Page 103 of Better in Black
Jace looked at her with concern. It was strange, Clary thought, how eventually people started to switch places with their parents; once Maryse had worried about Jace, and now he worried about her. “Should I call Alec and Izzy? Family meeting?”
Maryse shook her head. “There really isn’t anything they could do. I already feel bad enough for botheringyou.”
“We’re not bothered. We’d love to help,” said Clary. “Did something happen with Kadir?”
“No. Kadir and I are fine.” Maryse looked down at the gold ringin her hand. She said, “You know I had a brother. Well, have. Hopefully.”
“Max,” Jace said softly. Clary was confused for a moment, because Max wasJace’sbrother, the little boy she’d gotten to know only briefly before he died.
And then Clary remembered. Maryse had an older brother, Max Trueblood. He’d fallen in love with a mundane, back when Maryse was a teenager. Which, according to Shadowhunter law, was forbidden. Choosing to be with a mundane meant exile. Max Trueblood had had his Marks stripped, and been forced to give up all contact with the Shadow World. Which included his sister.
Maryse had never spoken about him before.
“I was always grateful Robert agreed to name our son after my brother,” said Maryse. “There was gossip in the Clave about it. Why I wanted to memorialize someone who’d been a disgrace.”
“That’s horrible,” said Clary.
“It was the way people thought, back when it happened,” Maryse said. “For years after he left, I almost managed to forget I ever had a brother.”
“When’s the last time you spoke to him?” Jace asked.
“The day he was exiled,” Maryse said.
Most of this world had become normal to Clary, but the Shadowhunters’ determination to live by their code of ancient rules, no matter how cruel, would never stop being strange.Sed lex, dura lex,of course. But why did the Law always have to be sodura?
Maryse sighed. “This afternoon—I was thinking about your wedding. I know, it isn’t planned yet, but I remember when Alec got married, and seeing him up there with Magnus, I thought,Max should be here. He should be watching his nephew get married.And now—there’s another chance. So I sent him a fire-message.”
Jace raised his eyebrows. “You sent a fire-message to a mundane?”
Maryse flushed. “I know—ridiculous. Not to mention forbidden, even if the rules about these things are a little more…flexible these days.”
It was true that now that the Clave had been cleaved in two, those who remained outside Idris had discovered the consequences of fanatical adherence to tradition. Many had begun questioning the rigidity of their Law. Or at least looking the other way when duty collided with humanity.
“So what happened?” Clary said.
“The message wouldn’t burn. No matter what I did. I ended up crumpling it and tossing it out.” Maryse sighed. “I thought, just maybe, Max was still enough of a Shadowhunter that it would work. And I couldn’t think of any other way. I don’t know what name he lives under. I don’t even know”—her voice caught—“ifhe’s alive.”
Jace cocked his head to the side. “Do you think he’dwantto come to a Shadowhunter wedding?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but—I find myself thinking about him more and more. For years, the loss of him was a sort of dull pain, a constant that could easily be ignored. And when big things happened—when Alec and Izzy and Max were born, or when we took you in, Jace—the pain would flare up again.Max should be here. Max should see this.” Maryse bit her lip. There was more gray in her hair now than there had been when they’d first met, Clary thought. She hadn’t noticed until now. “And when it did hurt, I’d just tell myself: He was the one who chose to leave. He picked a mundane over his own family. Over me. I was furious about that, for a very long time.”
Maryse gazed unseeingly at the window as Clary struggled tothink of what to say. She’d had a brother once, herself. Sebastian. Not a brother she’d loved, and yet she’d mourned when he died, mourned the person he’d never really been. Even the idea of family was powerful: She knew that in her soul.
“And then, at Alec’s wedding, I realized—Alec also had chosen to love someone the Clave didn’t approve of. Years ago, he could have been exiled for it. Would I have turned my back on him, as I did with Max?” Her voice tightened, as if she were fighting back tears. “I was so brainwashed back then—by Valentine, by the Clave, even—that I couldn’t see that the choice to be apart wasn’t just Max’s. It was mine too.”
Jace reached out and laid his hand over Maryse’s. “You were only a kid,” he said. “You believed what you were told. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s been a slow realization,” Maryse said. “Of understanding that my anger was gone. That I just wanted my brother.” She sighed. “And if I feel that way…imagine how he must feel, alone all these years, thinking his family hates him. Or that we’ve forgotten him. I want him to know we haven’t. You’re getting married, Isabelle’s getting married—I just wanted him to know. And that he’s welcome to attend. If he even wants to.”
“I’m sure he would,” Clary said.
“I’m not,” Maryse said, a bitter edge to her voice. “He’s been shut out for decades. By the Clave, byme.Even if Icouldfind him, he’d probably want nothing to do with me.”
“That can’t be true,” Clary said. “He’s your brother. There must be a way to let him know you miss him. That he’s got a whole family he could come home to.”
She waited for Jace to agree, but he was quiet beside her.
“It’s impossible anyway. There’s no way to track him down,if he’s even alive.” Maryse laid the Trueblood ring down on a side table with a lightclink.“I’d better get home. Kadir will be worried.”
