When Ella Herondale was born, it was with a great yell. When she died, it was without so much as a whimper. She had always been brave, had always taken care of her people. In the end, it was not a surprise to anyone that she died protecting her brother.
Linette Herondale née Owens had almost died giving birth to her first child. To say that it was a difficult birth was a vast understatement. It was pain and agony and fear. The baby was born too soon and too small, but the first thing she did in this world was scream, loud and long. With her father's bright gold hair and that powerful set of lungs, Linette knew that her Ella would be a fighter.
As the tiny creature that had nearly taken the life of his beloved wife and had nearly died trying to get herself into this world was laid in his arms, Edmund was simultaneously in love with and in terrified awe of his daughter. If he had ever thought that he'd given up half of himself when he chose Linette over the Nephilim, he received that lost half when he held Ella for the first time.
She was a tiny thing, but that didn't stop Edmund from putting a toy sword in her hand as soon as she was strong enough to hold onto it. She knew the right way to hold a sword before she knew how to pick up a pen. Her first steps weren't the faltering steps of a baby, but the balestra of a girl who was born to fence, and he wouldn't believe anything different, no matter how Linette tried.
Her balestra of first steps was only the beginning. She never walked, but leapt and lunged, her little sword never far from her little hands. Edmund watched and laughed with delight, while Linette shook her head at them both and instructed the servants to put the breakables and family heirlooms on the highest shelves.
It was like that during those early years. The house was full of Edmund's laughter and Linette's unwavering acceptance and Ella's budding Angelic grace that neither of Edmund nor Linette remembered to fear. Life was too good for the darkness of the Shadoworld to mar it.
When Will was born, her father took the bundle of blankets that he was wrapped in and laid them in two-year old girl's tiny arms and told her: "This is your baby, Ella. He's your responsibility now." She didn't have many dolls. She'd always liked her sword and her horse more than her babies and their bottles. But that changed as soon as she saw baby Gwilym's blue eyes staring up her.
She was a serious girl and she took her responsibilities seriously and she took Edmund's words to her about her baby most seriously of all. Will might have called Linette "Mam," but Ella was the one he ran to when he scraped his knees. She made it her job to protect him. When they played knights in shining armor, she and Da were always the knights, and Mam and baby Will were always the ones they saved.
When Cecily came, Edmund gathered Ella and Will to his side to meet their new sister. Will was transfixed and Ella was proud. She knew right away that this baby girl wouldn't need her, not like Will did. Cecily knew what she wanted and screamed when she didn't get it. She could handle herself.
Ella and Will had always been inseparable and, as soon as she could walk, Cecily became their shadow. Ella never shooed either of her siblings away, never went anywhere without them. When she started to receive lessons from the governess Mam had learned from when she was a child, so did Will and Cecily. When she was released from lessons into the fields and forests that surrounded their estate, they followed her. That was just the way it was.
When she was six, the representative from the Clave came to her the first time and she almost went with her. Her parents hadn't ever told her about the Shadowhunters and the lady the Clave sent made it seem like they were the knights that she and Da had pretended to be. The lady even had a dagger strapped to waist, long and wicked enough to be a sword. When Ella asked if she could bring Will and baby Cecily with her to London, the lady said maybe in a few years. Ella considered her offer very seriously before she solemnly shook her head and told the Clave's representative that she would wait until she could bring her siblings.
The next day all the toy swords in the house were gone.
It didn't matter much. She and Will could still play their new game, Shadowhunters and Demons, they'd just have to use sticks instead of swords. Cecily was only two and didn't know understand what they were playing, but she played a screaming maiden well enough. Ella brandished her tree branch and fought side by side with Will against imaginary demons. She was still taller than him then, and just bossy enough that she would always be the one who dealt the demon it's death blow. No one had told her that you couldn't kill a demon with a stick. All she had to worry about was making sure Mam and Da wouldn't see them.
When she was eight, the representative from the Clave came to talk to Will and she got to watch her mother weep into Da's shoulder while she waited to see if the Nephilim would take her son from her. Ella hadn't thought that the Shadowhunters would take her brother without taking her too, and, for the first time, she felt afraid of the Nephilim.
The next day, Ella decided that they needed to stop playing Shadowhunters and Demons. Instead, she took her siblings to the library and read them poems that they were too young understand with words that were too big for her to pronounce. They were all small enough that they could fit into Da's big chair and she held her brother and sister close and made them promise that her that they would always go on adventures together, that they were family first and foremost, and that they had to stay together no matter what.
She had no idea that she'd be the first to break their oath.
She took them to the forest and, together, they learned how to climb trees. She didn't climb too high when they were with her. It had only taken Will one fall from the branches for her to declare that the two of them weren't allowed to go any higher than the branches she could reach from the ground. Their arms and legs were so small that it wasn't much to ask.
Occasionally though, on the days when Will was kept inside with a cold and Cecily was taking her nap, Ella would sneak to the forest without them and climb to the treetops. She imagined, on those days when she was alone among the clouds, that she could touch heaven.
Eventually, they stopped being the wild tumble of children, one inextricable from the rest. Eventually, Will decided he wanted to read books on his own. Eventually, Cecily decided she wanted to climb to the tops of the trees, whether or not Ella liked it. Eventually, Ella realized that it was okay.
When she was ten, the representative from the Clave came to talk to Cecily and Ella held Will's hand when he cried and assured him that Cecy would never leave them. Cecily was wildness and freedom locked into a six year old's body, but they had made a promise to each other not to go on adventures without one another. Cecily would not leave them and Ella knew it.
The next day, they got to join their mother as she rode across their estate and visited the village that was dependant on their fields. Ella handed out bread to the hungry children and medicine to the mamas and watched Linette coo over the new babies and get her skirts dirty as she helped bring firewood to the widow who lived alone at the end of the lane and realized that this was noble too. That Mam mightn't be Nephilim, but she was still saving the world, little by little, with hearty bread and warm blankets.
She understood now. This was why her mother had decided not to try to Ascend. This was why her father had allowed them to take his Marks. It was the first time she realized that a person did not have to have the blood of Angels to be a hero.
At Christmas that year, Ella asked for a pair of sturdy boots and a horse, and she joined the foreman after lessons as he mended fences and counted sheep and collected rent. Her pen was her sword as she meticulously made marks in ledgers. Instead of naming blades, she named babies and wrapped them in warm blankets. This was her land and these were her people. Will might own it someday, that was the way the world worked and she knew it, but she would run it for him. She would run it and tend to it and he could read his books and go to university and she would make sure that the mamas got their medicine and the widows got their firewood.
Cecily wasn't her baby and Ella had always known that. Some part of her had always recognized that Cecy was wild and brave and reckless and Ella never told her not to be. Ella had climbed to the tops of the trees to try and touch the heavens once too. But now Ella had her boots planted firmly in the Welsh dirt. She was the tether that kept her wild sister connected to the ground. Cecily could do whatever she wanted, go wherever she wanted to in the world. But Ella would always make sure that her sister had a place to call home.
The next time the representative from the Clave came, she told the woman politely, but firmly, that her people needed her. When the woman asked if she was sure, Ella said "There are other demons in the world, ma'am. A seraph blade will not put bread in a hungry child's belly or wood in the widow's fire. Please do not ask me again."
When the representative from the Clave left for the final time, Ella watched her go, her Angel blood pulsing in her ears and threatening to spill out from behind her eyelids. When the woman was gone, she collected bread and blankets in baskets and rode her horse to the village. As she left, a woman there told her that she was an angel, just like her dear mother. That night she pulled out of the forbidden books her father had on the top shelf and read about real Angels and she laughed, even as tears ran down her face.
It had been a normal day, the horrible fateful day when the demon was released. She had gone to the village and handed out bread and blankets. Those children always needed blankets. She was working on a plan to make some of the houses sturdier and less prone to drafts, but it would take time and money and manpower and she already had a steady supply of blankets in the cupboards at home. She had been on her way to record the numbers from the day in her little ledger, when she'd heard Will's screams from their father's study.
She'd never seen a demon before, but there was no other explanation for what the creature in the middle of the room was. Will cowered against the legs of their father's desk and she moved without thinking. He screamed at her to leave, but the words "This is your baby, Ella." rang louder in her head. Before she knew it, the seraph blade Da kept on the shelf was in her hand and she was standing between the demon and her brother.
She knew the right way to hold a seraph blade because Da had put a sword in her hand before she was strong enough to hold it up. She knew it's name because she had read the books that Da had told her not too. She knew that demons could be banished, but she didn't know how. The books had never gone into that much detail.
And yet, she felt no fear. "This is your baby, Ella." She banished the demon and it laughed in her face as it knocked her aside.
She wasn't paying much attention to the words the demon spoke to her brother. The seraph blade had fallen from her hands when the demon had knocked her over. There was a little bit of pain in her arm, like a bee sting, but her breath had been knocked out of her when she fell and that hurt more. Not that she heeded either of those pains in her scramble to get the seraph blade back.
When the demon disappeared, she almost cried from relief. But the she saw Will's face and "This is your baby, Ella." sounded loudly in her head and she forgot her fear in her worry for him. She held him and wiped away his tears and scolded him lightly for touching Da's things. She made him promise that he'd never do it again without her. She took him to his room and read to him from his favorite book and made excuses to Mam for him and, when he fell asleep, she kissed his forehead. Never had the words "This is your baby, Ella." been more true than they were that day.
When she put on her night clothes, she noticed the little mark on her arm, felt the sting when the sleeve of her nightgown pull across the top of it. She knew that she was falling asleep with poison in her veins. What she did not know that the poison would kill her in her sleep, otherwise she would have hugged her sister and told her to it was okay to be weak. She would have told her brother it wasn't his fault and that the curse was a lie. She would have told her Da about fighting the demon and thanked him for teaching her how to hold a sword. She would have squeezed her mother's soft hands and told her that she was the truest angel in the world.
She fell asleep with the sting of poison in her veins and the glory of battle in her heart. She had saved her brother. She would have a scar to tell her children about. She was supposed to spend the rest of her life being an angel like her Mam, but today she had been an Angel like her Da.