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City of Bones: Deleted Scenes
This was the original prologue for City of Bones. I had wanted to tell some of the story from Jace's point of view, but once I got further into the book I realized it would be better if we mainly saw him from Clary's perspective. It made him more mysterious and a mysterious character is always fun.
Deleted Prologue
The marks on his skin told the story of his life. Jace Wayland had always been proud of them. Some of the other young people in the Clave didn't like the disfiguring black letters, didn't like the burning pain of the stele where it cut into the skin, didn't like the nightmares that came when runes too powerful were inked into the flesh of someone unready. Jace had no sympathy for them. It was their own fault they were not stronger.
He had always been strong. He'd had to be. Most boys got their first Marks when they were fifteen. Alec had been thirteen, and that was very young. Jace had been nine. His father had cut the marks into his skin with a stele made from carved ivory. The runes spelled out his true name, and other things besides. "Now you are a man," his father had said. That night Jace dreamed of cities made of gold and blood, of tall bone towers sharp as splinters. He was almost ten years old and had never seen a city.
That winter his father took him to Manhattan for the first time. The hard pavement was filthy, the buildings crowding too close together, but the lights were bright and beautiful. And the streets were full of monsters. Jace had only seen them before in his father's instructional manuals. Vampires in their finery, faces dead white as paper. Lycanthropes with their too-sharp teeth and their smell of wolf. Warlocks with their cat's-eyes and pointed ears, sometimes a forked tail protruding from the hem of an elegant velvet coat.
"Monsters," his father had said, with distaste. His mouth curled at the corner. "But they bleed as red as men do when you kill them."
"What about demons? Do they bleed red?"
"Some do. Some bleed thin blood like green poison, and some bleed silver or black. I have a scar here from a demon that bled acid the color of sapphires."
Jace gazed at his father's scar in wonder. "And have you killed many demons?"
"I have," said his father. "And some day, you will too. You were born to kill demons, Jace. It's in your bones."
It would be years later that Jace would see a demon for the first time, and by then his father had already been dead for several years. He pulled aside his shirt now and looked at the scar where that first demon had clawed him. Four parallel claw marks that ran from his breastbone to his shoulder, where his father had inked the runes that would make him fast and strong, and hide him from mundane eyes. Swift as the wind, strong as the earth, silent as the forest, invisible as water.
Jace thought of the girl in his dream, the one with the braided scarlet hair. In the dream, he had not been invisible to her. She had looked at him with more than awareness; there had been recognition in her eyes, as if he were familiar to her. But how could a human girl see through his glamour?
He had woken up shivering, cold as if his skin had been stripped
away. It was frightening to feel so vulnerable, more frightening than any demon. He would have to ask Hodge about runes for nightmare protection it in the morning. Perhaps there would be something about it in one of his books.
But there was no time now. There had been reports of dark activity in a nightclub downtown, human bodies found limp and drained as the sun came up. Jace shrugged on his jacket, checked his weaponry, ink-Marked hands skating lightly over cloth and metal. Marks that no human eye could see--and he was glad, thinking of the girl in his dream, the way she had looked at him, as if he were no different than she was. Stripped of their magic, the marks on his body were only marks, after all, of no more power than the scars on his wrists and chest, or the deep scar just over his heart where his father's killer had stabbed him when he was ten years old.
"Jace!"
The sound of his name startled him out of his reverie. They were calling him from the corridor, Alec and Isabelle, impatient, eager for the hunt and the kill. Sweeping thoughts of nightmares from his mind, Jace went to join them.
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Special: Kissed
It was printed on thin paper, nearly parchment, in a thin, elegant, spidery hand. It announced a gathering at the humble home of Magnus the Magnificent Warlock, and promised attendees “a rapturous evening of delights beyond your wildest imaginings.” —City of Bones
Standing in the stairwell of Magnus’ home, Alec stared at the name written under the buzzer on the wall. BANE. The name didn’t really seem to suit Magnus, he thought, not now that he knew him. If you could really be said to know someone when you’d attended one of their parties, once, and then they’d saved your life later but hadn’t really hung around to be thanked. But the name Magnus Bane made him think of a towering sort of figure, with huge shoulders and formal purple warlock’s robes, calling down fire and lightning. Not Magnus himself, who was more of a cross between a panther and a demented elf.
Alec took a deep breath and let it out. Well, he’d come this far; he might as well go on. The bare lightbulb hanging overhead cast sweeping shadows as he reached forward and pressed the buzzer.
A moment later a voice echoed through the stairwell. “WHO CALLS UPON THE HIGH WARLOCK?”
“Er,” Alec said. “It’s me. I mean, Alec. Alec Lightwood.”
There was a sort of silence, as if even the hallway itself were surprised. Then a ping, and the second door opened, letting him out onto the stairwell. He headed up the rickety stairs into the darkness, which smelled like pizza and dust. The second floor landing was bright, the door at the far end open. Magnus Bane was leaning in the entryway.
Compared to the first time Alec has seen him, he looked fairly normal. His black hair still stood up in spikes, and he looked sleepy; his face, even with its cat’s eyes, very young. He wore a black t-shirt with the words ONE MILLION DOLLARS picked out across the chest in sequins, and jeans that hung low on his hips, low enough that Alec looked away, down at his own shoes. Which were boring.
“Alexander Lightwood,” said Magnus. He had just the faintest trace of an accent, something Alec couldn’t put his finger on, a lilt to his vowels. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Alec looked past Magnus. “Do you have — company?”
Magnus crossed his arms, which did good things for his biceps, and leaned against the side of the door. “Why do you want to know?”
“I was hoping I could come in and talk to you.”
“Hmmm.” Magnus’ eyes raked him up and down. They really did shine in the dark, like a cat’s. “Well, all right then.” He turned abruptly away and disappeared into the apartment; after a startled moment, Alec followed.
The loft looked different without a hundred churning bodies in it. It was — well, not ordinary, but the sort of space someone might live in. Like most lofts, it had a big central room split into “rooms” by groupings of furniture. There was a square collection of sofas and tables off to the right, which Magnus gestured Alec toward. Alec sat down on a gold velvet sofa with elegant wooden curlicues on the arms.
“Would you like some tea?” Magnus asked. He wasn’t sitting in a chair, but had sprawled himself on a tufted ottoman, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
Alec nodded. He felt incapable of saying anything. Anything interesting or intelligent, that was. It was always Jace who said the interesting, intelligent things. He was Jace’s parabatai and that was all the glory he needed or wanted: like being the dark star to someone else’s supernova. But this was somewhere Jace couldn’t go with him, something Jace couldn’t help him with. “Sure.”
His right hand felt suddenly hot. He looked down, and realized he was holding a waxed paper cup from Joe, the Art of Coffee. It smelled like chai. He jumped, and only barely escaped spilling on himself. “By the Angel —”
“I LOVE that expression,” said Magnus. “It’s so quaint.”
Alec stared at him. “Did you steal this tea?”
Magnus ignored the question. “So,” he said. “Why are you here?”
Alec took a gulp of the stolen tea. “I wanted to thank you,” he said, when he came up for air. “For saving my life.”
Magnus leaned back on his hands. His t-shirt rode up over his flat stomach, and this time Alec had nowhere else to look. “You wanted to thank me.”
“You saved my life,” Alec said, again. “But I was delirious, and I don’t think I really thanked you. I know you didn’t have to do it. So thank you.”
Magnus’ eyebrows had disappeared up into his hairline. “You’re . . .welcome?”
Alec set his tea down. “Maybe I should go.”
Magnus sat up. “After you came so far? All the way to Brooklyn? Just to thank me?” He was grinning. “Now that would be a wasted effort.” He reached out and put his hand to Alec’s cheek, his thumb brushing along the cheekbone. His touch felt like fire, training tendrils of sparks in its wake. Alec sat frozen in surprise — surprise at the gesture, and surprise at the effect it was having on him. Magnus’ eyes narrowed, and he dropped his hand. “Huh,” he said to himself.
“What?” Alec was suddenly very worried that he’d done something wrong. “What is it?”
“You’re just . . .” A shadow moved behind Magnus; with fluid agility, the warlock twisted around and picked up a small gray and white tabby cat from the floor. The cat curled into the crook of his arm and looked at Alec with suspicion. Now two pairs of gold-green eyes were trained on him darkly. “Not what I expected.”
“From a Shadowhunter?”
“From a Lightwood.”
“I didn’t realize you knew my family that well.”
“I’ve known your family for hundreds of years.” Magnus’ eyes searched his face. “Now your sister, she’s a Lightwood. You—’
“She said you liked me.”
“What?”
“Izzy. My sister. She told me you liked me. Liked me, liked me.”
“Liked you, liked you?” Magnus buried his grin in the cat’s fur. “Sorry. Are we twelve now? I don’t recall saying anything to Isabelle . . .”
“Jace said it too.” Alec was blunt; it was the only way he knew how to be. “That you liked me. That when he buzzed up here, you thought he was me and you were disappointed that it was him. That never happens.”
“Doesn’t it? Well, it should.”
Alec was startled. “No — I mean Jace, he’s . . . Jace.”
“He’s trouble,” said Magnus. “But you are totally without guile. Which in a Lightwood, is a conundrum. You’ve always been a plotting sort of family, like low-rent Borgias. But there isn’t a lie in your face. I get the feeling everything you say is straightforward.”
Alec leaned forward. “Do you want to go out with me?”
Magnus blinked. “See, that’s what I mean. Straightforward.”
Alec chewed his lip and said nothing.
“Why do you want to go out with me?” Magnus inquired. He was rubbing Chairman Meow’s head, his long fingers folding the cat’s ears down. “Not that I’m not highly desirable, but the way you asked, it seemed as if you were having some sort of fit —”
“I just do,” Alec said. “And I thought you liked me, so you’d say yes, and I could try — I mean, we could try —” He put his face in his hands. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
Magnus’ voice was gentle. “Does anyone know you’re gay?”
Alec’s head jerked up; he found he was breathing a little hard, as if he’d run a race. But what could he do, deny it? When he’d come here to do exactly the opposite? “Clary,” he said, hoarsely. “Which is . . . Which was an accident. And Izzy, but she’d never say anything.”
“Not your parents. Not Jace?”
Alec thought about Jace knowing, and pushed the thought away, hard and fast. “No. No, and I don’t want them to know, especially Jace.”
“I think you could tell him.” Magnus rubbed Chairman Meow under the chin. “He went to pieces like a jigsaw puzzle when he thought you were going to die. He cares —”
“I’d rather not.” Alec was still breathing quickly. He rubbed at the knees of his jeans with his fists. “I’ve never had a date,” he said in a low voice. “Never kissed anyone. Not ever. Izzy said you liked me and I thought —”
“I’m not unsympathetic. But do you like me? Because this being gay business doesn’t mean you can just throw yourself at any guy and it’ll be fine because he’s not a girl. There are still people you like and people you don’t.”
Alec thought of his bedroom back at the Institute, of being in a delirium of pain and poison when Magnus had come in. He had barely recognized him. He was fairly sure he’d been screaming for his parents, for Jace, for Izzy, but his voice would only come out on a whisper. He remembered Magnus’ hands on him, his fingers cool and gentle. He remembered the death-grip he’d kept on Magnus’ wrist, for hours and hours, even after the pain had passed and he knew he would be all right. He remembered watching Magnus’ face in the light of the rising sun, the gold of sunrise sparking gold out of his eyes, and thinking how oddly beautiful he was, with his cat’s gaze and grace.
“Yes,” Alec said. “I like you.”
He met Magnus’ gaze squarely. The warlock was looking at him with a sort of admixture of curiosity and affection and puzzlement. “It’s so odd,” Magnus said. “Genetics. Your eyes, that color —” He stopped and shook his head.
“The Lightwoods you knew didn’t have blue eyes?”
“Green-eyed monsters,” said Magnus, and grinned. He deposited Chairman Meow on the ground, and the cat moved over to Alec, and rubbed against his leg. “The Chairman likes you.”
“Is that good?”
“I never date anyone my cat doesn’t like,” Magnus said easily, and stood up. “So let’s say Friday night?”
A great wave of relief came over Alec. “Really? You want to go out with me?”
Magnus shook his head. “You have to stop playing hard to get, Alexander. It makes things difficult.” He grinned. He had a grin like Jace’s — not that they looked anything alike, but the sort of grin that lit up his whole face. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
Alec drifted after Magnus toward the front door, feeling as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders, one he hadn’t even known he was carrying. Of course he’d have to come up with an excuse for where he was going Friday night, something Jace wouldn’t want to participate in, something he’d need to do alone. Or he could pretend to be sick and sneak out. He was so lost in thought he almost banged into the front door, which Magnus was leaning against, looking at him through eyes narrowed to crescents.
“What is it?” Alec said.
“Never kissed anyone?” Magnus said. “No one at all?”
“No,” said Alec, hoping this didn’t disqualify him from being datable. “Not a real kiss —”
“Come here.” Magnus took him by the elbows and pulled him close. For a moment Alec was entirely disoriented by the feeling of being so close to someone else, to the kind of person he’d wanted to be close to for so long. Magnus was long and lean but not skinny; his body was hard, his arms lightly muscled but strong; he was an inch or so taller than Alec, which hardly ever happened, and they fit together perfectly. Magnus’ finger was under his chin, tilting his face up, and then they were kissing. Alec heard a small hitching gasp come from his own throat and then their mouths were pressed together with a sort of controlled urgency. Magnus, Alec thought dazedly, really knew what he was doing. His lips were soft, and he parted Alec’s expertly, exploring his mouth: a symphony of lips, teeth, tongue, every movement waking up a nerve ending Alec had never known he had.
He found Magnus’ waist with his fingers, touching the strip of bare skin he’d been trying to avoid looking at before, and slid his hands up under Magnus’ shirt. Magnus jerked with surprise, then relaxed, his hands running down Alec’s arms, over his chest, his waist, finding the belt loops on Alec’s jeans and using them to pull him closer. His mouth left Alec’s and Alec felt the hot pressure of his lips on his throat, where the skin was so sensitive that it seemed directly connected to the bones in his legs, which were about to give out. Just before he slid to the floor, Magnus let him go. His eyes were shining and so was his mouth.
“Now you’ve been kissed,” he said, reached behind him, and yanked the door open. “See you Friday?”
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He broke off the kiss, and drew back.
“Friday,” he said, and let Magnus go. He backed away, down the landing, Magnus looking after him. The warlock crossed his arms over his shirt — wrinkled where Alec had grabbed it — and shook his head, grinning.
“Lightwoods,” Magnus said. “They always have to have the last word.”
He shut the door behind him, and Alec ran down the steps, taking them two at a time, his blood still singing in his ears like music.
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Because It Is Bitter
The scene that takes place during pages 170-174 of City of Ashes, in the chapter The Seelie Court, here from Jace’s point of view. I even gave it a name — “Because It Is Bitter.” Because boy, is Jace bitter here.
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.” — Stephen Crane
“I know that I will not leave my sister here in your Court,” said Jace, “and since there is nothing to be learned from either her or myself, perhaps you could do us the favor of releasing her?”
The Queen smiled. It was a beautiful, terrible smile. The Queen was a lovely woman; she had that inhuman loveliness that faeries did, that was more like the loveliness of hard crystal than the beauty of a human. The Queen did not look any particular age: she could have been sixteen or forty-five. Jace supposed there were those who would have found her attractive — people had died for love of the Queen — but she gave him a cold feeling in his chest, as if he’d swallowed ice water too fast. “What if I told you she could be freed by a kiss?”
It was Clary who replied, bewildered: “You want Jace to kiss you?”
As the Queen and Court laughed, the icy feeling in Jace’s chest intensified. Clary didn’t understand faeries, he thought. He’d tried to explain, but there was no explaining, not really. Whatever the Queen wanted from them, it wasn’t a kiss from him; she could have demanded that without all this show and nonsense. What she wanted was to see them pinned and struggling like butterflies. It was something immortality did to you, he’d often thought: dulled your senses, your emotions; the sharp, uncontrollable, pitiable responses of human beings were to faeries like fresh blood to a vampire. Something living. Something they didn’t have themselves.
“Despite his charms,” the Queen said, flicking a glance toward Jace — her eyes were green, like Clary’s, but not like Clary’s at all — “that kiss will not free the girl.”
“I could kiss Meliorn,” suggested Isabelle, shrugging.
The Queen shook her head slowly. “Nor that. Nor any one of my Court.”
Isabelle threw up her hands; Jace wanted to ask her what she’d expected — kissing Meliorn wouldn’t have bothered her, so obviously the Queen wouldn’t care about it. He supposed it had been nice of her to offer, but Iz, at least, ought to know better. She’d had dealings with faeries before.
Maybe it wasn’t just knowing the way the Fair Folk thought, Jace wondered. Maybe it was knowing how people who enjoyed cruelty for the sake of cruelty thought. Isabelle was thoughtless, and sometimes vain, but she wasn’t cruel. She tossed her dark hair back and scowled. “I’m not kissing any of you,” she said firmly. “Just so it’s official.”
“That hardly seems necessary,” said Simon, stepped forward. “If a kiss is all . . .”
He took a step toward Clary, who didn’t move away. The ice in Jace’s chest turned into liquid fire; he clenched his hands at his sides as Simon took Clary gently by the arms and looked down into her face. She rested her hands on Simon’s waist, as if she’d done it a million times before. Maybe she had, for all he knew. He knew Simon loved her; he’d known it since he’d seen them together in that stupid coffee shop, the other boy practically choking on getting the words “I love you” out of his mouth while Clary looked around the room, restlessly alive, her green eyes darting everywhere. She’s not interested in you, mundane boy, he’d thought with satisfaction. Get lost. And then been surprised he’d thought it. What difference did it make to him what this girl he barely knew thought?
That seemed like a lifetime ago. She wasn’t some girl he barely knew anymore: she was Clary. She was the one thing in his life that mattered more than anything else, and watching Simon put his hands on her, wherever he wanted to, made him feel at once sick and faint and murderously angry. The urge to stalk up and rip the two of them apart was so strong he could barely breathe.
Clary glanced back at him, her red hair slipping over her shoulder. She looked concerned, which was bad enough. He couldn’t stand the thought that she might feel sorry for him. He looked away fast, and caught the eye of the Seelie Queen, glimmering with delight: now this was what she was after. Their pain, their agony.
“No,” said the Queen, to Simon, in a voice like the soft slice of a knife. “That is not what I want either.”
Simon stepped away from Clary, reluctantly. Relief pounded through Jace’s veins like blood, drowning out what his friends were saying. For a moment all he cared about was that he wasn’t going to have to watch Clary kiss Simon. Then Clary seemed to swim into focus: she was very pale, and he couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking. Was she disappointed not to be kissed by Simon? Relieved as he was? He thought of Simon kissing her hand earlier than day and shoved the memory away viciously, still staring at his sister. Look up, he thought. Look at me. If you love me, you’ll look at me.
She crossed her arms over her chest, the way she did when she was cold or upset. But she didn’t look up. The conversation went on around them: who was going to kiss who, what was going to happen. Hopeless rage rose up in Jace’s chest, and as usual, found its escape in a sarcastic comment.
“Well, I’m not kissing the mundane,” he said. “I’d rather stay down here and rot.”
“Forever?” said Simon. His eyes were big and dark and serious. “Forever’s an awfully long time.”
Jace looked back at those eyes. Simon was probably a good person, he thought. He loved Clary and he wanted to take care of her and make her happy. He’d probably make a spectacular boyfriend. Logically, Jace knew, it was exactly what he ought to want for his sister. But he couldn’t look at Simon without wanting to kill someone. “I knew it,” he said nastily. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?”
“Of course not. But if—”
“I guess it’s true what they say. There are no straight men in the trenches.”
“That’s atheists, jackass.” Simon was bright red. “There are no atheists in the trenches.”
It was the Queen who interrupted them, leaning forward so that her white neck and breasts were displayed above the neckline of her low-cut gown. “While this is all very amusing, the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires,” she said. “Only that and nothing more.”
Simon went from red to white. If the kiss that Clary most desired wasn’t Simon’s, then . . .the way she was looking at Jace, from Jace to Clary, answered that.
Jace’s heart started to pound. He met the Queen’s eyes with his own. “Why are you doing this?”
“I rather thought I was offering you a boon,” she said. “Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn’t desire your kiss, she won’t be free.”
Jace felt blood flood into his face. He was vaguely aware of Simon arguing that Jace and Clary were brother and sister, that it wasn’t right, but he ignored him. The Seelie Queen was looking at him, and her eyes were like the sea before a deadly storm, and he wanted to say thank you. Thank you.
And that was the most dangerous thing of all, he thought, as around him his companions argued about whether Clary and Jace had to do this, or what any of them would be willing to do to escape the Court. To allow the Queen to give you something you wanted — truly, truly wanted — was to put yourself in her power. How had she looked at him and known, he wondered? That this was what he thought about, wanted, woke from dreams of, gasping and sweating? That when he thought, really thought, about the fact that he might never get to kiss Clary again, he wanted to die or hurt or bleed so badly he’d go up to the attic and train alone for hours until he was so exhausted he had no choice but to pass out, exhausted. He’d have bruises in the morning, bruises and cuts and scraped skin and if he could have named all his injuries they would have had the same name: Clary, Clary, Clary.
Simon was still talking, saying something, angry again. “You don’t have to do this, Clary, it’s a trick—”
“Not a trick,” said Jace. The calmness in his own voice surprised him. “A test.” He looked at Clary. She was biting her lip, her hand wound in a curl of her hair; the gestures so characteristic, so very much a part of her, they shattered his heart. Simon was arguing with Isabelle now as the Seelie Queen lounged back and watched them like a sleek, amused cat.
Isabelle sounded exasperated. ‘Who cares, anyway? It’s just a kiss.”
“That’s right,” Jace said.
Clary looked up, then finally, and her wide green eyes rested on him. He moved toward her, and as it always did, the rest of the world fell away until it was just them, as if they stood on a spotlighted stage in an empty auditorium. He put his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. She had stopped biting her lip, and her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a brilliant green. He could feel the tension in his own body, the effort of holding back, of not pulling her against him and taking this once chance, however dangerous and stupid and unwise, and kissing her the way he had thought he would never, in his life, be able to kiss her again.
“It’s just a kiss,” he said, and heard the roughness in his own voice, and wondered if she heard it, too.
Not that it mattered—there was no way to hide it. It was too much. He had never wanted like this before. There had always been girls. He had asked himself, in the dead of night, staring at the blank walls of his room, what made Clary so different. She was beautiful, but other girls were beautiful. She was smart, but there were other smart girls. She understood him, laughed when he laughed, saw through the defenses he put up to what was underneath. There was no Jace Wayland more real than the one he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.
But still, maybe, he could find all that somewhere else. People fell in love, and lost, and moved on. He didn’t know why he couldn’t. He didn’t know why he didn’t even want to. All he knew was that whatever he had to owe to Hell or Heaven for this chance, he was going to make it count.
He reached down and took her hands, winding his fingers with hers, and whispered in her ear. “You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like,” he said.
Her eyes fluttered shut, her lashes coppery lines against her pale, fragile skin. “I’ve never even been to England,” she said, and the softness, the anxiety in her voice almost undid him. He had never kissed a girl without knowing she wanted it too, usually more than he did, and this was Clary, and he didn’t know what she wanted. He slid his hands up hers, over the sleeves of her damply clinging shirt, to her shoulders. Her eyes were still closed, but she shivered, and leaned into him — barely, but it was permission enough.
His mouth came down on hers. And that was it. All the self-control he’d exerted over the past weeks went, like water crashing through a broken dam. Her arms came up around his neck and he pulled her against him, and she was soft and pliant but surprisingly strong like no one else he’d ever held. His hands flattened against her back, pressing her against him, and she was up on the tips of her toes, kissing him as fiercely as he was kissing her. He flicked his tongue along her lips, opening her mouth under his, and she tasted salt and sweet like faerie water. He clung to her more tightly, knotting his hands in her hair, trying to tell her, with the press of his mouth on hers, all the things he could never say out loud: I love you; I love you and I don’t care that you’re my sister; don’t be with him, don’t want him, don’t go with him. Be with me. Want me. Stay with me.
I don’t know how to be without you.
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Clary was staring at him. Her lips were parted, her hands still open. Her eyes were wide. Behind her, Isabelle was gaping at them; Simon looked as if he was about to throw up.
She’s my sister, Jace thought. My sister. But the words meant nothing. They might as well have been in a foreign language. If there had ever been any hope that he could have come to think of Clary as just his sister, this — what had just happened between them — had exploded it into a thousand pieces like a meteorite blasting into the surface of the earth. He tried to read Clary’s face — did she feel the same? She looked as if she wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away. I know you felt it, he said to her with his eyes, and it was half bitter triumph and half pleading. I know you felt it, too. But there was no answer on her face; she wrapped her arms around herself, the way she always did when she was upset, and hugged herself as if she were cold. She glanced away from him.
Jace felt as if his heart was being squeezed by a fist. He whirled on the Queen. “Was that good enough?” he demanded. “Did that entertain you?”
The Queen gave him a look: special and secretive and shared between the two of them. You warned her about us, the look seemed to say. That we would hurt her, break her as you might break a twig between your fingers. But you, who thought you could not be touched — you are the one who has been broken. “We are quite entertained,” she said. “But not, I think, so much as the both of you.”
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This scene was in the ARC for Ashes but was later deleted. It's a good scene for Isabelle, I think, but wasn't really necessary to the story. It begins at exactly the top of page 288 in the hardback US edition of City of Ashes.
"How convenient. Everyone's either unconscious or apparently delirious," said the Inquisitor. Her knife-like voice cut through the room, silencing everyone. "Downworlder, you know perfectly well that Jonathan Morgenstern should not be in your house. He should have been locked up in the warlock's care."
"I have a name, you know," Magnus said. "Not," he added, seeming to have thought twice about interrupting the Inquisitor, "that that matters, really. In fact, forget all about it."
"I know your name, Magnus Bane," said the Inquisitor. "And quite a bit more about you, besides. You were raised by the Silent Brothers of Madrid in the seventeenth century. They named you and turned you out on the world when you were sixteen. I know the things you've done, things you'd rather stayed hidden. It took you this long to build up your reputation; a word from me could tear it down again. So consider very, very carefully, if you wish to remain involved in this situation. You've failed in your duty once; you won't get another chance."
"Failed in my duty?" Magnus frowned. "Just by bringing the boy here? There was nothing in the contract I signed that said I couldn't bring him with me at my own discretion."
"That wasn't your failure," the Inquisitor said. "Letting him see his father last night, now that was your failure."
There was a stunned silence. Alec scrambled up off the floor, his eyes seeking out Jace's -- but Jace wouldn't look at him. His face was a mask.
Luke spoke first. "That's ridiculous," he said. Clary had rarely seen him look so angry. "Jace doesn't even know where Valentine is. Stop hounding him."
"Hounding is what I do, Downworlder," said the Inquisitor. "It's my job." She turned to Jace. "Tell the truth, now, boy," she said, "and it will all be much easier."
Jace raised his chin. "I don't have to tell you anything."
"Really?" The Inquisitor's words were like the flick of a whip. "If you're innocent, why not exonerate yourself? Tell us where you really were last night. Tell us about Valentine's little pleasure boat."
Clary stared at him. She could read nothing in his face. I went for a walk, he'd said. But that didn't mean anything. Maybe he really had gone for a walk. But her heart, her stomach, felt sick. You know what the worst thing I can imagine is? Simon had said. Not trusting the person you love more than anything else in the world.
When Jace didn't speak, Robert Lightwood said, in his deep bass voice: "Imogen? You're saying Valentine is -- was -- on a boat?"
"In the middle of the East River," said the Inquisitor. "That's correct."
"That's why I couldn't find him," Magnus said, half to himself. He still looked stunned. "All that water -- it disrupted my spell."
"But how would Jace even have gotten there?" Luke said, bewildered.
"Shadowhunters are good swimmers, but the river water is freezing -- and filthy --"
"He flew," said the Inquisitor. "He borrowed a motorcycle from the head of the city's vampire clan and he flew it to the boat. Isn't that right, Jonathan?"
Jace had dropped his hands to his sides; they were clenched into fists. "My name is Jace."
"There is no Jace. Jace is a ghost, a construct you and your father invented to fool the Lightwoods into loving you. You're your father's son and you always have been."
The Inquisitor turned to Isabelle. "Go around the side of this house," she said. "You'll find a narrow garbage alley. There's something blocking the far end, something covered with a tarp. Come back and tell us what it is."
"Izzy." Jace's thinned with strain. "You don't have to do what she tells you to."
Isabelle's dark eyes were snapping like firecrackers. "I want to. I want to prove to her that she's wrong about you." She spoke as if the Inquisitor wasn't there as she rose to her feet. "I'll be right back."
"Isabelle--"
But she was gone, the door falling softly shut behind her. Luke went over to Jace and tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but Jace shook him off and went to stand by the wall. The Inquisitor was looking at him greedily, as if she meant to drink every drop of his misery like wine. Vicious bitch, Clary thought. Why is she torturing him like this?
Because she's right. The answer came as if another voice, a treacherous voice, were speaking inside her head without her desire or permission. He did exactly what she said he did, look at his face.
But Jace's face was a blank, his eyes all that lived behind the smooth, unruffled façade. Maybe this was all part of some plan of his to discredit the Inquisitor. Though she didn't look as if she feared discrediting, she looked --
The front door flew open with a bang and Isabelle marched back into the room, her black hair whipping around her face. She looked from the Inquisitor's expectant face to her parents' worried ones, from Jace's set jaw to Alec's furious scowl, and said, "I don't know what she's talking about. I didn't find anything."
The Inquisitor's head whipped back like a king cobra's. "You liar!"
"Be careful what you call my daughter, Imogen," said Maryse. Her voice was calm but her eyes were blue fire.
The Inquisitor ignored her. "Isabelle," she said, lightening her tone with an obvious effort, "your loyalty to your friend is understandable --"
"He's not my friend." Isabelle looked over at Jace, who was staring at her in a sort of daze. "He's my brother."
"No," said the Inquisitor, in a tone that was almost pitying, "he's not." She sighed. "You do realize what a serious breach of the Law denying information to an officer of the Clave is?"
Isabelle lifted her chin, her eyes blazing. In that moment she looked like nothing more than a smaller copy of her mother. "Of course I realize it. I'm not stupid."
"Christ, Imogen," Luke snapped, "do you honestly have nothing better to do that bully a bunch of children? Isabelle told you she didn't see anything; now leave it."
"Children?" The Inquisitor turned her icicle gaze on Luke. "Just as you were children when the Circle plotted the destruction of the Clave? Just as my son was a child when he --" She caught herself with a sort of gasp, as if gaining control of herself by main force.
"So this is about Stephen after all," said Luke, with a sort of pity in his voice. "Imogen--"
The Inquisitor's face contorted. "This is not about Stephen! This is about the Law!" She turned on Isabelle, who shrank back, startled at the fury on the older woman's face. "By defying me, you break the Law, Isabelle Lightwood! I could have you stripped of your Marks for this!"
Isabelle had recovered her composure. "You can take your Law," she said in a measured tone, "and shove it right up your--"
"She's lying." The words were spoken flatly, almost without affect. It Clary a moment just to realize that it was Jace speaking; he moved to stand in front of the Inquisitor, partly blocking Isabelle from her view. "You're right. I did everything you said I did. I took the cycle, I went to the river, I saw my father, and I came back and stashed the bike in the alley. I admit to all of it. Now leave Isabelle alone."
Daylighter wrote: "His hands slid down to her waist, and he was pulling her against him, lost in the sensations that spiraled through his nerves and blood and bones, and he had no idea what he would have done or said..."AMAZING
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Maia was waiting for them in MacCarren Park, on one of the narrow paths dusted with the skeletons of fallen leaves. She wore a gray leather jacket and a soft pink hat, pulled down over her ears, from which her wildly curling hair escaped in a golden-brown halo. She waved tentatively as they neared her; the first words out of her mouth were:
“Did you hear about Luke?”
They all nodded — Simon had told Isabelle and Jordan what he knew on the L-train ride over — and she fell into step beside Jordan as they went through the park, a moving foursome. Jordan had his hands in his pockets and was talking quietly to Maia, werewolf to werewolf. Simon glanced at Isabelle,walking silently beside him.
Weak November sunlight had come out from behind the clouds and picked out reddish highlights in her hair. She smelled like his own apple shampoo and Shadowhunter. “So,” he said. “Do you want me to ask why you were passed out in my bed last night when I came home, or not?”
“I didn’t pass out in your bed,” she said, as they swung left on Manhattan Avenue. The G train stop was there, and a guy was leaning against the railing, picking out a tuneless song on a guitar. Across the street was a Thrifty store where you could still get ice cream cones for 50 cents. “I passed out in your living room and Jordan put me in your bedroom.”
“He did?”
“Well, if it wasn’t Jordan, someone broke into your house and put me in your bed. Personally I prefer the Jordan theory. Less creepy.”
“It’s not that, it — what were you doing, drunk, with Jordan? He doesn’t drink much.”
“I’d imagine not. He has awful taste in tequila.”
“Iz.” Simon put his hand on her wrist. “I only want to know why you came over.”
She turned her head away from him, her shining black hair slipping across her back. There was a small Mark on the lower left side of her throat, just above her collarbone. It looked vulnerable, somehow. Simon wanted to brush it with his fingertips, but kept his hands in his pockets. “Everything sucks,” she said. “I saw Helen and Aline last night. We had dinner. They’re just so happy, and I keep thinking —” She bit her lip. “My parents are getting divorced, I think,” she said. “Alec is happy but I never see him. Jace is [redacted-sorry guys!]. Max is dead. Clary —”
“I get it,” he said, gently. “You needed someone to talk to and you couldn’t think of anyone else.”
“No!” Isabelle said, frustration clear in her voice. “I wanted to talk to you. I always — I mean, I like to talk to you. Even if things weren’t like this, I would . . . “ She looked at him, sidelong. “I mean, we did date.”
“But it wasn’t — it was never serious,” Simon said awkwardly. “I didn’t think you wanted . . .”
“Did you? Want it to be serious?” Isabelle asked. There was a certain stiffness in her voice — pride, Simon guessed. Isabelle wasn’t the sort of girl who made the first move with guys. She wasn’t the sort of girl who had to.
“Did you?”
Isabelle made an exasperated noise. “Look, I didn’t come by last night because you’re number six on some list and everyone else is unavailable. I came because — I like you. You make me feel better. Maybe it’s something about your face.”
“My face makes you feel better?” So she was saying he was reassuring, sweet, dependable, all of those things; things he knew Clary thought he was; things that hadn’t helped her look at him instead of Jace, not for five minutes. And Isabelle liked her guys dangerous, not . . . reassuring. Reassuring was for stuffed animals. How could you be a vampire and not be sexually threatening? He wasn’t sure, but somehow, he’d managed it.
He was saved more torturous conversation by their arrival at Magnus’ apartment, the lobby of which, as usual, smelled like a combination of cat pee and old pizza. Simon made his way up the stairs after Isabelle — remembering the first time he’d been here, crushed out on Izzy and secretly hoping to make Clary jealous, not that that had worked. Magnus’ apartment had been full of rainbow smoke and Downworlders; now, as they filed in, it was quiet and full of late morning sunlight.
Magnus, Jocelyn and Alec were seated around a long rectangular table. Magnus was clutching a cup of coffee, wearing a dark green jumpsuit with yellow racing stripes, his dark hair an unruly mass of bed-head. Alec looked like . . . Alec. He raised his eyebrows at his sister as she came into the room, but didn’t seem inclined to kill either her, or Simon.
But Jocelyn looked at Simon with eyes as piercing as nails.“Where’s Clary?” she said, tightly.
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So below is, in fact, the original version of the scene that begins on page
137 in City of Glass, "Jace looked at Alec steadily. “What’s between you and
Magnus Bane?” In the original version, Jace actually does kiss Alec, more to
make a point than anything else, but the resultant scene made me laugh, made
all my critique partners laugh, and made my editor laugh, hysterically. It
was, actually, too riduculous to work. But since there have been a lot of
requests (mostly from Marcy and Ashley) to see it, here, to celebrate the UK
release of CoG, it is:
--
Jace looked at Alec steadily. Then he said, “What’s between you and Magnus
Bane?”
Alec’s head jerked to the side, as if Jace had slapped him or pushed him. “I
don’t — there’s nothing —”
“I know better,” Jace said, forestalling him. “I’m not stupid. Tell me the
truth.”
“There isn’t anything between us,” Alec said — and then, catching the look
on Jace’s face, added with great reluctance, “any more. There’s nothing
between us any more. Okay?”
“And why is that? Magnus really liked you.”
“Drop it, Jace,” Alec said in a warning tone.
Jace was having none of being warned. “Magnus says it’s because you’re hung
up on me. Is that true?”
There was a moment of utter silence. Then Alec gave a despairing howl of
horror and put his hands up to cover his face. “I am going to kill Magnus.
Kill him dead.”
“Don’t. He cares about you. He really does. I believe that,” Jace said,
managing to sound only a little bit awkward. “Look. I don’t want to push you
into anything, but do you maybe want to —”
“Call Magnus? Look, that’s a dead end, I know you’re trying to be helpful,
but —”
“—kiss me?” Jace finished.
Alec looked as if he were about to fall off his chair. “WHAT? What? What?”
“Once what would do.” Jace did his best to look as if this were the sort of
suggestion one made all the time. “I think it might help.”
Alec looked at him with something like horror. “You don’t mean that.”
“Why wouldn’t I mean it?”
“Because you’re the straightest person I know. Possibly the straightest
person in the universe.”
“Exactly,” Jace said, and leaned forward, and kissed Alec on the mouth.
The kiss lasted approximately four seconds before Alec pulled forcefully
away, throwing his hands up as if to ward Jace off from coming at him again.
He looked as if he were about to throw up. “By the Angel,” he said. “Don’t
ever do that again.”
“Oh yeah?” Jace grinned, and almost meant it. “That bad?”
“Like kissing my brother,” said Alec, with a look of horror in his eyes.
“I thought you might feel that way.” Jace crossed his arms over his chest.
“Also, I’m hoping we can just gloss over all the irony in what you just
said.”
“We can gloss over whatever you want to,” Alec said fervently. “Just don’t
kiss me again.”
“I’m not going to. I have other business to take care of.” Jace stood up,
kicking his chair back. “If anyone asks where I am, tell them I went for a
walk.”
“Where are you actually going?” Alec asked, watching him walk to the door.
“To see Clary?”
“No.” Jace shook his head. “I’m going to the Gard. I’m going to break Simon
out of jail.”
Daylighter wrote: "So below is, in fact, the original version of the scene that begins on page 137 in City of Glass, "Jace looked at Alec steadily. “What’s between you and
Magnus Bane?” In the original version, Jac..."
How did u get that, the book isnt even out yet?
Mod
137 in City of Glass, "Jace looked at Alec steadily. “What’s between you and
Magnus Bane?” In the ..."
CoG has been out for more than 2 and half years!
Daylighter wrote: "Desiree wrote: "Daylighter wrote: "So below is, in fact, the original version of the scene that begins on page 137 in City of Glass, "Jace looked at Alec steadily. “What’s between you and
Magnus ..."
im talking about the scene from city of lost souls
Daylighter has connections!!! Dontcha know???
Palak (Dust and Shadows) wrote: "Daylighter has connections!!! Dontcha know???"Daylighter is pretty pimp lol
LOL i guess Daylighter is pritty awesome!!!
Mod
137 in City of Glass, "Jace looked at Alec steadily. “What’s betw..."
Sorry for the late reply, but the scene you asked about has been up since August 2011. I don't quite remember why Cassie put it up, probably as a prize or something. I posted it back then on the Excerpts from City of Lost Souls thread.
Like all the other scenes I put up here, you can click on them and it takes you to the page of the book:
then just go to the URL under the info section and it takes you to where the author posted that outtake in the first place =)
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Hannah wrote: "Palak (Dust and Shadows) wrote: "Daylighter has connections!!! Dontcha know???"
Daylighter is pretty pimp lol"
Lol thanks, I just like the series a lot so I follow the author on her sites =)
I feel really nerdy when I admit it, but I also follow Cassandra Clare's Tumblr account. I love it when she answers fan questions because it really clarifies everything for me. I also love looking at the cool Mortal Instruments and Infernal Device inspired jewelry. It is so fun to look at.Here is the link if anyone wants it:
http://hebeldesign.com/Mortal-Instrum...
Jmbswim wrote: "I feel really nerdy when I admit it, but I also follow Cassandra Clare's Tumblr account. I love it when she answers fan questions because it really clarifies everything for me. I also love looking ..."the jewelry is sooooooo expensive!!!
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Yeah I know I love her work, the family rings & Tessa's clockwork angel are up in the photos of this group:
http://www.goodreads.com/photo/group/...
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He kissed each finger, and with each one of them spoken a word. Five kisses, five words. His last.
I would have said, Jem dying but it's TMI right?
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It's unidentified, which means it could be from any of her books.
Daylighter wrote: "unidentified snippet He kissed each finger, and with each one of them spoken a word. Five kisses, five words. His last."
AHHHHHHH i want to know so bad whats going on
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I love you. He can’t say it, so he tries to tell her with the pressure of his lips and his body and his hands; they are around her waist, lifting her, and he had forgotten: she isn’t fragile; she is strong.
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Special Content:
IN THE US:
BARNES AND NOBLE will be carrying their own special edition. It will contain a letter from Stephen Herondale (City of Lost Souls: Stephen's Letter to Jace) to Jace, written before he died. It will be detachable and affixed to the back of the book.
WALMART will be carrying its own special edition. It will contain the short story “City of Glass: A Dark Transformation” about how Jonathan Morgenstern took over the identity of Sebastian Verlac.
COSTCO will be carrying its own special edition. It will contain “City of Fallen Angels: The Act of Falling”: the “alleyway kiss” from City of Fallen Angels from Jace’s perspective.
Target will be carrying its own special edition: the short story “City of Lost Souls: A Question of Power” in which Alec and Camille talk about Magnus and his father.
In Canada:
INDIGO/CHAPTERS will be carrying the same special edition as BARNES AND NOBLE in the US. COSTCO CANADA will be carrying the same edition as COSTCO US.
In Australia/In the UK:
Still waiting on this info.
***As far as I know, no special content comes with e-books/kindles/nooks. [Because no one expects anyone to buy more than one copy of the book, ALL THIS SPECIAL CONTENT WILL BE POSTED ONLINE AFTER AN EXCLUSIVITY PERIOD OF BETWEEN 3-6 MONTHS. So just pick whichever you think you’d like to own/would be your favorite, and know you can read the others online for free down the road.]"__Cassie
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It's this one: Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader
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"It’s not particularly spoilery, but of course, you should avoid if you are avoiding all things CoLS."__Cassie
Deleted scene from City of Lost Souls: Magnus and Alec
Warlock law was very clear on this point: if you loved a mortal, all well and good, but it was not your place to interfere with their mortality. It took a long time to become used to such a law . . . usually until you realized that being immortal was less a gift than a burden.
Magnus dropped the snuffbox back onto the desk and picked up the phone, hitting the speed-dial button for Alec’s number. When Alec picked up he sounded both harried and hopeful: “Magnus? Have you found anything?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Crushing disappointment made Alec’s voice sound small.
“But I was thinking about parabatai,” said Magnus. “When parabatai are especially close, they can sense if the other is dead, or Changed, or —”
“I know,” said Alec. “I know that. I felt it — for that moment that Jace died, back in Idris. But this isn’t like that.” Magnus could picture him, eyes blue in his pale face, tugging at a snarled lock of his hair. Alec usually looked like he’d fallen out of bed and into a random pile of clothes, rather than as if he’d actually picked out an outfit, and since Jace had gone missing, he’d started to look like he’d stopped brushing his hair, too. “I just feel nothing.”
“Like really nothing? As in . . . nothingness?”
“Right . . .?” Alec sounded confused.
“That actually does give me some ideas,” said Magnus. “I’ll do everything I can to help, you know that, right, Alexander? Not because it’s the Clave, but because it’s you.”
“I know.” Alec was silent for a moment. “It’s good to hear your voice, even if you can’t help,” Alec added, and hung up abruptly.
Magnus placed the phone next to him and sat for a moment, still enough to hear himself breathing. I’m losing him, he thought. I don’t know how or why, but I know that I am.
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“Tell me more,” Alec said, pacing up and down the concrete floor of the abandoned subway station at City Hall. “I need to know,”
Camille looked at the boy in front of her. She was lounging on the scarlet divan she had furnished the small space with. It had a soft velvet nap, though it was worn in places –not the finest furnishing she had ever known, and a transit station below Manhattan hardly matched up to her studio in Paris, her town house in Amsterdam, or the great manor house buy the river near Saint Petersburg that she recalled now only as a dim memory. “Know more about what?” she demanded, though she knew perfectly well the answer.
“About Magnus,” said Alec. He held a witchlight stone in his hand carelessly, as if he had forgotten it was there. So typical of the Nephilim, who took for granted their angel-granted powers and the magic that ran in their blood. The stone cast its light upward, showing clearly the planes and angles of Alec’s face. “He won’t speak to me about his past, and I ca’t stand it. I can’t stand not knowing.”
She looked at the boy. He was pale as milk, his blue eyes startling against so much white skin and the darkness of his hair and eyelashes. He was long-legged, slender as a willow branch, but strong: a very pretty boy, even to her, who looked at human beings and saw mortality and rot.
“You may have to stand it.” She said, trying to keep the boredom out of her voice. “If Magnus has not shared his secrets with you yet, he may choose never to do so. So you may have him and his secrets, or not have him at all.”
“But he shared his secrets with you.”
She shrugged lightly, “We’d known each other a long time. I had a long time to give. A long time to earn his trust. It’s a pity that you don’t. Even Shadowhunters who don’t die young live for such a short span, as all mortals do.” She smiled, feeling the sharp kiss of her fang teeth against her lower lip. She was hungry. She thought about the boy, the pulse in his neck that beat more quickly as he spoke, the widening of his eyes. She wondered if he would cry. Human tears were salt, like their blood.
But he didn’t cry. His expression hardened, and she saw a flicker of his ancestors in the set of his jaw. “Who is his father?”
She let her head fall back against the divan. “And why should I tell you?”
“Because you want me to kill Raphael,” he said. “And because I could make life very unpleasant for you if I want to.” He raised the witchlight, and its cold white rays spread through the room. So he had remembered it after all.
She straightened up, pushing her hair back. “This is the last time Alexander. After this I will not say another word until you come to me with Raphael’s blood on your hands and his heart strung on a chain for me to wear.”
Alec swallowed, “Tell me. Where he was born. Who his father is.”
“You would call it Indonesia,” said Camille, “but when he was born it was the Dutch East Indies. Magnus’s mother was of mixed blood-a white father and Indonesian mother. His father was a Prince of Hell. You know the Princes of Hell, angel boy?”
Alec’s winter-pale skin went even paler. “Of course I do,” he said stiffly. “I am a Shadowhunter. But they are…mythic. The greatest angels of Heaven became the greatest princes of Hell. And the greatest of them all is….Lucifer.” He sucked in a breath. “You aren’t saying…”
Camille pealed with laughter. “That Magnus’s father is the Light-Bringer? The Morning Star? Certainly not!”
“But he is a Prince of Hell.”
“You will have to ask Magnus yourself,” said Camille, playing with a tassel on the end of the couch arm.
“Maybe he never told you.” Alec said, “Did he love you enough to tell you? Did you love him?”
“He loved me,” said Camille, thoughtfully, “I did not love him. I was fond of him. But I never loved him. Not like that.” She shifted irritably. “I grow tired of telling you things, little Shadowhunter, especially when you have been of so little use to me.”
Alec’s cheeks flushed the color of pale carnations. Camille could tell by the tension in his slender body that he was holding back both anger and shame, he needed her, she thought with satisfaction, needed her to satisfy the curiosity that consumed him, fed by fear. His need of her was like her need for blood.
“One last thing,” he said in a low voice. “Once last thing, and I will leave you alone.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Am I different?” Alec said. “Is there any way he loves me that is different than the ways he’s loved before?”
She let her lops curl into a slow smile. “The answer to that question, Alexander, will cost you.”
“Cost me what?” What more?”
There was pain in his voice.
“Blood.” She said.
A long silence stretched between them. Finally, in a incredulous tone, he said, “You want to drink my blood?”
She chuckled. “Do you know how long it has been since I drank from a willing human? And Shadowhunter blood has a special quality. Not all of you are like your Jace, of course, carrying daylight in your veins. But still—a vintage of sensual quality.”
The flush in his cheeks deepened. He stared at her as she lay back against the velvet, half-closing her eyes. She knew her beauty could not warm or tempt him, but it did not matter. Beauty was power, but there were other kinds of power.
This close to Alec, she could smell his scent: sandalwood cologne, winter chill, the salt tang of human fear. And they were human, Shadowhunters. Underneath it all, still human, prey to human emotions, human weaknesses, and human fears, for all that they believed they were special.
“Very well,” he said, “Just this once.”
She watched through half-lidded eyes that hid her triumph, the slight trembling in his fingers as he reached for the button that fastened the shirt cuff at his left wrist and flicked it open, then offered her his bare and unprotected skin.
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To my son,
If you are reading this letter, then I am dead.
I expect to die, if not today, then soon. I expect that Valentine will kill me. For all his talk of loving me, for all his desire for a right-hand man, he knows that I have doubts. And he is a man who cannot abide doubt.
I do not know how you will be brought up. I do not know what they will tell you about me. I do not even know who will give you this letter. I entrust it to Amatis, but I cannot see what the future holds. All I know is that this is my chance to give you an accounting of a man you may well hate.
There are three things you must know about me. The first is that I have been a coward. Throughout my life I have made the wrong decisions, because they were easy, because they were self-serving, because I was afraid.
At first I believed in Valentine’s cause. I turned from my family and to the Circle because I fancied myself better than Downworlders and the Clave and my suffocating parents. My anger against them was a tool Valentine bent to his will as he bent and changed so many of us. When he drove Lucian away I did not question it but gladly took his place for my own. When he demanded I leave Amatis, the woman I love, and marry Celine, a girl I did not know, I did as he asked, to my everlasting shame.
I cannot imagine what you might be thinking now, knowing that the girl I speak of was your mother. The second thing you must know is this. Do not blame Celine for any of this, whatever you do. It was not her fault, but mine. Your mother was an innocent from a family that brutalized her. She wanted only kindess, to feel safe and loved. And though my heart had been given already, I loved her, in my fashion, just as in my heart, I was faithful to Amatis. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae. I wonder if you love Latin as I do, and poetry. I wonder who has taught you.
The third and hardest thing you must know is that I was prepared to hate you. The son of myslef and the child-bride I barely knew, you seemed to be the culmination of all the wrong decisions I had made, all the small compromises that led to my dissolution. Yet as you grew inside my mind, as you grew in the world, a blameless innocent, I began to realize that I did not hate you. It is the nature of parents to see their own image in their children, and it was myself I hated, not you.
For there is only one thing I wan from you, my son — one thing from you, and of you. I want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be. Love where you wish to. Believe as you wish to. Take freedom as your right.
I don’t ask that you save the world, my boy, my child, the only child I will ever have. I ask only that you be happy.
Stephen
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The “alleyway kiss” from Jace’s perspective.
Jace will never forget the look on Clary’s face after he says it. Shock at first, blanching into pain.
He has hurt her before. Never because he wanted to, though he has lashed out in his own blindness—like the time she walked in on him kissing Aline and he said every awful thing he could think of, as if the words themselves might have the power to make her disappear, to send her back where she was safe.
He has always cared more about her safety than anything else. If he didn’t, none of this would be happening. Jace wonders if she can see the terror in his eyes, the shards of all those dozens of dreams in which he stabbed her or choked her or drowned her and looked down at his hands afterward, wet with her blood.
She backs up a step. There is something in her face, but it isn’t fear. It’s infinitely worse. She turns, almost tripping in her haste to get away, and rushes out of the club.
For a moment he stands and looks after her. This is exactly what he wanted, a part of his mind screams at him. To drive her away. To keep her safe, away from him.
But the rest of his mind is watching the door slam behind her and seeing the final ruin of all his dreams. It was one thing to push it to this point. It is another to let go forever. Because he knows Clary, and if she goes now, she will not ever come back.
Come back.
Somehow he is outside the club. The rain is pelting down like gunfire. He sees everything in a single sweep, the way he always has, the way he was trained to do. The white van at the curb, the slant of the street as it curves back toward Greenpoint, the dark opening of an alley behind the bar, and Clary at the corner, about to cross the street and walk out of his life forever.
She yanks her arm out of his when he reaches for her, but when he puts his hand against her back, she lets him guide her into the alley. His hand slides across her back to her arm as she whirls to face him—and he can see everything around them again: the wet brick wall behind them, the barred windows, the discarded musical equipment soaking in puddles of rainwater.
And Clary is lifting her face, small and pale; her mascara runs in glittery streaks beneath her eyes. Her hair looks dark, pasted to her head. She feels both fragile and dangerous in his grasp, a glass explosive.
She jerks her arm away from his. “If you’re planning to apologize, don’t bother. I don’t want to hear it.” He tries to protest, to tell her he only wanted to help Simon, but she is shaking her head, her words like stinging missiles. “And you couldn’t tell me? Couldn’t text me a single line letting me know where you were? Oh, wait. You couldn’t, because you still have my goddamned phone. Give it to me.”
He reaches to hand the phone back to her, but he is barely aware of his movements. He wants to say, No, no, no, I couldn’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t say I’m afraid of hurting you even though I don’t want to. I can’t say I’m afraid of becoming my father. Your faith in me is the best thing in my life and I can’t bear to destroy it.
Instead, he blurts out other words. “Forgive me-“
He face goes white, her lipstick starkly bright against her skin. “I don’t even know what you think I’m supposed to forgive you for. Not loving me anymore?”
She moves away from him and blindly stumbles, and he can’t stop himself: he reaches for her. She is delicate and shivering in his arms and they are both soaking wet and he can’t stop. Her mouth is part open, and he brings his own lips down against hers, tasting lipstick and sweet ginger and Clary.
I love you. He can’t say it, so he tries to tell her with the pressure of his lips and his body and his hands. I love you, I love you. His hands are around her her waist, lifting her, and he had forgotten: she isn’t fragile; she is strong. He fingers are digging into his shoulders, her mouth fierce against his, and his heart is pounding like it’s trying to get free of his body as he sets her down on a broken speaker.
Stop, his mind is telling him. Stop, stop, stop. He forces his hands away from her and places them on the wall, on either side of her head. Only that brings his body closer to hers, and that is a mistake. He can see the pulse slamming in her throat; her lipstick is gone now, and he can’t look away from the carnation-pink of her mouth, flushed from kissing, as she breaths, “Why can’t you talk to me? Why can’t you look at me?”
His heart is pounding as if it wants to leave his body and take up independent residence somewhere else. “Because I love you.”
It is the truth, and an inadequate truth at that, but he feels it punch through him with the force of a lie. Her face softens, her eyes widening. Her hands are against him, small and delicate and careful, and he leans into her, breathing the scent of her under the smell of rainwater. “I don’t care,” he hears himself say. “I’m sick of trying to pretend I can live without you. Don’t you understand that? Can’t you see it’s killing me?”
He is drowning, and its too late. He reaches for her like and addict reaching hopelessly for the drug he has sworn not to touch again, having decided it is better to burn up in one final blaze than live forever without it.
And the gray world blazes up around him with color as they come together, bodies slamming hard against the wall behind them. The water soaking her dress has made it as slick under his fingers as motor oil. He catches and pulls at her, desire reshaping their bodies with every touch. Her breathing is ragged in his ears, her eyelids half-closed and fluttering. He is touching her skin everywhere he can: her throat; the back of her neck; her collarbones, hard under is fingertips; her arms, smooth and slippery. Her hands are on him, too, no shyer than his own, and every touch seems to burn away the rain and the cold.
She is gripping his shoulders when she raises her legs and wraps them around his waist, and he makes a noise he didn’t even know he could make. It is too late to go back now. His hands clench involuntarily, and he feels the fabric of her tights rop under his fingers, and he is touching her bare skin. And their kisses taste like rain. And if he wasn’t falling before, he is falling now.
He thinks of the Fall, of angels tumbling forever in fire, and of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. He had thought of the agony of the Fall, the terror of it, but never that it might be joyful. Lucifer had not wanted to fall, but neither had he wanted to serve. As Jace gathers Clary close against him, closer than he ever thought they could be, he wonders if it is only in the act of falling that one can be truly free.
Mod
A Dark Transformation is about how Jonathan Morgenstern took over the identity of Sebastian Verlac.
It was a very small bar on a narrow sloping street in a walled town full of shadows. Jonathan Morgenstern had been sitting at the bar for at least a quarter of an hour, finishing a leisurely drink, before he got to his feet and slipped down the long, rickety flight of wooden stairs to the club. The sound of the music seemed to be trying to push its way up through the steps as he made his way downward: he could feel the wood vibrating under his feet.
The place was filled with writhing bodies and obscuring smoke. It was the kind of place demons prowled. That made it the kind of place that demon hunters frequented.
And an ideal location for someone who was hunting a demon hunter.
Colored smoke drifted through the air, smelling vaguely acidic. There were long mirrors all along the walls of the club. He could see himself as he moved across the room. A slender figure in black, with his father’s hair, white as snow. It was humid down here in the club, airless and hot, and his T-shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. A silver ring glittered on his right hand as he scanned the room for his prey.
There he was, at the bar, as if he was trying to blend in with the mundanes.
A boy. Maybe seventeen.
A Shadowhunter.
Sebastian Verlac.
Jonathan ordinarily had little interest in anyone his own age — if there was anything duller than adults, it was other adolescent — but Sebastian Verlac was different. Jonathan had chosen him carefully and specifically, the way one might choose an expensive and custom-tailored suit.
Jonathan strolled over to him, taking his time and taking the boy’s measure. He had seen photographs, of course, but people always looked different in person. Sebastian was tall, the same height as Jonathan himself, and had the same slender build. His clothes looked like they would fit Jonathan perfectly. His hair was dark — Jonathan would have to dye his own, which was annoying, but not impossible. His eyes were black too, and his features, though irregular, came together pleasingly: he had a friendly charisma that was attractive. He looked like it was easy for him to trust, easy to smile.
He looked like a fool.
Jonathan came up to the bar and leaned against it. He turned his head, allowing the other boy to recognize that he could see him. “Bonjour.”
“Hello,” Sebastian replied, in English, the language of Idris, though his was tinged faintly with a French accent. His eyes were narrow. He looked very startled to be seen at all, and as if he was wondering what Jonathan might be: fellow Shadowhunter, or a warlock with a sign that didn’t show?
Something wicked this way comes, Jonathan thought. And you don’t even know it.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he suggested, and smiled. He could see himself smiling in the grimy mirror over the bar. He knew the way it lit up his face, made him almost irresistible. His father had trained him for years to smile like that, like a human being.
Sebastian’s hand tightened on the edge of the bar. “I don’t…”
Jonathan smiled wider and turned his right hand over to show the Voyance rune on the back of it. The breath went out of Sebastian in relief and he beamed with the delighted recognition, as if any Shadowhunter was a comrade or a potential friend.
“Are you on your way to Idris, too?” Jonathan asked. He kept his tone professional, as if he was in regular touch with the Clave. Another dedicated Shadowhunter protecting the innocent. Can’t get enough of that!
“I am,” Sebastian replied. “Representing the Paris Institute. I’m Sebastian Verlac, by the way.”
“Ah, a Verlac. A fine old family.” Jonathan accepted his hand and shook it firmly. “Andrew Blackthorn,” he said easily. “The Los Angeles Institute, originally, but I’ve been studying in Rome. I thought I’d come overland to Alicante. See the sights.”
He’d researched the Blackthorns, a large family, and knew they and the Verlacs had not been in the same city for ten years. He was certain he would have no problem answering to an assumed name: he never did. He had never felt particularly attached to his real name, perhaps because he had always known that it was not his name alone.
The other Jonathan had been raised in a house not far from his, visited by his father. Daddy’s little angel.
“Haven’t see another Shadowhunter in ages,” Sebastian continued. He had been talking, but Jonathan had forgotten to pay attention to him. “Funny to run into you here. My lucky day.”
“Must be,” Jonathan murmured. “Though not entirely chance, of course. I assume you’ve heard the reports of a Eluthied demon lurking about this place?”
Sebastian smiled and took a last swallow from his glass, setting it down on the bar. “After we kill the thing, we should have a celebratory drink.”
Jonathan nodded and tried to look as if he was very focused on searching the room for demons. They stood shoulder to shoulder, like brother warriors. It was so easy it was almost boring: all he’d had to do was show up, and here was Sebastian Verlac like a lamb pushing its throat on a blade. Who trusted other people like that? Wanted to be their friend so easily?
He had never played nicely with others. Of course, he had not ever been given the opportunity; his father had kept him and the other Jonathan apart. A child with demon blood and a child with angel blood: raise both boys as yours and see who make daddy proud.
The other boy had failed a test when he was younger and been sent away. Jonathan knew that much. He had passed every test their father had ever set for him. Maybe he had passed them a little too well, too flawlessly, unfazed by the isolation chamber and the animals, the whip or the hunt. Jonathan had discerned a shadow in Father’s eyes now and then, one that was either grief or doubt.
Though what did he have to grieve over? Why should he doubt? Was Jonathan not the perfect warrior? Was he not everything his father had created him to be?
Human beings were so puzzling.
Jonathan had never liked the idea of the other Jonathan, of Father having another boy, one who made Father smile sometimes without a shadow in his eyes.
Jonathan had once cut one of his practice dummies off at the knees, and spent a pleasant day strangling it, disemboweling it, and slitting it from neck to navel. When his father had asked why he’d cut off part of the legs, Jonathan had told him that he wanted to see what it was like to kill a boy who was just his own size.
“I forget, you’ll have to excuse me,” said Sebastian, who was turning out to be annoyingly chatty. “How many are there in your family?”
“Oh, we’re a big one,” Jonathan replied. “Eight in total. I have four brothers and three sisters.”
The Blackthorns really were eight: Jonathan’s research had been thorough. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like — so many people, such untidiness. Jonathan had a blood sister too, although they had never met.
Father had told him about his mother running off when Jonathan was a baby. She’d been pregnant again, inexplicably weepy and miserable because she had some sort of objection to her child being improved. But she’d run away too late: Father had already seen to it that Clarissa would have angelic powers.
Only a few weeks ago, Father had met Clarissa for the first time, and on their second encounter Clarissa had proven she knew how to use her powers. She had sent Father’s ship to the bottom of the ocean.
Once he and Father had taken down and transformed the Shadowhunters, laid waste to their pride and their city, Father said that Mother, the other Jonathan and Clarissa would be coming to live with them.
Jonathan despised his Mother for running away. And his only interest in the other Jonathan was to prove how superior he was: Father’s real son, by blood, and with the strength of demons and chaos in that blood as well.
But he was interested in Clarissa.
Clarissa had never chosen to leave him. She had been taken away and forced to grow up in the midst of mundanes, of all disgusting things. She must have always known she was made of different stuff from everyone around her, meant for utterly different things, with power and strangeness crackling beneath her skin.
She must have felt there was no other creature like her in all the world.
She had an angel in her like the other Jonathan, not the infernal blood that ran through his own veins. He was very much his father’s son made stronger, tempered by the fires of Hell. Clarissa was Father’s real daughter too, and who knew what strange brew the combination of Father’s blood and Heaven’s power had formed to run through Clarissa’s veins? She might not be very different from himself.
The thought excited him in a way he had never been excited before. Clarissa was his sister; she belonged to no one else. She was his. He knew it, because although he did not dream often — that was a human thing — after Father had told him about his sister sinking the ship, he had dreamed of her.
Jonathan dreamed of a girl standing in the sea with hair like scarlet smoke coiling over her shoulders, winding and unwinding in the untameable wind. Everything was stormy darkness, and in the raging sea were pieces of wreckage that had once been a boat and bodies floating facedown. She looked down on them with cool green eyes and was not afraid.
Clarissa had done that — wreaked destruction like he would have. In the dream, he was proud of her. His little sister.
In the dream, they were laughing together at all the beautiful ruin around them. They were standing suspended in the sea; it couldn’t hurt them, for destruction was their element. Clarissa was trailing her moonlight-white hands in the water. When she lifted up her dripping her hands they were dark, and he realized that the seas were all blood.
Jonathan had woken from his dream still laughing.
When the time was right, Father had said, they would be together, all of them. Jonathan had to wait.
But he was not very good at waiting.
“You have the oddest look on your face,” Sebastian Verlac said, shouting above the beat of the music, bright and jagged in Jonathan’s ears.
Jonathan leaned over and spoke softly and precisely into Sebastian’s ear. “Behind you,” he said. “Demon. Four o’clock.”
Sebastian Verlac turned and the demon, in the shape of a girl with a cloud of dark hair, stepped hastily away from the boy it was talking to and began sliding away through the crowd. Jonathan and Sebastian followed it, out a side door with SORTIE DE SECOURS written across it in cracked letters of red and white.
The door led to an alley, which the demon was swiftly running down, nearly disappearing.
Jonathan jumped, launching himself at the brick wall opposite, and used the force of his rebound to arrow over the demon’s head. He twisted in midair, runed blade in hand; he heard it whistle through the air. The demon froze, staring at him. Already the mask of a girl’s face was beginning to slip, and Jonathan could see the features behind it: clustered eyes like a spider’s and a tusked mouth open in surprise. None of it disgusted him. The ichor that ran in their veins ran in his.
Not that that inspired mercy, either. Grinning at Sebastian over the demon’s shoulder, he slashed out with his blade. It cut the demon open as he’d once cut open the dummy, neck to navel. A bubbling scream rent the alley as the demon folded on itself and disappeared, leaving on a few drops of black blood splattered on the stones.
“By the Angel,” Sebastian Verlac whispered.
He was staring at Jonathan over the blood and the emptiness between them, and his face was white. For a moment Jonathan was almost pleased that he had the sense to be afraid.
But no such luck. Sebastian Verlac remained a fool to the end.
Mod
“I’d love to help you,” Jonathan said. “But unfortunately I’ve got to get going soon. My father needs me, you see. He has plans. And he simply can’t do without me.”
Sebastian looked absurdly disappointed. “Oh come, you can’t go now,” he coaxed. “Hunting with you was so much fun, mon pote. We have to do this again some time.”
“I’m afraid,” Jonathan told him, fingering the hilt of his weapon, “that won’t be possible.”
Sebastian looked so surprised when he was killed. It made Jonathan laugh: the blade in hand and Sebastian’s throat opening beneath it, the hot blood spilling onto his fingers.
It wouldn’t do to have Sebastian’s body found at an inconvenient time, ruining the whole game, so Jonathan carried the body as if he were helping a drunken friend home through the streets.
It was not very far at all to a little bridge over the river, delicate as green filigree or a dead child’s moldy, fragile bones. He heaved the corpse over the side and watched it hit the rushing black waters with a splash.
The body sank without a trace, and he forgot it before it had even sunk all the way. He saw the curled fingers bobbing in the current, as if restored to life and begging for help or at least answers, and thought of his dream — his sister and a sea of blood. Water had splashed up where the body went down, some of it splattering his sleeve. Baptizing him with a new name. He was Sebastian now.
He strolled along the bridge to the old part of the city, where there were electric bulbs masquerading as gas lanterns, more toys for tourists. He was headed toward the hotel where Sebastian Verlac had been staying. He had scoped it out before coming to the bar, and knew he could scramble up through the window and retrieve the other boy’s belongings. And after that, a bottle of cheap hair dye and…
A group of girls in cocktail dresses passed him, angling their gazes, and one, silvery skirt skimming her thighs, gave him a direct look and smile.
He fell in with the party.
“Comment tu t’appelles, beau gosse?” another girl asked him, her voice slightly slurred. What’s your name, handsome?
“Sebastian,” he answered smoothly, with not a second’s hesitation. That was who he was from now on, who his father’s plans required him to be, who he needed to be to walk the path that led to victory and Clarissa. “Sebastian Verlac.”
He looked to the horizon, and thought of the glass towers of Idris, thought of them enveloped in shadow, flame, and ruin. He thought of his sister waiting for him, out there in the wide world.
He smiled.
He thought he was going to enjoy being Sebastian.
Jace deserves more than valentine.
Jace is like god of good looks
Jace is like god of good looks
What rune is that? Looks like the bind rune. :)
The Infernal Devices
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^ If you click on the url in the detail section of the book, it takes you where you can read it"
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Yes please keep posting them....there amazing!!