Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the Angel’s sake. Look, if there’s no other way of getting out of this, I’ll kiss Simon. I’ve done it before, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Thanks,” said Simon. “That’s very flattering.”
“Alas,” said the Queen of the Seelie Court. Her expression was sharp with a sort of cruel delight, and Clary wondered if it weren’t a kiss she wanted so much as simply to watch them all squirm in discomfort. “I’m afraid that won’t do either.”
“Well, I’m not kissing the mundane,” said Jace. “I’d rather stay down here and rot.”
“Forever?” said Simon. “Forever’s an awfully long time.”
Jace raised his eyebrows. “I knew it,” he said. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?”
Simon threw up his hands in exasperation. “Of course not. But if—”
“I guess it’s true what they say,” observed Jace. “There are no straight men in the trenches.”
“That’s atheists, jackass,” said Simon furiously. “There are no atheists in the trenches.”
“While this is all very amusing,” said the Queen coolly, leaning forward, “the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires.” The cruel delight in her face and voice had sharpened, and her words seemed to stab into Clary’s ears like needles. “Only that and nothing more.”
Simon looked as if she had hit him. Clary wanted to reach out to him, but she stood frozen to the spot, too horrified to move.
“Why are you doing this?” Jace demanded.
“I rather thought I was offering you a boon.”
Jace flushed, but said nothing. He avoided looking at Clary.
Simon said, “That’s ridiculous. They’re brother and sister.”
The Queen shrugged, a delicate twitch of her shoulders. “Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn’t desire his kiss, she won’t be free.”
Simon said something angrily, but Clary didn’t hear him: Her ears were buzzing, as if a swarm of angry bees were trapped inside her head. Simon whirled around, looking furious, and said, “You don’t have to do this, Clary, it’s a trick—”
“Not a trick,” said Jace. “A test.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, Simon,” said Isabelle, her voice edged. “But I’d like to get Clary out of here.”
“Like you’d kiss Alec,” Simon said, “just because the Queen of the Seelie Court asked you to?”
“Sure I would.” Isabelle sounded annoyed. “If the other option was being stuck in the Seelie Court forever? Who cares, anyway? It’s just a kiss.”
“That’s right.” It was Jace. Clary saw him, at the blurred edge of her vision, as he moved toward her and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. “It’s just a kiss,” he said, and though his tone was harsh, his hands were inexplicably gentle. She let him turn her, looked up at him. His eyes were very dark, perhaps because it was so dim down here in the Court, perhaps because of something else. She could see her reflection in each of his dilated pupils, a tiny image of herself inside his eyes. He said, “You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like.”
“I’ve never even been to England,” she said, but she shut her eyelids. She could feel the dank heaviness of her clothes, cold and itchy against her skin, and the cloying sweet air of the cave, colder yet, and the weight of Jace’s hands on her shoulders, the only things that were warm. And then he kissed her.
