Chapter 2 ~ Hidden
Clary couldn't breathe.
Unwanted images ghosted across her memory, leaving dark and heavy imprints behind. Droplets of rain racing down her bedroom window. Tree branches reaching out from the darkness to twist around her small, child-like torso. Wisps of soft, crimson coloured hair curling around her body like a warm blanket, then being ripped away from her, the screams lingering in her ear. Her mind couldn't stop; it was racing at an incredibly pace to relive the worst night of her life, one that she feared more than the man who caused it.
The night she was kidnapped.
Her eyes whipped back and forth beneath her eyelids like a wind-screen wiper in the midst of a heavy storm; taking in information that she didn't want and moving onto the next nightmare. Clary feared the terrors that blurred into her dreams at night, covering hopeful dreams with despair and tormenting her so much that sleep never came easy to her. No matter how many times she tried to forget these memories, to crush the longing that drowned out her feelings every painful day, the darkness always left her vulnerable and wanting the life that she'll never have.
A scarred, calloused hand reached out from the darkness, curling its fingers around her throat and squeezing, squeezing until she felt as if she was choking on air. Clary's body convulsed as her brain pulled her from her sleep and she fell on the floor, grasping at the air that surrounded her throat.
Just another nightmare.
Clary sighed and lifted herself back onto the thin, grey blanket that sat in disarray on her small wooden bed. Dim light filtered in through the gap under the dark oak door, Clary's only indication that the sun had begun to rise. Her eyes drifted around the four blank walls of her bare prison, stopping at the lone chest of drawers on the other side of the room. Clary slowly stood and stared at the door for a few seconds, making sure that no one was awake on the other side on the door. When she was certain that she wouldn't be receiving a beating for being awake at this ungodly hour, she crept over to the sad-looking, wooden dresser. The dresser mostly held the only items she was permitted in this hell-hole; three, lily-white dresses and a pair of underwear.
In the first few months of her stay here, Clary always found the way she was treated peculiar. Before she had been stolen away in the middle of the night, Clary's school textbooks had explained that most children who had been kidnapped were left to starve in cells, getting next to none treatment at all. However Clary was fed two meals a day, received clean clothes and had a bed to sleep in. Whilst she wasn't permitted to walk around the house, and received beatings regularly, she still was treated better than she thought. She wasn't an expert on the topic, but she was pretty sure that most kidnappers didn't insist that their prisoners call them by their first name too. And either Valentine never asked for a ransom or her parents didn't care enough to pay for one. Clary shook that thought quickly from her head. Her parents loved her, and that was that.
Clary lowered herself into a crouched position and slowly eased the bottom drawer open. The drawer creaked when it rubbed against the frame, the sound loud in the dark silence, making Clary wince and whip her head around to look at the door. Her heart was already beating fast from her nightmare, the feeling of being choked to death still vivid in her memory, but it picked up at the thought of someone hearing. A few minutes passed, and when Clary was sure the door would stay closed, she proceeded to open the drawer. Once it was halfway open she felt around the bottom for the edge, lifting the panel once she found it. With the bottom of the drawer removed, she eased out the velvet covered book she had stolen from the library months ago. She sat down and caressed the cover of the Tale of Two Cities edition for a moment before opening the book and flipping through the pages.
Two months after her kidnapping, Clary had snuck away from her room to search the house, finding the dark hallway that led to both the library and the drawing room. The door had been left open, so Clary had made her way down the passage, stopping when she had heard two flustered male voices coming from the drawing room. One was clearly Valentine's, the other she didn't recognise, but she didn't stay long enough to find out. Once she had come across the two large doors belonging to the library, curiosity had gotten the best of her and she'd pushed them open. The stacks had looked like magnificent, gleaming mountains to her then and Clary remembered racing around them, looking at all the history and wonder that the room held. She remembered stopping in her path when the dark purple cover caught her eye. Something about the rich colour and gold-edged pages made her pull out the dust-covered novel, and she sat down between the stacks. She read for hours, flipping the pages eagerly. It quickly became her favourite, all other novels paling in comparison, so she snuck it away to her room and hid it as best she could.
Whilst she had read this book millions of times, the only victory she had over Valentine, she didn't pull out the book tonight with the intention of reading it. A small, broken pencil lay in the margin of the book, weighing down the small square of parchment paper that was hidden in the novel too. Clary had stolen these objects from Valentines drawing room on her way back from her second visit to the library. Her mother had always said that every person had a passion; something that drowned out their emotions, that was rooted in the core of their soul. She said that people spent their whole life chasing it, that the actions they took revolved around their passion. It was something they were driven for. Her mother was lucky enough to find hers. And her passion was art. She loved it; she could spend days painting, forgetting everything else except the image she was spurring into life.
Clary had adopted this love of art from her mother. She didn't know if she would call it her passion, but she hadn't realised how connected to it she was until she was kidnapped. After a week she began to crave the feeling of the pencil between her fingertips. At first she thought she just missed being able to draw every day, but as time progressed and she craved it more and more, she realised that she didn't miss the art as much as she missed her mother. She missed being able to walk into her mother's studio, the silence comfortable as they drew. She missed being able to go to her mother for help with her drawings, she missed watching her mother paint. Clary picked up the pencil and began to draw. She drew ridiculous things; her brother's guitar, the sign that hung above her father's bookshop, her mother's favourite biscuit. The light under her door was becoming brighter, so Clary tucked the objects safely into the hiding spot. She was clicking the bottom panel in when she froze.
Clary had only been drawing for fifteen minutes, not enough time for the sun to have risen that fast. Her eyes rose to study the door, but all she could see was darkness. They widened as she realised that the choking feeling she still could feel wasn't from her nightmare at all; it was from the smoke pouring in from under the door.
The house was on fire.
Hey guys, I'm sorry for the long wait! I've been having some internet issues lately. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Shout-out to all those people who gave me some positive reviews, I loved them! See you guys next time.
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GorgeousGeek42
