Author's Note: I'M HORRIBLE! AH! I'm going to do something awful to you guys. I'm going to give y'all a short chapter and just one at that. I'm so sorry. I'm just really stressed/busy and I can't find anymore time tonight to write! I'm so horribly sorry! I'll make it up to y'all tomorrow with three chapters (hopefully!) and yes, I am freaking out that I'm leaving it on an odd number. Ugh.


Chapter Twenty-Nine

I wait in the apartment, sitting on the edge of the couch stiffly.

Jace has been gone for three hours.

I tried to find them again in the halls after he'd left the restroom, but to no avail. Too embarrassed to risk seeing Isabelle again, I decided just to come back up to the penthouse and wait.

Now, I've been waiting so long that I feel uneasy. What if something happens? What if Jace manages to ruin things, my plans? I wouldn't put this past him.

But just as I let my mind begin to wander into dangerous territory, the door swings open viciously and Jace marches in, kicking it shut behind him. I flinch at the sound.

He paces back and forth, his steps jerky and brimming with fury. He's tensed, ready to snap at the slightest thing.

So I whisper, in a very calm, sweet voice, "Jace?"

"I hate that man," he growls, running his hands through his hair, pulling at it sharply so it stands up around his head wildly. "I really do hate him. He's such a damn control freak! Everything has to be his way just because he's a fucking psychopath!" Jace's hand suddenly shoots out, raking across the teacart, spilling the dishes down onto the floor, shattering most of them.

I shy away from him internally but force myself to remain calm on the outside.

"I'm so damn sick of it! He's been this way my whole life, and now, when I'm turning twenty-fucking-two and married, he's still treating me like a snot nosed kid!" Jace is turning red underneath the gold of his skin, the pulse at his throat hammering so hard that I can see it pulsating under his skin. "He's so obsessive and paranoid about all this shit! He's a serious nutcase! And then he wants to talk bad about my mother? It's so fucking ironic."

I blink rapidly at the profanities before clearing my throat and saying, quietly, "Come sit down." I pat the space next to me gently.

He walks across the room twice more before coming over and dropping onto the edge of the couch, jerking his leg up and down, humming with energy and fiery anger.

There's nothing I can say, so I just reach out and place my hand lightly on the top of his arm, where his muscle is hard and tense beneath his suit jacket.

It's a small gesture, but it has the desired effect. He slumps slightly, relaxing under my hand just a fraction. It's amazing what a gentle touch can do, how it can soothe you. I wish that my own mother had been more giving with these kinds of things, but she wasn't. Isn't.

Jace's head is suddenly in his hands. "I'm sorry," he mumbles. "If I scared you."

"You didn't," I say, even though he did. I wait for a few minutes, making sure he will calm down, before I brave asking, "What did Valentine say when you confronted him?"

"Just that he was taking matters into his own hands since I was being such a chicken shit because I wouldn't fucking rape you. He's such a bastard, Clary." Jace glances up at me, briefly, before putting his head in his hands again. "He always has things go his way. Like…this one time, when we were visiting the borders and sleeping out in the barracks and such, I saw this little yellow kitten—which is incredibly rare out in the Wild Lands. I befriended it immediately because it was so friendly and I was only eight. I thought it was so cool because my father, of course, wouldn't let me have a pet. But then, when Father found out I'd been sneaking it into the Wall at night and feeding it, he told me I had to kill it."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because he said that it was too attached to me now. That I'd just crippled it by giving it food and love. That it was dependent on me now and better off dead because we'd have to leave soon anyway."

I grimace and inquire, carefully, "Did you? Kill it?"

"Hell no. I was too much of a coward for it, and Father killed it himself—in front of me. He rang its little neck, like snapping a twig." Jace inhales once and then looks over at me, his face pained. "I couldn't kill Sebastian either, Clary. He was…he was laying there—dying. He pissed himself and was crying and he kept…he kept getting this glazed look in his eye and calling out for his mom—like she was there—and the smell…God, that smell. His flesh was burning. And he was begging me. Begging me just to kill him and get it over with, when he was conscious enough. He kept grabbing at my hands and pleading with me just to make it stop." Jace's jaw works a few times, and his eyes glisten just slightly, his voice starting to become choked. "And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I was too damn selfish and scared. I thought I'd carry it around with me the rest of my life, and now, I carry the guilt of not having fulfilled his wish. I just held him and did nothing like a coward for ten whole minutes as his body was eaten away." Jace swallows, hard and looks down at his trembling hands as they hang between his knees. "Maybe Father is right about a few things, about me being scared shitless to ever do anything."

I'm silent for a moment, my mind working. I try decide what to say, if anything, but then, my instincts get the best of me and I say, "Jace, having a heart is nothing to be ashamed over. Having compassion doesn't make you a coward."

"If I had compassion, I would have killed Sebastian—and would have never been nice to that cat. I knew it wasn't going to end well. I knew my father wasn't going to like it. It was my fault he even got his neck snapped."

"You can't go through your whole life not forming attachments to things because you think they make you weak, Jace."

"It's just easier not to, don't you think?" He looks over at me, his eyes genuinely searching and curious. "You don't have any attachments, do you? Maybe to your mother, but that's it, isn't it? And you're so cold…and I talk as though it disgusts me but…but sometimes, I wish I could be like that—detached. It's easier that way. It keeps you from getting hurt—and others, too. It has to be easier."

"The grass is always greener on the other side, darling." I smooth my hand down his arm slowly, watching its progress so I don't have to look at him directly.

"But you didn't answer my question—not really. It's easier—to be the way you are, isn't it?"
I bite my lip, debate for a moment, but the words rush through anyway, as if I hadn't thought about them at all. "Not always. It's very…lonely."

"I'd rather be lonely than afraid and guilty."

"That's only because you don't know loneliness."

"I do know it—all too well, I'm afraid. I'm lonely every day—lonely and guilty."

My eyes risk a glance at Jace, who is frowning a little desperately, and I see his eyes, his confused, isolated, miserable eyes.

He's a Guardian.

He has it all.

Wealth, a beautiful place to live, a place to belong, a throne to acquire. He will soon rule over it all. He has both parents, he has had a luxurious childhood, at least in monetary ways, and he's been given opportunities most humans would kill for.

And yet.

Yet he's dying, consumed with his own sense of grief and loyalty and burden and misery. He's drowning in his father's commands, in the weight of the world on his shoulders, in the loss of innocence and childhood taken.

It's the first time I look in his eyes and see something more than arrogance or playfulness or anger or lust. I see something much more important. And much more dangerous.

I see a piece of me.


Hm. What do y'all think? Leave me lots of reviews yet again, please! I respond to all of them! Also, y'all are going to like where I'm heading with these next few chapters. Uh-huh! (: