“Reckless,” he said. “You know, when I first showed up at the Institute, Alec called me reckless so many times that I went and looked it up in the dictionary. Not that I didn’t already know what it meant, but—I always kind of thought it meant brave. It actually meant ‘someone who doesn’t care about the consequences of their actions.’ ”

Clary felt stung on behalf of small Jace. “But you do care.”

“Not enough, maybe. Not all the time.” His voice shook. “Like the way I love you. I loved you recklessly from the moment I knew you. I never cared about the consequences. I told myself I did, I told myself you wanted me to, and so I tried, but I never did. I wanted you more than I wanted to be good. I wanted you more than I wanted anything, ever.” His muscles were rigid under her grip, his body thrumming with tension. She leaned in to brush her lips across his, to kiss the tension away, but he pulled back, biting against his lower lip hard enough to whiten the skin.

“Clary,” he said, roughly. “Wait, just—wait.”

Clary felt momentarily dazed. Jace loved kissing; he could kiss for hours, and he was good at it. And he wasn’t uninterested. He was very interested. She braced her knees on either side of his hips and said, uncertainly, “Is everything all right?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“Oh, no.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Okay. What is it?”

“Remember when we came through into the demon realm, and everyone saw something?” he asked. “And I said I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to tell me what you saw,” Clary said gently. “It’s your business.”

“I do,” he said. “You should know. I saw a room with two thrones in it—gold and ivory thrones—and through the window I could see the world, and it was ashes. Like this world, but the destruction was newer. The fires were still burning, and the sky was full of horrible flying things. Sebastian was sitting on one of the thrones and I was sitting on the other. You were there, and Alec and Izzy, and Max—” He swallowed. “But you were all in a cage. A big cage with a massive lock on the door. And I knew I had put you in it, and turned the key. But I didn’t feel regret. I felt—triumph.” He exhaled, hard. “You can shove me away in disgust now. It’s fine.”

But of course it wasn’t fine; nothing about his tone—flat and dead, and devoid of hope—was fine. Clary shivered in his arms; not from horror but from pity, and from the tension of knowing how delicate Jace’s faith in himself was, and how careful her answer had to be.

“The demon showed us what it thought we wanted,” she said finally. “Not what we actually want. It got things wrong; that’s how we all managed to break free. By the time we found you, you’d already broken free on your own. So what it showed you, that wasn’t what you want. When Valentine raised you, he controlled everything—nothing was ever safe, and nothing you loved was safe. So the demon looked inside you and saw that, that child’s fantasy of completely controlling the world so nothing bad can happen to the people he loves, and it tried to give you that, but it wasn’t what you want, not really. So you woke up.” She touched his cheek. “Some part of you is still that little boy who thinks to love is to destroy, but you’re learning. You’re learning every day.”

For a moment he just looked at her in astonishment, his lips parted slightly; Clary felt her cheeks flush. He was looking at her like she was the first star that had ever come out in the sky, a miracle painted across the face of the world that he could barely believe in. “Let me—” he said, and broke off. “Can I kiss you?”

Instead of nodding, she leaned down to press her lips to his. If their first kiss in the water had been a sort of explosion, this was like a sun going supernova. It was a hard, hot, driving kiss, a nip at her lower lip and the clash of tongues and teeth, both of them pressing as hard as they could to get close, closer. They were glued together, skin and fabric, a heady mix of the chill of the water, the heat of their bodies, and the frictionless slide of damp skin.

His arms wrapped her completely, and suddenly he was lifting her as he walked them both out of the lake, water pouring off them in streams. He went down on his knees on the powdery sand beach, laying her as gently as he could on top of the pile of their heaped clothes. She scrabbled for purchase for a moment and then gave up, lying back and pulling him down on top of her, kissing him fiercely until he groaned and whispered, “Clary, I can’t—you have to tell me—I can’t think—”

She wound her hands into his hair, drawing back just enough to see his face. He was flushed, his eyes black with desire, his hair, beginning to curl as it dried, hanging into his eyes. She tugged lightly at the strands wound between her fingers. “It’s okay,” she whispered back. “It’s okay, we don’t have to stop. I want to.” She kissed him, slow and hard. “I want to, if you do.”

“If I want to?” There was a wild edge to his soft laugh. “Can’t you tell?” And then he was kissing her again, sucking her lower lip into his mouth, kissing her throat and mouthing her collarbone as she ran her hands all over him, free in the knowledge that she could touch him, as much as she liked, however she liked. She felt as if she were drawing him, her hands mapping his body, the slope of his back, flat stomach, the indentations above his hips, the muscles in his arms. As if, like a painting, he were coming to life under her hands.

When his hands slid underneath her bra, she gasped at the sensation, then nodded at him when he froze, his eyes questioning. Go on. He stopped at each moment, stopped before removing each piece of clothing from either of them, asking her with eyes and words if he should keep going, and each time she nodded and said, Yes, go on, yes. And when finally there was nothing between them but skin, she stilled her hands, thinking that there was no way to ever be closer to another person than this, that to take another step would be like cracking open her chest and exposing her heart.

She felt Jace’s muscles flex as he reached past her for something, and heard the crackle of foil. Suddenly everything seemed very real; she felt a sudden flash of nerves: This was really happening.

He stilled. His free hand was cradling her head, his elbows dug deep into the sand on either side of her, keeping his weight off her body. All of him was tense and shaking, and the pupils of his eyes were wide, the irises just rims of gold. “Is something wrong?”

Hearing Jace sound uncertain—she thought maybe her heart was cracking, shattering into pieces. “No,” she whispered, and pulled him down again. They both tasted salt. “Kiss me,” she pleaded, and he did, hot languorous slow kisses that sped up as his heartbeat did, as the movement of their bodies quickened against each other. Each kiss was different, each rising higher and higher like a spark as a fire grew: quick soft kisses that told her he loved her, long slow worshipful kisses that said that he trusted her, playful light kisses that said that he still had hope, adoring kisses that said he had faith in her as he did in no one else. Clary abandoned herself to the kisses, the language of them, the wordless speech that passed between the two of them. His hands were shaking, but they were quick and skilled on her body, light touches maddening her until she pushed and pulled at him, urging him on with the mute appeal of fingers and lips and hands.