Clary ran her hands through Jace's hair, over his neck, and down the spine of his bare back. She hooked her leg around his hip and arched into him, allowing him better access to her neck. He ran his tongue over her jawline before kissing his way down her neck and breathing into her clavicle. "I love you."

Part of her wanted to come up with some kind of playful response because the mood had suddenly gone from flirtatious to serious. Jace's movements were laced with a need her own movements mirrored. Half the time she didn't even know what her body was doing until it had already happened. Getting swept up in this kind of desperate wanting seemed dangerous. How far did she want things to go?

Another part of Clary wished that her brain would shut up because, oh God, this felt amazing. Now her other leg was firmly wrapped around Jace's waist as his hands traveled from the flare of her hips to her waist up her sides and over the soft skin just next to her breasts. She let out a noise she didn't even know she could make as his mouth found hers.

Rocks dug into her back as the rubble of the Wayland Manor settled around them. Wait… what? How did they get to Idris? Given what Jace's hands were doing now, though, Clary didn't care. About anything. Only now everything seemed to feel further away. And why did the ground feel like the infirmary's sturdy cotton sheets?

Dammit.

Clary's eyes fluttered open and stared at the infirmary ceiling as she let out a frustrated sigh. The past day came crashing back to her. The du Mort. Viola. Rune tutoring. The mob of vampires in the subway tunnels. And Jace, Jace, Jace. She groaned as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Were relationships always this all consuming?

As much as Clary wanted to crawl back under the covers, she knew she couldn't. The whole "don't get yourself killed" thing didn't seem to be going too well. She changed out of her bloody clothes into the pajama pants, pink tank top, and velor hoodie someone - Isabelle? - had left at the foot of her bed, slipped her stele in her pocket, and headed towards Viola's room.

A sobbing noise became louder and louder as Clary neared the door. Was Viola crying? Unsure if she wanted to intrude, Clary knocked very softly on the door and drew her breath in sharply as she saw what lay on the other side.

In their brief acquaintance Clary had begun to see Viola as synonymous with a serenity born of knowledge and confidence. Now a very different woman stood before her. Deep scratches marred Viola's face, and she moved very gingerly. "What happened? Are you okay?" gasped Clary.

"My son is having a bad day," she said flatly. Viola told Clary about her fruitless search for help with Henry's demonic disease as Clary helped her apply healing runes.

Clary listened in horror. When she'd attended Saint Xavier's, Clary had known a girl whose dad beat her and her mother. The girl sat in front of her in English, and Clary had spent the year watching the spark in her die a little more with every black eye and bruised arm. She thought about what Jace had told her of his childhood. His falcon. Getting whipped with a belt. And this was happening to Viola only at the hands of her blameless son. How would you ever reconcile yourself to a situation like that? Unexpectedly a rush of gratitude flooded over Clary. Whatever her upbringing's faults, she'd never had to feel unsafe in her own home.

In a weird way she preferred it when tragedies were the result of demons and other clearly defined bad guys. That way you at least knew who to fight.

"God, Viola. Is there anything I can do to help?" As Clary uttered the words an image flashed across her mind. A curved rune resembling the letter "q" reflected in a calm pool of water, the sensation of a poison being drawn out of her body, a feeling of utter relaxation and serenity. "I think I might have an idea. Where is your son now?"

A small boy with a greenish tint to his skin lay in a heap in the middle of an Institute guest room. The furniture had been removed and mattresses lined the walls and the floors.

"This is Henr-," Viola broke off and let out a gasp. "His runes are gone," she said hollowly.

Clary looked. The boy's skin was as clear and unmarked as any mundane child's. Surely at least some scars should have been there based on all of the runes Viola had already tried. Clary didn't know what that meant, but she didn't think it was a good thing. She and Viola exchanged a nervous look. "Should I try a new rune anyway?"

Viola nodded. Rubbing Henry's back, she knelt down over the boy and gently applied binding runes to his ankles and wrists and a rune of quitetude to the back of his neck. "Just a precaution." Viola swallowed and kissed the top of her son's head, tears shining in her eyes.

Clary took her stele from the pocket of her hoodie and began to draw. As soon as its tip touched his shoulder blade, Henry began to thrash and snarl. Viola sprang onto his back pinning him to the mattress letting out a scream as he sank his teeth into her hand.

Clary let out a sharp cry, "It's done!" She pulled Viola away from the writhing boy, backing against the wall next to the room's door.

The black marks Clary had just applied to Henry's back began to ripple and fade. In under a minute they had disappeared entirely, the boy's smooth green skin leaving no sign that they'd ever been there.

Viola's jaw set as she applied an iratze to the soft inside skin of her wrist on her bitten hand. She winced as she flexed it. An emotion that Clary couldn't quite identify clouded Viola's face. Resignation maybe? Determination? "Thank you for trying, Clary."

Clary was nearly overwhelmed by an impulse to hug Viola and tell her everything was going to be okay. But how could she say something that might well turn out to be a lie? "I'm so sorry, Viola. I'm just… I'm so, so sorry. None of this is fair."

"It's not your fault," Viola said crisply as she began to adopt the poised demeanor she had displayed while she was tutoring Clary. Her eyes never left her son's thrashing form. "Let's talk about something more cheerful. How do you feel about a field trip?"

"A field trip?" Clary repeated, taken aback by the abrupt shift in conversation. Field trips, Clary thought, were something you reminded your mom about while you were digging around in your backpack for a permission slip, not something you casually brought up right after being mauled by a seriously ill child.

Henry abruptly stopped writhing and turned his big, brown eyes towards his mother. Clary had never seen anything so sad. If Viola wanted to discuss field trips, Clary would discuss field trips. Hell, if Viola wanted to break into song, Clary would sing back up. Who was she to tell this woman how to cope with this impossible situation?

"Yes," said Viola. "A field trip to Idris. The library at the Gard is amazing. There's the original Book of the Covenant as well as all kinds of other ancient Shadowhunter texts. You'd also have access to the physical locations that were key in a lot of Shadowhunter history. I think creating visual memories of these kinds of iconic, powerful sites might help with your visualization skills and thus help increase your access to your rune creation ability."

Jace's words in the library came back to Clary. "There's something going down with the vampires and maybe the werewolves neither of whom will be interested in your psychological relationship with their fangs." Her temper flared at the memory but she thought of the pain she'd felt when the vampire in the subway tunnel had sunk his teeth into her neck and begrudgingly acknowledged he had a point. "I mean, I'm all about runes. Don't get me wrong. But I want to be able to hold my own in a fight if I need to."

"I know you've just had a thoroughly unpleasant experience with vampires," Viola nodded, "So I thought you might be able to take advantage of the availability of trainers in Idris. Female Shadowhunters can be just as fierce as their male counterparts, but someone who's barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet won't succeed by employing the same techniques as someone who's twice her size. I have a friend in Idris who is petite like you and can teach you a thing or two. And, believe it or not, I can hold my own in a fight even without my stele. But we've got to leave tonight. I've arranged for you to use the portal in the Gard in an hour."

"Tonight? Why tonight?"

"In between the time change and the traffic that portal gets, it's either now or a week from now and I thought you'd be eager to get started."

"How long would I be gone?" asked Clary, mentally starting to create a packing list.

"Not long," said Viola. "A day or so at first. Then we'll set up future appointments for physical training, a historical tour, book viewings - we'll see."

So many questions buzzed inside Clary's head, but Viola's son had begun to thrash and foam at the mouth and Clary could see the older woman was no longer focused on her. "What about Henry? Is he coming with us? I thought nobody would take him in."

A dark look passed over Viola's face. "I suppose I'll have to make arrangements. Now hurry! Go home and pack and meet me back here in an hour."

Clary ran out of the room trying to shake the image of Henry straining against his bonds like a trapped animal. Was that what people did when they saw something dangerous and sad that they didn't know how to fix: run away and try to forget? Was that impulse what had made Viola and Henry's situation so desperate in the first place? How did the Nephilim's warrior culture handle the sick and disabled? Clary had never really thought about any of this before, but she didn't think she'd like the answers to any of these questions.

With a sigh, Clary forced herself to switch her mental focus to her trip to Idris.

She was glad her mother wasn't home or else her abrupt departure would cause an epic fight. At least if this trip was Viola's idea, Maryse would be okay with it. But what about Jace? How was she going to tell him? The look in his eyes as he'd smashed her bedside table flashed through her mind's eye.

If she only had an hour before she had to leave she didn't have time to get into the same fight with Jace again, though maybe now that Viola had brought up combat training it would be easier for him to get on board. Normally she'd just text him but, given his reaction to missing her earlier text, she thought that maybe a break from cell phones was in order. They didn't work in Idris anyway. She'd leave Jace a note explaining that she was leaving for a few days.

Maybe, given time and some persuasive words from Alec and Isabelle, Jace would see that he was being kind of insane. Maybe, when she got back, the werewolves would be back, the vampire mystery would be solved, and everything would be back to normal. She chuckled. Well, a little optimism couldn't hurt, right?

Clary thought of her dream and felt her stomach do a somersault. This was going to be a long couple of days. But it was for the best. She headed towards the library to find pen and paper.