CITY OF BONES Read-Along: Chapter 17: The Midnight Flower

Shadowhunters! We’re your next stop on the City of Bones Read-Along.

Continuing now until August 12, TMI Source, Page to Premiere, Mundie Momsand Fangirlish will be hosting a read-along to prepare you for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, which hits theaters on August 21.

CHAPTER 17 – THE MIDNIGHT FLOWER

This chapter needs no introduction. But I’ll go on anyway. Jace takes Clary up to the greenhouse, where he assures her that Alec and Isabelle won’t be interrupting because of allergies. And also, he “makes a mean cheese sandwich.” Yum.

Jace gives her a slice of apple as a makeshift birthday cake and proceeds to tell her about his fifth birthday when his father let him take a bath in spaghetti. That’s right, spaghetti. It was”slippery.” Jace begins to open up to Clary slowly as he describes his childhood, revealing that he didn’t have any friends until he was 10 when he first met Alec. “The first time I had a friend.” Jace describes how he used to travel the world with his father before he died. Since then he hasn’t left New York. Clary opens up about her own father, who passed away before she was born and we see the wall around Jace begin to slip a little more.

When the clock strikes midnight, Jace directs Clary to a green shrub they’d been sitting beside and watch as it blooms before them. But they don’t bloom at any time. “Only at midnight. Happy birthday, Clarissa Fray.” Jace then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a witchlight rune-stone, which “will always bring you light,” and gives it to Clary as a birthday gift. After some talking about tattoos when Clary shows Jace a chicken pox scar on her shoulder, Jace suggests they head back downstairs. Clary can’t help the words that come out of her mouth when she asks if Jace has ever dated Isabelle. She pins the blame on Simon being the only one interested in this information. The answer is no. Isabelle is a sister to him. Clary lets her insecurity show as she talks about Isabelle’s beauty. Jace surprises Clary when he calls her beautiful. It’s enough to make all of our hearts flutter.

As they make a second attempt to head downstairs, Clary sees Jace’s knife on the ground and pulls back to avoid stepping on it and she bumped into him. He reached his hand out to steady her and she turned to apologize. And then they were kissing. Swoon.

They’re interrupted by the sudden appearance of Hugo, who is watching them. Their third attempt at heading downstairs is successful and as they hold hands on the walk back to her room. The mood is different. Jace is different. This is a side of Jace that we — and Clary — haven’t yet seen.

Outside of her room, Clary thanks Jace for the birthday picnic, their hands still locked.”Aren’t you tired?” she asks. “I’ve never been more awake,” he responds. They lean into another kiss. Which just happens to be at the exact time that Simon opens the door and finds the girl he’s been in love with for years kissing a stranger. It’s the aftermath that is captivating, as well. Just as quickly as Jace’s guard was down with Clary it’s immediately built back up with the arrival of Simon. He brushes off the moment he and Clary shared before heading back to his room. “Don’t worry it wasn’t that memorable for me either.”

Clary heads inside her room to deal with the aftermath with Simon. Tempers and emotion flare between the best friends as Simon finally admits that he’s been harboring feelings of love — “sexy love,” as Robert Sheehan calls it — for Clary. “I was trying to make you jealous!” Simon said. “You’re so stupid, Clary. You’re so stupid, can’t you see anything?” The big reveal — at least for this chapter 😉 — “I’ve been in love with you for ten years.” Clary doesn’t know how to respond. She begins to question her feelings for him, realizing that she had never thought about her feelings for Simon.  As Simon heads out of her room he tells Clary that his mother was right about something. “She said you’d break my heart.”

When Simon leaves, Clary cradles her sketchpad like a life raft. Her mind is filled with the fresh memory of what had just happened with Simon, as well as Jace. As she stares at the sketch of Jace she had drawn, she brushes her fingers over the wings she’d drawn letting her mind wander. She jumped. She had felt them. The feathers. Clary immediately reached for some pencils and began drawing a coffee mug sitting on the nightstand. She grabbed the mug from her nightstand, placed it on the page and began drawing runes next to it.

Head to Page To Premiere for Chapter 18 tomorrow (August 6).