Chapter 87 – My Oath to Live

--- Less than 1 day before the start of the war. ---

A wave of different emotions washed over me and for a moment I couldn't move. I didn't know if or what my face revealed. Jace was the first to break our silence and calmly closed the distance between us. He looked down at me, without coldness but also without warmth. "You're bleeding."

I raised my hand in surprise, only to have it stop halfway. I stared down at myself, but there was no blood, no wound, just my obsidian-black outfit.

"Here," Jace whispered into the faint wind, his fingers sliding to my neck. My breath caught in my throat. They came to a halt, hovering millimeters above the middle of my throat. Like the ghost of a touch, I could feel the itch in my nerves, waiting in vain for his contact.

My neck was actually bleeding, but barely noticeable. When I had ducked under the knife, the blade had grazed me without causing any real damage. I didn't even feel it. I was about to wave it off when Jace's left hand came to rest on my shoulder and cupped my neck. I sucked in a breath in surprise and watched as his stele moved to the same spot where he had applied an Iratze on the roof. Shortly afterwards, a hot tingling rushed through my veins, and I knew that the bleeding had stopped.

"Thank you," I breathed hoarsely, my voice rough with emotion. I gazed up at Jace, where his topaz-gold eyes were already waiting for me.

"Why is there always someone standing between us?" Jace asked so quietly that it seemed as if he was talking to himself instead of me. "Exactly when I just want to get to you, naturally."

"What are you talking about?"

Jace blinked and looked back down at me. His eyes cleared and that raw intensity that made my heart race returned to his expression. Instead of answering, his hands tightly wrapped around my waist and pulled me toward him with such force that our lips crashed together like bursting stars.

There was a pull coming from Jace. A pull so strong that for a moment I feared I would fall forward; fall into him as if he were made of nothing but the light of a supernova, the warmth of a sun, and the endlessness of a universe. My eyelids fluttered shut, and as soon as the racing beat of our hearts synchronized, I knew with the certainty of an unchanging compass that it was meant to be: He was the center of my being, and I was his. This pull was nothing other than the unbreakable bond that had brought us together and held us together. Because we belonged to each other like yin and yang, sun and moon, heaven and earth.

A kiss that meant nothing to this world but meant the world to me. A kiss that was irrelevant to the Earth's gravity but restored mine. A kiss that evaporated my anxieties and shoved me back into my orbit, where I belonged.

"I was wrong," Jace gasped in my ear, and my foggy brain had to strain to make sense of his oddly strung syllables. It felt as if we had left every reality behind us – bound together like binary galaxies, one indispensable to the other. "I overestimated my strength."

Our lips found each other again like magnets and suddenly I felt the cool brick wall of the house at my back; Jace's fingers anchored in an unbreakable grip on my waist. "I thought I could let you go for my own protection. To escape the pain if ..." His voice broke and he pulled away from me as a shudder tore through his body. The fear in his dilated pupils pumped adrenaline through my veins as if by itself – in the need to protect him from his fears. But a moment later he pressed himself against me again so forcefully that my lungs were deprived of all oxygen. "It didn't even take a whole day of your absence to break me."

My hands were wrapped tightly around Jace's neck, like a rope that would keep a ship from crashing on the rocks. Our feverish eyes, engrossed in nothing but each other, had a conversation of their own; telling each other of panic and pain and love and loneliness. "I don't want you to suffer, Jace. I couldn't live with myself if you stayed with me just because your love was greater than your self-preservation."

"What I asked of you was wrong. I would rather have a few days with you than not have you at all. I would rather watch you step in the way of an arrow, knowing that we enjoyed every second together before, than knowing that I pushed away every opportunity to ever hold you in my arms again, just because I was afraid of something that might not even happen."

I let Jace kiss me. His soft lips were a relief for my exhausted body. His familiar smell was a balm for my tired soul. His strengths were a perfection for my weaknesses. I knew he would catch me if I fell.

"I won't stand in the way of an arrow unless it's aimed at you," I replied with every ounce of firmness I could muster. The expression in his eyes flickered in surprise, as if he didn't know if he had heard correctly. "I won't save anyone's life anymore. Not even Isabelle's. That–"

"No." Jace's intervention was as unyielding as the swing of the Soul Sword. His grip on my body tightened and clarity blurred the dark passion in his golden irises. "I don't want you to feel forced to promise me anything. You will carry on exactly as you have because you are Clary Morgenstern. And Clary Morgenstern wouldn't let anyone put her in a cage, not even me."

"Isabelle and I have already decided," I said in an equally unyielding tone, contrasting with the gentleness with which my hand cupped his cheek. "No one is putting me in a cage, because this is war, and I release myself from my weaknesses. This war will be brutal and merciless and there will be no room for weaknesses. I won't let my father force me into the position of using my weaknesses to their advantage. You are the only weakness I allow myself and that is only because I would rather live a life of guilt than have no life at all. Because you are my life, Jace. So yes, the Archangel himself may be my witness when I swear that I won't sacrifice myself for anyone but you in this war, for I have already made enough sacrifices."

Jace kissed my hands. "I love you."

I kissed his lips. "And I love you."

oOo

The evening blurred before my eyes. The laughter of people and the lively music mixed into a static – distant and yet somehow so close, although Jace and I simply stayed by ourselves for a while and watched the colorful hustle and bustle of the party from the safe distance of the shadows.

I had no great desire to join the crowd. I had no desire to make new acquaintances. Firstly, because it put me under pressure to live up to a reputation that I could only live up to on the battlefield. Secondly, because it made me nervous to have conversations with young people my own age. Thirdly, because I didn't need to know yet more faces that would be killed at the hands of my family.

But eventually Isabelle's reprieve – which I hadn't even known existed – passed and she dragged me out of the shadows, so she had someone to have fun with. Before I lost sight of Jace's blond hair in the crowd and bright lights, he winked at me over his shoulder and made his way towards Alec. He was standing – who would have guessed – next to Magnus and didn't seem particularly motivated to be in the middle of all these people. At least judging by his bored expression and quite the opposite to Magnus, who was engrossed in a stimulating conversation with a vampire.

"... alcohol level is slowly wearing off and Adam is sticking to me like a limpet because he has no friends here," I heard Isabelle curse before she pushed me right next to the aforementioned Adam with one last shove. Our eyes met, his already clearly clouded again, and we both pressed our mouths together almost lazily. "I want to hook up with q guy and a sulking drunk who won't leave my side isn't exactly helpful!"

Adam spat out the drink he had just tried to swallow in a wide arc, and I barely managed to dodge out of the line of fire. Our eyes widened in unison, and I whirled around to Isabelle, who had just put her hands on her hips in response to her words and responded to our staring with an innocent shrug.

"That wasn't nice," I blurted out, not knowing what else to say. Part of me wanted to laugh, but the other part ... Sometimes Isabelle took her comments to the extreme.

"Sulking drunk is at least an improvement over scum," Adam finally remarked, eyeing his bottle absentmindedly.

"Oh, come on, guys." Isabelle threw her arms in the air in a gesture of truce. "Why are you two always so dramatic?" Then she forcefully snatched the bottle from Adam's hand, his confusion so obvious that he didn't even try to stop her. "Stop drinking that disgusting stuff and help yourself to the cool drinks, then you'll feel better too."

"And where exactly are the cool drinks?" I interrupted before she could give me an instruction, gesticulating air quotes with my fingers. The way Isabelle's lips pursed made it completely worth getting on her nerves. "And just for your information: you are just as dramatic as we are."

"Dramatic, my ass." She rolled her eyes like a mother who was absolutely fed up with her children. Then she hooked her arms between Adam and me, forcing us to follow her as she marched from the garden to the terrace of the estate. "I'm dramatic because the majority of my species consists of idiots. It's simply my way of coping with that fact, since drama keeps those idiots away from me."

There was nothing to say in response to that. So Adam and I let ourselves be dragged to the terrace, only to be greeted by a wide, fully stocked bar like something out of a movie – who knew where Isabelle had found it. A young werewolf in his mid-twenties stood behind the bar and grinned at Isabelle. At the same time, he shook the cocktail shaker in his hands with such intensity that it seemed as if he was about to throw it to the moon at any moment.

"Care for a drink?" the werewolf asked in a deep, raspy tone that could definitely give you goosebumps under the right circumstances. He had bronze-brown, shoulder-length hair tied up in a ponytail and wore a tight-fitting navy-blue shirt that showed off his muscles. A silver ring adorned his curved nose, and I couldn't help but stare at him.

Isabelle nodded animatedly, broke away from us and patted each of us on the shoulder. "This is Lyall. He knows exactly which drink suits you. Lyall, this are Clary and Adam. They desperately need a good drink."

"I would love to." A charismatic grin lifted the corner of Lyall's mouth as his silver-gray eyes met mine and he noticed my staring. "Clary Morgenstern." The way he said my name made me sit up and take notice, because it sounded playful and serious at the same time. But before I could wonder, he was already holding out his hand to me across the counter. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise," I replied a little too stiffly and shook his hand.

"You're staring," Isabelle murmured loudly enough for the others to hear.

"I–" But she was right, I literally stared. "It's just ..."

"The nose ring," Lyall finished my thought, his smile revealing a row of polished white teeth. I noticed that he didn't give Adam an ounce of attention, as if he didn't exist at all.

I nodded, grateful that he understood immediately. "It's not real silver, is it?"

In a move that reminded me strongly of pride, Lyall puffed out his chest and simultaneously began pouring a new liquid into his shaker. "Titanium," he clarified. "It irritates most people, don't worry. That's intentional."

"But why?" I asked, insensitive as I was, and realized at the same time how much I had changed since arriving in New York. A casual conversation with a werewolf, just shaking his hand in a friendly manner as if we were equals, would have been unthinkable for me back then. And now I asked one of them substantive questions, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Because it wasn't. Because he was just a werewolf, and I was curious. Because we were equals.

"Werewolves can't tolerate silver. So how ironic to wear a nose ring that at first glance appears to be silver?" Lyall didn't seem to take himself too seriously. He poured the contents of the shaker into a glass decorated with sugar on the rim, without taking his attention off me for even a second. "Proof that the circumstance of our existence doesn't have to be a hindrance if we're just creative enough to overcome it."

"The circumstance of your existence?" I echoed, baffled, even less enlightened than before.

Lyall didn't answer immediately, but instead handed Isabelle the glass he had just filled. She gave him a silent nod and he continued just as wordlessly. "I'm a werewolf," he said, finally acknowledging Adam with a sideways glance, so that I suddenly became painfully aware of why he had ignored him until now. "Our existence comes with disadvantages, just like every kind of Shadowworld-being does. At least that's the case if you tell yourself so vehemently. If you learn to live with it, you can make so much more of it. Like I did with my ring."

"But also a multitude of advantages," I replied. "Not to mention the physical ones. I wish the Nephilim would stick together as unconditionally as a pack does."

A smile spread across Lyall's face. The cocktail shaker in his hands shook to the beat of the wild rock music around us. "I like you, Clary. You're different than I imagined."

There was no appropriate answer. Thank you? Glad to hear that? A smile, as if his liking for me had been the goal of this conversation? None of that was true. However, I was spared a clumsy answer when he lowered his shaker again and held out the next glass to me.

For a moment I couldn't help but stare at the glass. A martini glass, the rims also coated in sugar, with a shimmering, blood-red liquid swirling inside. "But I haven't even–" I began, surprised, but Isabelle was already interrupting me.

"When Lyall hands you a drink, you don't ask questions, but accept it with thanks," she explained so matter-of-factly, as if her statement was a law of nature that I should know about. The commanding look with which she pierced me was instruction enough.

So I took the glass, sniffed it first, and when there was no aroma, I took a small, suspicious sip. I feared a reaction similar to that of Adam's scotch, but it didn't happen. The fruity note caught me by surprise because I was expecting something much more bitter. Seconds later, my eyes widened in amazement because this – whatever this was – tasted exactly like what my taste buds had been craving. The hint of honey would have made me blush if I hadn't been so overwhelmed. "How ..."

"That's my talent." Lyall's grey irises glittered smugly before his focus shifted to Adam with a grim aura and his expression took on a scrutinizing robustness. "I know exactly what people are craving right now."

"Then I'm curious to see what I'll get," Adam remarked, not missing Lyall's glances. Frustration ripped through his voice like a rusty, unsharpened knife. "If you're going to offer me anything at all."

"Oh, don't worry, Shadowhunter." Beneath the cloak of Lyall's steely reserve lurked a conflict that was beyond my comprehension. "I refuse my services to no one, and you need them more than most guests here."

Adam's drink was pitch black. So black that you couldn't see through it. The glass, devoid of any decoration, as if its contents would otherwise swallow everything in its darkness, pulled the corners of Adam's mouth even further down and he assessed it for too long without reacting. Only when Isabelle cleared her throat did he slowly reach out for it, careful not to touch Lyall's fingers.

"Thank you," he said through clenched teeth, looking anything but grateful. Despite everything, a spark of curiosity must have gripped him, as he immediately put the glass to his lips and drank. But perhaps it was simply Adam's greed for alcohol, which seemed to know no bounds today.

But when Adam's eyes widened until his forest green irises were almost completely replaced by dark pupils, I was suddenly filled with fear. Had it been a mistake to trust Lyall? Had he perhaps even poisoned Adam in his hatred for his actions?

Something in Adam's face relaxed as soon as he put the glass down. His eyes, which suddenly seemed far removed from the here and now, took on a strangely vulnerable expression as they stared into nothingness. Until they finally filled with tears, for the blink of an eye, before he looked up at Lyall. Lyall was already waiting for Adam's reaction, alert as a hunting eagle, but without the expected aggressiveness.

Adam opened his mouth, and we had to simultaneously lean forward to catch the whispered words before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the crowd with such speed that under normal circumstances, we would have raised our eyebrows.

"I'm sorry."