The Mortal Instruments: City of Past Ghosts (Book 1)

Epilogue: Mea Maxima Culpa

So sorry for the late update I'm on holiday in Langkawi Island. It's so beautiful I wish you guys could see it. I give you the epilogue!

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Epilogue: Mea Maxima Culpa

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Clary wrapped her jacket tightly around her as she looked out at the garden that sat across the looming façade of the New York Institute. She shivered from the cold before she turned away from the open window and sat at the foot of her bed. The cold autumn air blew into her room, clearing the musty air in the rectangular room and replacing it with a crisp atmosphere.

She felt lonely, a presence that had loomed around her for the past couple of days she had been stuck in here. But within that loneliness, there was a small almost unnoticeable flicker of relief.

That was the flipside to the isolation, she decided. It gave her time to think, to ponder over things that had happened in the last week.

Clary had never been one to think or go into deep thought about things. She had always acted first and thought about the consequences of her actions later. She wasn't like warrior Jace who strategized every single move he made before he did it.

She was more like devil-may-care Jace who threw himself in the path of danger without thinking of the consequences or dangers except she didn't have a death wish as big as Jace's. She wasn't raised a Shadowhunter that was taught ever since from a young age that every move and every decision had its consequences whether good or bad.

She remembered what Isabelle had said to her once.

You're Clary Fray. You go charging into every situation without knowing how the hell it's going to turn out, and then you get through with sheer guts and craziness.

She recalled the whole of last week and she remembered how it felt to not know Jace and Isabelle and Simon and Alec and not recognize them. It seemed like such an impossible thing—her forgetting and not knowing them but she had.

She stared at the blank white wall that sat across her bed, the same one she had been staring at for the last two days. Ever since they got back from Ireland, after the Silent Brothers had treated her wounds, she had been locked in this room, unable to leave it though it was unlocked, occasionally getting visits from several Silent Brothers who commenced to running tests on her, to check for any side effects on the rune she had drawn and for any remaining Blocks in her mind.

She was also visited by members of the Clave who had interrogated her on her time with Keayla and in Ireland. When she had requested for Jace and Isabelle and Simon and even once, Alec, the Silent Brother that stood outside her door, guarding it at this very moment would tell her that no one but Silent Brothers and Council members could see her at the moment.

She leaned back, her back lying on the bed while her legs hung over the sides and closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened after she had blacked out upon arriving in Los Angeles so many months ago.

It turned out that what Clary told Jace about remembering everything hadn't been particularly true. Over the past two days, she found that certain memories were fuzzy and when she tried to remember clearly, she would end up with two or more versions of the memory.

She had a faint idea which of the versions was the real one but sometimes she found herself confused.

She opened her eyes and stared at the roof of her room, watching the small particles of dust float through the air.

An image of Jace kissing Colette flashed in her mind and Clary grimaced, as if that image affected her physically. In a way, it did by making her stomach churn and tears prickling in her eyes.