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Epilogue

Twelve years later

The girl was beautiful. Coppery red pigtails hung past her skinny shoulders and her emerald eyes were wide and focused. She sat like a princess at the kitchen table, legs crossed neatly, and spoke animatedly as though she were addressing a crowd.

She was also shoveling Lucky Charms into her mouth at an alarming pace, which somewhat shattered the illusion.

"…And I told Simon that nobody ever became lead guitarist without having at least one lesson. I mean, what the heck, right? But of course he thinks that he can learn a couple chords and immediately get a guest appearance on TRL with Eric."

Jocelyn brushed a stray piece of hair off her daughter's forehead.

"I hope you still encouraged him to go after his dreams, sweetie."

"Mom." Clary rolled her eyes in a way that was entirely too teenagery for Jocelyn's liking. "His dreams are unrealistic."

"You never know." Jocelyn smiled, sinking into the chair across from her. "How would you like it if Simon said that about your dreams?"

"Oh my gosh, that reminds me. I had the weirdest dream last night."

Knowing Clary's tendency to rattle off long, imaginative stories, Jocelyn gave an obvious glance at the clock in the kitchen.

"I'd love to hear about it, honey, but you should start getting dressed. Luke will be here any minute, and you didn't hear it from me, but he might be planning on bringing twelve birthday presents for a certain someone."

"Twelve?!"

"One for every year you've been alive."

"Mom, that's way too many! I don't need all that!" Her face was sparkling with uncontrolled glee.

Jocelyn got to her feet, ruffling Clary's hair as she walked by. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

"I hate when you start quoting Byron at me."

"Shakespeare, sweetie."

"I'll tell you my dream really quick while I'm getting dressed." Clary let her spoon clatter to the table, leaping out of her chair and skipping to her bedroom at the other side of their Brooklyn apartment. Jocelyn knew a losing battle when she saw one. She laughed quietly, shaking her head. Maybe she spoiled her daughter, but it was impossible not to feel overwhelmingly, paralyzingly grateful for a child who was completely human.

Beautiful and brilliant and yet nothing like her father.

"I was getting ready for my birthday party, but it wasn't my birthday party, you know?" Clary called from her room. She opened her closet door with a bang. "I was wearing red… dark red. You know I hate wearing red."

"Maybe I made you wear it."

"No, you weren't in the dream yet. Anyway, I was walking up some fancy stairs. When I got to the top, I was in this big room. All white and pretty. I thought it was a restaurant."

"Was it?" Jocelyn rinsed off Clary's cereal bowl in the sink, only half listening.

"No, it was like, a big theater. Not theater… what's the word for a big theater that's not 'theater'?"

"I don't know, honey."

"Well, anyway, there was a big gold chair in the middle of the room."

Jocelyn froze.

"There were lots of people in the room too… nobody I knew. I sat in the chair 'cause I guessed I was supposed to. And then when I looked down, I had all these black marks on my arms."

The faucet was still running, spilling over the edges of the bowl. It changed from hot to warm to cool until it felt like ice water running over Jocelyn's hands. Must be a problem with the hot water heater. With shaking hands, she switched the faucet off.

"Not like, tattoos, Mom. I know that's what you're thinking. They were just designs. I think I was thinking about drawing or something."

Clary's bedroom door cracked open. Jocelyn turned around slowly. Her daughter stood there, looking as normal as it was possible to be in her denim shorts and green tank top. She slid her feet into flip flops as she continued.

"And then I got out of the chair and looked around and saw you. You were crying."

"Why… why do you think that was?"

"Because I'm so old, probably." Clary grinned at her mother. "You were probably thinking, oh no, I'm so sad, it feels like only yesterday that Clarissa was a tiny little baby in my arms!"

Her grin faded as she looked up at Jocelyn's face.

"Mom?"

A sudden tapping at the front door startled them both. Clary pushed past her mother as the door swung open, revealing a tall man with two giant Midtown Comics bags cradled in his arms.

"Uncle Luke!" Clary hurtled across the room and tried to jump into his arms.

"Whoa, easy!" Lucian laughed, setting the bags down on the hardwood floor. "It's only ten in the morning and you're already bouncing off the walls, huh?"

He knelt down and opened his arms wide, allowing the girl to run into his embrace. Over her shoulder, his bright blue eyes met Jocelyn's and he smiled.

We need to talk, Jocelyn mouthed.

Golden sunlight filtered lazily through the trees in Prospect Park, warming the grass and glittering off the surface of the lake. It was the perfect early August day, hot but not oppressively humid. Clary and her best friend Simon sat by the water on a blue and white checkered blanket. Occasionally, snippets of their conversation drifted back to Jocelyn, who sat further up the hill next to Lucian.

"You don't understand," Jocelyn said wearily. "It was a Marking Ceremony. The night before her twelfth birthday, she dreamt about a Marking Ceremony."

Lucian sighed. "It does sound like it."

"Magnus's spell should be working. It's never been like this before - it's usually perfect. She's usually completely blind to any aspect of the Shadow World. You know I watch her like a hawk just to make sure."

"But this is a dream, Jocelyn. It's her subconscious. The spell probably can't do anything about that."

Jocelyn ran her hands over her face. "So you think it's just a part of her nature? Deep inside, she knows the importance of this birthday?"

"Of course she does. She's Nephilim. Today should have been the most important day of her life." Lucian could not hide the note of annoyance that ran through his words. "But as far as she knows, it's just another birthday."

"You know I did what I had to do."

"I know."

Out of the corner of her eye, Jocelyn glanced at her best friend. It was still difficult for her to see him as anyone other than Lucian Graymark, even after all these years. He hadn't worn Shadowhunter black in over a decade, but his new uniform of jeans and flannel never seemed quite right. Neither did the name: Luke Garroway. She had wrinkled her nose in distaste when she'd first heard it. It was so… mundane.

But they were mundanes now - at least, as much as they could ever be. She was Jocelyn Fray, Brooklyn painter. She joked and loved and lived like any other single mother, selling old pieces of jewelry to make ends meet when money was tight, giving her daughter art lessons in the living room, taking morning walks around the city to gain inspiration for her next painting. Jocelyn Fray had never held a seraph blade or used a stele. She had certainly never seen her friends die.

Was it so wrong to want to live without the constant pervasive fear of death? Was it so wrong to shield her only daughter from a cold, brutal life of violence and sorrow?

Clary, with her musical laugh and vivid imagination and chatty nature, would never have been suited to that world. This was what Jocelyn told herself often. She ignored her daughter scrambling up a tree at Lucian's farm upstate and her straight A's in French class and the blazing look of determination in her eyes that reminded Jocelyn so, so much of Valentine. If she didn't ignore these things, she would not be able to stop her mind from wandering. From picturing Clarissa Fairchild, star student of the Shadowhunter Academy, clad in black and wielding a seraph blade. "A spirited girl," her tutors would say. "Not like her mother, the traitor — not like her father, who tried to burn down the world."

"You'll have to tell her someday," Lucian said now, turning to face Jocelyn. His glasses were sliding down his nose.

She leaned over and pushed them back up. "Maybe someday."

Four years later

Jocelyn paced the empty apartment.

Clary was gone — and furious, of course. She had expected that much. Of course her stubborn daughter wouldn't want to be uprooted from her life right before her sixteenth birthday, taken from her friends and her routine and tucked away at a remote farmhouse in upstate New York.

They would just be so much safer there — she would be able to breathe, to keep an eye on her daughter at all times. But of course Clary would resist that. If Adele had ever suggested such a thing to Jocelyn at sixteen, she would've run straight out the door too.

Valentine, here in the city — Jocelyn had hoped she'd misheard Madame Dorothea when she had dropped by to deliver the news. It had felt so safe here. The bustling streets of New York had seemed like the perfect way to slip away undetected. But if Valentine had been spotted roaming the streets, it could only be for one reason.

"Every day of your life, you will regret what you've done," he had told her on that terrible night, the night of the Uprising. She had not realized how right he was.

Jocelyn shoved her cell phone into the pocket of her jeans and stormed out of the apartment, thumping down the stairs. It was probably smarter to be away from home for now — but where could she hide Clary? Maybe she could suggest a sleepover with Simon… disguise it as a way to make amends…

No sooner did Jocelyn's feet hit the sidewalk outside than she saw him.

Blond hair white in the shimmering sunlight, eyes black as tar pits. He was half a block away, but he saw her — of course he saw her. It was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. Before she could breathe, before she could think, she turned on her heel and raced back to the building, pulling her phone from her pocket and hitting speed dial.

The phone rang as she crashed through the entranceway. It rang as she pounded up the stairs. It rang as she lurched through the front door, slamming it tight and locking it, almost breaking the deadbolt in her panic. It rang as she threw all her weight into shoving the coffee table in front of the door.

Clary finally picked up as Jocelyn was sprinting down the narrow hallway to her bedroom.

"Mom?"

"Oh, Clary. Oh, thank God. Listen to me—"

"It's all right, Mom," Clary said, voice quivering just slightly. "I'm fine. I'm on my way home —"

"No!" Jocelyn almost screamed, dropping to her knees and crawling to the back of her closet. She fumbled in the dark with shaking hands. "Don't come home! Do you understand me, Clary? Don't you dare come home. Go to Simon's. Go straight to Simon's house and stay there until I can…"

A distant thump came from the living room. Jocelyn's hands closed around the small wooden box carved by her father and she cracked it open, sliding the false bottom to pull out a small gold flask.

"Mom!" Clary shouted. "Mom, are you all right?"

Another crash, and then another.

"Just promise me you won't come home." Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she tried to loosen the cap. "Go to Simon's and call Luke — tell him that he's found me—"

The sound of splintering wood, heavy and deafening and horrible, was quickly followed by a pounding of footsteps. She knew those steps — she had spent years dreading them.

"Who's found you? Mom, did you call the police? Did you—"

The bedroom door crashed open.

Valentine Morgenstern stood framed by afternoon sunlight, just as intimidating and terrible and untouchable as she remembered. Lines of fury were etched across his face, but at the moment, all she saw was triumph. From behind him came a terrible slithering noise — a sound she would know anywhere. Of course he would bring demons to help retrieve her. Of course he would stoop so low.

Jocelyn drew a breath.

"I love you, Clary," she said, and hung up.

Valentine stepped across the threshold, eyes gleaming. He held out his hand.

"You couldn't run forever, my Jocelyn. You are too defiant… too headstrong… too ruthless…"

"I am what you made me," she spat.

She raised the flask to her lips and swallowed the potion in one gulp.

As Valentine gave a roar of outrage and raced forward, she collapsed to the floor. Darkness took hold quickly, but not quickly enough. Behind her eyelids, she saw a manor house on a sweeping green lawn, a silver necklace lying in her palm, a brilliant pair of blue eyes watching her and only her.

She carried this last vision with her as she faded into an eternal dreamless sleep.

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

If you want to know what happens next, I can recommend a good book series.

In all seriousness, I am so thankful for each and every one of you who have read this story, left reviews, and sent me messages. This is the longest piece of writing I've ever completed and while I'm SO excited that it's finally done, I'm going to miss working on it! A huge thank you to the Shadowhunter Wiki, my go-to source for information, and an even bigger thank you to Ary, my parabatai, who has listened to me talk about this for over a year and helped educate me on the most basic aspects of horseback riding.

I've had a few people ask me if I'll continue writing about Jocelyn and Luke. While I never want to guarantee anything, I feel so attached to both of them that I'm sure I'll do something at some point!

A disclaimer — some of the dialogue in the final scene is taken from Cassandra Clare's CITY OF BONES. Perhaps my biggest thank you of all should go to Cassie for creating this incredible world. I'm forever grateful to have had the chance to live in it for a little while.

I hope you guys have enjoyed reading Antebellum. Leave a review if you feel so inclined, and if you have questions or comments or anything you want to share, you can send me a message on Tumblr, where I'm isabelllelightwood. I love you all!

xx