Through Blood, Through Fire Read online

  But they were not the only ones looking. They arrived, again, too late. The house was a ruin of blood and ichor, Mantid demons wreaking bloody destruction in desperate battle with—Tessa’s eyes widened—Emma Carstairs? There was no time to ask questions, not with the insectoid demons swarming angrily in search of warm-blooded prey. The Riders of Mannan would never have sent demons to do this job, but after what Tessa had learned about Rook, she supposed it was no surprise he had more than one enemy to worry about. Though perhaps his worries were at an end: the ruined body lying in a pool of blood was surely Johnny Rook’s. As she launched into action, slicing a razored foreleg, spearing a bulging eyestalk—she spared a moment of sorrow for Rosemary, who had died so desperately hoping that her husband would live.

  But all was not lost. Because there, miraculously alive despite the swarm of ravening Mantids, was the treasure Rosemary had sacrificed everything to protect: her son. As Emma and Jem waged fierce battle against the remaining demons, Tessa approached the boy. She thought she would have recognized him anywhere—not just from Rosemary’s memories of her child as a toddler, but from Tessa’s own memories of her children and grandchildren, her memories of Will. The determination in his blue eyes, the fierce, graceful way he held himself in the face of danger—there was no doubt, this was a Herondale.

  She introduced herself. He said nothing. He was so young, and trying so hard to look brave. She honored this effort, speaking to him as a man, rather than a child needing her care. “Get up, Christopher.”

  He didn’t move, his gaze straying toward—then quickly away from—the body. The boy’s jeans were coated in blood, and Tessa wondered if it belonged to his father.

  “My father, he . . .” His voice trembled.

  “You must grieve later,” Tessa told him. He was, by blood if not by training, a warrior. She knew his strength better than he knew it himself. “Right now you are in great danger. More of those things may come, and worse things as well.”

  “Are you a Shadowhunter?”

  She flinched at the disgust in his voice.

  “I am not,” she said. “But—” Rosemary had tried so hard to keep this from him. Had sacrificed everything so he could live in ignorance of the darkness surrounding him. That life was over now, that lie was dead, and Tessa would be the one to deal it the final, fatal blow. “But you are.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. She extended a hand. “Come now. On your feet, Christopher Herondale. We’ve been looking for you a long time.”

  Jem gazed out at a picture-perfect landscape—white crests on a sun-dappled sea, the peaks of the palisades poking at a storybook blue sky, and beside him, Tessa Gray, the love of his many lifetimes—and tried to ascertain why he felt so uneasy. Christopher Herondale, or Kit, as he preferred to be called, was safely under the protection of the LA Institute. Jem and Tessa hadn’t failed Rosemary, not entirely—they’d lost her, but saved her son. Returned a lost Herondale to the Shadowhunter world, where, hopefully, he would find a new home. He and Tessa would soon part—she’d been summoned to the Spiral Labyrinth to look into some troubling reports of illness in the warlock community, while Jem went in search of Malcolm Fade’s body and the Black Volume of the Dead. He had a feeling that what Fade had begun here in Los Angeles was only the beginning of a graver danger. All of these were ample reasons to feel uneasy, but that wasn’t it.

  It was Tessa, who was still holding herself at some remove from him, as if there was something she couldn’t bear for him to know.

  “This place,” Tessa said, sounding troubled. Jem put an arm around her shoulders, held her close. These felt like stolen moments together, before they turned to their respective missions. He breathed her in, trying to memorize the feel of her, already preparing for her absence. “There’s something so familiar about it,” Tessa said.

  “But you’ve never been here before?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s . . . it’s more like something I saw in a dream.”

  “Was I there with you?”

  Tess’s smile had an unmistakable trace of sorrow. “You’re always in my dreams.”

  “What’s wrong?” Jem said. “Is it Rosemary? I can’t help but feel her death is on my shoulders.”

  “No!” Tessa insisted. “We did everything we could for her. We’re still doing everything we can—Kit is safe, for the moment, and hopefully the Riders of Mannan still have no idea he exists. Maybe the Unseelie Court will consider their job done.”

  “Maybe,” Jem said, dubiously. They both knew it was unlikely to end here, but at least they’d bought Kit some time. “I wish we could do more for him. No child should have to see his father murdered.”

  Tessa took his hand. She knew exactly what Jem was thinking about—not just all the orphans scattered through the Shadowhunter world who’d watched their parents cut down in the Dark War, but his own parents, tortured and killed before his eyes. Jem had told no one but Tessa and Will the full horror he’d endured at the hands of that demon, and telling the story even once was almost more than he could stand.

  “He’s in good hands,” Tessa assured him. “He’s got a Carstairs by his side. Emma will help him find a new family, as we did with Charlotte, Henry, and Will.”

  “And each other,” Jem said.

  “And each other.”

  “It won’t be a replacement for what he’s lost, though.”

  “No. But you can never replace what you’ve lost, can you?” Tessa said. “You can only find new love to fill the void left behind.”

  As always, the memory of Will sat between them, his absence a presence.

  “We both learned that lesson too young,” Jem said, “but I suppose everyone learns it eventually. Loss is what it means to be human.”

  Tessa started to say something—then burst into tears. Jem wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight against the wracking sobs. Smoothed her hair, rubbed her back, waited for the storm to pass. Her pain was his pain, even when he didn’t understand its source. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m with you.”

  Tessa took a deep, shuddering breath, then met his gaze.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You can tell me anything.”

  “It’s . . . it’s you.” She touched his face, gently. “You’re with me, now, but you won’t always be. That’s what it means to be human, like you said. Eventually I’ll lose you. Because you’re mortal, and I’m . . . me.”

  “Tessa . . .” There were no words to say what he needed to say, that his love for her stretched beyond time, beyond death, that he had spent too much time these last few days imagining his own world without her, that even unfathomable loss could be survived, that they would love each other for as long as they could—so instead, he held her, tight, let her feel his arms sturdy and sure around her, physical evidence: I am here.

  “Why now?” he asked gently. “Is it something Brother Enoch said?”

  “Maybe I didn’t realize how much I’d shut myself away from humanity all those years in the Spiral Labyrinth,” she admitted. “You fought in the War, you saw so much violence, so much death, but I was hiding—”

  “You were fighting,” Jem corrected her. “In your way, which was as essential as mine.”

  “I was fighting. But I was also hiding. I didn’t want to be fully in the world until you could be there too. And now, I suppose, I’m waking up to being fully human again. Which is terrifying, especially now.”

  “Tessa, why now?” he said again, alarm growing. What could Brother Enoch have told her to send her into this kind of spiraling panic?

  Tessa took his palm and pressed it flat against her stomach. “The reason I had so much trouble Changing back to myself is that I’m not only myself right now.”

  “You mean . . .?” He was almost afraid to hope.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Really?” He felt like a l
ive wire, the idea of it, a baby, lighting his synapses on fire. He had never let himself hope for this, because he knew better than anyone how difficult it had been for Tessa, watching her children age as she did not. She had been a wonderful mother, she had loved being a mother, but he knew what it had cost her. He’d always assumed she would never want to endure that again.

  “Really. Diapers, strollers, playdates with Magnus and Alec, assuming we can persuade Magnus to wait a few years before he starts training our child to blow things up, the whole nine yards. So . . . what do you think?”

  Jem felt like his heart would burst. “I’m happy. I’m—happy doesn’t even begin to cover it. But you . . .” He examined her expression, carefully. He knew her face better than his own, could read it like one of Tessa’s beloved books, and he read, now: terror, longing, sorrow, and most of all, joy. “You’re happy too?”

  “I didn’t think I could ever feel this way again,” Tessa said. “There was a time when I thought there was no more joy left to me. And now . . .” Her smile blazed like the sun. “Why do you look so surprised?”

  He didn’t know how to say it without hurting her, making the pain fresh again by reminding her of her loss—but of course, she could read his face just as well as he could read hers. “Yes. I might lose them, someday. As I’ll lose you. I can’t bear the thought of it.”

  “Tessa—”

  “But we bear so much that seems unthinkable. The only truly unbearable burden is living without love. You taught me that.” She laced her fingers through his, squeezed tight. She was so unimaginably strong. “You and Will.”

  Jem cupped her face in his hands, felt her skin warm against his palms, and felt grateful all over again for the life that had been returned to him. “We’re having a child?”

  Tessa’s eyes shined. The tears had stopped, and in their wake was a look of fierce determination. Jem knew what it had cost her to lose Will, then to lose the family she’d built with him. Jem had lost a piece of himself when his parabatai died; Will’s absence had left behind a void that nothing could fill. There was, all these years later, still pain. But the pain was evidence of love, was a reminder of Will.

  It was easier not to feel. It was safer not to love. It was possible to make oneself silent and still as stone, to wall oneself off from the world and its losses, to empty one’s heart. It was possible, but it was not human.

  It was not worth losing the chance to love. He had learned this from the Silent Brotherhood, and before that, from Tessa. And before that, of course, from Will. They had both tried so hard to hide from the pain of future loss, to stay solitary, safe from the dangers of connection. They had failed so beautifully.

  “We’re having a child,” Tessa echoed him. “I hope you’re ready to give up sleep for a few years.”

  “Fortunately I’ve got plenty of practice at that,” he reminded her. “Less so when it comes to diapers.”

  “I hear they’re much improved since the last time I needed them,” Tessa said. “We’ll have to figure it out together. All of it.”

  “You’re sure?” Jem said. “You want to take all this on yourself again?”

  She smiled like Raphael’s Madonna. “The nappies, the sleepless nights, the endless crying, the love like you’ve never imagined was possible, like your heart is living on the outside of your body? The chaos and the fear and the pride and the chance to tuck someone in and read them to sleep? To do all of that with you? I couldn’t be more sure.”

  He took her in his arms then, imagining the life growing inside of her and the future they would have together, a family, more love to fill the absences left by those they’d lost, more love than either of them had ever imagined still possible. The future was so precarious, shadowed by a looming danger neither of them fully understood, and Jem wondered what kind of world his child would be born into. He thought of all the blood that had been shed these last few years, the growing sense among the Shadowhunters he knew that something dark was rising, that this Cold Peace after the war might be only the eerie calm at the eye of the hurricane, those still, silent moments in which it was possible to deceive yourself into imagining the worst was over.

  He and Tessa had been alive too long to deceive themselves, and he thought about what might happen to a child born at the eye of such a storm. He thought about Tessa, her will and her strength, her refusal to let loss after loss harden her against love, her refusal to hide any longer from the brutality of the mortal world, her determination to fight, to hold on.

  She too had been a child born of storms, he thought, as had he, as had Will. All three had risen in love through their struggles to find happiness—and without the struggle would the happiness have been so great?

  He closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to Tessa’s hair. Behind his lids he did not see darkness, but the light of a London morning and Will there, smiling at him. A new soul made of you and Tessa, Will said. I can hardly wait to meet such a paragon.

  “Do you see him, too?” Tessa whispered.

  “I see him,” Jem said, and he held her even more tightly against him, the new life they had created together between them.

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  About the Authors

  Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood traveling the world with her family. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old. Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on the eponymous Jane Austen short story (and from which she later took her current pen name).

  After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favorite city.

  In 2007, the first book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones, introduced the world to Shadowhunters. The Mortal Instruments concluded in 2014, and includes City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls, and City of Heavenly Fire. She also created a prequel series, inspired by A Tale of Two Cities and set in Victorian London. This series, The Infernal Devices, follows bookworm Tessa Gray as she discovers the London Institute in Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince, and Clockwork Princess.

  The sequel series to The Mortal Instruments, The Dark Artifices, where the Shadowhunters take on Los Angeles, began with Lady Midnight, continues with Lord of Shadows and will conclude with Queen of Air and Darkness.

  Other books in the Shadowhunters series include The Bane Chronicles, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and The Shadowhunter’s Codex.

  Her books have more than 36 million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Visit her at CassandraClare.com.

  Robin Wasserman is a graduate of Harvard University and the author of several successful novels for young adults including the Seven Deadly Sins series, Hacking Harvard, the Skinned trilogy, and The Book of Blood and Shadow, as well as Girls on Fire, her first novel for adults. A recent recipient of a MacDowell fellowship, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

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