So excited about this one! Reviews to come! Name: in City of Bones, Jace compares Clary's name to the herb, Clary Sage. Thus, this story. . I am not Cassandra Clare. Just so you know. Not her. If you wanna compare me or anything. *Innocent smile* you stare at me. *Cue the innocent smile!*nothing. *Cue it, dammit!*
"Certainly, father," Jace said, and crossed the room to Clary. Before she could throw her hands up too ward him off, he had caught her up roughly by the arm.
"Jace," She whispered, appalled.
"Don't," He said. His fingers dug painfully into her arms. He smelled of wine and metal and sweat. "Don't talk to me."
Then Clary forgot how Jace-y he smelled, how his fingers hurt her flesh where he gripped her, and blocked out the noises around her—Jace, mumbling something, wolves, howling, growling, thundering up the steps—and saw only one thing: Valentine, standing over Luke, a sword in his hands. The only thing she felt was hatred—hatred, shock—and pain. She didn't hear the scream that tore from her throat as the sword arched downward. She did, however, slam her heel into Jace's shin while throwing her head back into Jace's skull. She didn't hear the crunch as Jace's nose broke, or feel the trickle of blood on her hair.
She threw herself at him—Luke, not Valentine or Jace, just as the sword hit Luke's chest. She landed too late and scraped her side against her father's sword. Jace grabbed her shoulder, and she resisted, but finally heard what she was yelling when he lifted her.
"Luke! LUKE!"
"He was just a filthy downworlder," Valentine said, and spat on Luke's body.
"How can you say that?" Clary screeched, and the way her voice sounded brung back the memory of something Magnus Bane had said to her, once. "You screeched like a banshee when my cat scratched you, so I asked if you were part banshee. She didn't laugh." Clary realized she was crying then, her sight blurred with tears. She thought back to when she'd gotten back from the Silent Brothers', when she couldn't sleep, and Jace had scared her into dropping the tisane Hodge had made her and gone through her sketchpad and told her a story. Hodge. Hatred and disgust clouded her vision, but she pushed it away and remembered the story Jace had told her. Once there was a boy… "He…" Clary trailed off, green eyes locked on Luke's cold, dead, blue ones. Then Luke blinked. Clary looked away quickly; she didn't want them to know that Luke wasn't dead.
"He's a demon." Repeated Valentine. "With a man's face. You'd do well to remember that." He told his daughter, seizing the sword and pulling out of Luke's chest. Luke barely had time to wince as Valentine plunged the sword downward again.
Clary screamed, sobbing and struggling in Jace's arms. She repeated the end of the story in her mind. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: to love is to destroy and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.
Clary, she decided, would never cry again. She would never love again. She would have a cold heart and dry eyes and feel only hatred. She would freeze. She would focus on only her training as a shadowhunter, getting better than her father and even Jace, and so she could burn down the world, with all the shadowhunters, mundanes, and downworlders alike in it. Yes, she promised, struggling in Jace's arms while her father stabbed Luke again and again, she would burn down the world. And she wouldn't care. She wouldn't care, because her heart was cold. She thought this, in the hospital on Roosevelt Island in Jace's arms, wrapping ice around her heart.
I will be weak no more, Clary thought.
She jerked out of Jace's hold, and removed the stele from her pocket. She knelt in front of the door, and traced a single rune on the ground, one that came to her head, not one from the gray book. The wolves' footsteps thundered away, and the smell of rotting mushrooms and maggots evaporated. Not looking up, balancing the stele in her palm, Clary told her father, emotionlessly, "You'll need some more forsaken."
"What rune was that?" Valentine asked, awestruck.
"Mine." Clary answered, turning and standing, sliding the stele into her pocket. "Where's my room?"
"Jonathon," Valentine turned to his son. "Show Clarissa to her room."
"Yes, father." He led her down the hall. He stopped her at a door, and Clary went through it, without so much as a thank you. Who's the rude one now, Clary thought, slamming the door. Who's the rude one now.
Clary sat down on her bed and smiled, caressing the stele in her hands, but it wasn't a nice smile. It was wicked, evil, and not one of real happiness, of one admiring one's cleverness. Because, Clary reached down, and pulled the unsheathed kindjal from where it was tucked, half in her green sketchers, half in her pantleg, and flipped it, catching it by the blade, as a plan unfolded in her head.
This is so embarrassingly short. I'm appalled. But I'll get the next one up soon, don't worry.
(P.S., Like my smiley face? Hehe.)