Clary stared at the note. She thought her stomach had moved temporarily into her lungs and her brain was thus suffering from lack of oxygen. Her eyes were watering by the time she got half way, making the rest hard to decipher. Breathe, she reminded herself.

Clary,

I should have told you before, but I didn't know what to say, much less how to say it. It felt like I could put off the inevitable if I just ignored it, but now I have to accept that it's going to happen anyway.

I love you. These past few months have been everything I ever imagined, and somehow better at the same time. Every time I see you, I feel like my heart might stop because it's so filled with my feelings for you. Even when you cried with frustration at your Mom when she wouldn't let you choose your dress for the wedding, and you buried your face in my shirt for hours - when I held you, it was so hard not to think how lucky I am that I'm the one holding you.

The note so far was making no sense. Some small voice in the back of her mind told her that this is what it sounds like when people break up, but she pushed the voice down. She and Jace weren't going to break up any time soon, Clary reminded herself.

But you have to know that the Clave have lifted the curse on the Lightwoods. Maryse and Robert are moving back to Idris soon, and I have to decide whether to stay with them or stay at the Institute with whoever runs it next. Alec and Isabelle are going with their parents. And now I have to decide whether to leave my family or leave you, and it's harder than I could have imagined. I always thought I'd choose the Lightwoods, but now I'm not so sure. You've changed me, Clary, and I can't imagine being away from you for so long.

You know that we're leaving for Idris for a few days, but by the time we come back, I have to have made my decision. I don't know how I'll do it.

I love you,

Jace

P.S. Don't be mad at Alec and Isabelle for not telling you about this. I made them swear not to.

Tears flowed down her cheeks as she reread the last bit of the note to make sure she hadn't misread it. To her dismay, she hadn't.

Three days, she thought. They're coming back in three days. Jace might be living half the world away in three days.

The thought made her gasp with fear for their still preciously new relationship. Up until now, she'd never thought of it as 'fragile' - the way that some new relationships were.

Now she wasn't so sure. How could any relationship withstand a distance like that?

There was a knock at her bedroom door. Clary did her best to brush away the tears as she went to open it.

"Hi, Honey, I -" Jocelyn stopped talking as she took in her daughter's appearance. Clary almost laughed as she thought about how she must look - red eyes, un - brushed hair, half dressed. "What happened?"

I will not cry any more, Clary told herself sternly. I will not. She took a deep breath.

"The Lightwoods are moving back to Idris," she said. Her breath caught on the word

'Idris', and a few glistening tears spilt over. "The Clave lifted their curse, and now-" And now Jace might leave me.

Jocelyn hesitated for a moment, then stepped into the room and gathered Clary up into a hug that reminded her of the time their cat had died when she was nine.

"I'll lose him," she gasped through sobs. "I've only just found him, and I'll lose him!"

"Shh," Jocelyn soothed, stroking her daughter's hair. "You won't lose him. Not if you don't want to."

"I don't," Clary said. She wiped her eyes and pulled out of her mother's arms. "Did you want something when you came here," she asked.

Jocelyn smiled. "Yes, actually. I was going to tell you that Luke agreed with you that you should have free reign over your dress for the wedding. As long as it keeps with the theme." She pulled out a catalogue proclaiming to be the only place to go for wedding planning, and handed it to Clary.

"It's a wedding," Clary said, sitting on her bed. "Clearly, the theme is white."

Jocelyn chuckled. "Jace is rubbing off on you."

Clary looked up, not quite sure what to say. Part of her wanted to tell her mother that, no, Jace was nothing like her. Another part wanted to grin that she had spent enough time with him to pick up his sense of humour. She compromised, and arranged her features in a small smile that she hoped didn't betray too much of either emotion.

In the end, Clary decided that she wasn't going to focus on dresses when her life was so close to falling apart, and abandoned the catalogue as soon as Jocelyn left the room, opting instead for her sketchbook. She drew a sketch of her mother and Luke's wedding, where the two of them were facing each other and holding hands between them. Both of them were wearing radiant smiles that made Luke look younger and Jocelyn look even more beautiful than usual. At one corner of the picture, nearer Jocelyn, she drew herself watching them. The dress she had on was neither the one Jocelyn hadn't allowed her to wear, nor like any she'd ever seen - instead, she just drew what came to her mind as she thought about Jace and how far away could be living.

Thinking about Jace made her abandon the sketch without drawing in the best man and turn over to a blank piece. She grabbed a piece of charcoal from her desk, and began tracing a tall boy in black Shadowhunter gear. He was turned away from her, but twisting back so she could see his face and the seraph blade that he was wielding. She moved the charcoal across the page in strong, swift movements, her hand sure that it knew every detail of Jace's form.

She'd just finished and drew back to look at it, when someone walked through her door.

She flipped shut her sketchbook and dropped it lightly on the floor beneath her before looking at the intruder.

"I would apologize for invading your space like this, but I fear it would be insincere as I am not, in fact, sorry in the slightest," he said. His spiky hair looked blacker than usual against the glittery silver floor-length coat he wore.

"Magnus!" Clary exclaimed, then paused. "Why on Earth are you here?"

"Because, my little ignorant Shadowhunter," he smiled wanly. "We seem to be in the same position."

"We are?" said Clary, confused. She nearly slapped a hand to her forehead as she understood what he meant, though. "Oh. You heard about the Lightwoods moving."

Every bit of Magnus, from the tips of his hair to the tails of his coat seemed to lose a bit of energy as he sat down on her bed and turned his cat's eyes despairingly at Clary.

"Alec's going with them," he said.

Clary sighed. "I know. I think Jace will too."

"I've contemplated moving to Idris too," Magnus continued, ignoring her. "There's a wonderfully isolated cottage just outside Alicante where I could practice some of the more conspicuous spells I haven't been able to before. But it is also unacceptably far away from anything remotely resembling uptown, and just what I would do without a social life is unusually beyond me."

He threw himself back on her bed, shoes and all. Clary almost opened her mouth to protest, but thought the better of it.

Magnus sighed. "In four hundred years of magical existence, I have never once met a conundrum that I haven't been able to solve - if it didn't bore me enough to ignore it anyway. And then along comes Alec, nothing more than a Shadowhunter, with whom I somehow fall in love. And suddenly my entire way of thinking is thrown into turmoil equaling that of a Fey child trapped in a room of iron."

Clary saw her chance as he paused. "Tell me about it," she said. "You're talking to someone who thought she was a mundane for fifteen years, then discovered that her father was, in fact, a power-hungry, twisted, as-close-to-an-evil-overlord-as-you-get-in-real-life maniac hell-bent on destroying an entire race of humans who - by the way - hunt demons of all things, and are effectively the policemen of all sorts of mythical creatures that I never knew existed!" She took a deep breath and met Magnus's astounded gaze as he sat up to stare at her.

"That," he said, "is in no way the same thing."

Clary rolled her eyes in a way that she probably would never have dared to do at Magnus under normal circumstances. "Right. I forgot to mention that along the way I fell in love with a guy who turned out to be my brother, and then, um … not," she finished, somewhat lamely. Magnus seemed not to notice.

"As much as it pains me to admit," he told her. "You're right."

Just before she thanked him in what she felt sure would have been an astounded voice, Clary felt her face fall. "Not that it helps."

He met her gaze steadily. There was a time, he thought, that this girl whom he'd watch grow up from when she was about two years old, would have been unnerved by him. As he remembered this, Magnus realised how oddly glad he was that she was not like this any more. "What are you going to do?" he asked her as gently as his arrogance would allow.

"I don't know," she said. "I only found out about two hours ago anyway."

"And I, approximately ten minutes ago when Alec sent me a message," Magnus told her, suddenly frustrated. "As if he didn't have ample opportunity to tell me personally that their little weekend trip was to visit their new home."

Clary blanched. "They're visiting the new house?" She felt the dregs of hope that it was a bad joke slip away, unaware until then that she had even been holding on to them.

Magnus nodded, then stood up abruptly. "Well, my equally uninformed Shadowhunter-fledgling, it seems that this little tête-à-tête has come to an end." He crossed to the door, ignoring Clary's surprise. "I sincerely hope we don't do this again."

"Oh, okay," she said, hurrying to see him out. "Um, bye."

"Oh, Clary," said Magnus, turning back to her. "If anything I've said here leaves your fragile mind, I shall cheerfully erase your memory of this for you." He grinned at her and glided downstairs before Clary could have a chance to respond. Magnus might have dressed it up as a joke, she thought, but she wouldn't put it past him to modify her memory if she did let anything slip of this brief (but very telling) meeting.

"Wait, Magnus visited you," Simon exclaimed as Clary mentally scolded herself that she shouldn't have said any more than 'the Lightwoods are leaving for Idris'.

She and Simon were sat on the porch steps outside Luke's house. It was twilight, the time that Simon always came to visit her if they hadn't seen each other that day for some reason. Since everything that had happened in Alicante, and the amount of bad luck that seemed to be following them both around, they had mutually decided on seeing each other at least once a day.

"Ye-yes," she said carefully, mind racing as to how she'd explain this to the warlock. "But, um, it was only for, uh, something unrelated…"

Her voice trailed off as she saw Simon's disbelieving expression.

"Right," he searched her eyes for a moment, then seemed to decide it was better giving her the benefit of the doubt. "Well, Clary, I don't pretend to particularly like Jace, but I am sorry he's leaving. I'm sorry they're all leaving." Simon looked at his lap. "Apart from you, they're the only human friends I have that I can by myself around, fangs and all."

Clary let him put an arm around her, and leant her head into his chest the way they always used to when either one of them was upset. "I think I've had just about enough change without this, you know," she told him.

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," he laughed.

They sat in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts, until the moon came up and the night turned velvety blue, and Simon detached himself from her to rise gracefully to his feet. Watching him, Clary shivered slightly. After nearly a year of Simon being undead, she still hadn't quite got used to the grace that came with the territory of vampirism.

"I have to go see Maia," he told her awkwardly in response to her questioning look. "She said she had to tell me something after school."

Although Maia had done so unwillingly, Simon had convinced her to enroll in the same school as him for the remainder of the year. It had taken a while, but eventually she agreed that if it meant more time with Simon, she was happy. The two had been a couple for just over two months, after Isabelle had assured Simon that there was a handsome ifrit that had caught her eye. Clary had wondered if dating half demons ran in the family.

"Hey," Clary called as he began to walk away. "It's your birthday next week."

Simon groaned. "Don't remind me. Just another way to remind me that I am forever -" he gestured down his marble white body - "sixteen."

Clary giggled. "Just think of the amount of movie stars that would kill to be in your position. You could get a lot of publicity if you went into showbiz."

"Oh yeah," said Simon sarcastically. "I'll just announce it on my resume that they don't need to worry about aging 'cause I've found the cure to growing older."

With that, he turned and disappeared in the direction of the old police station that Luke's pack inhabited. Clary stared at the spot where he'd left her line of vision for a moment:

The towering spires of the Institute where the Lightwoods lived. And yet as they're looking at the new house, I guess ... I guess they don't anymore, she thought with yet another a sinking feeling. They live in Idris.

The thought threatened to bring more tears to her eyes than had already been spilled, so she closed her eyes on the Institute and turned back into the house.

Inside, Luke and Jocelyn were sat on the new dark brown sofa, talking in low voices. One of the first things Jocelyn had done when she moved in with Clary and Luke was to throw out the old bloodstained couch and buy a new one that wouldn't show past injuries and mishaps as much or as easily.

Luke spotted her. "Clary! You're back."

She shrugged. "I didn't really go anywhere."

"Can we talk to you for a minute, Honey?" Jocelyn asked tentatively. Clary shrugged and nodded. She sat on a chair opposite them.

"The thing is," Luke began. "with Jace and the Lightwoods moving -"

"Jace might not go," Clary interrupted. She'd been taking it as inevitable that he would up until now, but something in her made her want to be absolutely clear that Jace might stay at the Institute.

"Clary," Jocelyn reasoned gently. "He's lived with them for seven years. They're his family."

"He lived with Valentine for ten years," Clary said, narrowing her eyes. "That didn't stop him trying to kill him."

She knew she was toeing a very thin line by talking about Valentine out of anger, but she didn't care. All that mattered was that Jace might not leave her, and making sure that her mother and Luke understood this before they took all sorts of pity on her.

"That's enough," Jocelyn's tone lost all friendliness, and Clary was reminded of how dangerous her mother actually was. "We're here to talk to you, not to argue, and if you can't do that without picking at us, then you'd better go."

Clary rolled her eyes but stayed silent.

Luke started again. "Since they're moving to Idris, we thought we would offer you a sort of compromise." He glanced at her mother before continuing. "You can continue your Shadowhunter training in Idris, but -" he stressed as Clary gasped. "You come back here once a month for a week."

A mixture of relief and confusion washed over her. I'll still see him!

"Who would teach me?" she asked, looking between the two. The two of them had been teaching her the theory that she had missed out on during her mundane existence ever since the battle in Alicante. Although there was no weapon handling and no rune-magic involved in this, somehow Luke and her mother had managed to make the lessons entertaining and engaging. Clary couldn't see how anyone would manage to tutor her demonology in quite the same way.

"Amatis has agreed to let you stay with her," Luke said. "And she'll help you with your theory, as well as with runic studies. We haven't talked to them yet but -"

"We both think that Alec Lightwood would be an excellent weaponry tutor," Jocelyn finished.

Clary bit back a cry of surprise. Alec, tutor her in combat? She couldn't help but feel that this would be a fairly weird arrangement, considering the two of them had spent much of the past year in mutual dislike of one another. Luke seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

"I know you might think it slightly odd," he grinned slightly. "But Alec is probably the most adept fighter in Alicante at the moment. He had the benefit of the Lightwoods' ruthlessness in combat and Hodge Starkweather's vast knowledge of all things demon. Not every Shadowhunter has that kind of education."

"And," Jocelyn added before Clary could interrupt that, by this reasoning, Jace or Isabelle could also be her teacher. "He's eighteen."

Clary thought about it. It was almost certain that, love or not, Jace would stay with the Lightwoods. Her parents were giving her the choice not to lose him, to keep him as an integral part of her life. Not to mention that studying with Amatis and Alec, as weird as it might be initially, would be useful in any future arguments she might have with Jace about hunting demons with him.

"Okay," she said eventually. "Let me think about it."

"That's all we're asking," Luke said.

Clary nodded at him and stood up. Before she left, she turned back and addressed Luke. "How's Maia doing in school?"

Luke raised his eyebrows. "Not badly, I hear. For someone who's missed over a year of education, she's doing remarkably well. Any particular reason?"

Clary hesitated. "No," she smiled at him. "No reason. I'm going upstairs. Call me when dinner's ready."

A/N: I know this chapter doesn't flow very well, and it was origionaly just written for fun. But I got some decent plot ideas out of this, and after one more slightly painfully slow chapter, there will be some action, some weird happenings, and some things that don't quite add up for you to think about :)

Also, to those of you who believe Jace's hesitation in choice between Clary and the Lightwoods was purely out of character, and that he would choose Clary no matter what; I agree with you. But the key phrase there is out of character, so I went with what I thought his initial reaction would be.