“Sebastian’s afraid of you,” she said. “He played it off, especially at the end, but I could tell.”

“He’s afraid of the heavenly fire,” corrected Jace. “I don’t think he’s exactly sure what it does, any more than we are. One thing’s for certain, though—it doesn’t hurt him just to touch me.”

“No,” she said, without turning around to look at Jace. “Why did he kiss you?” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say, but she kept seeing it in her head, over and over, Sebastian with his bloody hand curling around the back of Jace’s neck, and then that strange and surprising kiss on the cheek.

She heard the creak of the leather sofa as Jace shifted his weight. “It was a sort of quote,” he said. “From the Bible. When Judas kissed Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It was a sign of his betrayal. He kissed him and said ‘Hail, master’ to him, and that was how the Romans knew who to arrest and crucify.”

“That was why he said ‘Ave, master,’ to you,” said Clary, realizing. “ ‘Hail, master.’ ”

“He meant he planned to be the instrument of my destruction. Clary, I—” She turned to look at Jace as he broke off. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, running a hand through his messy blond hair, his eyes fixed on the floor. “When I came into the room and saw you there, and him there, I wanted to kill him. I should have attacked him immediately, but I was afraid it was a trap. That if I moved toward you, either of you, he would find a way to kill you or hurt you. He’s always twisted everything I’ve ever done. He’s clever. Cleverer than Valentine. And I’ve never been—”

She waited, the only sound in the room the crackle and pop of the damp wood in the fireplace.

“I’ve never been afraid of anyone like this,” he finished, biting off the words as he spoke them.

Clary knew what it cost Jace to say it, how much of his life had been expertly hiding fear and pain and any perceived vulnerability. She wanted to say something in reply, something about how he shouldn’t be afraid, but she couldn’t. She was afraid as well, and she knew they both had good reason to be. There was no one in Idris who had better reason than they did to be terrified.

“He risked a lot, coming here,” Jace said. “He let the Clave know he can get in through the wards. They’ll try to shore them up again. It might work, it might not, but it’ll probably inconvenience him. He wanted to see you badly. Badly enough to make it worth the risk.”

“He still thinks he can convince me.”

“Clary.” Jace rose to his feet and moved toward her, his hand outstretched. “Are you—”

She flinched, away from his touch. Startled light flared in his golden eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He glanced down at his hands; the faint glow of the fire in his veins was visible. “The heavenly fire?”

“Not that,” she said.

“Then—”

“Sebastian. I should have told you before, but I just—I couldn’t.”

He didn’t move, just looked at her. “Clary, you can tell me anything; you know you can.”

She took a deep breath and stared into the fire, watching the flames—gold and green and sapphire blue—chase each other. “In November,” she said. “Before we came to the Burren, after you’d left the apartment, he realized I’d been spying. He crushed my ring, and then he—he hit me, pushed me through a glass table. Knocked me to the ground. I almost killed him then, almost shoved a piece of glass through his throat, but I realized that if I did, I’d be killing you, and so I couldn’t do it. And he was so delighted. He laughed and he shoved me down. He was pulling at my clothes and reciting pieces of the Song of Solomon, telling me about how brothers and sisters used to marry to keep royal bloodlines pure, how I belonged to him. Like I was a piece of monogrammed luggage with his name stamped on me. . . .”

Jace looked shocked in a way she had rarely seen him shocked; she could read the levels of his expression: hurt, fear, apprehension. “He . . . Did he . . . ?”

“Rape me?” she said, and the word was awful and ugly in the stillness of the room. “No. He didn’t. He . . . stopped.” Her voice fell to a whisper.

Jace was as white as a sheet. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but she could hear only the distorted echo of his voice, as if she were underwater again. She was shaking all over, violently, though it was warm in the room.

“Tonight,” she said, finally. “I couldn’t move, and he pushed me up against the wall, and I couldn’t get away, and I just—”

“I’ll kill him,” Jace said. Some color had washed back into his face, and he looked gray. “I’ll cut him into pieces. I’ll cut his hands off for touching you—”

“Jace,” Clary said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “We have a million reasons to want him dead. Besides,” she added with a mirthless laugh, “Isabelle already cut his hand off, and it didn’t work.”

Jace closed his hand into a fist, drew it up against his stomach, and dug it into his solar plexus as if he could cut off his own breath. “All that time I was connected to him, I thought I knew his mind, his desires, what he wanted. But I didn’t guess, I didn’t know. And you didn’t tell me.”

“This isn’t about you, Jace—”

“I know,” he said. “I know.” But his hand was so tightly fisted that it was white, the veins standing out in a stark topography across the back of it. “I know, and I don’t blame you for not telling me. What could I have done? How am I not completely useless here? I was just standing five feet from him, and I have fire in my veins that ought to be able to kill him, and I tried and it didn’t work. I couldn’t make it work.”

“Jace.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—you know me. I only have two reactions to bad news. Uncontrollable rage and then a sharp left turn into boiling self-hatred.”

She was silent. Above everything else she was tired, so tired. Telling him what Sebastian had done had been like lifting an impossible weight, and now all she wanted was to close her eyes and disappear into the darkness. She had been so angry for so long—anger always under the surface of everything. Whether she was shopping for presents with Simon or sitting in the park or alone at home trying to draw, the anger was always with her.

Jace was visibly struggling; he wasn’t trying to hide anything from her, at least, and she saw the quick flicker of emotions behind his eyes: rage, frustration, helplessness, guilt, and, finally, sadness. It was a surprisingly quiet sadness, for Jace, and when he spoke at last, his voice was surprisingly quiet too. “I just wish,” he said, not looking at her but at the floor, “that I could say the right thing, do the right thing, to make this easier for you. Whatever you want from me, I want to do it. I want to be there for you in whatever the right way is for you, Clary.”

“There,” she said softly.

He looked up. “What?”

“What you just said. That was perfect.”

He blinked. “Well, that’s good, because I’m not sure I have an encore in me. What part of it was perfect?”