Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Cassandra Clare and the plot is a combination of my own and the author of the original fairy tale.

Chapter One – Jem's Backstory

I lost both my parents when I was young, just at different times. My mother was a cop, responsible for cracking down on gang violence. Because of her, the streets of Shanghai were safe once more. But there was one gang that defied all the rules and used magic to escape police custody on more than one occasion.

No one on the police force could understand how this gang moved in the shadows and went unseen by their customers. But eventually one of the lower ranking members made a mistake and my mother was able to arrest him. After three days, he finally gave up their location and rolled over on his boss.

My mother formed a special task force and went after the entire gang, getting everyone except the leader. She was content with waiting until they resurfaced. That is, until they murdered my father while he was in London on business. My mother was devastated and didn't leave our home for days. I did my best to care for her but without my father; she was losing her will to go on.

On the fifth day, a woman, Mrs. Black came round to tend to her. Right away I knew something wasn't right. She kept lingering near my mother's window like she was waiting for someone. I left to go get my mother some water when I was attacked by the gang leader, a woman named Yan Lou. We were dragged into the living room and handcuffed to chairs. Yan Lou was sadistic; poisoning my body with a substance Mrs. Black created using the blood of her sister. I became delirious and hallucinating. My mother begged me to hold on and to fight against the poison but I was too weak.

The last thing I remembered before hearing the shot was my mother calling to me, using my birth name, Jian. I was left for dead but I was discovered by my mother's partner. He became worried when no one was answering the phone and she had yet to return to work. I was taken to the hospital where the doctors ran every test. They couldn't identify the poison but had seen it before. Despite an experimental drug, using a synthetic strand of the drug combined with others, no one had survived. The drug would only prolong the inevitable.

So I headed to London to deal with my father's affairs, waiting for the end.