I'm hoping to post a Merely a Luxury-related Christmas surprise soon, so keep watch and author alert me if you're interested. :D
Chapter Nine: Baby Steps
He stared at her, eyes clouded with something that could be disbelief. "Try again," he murmured encouragingly, but changed his tone abruptly when he saw the look on her face. "It won't bite any more than I will."
"Then I don't trust it in the least," Melissa replied, flinching from both Valentine's hand and the tip of his stele. Valentine rose from his kneeling position on the common room floor and sat on the slightly threadbare couch beside her. Melissa eyed him warily, sensing annoyance in his voice and posture. She brought her legs up to her chest and idly rubbed the small, stele-induced burn while letting the fire's warmth wash over her body.
Valentine's voice made her turn to face him.
"I could be studying, you know."
"Then study," she replied, turning away again. "I don't want to be guilt-tripped into doing this."
"It was your idea in the first place," he murmured mildly, airs of annoyance gone. Sparing a glance out the window, Valentine noted that the moon had already disappeared.
"Melissa, look at me."
Only the surprisingly smooth hand that touched her own made her obey. Firelight danced in Valentine's dark eyes as he spoke.
"You are perfectly capable of this. You most likely suffered worse pain from your bout earlier today than you will now, from this." She snorted, but didn't break eye contact.
"I dare you."
There it was again. The voice that had urged her on in her mock fight that morning, the one that had caused the corners of her mouth to unwittingly rise that afternoon. It was like he wasn't contemplating that she could do better- he was certain of it. If she let him draw her first Marks, she was only living up to his expectations- anything less and she was disappointing him.
As soon as Melissa's eyes hardened into green ice, Valentine knew he had achieved his goal.
She flipped her curls out of the way before positioning her back to him and pulling down the shoulder of her sweater. A dark purple bruise, a token of the day's bout, was the only blemish on a blank canvas of ivory skin.
Melissa threw him a coy smirk over her shoulder. "Draw me."
There was a smile of a slightly different nature present on Valentine's face as he moved closer to her. The old couch squeaked in protest as he shifted his six foot frame to better position himself over her exposed back.
This time, Melissa met the fiery bite of the stele with only a sharp intake of breath. But, infuriatingly, Valentine was right- she had experienced pain far worse than this, like the time her wrist was fractured while trying to execute a triple pirouette when she was only nine. Melissa had to let it heal naturally, for her parents would not permit even the weakest of Marks to touch her skin.
As he drew, she could barely feel the warm caress of his breath on her bare shoulder. It sent an unwarranted shiver racing down her spine and Melissa heard Valentine's sharp intake of breath behind her. Assuming it was a result of her movement, the dark-haired girl held herself as still as she was able to. At the same time as the stele's painful touch left her skin, a cold draft of air stroked it- and Melissa suddenly felt exposed. With a strange jolt of fear, she whipped around and yanked her sweater up before reaching her hand back to feel her first Mark.
Because she had unreasonably expected the area to be as smooth as before, Melissa was startled to feel lines of slightly raised flesh beneath her fingers. As her finger lingered on the Mark in shock, she realized that the thin lines were faintly warm.
Poking her skin gently, Melissa also found that the bruise had vanished.
The cosmetic-related doubts fell away as she traced the swirling lines of skin, entranced. We have the power to solve so many problems, with just the touch of a stele. Looking to her right, Melissa saw a small smile appear on Valentine's narrow face and felt her own lips bend to mirror his.
"More," she breathed, thrusting an upturned forearm towards him.
An odd look surfaced in Valentine's eyes as he ran a finger down the edge of his stele. Melissa, dizzy from her very first surge of rune-induced power, vaguely noted how his almost delicate fingers contrasted harshly with the rest of his sturdily-built frame. Her sense of reality heightened again, however, when she felt his fingertips turn her palm over and poised his stele over the back of her hand.
"If you're trying to read my palm, you're doing it wrong," she said hesitantly.
Onyx eyes darted up to meet her own. "Customary venomous jibe is lacking the usual wit to back it, Ryder," he replied in as playful a tone as Valentine Morgenstern was capable of. "Have you noticed the one Mark, present on every true Shadowhunter, that doesn't seem to fade?"
Melissa located the Mark in question quickly enough on Valentine's own body. "The eye, right there." She lifted the hand that was not currently being held and lightly touched Valentine's left hand, the one that grasped the stele. "The symbol for clairvoyant sight." While the other runes that criss-crossed his skin had faded long ago, the swirling eye on the back of his hand was as black as the day it had been drawn.
"I'm pleased to hear that you do not sleep through all of your classes."
She smirked. "I only dose off when the company beside me is lacking."
Valentine pointedly decided to ignore the last comment. "Are you sure that you want me to draw this upon you? This is one of the Nephilim's most cherished Marks, given when a young Shadowhunter first starts their training. In fact, there is usually a ceremony attached to it- do you want to miss that?" There was no wavering of his voice, no doubt in his own ability to perform such a celebrated ritual without assistance- he was merely questioning her position. It was then that Melissa truly became aware of how utterly and completely certain Valentine was in everything that he strived to accomplish. And in light of that realization, she was not sure whether to be angry at him, extremely jealous or both.
"I do not require the entire population knowing how late of start I got off too- and it seems as though this Mark is already overdue." She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply before opening them once more. "I'm ready."
"Do you want me to be the one to do it?"
Did she? Thoughts ghosting over faces of the few people- both teens and adults- that she was familiar with at the Academy and in the world outside of it; a shock of electricity ran through Melissa's mind. While she could think of many others who were no doubt more skilled than Valentine (no matter how great of Shadowhunter the Circle members claimed he was), a strange feeling filled her when she realized that the only person she trusted to Mark her like this was Valentine himself.
"If it's not you, then it'll be some other stranger," she said matter-of-factly. "I'd rather it was someone... someone I knew." Melissa was surprised when the last sentence came out as a whisper.
As his eyes bored into her own, it seemed like Valentine was about to say something, but instead directed his gaze downwards once more. Melissa was still as the now-familiar sting of the stele's tip was present on soft skin of her hand.
He traced the outline of the Mark with slow, painful precision. An oval with a swooping end appeared first, lines thick and stylized. A swirling pupil came next, circling the center of the eye like a hurricane. By the time it was nearing completion, Melissa was gritting her teeth in pain, trying to distract herself with the beautiful, curling lines that were almost soothing to her eyes. It was the first time Melissa had ever thought of Valentine as an artist.
When it was done, an eye-like Mark just as perfect as the one decorating his own left hand stared back at her from her right one.
Gaze leaping up in search of Valentine's, Melissa found that he was already on his feet and across the room, seemingly in search of something. She stretched her feet out on the hearth with a sigh while her left hand absentmindedly drifted over the new Mark.
"Why did you choose my right hand?"
Valentine stopped shuffling through papers long enough to glance at her. "Your right hand?"
"Yeah." She waved it at him as if she needed to make herself clearer. "This rune is supposed to be drawn on your dominant hand, but I'm ambidextrous... so why?"
He grabbed a paper from the common room table and returned to the couch, setting it down on the coffee table and sliding it over to her. Melissa was too curious for an answer to notice.
"The race of Nephilim was made to be God's wardens of the mundane world because of the Angel's own blood that runs through us. Therefore we are God's creatures, through and through. In my life, the only thing I have deplored about myself is the only way I am connected to Satan, and Hell... through my left hand." He paused then, looking down at his own hand as though it was a slightly distasteful piece of food. Melissa pictured a much younger Valentine throwing a tantrum about how much he hated his left hand and almost laughed.
"Sorry, I'd like to sympathize with you on that, but I can't say I can. Usually my uneven left eyebrow and bountiful freckles get me so riled up in the morning, I couldn't even think about my preferred hand if I tried."
Valentine's eyes were slightly confused. "You don't have freckles."
This time, Melissa couldn't hold back her mirth. Looking for a distraction, she cast her eyes upon the sheet of paper he had brought over and felt them widen.
"I suppose you're not planning on attending?"
The brunette's eyes narrowed. "Let me think for a min- no. Did Aribelle put you up to this?"
"I don't think Aribelle would put me up to anything involving you at the moment, Melissa," Valentine said with a condescending air. Melissa scowled at him.
"But," he continued, "I am getting tired of the large population of female Academy students worrying about my relationship status more than their grades. I thought that if you- ah, accompanied me to the formal dance in the Hall of Accords, it might prove to disconcert their efforts."
She felt her jaw gape and her eyebrows rise of their own accord. "You want me to be your girlfriend?"
"I never said that," he replied infuriatingly and leaned back, watching her with glint in his eyes that unsettled her. "From what I understand, a date and a date for a dance are two separate things. And don't you think that you owe it to me, Miss Ryder? I have given you your first and most important Marks- I would say you are thoroughly in my debt."
Melissa tried in vain to read his eyes, gave up, and sat back with a carefully constructed look of blankness on her face. She wondered why she felt like she was being played as easily as an instrument.
He chuckled. "Who knows, you may even be able to teach me a few things on the dance floor."
She knew that there was no simple motive behind this offer but Melissa felt inexplicably drawn to the evident dare in his dark eyes. Loathing both herself and the boy in front of her, she rose to her feet in one fluid movement.
"Fine, I'll go," Melissa said as she walked past him and out the common room door.
Aribelle blew a stray wisp of blonde hair from her face and looked up from her textbook as a knock was heard from the door. Leaping expertly over the obstacle course of books, clothing and all manners of other objects that her roommate had left for her, she opened the door to find Melissa lounging on the other side.
Aribelle's logical mind clicked away. "How did you find my dorm room?"
Melissa waved a rolled-up copy of the Academy residence map, which the blonde student snatched from her hands merely for something to do. Melissa waited for Aribelle to emerge from behind the map before speaking. "I'm not as stupid as I look, you know."
Aribelle's hazelnut eyes ghosted over Melissa's frame and the huge, dark sweater that was draped over it as her mind jumped back to the day's events. "Actually, you don't look that stupid. You look like a bat in that sweater, and bats have very high intelligent levels. However, I'm not sure if the "high" part can apply to bat-resembling humans."
Something akin to pain or regret flashed in Melissa's eyes as her face tightened. "Touché. But what if I told you that you looked like an off-duty cheerleader?" She was looking pointedly at the other girl's Academy insignia-embroidered hoodie.
"Then I would slap you."
"Ah. Then you look lovely." Melissa stepped forward. "But I haven't stopped by just to say how well that shade of navy compliments your complexion. I'm afraid I am in quite a pickle, dear Aribelle, and need assistance pronto. And I'm sure this will be right up your alley."
Her plea was met with raised eyebrows but no comment.
She sighed impatiently and lowered her voice. "Valentine has conned me into attending the dance in the Accords Hall the day after tomorrow, and if you don't think showing up in this sweater is the best idea, I think I'll need some-"
But she stopped speaking then, for the smile that was slowly spreading across Aribelle's face was the only answer she needed.
Next chapter to be called "Dance with Death, Part I." Anonymous reviews are enabled now, so please take that extra few seconds of your day to tell me what you think.