The man standing before me looked nothing like the Commander of my imagination. Stories of the takeover were legends among the children of the orphanage and we had played games that involved imagining the conditions of his current life and pretending to govern a country in ludicrous and romantic ways. The possibilities were endless for someone holding as much power as the Commander, so whenever I imagined him, he reflected that by having a well fed belly and wearing medallions and jewellery to display his wealth.

Instead the Commander was a rather small man with a delicate face. He might have been mistaken for a woman if not for the masculine power coming off him in waves. The only visible sign of his position was the two rubies stitched onto his collar. He reached out his hand for me to shake and I responded automatically by raising my own hand.

"It is an honour to meet you sir," I lowered my eyes and tried to be respectful and inoffensive. The fact that I had been openly staring at him only moments before was not helping my cause.

"It may be an honour for you but it is a pleasure for me. I hope you will enjoy our hospitality and rest assured we will do everything in our power to make you comfortable." His voice was pleasant, reminding me of a man in MD5 that acted like everyone grandfather and spoke in a loving tone to all of the orphan children. The Commander turned to the two men whom I didn't know and gestured for them to step forward.

The first man stepped forward eagerly. He was thin with dark hair and half of his right ear was missing. There was something mischievous in his eyes, like he knew something funny was about to happen and he was waiting until he could laugh openly about it. May was like that. The second man hung back from the bed. He had curly black hair and a pale face. When he looked at me directly I could see that his eyes were a sapphire blue.

Commander Ambrose then began the introductions. "This is Janco," he pointed to the eager man, "He, along with Ari, is one of my captains. And this is my chief of security," he gestured to the reluctant man. So that was the infamous Valek. His reputation at the orphanage was something fierce. Some of our tales said that he was an actual magician and that he killed his own kind.

"It is nice to meet both of you but I am very confused. How did I get here?" The men all looked at each other once I had asked my question. It was a tad pathetic.

Ari was the one to answer me, if you could call it an answer. "I know that you have a lot of questions and they will be answered and there will be time for that later. Right now you need to focus on getting your strength back; the medic said that you were suffering from malnutrition."

"Well of course she's suffering from malnutrition Ari; she has been deprived of my presence until this moment. Now that I am here I am happy to say she will make a full recovery." I was right in thinking that Janco was going to make fun of everything but his terrible joke actually brought a smile to my face. It had been a while since I had heard a joke so my expectations were low.

The medic came back and shooed everyone but Ari out of the room. She had tried to make him leave but he refused to leave my side, saying that I needed company. I was touched; no one had ever done something like that for me, not even Mogkan.

At first he just watched me and I tried to look at anything but him. I tried counting the cracks in the ceiling but I couldn't stay focused for long enough to get very far. After running out of things to stare at I looked at him, he looked right back and then we both started laughing. There was no reason for it but after everything I had been through it felt good, like a part of my soul had returned. I knew that it was ridiculous; I had accepted the fact that I was damned a long time ago. Before long there were tears in both of our eyes and an intense pain in my gut.

"So I'm not well enough to be informed?" I said this with a smile so that he knew I was not upset.

"You're much too sick. And there's also the fact that we don't really know how to explain what happened. It had something to do with magic, but we don't understand how it worked and we certainly don't understand what the whole experience would have been like for you. So we've contacted someone who should know what happened and be able to explain it. They'll be here in about ten days."

The word magic caught my ear causing me to turn my head so that Ari couldn't see my face. Growing up in Ixia bred a fear of magicians among most children but I had never been able to inspire the terror in myself. Whenever stories of terrible magicians had reached me, I had simply scoffed because I had refused to see magicians as monsters. But if magic had something to do with what happened then maybe I was wrong in thinking that they were anything like me and other normal people.

Ari watched me even more closely than before; looking for a reaction for his words. I didn't know what he expected to see but he quickly turned his head to the side once I looked back at him. It was awkward for a few minutes after that but I had never been able to stand tension for very long so I soon began the conversation on a more pleasant topic.

"So someone's coming to talk to me. Do you know who it is?"

"Yes, she's a good friend of mine, Janco and I taught her to fight."

"So it's a woman. Tell me what she's like."

"She's strong, stubborn, resourceful, brave, selfless, loyal and kind. She's overcome so many obstacles and she will understand whatever happened to you Carra, she'll answer your questions."

I felt disappointed listening to Ari describe the woman. It was clear from his voice that he cared about her and a part of me wanted him to talk like that about me. When Mogkan and I were involved I had heard him and Brazell talking about me. They didn't know that I was behind the door and I heard Mogkan saying that I was good for nothing and stupid. When I talked to him about it later he told me that he was just pretending so that Brazell wouldn't suspect what was going on between us. It was nothing like the way Ari spoke of this woman.

"You must love her a great deal."

"She's like the little sister I always wanted." Sister? So he wasn't in love with her; for some reason the knowledge took a weight off my mind and I was suddenly very tired. Ari noticed this and stood up. "You should sleep, you look exhausted." He left and I drifted off into unconsciousness, too tired to worry if I would ever wake up.

AN: Hi everyone, I have to get an update schedule figured out. Can you guys leave me a message with how often I should update, it would be really helpful. Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed the previous chapters and I hope that you will continue to leave positive messages. It took me ages to write this chapter and I had to do it a couple of times. I hope I got the personalities of the characters right. I like writing as Carra because her personality was never defined. If anyone thinks that the characters are OOC can you please tell me because I hate it when fanfics are like that? I used references from Poison Study in this chapter and if you can find them I will give you a sneak peek at the next chapter. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

P.S. I found out the other day that there are going to be another three books in the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. I am so excited!

The Angel of Clarity