“Stephen is with the wrong woman,” Valentine told her, almost gently. “Deep down, he knows that. I’ll simply make this as clear to him as it is to us, and the rest will be as easy as falling off a cliff. You need only relax and let gravity do its work. Don’t be afraid to reach for the things you really want, Céline. It’s beneath you.”

What she really wanted …

It wasn’t too late to speak up, to save her parents.

Or she could keep her word and keep his secret. She could let her parents pay for what they’d done to her. For the lattice of scars on her skin and her heart. For the ice in her blood. If she was the kind of daughter who could consign her parents to death, then they had no one to blame but themselves.

But that didn’t mean she had to accept the entire bargain. Even if she stayed silent, she could walk away: away from Valentine, now that she knew what he was capable of. Away from Stephen, now that she knew what he thought of her. She could close the door on the past, start again. She could choose a life without pain, without suffering or fear.

But who would she be without pain?

What was strength, if not the endurance of suffering?

There is nothing more painful than love denied, the strange Silent Brother had told her. A love that cannot be requited. I can think of nothing more painful than that.

If Valentine said he could give her Stephen Herondale, he meant it. Céline did not doubt this. He could do anything, and that included finding a way to force Stephen Herondale into her life and her arms. But even Valentine could not make Stephen love her.

To have Stephen would mean not having him—it would mean knowing in every moment, every embrace, that he wanted someone else. It would mean a lifetime of longing for the one thing she could not have. The Silent Brother was wise and spoke the truth. There could be no greater pain than that.

“Take your time,” Valentine said. “It’s a big choice.”

“I don’t need time,” she told Valentine. “I want it. I want Stephen.”

It didn’t feel like choosing, because it was the only choice she had.

Son of the Dawn

By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan

New York City, 2000

Every world contains other worlds within it. People wander through all the worlds they can find, searching for their homes.

Some humans thought their world was the only world there was. Little did they know of other worlds as close to their own as the next room, or of the demons trying to find a door through to them, and the Shadowhunters who barred those doors.