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"You forget," said Lilith "I was there, Shadowhunter I watched you fall and die I watched Valentine weep over your body And then I watched as the Angel asked Clarissa what she desired of hi else, and she said you Thinking you could be the only people in the world who could have their dead loved one back, and that there would be no consequences That is what you thought, isn't it, both of you? Fools" Lilith spat "You love each other-anyone can see that, looking at you-that kind of love that can burn down the world or raise it up in glory No, she would never leave your side Not while she thought you were in danger" Her head jerked back, her hand shooting out, fingers curved into claws "There"

There was a screa Clary, who had been crouched, hiding, in the ed forward, her fingernails scraping the ground, seizing in vain for a purchase on sorip Her hands left bloody trails on the tiles

"No!" Jace started forward, then froze as Clary hipped up into the air, where she hovered, dangling in front of Lilith She was barefoot, her satin dress-now so torn and filthy it looked red and black rather than gold-swirling around her, one of her shoulder straps torn and dangling Her hair had co coreen eyes fixed on Lilith with hatred

"You bitch," she said

Jace's face was a mask of horror He really had believed it when he'd said Clary was gone, Siht she was safe But Lilith had been right And she was gloating now, her snake's eyes dancing as she asped in the air Lilith flicked her fingers, and what looked like the lash of a silver whip ca her dress open, and the skin under it She screamed and clutched at the wound, and her blood pattered down on the tiles like scarlet rain

"Clary" Jace whirled on Lilith "All right," he said He was pale now, his bravado gone; his hands, clenched into fists, hite at the knuckles "All right Let her go, and I'll do what you want-so will Simon We'll let you-"

"Let ed theled in the sockets of her eyes, her white skin was too stretched and shining, her mouth too wide Her nose had nearly vanished "You have no choice And more to the point, you have annoyed me All of you Perhaps if you had sio You will never knoill you?"

Sio of the stone pedestal, swayed, and steadied hi his feet down, one after the other, felt like heaving enors of packed wet sand down the side of a cliff Each tih his body He concentrated onforward, one step at a time

"Maybe I can't kill you," Lilith said to Jace "But I can torture her past the point of her endurance-torture her to s than death, Shadowhunter"

She flicked her fingers again, and the silver whip ca up a wide gash Clary buckled but didn't screa in on herself as if she could protect herself from Lilith

Jace started forward to throw hiazesin suspension, all of it, not just Clary Simon saw Lilith, all her attention focused on Clary, her hand drawn back, ready to deliver an even uish, his eyes darkening as they met Simon's-and he realized-and understood

Jace stepped back

The world blurred around Sis One, that it was impossible, he would never reach Lilith in ti forward, the air in front of her alive hirling silver And two, that he had never understood before quite how fast a vas, his back, tear, the bones in his feet and ankles crack-

And he was there, sliding between Lilith and Clary as the de, razored silver wire struck hi pain-and then the air see confetti, and Simon heard Clary screah the darkness "Simon!"

Lilith froze She stared fro in the air, and then down at her own hand, now eed breath

"Sevenfold," she whispered-and was abruptly cut off as a blinding incandescence lit up the night Dazed, all Si under the concentrated beaed down fro ainst the darkness, trapped within the blinding flame, her mouth open like a tunnel in a silent screaainst the darkness-and then she hite gold, beaten thin against the air-and then she was salt, a thousand crystalline granules of salt that rained down at Simon's feet with a dreadful sort of beauty

And then she was gone

Chapter 19

HELL IS SATISFIED

The uniinable brilliance printed on the back of Clary's eyelids faded into darkness A surprisingly long darkness that gave way slowly to an interht, blotched with shadows There was so into her back, and her whole body hurt She heard h her head Soently on the throat, and the hand ithdrawn She took a deep breath

Her whole body was throbbing She opened her eyes to slits, and looked around her, trying not toon the hard tiles of the rooftop garden, one of the paving stones digging into her back She had fallen to the ground when Lilith vanished, and was covered in cuts and bruises, her shoes were gone, her knees were bleeding, and her dress was slashed where Lilith had cut her with the h the rents in her silk dress

Si over her, his face anxious The Mark of Cain still gleamed whitely on his forehead "Her pulse is steady," he was saying, "but co runes Thereyou can do for her-"

"Not without a stele Lilith rab it from me when she woke up" The voice was Jace's, low and tense with suppressed anguish He knelt across from Simon, on her other side, his face in shadow "Can you carry her downstairs? If we can get her to the Institute-"

"You want me to carry her?" Simon sounded surprised; Clary didn't bla her" Jace stood up, as if he couldn't bear to remain in one place "If you could-"