You don't know how much I love you

by KelsArchive

Jace and Clary love story with drama, action, and romance. Stick with me for the beginning because it gets better as it goes on. Post City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels spoilers are added in at a later point not yet . Summary bad, story better! DFTBA!

18. Lights

Really, really, really long chapter here for you. It's a nice, big, plotty one! So go grab a drink and some snacks, because it's one of those really important chapters. And since it's so long, I won't bore you with a long author's note. Let the chapter begin.

DFTBA! And Best Wishes,

KelseyDockry

My back hit the mat hard for the third time since we'd started sparring today. Jace's hands were grasping my shoulder firmly while he smirked at me. I growled under my breath and attempted to get his hands off of me.

"Settle down, baby. Just get me off you and we can start over," he said. I didn't move against him, didn't listen to him. The only thing that I did do was turn my head away from him and crossed my arms over my chest. "Come on, don't be stubborn. This happens to everybody, I've been training since I could walk. You're just starting."

"I started a week and a half ago!"

"Exactly my point," he said, taking his hands off of my shoulder and leaning back, still sitting on my hips.

"And my point," I snarled, pushing him off me, "is that I shouldn't need this, you know. You've seen what I can do. I fought in the war, I've been hunting, and I survived Valentine! Why can't I take you down in a damn spar?"

"I'm sure that you can, you're just frustrating yourself."

"Whatever."

"Again?" He asked.

"Again." I rolled my shoulders back and shifted to stand on the balls of my feet.

"Are you ready?" He asked, circling me.

"Ready, just do it."

I could feel his eyes on me, assessing me and trying to find the best spot to attack. He moved to walk in front of me, muscles rippling under his gold skin. He was shirtless, wearing only shorts. His hair was matted in some places from sweat, while more sweat rolled down his bare stomach. I swallowed visibly. He was half crouched and ready to start.

"Go," I said.

"Don't be so-" He flew at me. I caught the fist that he was about to throw at me and punched him hard in the stomach. He didn't even flinch, just backed up for a moment before kicking out at me. I ducked under his leg and moved mine out against his ankle. He didn't have the time to jump up and lost his balance at my impact. I moved over as quickly as I could to pin him to the ground but he was too fast. "You're gonna have to do better than that, baby girl," he taunted.

I flew back at him before he could move. I knew what he'd expect, I'd spent the entire week making sure that he'd think that I would only kick at him or throw a punch to his stomach. It'd been so hard to spend my week like that, tricking him. But it was so worth the look on his face when my fist connected with his jaw and my foot connected with his chest, kicking him so hard he flew back in the air and hit the mat-covered wall. I sprinted to him and pushed him as firm as I could against the wall, keeping him there.

"That better?" I asked, panting. He looked me up and down, taking in my spandex workout pants and my loose white tank top that fell over my pink sports bra. I wore no shoes and tape over my knuckles.

"So much better," he said, moving the hand that I didn't have against the wall to my hair. He smiled at me. I brushed the matted hair away from his forehead; he was covered in sweat and it should have been a turn off but, Angel, did it just make him hotter. His lips moved down to mine, fast and insistent. I could taste him perfectly and damn if it wasn't good. He lifted me and pushed me up against the wall of the training room. Bodies flush against each other, breaths mingling with each other's, and hands intertwined against the wall. I wonder why my training sessions always end like this, one of us kicking ass until Jace can't stop himself any more. Not that I would ever complain but it always made Alec upset. This took away the sort of intense training that he wanted, not that Jace cared at all. I wouldn't be shocked if he thought that Alec's annoyance was funny. Alec taught me some, if he didn't he wouldn't care. I tugged on Jace's hair as he liked and he made a sound in the back of his throat that I didn't have a name for, a perfect mix of a moan and a grunt, and it drove me insane. His fingers went to the tie that held my hair in a high ponytail and pulled it out, making it fall around my shoulders in the way he always liked. I couldn't breathe, much less did I want to, but he seemed to think that I had to. So he pulled back and nipped at my jaw. My breath washed over his hair, fanning it back softly. He lifted me higher and kissed my neck, moving his lips along to the dip in my collarbone.

"Jace," I whispered. "Jace, wait a second."

"Really?" He groaned.

"We can continue-"

"Making out?" He interrupted with a smirk.

"Yeah, that. We can keep doing that but I want to take a shower."

"I'm pretty good at that, you know."

"I've heard. But so far I've been able to do it without help."

"But I don't really care if we've been training. I'm probably sweatier than you are."

"Yeah but it makes you look sexier, it just makes me feel disgusting."

"You're plenty sexy, trust me."

"Yeah," I pushed against his chest and he set me back on my feet. "I'm still going to take a shower."

It always surprised me how blank his room was. The only color that I could find were the touches that I'd tried to make. He had a few of my paintings hung on the wall, some pictures of us and our families on the dresser. I'd also put new curtains up and a deep navy blanket at the bottom of his bed. The only color that he put in his room was the picture of me that sat on his bedside table. It was something that I'd tried to get him to put away since he'd put it there in the first place but he insisted that it was something he needed to have on his table. I'm pretty sure it was just there to bother me.

When I'd gotten to his room, I walked straight through to his bathroom. Izzy must never have walked into this room because the only color was his toothbrush, the toothbrush that he'd probably used about twice because we never slept here. The walls were white, as well as the shower curtain, rugs, floor, and various holders of his things; everything was white. I stripped off my sweaty clothes and tore open the shower curtain. The shower had a strange mix up with it, you had to pull the tab for the water up and hard to the right for it to work properly but the water from the large shower head felt like heaven.

I realized after about a second of being out of the shower that I'd forgotten to grab new clothes. And there was no way that I was going to put on those sweat soaked spandex pants. I wrapped the oversized and fluffy towel around me and fastened it tight under my arm.

The door clicked loud enough to make Jace turn around from the window. I walked out from the bathroom and closed the door behind me, trying as hard as I could not to blush as I stood before him in a towel.

"Are you planning something or have you just forgotten your clothing? Personally, I'm hoping for the former," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall.

"Just shut up and take your shower."

"I thought that you said I wore my sweat like a sex-god." He walked past me and opened the door.

"I did not say that."

"You have that 'he's so sexy when he teases me' look on your face."

"This is my normal face."

"Exactly," he said, shutting the door.

I laughed to myself before walking to the dresser near the window. I opened the drawers and drew out one of his long sleeved plaid button ups and a pair of my own light denim shorts. As I dressed myself, I studied the pictures that were scattered around his dresser. A few of them were pictures of the entire family, some just him and his siblings, and most of them had me in them. There were ones of his family and me, ones of my family and him, but mostly ones of us together. Simon was even up on there once or twice. I was constantly shocked at the pictures that he found important enough to keep in his room.

I'd half buttoned my shirt when I heard the door creak open. Jace walked out with semi-dripping hair and low-rise jeans. You could see the band of his underwear just over the top of the dark wash denim. His hands held a white towel that scrubbed at his damp hair.

"You gonna finish buttoning that shirt or am I going to have to take another cold shower?" He asked from under the towel.

"Oh," I said, taking my eyes off him for a moment and looking down at myself. "Sorry." I buttoned my, well his, shirt up until only the top two buttons were loose.

"Please don't ever apologize for having your clothes half off."

"You're such a perv," I said. He shrugged and walked over to the dresser. His hand went to the first handle when one of mine went to his stomach. He looked down at my fingertips on his abs and then up to my eyes, he cocked an eyebrow up at me.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Who did you say was the perv?"

"It's definitely you, definitely you."

"Right, because I'm the one touching the other without permission?"

"Is it not okay for me to do this?" I leaned forward into him and he pushed me against him, taking a step forward to press my back into the dresser. "Maybe I should stop."

"You really think I'd let you stop?" He moved his eyes down my body to the wound I'd gotten during training today. It wasn't bad, just a slit in my skin that stretched the vertical length of my right thigh. It had only bled for a few minutes and clotted fairly quickly but it still bothered Jace when anything like this happened. He brushed his fingertips over the gash and frowned.

"Jace, it's just a scratch," I moved away from him.

"No, Clary, I saw your face when it happened."

"My face didn't look any different from usual."

"Your eyes did. I hurt you, Clary."

"It didn't hurt that much, don't worry about it," I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my fingers over the cut. Pain sparked under the pressure of my hand.

Jace moved over to me and kneeled in front of the bed. "I'm always going to worry about you, Clare," he said, holding my face. "The thought of training you is… petrifying. But I'm trying not to think about hurting you. I know how hard it is to begin training and you're exceptionally good at it. I just don't want you to be in pain."

"Don't beat yourself up about this, Jace. It's not like I can't kick your ass." I reached to the other side of the floor where Jace's black stele had fallen. He took it from me before I could press it onto my leg. "Are you playing doctor?"

"If I were playing doctor, you wouldn't have to ask," he said, putting the tip of the stele on my skin.

"Well are you planning to tear your clothes off to dress my wounds? Because I wouldn't be opposed to that."

He smiled and continued to draw the iratze. "If you want me to get naked, just say so."

"I would but that would go against our agreement yesterday," I said, twisting my hand into his hair. I flashed briefly back to the conversation we'd had last night. We agreed that it would be much better to wait until June to sleep together. To wait until after we're married. The reasoning was simple: neither of us wanted me to get pregnant before the wedding. Most people had probably already assumed that we'd gotten pregnant already and I didn't want them to be right. And as I'd told him after we got engaged, I wasn't sure if parenthood was something that I was ready to take on at eighteen. So we decided that it'd be more special and sensible if we just wait for the months that were left.

He stared at the iratze for a moment after he'd finished it before running his hand over the fast healing skin. It bonded itself back together under his touch almost like he was the thing mending it.

"See," I whispered, "all better."

His hands continued over my leg and up to my waist. His thumbs drew circles over my shirt and pulled me so that I was sitting on the very end of the bed. He straightened his back and connected his lips with mine, hard. I reached out to him like I was drowning and he was air. He rose from his knees and leaned into me, pulling me up to his bare chest. I could hear him murmuring against my mouth before he breathed in deeply, crushing me to him. One of his hands moved to knock the stele and the bits of clothes and gear off of his bed. He drew me up to the pillows and pushed me further into the mattress. I could feel his breath fanning against my face when he broke off to look down at me. He brushed stray hairs off of my forehead before kissing along my jaw, hands slipping up under my shirt and tracing patterns on my stomach and back. His tongue darted out against my neck and I couldn't hold my eyes open anymore. His lips moved up to my ear and bit on it lightly.

"You're going to have to breathe if you want me to keep doing things like this," he said before pulling back.

"Wh-what?"

"Well, baby, I know I'm pretty but I'd prefer that you stay alive here. I'm doing the best that I can to keep your heart beating, I'd like a little bit of help."

"You're good," I said, "but you're not that good."

"You're funny. Let's not pretend that I don't drive you insane."

"You are such a-" His hand came up and covered my mouth softly.

"No, no, baby girl. Careful what you say, you know how I react to your naughty words."

"Get off," I laughed, pushing at his shoulder.

"That's exactly what I do."

I blushed when I realized what he meant. "You're disgusting."

"Don't lie," he said, rolling over and falling onto the pillows next to me. I got up and walked over to the door. "Hey, where're you going?"

"Put a shirt on!" I called back, turning out the door.

"Who's naked?" Rose asked excitedly from outside the door. She smirked a very adult-looking and omniscient smirk.

"Nobody's naked."

She looked me up and down, seeming to notice that I wasn't wearing my own shirt. "You sure about that?" She continued to study me as I studied her.

"All black?" I asked.

"All Jace?" She said, not looking at me but tugging at her cut-off biker gloves that stopped half way down her hands and had no finger coverings.

"Wouldn't know what you're talking about."

"Sure, sure. Saw you training earlier today."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you kicked his ass."

"Well he got me in the leg with a knife but other than that."

"He's not that hard to take down."

"Like you've ever tried," Jace said from behind us.

"I've never been beaten before."

"You've never fought me."

"You two are so annoying when you're together," I said, running a hand through my hair.

They both blamed each other at the same time.

"I'm gonna go take my Latin training now," I said, walking away from them as they glared at each other.

"Alec, I really don't think that you understand. It's been two hours and I literally cannot say one more word of this."

"It's not that bad, Clary. You haven't retained anything. Focus."

"Ego adtendens, Alec. Ego incipio cogitare Latine!"

"…All right, point taken. Go."

"Gratias ago vos adeo!" I said, stealing away through the library door.

"How was your lesson?" Jace asked from where he'd been waiting in the hall.

"Terribilis."

"Remind me again why I'm not your Latin teacher. Because, damn, that's hot."

"It's probably the same reason that they don't want you to be any kind of teacher."

"And why would that be?" He smiled.

"I distract you."

"I believe it's because I distract you."

"Don't kid yourself, honey."

He caught up to me as I started making my way down the hall. "Rose wants to go hunting tonight. I thought that if you didn't want to we could go to a movie or something."

I could feel my eyes light up. "Hunting?"

"Clare, you've already been hurt from training enough today."

"Jace, come on! You sound like my mother!"

"I just don't want you to work yourself too hard in one day. Let's just go to dinner and a movie."

"I'll tell you if I start to tire myself out."

"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "But if you start to complain, I get to fix you up and tell you 'I told you so.'"

"Agreed." I pulled him down for a quick kiss before he broke off.

"You're smiling too much. It makes me uncomfortable, you seem to know something that I don't."

"I know firsthand how much you love my smile. Don't pretend."

"Oh no, I definitely do. You're sexy when you smile, as if you weren't sexy all of the time. You're just… too excited to go hunting. I'm not too happy about it."

"Stop trying to protect me, Jace," I said, running my lips in the hollows of his cheekbones. "I've got this."

"I know a few things that you can have but this isn't one of them. I've told you before, I'm always going to worry about you."

"I don't see why, though. There's really no point to your worrying. If I can kick your ass, I can kick anyone's ass."

"You cannot kick my a-"

"Simon, will you please just be rational for one damned minute! I am telling you that there is no point to this. If you really want to complain about your damn World of Warfare or whatever, leave me out of i—ew," Isabelle said into the phone. I looked up at her face, which was distorted in disgust. "Why do you two insist on doing this in the halls? Use Jace's room, that's why he has it."

"I have my room so that I have a place to make out with my girlfriend? I didn't know that that was why Maryse gave it to me, how sweet of her."

"You know what I meant."

"Iz," I said, "can I have your phone?"

"As long as Simon stops complaining about his level eighty-nine dungeon troll, or whatever, you can keep the thing," she said, shoving the hunk of pink plastic at me.

"Isabelle! It is not a dungeon troll, it's a—" Simons voice growled from the small speaker.

"Look, Si, Izzy doesn't care about World of Warcraft. In fact, I barely care about it. It's just you, Simon, just you. So settle the hell down, all right?"

"But someone to—"

"Simon, sweetie, I'm going to be as nice as I can. Shut up!"

"That's not exactly what I'd call nice, Clarissa."

"Simon, call me that one more time," I hissed. "Test me, come on, I dare you."

He gulped on the other side of the phone.

"That's what I thought I heard you say. Now talk to your girlfriend about something she cares about and keep her busy," I looked back at her. "She's being interruptive."

"Maybe if you'd just go into Jace's room like I told you to," said Izzy, snatching the cell phone out of my grip, "you wouldn't have to worry about my interrupting."

"That'd be the ideal world, now wouldn't it?" Jace put in.

"You've always got to be an ass, don't you?" She asked, obviously annoyed.

"What was that? You checked out my ass? Thanks, Iz, but I've got a fiancée whose ass I'm much more interested in."

I slapped him in the arm and he dragged me into his side and grinned at me.

"You two disgust me. Clary, I'll see you tonight."

"Why?"

"We're hunting, it's your first actual and intentional hunt. You're bait, baby."

"My name is Barbie."

"Yes," she said, already making her way down the corridor, "yes it is."

I watched her walk unfalteringly in her heels on the white carpet. She never failed to be the most fashionable thing I'd seen in all of New York, never failed to be the most beautiful girl in the room, and she never failed to see that in herself. Some people would call it borderline arrogance, but it wasn't, it was confidence. She'd always had to be the big, strong girl in this field of big, strong men. With Jace and Alec for older brothers, she must have been outshined in her athletic department since she was too young to understand why she truly needed to train. She had unfailing courage and strength that snaked through her unquestionable beauty. If you didn't know her, you wouldn't see it until she made you see it. But if you knew her as I did, you would see it present in all that she did, all that she said, hiding just under a layer of icy blue in her eyes, her indomitable eyes.

I laid my head down on Jace's shoulder as I sighed, and felt it rise with his laughter.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm just, you know, after training and—"

"Are you tired?" He asked in a teasing little voice.

"Not tired so much as—" I broke off when he bent down to lift me off of the ground, bridal style. I clutched my arms around his neck in surprise.

"I told you that hunting would be a bad idea, this is just further proof," he said, walking as if I didn't weigh anything at all.

"If you're going to try to talk me out of it, then put me down."

"No thanks, I like to have total control over you, it's kind of reassuring. You're so damn stubborn that I'm not sure if I will ever want to put you down. And besides, don't pretend that you don't want to be carried around by me."

"If you say one word about this being practice for the honeymoon, I'm going to kill you. You are so painfully cheesy."

He smirked. "Roses are red, violets are blue—"

"Be quiet," I said.

We'd reached his door and he kicked it closed behind him. He didn't put me down until his shins hit the bed. I sat up and stared at him, watching him crawl up to me on the pillows. He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back. He moved on top of me and looked down with a blank expression, surprisingly blank. He didn't have any kind of smirk or sarcastic look, just blank.

"Jace," I asked, tucking my fingers under the hair that fell over his eyes, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"You're all serious-faced."

"Well I can't pull a sexy smirk all of the time. Would you like me to spend my time doing something else with my face?" He asked, pressing his lips to mine once.

"Wouldn't you love that?" I asked, curling my fingers into the hair at the back of his neck. I rolled over after a minute while he was still hovering on top of me. "I'm going to sleep now."

"Kill joy," He joked, laying down next to me. He fit his body against mine and wrapped me up in his arms. I turned my head into his shoulder and sighed contentedly.

I woke up about an hour later to Jace's lips brushing against the sensitive skin behind my ear

"Leave to go where?"

"Don't know, don't care. Just not here. I hate being here."

"Do you want to go do something for the wedding?" I joked.

"You sound like Isabelle, oh Angel, you sound like Isabelle."

"I'm sorry, did I scare you, baby?"

He smiled down at me and caressed the side of my face.

"We have literally nothing to go and do, Jace. Why don't you figure something out?"

He scrunched up his brow for a moment before clapping once and saying, "I got it!"

"Yes?"

"Let's go back to the apartment and make out until we're dragged off to Pandemonium. Yes, I do believe that sounds like a plan!" He said, putting his hand on one of my thighs.

I laughed and pushed him back. "Funny, baby, real funny."

"I'd say thank you if I were joking."

"That's really what you're suggesting? I'd like to hear your follow up to that."

He paused. "It's fun?"

"Are you sure that you're nineteen? You sound like you're fifteen."

"And pray tell," a voice came from the left, "what is wrong with fifteen year olds?"

"They keep interrupting and they're the most annoying things on the planet."

"You're not a picture of perfection yourself, charmer," Rose said.

"I'm willing to bet that I am. And you're not exactly a picture of sexiness either."

"Beg to differ," she said, pulling her left hand into her honey curls and swishing them back. "Crimson," she addressed me, "Isabelle wants to see you about your little ceremony with Charmer there."

"Okay," I said. She pulled at her biker gloves again and straightened her leather jacket. She unconsciously batted her eyelashes over her clear blue eyes and shook her hair back again.

"She's on the phone with the vampire though, you know how those freaks are. So you probably have, what, an hour or two?"

"About," I agreed. I watched her walk away from us both with that confidence in her step. I turned back to Jace. "Home?" I asked.

He nodded. "Home."

I turned the key in my door and tried to push it open. It was stopped half way by the mass of boxes stacked around in the hallway and living room. Jace had more than half moved into my apartment. And by half moved in, I mean his mark was even more in here than I thought possible. I'd often entertained the idea of moving in with a man, when I was little. Though, the thought of it was never anything like how it actually turned out. Back when I used to dream of that, I was still being repeatedly brainwashed by my sparkly friend and I'd always pictured a nice boy with trimmed hair and pretty eyes. The kind of boy that I could bring to my mother and be proud of his gentlemanliness; the kind of boy that I could call a perfect man. Like, a manly man that was still a gentleman. At least Jace is manly and he can be a gentleman, mostly when it's just us.

I pushed my way through the door and dropped the keys in the bowl on the table. Jace closed the door with his foot and followed my safari trip into the forest that was his possessions.

"I didn't think your moving in would consume so much of our apartment," I called back to him when I'd made it to my kitchen. I riffled through my fridge, searching for some form of leftovers.

"Complaining or simply pointing out the obvious?" He asked. I could see him lounge on the counter next to me. I pulled out a styrofoam take-out box and transferred the cold food to a plate.

"More considering the moving idea that we talked about two weeks ago," I said, placing the food in the microwave and moving to stand in front of him. He wrapped his arms around my waist and placed a quick kiss on my forehead.

"The boxes will leave when the stuff gets moved in, we don't have to move. I know that you don't want to move."

"Well, I bought it for myself. Now I can tell that it isn't the size for two full time people."

"You don't want to move, I don't really want to move anywhere else right away. Let's just stay here for now. We can look for apartments and if we find one, we'll move then. Okay?"

"Fine, but we're cleaning through these boxes the second we get the chance."

"Deal," he said.

After we'd had lunch, I heard the phone ring. Jace stopped moving his lips against mine and sighed, reaching out to grab the phone. "Hello?" He asked. He handed me the phone. "Jocelyn."

"Mom," I said after I'd taken it, "hi."

"You'll never guess the news," she said excitedly.

"What is it?"

"I scheduled my first ultrasound!"

"You did? For when?"

"Tomorrow," she said. I looked up at Jace, who hadn't taken a step back, and he smiled at me, seeming to have heard the news.

"That's great, Mom!"

"I'm so excited, I've never had a proper ultrasound!"

"You haven't?"

"No," she said, "Valentine did a few while I was pregnant with Jonathon, but he sedated me. He only did it to see if the potions were working. When I was pregnant with you, I couldn't go to a hospital. I was too scared that Valentine would somehow find out about you that I just… couldn't."

"I was born in a hospital," I stated, confused.

"I walked in, they thought my name was Katherine White."

"You… Why didn't you tell me that?"

"It happened and I can't change that, Clary. I told them a fake name to protect you from your father. You've seen him and you know who he is, how terrifying he is. I wouldn't let him find you and I was afraid that if they knew my name, he would. I went as Jocelyn Fray for all these years, I'm still afraid of him-"

"He's dead, Jocelyn," I said without emotion. "I was there, I saw it. He is dead."

"I know he is, Clary, I know. But death doesn't always hold. You should know that better than anyone." I flashed my eyes up to Jace's chest, just over his heart where I knew his scar was. One of the many scars, most were twirling and short; but this, this one was clean and straight, like the sword that had pierced him. I flashed back to when he died, the way his eyes stayed on mine when the light left him, how his chest heaved before suddenly slowing to a stop, the way his mess of curls fell back when his head dropped, how his body lost all of the strength, and how his full lips parted with death. I'd never been more scared in my life, never been so angry in my life. His eyes had locked with mine until the end and the strength in them faded slower than his life had. I still have nightmares about the way the body that I loved had gone limp with death. The letter that he'd written me about finding Valentine rang in my head with the grief over and over and over. 'So I lied to you last night,' it read. 'I said I just wanted one night with you. But I want every night with you. And that's why I have to slip out of your window now, like a coward. Because if I had to tell you this to your fact, I couldn't make myself go.' And the part that still haunts me, still makes my chest tight with pain: 'I don't blame you if you hate me, I wish you would. As long as I can still dream, I will dream of you.'

"I don't know what you're talking about," I lied to her.

"You do, Clary. You do know what I'm talking about. I know about Jace, Luke knows."

"What about Jace?" I persisted.

"Valentine killed him. Stop this; I know what happened. I know that it still has more impact on you than anything else that happened during that war. I know that my coma never hurt you as much as what happened between you and Jace. I know what Valentine did to you, he hurt me just as well as he hurt you. He killed the one I love just like he killed the one that you love. The difference is that the man that I love didn't come back, I didn't get to see him again."

"What are you talking about, Jocelyn?" I asked. "Luke is alive."

"No, not Luke. He killed the Valentine that I fell in love with. And he killed me every time I had to look into those eyes. Every time he touched me, I couldn't feel the man I loved. I could only feel hate, hate for myself, hate for him, hate for my own child. But I stayed with him in hope that Valentine would come back to me, that the love I felt would come back to me. That's why you were born as far away from him as you were. That's why I ran away, because I knew that, after Jonathan, nothing could be normal again. So what do you want, Clary? Do you want me to apologize for taking you away from him? For lying to you about who you were, what you were? I'm not sorry, and I don't think I'll ever be sorry. Do not think that I ran for my own benefit. I left him for you, and only you. That's why every time I look at Luke, I fall more in love with him. Because he came for me, he looked for me, like the Valentine I fell for would have. And for that, I'll never apologize. So now you know where you came from. You came from love, hate, and a fear to run away. Tell me, where did Jace come from?"

I couldn't speak, I couldn't breathe. There was nothing I could say to that and I couldn't breathe. With nothing to say, no need to try to speak, I hung up the phone and placed it back in the cradle. Jace stared down at me. Without saying a word, I stepped away from him. My feet lifted slowly with each step, I wasn't controlling them anymore, nor was I trying to stop them. As I got closer to the living room, I picked it apart with my eyes. At the bottom of the stacks lay a different kind of box. A box I'd never looked through but always knew was there. I moved all of the boxes away in a hurry that surprised me. I ran my fingers over the metallic bird design on the top before undoing the leather fastening. I tore the box open and looked down into it at the assortment of pictures, letters, and things of Jace's father's. I reached in and pulled out a photo of Jace's parents. Celine was pregnant in the picture and her smile was unmatched by any I'd seen, except maybe those of Jace and mine. Stephen had one hand on Celine's stomach and one arm rested around her back. He looked like Jace, so much like Jace. All of him was there: the high cheek bones, the mop of golden curls, though Jace's were longer, the tall and muscular body type, and the same look of confidence in his eyes. Celine was small; she looked like she was thin before she got pregnant. The thing that I noticed about her were her eyes. She obviously gave Jace the golden eyes that stared at me as I sat here. I placed the picture gently on the floor next to me and picked through more. Multiple pictures of his parents mixed with the pictures of Amatis near the bottom, a hunting dagger that I'd almost cut my hand open on, letters scattered around, the family ring. I could tell from the letters that Stephen thought of Amatis how Jace thought of me. Once I'd hit the bottom of the box, I found one more picture. The picture had Jace's parents along with a horde of other curly haired blonds. They must be his extended family. Stephen had one arm around his wife and one on the shoulder of another woman. She was tall, blue eyes, rune-baring, and golden haired. Next to her was the man I could only assume to be her husband by the way her eyes stared at him with intense love. It must have been the most recent picture of them all, Celine looked about seven months pregnant and Stephen wasn't smiling sweetly like everyone else, but he wore a smirk of confidence and power, one I'd seen on Jace many times.

I looked up from the empty box and tuned my head back to look behind me. Jace sat on the couch and stared with a look of confusion and worry. "Are you okay?" He asked after a moment.

"I don't know," I whispered honestly. I got to my feet and walked over to him, stopping two steps in front of him. My arms dangled uselessly at my sides and I looked up into the eyes he got from his mother. He reached forward and hooked his fingers into the belt loops in my shorts. He tugged forward once and I fell into his chest, his arms automatically wrapping around me. I moved my legs to either side of him and pulled my head off of his shoulder. I tucked one side of my hair behind my ear and looked down at his lips. He had his lower lip caged between his teeth and his left hand came up to curl around my neck. I became very aware of every part of him that touched me and every part of me that touched him. The fingertips of his right hand were slowly making its way down my side. I leaned in about a centimeter, causing him to close the distance in half a second. My hands both went to his neck and pulled his face up to mine, effectively making him kiss harder. My hair fell around us like a curtain, shielding us from everything but ourselves. He made little noises in the back of his throat and his hand slid to the underside of my knee, tugging me closer to him. After that point, he couldn't seem to decide where to keep his hands. They slid over my shoulders, around my back, down my legs, on my hips. I caught his bottom lip between my teeth and pulled back slightly. This made him groan deep in his throat and pull me harder against his chest. I smiled against his mouth and both his hands went to my hair. His lips forced my lips open. I gasped at the first swipe of his tongue against mine. By now, my knees were in between the cushions on the top and bottom of the couch and my body was so tight against his that I could feel his heart pound and I could barely breathe against him.

"I love you so much," he whispered against the dip in my collarbone. "Do you know that?"

I nodded, my chin brushing his cheekbone, and turned my face against his head, sighing into his hair. He stopped kissing my neck and looked back up at me.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"What did Jocelyn say?" He still sounded so worried.

"She rehashed the Valentine thing. I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay," he said, pushing fallen hair off of my face. "That's fine, we don't have to talk about it. I thought you just might want to."

"No, I don't." I laid my head on his shoulder and pressed my face into his neck. Conversation by that time was rendered unnecessary; there really was no point to speaking about anything. We were there, it was just us and the boxes, and the scattered possessions of Jace's father, and the place that we'd begun to call home. After a while, I looked into his eyes and the look that I saw in them was pure, unadulterated caring. It was very real and very present in his eyes, how much he cared. My phone buzzed, interrupting us. I looked down and pulled it out of my back pocket. I sighed and connected the call.

"It's time," Isabelle's voice rang through the speaker.

"Why don't you play Barbie with Rose?" I proposed, moving to get off of Jace's lap when his fingers wove through my belt loops and kept me against him.

Izzy barked something in my ear about how it was more fun to dress me because she likes a fight. I looked down at Jace with a playful and confused smile. I put my hands over his and removed them from my shorts. I stood and sat on the coffee table in front of him. He reached out and grabbed one of my crossed legs, pulling it so it was straight in front of him. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my ankle.

"Iz, seriously, you don't have to," his lips reached the side of my calf muscle, I swallowed and shook my head, trying to focus on what I was saying, "do the whole dress up thing."

She continued her rant while Jace continued his way up my leg. He'd gotten to my lower thigh when I slapped at his shoulders and tried to pull my leg back. He responded by using his grip on my leg to pull himself off of the couch and bend over me, placing his lips opposite my phone on my neck. I swirled my hand into his curls and let my head fall back to give him more room.

"Clary, just get over here. I'm so sick of fighting you about this. You know it drives Jace insane when I make you all beautiful. I don't know what goes on between you two after, and I don't know if I want to, but it makes him crazy. And you know you love a crazy Jace," she said, thankfully oblivious to what was happening to me here and now.

"I think I'm perfectly capable of driving him crazy on my own, thank-you-very-much." Jace chuckled into my skin, causing me to slap his shoulder to making quiet.

"Yeah, yeah, you don't need my help, you're an independent woman, I get it. We don't need to rehash this. Just take a shower, get over here, and I'll make you all womanly. Deal?"

She was so damn stubborn. "Deal," I said before putting my hand over the microphone of my cell and turning my lips down to Jace's. He smiled and slid a hand to the side of my face, enslaving me in his grip.

Isabelle cheered and started to list things that she needed to get and needed to do before realizing that I had no real interest. She said some form of goodbye before I disconnected the call and pushed both hands into Jace's curls. His hands shot out on either side of me, pushing all of my belongings onto the floor before he laid me back on the table. One of his legs came up, knee balanced between mine with his other foot on the floor. His hands were up under my shirt and cupping my waist.

"I need to get," I said between kisses, "back to Isabelle."

"I think I like you here," he said, capturing my body in his arms.

"Mmm," I said, grabbing hold of his biceps, "I agree but you know she'll kill us both if I take more than twenty minutes to get there."

"Twenty minutes is a long time, baby."

"Yes, but I have to take a shower before I go and then get dressed. I don't have time to play." My grip tightened on his arms and I gasped when he bit my neck gently.

"Make time," he said.

I groaned and pushed at his chest, something that made him reluctantly move off of me.

Isabelle wasn't happy that I'd worn sweats to the Institute. It didn't really make sense that she was upset, she was only going to dress me up again. "Because," she'd said, exasperated, "it's the principle that makes the difference! You came in sweats, is that how you're going to dress for the rest of your life if I don't dress you?"

"Not all of the time."

"Sure," she said, plopping me down on the chair at the vanity. I turned around to watch her near trip over the piles of belongings. At least they were a bit organized. Piles of discarded jeans were to one side of the gigantic bed, shirts and dresses to another, shoes by the closet, and a rather unwelcomed smaller pile of bras and panties by the bathroom.

"Iz, when is the last time you cleaned this room?" I called to her as the clothes that she threw flew through the closet door.

"What?" She yelled back, clothes momentarily stopping.

"When did you last clean your room?"

She paused for a moment. "I'm not sure."

"And you let Simon in here?"

"Of course." She stuck her head outside of the door. "Why wouldn't I?"

"You have your underwear all over the place."

"And?"

I shuttered at that, not wanting to hear about her and Simon's sex life. "Never mind."

"Oh, perfect!" She exclaimed. She near tripped over the clothes she'd just thrown. "This dress is perfect for you! Perfect, perfect, perfect!"

"What if, because I need room to move, I didn't wear a dress?"

"I wasn't going to put you in a dress," she said.

"You-what?"

She held up intimidating leather shorts, a floral corset, thigh-high black stockings, and a cropped leather jacket.

"Leather shorts?"

"They're cloth on the inside, promise. They're comfortable enough for fighting, you could fight in them all day and you and Jace could," she whistled, "all night. You wouldn't feel a difference from your usual night."

"Izzy, I think you have highly misinterpreted our lives."

"Well, I know you two are doing the dirty."

"And how do you think you know that?" I asked.

"I saw you two on your birthday. You were trying to take his pants off! Of course you started sleeping with each other."

"We aren't."

"Sure," she laughed.

"We're waiting until the wedding night."

"Just change, will ya?" She tossed the clothes at me. I stripped down and started to roll the stockings up my legs when I looked up at Izzy. She was watching me with a crease between her eyebrows while she fiddled with the cord of her warming flat iron.

"What?" I asked.

"You're not pregnant or anything, are you?"

"W-what?"

"Don't take it the wrong way! You look skinny as hell. But, are you?"

"Of course not, I told you that we weren't sleeping together. Why did you think that?"

"Well," she looked down at the twisting cord in her hand, "you're, like, eighteen and you and Jace are engaged. I thought, you know, because of Jace…"

"Not pregnant."

"Okay, good," she said, sighing a breath of relief.

"What do you mean 'good'?" I asked.

"Do you know how hard it would have been to find a wedding dress that makes you look good if your stomach is ballooned to the size of a fighter jet?"

"That's the reason you were worried?"

She shrugged, seeming to think it was a perfectly logical excuse to be concerned.

"You do realize that I'll be pregnant eventually and you won't be able to dress me up like this anymore, right?" I asked, tugging at the leather shorts. She was right; they were surprisingly comfortable.

A look of excitement flashed through her blue eyes and she scurried over to sit on the loveseat next to me. "Have you two talked about kids yet?"

"Of course we have," I said, pulling the corset on.

"And?" She prompted.

"And what?"

"When is Isabelle junior going to be brought into this world?"

"Isabelle junior?" I laughed.

"Well I am the aunt and the mother's best friend! What else would you name her?"

"It could be a boy, you know."

"Yes, Simon junior. Of course I know that."

I rolled my eyes and laughed at her. "Simon or Isabelle? Both great names but I'm not sure if they'll be the final product."

"When are you two planning to make little Shadowhunters?"

"Don't you think Jace should see what a baby looks like before he becomes a father?" I asked. She got up from the chair and spun me around to the vanity, taking my hair in her hands.

"He's been around babies before."

"When?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure he has," she said. "It's not like he could ever be a bad father, you've seen him with Max."

"Yeah and Max is eleven. Haven't you noticed that Jace usually tries to stay away from everyone younger than fourteen, other than Max?"

"Well, does he, you know, want kids?"

"Yeah, he does. He's the one who brought it up in the first place."

"So, aren't you happy?" She asked, pulling the flat iron through my hair.

"More than. But I'm not sure if I want to just pop a baby out as a teenager. I just never pictured myself starting a family so soon. But I know I'll change my mind."

"I look forward to the day when you realize how stupid it is waiting for what you want. If you want something, and it's just being offered to you, you should take it. Just reach out and take it."

Most of the getting ready process was silent from then, aside from meaningless sentences every once in a while. And really, what wasn't silent about meaningless conversation. If you won't remember a conversation, things should be called silent, if you don't listen to what someone's saying, things should be called silent. That's how silence should work. And there weren't many words between us as we got ready, really. Less conversation than one would imagine taking place between two best friends. But nothing really needed to be said, so my definition of silence took place. I became more anxious as she drew runes around on my stomach and back. What was I about to do? Was it one kill or twenty? If we saved one girl's life, how many have we been too late for? If the demon knew I was a Shadowhunter how long did I have to kill it? If Jace saw me fighting how much would it hurt him? If I saw Jace hurt, how would it hurt me? What if I'm not strong or trained enough? What if I get hurt? What if someone else gets hurt? I could handle this, right? Yes, yes I can handle it. I'm Clarissa Fray: Shadowhunter, not Clarissa Fray: scared to be more than a Mundane. I've got this in the bag. But what if I don't?

"Everything's going to be fine," Izzy said, staring at the rune that she traced over my lower abdomen. She stood and tugged the zipper on my corset back in place.

"I didn't say it wouldn't be."

"Are you not thinking about it?"

"No," I lied.

"All right, then." She went back into her closet and threw a pair of heeled boots at me. I caught them before they hit the floor. After a moment, she called out to me. "Put those on," she said. She stepped out of the closet, fixing an earring before tugging the bun out of her hair. Voluminous black curls cascaded down her back, covering the surely open back of her short and tight dress. She wore her, as she called them, 'ass-kicking boots': six inch heels, a dagger hidden in the inside, hugging tight against her calves, and surely covering fresh runes. "Tonight's going to be so badass!" She said. I looked at myself in her wall-length mirror. Oh Angel, tonight was going to be more than badass.

"You almost done?" I asked.

"Almost, almost," she smiled. That gave me half an hour, minimum.

"Hurry yourself," I said. I zipped the side of the heels up; they ended just above my ankle, and stood four inches higher than usual. "I'll be—"

"Don't you dare screw up all of that work that I did on your makeup! Keep your face off of Jace's!" She said, squirting some kind of perfume at me. My lungs protested at the flowery scent. I coughed into my arm. "Don't be a baby, Clary."

"I'll be… not here."

"I swear to the Angel, if your makeup is smudged even a little bit, I will take parts off of Jace that are very necessary for the situation we talked about earlier."

"Calm yourself," I said, walking to the door.

"If you want children, you had best keep your hands off of him."

"Don't threaten his manhood, you know it's what makes him so confident."

"I don't think I know as much as you do," she said, winking.

"I'm going to leave now… you're kind of scaring me."

"Be afraid," she narrowed her eyes, "be very afraid."

I shook my head and walked out into the hall. It didn't take much work to find Jace in the training room. I opened the door quietly and shut it behind me. His back was facing the door I pressed myself up against and he was shirtless, tape covering his knuckles as they beat into the punching bag. The muscles in his back tensed, the chain objected to the hits he kept throwing. He made noises with every hit, like he was hurting himself while trying to pulverize the bag. So I waited, until he couldn't hit anymore. It sounded easier than it was, he didn't stop until the chain broke. His chest heaved and he fisted at his hair, clenching and unclenching. I pushed off the wall and walked forward, my heels making quiet clacks on the hard wood. When I'd gotten to him, I reached out and touched my fingertips to his shoulder blade. He jumped when I touched him but didn't say anything and he didn't look at me. I put my forehead on his back, just at the base of his neck. He dropped his hands from his hair and wrapped his arms behind his back, pressing me into him.

"Talk to me, Jace," I begged. "Tell me why this is bothering you. Please."

"I don't want to talk about this again, Clare. I just want you to promise me that you won't be scared away from me after tonight."

"You're acting like I've never seen you fight before."

He turned around and grabbed me harder, lifting me off the floor. "Angel, if a demon even looks at you…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "I'd have to rip its head off. And I am saying literally, I don't think I'd be able to let it die easy. I don't even want to think…"

"You don't think I know what that's like, to want to break every bone in a demon's body for even looking at you? I know that you think fighting is fun but I can't even imagine what I'd do if you were hurt. And now that I'm training and watching you first hand do this again… The war was hell, pure hell, but now that I'm allowed to love you, allowed to keep you safe, it's so different."

"Seeing you in the war was the single worst thing in my life. And every time I see you in danger, it just gets worse."

"Promise me you'll do everything in your power not to leave me again," I said, touching the scar over his heart that Valentine had forever imprinted. He nodded, swallowing hard.

"Promise me that you'll do the same," he begged.

I looked up in his eyes, trapping them in mine. And I said very, very seriously: "I promise on everything in me that I will try my damnedest to come back to you. Every time." His breath caught and he looked back at me with unclouded eyes, every bit of his love shining bright and clear. I crushed my lips on his almost painfully. One hand went to the back of my neck, keeping my face pressed up against his. I got that feeling that he was scared that I was going to disappear. I knew that feeling all too well and I thought, hoped, that we'd never feel that way again, especially after he'd proposed. I was taken back to the first kiss in the greenhouse, how he seemed scared to touch me, like I'd break and he'd have nothing to remember me by except that moment. How I had to push myself harder against him to show him that I wasn't glass and I wasn't going to break. It'd been a lie, I did break; I broke a million times over. After we were told that loving each other was a hideous sin, like it was cosmically wrong and disgusting, I broke every time I saw him, every time he looked at me and turned away just as fast. When I saw him with Aline, I thought I broke beyond repair, I felt every part of me shatter. And shattering was the best thing that could happen to me, maybe not then, but now. Shattering was important because it proved to me, the stubborn girl that I was, that I loved him beyond everything I'd ever known. And if it hadn't grown more and more every damn time I looked into those gold eyes…

I didn't want it to end when he set me back down and detached his lips from mine, keeping his forehead to my own. "Clarissa Marie Fray," he whispered, drawing in a shaky breath and blowing it out in a fast huff, "I love you."

"Jace, Angel, I love you too." He smiled as the words fell off of my lips. He pushed my hair behind my ear on one side and pressed his lips to mine again in a soft, close-mouthed kiss. I put my hands up on his neck and kissed him back, trying with everything I had not to cry and ruin Izzy's makeup.

"I should get dressed," he said, not moving.

"I think shirtless is a good look for you," I said, and not for the first time, I'm sure.

"As much as I agree, Isabelle will kill me."

"She's already threatened your manhood once today, maybe getting dressed is a good idea."

He smiled again and moved his hands from my hair to my wrists, my hands were still at his neck. He removed my hands from him and took one step back. He looked me up and down ever so slowly. "Are—are those leather shorts?" He asked, eyebrows rising. I blushed in response. "Damn it," he closed his eyes and put one hand on his forehead, "why did I promise to wait until the wedding night?" I blushed deeper. "There's no way that I couldn't seduce you if I weren't such a good guy."

"Oh yes," I whispered sarcastically and mostly to myself, "you're the epitome of good guys." He chuckled and started to walk away. I ran up behind him and reached out for his hand.

"You know that I'm just going to change, right?" He asked, threading his fingers in between mine.

"Yeah, but I don't have anything to do. Are you uncomfortable with me seeing your body?" I teased.

"I can tell you with absolute certainty that no, I am not uncomfortable with you seeing my bronzed beauty."

"That's what I thought," I said. When he opened the door, he told me that he was going to have a shower and he'd be right out. I had the strange inclination to follow him and watch, which was probably because he, Izzy, and Magnus were rubbing off on me. So instead, I went to his bed and remade its neglected covers. The last time he had to make his bed was probably a month ago. I can't even remember the last time I slept alone, and the strange thing was that I didn't care that I was never alone. I never want to be alone, that was the thing, because not being by him made me uncomfortable, pretty simple and also pretty sad. After I made his white bed, I sat at the end of the bed and smoothed out the comforter under my hands. I looked up at Jace when he got out of the bathroom. He was in only a white towel again, which was closed haphazardly by the fist that clutched it. Seeing him like this got me every damn time. He looked up at me, moving his hair out of his eyes. I tweaked my finger at him and bit my lip. He tucked the towel tighter around his waist and walked forward, his bare feet padding softly against the white carpet. He leaned down over me, hands braced on the mattress.

He moved down, putting his lips on my ear and said, in a very low and husky voice, "What do you want, baby?" He looked at me with dark eyes and moved back in to take my earlobe between his teeth. I wrapped my hands around his upper arms.

"You're going to kill me with that sexy talk one day." He smiled and pushed me back on the bed, going down with me. His hand slipped up my thigh and fingered the edge of my shorts. "Jace, Isabelle will kill us both if you mess anything up."

"She should know that dressing you like this and telling me not to touch is going to make me want to break the rules even more than usual."

"She threatened to remove your- you know," I said, looking down at his towel and raising my eyebrows twice.

"Did she? Well, I think that we should put it to use while I still can."

I shot my eyes open wide and looked back up at him, his wet hair dripping on the white comforter under us. "Isabelle is going to expect us out any second and you're naked."

"I'm wearing a towel," he said.

"Yeah but that's still naked."

"If it makes you feel better, you're naked under those clothes too."

"Jace," I said, "put some clothes on."

"Come on," he said, rolling us over so that I was on top of him. His skin was still slightly damp, but not sticky like sweat, he felt fresh and soft. I laid my face down on his neck and closed m eyes. Even this late, it felt like sunshine was bursting through the room. Maybe it was the Shadowhunter's sunshine smell, in fact, I was willing to bet that it was. I straightened my elbows and hovered over him.

"You should get dressed now," I said. "We can do this later."

"You wore those shorts just to tease me, didn't you?" He rolled me off him and got up.

"You're lucky she didn't put me in a garter belt." He turned around from the dresser with wide eyes. "Yeah, I did just say garter belt. How's that picture for you?"

He raised his left eyebrow and smirked at me. "When did you get so dirty?"

"You can file your complaints later."

"You better leave the room before I can't handle myself anymore," he warned. "Also, if you want to shield your eyes from the blindingly humbling beauty that is my naked body, I suggest you either leave or look away."

"Really, beca—" I said, looking up at him and seeing him start to undo his towel. "Oh my." I turned around before I saw anything, though my eyes begged me not to. I sat with my legs crossed, and stared at the wall over his bed. "So, has Magnus scheduled the date for any wedding stuff that you know about?" I asked.

"He thinks that he's going to get me to go shopping for a tux or something all weekend," He said. I heard a lot rustling of drawers and fabric.

"All weekend?"

"That's what he told me."

"Can't we postpone the tux shopping?" I asked.

"I'll try but you know how Magnus gets."

"He hasn't even bothered me about the wedding dress yet."

And suddenly, his lips were at my ear. "I can't wait to see you in that wedding dress."

"Can I look at you now, or is your blindingly beautiful naked body going to turn me into some kind of hormonally saturated fangirl?"

"Well, you could, but I'm about to make you close your eyes," he said, hand winding in my hair and gently turning it up and to the side. His lips made forceful contact with mine, swallowing my gasp. His head was above mine, giving us an upside-down feeling kiss, his bottom lip between mine and my bottom lip between his. His tongue brushed against my mouth, begging for permission to enter. I opened my mouth as fast as I could, more than giving him consent.

"Open the damn door!" Izzy's voice, accompanied by several hard knocks, sounded. Jace ignored her, just kissed me more forcefully. I gripped at him with everything I had in me. "I swear on every pair of heels that I have, I will unlock this door with a rune. And Jace, if I find that you have your tongue in poor Clary's mouth, I will literally whip you."

"Isabelle, get the hell away from us," Jace yelled before crushing my lips again.

"We're going hunting! I expect both of you to look perfect and out in this hallway in thirty damn seconds!"

"Jace," I said in between kisses, "we should—should stop."

"Not a chance, baby."

"I have absolutely no doubt that she will kick that door down with her ten foot tall heels." He kissed me hard one more time and let go of every part of me that he was touching. I shot up off the bed and hurried to the mirror. Fixing the smudged lip products and the watered down eyeliner, I went back out and grabbed his hand.

"Isabelle, holster any weapons, we're opening the door," Jace called. He did as he said he would and raised his hands, including the one twined with mine. "I don't have any artillery in my hands."

"Oh, you're so clever," Izzy said. "Let's go." She strutted off, arms flowing as she walked. She looked like she was damn ready for a fight.

"She's so overly dramatic," Jace whispered, smirking.

"Shh," I said. He chuckled softly and started walking after Izzy.

"You know," he said, "that Spiderman style kiss, much better than I always pictured it to be."

"You've never kissed anyone upside down like that before? I have a hard time believing that."

"Nope."

"Glad to be your first, hope I didn't disappoint," I said.

He smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. "I hope I don't disappoint you."

"What do you—oh," I said, blushing when I realized what he was talking about. I looked down at our feet and crossed my arms over my chest.

"Yeah," he said, looking up and away from me. He stuck his hands in his pockets and balled them into fists. He put his walls up again, like he didn't mean to have said that out loud, and started to grind his teeth.

"Jace," I said.

He didn't respond.

"Hey," I said in the softest voice I could. When he looked up, I smiled at him. "You won't, I promise you won't."

"You don't know that."

I walked in front of him and stopped him from walking, looking up in his eyes. I grabbed his face to get him to look at me. "You know I love you, right?" He nodded. "Do you love me?" He nodded again. "So everything will be fine. You'll be fine, I'll be fine, it'll be fine. I won't be disappointed because I love you. So don't be worried, okay?"

"Okay," he said, nodding.

"Okay," I smiled. "Now let's go kick some demon ass." He smiled and leaned down to kiss me quickly.

Magnus was already at the elevator, hand-in-hand with Alec. Rose was pacing there too. Izzy had her foot braced with on the wall.

"Well, didn't you two take your damn sweet time getting here?" Rose asked, slamming her fist into the call button. The elevator screeched up and everyone filed in.

The line for Pandemonium was larger than usual, every time we went it seemed to get larger. The strobe lights and music assaulted my senses, accompanied by the ever-present stench of sweat and alcohol. Some guy walked up on stage, turning on the microphone. He announced the band and walked off to the left. Every stage light came on with the first blasting shred of the guitar, before turning off again. Green laser lights started spinning, throwing the room into some eerie kind of flashing. I looked through the crowd for a moment, searching for something, anything, that would be a threat. When I didn't see one, I went over to the bar, Jace on my heels.

I pulled him down so my lips were at his ear, trying to blend in with the sex-crazed dancers. "Do you see anyone?" I asked.

"Not yet, they'll come," he said, grasping the bar grimly with one hand. I turned my head back and called for the bartender. When she came over, Jace and I ordered. I scanned the crowd again, biting my lip in frustration. "They'll come," Jace repeated. The bartender came back with our drinks and looked at Jace, nodding and throwing her eyes at the throng of dancers. She locked eyes with him again and nodded to the left. She mouthed the word 'there' at him and turned back to the awaiting costumers.

I immediately looked to where she'd indicated and saw a man with jet-black hair staring at us. I curled my lips back into a seductive smile at it. It smiled back and looked at Jace, who was still facing me. He knew that I was looking at the demon and he was clenching his jaw. I took a swig of my drink and touched Jace's chest, shoving him like I didn't want him. He knew that this was just so the demon could think that I wanted it instead of Jace, but that didn't make him look like he wanted to choke the damn thing any less. I made my way over to the thing while Jace was surely looking like it just cock-blocked him. We'd planned for this, and now that it was happening, I had absolutely nothing but confidence. I made my way over to it and smiled up, gnawing on my lower lip like I was trying to keep myself from jumping on the demon. It licked its lips and shoved the jet-black, eye-length, shaggy hair from its face.

"Hi there," it purred.

"You wanna dance?" I asked.

"I wanna do everything with you."

"Is that so?" I pretended to be turned on by that. Really, the only way that I could was by pretending that it was Jace saying it.

"You don't have a clue." It grabbed my hand and led me to the packed dance floor. I imitated wanting to be close to it and danced just as secure as it wanted me to. After about three songs, it told me to follow it. I nodded knowingly and trailed behind it as it led me through the back door to the alleyway. It was a pretty large alley, about fifteen feet in width, and the tall buildings on either side had rickety and rusty fire escapes coming halfway down before the ladders stopped. There were poles coming off in odd places made to support awnings, dumpsters on the outside of padlocked doors, smoke and steam billowing out of subway grates and pipes coming out of buildings, with a small amount of yellow light spewing lanterns, most of which were broken and blown out. Litter scattered the revoltingly dirty ground, keeping company with the glass and cigarette butts. Various tags and words were graffitied on the walls of the two basements. Music drifted from the club and the restaurant that was on the bottom of the apartments next to Pandemonium. The lines to get into both buildings were on the other side of them, leaving the alley and everything near it deserted.

The demon stared at me with its dark gray eyes, circling me where I stood in the middle of the alley. I watched it over my shoulder, smiling like I was getting ready to do anything it wanted.

"Aren't you beautiful?" It asked, breath buzzing over my neck and causing goose bumps to rise from disgust.

"I could say the same about you, baby," I purred.

It chuckled lowly and continued its circling. It looked like a shark monitoring for its prey. As if I'd be prey for its little game. How any mundane could fall for this, I didn't know. But I sure wasn't going to be the pretty little kill. I only needed to play victim until the rest of them got out here. So I egged it on.

"Why are you circling, baby? I'll show you everything you want to see, all you have to do is ask."

It laughed again, deep and threatening laughs. "Did you hear that?" It called loudly. "Our little snack is a feisty one." I heard more laughs and felt icy stabs deep in the pit of my stomach. More demons walked out. I counted them quickly in my head, thirteen, more than double the amount on my team of fighters. They all stared at me like I was some kind of personal choice of food. I was worried and, as any mundane would, I made myself look as scared as I could. I raised my heart and breathing rate, as Jace taught me to do in the first two days of training. A few more cackles rose from some of them. The original demon was at my ear again, laughing and moving my straight red hair off of my neck.

"You still want to play?" It whispered. "You don't mind if a few of my friends join in, do you?"

"What's going on?" I pretended to be confused.

"Midnight snack," it said. I could see him out of the corner of my eyes. At that moment, smelling its rotten breath, I heard something. A door was kicked open and out came Jace. Behind that golden fighter was the rest of the group. He saw the demon's hands on me and had a look of pure rage glint in his eyes. The demon, obviously caught off guard, dropped every contact it had on me. I watched Jace flash his eyes over every demon in less than a second, counting them, when he was done, he looked back at me. The protective rage covered his eyes again and he had to swallow back the reaction I knew he wanted to use: to rip every head off every demon there for wanting to even look at me. I stared harder into his eyes and made him focus on me. With an almost imperceptible nod from him, I moved my center of attention back to the demon. I took a breath, feeling its arm go around my neck and the other around my arms. When its grip tightened, I lifted my foot, kicking it into its shin and shoved it down to crush its foot with all of the strength I could put into it. It cried out and let go. I turned around, throwing a punch square into its jaw. It flew back into the wall and I felt pain shoot up my arm, like I'd just hit a cement wall. The other demons stared to move in towards me and I did a flawless back flip, landing in a crouch. They stopped in their tracks and turned around to see me. When one of them looked back to see what I assumed to be their leader, it was met with Jace's wrath-consumed face.
"Hi there," he said in his deep and angry voice. Before the demon could even look scared, Jace had thrown his fist into its stomach and grabbed its shoulder. It grunted in pain and Jace smiled, tightening his grip on its shoulder and flipping it, bringing it down on the ground harder and faster than I would have thought possible.

Before I had time to see everyone else spring into action, I felt searing pain in my arm. I was yanked around and towards a green haired demon. I was about to kick it back when it threw me hard against the adjacent building. I shook my head and gritted my teeth, shoving my elbow into the pressure point between its shoulder and neck. It fell to its knees and kicked out at me, landing me on my back, glass shearing through the jacket. It came on top of me, grabbing my shoulders and forcing me harder back.

"That all you got, sweetheart?" I taunted. I reached down to my thigh and whipped out the dagger faster than I would have thought possible. I grabbed its right forearm and stabbed the knife into its underarm, dislocating the shoulder and rendering the arm basically unusable. The ichor splashed out and hit my collarbone, scorching it. I kicked it off of me as it howled in pain. Flipping back onto my feet, I charged at the demon that was cornering Alec. I hit it full on in the side, sending it against the wall with a crippling force. It wiped at its mouth before launching its body at me. I flipped out of the way and jumped unintentionally next to Jace. He was fighting two demons with a smile and two seraph blades.

"Clare," he said, setting the seraph blade in my hand. "You've got this." He sprang at one of the demons that he was fighting and landed with his feet on its shoulders. They would have tumbled together if he didn't stab the demon through where the neck met the shoulders the second that his feet planted themselves on its body. The demon let out a strangled whimper before disappearing. Jace landed on his feet in a crouch and smiled at the victory. He turned his attention back to the other demon and sprang at him too, spinning in the air. My first impression of him was more accurate than I'd thought; he was a damn lion when he fought.

I turned my head and saw a demon charge toward me. I felt another's presence behind me. I had to make a split decision, jump or hit both at the same time. I jumped up and grabbed the pole that was ten feet above the ground. I shouted the name of the seraph blade and swung in a circle on the rod. I hit the back of one of the demons heads when I jumped off of the pole. I grabbed its neck and pulled backwards, shoving the blade into its outstretched spine. It screamed in agony before disappearing. I became aware of all of the rest of them, and with that came the awareness of all of my friends. Jace was battling three with a smirk, Rose was trying to stab at a much larger one, Izzy had her whip flinging at the one whose arm I'd dislocated, Alec was lying in the shadows unconscious, and Magnus was over him and trying to wake him up. I couldn't do anything for Alec and Magnus but worry. I had to focus on what I could do. Jace, though it literally chilled me to the bone to not be able to help him, was doing fine. Izzy was in some trouble, but not so much that she couldn't handle it. Rose was by far the most needy at this point. The demon had her locked up against the building, her feet dangling about a yard, her knife flying down at him and missing repeatedly.

When I was about to run and break the demon's teeth out of its thick skull, I saw the one that started all of this walk out of the shadows. Its eyes burned with intensity as it stared at me.

It pointed at me and caught the attention of all of the demons that weren't fighting. "Get the girl from the Seraph Set," he ordered. Two of the demons fighting Jace stopped and turned to look at me. After they stopped, the other seven useless pawns gawked at me. I backed up and touched the hilt of the hunting dagger that Jace had gotten me for my birthday. At first I was intimidated and even scared. I mean eight demons were just about to come at me and try to kill me. But the half-second long fear washed out and was replaced with clouded vision. Everything around me slowed a thousand times slower, and every color blended and clouded in my eyes before black suddenly swallowed me. With that black came a burning symbol: gold and swirling in interlocking loops, circles, and knots. It took me a moment to understand that I was creating a new rune. It must have been sparked by the fear that had briefly swallowed me mixed with the adrenaline that rushed through me faster than my blood. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd launched myself into the air and caught the railing to the old fire escape. I flipped over the rusted metal and addressed briefly in my mind that I'd just jumped approximately seventeen feet, but it didn't seem to be important at the moment. I reached into my inside jacket pocket and tore the stele out of the loop that held it. I ripped my stocking down and drew the rune with shocking speed onto my calf. I then looked down as the demons started to notice that I'd all but disappeared before them. I grabbed the railing again, fixed the stocking, and jumped back over it. Spiraling in the air and landing in a crouch, time started to come back to a normal speed. I heard a demon scream and saw Jace twist a knife into the wound that it sheared through the demon's chest. As he withdrew the knife, that demon, too, disappeared. I registered the wince that Jace surrendered as he stood, grabbing at his chest where his rib must have broken. I looked over to see Izzy fly across the alley and hit the wall. With a deafening crack, I heard her one bone of her left forearm split in two. She whimpered before passing out, probably from the blow to the head that the wall had dealt her. The demon that had Rose in his grasp must have been having fun because he was toying with her, letting her kick out at him uselessly.

I focused on all of the demons that were in front of me. The eight that there were became seven as Jace grabbed one by the shoulder and tore it away from the crowd. I felt the rune pulse as they stared at me, confused about how I appeared to have vanished before. The demon on Rose threw her to the other wall and charged forward. She was bruised and looked to be in more pain than I'd seen anyone today in. I didn't know why the demon was trying to hurt her, not kill her. The demon that Jace was fighting tried to get a punch into Jace's jaw. Jace bent and grabbed the demon's ankle, flipping it and making it hit the ground with a loud crack as the pavement gave way under it. Rose looked like she had several things broken or sprained as she was lying there, making a tremendous effort to keep breathing. Magnus stopped focusing his attention on Alec and looked up as the demon made its slow way to Rose's broken down and seemingly comatose shape. He pointed a tired finger at the demon, sending a tremendous amount of red lightning-bolt-shaped magic at him. The demon collapsed to the ground, convulsing before disappearing. Magnus blew a sigh of relief as he collapsed on Alec's unmoving form. This left Jace, me, the eight demons that were still breathing, and the leader demon that lounged against the graffiti on Pandemonium's wall. The demon on Jace seemed to be having the upper hand due to Jace's concern for me. He kept looking over at me, like he thought that every time would be the last.

The demons in front of me still didn't move. "Come on," I said to them. "Come at me."

A few of them smiled before the first two charged. I kicked out at them, connecting my foot to one's chest and blowing it back to the crowd. It flew back at me, accompanied by two others. I was about to stab one through the chest when I heard a sound that made me freeze completely.

It was Jace. He was screaming in pain. His knife was two feet away from him. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. The demon he had been fighting joined the pack that charged at me. There were now eight coming at me at one time. In my lapse of focus, they had pinned me up against a wall, two feet off the ground. One demon had both hands on my left arm, another set on my right. And Jace looked at me, with those damn golden eyes. He looked furious, furious and afraid. Deathly afraid. My chest heaved with painful breaths. And I looked into the eyes of the leader as it made its way to me.

"And the famous Clarissa Morgenstern falls. I never thought that it would be so easy to take the Seraph Set. Master will be very happy," it said. The grips on my arms tightened, scraping them against the brick they were pushed into. "When you're done with her, take care of the unconscious Herondale. This is the day that the Seraph girl falls." It started to walk away but stopped and turned when it saw the light. Its eyes grew very wide and its jaw fell slack. It stared with certain disbelief as I uncurled my fists to make the light shine brighter.

"Wrong," I said. I spread my fingers as wide as they could go, unleashing the circles of blue light that was in the middle of my palms. I looked the leader straight in the eyes and locked the joints in my fingers like talons. Fire shot with more force than anything had that night. My hands didn't feel warm as they shot the fire out of my palms like water out of a faucet on full blast. I screamed with effort to keep the fire going faster and pressed my eyes shut as hard as I could. When I opened my eyes, every demon was gone, dead, without a sound. I was on my feet, circles of light still on my palms, waiting for the next demand to spray flames. I stared at the blue light for a moment before shaking my hands once, extinguishing the light. When I looked up, I saw Jace writhing in pain, eyes still looking at me, which must have taken more effort than it should have.

I ran to him as fast as I could push my exhausted legs. "What's wrong?" I asked, panicked. "Where does it hurt?"

He opened his mouth and his voice was quieter than I'd ever seen. "Ribs, right leg," he said. "Iratze, please, iratze." He continued to wince as I had to cut his shirt off of his frame. As the fabric fell away, I saw the black, blue, and bloody spots on his torso. One of the broken tips of his rib had pushed through his lower chest. I tried not to gag and took out my stele. "How bad?" He asked, wincing and breathing shallowly.

"It could be worse," I said, pressing the stele to the bloody skin. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and gripped at the side of my jacket as I traced the iratze on and his bone went back down in his body, the flesh mending and blending itself back together. I then noticed the pain in my arms. They were bruised and the skin was partly rubbed away, causing it to bleed in spread out places. I went down and gently pulled up the loose right leg of Jace's jeans, soaking parts of them with my own blood. I saw how swollen and bruised it was. It had to be badly broken. I put an iratze there, and when it didn't fully mend everything, I drew another. I stared at his face as the runes worked on him. I pushed the sweaty hair off of his face and wiped the blood off of his lip with my thumb. He stopped wincing and looked up at me. I shushed him when he tried to speak, telling him that I had to fix the others and that he should rest. I got up and looked at poor Izzy. I could feel the blood drip down my arms and off my fingertips as I made my way over to her. She was lying crumpled and broken against the wall. I moved her from it and examined her. Her arm was obviously broken, I'd heard the pop myself, and she had blood coming from her head, soaking and matting her black hair. I knew head wounds bled a great deal but this, this was a lot. I winced at the thought of the migraine she'd have later. I moved her hair from her neck and put an iratze there, doing the same to her arm.

Jace could get up then, and he walked over to me. I knew he was going to ask about the hand-light thing. I mean, I'd want to know how my fiancée just started spouting flames out of her hands. It made sense. But right now, with everything that just happened, I didn't have time to explain. He went over and rolled Magnus off of Alec's unmoving shape. I walked over to the three boys and stared as Jace pulled Alec's head onto his legs, examining his parabatai's body for where the injury was. After tracing an iratze on Alec's palm, hoping that it would help wherever the boy was hurt, he looked up at me.

"What do we do about Magnus?" He asked in a monotone voice, like he didn't know what else to say, what else to do. I looked up into the familiar gold eyes before looking at my palms. They glowed slightly, suggesting that I do exactly what I knew I could do to help him. I moved Magnus so that he was lying with his legs shoulder width apart and his arms away from his torso. I told Jace to unbutton his shirt and stand. As I stared down at my hands, they glowed for a moment again. I shook them once, eliciting a heavy shine from the circles. I turned my back to Jace and Magnus, putting my hands parallel to the ground, and flexed my arms like I thought I should. Nothing happened. So I squatted, placed them flush against the pavement, leaned forward on them, and flexed again. A shock flowed through my arms and made the pavement glow for a moment. I smiled, knowing exactly what I had to do.

I turned around and put my hands on Magnus' bare chest. Leaning forward and pushing down slightly, I flexed my arms and saw light flow between my fingers. His back arched involuntarily, and blue light flowed across his skin like a shockwave. His green cat eyes flew open and he stared up at me curiously.

"What happened?" He asked, oblivious.

"I woke you up."

"First portals, now this? You're stealing all of the fun things that only warlocks can do!" He said.

"Clary," Jace said seriously, looking me in the eyes, "what did that rune do?"

"I think I just showed you." I put my hands up, showing the both of them the light that poured out of them. Jace stepped over Magnus and crouched down next to me, taking my hands and laying them open in his. He moved his left hand over my right slowly, studying the hand I was sure he already had memorized. He stopped on the outskirt of the light circle, looking in my eyes.

"You can touch them," I whispered, looking at the circles briefly, "at least, I think you can."

He nodded and brushed his fingertips over the light. I didn't notice a difference in his touch; it felt like normal.

He looked up puzzled. "Nothing's different. It just feels like your hand."

"That would be because," Magnus said, "it is her hand. The light hasn't changed anything. In fact, I'd be surprised if it were really there, it could just be a perception of the rune."

"But I drew this on my leg," I said, showing him the pattern.

He stared at it with concentrated interest. He looked up at me. "You saw this during the fight?"

I nodded, feeling Jace's fingers trace the rune.

"What did you touch when you saw it?" Magnus asked very slowly, like he was asking a question that would change the meaning of his life forever.

I went back over the fight, trying to remember. Then it hit me. "The hunting dagger that Jace got me for my birthday."

Magnus looked at me very seriously. "Are you absolutely sure?" He asked.

I nodded, worrying about what he was so worked up about.

He looked at Jace and said, "Where did that dagger come from?"

"I don't know, Idris? They told me it was my mother's. They found it somewhere," he said, looking confused.

"Who is they?" Magnus asked.

"My parents' old friends. They gave it to Amatis recently and she told me about it when I spoke to her about Clary's birthday."

"This is very, very important, Jace, you have to understand and think exceptionally hard about this." Jace nodded. "Okay," Magnus said, "Who had the dagger before Amatis?"

Jace furrowed his brows and moved his eyes around the pavement, like he thought the answer was encased in it. He looked up at Magnus, worried. "I have no idea. She didn't tell me that."

Magnus looked between us nervously before glancing at the fading rune on my leg. "Can you do anything else with that?" He nodded to the light in my hands.

"I don't know, maybe? I can't do anything unless the idea comes to mind," I said.

"Can you extinguish them?" He asked. I nodded and shook my hands once, making the light flicker before going out, like a candle. "Perfect," he said. We heard a pain-filled whimper and looked behind us. Rose was black, blue, and dripping slightly with blood. "I'll get her," Magnus said. "Jace, take care of Clary's arms, they're raw and they're making her lose a lot of blood."

Jace nodded and watched Magnus walk over to Rose's limp body. He took my stele off the ground and pressed it to my upper arm where there wasn't any torn skin or blood. He put an iratze on both of my arms and watched the skin rope itself back together, repairing it all without trouble. He looked up into my eyes with such a worried look that it made my breath catch.

"What's wrong?" I whispered.

He leaned forward and hugged me with everything he had in him. I buried my face in his shoulder and breathed him in, something I had worried that I wouldn't be able to do again during that fight. "I'm so sorry," he breathed into my hair.

"About what?" I asked.

"If I hadn't come to that damned coffee shop that day when Erik was reading his poetry, you wouldn't have almost died tonight. All of this was my fault and I can't bring myself to feel bad about finding you."

I pulled back, put my hands on either side of his face, and looked into that burning gold. "Never, ever, be sorry about coming to find me. Do you hear me? Never."

He looked into my eyes for a while before nodding. He leaned forward slowly, almost like he was embarrassed to initiate kiss. I molded myself into him and moved my lips against his. Angel, I was going to marry this man, and, after all that happened in our lives, he still wanted to marry me. I literally found nothing more incredible in the world than I did him. When he parted his lips from mine, and put his forehead on my forehead, I heard the tired sigh of a waking Shadowhunter. Alec sat up, looked around for a moment and cocked his head to the side.

"Fight's over," Jace said, moving his head away from mine. "You passed out about two minutes into it. And, like usual, Max could have done better." He smiled at Alec while the blue-eyed boy frowned at him.

"All you boys do is fight," Isabelle's voice said. I looked up to see her making her way over to us. "Will nothing ever change with you two?"

"Nope," they both answered in unison. I laughed with Izzy glared at them.

"I hate to kill your sibling buzz," Magnus called, "but we need to get Rose to the infirmary. Now."

We all looked up, panicked. Magnus stood, shirt still unbuttoned, with Rose's limp body in his arms. She looked even worse with the light of the dim lantern shining over her. Everyone stood fast and I ran over to her. I saw how the ends of her honey curls were damp with her own blood, saw the way her limbs were swollen in some places, saw the bruises that bloomed all over her body, splotching her light gold skin with color. But mostly, I saw where the ichor of a demon was mixing with hers, flowing together on an open wound. Iratzes don't help when ichor blood is in the wound.

The way back to the Institute was kind of a blur, all that I could remember was running as fast as I could, not enough time to catch a taxi. I remember pain shooting through me every time I moved my left shoulder and my back was stiff. But more than anything, I remember the elevator seeming to work faster than ever, like it knew that we were in distress. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it did know, what was normal about this place? The seemingly omniscient cat that sat always made its way through the Institute, bribing everyone into pets and treats every day, certainly wasn't normal. Church knew that something was wrong the moment the elevator doors opened because he was there in the hall, leading the way to the infirmary. When Magnus set Rose down on the bed, everyone stared at her.

He looked up at me and caught my attention. "Can you wake her up?" He asked.

I thought about that one. I could certainly try but I wasn't sure how. I only woke Magnus up because he already had magic coursing through him. I reached down and placed my hands on her décolleté, pushing for the light to come back. When nothing happened, I pulled my stocking down and looked for the rune. Bare, no scar or anything. Huh, I could have sworn it was on that leg. I checked the other one. Bare, no score or anything.

"Magnus…" I said.

"What, what's wrong?"

"The… The rune is gone."

"Just trace over the scar," he said.

"No, I mean it's gone. Like, gone-gone. There is no scar to trace."

"Don't you remember it?" he asked, clinging to his last shred of hope.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I could have beaten my head against the wall in frustration, actually, I considered it. I opened my eyes and looked into the green of his. "It's gone," I whispered.

He stared at Rose for a moment, looking as if he was trying to decide something. "Somebody call Maryse and then go get some sleep. It's gonna be a bumpy ride." And with that, Izzy went off to call her mother and he sent Jace and me home to my apartment. Like we weren't supposed to think about Rose, like we were supposed to be able to sleep, like everything was normal. Did he think anything could be normal now?

Thank you for your review.

-KelseyDockry