Hello, hello, hello! For those of you new to the story, welcome! For those of you new to me, welcome! For those who've been to this story before, welcome back, and to those who have been with me since the beginning, I am eternally grateful for your support and patience and understanding.

I've been struggling with this story and how to tell it. As some of you know, I lost all my outlines, notes and chapters for this story when my laptop broke a few months ago. Rereading it, trying to remember all the places I wanted it to go, there were some things that I wasn't happy with, some things I wanted to add or change.

So I've decided to edit and re-upload my chapters. The general storyline has not changed, so feel free to skip these chapters right to the new one, but I've definitely added some additional content, some direction, and some fluff. :)

During my hiatus, I've been writing, working on other projects, and wrestling with a part of my past that I've not yet been strong enough to deal with, but I'm hoping to be back and better than ever, and hold myself accountable for updating!

Thanks for sticking with me through thick and through thin, just like we stick with our faves from the Mortal Instruments. 3

I'm putting the same A/N at the beginning of all updated chapters, so if you're reading this right now, feel free to skip it every time following. I love and appreciate every single one of you. And for whoever needs it, you are not your past. You are not the wrongs done to you. You are worthy and strong and so entirely perfect. Please know that.

Love you all.


This is the start of the new content that continues the story! Yay!


Dancing With Demons

Chapter 28: Demon Hero

Song: Wicked Game – Theory of a Deadman


For the first time in my entire life, I slept past sunrise, a bundle of curls murmuring softly in her sleep as I lift myself from the warm sheets. Even the steaming shower is cold compared to her embrace, an emptiness taking root in my heart, cementing itself there as I stick my keys into the ignition and route myself to work.

Leaving her there, alone, asleep, defenseless—it stirs something deep within me, a feral feeling of protectiveness. It flares and spreads heat through my veins, my heart beating heavier, my brain calculating every possible scenario that might occur in my absence.

I'm not familiar with this feeling of anxiety. I've been trained to remain emotionless, honed to keep calm in the face of my darkest enemies. And yet, a small redhead had thrown those years of preparing out the window, waltzing into my life and burning me down to my base, revealing my truest self.

"Isabelle," I greet my sister, who's seated in my waiting room.

"You have a visitor," she tells me, taking the place of my slumbering secretary for the time being. "Michael Wayland." The name brightens my mood, one I hadn't heard in a long time.

"Thanks, Iz." She nods, exiting to return to her own duties as I enter my office.

"Look at you," Michael says in leu of greeting. The last time I saw Michael was the day before I was named the official leader of the Shadowhunters, the day my grandfather was lain to rest. "You've become a man."

He wraps his arms around me in a tight embrace. Michael retired after my grandfather's death, settling into a life just outside of the city, maintaining contact with the older generation of the Shadowhunters, those who've served longer than I've been alive. "You always were a little bit naïve," he adds, pulling back as I fail to mask my confusion.

I'd always known that the ties and alliances between the gangs were a clusterfuck of bastardized children and forbidden romances, but I'd never expected Michael Wayland to press a gun to my temple.

If Robert Lightwood had been my father's right hand, Michael Wayland was the left. He'd given me my first seraph blade, taught me how to utilize the traditional weapon when my enemies were armed with guns. He taught me the pride in using one's body, one's own strength, to overcome even the toughest adversaries. "What are you doing, Wayland," I growl. "Once a Shadowhunter, always a Shadowhunter."

"Look out at this city, boy," he growls, the cold metal digging deeper into my forehead as he grips the back of my chair. He spins my office chair so that I face picture window, looking at the city, my city from seventy floors up. Rain drizzles against the glass pane. Below, people open umbrellas, rushing from point A to point B, dragging children and pets along as they lag back to splash in the puddles. "War is upon us. New York is burning to the ground, and only Demons can survive the blaze."

"How do you plan to start a fire in this fucking rain?" I quip because I'm an indignant asshole, because even in the face of certain death, I refuse to cower. He can hear the gnashing of teeth as he sets his jaw. The gun cocks. I don't flinch.

"I'll tell that pretty little wife of yours you said Hi.'"

I wince then, not because his fingers had moved toward the trigger, but because my life has taken a shape in my mind. It's in the form of her lips, soft and swollen from late night kisses, in her hair, swept backward by the wind from the opened window of my Corvette, in her smile, the one that reveals her teeth and reaches her eyes. It's in her hands, the way they trace my scars, unbothered by who I am, by what I've done. It's in the way she sleeps soundly, trusting me to keep the demons at bay.

For the first time in my life, when faced with my own mortality, I am afraid.

I love you.

I will it from my mind to hers, praying to whatever gods live above that she might hear it, that she might lift her face and feel a warm breeze against her cheeks, that a sliver of sun might bust through the quilted clouds and land at her feet, that she might blink and a rainbow will appear.

"It's been a good run, Herond—" His words are cut off. Not by any sound in particular, just abruptly dissipating into silence.

And then I hear it, the familiar gurgle of death, the last attempt for breath that's drowned by blood rushing into the lungs. The knife makes a squishing sound as it is removed from his back, his corpse slowly slumping forward as gravity takes its toll.

I see her behind him.

My hero.

My angel.

The knife clatters to the ground, shattering the chaotic silence as Clary backs away from the man, eyes wide, horrified at the scene before her. Her hands are shaking, mouth opened in a silent scream. There's crimson splattered across her cheeks, her hair a wild tangle of curls as bright as the blood pooling at her feet.

"Clary," I murmur, my voice oddly calm despite my recent brush with death. I toe the body with my boot as I pass by, just to check, before taking her up in my arms. Her hand has come up to cover the shock on her face, her torso shaking uncontrollably as blood pools near our feet. She doesn't look at me, doesn't speak. Instead, she extracts herself from my embrace and steals from the room, disappearing before my mind has even caught up.