away the thorns.

The mist inside the mirror coalesced, and Sebastian’s angular face looked out. “My beautiful one,” he said. His voice was calm and composed, though there was blood on his face and clothes. He was holding his sword, and the stars along the blade were dimmed with scarlet. “I am . . . somewhat occupied at the moment.”

“I thought you might wish to know that your sister and adoptive brother have just left this place,” said the Queen. “They found the road to Edom. They are coming to you.”

His face transformed with a wolfish grin. “And they didn’t make you promise not to tell me that they came to your court?”

“They did,” said the Queen. “They said nothing about telling you of leaving.”

Sebastian laughed.

“They killed one of my knights,” said the Queen. “Spilled blood before my throne. They are beyond my reach now. You know my people cannot survive in the poison lands. You will have to take my revenge for me.”

The light in his eyes changed. The Queen had always found what Sebastian felt for his sister, and Jace as well, to be something of a mystery, but then Sebastian himself was by far the greater mystery. Before he had come to make her his offer, she would never have considered a true alliance with Shadowhunters. Their peculiar sense of honor made them untrustworthy. It was Sebastian’s very lack of honor that made her trust him. The fine craft of betrayal was second nature to Fair Folk, and Sebastian was an artist of lies.

“I will serve your interests in all ways, my Queen,” he said. “In a short enough while your people and mine shall hold the reins of the world, and when we do, you may have revenge on any who have ever offended you.”

She smiled at him. Blood still stained the snow in her throne room, and she still felt the jab of Jace Lightwood’s blade against her throat. It was not a real smile, but she knew enough to let her beauty do her work for her, sometimes. “I do adore you,” she said.

“Yes,” said Sebastian, and his eyes flickered, their color like dark clouds. The Queen wondered idly if he thought of the two of them the way she did: lovers who, even while embracing, each held a knife to the other’s back, ready to stab and to betray. “And I do like to be adored.” He grinned. “I am glad they are coming. Let them come.”





Part Two


That World Inverted





And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein.

—Deuteronomy 29:23





14

THE SLEEP OF REASON


Clary stood on a shady lawn that rolled away down a sloping hill. The sky overhead was perfectly blue, dotted here and there with white clouds. At her feet a stone walkway stretched to the front door of a large manor house, built of mellow golden stone.

She craned her head back, looking up. The house was lovely: The stones were the color of butter in the spring sunshine, covered in trellises of climbing roses in red and gold and orange. Wrought iron balconies curved out from the facade, and there were two large arched doors of bronze-colored wood, their surfaces wrought with delicate designs of wings. Wings for the Fairchilds, said a soft voice, reassuring, in the back of her mind. This is Fairchild manor. It has stood for four hundred years and will stand four hundred more.

“Clary!” Her mother appeared at one of the balconies, wearing an elegant champagne-colored dress; her red hair was down, and she looked young and beautiful. Her arms were bare, circled with black runes. “What do you think? Doesn’t it look gorgeous?”

Clary followed her mother’s gaze toward where the lawn flattened out. There was an archway of roses set up at the end of an aisle, on either side of which were rows of wooden benches. White flowers were scattered along the aisle: the white flowers that grew only in Idris. The air was rich with their honey scent.

She looked back up at her mother, who was no longer alone on the balcony. Luke was standing behind her, an arm around her waist. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves and formal trousers, as if halfway dressed for a party. His arms too were twined with runes: runes for good luck, for insight, for strength, for love. “Are you ready?” he called down to Clary.

“Ready for what?” she said, but they didn’t seem to hear her. Smiling, they disappeared back into the house. Clary took a few steps along the path.