They stood across from each other.
Jace was the one to speak first.
"Should we go then?"
He gestured to the spot beside him, twirling his stele as he did so. It seemed two full days of tracking Soraya, the young Queen of a land he hadn't even heard of before last Tuesday, had yet to erode his cheeky attitude.
The evening spun ever so slightly as he waited for her reply. Inheriting the right to rule left Soraya as ruined as she might have been had her life been destined for mediocrity. An unusual child with unusual gifts, she had brought the kingdom equal parts suffering and gratitude. She could move the earth as she moved her own molecules, setting it off into a tectonic jive with the mere flare of her temper. As she held rank across from Jace, the ground rocked in its unusual way, families screaming and watching their underwhelming meals, government provided of course, bounce and roll off the wooden tables issued to every family. Trees lost their spines and streets rearranged their cobble feet. Everyone knew the New Queen of the Kingdom was angry.
"I take that as a yes," Jace pinched his tone, in some way wishing it had the same power over her stubbornness. Perhaps if he could sharpen the tip of his voice enough, like a fork-tongue, he could have clipped the precious Queen's wings. He could have made quick work of this mission.
"Why did you come here? I told you to leave me alone," Soraya snapped. Her torso, aside from being covered in burned fabric, was wrapped in three loops of chain. Large, medieval bindings that weighed her down and gave her the scent of festering metal.
"Blah blah, something promise, blah blah, really boring and heroic stuff."
"I'm not going to let anyone do this but me." Soraya moved across him to the edge of the circular platform they both stood on, kicking aside a few vines that grew in her way. The roof of every building in the Wretched City hosted all manner of overgrowth.
Jace made no attempt to hide his irritation. "That's really great but we don't have time for posturing. I need you to come with me."
"Oh? And the heroic stuff, that's not posturing?" In the tired light of the sky, Jace could see the triumphant glint in Soraya's smirk.
There was no time, however, for Jace to answer, for at that exact moment a loud buzzing noise erupted in the bruised atmosphere above them, the sky parting as if to let the noise suck everything up.
"Jump!" Jace shouted just before doing exactly that, himself.
Soraya hesitated, and the price for her pause was a sudden gust of wind swooping down on the platform and cuffing her in the stomach. She felt what could have been blood or sweat explode across her stomach. To Soraya, fear was a word with a vague definition, only confirmed by the way most of her subjects coiled away from conversation and rarely stated their opinions in her presence, yet as her stomach bloomed with a cold wetness she could have sworn it was fear coursing through her. The earth shuddered with her.
Jace was too late, twisting his body around to face Soraya mid-fall, reaching a futile hand towards her rising silhouette. She was being carried up higher and higher as he fell lower and lower. He had desperately needed to take Soraya back to the Institute with him, the only mission he'd been allowed to go on alone in months, and now any hope of proving himself to Clary and the others was soaring into the sky.
Quick as a blip, Jace dropped into darkness.
