AllofNovels
Chapter 46
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I asked how she had found me. She said that therewere rumors in Alicante of a werewolf who had oncebeen a Shadowhunter. Valentine had heard the rumorstoo, and she had ridden to warn me. He came soonafter, but I hid from him, as werewolves can, and he leftwithout bloodshed.
After that I began to meet Jocelyn in secret. It was theyear of the Accords, and all of Downworld was abuzzabout them and Valentine’s probable plans for disruptingthem. I heard that he had argued passionately in theClave against the Accords, but with no success. So theCircle made a new plan, steeped in secrecy. They alliedthemselves with demons—the greatest enemies ofShadowhunters—in order to procure weapons thatcould be smuggled undetected into the Great Hall of theAngel, where the Accords would be signed. And with theaid of a demon, Valentine stole the Mortal Cup. He left inits place a facsimile. It was months before the Clave
realized the Cup was missing, and by then it was toolate.
Jocelyn tried to learn what Valentine intended to do withthe Cup, but could not. But she knew that the Circleplanned to fall upon the unarmed Downworlders andmurder them in the Hall. After such wholesale slaughter,the Accords would fail.
Despite the chaos, in a strange way those were happydays. Jocelyn and I sent messages covertly to thefaeries, the warlocks, and even to those age-oldenemies of wolfkind, the vampires, warning them ofValentine’s plans and bidding them prepare for battle.We worked together, werewolf and Nephilim.
On the day of the Accords, I watched from a hiddenplace as Jocelyn and Valentine left the manor house. Iremember how she bent to kiss the white-blond head ofher son. I remember the way the sun shone on her hair;I remember her smile.
They rode into Alicante by carriage; I followed runningon four feet, and my pack ran with me. The Great Hall ofthe Angel was crowded with all the assembled Claveand score upon score of Downworlders. When theAccords were presented for signing, Valentine rose tohis feet, and the Circle rose with him, sweeping backtheir cloaks to lift their weapons. As the Hall explodedinto chaos, Jocelyn ran to the great double doors of theHall and flung them open. 𝓂𝓃𝓋.𝓂
My pack were the first at the door. We burst into theHall, tearing the night with our howls, and were followedby faerie knights with weapons of glass and twistedthorns. After them came the Night Children with baredfangs, and warlocks wielding flame and iron. As thepanicked masses fled the Hall, we fell upon themembers of the Circle.
Never had the Hall of the Angel seen such bloodshed.We tried not to harm those Shadowhunters who werenot of the Circle; Jocelyn marked them out, one by one,with a warlock’s spell. But many died, and I fear wewere responsible for some. Certainly, afterward, wewere blamed for many. As for the Circle, there were farmore of them than we had imagined, and they clashedfiercely with the Downworlders. I fought through thecrowd to Valentine. My only thought had been of him—that I might be the one to kill him, that I might have thathonor. I found him at last by the great statue of theAngel, dispatching a faerie knight with a broad stroke of
his bloodstained dagger. When he saw me, he smiled,fierce and feral. “A werewolf who fights with sword anddagger,” he said, “is as unnatural as a dog who eatswith a fork and a knife.”
“You know the sword; you know the dagger,” I said. “Andyou know who I am. If you must address me, use myname.”
“I do not know the names of half men,” said Valentine.“Once I had a friend, a man of honor who would havedied before he let his blood be polluted. Now anameless monster with his face stands before me.” Heraised his blade. “I should have killed you while I hadthe chance,” he cried, and lunged for me.
I parried the blow, and we fought up and down the dais,while the battle raged around us and one by one themembers of the Circle fell. I saw the Lightwoods droptheir weapons and flee; Hodge was already gone,having fled at the outset. And then I saw Jocelyn racingup the stairs toward me, her face a mask of fear.“Valentine, stop!” she cried out. “This is Luke, yourfriend, almost your brother—”
With a snarl Valentine seized her and dragged her infront of him, his dagger to her throat. I dropped myblade. I would not risk his harming her. He saw whatwas in my eyes. “You always wanted her,” he hissed.“And now the two of you have plotted my betrayal
together. You will regret what you have done, all the restof your lives.”
With that, he snatched the locket from Jocelyn’s throatand hurled it at me. The silver cord burned me like alash. I screamed and fell back, and in that moment hevanished into the melee, dragging her with him. Ifollowed, burned and bleeding, but he was too fast,cutting a path through the thick of the crowd and overthe dead.
I staggered out into the moonlight. The Hall was burningand the sky was lit with fire. I could see all down thegreen lawns of the capital to the dark river, and the roadalong the riverbank where people were fleeing into thenight. I found Jocelyn by the banks of the river, at last.Valentine was gone and she was terrified for Jonathan,desperate to get home. We found a horse, and sheplunged away. Dropping into wolf form, I followed at herheels.
Wolves are fast, but a rested horse is faster. I fell farbehind, and she arrived at the manor house before I did.
I knew even as I neared the house that something wasterribly wrong. Here too the smell of fire hung heavy inthe air, and there was something overlaying it,something thick and sweet—the stench of demonicwitchcraft. I became a man again as I limped up thelong drive, white in the moonlight, like a river of silver
leading … to ruins. For the manor house had beenreduced to ashes, layer upon layer of sifting whiteness,strewn across the lawns by the night wind. Only thefoundations, like burned bones, were still visible: here awindow, there a leaning chimney—but the substance ofthe house, the bricks and the mortar, the pricelessbooks and ancient tapestries handed down throughgenerations of Shadowhunters, was dust blowing acrossthe face of the moon.
Valentine had destroyed the house with demon fire. Hemust have. No fire of this world burns so hot, nor leavesso little behind.
I made my way into the still-smoldering ruins. I foundJocelyn kneeling on what had perhaps once been thefront doorsteps. They were blackened by fire. And therewere bones. Charred to blackness, but recognizablyhuman, with scraps of cloth here and there, and bits ofjewelry the fire had not taken. Red and gold threads stillclung to the bones of Jocelyn’s mother, and the heathad melted her father’s dagger to his skeletal hand.Among another pile of bones gleamed Valentine’s silveramulet, with the insignia of the Circle still burning white-hot upon its face … and among the remains, scatteredas if they were too fragile to hold together, were thebones of a child.
You will regret what you have done, Valentine had said.And as I knelt with Jocelyn on the burned paving stones,
I knew that he was right. I did regret it and haveregretted it every day since.
We rode back through the city that night, among the still-burning fires and shrieking people, and then out into thedarkness of the country. It was a week before Jocelynspoke again. I took her out of Idris. We fled to Paris. Wehad no money, but she refused to go to the Institutethere and ask for help. She was done withShadowhunters, she told me, done with the ShadowWorld.
I sat in the tiny, cheap hotel room we had rented andtried to reason with her, but it did no good. She wasobstinate. At last she told me why: She was carryinganother child, and had known it for weeks. She wouldmake a new life for herself and her baby, and shewanted no whisper of Clave or Covenant ever to tainther future. She showed me the amulet she had takenfrom the pile of bones; in the flea market at Clignancourtshe sold it, and with that money purchased an airplaneticket. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going. Thefarther away she could get from Idris, she said, thebetter.
I knew that leaving her old life behind meant leaving mebehind as well, and I argued with her, but to no avail. Iknew that if not for the child she carried, she would havetaken her own life, and since to lose her to the mundaneworld was better than to lose her to death, I at last
reluctantly agreed to her plan. And so it was that I bidher good-bye at the airport. The last words Jocelynspoke to me in that dreary departure hall chilled me tothe bone: “Valentine is not dead.”
After she was gone, I returned to my pack, but I foundno peace there. Always there was a hollow achinginside me, and always I woke with her name unspokenon my lips. I was not the leader I had once been; I knewthat much. I was just and fair, but remote; I could notfind friends among the wolf-people, nor a mate. I was, inthe end, too much human—too much Shadowhunter—to be at rest among the lycanthropes. I hunted, but thehunt brought no satisfaction; and when it came time forthe Accords to be signed at last, I went into the city tosign them.
In the Hall of the Angel, scrubbed free of blood, theShadowhunters and the four branches of half humanssat down again to sign the papers that would bringpeace among us. I was astonished to see theLightwoods, who seemed equally astonished that Iwasn’t dead. They themselves, they said, along withHodge Starkweather and Michael Wayland, were theonly members of the former Circle to have escapeddeath that night in the Hall. Michael, racked with griefover the loss of his wife, had hidden himself away at hiscountry estate with his young son. The Clave hadpunished the other three with exile: They were leavingfor New York, to run the Institute there. The Lightwoods,
who had connections to the highest families in theClave, got off with a far lighter sentence than Hodge. Acurse had been laid on him: He would go with them, butif ever he were to leave the hallowed ground of theInstitute, he would be instantly slain. He was devotinghimself to his studies, they said, and would make a finetutor for their children.
When we had signed the Accords, I rose from my chairand went from the Hall, down to the river where I hadfound Jocelyn on the night of the Uprising. Watching thedark waters flow, I knew I could never find peace in myhomeland: I had to be with her or nowhere at all. Idetermined to look for her.
I left my pack, naming another in my stead; I think theywere relieved to see me go. I traveled as the wolfwithout a pack travels: alone, at night, keeping to thebyways and country roads. I went back to Paris, butfound no clue there. Then I went to London. FromLondon I took a boat to Boston.
I stayed awhile in the cities, then in the White Mountainsof the frozen north. I traveled a good deal, but more andmore I found myself thinking of New York, and the exiledShadowhunters there. Jocelyn, in a way, was an exiletoo. At length I arrived in New York with a single duffelbag and no idea where to look for your mother. It wouldhave been easy enough for me to find a wolf pack and
join it, but I resisted. As I had done in other cities, I sentout messages through Downworld, searching for anysign of Jocelyn, but there was nothing, no word at all, asif she had simply disappeared into the mundane worldwithout a trace. I began to despair.
In the end I found her by chance. I was prowling thestreets of SoHo, randomly. As I stood on thecobblestones of Broome Street, a painting hanging in agallery window caught my eye.
It was the study of a landscape I recognizedimmediately: the view from the windows of her family’smanor house, the green lawns sweeping down to theline of trees that hid the road beyond. I recognized herstyle, her brushwork, everything. I banged on the doorof the gallery, but it was closed and locked. I returned tothe painting, and this time saw the signature. It was thefirst time I had seen her new name: Jocelyn Fray.
By that evening, I had found her, living in a fifth-floorwalk-up in that artists’ haven, the East Village. I walkedup the grimy half-lit stairs with my heart in my throat,and knocked on her door. It was opened by a little girlwith dark red braids and inquisitive eyes. And then,behind her, I saw Jocelyn walking toward me, her handsstained with paint and her face just the same as it hadbeen when we were children ….
The rest you know. novelbin
22
RENWICK’S RUIN
FOR A LONG MOMENT AFTER LUKE FINISHEDSPEAKING, THERE was silence in the room. The onlysound was the faint drip of water down the stone walls.Finally, he said:
“Say something, Clary.”
“What do you want me to say?”
He sighed. “Maybe that you understand?”
Clary could hear her blood pounding in her ears. Shefelt as if her life had been built on a sheet of ice as thinas paper, and now the ice was beginning to crack,threatening to plunge her into the icy darkness below.Down into the dark water, she thought, where all hermother’s secrets drifted in the currents, the forgottenremains of a shipwrecked life.
She looked up at Luke. He seemed wavering, indistinct,as if she looked through a blurred glass. “My father,” shesaid. “That picture my mother always kept on the mantel—”
“That wasn’t your father,” said Luke.
“Did he ever even exist?” Clary’s voice rose. “Was thereever a John Clark, or did my mother make him up too?”
“John Clark existed. But he wasn’t your father. He wasthe son of two of your mother’s neighbors when youlived in the East Village. He died in a car crash, just likeyour mother told you, but she never knew him. She hadhis photo because the neighbors commissioned her topaint a portrait of him in his Army uniform. She gavethem the portrait but kept the photo, and pretended theman in it had been your father. I think she thought it waseasier that way. After all, if she’d claimed he’d run off ordisappeared, you’d have wanted to look for him. A deadman—”
“Won’t contradict your lies,” Clary finished for himbitterly. “Didn’t she think it was wrong, all those years,letting me think my father was dead, when my realfather—”
Luke said nothing, letting her find the end of the sen-tence herself, letting her think the unthinkable thoughton her own.
“Is Valentine.” Her voice shook. “That’s what you’retelling me, right? That Valentine was—is—my father?”
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