Page 104 of Better in Black
She rose to her feet, picking up her coat, and headed for the door.
Impulsively, Clary called out to her. “Maryse, wait—”
Maryse paused in the doorway. Clary hesitated—she’d wanted to promise Maryse that they would find her brother, reunite the remaining Truebloods, assure Maryse that she wouldn’t have to sit through another wedding without her brother. But who was Clary to make a promise like that?
“What was he like, your brother?” she said, instead.
Maryse’s expression softened. When she smiled, Clary could see a trace of the little sister she’d once been. “He was my hero,” she said. “I wanted to be just like him. It’s why I took up the broadsword—that was his favorite weapon. When I was a kid, it was almost taller than me. I must have looked ridiculous. But I was determined. Max teased me, mercilessly. But he also told me I was going to grow up to be a fearless warrior.”
“He was right,” Jace said.
Maryse shrugged, turning away. “He never got to see it. By the time I mastered the broadsword, he was long gone.”
—
It had begun to rain, that soft October rain whose sound was muffled by a carpet of fallen leaves. Clary was sitting on her bed, her back against Jace’s chest, toying with her phone. Jace, behind her, was reading a book with one hand and idly stroking her hair with the other.
This is perfect happiness,Clary thought, as she often did in moments like this—quiet moments, when they weren’t running aroundsaving the world or dispatching demons. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being a Shadowhunter. She loved so many things about it. But life beyond the walls of the Institute had, in some ways, never felt so fraught. There was peace, in a way, but it felt more like paralysis. An intolerable wait for the next terrible thing to happen. But in their bedroom, Jace’s arms around her, it was impossible not to be at least a little happy. Even if that happiness had a slight flaw in it, like a fleck in amber.
Jace set his book down. He kissed the side of Clary’s neck, and she shivered a little, the way she always did at his touch. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.
“I was thinking that we have to help Maryse find her brother. Is that weird?”
Jace stopped kissing her neck. “Not as weird as you thinkingI’mthinking about my adoptive mom right now.”
Clary laughed. “Sorry. I just can’t stop worrying about her. She seemed so anguished.”
It wasn’t as if Clary had never thought about Maryse’s past before. Maryse and Robert had been Valentine’s loyal lieutenants in the Circle, alongside Luke and her mother. Somehow it was easy to imagine the headstrong teenagers that Luke and Jocelyn used to be. But Clary couldn’t picture Robert or Maryse as anything but adults. Cynical, tired adults who had been through a wringer, who had seen their adolescent idealism turn to poison, the leader they’d adored revealed as a purveyor of evil and lies.
“She’s lost so much these last few years,” Jace said. “She just doesn’t show it much.”
That was true. Maryse always did her best to make sure she was the last of anyone’s worries. Something all her children had also learned to master, in their own ways.
“You’ve lost a lot too,” Clary said.
“But I’ve gained so much.” Jace set his book aside. “And Isabelle found Simon. Alec has Magnus, the kids. When I met you, my life felt—confined. As if I were in a play with only a few characters. Now everything seems so muchbigger.”
Clary put her hand over Jace’s. “I know what you mean,” she said, and she did. A few years ago, she’d had her mother and Luke, she’d had Simon—and that was it. Her life now was overflowing with people to care about, people whose lives she would defend to the death, and sometimes had.
“I never thought about how Maryse might feel the opposite,” Jace said. Clary turned to look at him; his dark gold eyes had softened, lost in thought. “She lost Robert, she lost Max—our Maxandher Max. Her kids grew up and now we’re all making our own families. Maybe she feels like she’s losing us too?”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Clary said firmly. “And you know Maryse loves seeing her kids happy. She loves being a grandmother. She loves Kadir. Her life isn’t empty.”
Jace wound a lock of Clary’s hair around his finger. “You know, when I first came to the Institute, I was so determined not to get soft. I’d been taught that kindness was weakness. That love was poison. If Maryse had been more…motherly,I probably would have run away screaming. I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds true.” Jace so rarely talked about his childhood, especially those raw months right after Valentine had “died” and left Jace an orphan.
“Maryse didn’t try to get me to talk about my feelings. She just let me sit with them, and she sat with me. That was enough. But there was this one time, Isabelle was having a temper tantrum. Not an unusual occurrence, you can imagine.”
Clary laughed. Isabelle was known to have the occasional temper tantrum even now.
“Maryse gave me this kind of secret smile, like we were a team—like she was sayingwewould never put on such a display. She was right. And, deep down? I was jealous. I put so much effort into keeping my pain a secret and there was Isabelle just…letting it out.”
“Maybe Maryse was jealous too,” Clary said. “People who are good at asking for help usually get it.” She turned her body around so she was facing Jace. She ached to put her arms around him—not just him the way he was now, but as the lonely little boy taught that love was poison. “You know what we have to do now, right?”
He ran a finger along her collarbone. “I have some thoughts.”
“Remove your mind from the gutter for a moment,” said Clary. “We have to find Maryse’s brother, and bring him home.”
