The City of Fallen Angels (Mortal Instruments 4)(99)

“I won’t do it.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“A world without Sebastian”—Simon used the name deliberately—“in it is a better world than one with him in it. I

won’tdoit.”AngerwasrisinginSimon,aswifttide.“Anyway,Icouldn’tifIwantedto.He’s dead.Vampirescan’t bring back the dead. You ought to know that, if you know so much.

Once the soul is gone from the body, nothing can bring someone back. Thankfully.”

Lilith bent her gaze on him. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said. “Clary never told you.”

Simon was getting fed up. “Never told me what?”

She chuckled. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. To prevent chaos there must be order. If a life is given to the Light, a life is owed to the Dark as well.”

“I have,” Simon said slowly and deliberately, “literally no idea what you’re talking about.

And I don’t care. You villains and your creepy eugenics programs are starting to bore me.

So I’m going to leave now. You’re welcome to try to stop me by threatening or hurting me. I encourage you to go ahead and try.”

She looked at him and chuckled. “‘Cain rose up,’” she said. “You are a bit like him whose Mark you bear. He was stubborn, as you are. Foolhardy, too.”

“He went up against—” Simon choked on the word. God. “I’m just dealing with you.” He turned to leave.

“I would not turn your back on me, Daylighter,” said Lilith, and there was something in her voice that made him look back at her, where she leaned on Sebastian’s coffin. “You think you cannot be hurt,” she said with a sneer. “And indeed I cannot lift a hand against you. I am not a fool; I have seen the holy fire of the divine. I have no wish to see it turned against me. I am not Valentine, to bargain with what I cannot understand. I am a demon, but a very old one. I know humanity better than you might think. I understand the weaknesses of pride, of lust for power, of desire of the flesh, of greed and vanity and love.”

“Love isn’t a weakness.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” she said, and glanced past him, with a look as cold and pointed as an icicle.

He turned, not wanting to, knowing he must, and looked behind him.

There on the brick walkway was Jace. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt. Standing in front of him was Clary, still in the pretty gold-colored dress she had worn to the Ironworks party. Her long, wavy red hair had come out of its knot and hung down around her shoulders. She stood very still in the circle of Jace’s arms. It would almost have looked like a romantic picture if it were not for the fact that in one of his hands, Jace was holding a long and glittering bone-handled knife, and the edge of it was pressed against Clary’s throat.

Simon stared at Jace in total and absolute shock. There was no emotion on Jace’s face, no light in his eyes. He seemed utterly blank.

Very slightly he inclined his head.

“I brought her, Lady Lilith,” he said. “Just as you asked.”

AND CAIN ROSE UP

Clary had never been so cold.

Even when she had crawled out of Lake Lyn, coughing and sputtering its poisonous water onto the shore, she hadn’t been this cold. Even when she had thought Jace was dead, she hadn’t felt this terrible icy paralysis in her heart. Then she had burned with rage, rage against her father. Now she just felt ice, all the way down to her toes.

She had come back to consciousness in the marble lobby of a strange building, under the shadow of an unlit chandelier. Jace had been carrying her, one arm under her bent knees, the other supporting her head. Still dizzy and groggy, she’d buried her head against his neck for a moment, trying to remember where she was.

“What happened?” she had whispered.

They had reached the elevator. Jace pushed the button, and Clary heard the rattle that meant the machine was moving down toward them. But where were they?

“You were unconscious,” he said.

“But how—” She remembered then, and fell silent. His hands on her, the sting of her stele on her skin, the wave of darkness that had come over her. Something wrong with the rune he had drawn on her, the way it had looked and felt. She stayed motionless in his arms for a moment, and then said:

“Put me down.”

He set her down on her feet, and they looked at each other. Only a small space separated them. She could have reached out and touched him, but for the first time since she had met him, she didn’t want to. She had the terrible feeling that she was looking at a stranger. He looked like Jace, and sounded like Jace when he spoke, and had felt like Jace when she was holding him. But his eyes were strange and distant, as was the tiny smile playing about his mouth.

The elevator doors opened behind him. She remembered standing in the nave of the Institute, saying “I love you” to a closed elevator door. The gap yawned behind him now, as black as the mouth of a cave. She felt for the stele in her pocket; it was gone.

“You knocked me out,” she said. “With a rune. You brought me here. Why?”

His beautiful face was entirely, carefully blank. “I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice.”



She turned and ran then, going for the door, but he was faster than she was. He always had been. He swung in front of her, blocking her path, and held out his hands. “Clary, don’t run,” he said. “Please. For me.”