City of Secrets

Chapter 5: Amor Verus Numquam Moritur

"An effective way to get you quiet without a Quietude rune, don't you think?"

"Jon." Ember's voice came out as nothing more than a breathy whisper. "I need to know what's bothering you. Please."

Jonathan tore himself away from Ember and let out an almost inhuman scream. Ember felt the hairs on her arms and neck rise. Goosebumps erupted on her skin. She felt her heart crack in her chest as Jonathan began to beat his hands raw against the concrete. Then he went silent.

She looked around. No one was around to see.

Ember took a step towards him. Then another. And another- until she kneeled next to him. Jonathan stared ahead blankly. Teardrops silently fell down his cheeks. Ember brushed them away, and Jonathan caught her hands in his bloodied ones. He stared at her wet fingertips, a bewildered expression on his pale face.

"What are you doing to me, Ember?" he whispered.

"Me? Nothing."

"You're wrong." Jonathan shook his head. "I grew up in Idris, the Shadowhunter homeland. My mother left me when I was a baby. When I was about five or six, my father took me deep into some isolated fields. They were full of tall grasses and flowers of every color. You and my sister would've loved to paint them. I asked my father about her- my mother. He said that she left because something was wrong with me. He said I was a monster, and that it was my fault she had left." He chuckled bitterly. "I asked him if he could fix me, and he said no. He said that no one would ever love me, and that only he could ever love a monster. I remember going to bed that night and crying until I thought no more tears could come out. I never cried again...until today. You're doing things to me, Ember, whether you believe it or not. You're unlocking things inside of me. You're making me feel things I never thought I was capable of feeling, and- and I don't know what to make of it."

Ember took Jonathan in her arms. Her head rested directly above his heart. "I love you." She heard his heart skip a beat and his breath catch in his lungs. "Your father was wrong, and you don't have to say it back yet. You don't have to say it at all. I just needed you to know." She looked up, and Jonathan was looking down at her in wonder. His black eyes were wide and conflicted. They focused and unfocused on her, as if he were fighting a war with himself inside his head.

He finally got up and cleared his throat. He held a hand towards Ember, which she took. She didn't even care that it was sticky and wet with his blackish blood, and Jonathan helped her up. "Forget the coffee. I'll walk you home."

He walked ahead of her and waited at the end of the street, and Ember broke into a jog to catch up.

Ember set down her graphite drawing pencils on the table next to her bed. Her fingers drifted down the rough paper of her sketchbook. Jonathan's coal black eyes looked back at her. It would've been impossible for someone to tell apart the pupil from the iris, but not for Ember. She had spent months looking into those eyes. They reminded her of an abyss, black and bottomless, and she was the one falling deep down into them, never coming back up for air. The only thing separating the pupil from the iris was a silver ring around the pupils. His lips were lifted in a small smile, his face amused and indifferent at the same time. His white-blond hair was slightly mussed with an invisible breeze.

Ember was sitting down on her bed at the infirmary of the New York Institute, her knees drawn up, sketchbook in her lap. After Magnus gave her the okay and said that her baby was safe and healthy, she and the others said good-bye and left for the Institute. Ember had marched right up to the infirmary and had stayed there for the next two hours.

She pushed the sketchbook off to the side and reached up and turned off the lamp next to her bed. The room was immediately engulfed in silvery moonlight that streamed in through the windows. The gray kitten that had previously been napping on the corner of Ember's bed now crawled onto her sketchbook and curled up on top of it.