"What do you think it would have been like if Valentine had brought you up along with me? Would you have loved me?"

"Well, you're my brother. I would have loved you. I would have...had to."


One wasn't meant to be afraid of one's own brother. In all fairness, a good-sized part of Clary really did love Jonathan. But whenever she looked into his black, black eyes, an unsettling chill ran up her spin. She was sure that these thoughts were wrong on so many different levels, but what could she do about it? For the most part, she ignored the feeling, but sometimes, she just couldn't.

Once, she had walked into his room, meaning to retrieve something or other of hers, and came upon him prodding something with a stele that she supposed must have once been a squirrel, trying to mark runes on it. Every time the adamas rod touched the mutilated skin, the poor thing jerked sickeningly. Clary had screamed, and Jonathan had just looked up and smiled, as if he was delighted that she'd walked in on his sick experiment. She'd run out of the room almost in tears, sure that she'd never be able to sleep again. But strangely enough, Jonathan had come to her aide as she sobbed out in the meadow, comforting her until she calmed down. "What were you doing?" She'd whispered, once she could talk again. He had remained silent for so long that she'd thought he wasn't going to respond, and then he spoke in a tone that sounded eerily close to regret. "I wanted to see if no other being could truly bear the runes besides Shadowhunters. I hadn't believed Valentine when he told me the first time. Now I realize what a fool I'd been." Clary had known that he was pretending to feel sorry for what he'd done so she would be content, and she'd let him get away with it. Next to nothing would make Jonathan feel anything close to remorse, a fact she had accepted from the very beginning.

"Clary!" Jonathan calls now, disrupting Clary from her "reading" of some dusty old book or other that Valentine had demanded that she study. Eager for a respite from the mind-numbing dullness of the tome, Clary jumped up with the lithe grace drilled into her since she could walk, and bounded towards the sound of his voice. She quite literally ran into him in the kitchen, but fortunately, he caught her with amazing speed, saving them both from a near disaster. So much for her grace.

"Easy, tiger." He says, and although his tone is cool, his eyes glimmer with just the barest hint of amusement.

"Sorry. A History Of Demons And Their Effects On Shadowhunter Society does terrible things to the soul." She explained breathlessly. "You're lucky Father doesn't make you read."

A dark look flashed over Jonathan's face, instantly replaced with his usual controlled expression. Clary touched his sharp cheekbone gently, anxious that she'd made him upset.

"Are you okay? Trust me; reading isn't all it's cracked up to be." She tilted her head in thought. "Though, I can't imagine it was ever cracked up to be much in the first place."

"It's nothing. I only remembered something I'd forgotten to do." Jonathan dismissed it, and though Clary could tell that he was lying, she let it go.

"So, what did you call me here for?"

"It's time to do drills, or did you forget?"

"Oh." She pouted, her bottom lip sticking out just slightly. "I think I might go back to reading then."

He smirked. "It's not all that bad."

"If twenty miles on uneven, hilly terrain in the heat 'isn't that bad' for you, then I don't know what is. And you always beat me anyhow. What's the point anymore?" It was true. No matter how hard she pushed herself, Jonathan always won by a landslide at any physical challenge they were faced with. It was downright infuriating.

"It's not a race, little sister. If it was, I would let you win every time."

She snorted at that. Experience told her that very little would stand in the way between Jonathan and what he wanted, ever. "Okay, sure. I'm going back to the study to suffer the lesser of two dull evils."

He stared at her with a curious expression for a moment, and before she had time to decipher it, he picked her up like she weighed no more than a pound and sprinted out the door.