"Ree, have you finished packing?" Clarissa Herondale asked her daughter. At 15 years old, Ithuriel "Ree" Imogen Herondale was living in Irdis with both of her parents and with her mother's mom and step-father living next door.
"I still don't see why we need to go. But yes, I'm ready." Ree sighed heavily.
"Ree, I grew up in New York City. I promise you, it will be fun. And it's just a vacation. I don't understand why you're putting up such a large wall against the trip, it's just New York and it's just for a few weeks. We haven't been back since you were a baby, and that's where Dad's family all is." Clary pauses for a moment. "Ree, if I didn't think this was safe for you, we wouldn't be going." Smoothing her daughter's fiery hair, Clary kisses Ree's forehead and turns to leave.
"What if they don't like me?" the teen's voice was quiet as she looked up at her mother. "What if they think I'm weird or ugly?"
"We are going to sit down with them and explain it all, I promise. And you are not ugly, don't you dare ever even think that." Clary hugs Ree close, and they hear a wrap on the door.
"Clary? Magnus is about to send the Portal."
"I still don't know why we couldn't just do it. Alright, we will be there in a minute, thanks Luke." Clary turns towards Ree. "You ready to go?" Clary's green eyes stared deeply into Ree's mismatched green and gold ones. With a curt nod from Ree, Clary gathers as many bags as she can in her arms and walks outside onto the wooden porch, where a swirling blue circle taller than Clary and 5 times her width sat.
"Hey, you ready?" Jace looked at his wife, then his daughter, then his wife again trying to decipher any possible issues. Finding none, he took Clary's small hand in his right hand and Ree's even smaller hand in his left. All three were covered in straps from multiple bags and they struggled to all get into the Portal, but as soon as they did, they were off and then out before it anything seemed to happen.
"Ree, darling, do you feel alright?" Clary checked her daughter over as Jace looked around the library inside the New York Institute.
"Yes, Mom, I'm fine. Stop fussing over me." Ree pushes her mother away as Clary attempts to take Ree's temperature and look at her pupils. Deciding they were normal, she backed away from her swatting daughter and looked at her husband.
"Jace? Is that you?" a voice called. The owner of that voice, Alec Lightwood-Bane, was standing across the library, his dark hair in perfect order and his blue eyes shining from 100 feet away.
"Alec." Jace smiled and walked the 100 foot gap as if it were 5 feet, hugging his Parabatai in seconds. Clary laughed quietly and Ree saw her mother as she truly was for the first time in years, probably since the beginning of the newly developed issue that had occurred in the past 9 months. Ree was surprised that 9 months in a stressful environment had changed her mother so much. The badass artist, Shadowhunter, and Mother had always been Ree's role model, but over the last few months, Clary had become uptight and overly worried about Ree's whereabouts at every moment of every day.
"Clary, Ree, come on. Let's go see everyone else." Jace looked back at his wife and daughter. They walked fast, and unlike most Shadowhunters, naturally quiet and graceful, as to say without the need of a rune.
Clary looked at Alec for a moment before dropping a few of their bags on the floor and hugging him tightly.
"Welcome home Clarissa." Alec whispered in her ear.
"Thanks so much for having us." Clary and Alec release each other and Alec grabs the bags Clary had dropped with ease, leading them into the hall and down to the living space inside of the Institute.
"Jace!" Isabelle Lightwood-Lewis was out of her seat and hugging her brother before you could pin the tail on the donkey.
"Momma, who are these people?" A little boy asked. His bright blue eyes and dark hair made him look like a mini Alec.
"Clary!" a voice shouted from the doorway. Every red hair on Clarissa's head whipped around as she turned to stare at Daylighter-turned-Shadowhunter, Simon Lewis.
"Simon!" Ree stood awkwardly as Isabelle and Simon's three children tried to ask questions from the couches and Jace and Isabelle and Simon and Clary all took turns hugging and rambling to each other.
I can do one of two things right now. Ree thought. I can get up and silently leave, or I can make a huge scene. She took the quieter option and slipped through the doorway and down the hall, stopping only once to take off all of the bags she was carrying and put them against some wall.
The Institute had remained the same throughout the years, old and gothic yet modern and realistic all at once. Maryse Lightwood lived here somewhere, as did Simon and Isabelle and their children. Alec lived with Magnus in the Brooklyn loft, but was at the Institute every day..
But Ree felt lonelier than she ever had before, suddenly longing for her Grandparents in Irdis and her sort-of friends she had left behind. She had started to walk up the steps to the garden when she heard a noise. Ree froze and listened for a few moments, but after finding nothing suspicious, she kept walking and found a bench in the garden. She saw with her butt on the ground and her back against the bench, her knees pulled close against her chest. She hadn't really traveled before, for all she knew, Irdis was the only place she'd ever belong. It felt foreign to be in a land when her parents know everyone, yet nobody knew her. She's heard plenty of stories, sure, but meeting them? Living an exciting life? Even Ree's stupid Hello Kitty Magic 8 ball had said 'Try again'.
"It's nice up here, isn't it?" Ree jumped and looked up, down, and to both sides in a panic trying to find the owner of this voice.
"Who are you?" Ree asks, her voice surprising her by its strength when she felt like falling apart.
"Well I'm not your cousin because all Herondales are dead and all of your Lightwood cousins are in that dreaded meeting room, and I'm not Sebastian's child-she's a bitch by the way-but I live here. My name's Madison, call me Maddie."
"What are you?" Ree asks. Her voice is raw even though she hasn't cried.
"What do you mean what am I? I'm a Shadowhunter, just like you. Well, not just like you, you're a little extra Shadowhunter than most... But still."
"Who are your parents?"
"Who knows?" Madison shrugs. "My brother and I were Shadowhunter orphans. Izzy took us in and we've been at the Institute since." Madison shrugs.
"You have a brother?"
"Yeah, he's my twin. His name is Parker." Madison sinks her teeth into a crunchy apple and chews it quietly as Ree thinks silently. There are more people here than she expected.
"How'd you become orphans?" Ree asks suddenly. Madison chews the previous bite of her apple fully and then swallows.
"We were abandoned and marked with runes by whoever abandoned us to mark that we are Shadowhunters."
"For real?!" Ree's eyes widened and she tried to imagine twin Shadowhunter babies, crying and abandoned in the middle of New York City.
"Yeah. Madison Square Park." She takes another bite of her apple before the door opens and a voice hollers.
"Madison Carfleur, are you up there?"
"Yes ma'am! And I've got Ree here too." Madison looks at Ree. "It's just Maryse. If it was Isabelle it would mean I have to come down." She explained.
"How old are you Madison?" Ree looks around her and examines the flowers that she has grown accustomed to seeing in Irdis.
"I'll be 16 in a week." Ree nods and then Isabelle yells at them to come down for dinner. Begrudgingly, both girls got up and climbed downstairs without conversation and slipped into the hall before the ruckus started.
"Mom! Flynn won't give me my toy back!" a 5 year old boy whines.
Isabelle "Max, give your brother his toy back please."
Flynn "Mom, he has my crayon!"
Isabelle "Flynn, Max is 5. How old are you?"
"8." He grumbles, his dark hair and dark eyes making him look more like Simon than any of the other children.
"Isabelle, Maia and Bat and the kids are here!" a man voice called.
"Okay! Now, kids, be on your best behavior please and no screwing around with River and Sasha please!" the two little boys looked at each other and ran off down the hall. Her curvy figure helped in keeping the baby girl on her hip.
"Ree, Madison, I didn't even see you girls there."
"Soundless rune." Madison flashed her arm to Isabelle, who just rolled her eyes. Ree followed the two women to the dining room.
The table was huge, and the room even bigger. With room for as many as you may need, the table worried Ree. Would it fall apart? Could it bare weight?
"Ree! There you are!" Jace called his daughter over to him.
"Seats everyone please!" Isabelle ordered. Everyone, including the werewolf couple who had just joined them, sat instantly.
"Alright, well everyone, this is Ithu-"
Ree cut off Isabelle. "It's Ree." She says. The words are articulate and sharp.
"Ree. Ree, this is Maia, Bat, River, Sasha, Maryse, Robert, Flynn, Max, Madison, Parker, Alec, Magnus, Landon, Aline, Helen, Jade, Clara, Simon, and I'm Isabelle and this little baby girl is Onyx." Ree counted 20 people, not including Ree, Jace, and Clary.
"I still can't believe you named her Onyx." Clary laughed.
"Hey, you took the best name for a Shadowhunter! What was I suppose to name her?" Isabelle was laughing now.
"Ree, sit down honey." Clary told her daughter. Ree slipped into the seat and looked down, purposefully allowing for her wild hair to cover her face.
The first course of the meal, soup, went well. Ree quietly ate her food and listened to Alec, Magnus, Aline, Helen, and Isabelle explain how everyone was related.
"Well Maia and Bat had their kids the real way, so their fine." Magus fake waved them away.
"And then Magnus and I adopted Landon." Alec said, pointing to the 13 year old girl who was fighting with Madison about some hit TV show.
"And then when Sebastian knocked up that Shadowhunter chick, what was her name? Jade? What was your mom's name?" Ree stifled a laugh.
"Hanna? I think?"
"Right! Well Sebastian knocked up Hanna and then being his usual D-bag self said he didn't want the baby and Hanna didn't know what to do with it-she was like 16- so we took in Jade, who is 17 now, and then we had Clara from a donor." Aline explained.
"Momma, what's a D-bag?" Max asked. Isabelle shot Aline a look and Aline laughed.
"It's a bad word Maxxy. Aunt Aline should not have said that."
"How old is Clara?" Ree asked.
"7." But Clary and Jace were too busy staring at Jade, who had Sebastian and Valentine's white blonde hair and menacing dark eyes.
"Where is my brother these days?" Clary asks.
"We don't ask. The Silent Brothers keep him busy on their errands." Helen shrugs.
"River! Stop hitting your sister!" Maia yelled. Bat's hand slammed the table when River, the ever annoying younger brother, elbowed his sister.
"River! That is enough!" Bat yelled. The room went silent for a full 3 seconds before the hall filled with noise again, and the table broke up into a bunch of different conversations as the main course-roasted garlic chicken and sautéed carrots- were served and consumed. Ree, not engaged in any conversation, ate her food silently and traced a random pattern on the table with her left index finger.
"Ree? How is the food?" Ree looked up at Isabelle, who was sitting across from her. Shocked by the sudden conversation, Ree had jumped and the ever-protecting curtain of hair fell away from her face as she looked at the speaker.
"It's good, thank you."
"Woah! Momma, look at her eyes!" Flynn exclaimed.
Max "Woah!"
Clara "I wanna see!"
Landon "Me too! Me too!"
Clary "Uh oh…" Scared, embarrassed, and ashamed, Ree didn't know where to look other than down at the table, and consequently, and the design she had been tracing.
Mirage she thought. Then, with a sudden jerk, Ree was out of her seat and going wherever her feet would carry her, far far away. She heard cries from the dining hall and pictured her mother canceling out that Rune with another.
Madison was right.
She wasn't a normal Shadowhunter.
Ree was a lot more than a normal Shadowhunter.
With extra Angel blood from both parents, along with a little extra from her mother's wonderful brother, Ree was more Angel than she was human.
She just didn't know it yet.