City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(166)

She was looking at the inside of the Accords Hall. It was full of children. Shadowhunter children sat and stood and clung together. There were the Blackthorns, the children huddled tightly in a group, Julian sitting with the baby on his lap, his free arm stretched out as if he could encompass the rest of his siblings, could pull them all in and protect them. Emma sat close by him, her expression stony, her golden sword gleaming behind her shoulder—

The scene resolved into Angel Square. All around the Hall of Accords was a boiling mass of Nephilim, and ranged against them were the Endarkened in their scarlet gear, bristling with weapons—and not just the Endarkened but figures that Clary recognized with a sinking heart as faerie warriors. A tall faerie with hair of mixed blue and green strands was battling Aline Penhallow, who stood in front of her mother, her sword drawn as if ready to fight to the death. Across the square Helen was trying to push her way through the crowd toward Aline, but the crush was too great. The fighting penned her back, but so did the bodies—bodies of Nephilim warriors, fallen and dying, so many more in black gear than red. They were losing the battle, losing it—

Clary whirled on Sebastian as the scene began to fade. “What’s happening?”

“It’s over,” he said. “I requested that the Clave turn you over to me; they didn’t. Admittedly because you’d run off, but nevertheless, they were no further use to me. My forces have invaded the city. The Nephilim children are hiding in the Accords Hall, but when all the others are dead, the Hall will be taken. Alicante will be mine. All of Idris will be mine. The Shadowhunters have lost the war—not that there was much of one. I really thought they’d put up more of a fight.”

“That’s hardly all the Shadowhunters that exist,” Clary said. “That was just who was in Alicante. There are still Nephilim scattered all over the world—”

“All the Shadowhunters you see there will drink from the Infernal Cup soon enough. Then they will be my servants, and I will send them out to find their brethren in the world, and those who remain will be Turned or killed. I will slay the Iron Sisters and the Silent Brothers in their citadels of stone and silence. Inside of a month the race of Jonathan Shadowhunter will be wiped from the world. And then . . .” He smiled a terrible smile, and gestured toward the western window, which looked out on the dead and blasted world of Edom. “You’ve seen what happens to a world without protectors,” he gloated. “Your world will die. Death on death, and blood in the streets.”

Clary thought of Magnus. I saw a city all of blood, with towers made of bone, and blood ran in the streets like water.

“You can’t imagine,” she said in a dead voice, “that if you do this, if what you’re telling me is going to happen does actually happen, that there is any chance I would sit on a throne beside you. I’d rather be tortured to death.”

“Oh, I don’t think it,” he said breezily. “That’s why I’ve waited, you see. To give you a choice. All those Fair Folk who are my allies, all the Endarkened you see there, they wait on my orders. If I give the signal, they will stand down. Your world will be safe. You’ll never be able to return there, of course—I’ll seal the borders between this world and that, and never again will anyone, demon or human, travel between them. But it will be safe.”

“A choice,” Clary said. “You said you were giving me a choice?”

“Of course,” he said. “Rule beside me, and I will spare your world. Refuse, and I will give the order to annihilate it. Choose me, and you can save millions, billions of lives, my sister. You could save a whole world by damning a single soul. Your own. So tell me, what is your decision?”



“Magnus,” Alec said desperately, reaching to feel the adamas chains, sunk deep into the floor, that connected to the manacles on the warlock’s wrists. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Isabelle and Simon were checking Luke for injuries. Isabelle kept glancing back at Alec, her face anxious; Alec deliberately didn’t meet her gaze, not wanting her to see the fear in his eyes. He touched the back of his hand to Magnus’s face.

Magnus looked sunken and sallow, his lips dry, ashy shadows beneath his eyes.

My Alec, Magnus had said, you’ve been so sad. I didn’t know. And then he had sunk back against the floor, as if the effort of speaking exhausted him.

“Hold still,” Alec said now, and drew a seraph blade from his belt. He opened his mouth to name it, and felt a sudden touch at his wrist. Magnus had wrapped his slender fingers around Alec’s wrist.

“Call it Raphael,” Magnus said, and when Alec looked at him in puzzlement, Magnus glanced toward the blade in Alec’s hand. His eyes were half-closed, and Alec remembered what Sebastian had said in the entryway, to Simon: I killed the one who made you. Magnus’s mouth quirked at the corner. “It is an angel’s name,” he said.

Alec nodded. “Raphael,” he said softly, and when the blade blazed up, he brought it down hard on the adamas chain, which splintered under the touch of the knife. The chains fell away, and Alec, dropping the blade to the floor, reached forward to take Magnus by the shoulders and help him up.

Magnus reached for Alec, but instead of rising to his feet, he pulled Alec against him, his hand sliding up Alec’s back to knot in his hair. Magnus pulled Alec down and against him, and kissed him, hard and awkward and determined, and Alec froze for a moment and then abandoned himself to it, to kissing Magnus, something he’d thought he’d never get to do again. Alec ran his hands up Magnus’s shoulders to the sides of his neck and cupped his hands there, holding Magnus in place while he kissed him thoroughly breathless.