Author's Note: Here's a little bit more of the feisty Clary I'm sure most of you are rooting for! Finally!
Chapter Four
"I met with your cousin Isabelle today," I say, smoothing my napkin into my lap as I situate myself across from Jace.
We are sitting in the same table we sat in a few days ago, at our first dinner, but tonight, Jace is hardly looking at me. He seems bored or distracted or something. Not that I mind. Truthfully, I'm grateful.
"Did you?" he asks dully.
"She's very colorful."
"Isabelle is quite the card," he agrees, brushing his knuckles over his mouth, back and forth, his eyes fixed on nothing across the room. "A thorn in my father's side."
"He was the one that introduced us. He wants her to be my guide throughout the next few days."
"He's probably hoping that some of those manners you have will rub off on Izzy." Jace is still moving his knuckles over his mouth, his eyes blank.
"Was that actually a compliment you paid me?" I inquire deadly.
"No. Manners aren't always a good thing." His hand drops finally, and he looks over at me, the first time in the ten minutes we've been seated. "Why are you doing this, Clary? I asked you before, and I'll ask you again. Why? I know you don't want to. I can't quite figure out why, but—"
"Can't figure out why any girl wouldn't be throwing herself at you?" I scoff before taking a dainty sip of wine from my glass.
Jace glowers. "I can't figure out why someone in your social class would be so adverse to moving up. But I know you aren't worried about social class. In fact, despite your politeness, you're nothing but indifferent to all of this." Jace motions around us, to the band, to the chandeliers, to the fifty plus other Guardians dinning in the grand room.
"Is it so shocking to think that I don't want to be sold off like I'm at auction?" I ask calmly, grabbing my fork and knife and cutting a piece of prime rib. "Is it so foreign to you that I would have feelings, too, about being wed to someone I hardly know, nonetheless love?"
"Than why do it?" he asks impatiently.
"I respect my mother, just as you respect your father. That is why we both go through with it."
"I don't respect my father," Jace snaps suddenly, slumping lower in his chair. He resumes looking across the room, rubbing his knuckles roughly over his mouth. "He's a bastard."
"Then why are you following his orders?" I ask, my voice as dull as always, but now I am curious. These are things I wish to know, the things I'm supposed to know. This is progress.
"I follow his orders because he is god around here. He's the head Guardian—don't pretend like you don't know that. He rules over everyone—Guardian and human. If I ever want that title, I follow his rules or he'll find someone else to replace me."
"Is power that important to you?"
"It's the only thing that's important," Jace returns, meeting my eyes again, albeit briefly. "With power, you can do anything."
I shrug indifferently, cutting another piece of Prime Rib.
"Think of if you were in your mother's position—you wouldn't be marrying me or doing anything you didn't want to do."
"Power is more complex than that, I believe," I murmur. "Being in power, you still have to do things you don't want to do. For the greater good."
"Well, fuck the greater good. Fuck anything that makes you cow-tow to anyone else. It's a horrible way to live." Jace is slumping even lower now, anger radiating out of him dangerously.
"You have a rather childish, narrow-minded point of view on life, Mr. Wayland, I must admit."
Jace glares over at me slowly. Furiously. "What did I tell you about your opinions?"
I don't look at him. I just look at my plate as I cut more Prime Rib. I do this just to infuriate him further. "You told me you didn't care to hear my opinion. Frankly, I don't care to hear yours, either—but yet, here you are, giving it. We will be getting married in a week—there's nothing either of us can do about it. But there is one thing that I'm going to do, and that's not be pushed around by you. You set out your expectations of me, and now, I shall do the same. Just because you are above me in social standing does not make you any better than me," I say calmly. "In fact, on what I have seen from your outlooks on life and your manner, you are much more lowly than me—not much more than a spoiled brat pitching a fit over not having his way."
Jace's hands slam down on the table hard enough to make the china rattle. "You shut up," he seethes. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about."
"See. There you go again—throwing a tantrum just because someone is telling you the truth," I say, continuing to cut. I'm cutting faster now, getting nervous, but my voice remains calm and matter-of-fact. "Well, I'm sorry. I've thought of my life following your rules, and I hate to admit that I cannot live that way—seen but not heard. I won't sit idly by and let you run rough-shot over me. It won't happen. It's not who I am, and I think, some part of you must already realize that—that's why you okayed the wedding. You don't want a girl that's going to let you boss her around. You want a challenge. That's just who you are."
"You don't know anything about me," he hisses dangerously, leaning in close to me.
My eyes finally flash up to meet his, and there's cold fury in mine, burning hatred in his. "And you know nothing of me, either. So I'd appreciate you keeping your opinions of what a whore I am to yourself." I let my fork and knife clatter to the plate, and I stand up jerkily. I'm terrified of him, of the way his rage seems to roll off of him in giant waves, of the way he's fisting the table cloth in his hands, barely restraining himself. But I simply say to him, without a quaver in my voice, "I'm taking my leave now."
And I quickly walk away, before he can compose himself enough to stop me without physically abusing me in front of the whole dinning room and making a scene.
I swipe all the red lipstick off, watching it disappear in the reflection of my vanity. Then I take the cold rag I've wet and rub at my cheeks, at my eyes, taking away the makeup and the paint.
I'm left looking young. Much younger than sixteen.
I look like a child. Innocent. Sweet. But sad, always sad.
Thinking back, I can't remember a time when I haven't been sad. Surely, I must not have always had this look of dull desperation on my face. Surely, I haven't always been so tremendously miserable.
A fat tear rolls down my pale cheek, and I let it run, all the way down until it falls off my jaw and lands against the white cotton of my nightgown.
My new room is quiet, and the nightlights from the city shine in different than they did at my old room.
Contrary to Jace's belief, I did not grow up in a house of whores.
I grew up in a small little apartment with my mother. It wasn't fancy or luxurious, but it was ours. It was completely ours. She worked at a mill, sweeping up floors, so that she could pay for the apartment. Once, I asked her why. She had said because she didn't want the place where I lay my head at night to be paid for by her immoral acts. Even then, she'd been ashamed.
I hadn't understood when I was young why she didn't like the jewels she had, the dresses. I thought her things were so lovely, so precious. But she always looked at them in disgust. And when she'd dress up in them, when she was going out to spend the night with the man that had asked for her company, she'd be especially unhappy.
I finally figured out why, not because she told me but because my neighbor did. He called my mother a whore.
I'd only been ten, but I beat the man so badly that he'd had to go to the hospital. I'd used a baseball bat, and it was only because I wasn't quite strong enough that I hadn't bashed his head in entirely. It hadn't been from lack of rage.
After that, Mother told me what she did. She told me that she was not only a Date but that she was the one that run the house, that decided which girl went to who, which girl had a personality best suited for a certain man or Guardian. Mostly Guardians, though. Dates were too high-priced for mere human men, unless the men worked for the Guardians.
I look at myself now in the mirror and wonder how these Guardians become so corrupted. Surely the stories must be wrong. Surely the Guardians are descent from the demon Invaders themselves—not angels.
I pray angels are not this way—not real angels. I feel in my heart that it can't be true, and I hope I am right.
This is all so very unlike how I thought things would play out when I was ten. I'd been a tomboy then, always wearing britches and a ball cap, always playing with the boys in the park, playing baseball and football—never touch, always tackle. I had been protected from all ugliness in the world, safe. I had thought like everyone else my age did, because the school taught it to us, that the Guardians were good and true, that they watched over us and protected our city from the hordes of demonic invaders beyond.
But as I got older, I saw the unfairness.
I saw that the humans were poor, living in slums, that it was only in the heart of the city, where everything dripped wealth, that the Guardians resided. They didn't take care of us. Maybe they kept the demons out, but they didn't take care of us—not in the way we needed.
I saw everything, in shades of gray and gold—the gray being us humans and the gold being the jewels and coin that hung from the Guardians and their pretentiousness.
My mother saw it, too.
She saw it like no other because she was special. She is special. And she has a plan.
I plan I hope I can execute.
Because it all falls on me now.
Jocelyn's not the most horrible mother in the world. She's not the pimp y'all believe her to be. Y'all will see.