City of Healing

1. How it all started.

Clary

I wish he wanted me to stay.
Watching Jace walking in front of me was its own entertainment. The way his body moved screamed confidence; he almost strutted his way around the institute, each step a challenge.
No one would guess by looking at him just how much he had gone through in the last few weeks. Even I wasn't sure how he was really coping with it all. Ever since our return from Idris he had been closed off.
Our relationship has blossomed in those weeks though. It was still so weird to think of him as my boyfriend. It seemed like such a childish word and didn't come close to the truth of how I felt about him.

Or what I had done for him.

A shiver passed through me at the thought,
"You're not cold, are you?"
Ever the observer Jace had noticed my shiver, even when I thought he wasn't paying attention to me at all.
He slowed down and fell into step with me, putting his arm around my shoulders.
"No, I'm okay. Just thinking about what my mom's gonna say about me being late home."
Another change. My mom had never wanted me to become a Shadowhunter so it hadn't surprised me when she had tried to forbid me from beginning training. The argument had lasted days and I honestly think we would still be arguing if it weren't for Luke getting involved and convincing her that this was something I had to do. Go Luke!
Eventually she had calmed down enough to agree, but the concession had come with a few rules. I had to be home by 8pm every night, she was getting bi-weekly reports from Maryse about my progress, and "Absolutely No sleepovers with your boyfriend at the institute!".
My mom was not Jace's biggest fan, this of course had provided an entirely different source for our disagreements. Even though she was slowly coming to terms with Jace's position in my life, she still didn't want to encourage any kind of relationship between us. Little did she know how far I'd already gone to save him. Nobody did. We had agreed that we wouldn't tell anyone what had truly happened with Valentine at the lake, and we had stuck to that agreement, suffice to say our relationship was pretty unbreakable.

Or so I had thought.