“Did she remind you of anyone?” Tessa teased.
Her love seemed to cause her great pain. I would have liked to help her.
It was one of the things she loved about him, his abiding desire to help anyone in need. This was something the Silent Brotherhood could not strip away.
“I used to come to this bridge all the time, you know, when I lived in Paris. After Will.”
It is very peaceful here. And very beautiful.
She wanted to tell him that wasn’t it. She hadn’t come for the peace or the beauty—she’d come because this bridge reminded her of Blackfriars Bridge, the bridge that belonged to her and Jem. She’d come because standing here, suspended between land and water, her hands tight on the iron railing, her face raised to the sky, reminded her of Jem. The bridge reminded her that there was still someone in the world that she loved. That even if half of her heart was gone forever, the other half was still here. Unreachable, maybe, but here.
She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be asking something of Jem that he couldn’t deliver, and the world had already asked far too much of him.
“He would have hated it, the idea of a Herondale out there somewhere who thinks she can’t trust the Shadowhunters. Who thinks we’re the villains.”
He might well have understood.
It was true. Will himself had been raised to distrust the Shadowhunters. He knew, better than most, how harshly the Clave treated those who turned their backs on it. He would have been enraged to learn about this lost branch of his family, at the thought of the Clave attempting to execute a mother and child for a father’s sins. Tessa feared for the safety of this lost Herondale, but just as much, she longed to persuade her that some Shadowhunters could be trusted. She wanted to make this young woman understand that they weren’t all hard and unfeeling: that some of them were like Will.
“I get so angry at them sometimes, the Shadowhunters who came before us, the mistakes they made. Think how many lives have been ruined by the choices of an earlier generation.” She was thinking of Tobias Herondale, but also Axel Mortmain, whose parents had been murdered in front of him, and Aloysius Starkweather, who’d paid for that sin with his granddaughter’s life. She was thinking, even, of her own brother, whose mother had refused to claim him as her own. Who might have found his way to being a better man had he been better loved.
It would be unjust to blame the past for choices made in the present. Nor can we justify present choices by invoking the sins of the past. You and I know that, better than most.
Jem, too, had seen his parents murdered in front of him. Jem had endured a life of pain, but he’d never let himself be warped by it—never turned to revenge or vindictiveness. And Tessa had been conceived as a demonic tool, literally. She could have chosen to accept this fate; she could have chosen to flee the Shadow World altogether, return to the mundane life she’d once known and pretend she did not see the darkness. Or she could have claimed that darkness as her own.
She’d chosen a different path. They both had.
We always have a choice, Jem said, and for once, the voice in her mind sounded like him, warm and close. It’s not always the choice we would want, but it’s a choice nonetheless. The past happens to us. But we choose our future. We can only hope that our lost Herondale ultimately chooses to save herself.
“That’s the best hope for any of us, I suppose.”
Jem slid his hand across the railing and rested it atop hers. It was, as she knew it would be, cold. Inhuman.
But it was also Jem: flesh and blood, undeniably alive. And where there was life, there was hope. Maybe not now, not yet, but someday, they could still have their future. She chose to believe it.
* * *
The Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church was founded in 558 AD. The original abbey was built on the ruins of an ancient Roman temple, then destroyed two centuries later in a Norman siege. Rebuilt in the tenth century AD, the church has now endured, in one form or another, for a millennium. The Merovingian kings are buried in its tombs, as is the torn-out heart of John II Casimir Vasa and the headless body of René Descartes.
Most mornings the abbey saw a steady trickle of tourists and observant locals wandering through its apse, lighting candles, bowing heads, whispering prayers to whoever might be listening. But this particular drizzly August morning, a sign on the door indicated the church was closed to the public. Inside, the Paris Conclave had assembled. Shadowhunters from all across France listened solemnly to charges lodged against two of their own.
Jules and Lisette Montclaire stood silently, heads bowed, as Robert Lightwood and Stephen Herondale testified to their crimes.
Their daughter, Céline Montclaire, was not called on to speak. She had, of course, not been present for the warlock’s revelation of her parents’ crimes.
The scene played out as if Valentine had scripted it himself, and like everyone else present, Céline did exactly as Valentine intended: nothing.
Inside, she was at war with herself. Furious at Valentine for making her complicit in her parents’ destruction; furious with herself for sitting silently as their fates were sealed; more furious at her own instinct for mercy. After all, her parents had never shown any to her. Her parents had done their best to teach her that mercy was weakness, and cruelty was strength. So she steeled herself to be strong. Told herself this wasn’t personal; this was about protecting the Circle. If Valentine believed this was the righteous way forward, then this was the only way forward.
She watched her parents quaver with fear under the steely eye of the Inquisitor, and she remembered the two of them backing away from her, ignoring her cries, closing her into darkness—and she said nothing. She sat very still, head lowered, and endured. They had taught her that, too.
The Shadowhunters of France all knew Céline, or thought they did: that sweet and obedient daughter of the Provençal countryside. They knew how devoted she was to her parents. Such a dutiful daughter. She would, of course, inherit their estate.
Céline bore the weight of the stares with dignity. She did not acknowledge the pitying looks. She kept her eyes on the floor when the judgment was issued and so did not see the horror on her parents’ faces. She did not watch them placed in the custody of the Silent Brothers, to be transported to the Silent City. She did not expect them to survive long enough to face the Mortal Sword.
She did not speak to Robert or Stephen, and let them believe this was because they had just consigned her parents to death.
Valentine caught up with Céline just outside the church. He offered her a Nutella crepe. “From the stand across from Les Deux Magots,” he said. “Your favorite, right?”
She shrugged but took what he had to offer. The first bite—warm chocolate hazelnut, sweet pastry—was as perfect as ever and made her feel like a child again.
Sometimes it was difficult to believe she had ever been young.
“You could have told me,” she said.
“And ruin the surprise?”
“Those are my parents.”
“Indeed.”
“And you’ve killed them.”
“They’re still alive, last I checked,” Valentine said. “They could probably stay that way, with a word from you. But I didn’t hear it.”
“You took a pretty big risk, not telling me the whole story. Expecting me to let you . . . to let them go.”
“Did I?” he said. “Or did I simply know you well enough to know exactly what you would choose? To know I was doing you a favor.”
He met her eyes. She could not look away. For the first time, she didn’t want to.
“You don’t have to admit it, Céline. Just know that I know. You’re not alone in that.”
He saw her; he understood. It was as if a muscle she’d been clenching her entire life finally released.
“A deal’s a deal, though,” he said. “Even if you got more than you bargained for. Stephen is all yours—assuming that’s still what you want?�
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“How exactly would you make that happen?” she asked, clear now on what Valentine was capable of. “You wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t hurt him, would you?”
Valentine looked disappointed in her. “Stephen is my closest friend, my most trusted lieutenant. The fact that you could even ask that makes me question your loyalty, Céline. Do you want me questioning your loyalty?”
She shook her head.
Then that warm, buttery smile broke over his face again. She couldn’t tell whether this was the real Valentine breaking through or the mask dropping back over his face. “On the other hand, it would be foolish of you not to ask. And as we’ve discussed, there’s nothing foolish in you. No matter what people might think. So, your answer: no. I swear to you, on the Angel, I will cause Stephen no harm in the enactment of this agreement.”
“And no threat of harm?”
“Do you think so little of yourself that you assume a man would need to be threatened with harm before he could love you?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to: he could surely read it all over her face.
“Stephen is with the wrong woman,” Valentine told her, almost gently. “Deep down, he knows that. I’ll simply make this as clear to him as it is to us, and the rest will be as easy as falling off a cliff. You need only relax and let gravity do its work. Don’t be afraid to reach for the things you really want, Céline. It’s beneath you.”
What she really wanted . . .
It wasn’t too late to speak up, to save her parents.
Or she could keep her word and keep his secret. She could let her parents pay for what they’d done to her. For the lattice of scars on her skin and her heart. For the ice in her blood. If she was the kind of daughter who could consign her parents to death, then they had no one to blame but themselves.
But that didn’t mean she had to accept the entire bargain. Even if she stayed silent, she could walk away: away from Valentine, now that she knew what he was capable of. Away from Stephen, now that she knew what he thought of her. She could close the door on the past, start again. She could choose a life without pain, without suffering or fear.
But who would she be without pain?
What was strength, if not the endurance of suffering?
There is nothing more painful than love denied, the strange Silent Brother had told her. A love that cannot be requited. I can think of nothing more painful than that.
If Valentine said he could give her Stephen Herondale, he meant it. Céline did not doubt this. He could do anything, and that included finding a way to force Stephen Herondale into her life and her arms. But even Valentine could not make Stephen love her.
To have Stephen would mean not having him—it would mean knowing in every moment, every embrace, that he wanted someone else. It would mean a lifetime of longing for the one thing she could not have. The Silent Brother was wise and spoke the truth. There could be no greater pain than that.
“Take your time,” Valentine said. “It’s a big choice.”
“I don’t need time,” she told Valentine. “I want it. I want Stephen.”
It didn’t feel like choosing, because it was the only choice she had.
Son of the Dawn
By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan
New York City, 2000
Every world contains other worlds within it. People wander through all the worlds they can find, searching for their homes.
Some humans thought their world was the only world there was. Little did they know of other worlds as close to their own as the next room, or of the demons trying to find a door through to them, and the Shadowhunters who barred those doors.
Still less did they know of Downworld, the community of magical creatures who shared their world and carved out their own little space therein.
Every community needs a heart. There had to be a common area where everyone could gather, to trade for goods and secrets, to find love and riches. There were Shadow Markets, where Downworlders and those with the Sight met, all over the world. Usually they were held outside.
Even magic was a little different in New York.
The abandoned theater on Canal Street had stood since the 1920s, silent witness to but not part of the blaze of activity that was the city. Humans who did not have the Sight passed by its terra-cotta facade in a hurry about their own affairs. If they spared the theater a look, they thought it as dark and still as ever.
They could not see the haze of faerie light that turned the gutted amphitheater and bare concrete halls to gold. Brother Zachariah could.
He walked, a creature of silence and darkness, through halls with sunshine-yellow tiles, panels of gold and red blazing on the ceiling above him. There were busts grimy with age set in alcoves along the walls, but for tonight faeries had coaxed flowers and ivy to twine around them. Werewolves had set little twinkling charms depicting the moon and stars in the boarded windows, lending brightness to the decayed red curtains still hanging in the arched frames. There were lamps with casements that reminded Brother Zachariah of a time long ago, when he and all the world had been different. In one vast echoing theater room there hung a chandelier that had not worked in years, but tonight warlock magic had suffused each bulb with a different-colored flame. Like burning jewels, amethyst and ruby, sapphire and opal, their light created a private world that seemed both new and old, and restored the theater to all its former glory. Some worlds lasted only one night.
If the Market had the power to lend him warmth and illumination for only a night, Brother Zachariah would have taken it.
A persistent faerie woman had tried to sell him a love charm four times. Zachariah wished such a charm would work on him. Creatures as inhuman as he did not sleep, but sometimes he lay down and rested, hoping for something like peace. It never came. He spent his long nights feeling love slip through his fingers, more a memory by now than a feeling.
Brother Zachariah did not belong to Downworld. He was a Shadowhunter, and not only a Shadowhunter but one of the cloaked and hooded Brotherhood dedicated to arcane secrets and the dead, sworn and runed to silence and withdrawal from any world. Even his own kind often feared the Silent Brothers, and Downworlders usually avoided any Shadowhunter, but the Downworlders were used to the presence of this particular Shadowhunter at Markets now. Brother Zachariah had been coming to Shadow Markets for a hundred years, on a long quest that even he had begun to believe would be fruitless. Yet he continued searching. Brother Zachariah had little enough, but one thing he did have was time, and he had always tried to be patient.
Tonight, though, he had already been disappointed. The warlock Ragnor Fell had no word for him. None of his few other contacts, painstakingly gathered over the decades, had attended this Market. He was lingering not because he was enjoying this Shadow Market but because he remembered enjoying Markets once.
They had felt like an escape, but Brother Zachariah hardly remembered the wish to escape from the City of Bones, where he belonged. Always in the back of his mind, cold as a tide waiting to wash all other things away, were the voices of his Brothers.
They were urging him home.
Brother Zachariah turned under the glitter of diamond-paned windows. He was leaving the Market, making his way through the laughing, bargaining crowd, when he heard a woman’s voice saying his name.
“Tell me again why we want this Brother Zachariah. The normal Nephilim are bad enough. Angel in the veins, stick up the butts, and I bet with Silent Brothers it’s a whole staff. We definitely can’t take him out for karaoke.”
The woman was speaking in English, but a boy’s voice replied to her in Spanish: “Quiet. I see him.”
It was a pair of vampires, and as he turned, the boy lifted a hand to attract Zachariah’s attention. The vampire with his hand up looked fifteen years old at most, and the other like a young woman about nineteen, but that told Zachariah nothing. Zachariah still looked young too.
It was unusual for a strange Downworlder to want hi
s attention.
“Brother Zachariah?” asked the boy. “I came here to meet you.”
The woman whistled. “Now I see why we might want him. Helloooo, Brother Mackariah.”
Did you? Brother Zachariah asked the boy. He felt what would once have been surprise and now was at least intrigue. Can I be of any use to you?
“I certainly hope so,” said the vampire. “I am Raphael Santiago, second in command of the New York clan, and I dislike useless people.”
The woman waved her hand. “I’m Lily Chen. He’s always this way.”
Brother Zachariah studied the pair with new interest. The woman had hair streaked neon yellow and wore a scarlet qipao that suited her, and despite her own remark she was smiling at her companion’s words. The boy’s hair was curly, his face sweet, and his air disdainful. There was a burn scar at the base of his throat, where a cross might lie.
I believe we have a mutual friend, said Brother Zachariah.
“I don’t think so,” said Raphael Santiago. “I don’t have friends.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” said the woman at his side.
“You, Lily,” said Raphael coldly, “are my subordinate.” He turned back to Brother Zachariah. “I assume you refer to the warlock Magnus Bane. He is a colleague who always has more dealings with Shadowhunters than I approve of.”
Zachariah wondered if Lily spoke Mandarin. The Silent Brothers, speaking mind to mind, had no need for language, but sometimes Zachariah missed his. There had been nights—in the Silent City it was always night—when he could not remember his own name, but he could remember the sound of his mother or his father or his betrothed speaking Mandarin. His betrothed had learned some of the language for him, in the time when he had thought he would live to marry her. He would not have minded talking with Lily longer, but he did not particularly like her companion’s attitude.
Since you do not appear to care for Shadowhunters, and you have little interest in our mutual connection, Brother Zachariah observed, why approach me?
“I wished to talk to a Shadowhunter,” said Raphael.
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