Alec
Telling Jace about Clary was much worse than he thought it would be. Jace knew that something was wrong the moment he laid eyes on him after going to his room and knocking on the door. Jace answered the door and when he saw his red eyes and puffy face, he dropped the book he was reading and demanded to know what was wrong. He could barely get the words out of his mouth but when he did, Jace was shaking his head furiously. "No. She's not. I would know. I would have felt it here." He placed his hand over his heart and tapped there. "She's not gone. You're wrong."
He then shoved past Alec and stomped towards the weapons room stating that he was going to get her back. He was going to find a way into Faerie and kill everyone he saw until he found her. Thankfully, Magnus appeared then, coming from Luke and Jocelyn's place. Jace stopped in his tracks when he saw Magnus' teary face. "You were there?" he asked breathlessly.
Magnus shook his head. "No. I got there too late. I looked into Alec's mind and saw what happened." He choked a little on his words and took a shaky breath. "The Faerie Knight...he cut her throat."
"She's still alive!" Jace shouted angrily at him. "I would know if she was dead!"
"Alec watched her body go limp and the life drain out of her eyes. I'm so sorry, Jace." Magnus says to him.
Jace stood there for a moment, his chest heaving up and down with his heavy breaths. "No. No. No." he says in a whisper. His hands came up to the sides of his head and pulled at his hair as he looked down at the carpeted hallway. The pure guttural moan of pain that sounded from his lips then will haunt him for the rest of his life. He would have never thought that a human could make a sound like the one he did. Pure pain. He welcomed the physical pain that he felt from the connection he shared with Jace. The actual physical pain that lanced through heart was almost too much to bear. The worst part about all of it was that he knew that if his heart hurt that much from his connection with him, the pain in him being muted because it wasn't his pain, then he didn't want even begin to imagine the pain the Jace was feeling. That thought alone was terrifying.
The next month was pure hell. Jace was destructive and angry, not letting anyone near him with the exception of Alec on some occasions. He went to the Clave and demanded that they start a war with the Faeries only to be turned down after two days of debate among the council. They stated that although Clary had been the saviour of their race twice over, that it would have been too detrimental to their already significantly depleted numbers if they engaged in a war with them without Clary's rune abilities.
Magnus had to place a sleeping spell on him when they told him their decision because he had started to charge them with a sword in hand. After that came him trying to find any faerie anywhere and trap and question him for any information. Unfortunately though, since Clary had been taken, faeries were hard to come by. They all but disappeared.
Now, as he sat looking at his parabatai's lifeless eyes, he knew that he would never be the same. He had already made peace with that, said his goodbyes to the old Jace and was determined to help him find himself again. A new Jace. One that he hoped would eventually eat more than a granola bar and a protein shake a day. One that spoke without being asked a direct question. One that actually smiled again.
Clary
Clary doesn't know how long it is till she wakes again. She's on her stomach, laying on the cold packed brown earth of her room. She brings her arm up from beside her to her shoulder and pushes up and into a sitting position. Her skin pulls tightly along her back and she shouts out a shocked screech of pain. It lances through her body like a knife. She can feel her dried blood covering most of her torso and her hair as she moves to sit up. She shivers in the cold, wrapping her arms around the top half of her bare body. Her pants are still in place at least. Her head spins heavily on her shoulders and nausea tugs in the pit of her stomach.
Her tongue comes out to soothe her cracked lips but they find no relief. Her mouth is bone dry after not having anything to drink for who knows how long. "Shit." she says to herself as she twists her top half a little. Every little move she makes sends burning pain across her dirty skin. How long will I be able to hold off eating or drinking anything she thinks to herself. With the way her throat is dry and itchy, begging for any liquid, she's not sure she will be able to resist if she was offered anything. No, Clary. You can't. You know the rules. she tells herself. She can't eat or drink anything in Faerie or she'll end up belonging to them, unable to leave, even if she was shown the way out of here.
Her eyes survey the room she's in again, unable to discern anything. It's a perfectly circular room so there is no way to know where the door is. Every inch of it looks the same as the rest with no breaks in the walls. It's disorienting. The faerie's words come back to her then. "Now you'll look just like your brother." he said to her. She tries to reach back behind herself again and feel her back. When her fingers come into contact with the raw skin there, she knows that she will be permanently scarred. There is no way that they will let her have a stele to heal herself so she will have to heal like a mundane. Her once smooth back will be rough and ugly now. She briefly wonders if Jace will cringe away from her if she ever sees him again.
No. Don't think like that. Don't say if. she tells herself. I will see him again.
She sits up, leaning forward onto her bent knees, alone in the room on the ground for a while. Exactly how long, she doesn't know. There is no way to tell time down here, even if she did have a window of some sort. She's in Faerie and the laws of the universe tend to bend to the Queen's will depending on her mood. She eventually lays down on her side and curls her legs up to her naked chest and wraps her arms around herself. She welcomes it when her eyelids begin to droop and she falls asleep. It's a welcome escape from the dull roar of fire along her back. When she wakes up again, the single candle that is burning in the center of the room has almost burned down to the bottom. She continues to lay on her side and turns her head up and decides to focus on watching it, using it as a means of not thinking about her tight and painful back.
For the first time since being taken down here, a tear of fear slips out of her eye. Sure, she cried when she was being whipped, but that was because she was in pain. These tears that are now running down her face are because she is afraid. Afraid that this will be her life for the foreseeable future. She's cold, alone, in pain, lying on the dirt floor of a room, and completely at the mercy of the Seelie Queen who absolutely hates her. She knows that she is running low on time. The longer she is down here, the lesser her chances of getting out and escaping are. She doesn't even want to think about what kind of torture the Queen has planned for her. Having her whipped so her back would be as scarred as her brother's is, she guesses, the Queen's means of poetic justice for Jonathan.
The moment the candle flickered out in her room, it immediately reformed, looking new with a large flame atop it. She watched until it went out again and reformed a second time, never moving an inch, before she fell asleep again.
"Get up." a high voice says. Clary cracks one eye open in time to see an animal skin covered foot connect with her gut. A large rush of air pushes it's way from her lips from the force of the kick. She coughs for a second, clutching her arms around her stomach. When she sees the foot coming back at her again, she catches it and twists it, bringing down the owner of the foot to the ground. She lifts her elbow up to land a blow to the faerie's shin to break it but a whip wraps around her wrist from behind her. It snatches her backwards, making her roll onto her back. The pain from her being dragged on the ground on along her back forces a scream from her lips.
The faerie that she had knocked down, a young female with pale skin and blue hair, pushes up and walks over to land another blow to her stomach. "Stupid Nephilim scum." she says in her shrill voice. "You'll pay for that."
"I already am because I have to look at you." Clary grunts out with an amused smile on her lips. She chokes out a small laugh before the faerie's hand comes down and pushes her face into the dirt of the floor. Clary tries to take a breath but only inhales dirt. "You are not very funny." she tells her as she presses her face even harder into the ground. "Or very smart."
Clary manages to turn her head enough to grit out, "I don't know. I thought what I said was pretty damn funny."
The pale faerie screeches again in anger, standing up with a look of pure rage on her face. Her fingers curve into talons and then Clary is being dragged away by the whip wrapped around her wrist. The ground pulls at the bare skin along her side as she is dragged. She grunts and manages to get her feet under her before she is dragged across a jagged root along the ground that she sees up ahead. Her free arm comes up to cover her bare chest to try and retain some of her dignity as she is pulled down the dirt tunnel that is much like the room she's being kept in. The walls are curved with packed brown earth, completely rounded with the occasional hole where a room was carved out.
She grins to herself as the hand that is wrapped in the whip grabs hold of it. She readies herself to pull on it to knock down the knight that is pulling her along when she feels a burning pain added to the dull ache of her back. She grunts in pain and stumbles in her step. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." the faerie that kicked her says with a clearly amused tone. Clary whips her head back to her and sees the knife the girl is holding in her palm, stained red with her blood.
They turn a corner then and she turns to face forward again, trying to see where they are going. She needs to familiarize herself with the tunnels here if she ever wants to find her way out. They turn another corner and her heart rate picks up. At the end of the hallway is the same moss covered green room from yesterday; or at least she thinks it was yesterday. She manages a dry gulp as her eyes widen, knowing what will await her once inside there. She fixes her face into a stoic mask, unwilling to give away any emotion. Especially not fear.
Once at the door to the room, the girl behind her shoves her in, digging her nails into her raw back. She grunts in pain as she grits her teeth together, not wanting her to know just how much that hurt her.
The same faerie that whipped her is there waiting for her again. "Here you go, Varys." coos the girl. "Have fun with her today."
"I always do." he says in a sinister voice. They leave then, closing the door from which they came with a thick curtain of thorns.
Clary stands tall, and surveys the area around them. Jace had beat it into her that that is what should always be done first. "Look around for exits and possible weapons every chance you get." he would tell her in training. But once again, there was nothing. Nothing but the green earth of the room and the green light that enveloped everything in sight and a bucket of water next to his feet. "Varys is it?" she asks him.
"That is what they call me." he says to her. "Although I prefer my other name that my Lady Queen has given me."
"And what name is that? Papa Smurf?" Clary chuckles at her own little joke as her eyes scan over his blue skin and red eyes.
"The Designer of Pain." he answers her. His lips curl upwards and Clary has to work hard keep her smile on her face, not wanting him to know that his little nick-name wasn't exactly comforting to her. "You will soon learn why I have procured that particular name. Although my Lady Queen has laid out very specific plans for you for the time being. I long for the day that I will be the one planning your pain."
"And what plans are those?" she asks.
"The ones where I burn her mark of possesion onto your skin."
Clary stills, her heart rate doubling. "What mark of possession?" she asks, unable to quell her curiosity.
"This one." Varys says and pulls out a piece of metal the size of a small onion from out of thin air. It is in the shape of the flowers from the deadly plant, Oleander.
"She wants to brand me?" she asks.
"Yes." he answers, producing a flame from nowhere and holding it below the piece of metal. "Don't worry, it will only hurt a lot. Especially when the toxins from the plant seep into your blood stream."
"What?" she croaks out. "If that thing is covered with the poison from the Oleander plant, it will kill me."
"Not in this particular dose. It will most likely cause you to have siezures instead. She doesn't want you dead just yet. She wants you to suffer for as long as her and her people suffer."
Clary's heart drops. "But the next accords signing is thirteen years away!" she shrieks, unable to control herself. "I can't...I can't be down here for thirteen years!"
Jace. She can't be away from him for that long. That is what she is really thinking. He is her strength, her other half, just like she is his strength. He'll go crazy knowing she's down here for that long, unable to do anything. God, I hope he finds a way to get to me she says to herself. She's not sure if they would be able to survive it. It will drive them both crazy wondering how the other is doing. "No. I'll get out of here." she whispers to herself in an effort to convince herself.
"That is amusing that you believe that." Varys says with a smile, still holding the flame to the metal. It has started to glow a bright red and the sight makes her stomach twist in knots. Her feet begin to carry her backwards till her back touches the curved mossy wall. It stings like fire when she presses herself even further into the wall, trying with futility to back further away from the faerie and trying to ready herself to give him the fight of his life. If he thinks she's just going to let him brand her, he's got another thing coming to him.
He blows out the flame when the brand is burning a bright orange and turns his eyes to her. Quicker than her eyes can follow, his thorny hair comes alive and stretches out from his body and wraps it's vines around either of her wrists. She lets out a quick shout of pain as they pull her arms away from herself as she was trying to conserve her modesty, and pin them to the wall on either side of her. "Now, where would you like it?" he asks.
"Up your mother's ass?" she says with bitterness.
He holds it up in front of her face, and looks longingly at her mouth. "Maybe if I place it on your mouth, it would shut you up."
Her arms are pulled even wider to either side of her body and are pinned to the curved walls. She whimpers in pain as the thorns dig deeper into her skin, her bare chest exposed for the world to see. She wants so badly to cover up and hold on to what dignity she has left, but as Varys comes closer to her, holding out the fire red brand, all of thoughts of modesty are pushed to the back of her mind.
Another strand of his thorny hair grows out and wraps around her legs, preventing her from kicking out at him. His red eyes slink down her body and then back up to her face. "I think the perfect place for it is right here." She tries to pull away on instinct as he presses the brand into the skin just below her collar bone on her right side, right next to her shoulder.
The scream that comes from her lips is blood curdling. The searing pain from the brand being placed on her skin is blinding. Her world starts to spin around her. Her legs begin to shake as she feels the blood drain from her face. "Jace." she mumbles. For some reason, his face plants itself on the back of her eyelids. She finds strength in his golden eyes and is able to force her eyes open just as a bucket of water is thrown on her.
She sucks in a startled breath from the shock of the coldness of it before she realizes that her mouth was hanging open when it was thrown at her. She feels the liquid in her mouth. Panic lances through her as she starts to try and spit every drop of it out of her mouth, knowing in the back of her mind that it's too late. Varys begins to chuckle at her efforts. "It's too late little Morgenstern." he chortles at her. "You're mine now."
Clary's eyes widen in horror. "No! Jace!" she screams in hysteria. "No! Please, let me go! I can't stay here!" The pain that is pulsing through almost every inch of her is forgotten.
"You are not going anywhere for a long time." he tells her. "I've got a few experiments that I have planned for you and your angel blood. I've always wanted to get my hands on an angel. It's said that their blood can heal any wound."
She barely registers anything he says. She's completely at the mercy of the Seelie Queen now and there is no way that she will ever let her go. "No." she whispers to herself. "Jace, I'm so sorry." Her head hangs down as her eyes fall to the floor and stare at the ground there, defeat settling around her heart like a vise for the moment.
She sees a light blue finger come closer to her and press into her new brand. A scream leaves her lips as her pain is brought back to the forefront of her mind. "There." he says sounding satisfied. "Now that I have your attention again, I want you to drink some water. I don't want you passing out from dehydration during our time together." The thorny vines that make up his hair release her arms and legs then, allowing her to collapse to the floor in exhaustion. Her hands catch her just before she face plants into the mossy ground. "Drink." he says sternly and places a tall glass of water in front of her. "Fuck you." she says, her throat scratching with the effort to speak. Although she is nearly dying of thirst while her body shakes in pain, she refuses to drink anything in this moment and give him any sort of satisfaction. She reaches out and knocks the glass over.
"Suit yourself." he says and then there is a searing pain that lances across her back. She jerks upwards to see him pouring some pink liquid onto her back. It burns like the brand she just received. She tries to roll away but there are vines back at her legs, holding them together and preventing her from moving. He laughs when she feebly tries to reach out at him. He steps just out of reach of her. "What is ever the matter? Does that hurt?" he asks in a falsely innocent voice.
A feral growl forces it's way up her chest as she pushes up onto her hands and knees. Her green eyes turn into slits at him which amuses him to no end.
"Would you like some more?" he asks with a chuckle and tosses the rest of the liquid in the pint sized glass onto her back. She yells out in pain as she hears it sizzle on the wounds of her back. "I'm doing this to help you, Nephilim." he tells her. She heaves heavy breaths in and out as she tries to gain back some control of herself. "That is a healing serum. I don't want you to get an infection and die. Where would I get my fun if you weren't here to provide it for me?"
"Fuck you." she mutters to him lowly. Her head has started to swing unsteadily on her shoulders again. A tsunami of dizziness and nausea crashes against her then and she rolls to her left and falls onto her side. Her blood begins to boil as her muscles start to tense painfully. "I see the Oleander is starting to take effect." he says to her from somewhere far away.
Her body begins to shake of it's own accord and Clary looses all control over herself. Every single muscle in her body contracts like one big charlie-horse. Her bowels release and her eyes roll back.
She's having a seizure.
Little grunting noises escape her mouth without her will and then she's aware of some more of the burning liquid being tossed on her back. It burns like hell but she's unable to focus on anything other than her muscles and the knowledge that she is having a seizure. From what she can remember from school, the longer the seizure, the worse it is for the brain. She could become a vegetable if it goes on for too long.
The burning liquid is tossed again onto her back and then her seizure begins to subside. Her breaths are heavy and labored and then unconsciousness takes her.
When she wakes up again, she expects to find herself in her room, but to her horror, she's still in the moss covered torture room. Her throat is uncomfortably dry and her shoulder is screaming at her. She looks down at the brand and cringes to herself. The skin is angry looking - red and swollen with bits of black around the edges where her skin is burned away and curled up. Her back is back to being a dull roar of pain and for that, she's thankful. She's sitting in a chair now, her hands tied behind her back while her calves are tied to the legs of the chair. "Finally." she hears Varys say in an annoyed tone. "You've been out for a while."
She forces her head to rise up and look at him. It takes every bit of strength she has to hold her heavy head steady and keep her eyelids from closing. She can tell that her body is barely able to function at this point. She squints her eyes harder when she realizes that she is seeing two of everything.
The two Varys creep closer to her as their eyes study her. They have something in their hands. Something small and shiny. "Do you want to hear a story, Nephilim?" the two Varys say to her. "Alright. If you insist." he says when she doesn't say anything back to him. As he speaks, he circles her slowly.
"I have lived for three of your centuries. My mother was one of the Queen's ladies and my father was a knight. One evening, when I was only a boy, I went with my father to your world. He wanted to show me how weak humans were. All you had to do was kill someone they loved and they would become useless; a waste of life, even if it was the lowest form of life. Just when we were at the entrance back to Faerie, we were spotted by Nephilim. They didn't hesitate in cutting down my father and just when one was about to drive a seraph blade through my chest, the chest of a child, my mother appeared at the entrance. When they spotted her, she was shot through the heart with an arrow. All she had done was stand there in the night and they killed her."
He stops in front of her then and she tries her best to look up at him after seeing that he has gone back to being one person. "When I ran to her, she was dead. I looked back up to the Nephilim to see an arrow coming straight for my head. I moved out of the way in time for it to fly by my head before I jumped into Faerie."
She blinks when he spins away from her and walks near the door. "Instead of letting the deaths of my parents destroy me like you Nephilim and humans do, I let it find me purpose." He turns back around with a twist of his lips to make it look like he is smiling. "I'll give you one guess as to what that purpose is."
"Is it to bore everyone to death with your horrible story telling skills?" she says, her voice breaking from how dry her throat is. She thinks to herself with a laugh that Jace has rubbed off on her more than she thought.
He continues like she hadn't said anything. "I have tortured and killed over five hundred of your kind over my years in the Queen's service. Your kind is responsible for the death of every one of them. If your kind hadn't killed my parents that night, I wouldn't have become what I am and take such joy in causing agony to any Nephilim I can get my hands on."
"And if my father wasn't a sick sadistic fuck, I would have been born a normal shadowhunter with a normal brother and would have never been here in the first place." she says. "Would you just stop talking and get on with whatever you are going to do. You are going to bore me to death with your shitty fucking story."
"Alright." he replies with a smile, allowing her to see a curved blade and some sort of hooks in his hand. "Since you asked for it."
He walks over to her and goes around to her back. She stifles a scream as his fingers dig into the torn skin along her right shoulder blade and pinches it. She is unable to hold in a scream when he slides the curved blade into her skin, pulling her flesh off of her body before sliding one of the hooks he was holding into her. He repeats this process on her other side and this time she is able to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming. "Why did you put hooks in me?" she asks through her labored breaths.
"So I can hang you from the ceiling as a decoration, of course. Albeit a very ugly decoration." He waves his hands as his eyes look up the ceiling. Vines are growing from the moss there and are inching closer to her. Her eyes widen as adrenaline starts to course through her. She thrashes against her restraints, shredding the skin on her wrists and calves to pieces. The vines wrap themselves around the hooks and then she is being lifted into the air.
Her skin pulls roughly upwards and searing pain makes her body go rigid. She can feel her skin being peeled from the muscles underneath them. She lets out a tortured wail as her feet lift from the ground and she begins to dangle and swing in the air. Varys steps forward and cuts the bindings from her legs and the chair that she was strapped to falls to the floor. His gaze slides over her body as he circles her, admiring his work as she tries her hardest to stay still. The more she moves, the more the hooks pull at her and the more pain it causes. She grunts and tries her best to gain control of her erratic breathing, using this as a distraction from the pain. In...out...in...out... she tells herself, willing her lungs to move in time with her commands.
When her breathing steadies and she's gained control over herself again, Varys reaches out and gives her a hard shove. Her body swings heavily causing her to shriek in pain as she squeezes her eyes shut. This pattern repeats itself thirty times before there is a break in the repetition by a voice coming from where the door is. Although she is grateful at first for this distraction, her gratitude is quickly replaced with fear. It's the Seelie Queen.
Her lips turn up into a genuinely satisfied smile as her eyes take in Clary hanging from the ceiling.
"My lady." Varys says, his voice dripping with admiration as he bends into a deep bow. The Queen doesn't even glance his way as she walks over to Clary. "Whatever beauty you possessed has left you." she says to Clary. "You shouldn't stress so much. It ages you."
"You would know, wouldn't you?" Clary says back to her. "I saw a crack in your glamour earlier." She smiles when she sees the Queen's eyes widen and then turn angry.
Quicker than her sluggish brain can see, the Queen pulls out a knife and buries it into her upper thigh and twists it. She screams out a few obscenities for a few seconds before gaining control over herself again and locking her jaw as she glares at the Queen. "Varys, bring her to hang in my court. I have something to show her."
"Yes, my lady." he replies lovingly as she spins around and leaves them alone again. Once she is gone, Varys flicks his fingers and the vines release her. She falls to the floor in relief only to have the hooks unceremoniously taken from her back. He then kicks her over and removes the knife from her thigh and snaps his fingers loudly. "Take her to the Queen." Varys says and then two knights are picking her up by each arm while her hands are still tied together behind her, and drags her limp body down a series of halls.
After a few turns, a bag is placed over her head so she can't see where they are going and her pants are cut from her body, leaving her in just a pair of purple boy shorts underwear. When she tries to stand to walk on her own, her legs give out under the pain of her knife wound. She allows them to drag her then, content in just letting her bare feet drag along the rough ground.
She guesses that it's around five minutes before she hears a rumble of voices. Another ten seconds pass before the hands holding her arms release her and drop her to the floor. The bag is pulled from her head and she immediately sees that there must be at least twenty to thirty faeries in the familar room. She's back in the Queen's quarters, in the place she was the first time she was ever here.
She wants to hide her body away from them, cover herself up but no one seems to care about her naked state except her. All of the eyes on her are tainted with hate and disgust and anger. "I have procured a new pet." the Queen's voice coos from behind her. "One that I am sure all of you will recognize."
"The Morgenstern girl." someone calls out.
"Yes." the Queen says with an approving tone. "And I brought her here because I have gotten her a gift. Something that represents our warmest welcome to her."
Clary jerks her head back to the Queen to study her. She's sure that whatever gift she's gotten her, it's one that will surely cause her pain. The Queen doesn't spare her a glance as she looks to the back of the crowd and says, "Bring him forward."
Clary looks in the direction of the Queen's gaze and forces herself to stand, pushing past the pain in her leg so she can see into the crowd. She puts all of her weight on her good leg and balances just in time to see a flash of familiar blonde hair over the shoulders of some faeries. "No." she says to herself in horror. "No."
"Yes." the Queen says from closer to her, but her eyes stay on that place in the crowd. Another long second passes before her heart stops in her chest. There, being held by two faerie knights with his hands tied behind his back, is her Jace.
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