Ciudad del Fuego Celestial (inglés)

For Elias and Jonah

Acknowledgments
Them that I love, know that I love them. This
time I want to thank my readers, who have
stuck with me through this whole epic roller
coaster of a saga, through cliff-hangers and
angst and feels. I wouldn’t trade you for all
the glitter in Magnus’s loft.

In God ’tis glory: And when men aspire,
’Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire.
—JohnDryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”

PROLOGUE:
FALL LIKE RAIN

The Los Angeles Institute,
December 2007
On the day Emma Carstairs’s

parents were killed, the weather was perfect.
On the other hand the weather was usually perfect in Los Angeles. Emma’s mother
and father dropped her off on a clear winter
morning at the Institute in the hills behind
the Pacific Coast Highway, overlookingthe
blue ocean. The sky was a cloudless expanse

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that stretched from the cliffs of the Pacific
Palisades to the beaches at Point Dume.
A report had come in the night before of
demonic activity near the beach caves of Leo
Carrillo. The Carstairs had been assigned to
look into it. Later Emma would remember
her mother tucking a windblown strand of
hair behind her ear as sheoffered to draw a
Fearless rune on Emma’s father, and John
Carstairs laughing and saying he wasn’t sure
how he felt about newfangled runes. He was
fine with what was written in the Gray Book,
thanks very much.
At the time, though, Emma was impatient
with her parents, hugging them quickly before pulling away to race up the Institute
steps, her backpack bouncing between her
shoulders as theywaved good-bye from the
courtyard.
Emma loved that she got to train at the
Institute. Not only did her best friend, Julian, live there, but she always felt as if she

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were flying into the ocean when she went inside it. It was a massive structure of wood
and stone at the end of a long pebbled drive
that wound through the hills. Every room,
every floor, looked out over the oceanand
the mountains and the sky, rippling expanses
of blue and green and gold. Emma’s dream
was to climb up onto the roof with
Jules—though, so far they’d been foiled by
parents—to see if the view stretched all the
way to the desert in the south.
The front doors knew her and gave way
easily under her familiar touch. The entryway and lower floors of the Institute were
full of adultShadowhunters, striding back
and forth. Some kind of meeting, Emma
guessed. She caught sight of Julian’s father,
Andrew Blackthorn, the head of the Institute, amid the crowd. Not wanting to be
slowed down by greetings, she dashed for the
changing room on the second floor, where
she swapped her jeans and T-shirt for

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training clothes—oversize shirt, loose cotton
pants, and the mostimportant item of all:
the blade slung over her shoulder.
Cortana. The name simply meant “shortsword,” but it wasn’t short to Emma. It was
the length of her forearm, sparkling metal,
the blade inscribed with words that never
failed to cause a shiver down her spine: I am
Cortana, of the same steel and temper as
Joyeuse and Durendal. Her father had explained what it meant when he put the swordin her ten-year-old hands for the first time.
“You can use this for training until you’re
eighteen, when it becomes yours,” John
Carstairs had said, smiling down at her as
her fingers traced the words. “Do you understand what that means?”
She’d shaken her head. “Steel” she’d understood, but not “temper.” “Temper” meant
“anger,” something her father was always
warning her she shouldcontrol. What did it
have to do with a blade?

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“You know of the Wayland family,” he’d
said. “They were famous weapon makers before the Iron Sisters began to forge all the
Shadowhunter blades. Wayland the Smith
made Excalibur and Joyeuse, Arthur’s and
Lancelot’s swords, and Durendal, the sword
of the hero Roland. And they made this
sword too, from the same steel. All steel
must be...