Clary stared at the words printed on her shoulder blades, the mirrored letters burned off. Her soulmate had died, and it had been the worst possible person.
Her eyes - hollow and green - rose up to stare at herself in the mirror, and she offered herself a bitter laugh.
Of course her soulmate had been her brother. His last words - "Didn't I tell you, Clarissa?" forever etched in her skin. Clary took a deep breath.
Soulmate marks were this odd little thing that everyone had, but with a dark twist - marked in one's skin were the last words the other would say to them. To find a soulmate, just to lose them, a cruel turn of fate that fell onto everyone. To Clary, it was crueler.
Clary mentally went back to Edom, seeing herself pausing before saying her last words to Sebastian. At the time, she didn't know.
"Maybe you were meant to be like this,", she had ended, softly, taking a wheezing laugh from her brother, and Clary bit her tongue, noticing, too late, what he laughed about.
"Didn't I tell you, Clarissa?", he told her, in turn, as he turned his now green eyes to the ceiling. "I feel so light."
Clary's skin burned when he gave his last breath, and she bit her lower lip as not to scream. He had told her, a lifetime ago, walking through Paris while she tried to get better from demon poisoning.
"Perhaps,", he had started, taking a sip out of his hot chocolate,", just perhaps, but maybe we're soulmates."
"That's…", Clary paused, collecting her swirling thoughts, and wished she hadn't when Sebastian's smile told her everything she needed to know. "Don't."
"Oh, don't worry, I already know. But hear me: our words, in a way, match, don't they?", he said, and Clary thought about the words in her skin, pushing part of his collar aside to show her a too-familiar calligraphy. Clary still denied it. "Wouldn't you say such romantic words to me in our final moments?"
Clary blushed against her will, and Sebastian smirked, changing the subject as she fingered his scarf. She still had it, somewhere deep in her closet.
The words in Clary's shoulder blades mocked her, and Clary grabbed her stele, the new rune already forming in her mind's eye as her hand followed its lines, the burned words disappearing from her skin, substituted by black ink, as if her soulmark was fresh, as if her soulmate wasn't her dead brother.
She took a deep breath, analyzing the result - perfect, as expected -, and went to her closet, dressing herself and ignoring the scarf she glimpsed in its depth. Clary's soulmate was alive, as far as anyone else knew, and she'd bury the truth with herself.