He gasped, and broke off. His hands had closed around the hilt, just above the wound in his chest. There was no blood, but there was a flash of red, a spark—fire. The wound was beginning to burn. “What—is—this?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
“‘And I will give him the Morning Star,’” Clary said. “It’s not a weapon that was made under Heaven. It is Heaven’s fire.”
With a scream he pulled the sword free. He gave the hilt, with its hammered pattern of stars, one incredulous look before he blazed up like a seraph blade. Clary staggered back, tripped over the edge of the steps to the throne, and threw one arm partly over her face. He was burning, burning like the pillar of fire that went before the Israelites. She could still see Sebastian within the flames, but they were around him, consuming him in their white light, turning him to an outline of dark char within a flame so bright, it seared her eyes.
Clary looked away, burying her face in her arm. Her mind raced back through that night when she had come to Jace through the flames, and kissed him and told him to trust her. And he had, even when she had knelt down in front of him and driven the point of Heosphoros into the ground. All around it she had drawn the same rune over and over with her stele—the rune she had once seen, it felt like so long ago now, on a rooftop in Manhattan: the winged hilt of an angel’s sword.
A gift from Ithuriel, she guessed, who had given her so many gifts. The image had rested in her mind until she’d needed it. The rune for shaping Heaven’s fire. That night on the demon plain, the blaze all around them had evaporated, drawn into the blade of Heosphoros, until the metal had burned and glowed and sung when she’d touched it, the sound of angelic choruses. The fire had left behind only a wide circle of sand fused into glass, a substance that had glowed like the surface of the lake she had so often dreamed about, the frozen lake where Jace and Sebastian had battled to the death in her nightmares.
This weapon could kill Sebastian, she had said. Jace had been more dubious, careful. He had tried to take it from her, but the light had died in it when he’d touched it. It reacted only to her, the one who had created it. She had agreed that they had to be cautious, in case it didn’t work. It seemed the height of hubris to imagine she had trapped holy fire in a weapon, the way that fire had been trapped in the blade of Glorious. . . .
But the Angel gave you this gift to create, Jace had said. And do we not have his blood in our veins?
Whatever the blade had sung with, it was gone now, gone into her brother. Clary could hear Sebastian screaming, and over that, the cries of the Endarkened. A burning wind blew past her, carrying with it the tang of ancient deserts, of a place where miracles were common and the divine was manifest in fire.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had started. The dais shook under Clary as a weight collapsed onto it. She looked up and saw that the fire was gone, though the ground was scarred and both thrones looked blackened, the gold on them no longer bright but charred and burned and melted.
Sebastian lay a few feet away from her, on his back. There was a great blackened hole across the front of his chest. He turned his head toward her, his face taut and white with pain, and her heart contracted.
His eyes were green.
The strength in her legs gave out. She collapsed to the dais on her knees. “You,” he whispered, and she stared at him in horrified fascination, unable to look away from what she had wrought. His face was utterly without color, like paper stretched over bone. She didn’t dare to look down at his chest, where his jacket had fallen away; she could see the stain of blackness across his shirt, like a spill of acid. “You put . . . the heavenly fire . . . into the blade of the sword,” he said. “It was . . . cleverly done.”
“It was a rune, that’s all,” she said, kneeling over him, her eyes searching his. He looked different, not just his eyes but the whole shape of his face, his jawline softer, his mouth without its cruel twist. “Sebastian . . .”
“No. I’m not him. I’m—Jonathan,” he whispered. “I’m Jonathan.”
“Go to Sebastian!” It was Amatis, rising, with all the Endarkened behind her. There was grief on her face, and rage. “Kill the girl!”
Jonathan struggled to sit upright. “No!” he shouted hoarsely. “Get back!”
The Dark Shadowhunters, who had begun to surge forward, froze in confusion. Then, pushing between them, came Jocelyn; she shoved by Amatis without a look and dashed up the steps to the dais. She moved toward Sebastian—Jonathan—and then froze, standing over him, staring down with a look of amazement, mixed with a terrible horror.
“Mother?” Jonathan said. He was staring, almost as if he couldn’t quite focus his eyes on her. He began to cough. Blood ran from his mouth. His breath rattled in his lungs.
I dream sometimes, of a boy with green eyes, a boy who was never poisoned with demon blood, a boy who could laugh and love and be human, and that is the boy I wept over, but that boy never existed.
Jocelyn’s face hardened, as if she were steeling herself to do something. She knelt down by Jonathan’s head and drew him up into her lap. Clary stared; she didn’t think she could have done it. Could have brought herself to touch him like that. But then her mother had always blamed herself for Jonathan’s existence. There was something in her determined expression that said that she had seen him into the world, and she would see him out.
The moment he was propped up, Jonathan’s breathing eased. There was bloody foam on his lips. “I am sorry,” he said with a gasp. “I am so . . .” His eyes tracked to Clary. “I know there is nothing I could do or say now that would allow me to die with even a shred of grace,” he said. “And I would hardly blame you if you cut my throat. But I am . . . I regret. I’m . . . sorry.”
Clary was speechless. What could she say? It’s all right? But it wasn’t all right. Nothing he had done was all right, not in the world, not to her. There were things you could not forgive.
And yet he had not done them, not exactly. This person, the boy her mother was holding as if he were her penance, was not Sebastian, who had tormented and murdered and wrought destruction. She remembered what Luke had said to her, what felt like years ago: The Amatis that is serving Sebastian is no more my sister than the Jace who served Sebastian was the boy you loved. No more my sister than Sebastian is the son your mother ought to have had.
“Don’t,” he said, and half-closed his eyes. “I see you trying to puzzle it out, my sister. Whether I ought to be forgiven the way Luke would forgive his sister if the Infernal Cup released her now. But you see, she was his sister once. She was human once. I—” And he coughed, more blood appearing on his lips. “I never existed at all. Heavenly fire burns away that which is evil. Jace survived Glorious because he is good. There was enough of him left to live. But I was born to be all corruption. There is not enough left of me to survive. You see the ghost of someone who could have been, that is all.”
Jocelyn was crying, tears falling silently down her face as she sat very still. Her back was straight.
“I must tell you,” he whispered. “When I die—the Endarkened will rush at you. I won’t be able to hold them back.” His gaze flicked to Clary. “Where’s Jace?”
“I’m here,” Jace said. And he was, already up on the dais, his expression hard and puzzled and sad. Clary met his eyes. She knew how hard it must have been for him to play along with her, to let Sebastian think he had her, to let Clary risk herself at the last. And she knew how this must be for him, Jace who had wanted revenge so badly, to look at Jonathan and realize that the part of Sebastian that could have been—should have been—punished was gone. Here was another person, someone else entirely, someone who had never been given a chance to live, and now never would.
“Take my sword,” said Jonathan, his breath coming in gasps, indicating Phaesphoros, which had fallen some feet away. “Cut—cut it open.”
“Cut what open?” Jocelyn said in puzzlement, but Jace was already moving, bending to seize Phaesphoros, flipping himself down from the dais. He strode across the room, past the huddled Dark Shadowhunters, past the ring of runes, to where the Behemoth demon lay dead in its ichor.
“What is he doing?” Clary asked, though as Jace raised the sword and sliced cleanly down into the demon’s body, it seemed obvious. “How did he know . . .”
“He—knows me,” Jonathan breathed.
A tide of stinking demon guts poured across the floor; Jace’s expression twisted with disgust—and then surprise, and then realization. He bent down and, with his bare hand, picked up something lumpy, glistening with ichor—he held it up, and Clary recognized the Infernal Cup.
She looked over at Jonathan. His eyes were rolling back, shudders racking his body. “T-tell him,” he stuttered. “Tell him to throw it into the ring of runes.”
Clary lifted her head. “Throw it into the circle!” she cried to Jace, and Amatis whipped around.
“No!” she cried. “If the Cup is ruined, so shall we all be!” She spun toward the dais. “Lord Sebastian! Do not let your army be destroyed! We are loyal!”
Jace looked at Luke. Luke was gazing at his sister with an expression of ultimate sadness, a sadness as profound as death. Luke had lost his sister forever, and Clary had only just gotten back her brother, the brother who had been gone from her all her life, and still it was death on both sides.
Jonathan, half-supported against Jocelyn’s shoulder, looked at Amatis; his green eyes were like lights. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have made you.”
And he turned his face away.
Luke nodded, once, at Jace, and Jace flung the Cup as hard as he could into the circle of runes. It struck the ground and shattered into pieces.
Amatis gasped, and put her hand to her chest. For a moment—just a moment—she stared at Luke with a look of recognition in her eyes: a look of recognition, even love.
“Amatis,” he whispered.
Her body slumped to the ground. The other Endarkened followed, one by one, collapsing where they stood, until the room was full of corpses.
Luke turned away, too much pain in his eyes for Clary to be able to bear to look at him. She heard a cry—distant and harsh—and wondered for a moment if it was Luke, or even one of the others, horrified to see so many Nephilim fall, but the cry rose and rose and became a great shrieking howl that rattled the glass and swirled the dust outside the window that looked out on Edom. The sky turned a red the color of blood, and the cry went on, fading now, a gasping exhalation of sorrow as if the universe were weeping.
“Lilith,” Jonathan whispered. “She weeps for her dead children, the children of her blood. She weeps for them and for me.”
Emma pulled Cortana free of the body of the dead faerie warrior, heedless of the blood that slicked her hands. Her only thought was to get to Julian—she had seen the terrible look on his face as he’d slid to the ground, and if Julian was broken, then the whole world was broken and nothing would be right again.
The crowd was spinning around her; she barely saw them as she pushed through the melee toward the Blackthorns. Dru was huddled against the pillar beside Jules, her body curled protectively around Tavvy; Livia was still holding Ty by the wrist, but now she was staring past him, her mouth open. And Jules—Jules was still slumped against the pillar, but he had begun to raise his head, and as Emma realized that he was staring, she turned to see what he was looking at.
All around the room the Endarkened had begun to crumple. They fell like toppling chess pieces, silent and without crying out. They fell locked in battle with Nephilim, and their faerie brethren turned to stare as one by one the Endarkened warriors’ bodies dropped to the floor.
A harsh shout of victory rose from a few Shadowhunter throats, but Emma barely heard it. She stumbled toward Julian and went down on her knees beside him; he looked at her, his blue-green eyes wretched. “Em,” he said hoarsely. “I thought that faerie was going to kill you. I thought—”
“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Are you?”
He shook his head. “I killed him,” he said. “I killed my father.”
“That wasn’t your father.” Her throat was too dry to speak anymore; instead she reached out and drew on the back of his hand. Not a word, but a sigil: the rune for bravery, and after it, a lopsided heart.
He shook his head as if to say, No, no, I don’t deserve that, but she drew it again, and then leaned into him, even covered in blood as she was, and put her head on his shoulder.
The faeries were fleeing the Hall, abandoning their weapons as they went. More and more Nephilim were flooding into the Hall from the square outside. Emma saw Helen heading toward them, Aline beside her, and for the first time since they had left the Penhallows’, Emma let herself believe that they might survive.
“They’re dead,” Clary said, looking around the room in wonder at the remains of Sebastian’s army. “They’re all dead.”
Jonathan gave a half-choking laugh. “‘Some good I mean to do, despite of my own nature,’” he murmured, and Clary recognized the quote from English class. King Lear. The most tragic of all the tragedies. “That was something. The Dark Ones are gone.”
Clary leaned over him, urgency in her voice. “Jonathan,” she said. “Please. Tell us how to open the border. How to go home. There must be some way.”
“There’s—there’s no way,” Jonathan whispered. “I shattered the gateway. The path to the Seelie Court is closed; all paths are. It’s—it’s impossible.” His chest heaved. “I’m sorry.”
Clary said nothing. She could taste only bitterness in her mouth. She had risked herself, had saved the world, but everyone she loved would die. For a moment her heart swelled with hatred.
“Good,” Jonathan said, his eyes on her face. “Hate me. Rejoice when I die. The last thing I would want now would be to bring you more grief.”
Clary looked at her mother; Jocelyn was still and upright, her tears falling silently. Clary took a deep breath. She remembered a square in Paris, facing Sebastian across a small table, him saying: Do you think you can forgive me? I mean, do you think forgiveness is possible for someone like me? What would have happened if Valentine had brought you up along with me? Would you have loved me?
“I don’t hate you,” she said finally. “I hate Sebastian. I don’t know you.”
Jonathan’s eyes fluttered closed. “I dreamed of a green place once,” he whispered. “A manor house and a little girl with red hair, and preparations for a wedding. If there are other worlds, then maybe there is one where I was a good brother and a good son.”
Maybe, Clary thought, and ached for that world for a moment, for her mother, and for herself. She was aware of Luke standing by the dais, watching them; aware that there were tears on Luke’s face. Jace, the Lightwoods, and Magnus were standing well back, and Alec had his hand in Isabelle’s. All around them lay the dead bodies of Endarkened warriors.
“I didn’t think you could dream,” said Clary, and she took a deep breath. “Valentine filled your veins with poison, and then he raised you to hate; you never had a choice. But the sword burned away all that. Maybe this is who you really are.”
He took a ragged, impossible breath. “That would be a beautiful lie to believe,” he said, and, incredibly, the ghost of a smile, bitter and sweet, passed over his face. “The fire of Glorious burned away the demon’s blood. All my life it has scorched my veins and cut at my heart like blades, and weighed me down like lead—all my life, and I never knew it. I never knew the difference. I’ve never felt so . . . light,” he said softly, and then he smiled, and closed his eyes, and died.
Clary rose slowly to her feet. She looked down. Her mother was kneeling, holding Jonathan’s body sprawled across her lap.
“Mom,” Clary whispered, but Jocelyn didn’t look up. A moment later someone brushed by Clary: It was Luke. He gave her hand a squeeze, and then knelt down by Jocelyn, his hand gentle on her shoulder.
Clary turned away; she couldn’t bear it anymore. The sadness felt like a crushing weight. She heard Jonathan’s voice in her head as she descended the stairs: I’ve never felt so light.
She moved forward through the corpses and ichor on the floor, numb and heavy with the knowledge of her failure. After everything she had done, there was still no way to save them. They were waiting for her: Jace and Simon and Isabelle, and Alec and Magnus. Magnus looked ill and pale and very, very tired.
“Sebastian’s dead,” she said, and they all looked at her, with their tired, dirty faces, as if they were too exhausted and drained to feel anything at the news, even relief. Jace stepped forward and took her hands, lifted them and kissed them quickly; she closed her eyes, feeling as if just a fraction of warmth and light had been returned to her.
“Warrior hands,” he said quietly, and let her go. She stared down at her fingers, trying to see what he saw. Her hands were just her hands, small and callused, stained with dirt and blood.
“Jace was telling us,” said Simon. “What you did, with the Morgenstern sword. That you were faking Sebastian out the whole time.”
“Not there at the end,” she said. “Not when he turned back into Jonathan.”
“I wish you’d told us,” Isabelle said. “About your plan.”
“I’m sorry,” Clary whispered. “I was afraid it wouldn’t work. That you’d just be disappointed. I thought it was better—not to hope too much.”
“Hope is all that keeps us going sometimes, biscuit,” said Magnus, though he didn’t sound resentful.
“I needed him to believe it,” Clary said. “So I needed you to believe it too. He had to see your reactions and think he’d won.”
“Jace knew,” Alec said, looking up at her; he didn’t sound angry either, just dazed.
“And I never looked at her from the time she got up onto the throne to the time she stabbed that bastard in the heart,” Jace said. “I couldn’t. Handing over that bracelet to him, I—” He broke off. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called him a bastard. Sebastian was, but Jonathan isn’t, wasn’t, the same person—and your mother—”
“It is like she lost a child twice,” said Magnus. “I can think of few worse things.”
“How about being trapped in a demon realm with no way to get out?” Isabelle said. “Clary, we need to get back to Idris. I hate to ask, but did Seb—did Jonathan say anything about how to unseal the borders?”
Clary swallowed. “He said it wasn’t possible. That they’re closed forever.”
“So we’re trapped here,” Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked. “Forever? That can’t be. There must be a spell—Magnus—”
“He wasn’t lying,” Magnus said. “There’s no way for us to reopen the paths from here to Idris.”
There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been resting on Magnus, said, “No way for us?”
“That’s what I said,” Magnus replied. “There’s no way to open the borders.”
“No,” said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. “You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might be someone who could.”
Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all. His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and he looked both very young and very, very old. His face was a young man’s face, but his eyes had seen centuries pass, and never had Clary been more aware of it. “There are worse things than death,” Magnus said.
“Maybe you should let us be the judge of that,” said Alec, and Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said, “Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson. It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn.”
“But you’re alive,” said Clary. “You lived through the lesson.”
Magnus smiled an awful smile. “It wouldn’t be much of a lesson if I hadn’t,” he said. “But I was duly warned. Playing dice with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours—”