Wow! The response to last chapter was incredible—thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm excited to tell you guys that I'm working on my own original story and it will (hopefully) be done by the time I graduate. Oh! And I just turned 17 on the 19th. So, I've had a birthday, family's in town, been to three different Christmases and haven't had a whole lot of time to write. This next week should be a lot more calm (fingers crossed). You'll hear from Clary in this chapter and Jace in the next.
Listen to this song (you won't regret it) if you haven't already heard it: Way Down We Go by Kaleo
Clary
The first thing I was aware of when I came to again were the shackles around my wrists, heavy and cool to the touch despite having been there for the past hours on end. They cut into my skin, tightened past the width my bones supported, and confined me to the wall space but a stride away from where the king sat. Then, there was the blood chain still buzzing with concealed energy, a strip of glowing gold metal across my neck. But most pronounced of all were the voices.
"She's awake."
"Do it now."
"Hold her in place—" Hands, I supposed, heavily calloused from spending life times of carrying out the king's dirty work, were tight and cold like the metal cuffs sedimented to the space above my own hands, coming to grip my forearms. I was pulled from the ground, my temples throbbing, body barely pulsing; I was leadened weight and everything felt like it was happening so slow: The cutting curvature of a bowl pressing into my bottom lip, more hands squeezing around my jaw and tangling in my hair, the downpour of something thick and wet and foul filling every gap of my mouth, leaving no inch spared, before exploding in taste and volume as it creeped further down my throat. My insides churned and very essence tried to repel the invasion, but the so obviously-distinguishable acerbic blood didn't settle until I was forced to swallow it back. The king's blood.
It was the second time I had been forced to drink it, each sample after waking up disoriented and drained inside of his throne room. Even more repulsive than Sebastian's blood was his own father's. I could barely keep it down, not as I braced my arms against the stone floors and dry heaved, but its affects were instantaneous and obstructing and maybe even glorious. The rush of energy, warmth, and life; its healing properties were undeniable, ebbing away the pain of my still-broken fingers, if only for a second's worth of reprieve, and dimming the uproar inside of my head. But it spread like an infestation, impossible to hack back up. I could feel it expanding in my stomach and eating its way into my bloodstream.
"Don't be so dramatic," the king laughed. "I know I don't taste as good as your Jace does, but you should be thanking me, my dear. Without my blood, you'd be dead."
Thanking him?
The horrible euphoria never lasted long. While the stomach-churning heavy taste of it lingered, its touch of aid and rejuvenation fastly diminished, leaving behind a cold sweat and feverish pound of layers in its wake. I sat desperately against the wall, easing the grayness to evaporate, the chills to impartially flood through my finger tips. The pounding in my head returned, dull but back nonetheless. All the pain was back.
"The girl doesn't look good," the king said, most likely addressing his son if not voicing his thoughts aloud. No shit. I squeezed my eyes shuts, lulling my head backwards against the wall. "A little clammy. I don't think I'll have the desired effect on my son if she isn't...desirable herself."
"What do you suggest?" Sebastian said. It had to be him—no else possessed that dark, intrusive cadence. That spine-upsetting dissonance and instant dosage of intimidation. I cracked one of my swollen eyes open, somewhat surprised that I hadn't lost my sight altogether along with the majority of my blood. He stood in a blurry haze, his plank-board figure looming in a sea of red carpeting and penetrating light from the windows behind him. The brightness hurt—well, a lot of things hurt—but not being able to keep watch over the sadistic duo would inevitably lead to more hurt and more feeling like... this.
"Take her to get bathed," the king said offhandedly, looking down at his splayed hand. "Have her dolled up. Fed. Give her a good dress but tell them to go easy on the make up and perfume. She has to be somewhat appealing if she's to serve as our damsel in distress."
Like the obedient commissioner of evil itself, the dark prince bowed—his body nearly bending in half like the splintering of a stick—and leisurely straightened in salutation. I didn't know why he so willingly obliged with his father's every beck and call, or stroked his ego more like. Sebastian was sharp, Sebastian was cunning, but Sebastian wasn't a mindless henchman. Not even two days had I been with the other members of the infamous royal family but it was clear that the king used his remaining son like a pack mule. His demands never ended but they were also never not met. I didn't know whether Sebastian's ever-present smiles were all for show or not. But if they were—what was he stalling for?
The devil in question need only flick his wrist and the king's soldiers were flanking me on either side, taking little care in releasing my wrists from their restraints—not that I could've gotten very far without them—and hauling me to an unstable standing position. I knew that the vampires in the throne room were only the king's most capable soldiers, manipulated and soul-sucked since their time of birth, and that the Rogues now littered the palace; the former group carried me in step behind their prince, and he'd bring me to God only knows where to maybe carry out his father's orders, but all I could think about were our dwindling odds against the kingdom's arms. Hundreds of soldiers, an army of Rogues now completely subjecting themselves to all of the promises the king had undoubtedly made them, and security unlike any other.
Jace would need to somehow convince Magnus Bane whole-heartedly of letting him use his men. Otherwise, we didn't stand a chance.
"Hurry up! I haven't got all day," Sebastian snapped, clearing the hallway of grandeur, sconces, and portraits briskly. Before that, I was carried past the entry-way wall, like being led straight into the mouth of rotting corpses desperate for blood, spindling hands reaching, rasps piercing, warped and painfully louder as they caught a short whiff of the human girl. Me. I was shuddering, the image of sunken eyes and fraying skin practically melting off of the bone lasting even when their moans and cries and helpless gurgles were too quiet to make out. The king purposely had me chained against the wall directly across from his collection so that whenever I was conscious, I had to see them. He also never hesitated to remind me that, if the Resistance did fail, Jace would shortly join them in their misery.
The soldiers were but two steps behind their prince's pace, lifting me as if I weighed nothing at all more than pressuring me into walking; I think they new just by my appearance alone that I couldn't even manage to stand, much less had the energy to keep up with vampires and their impossibly long, swift strides. That, and they didn't want to risk the dark prince's wrath for keeping him waiting.
When met with the two-way staircase, Sebastian took a right. Jace's chambers had been on the left—I had only ever seen his oddly comforting and plushly decorated living space. He'd fed me as if I were a monarch myself. Mountains of fruits, fine pieces of meat I hadn't yet heard of, sweet juices and artful pastries. I had a feeling that his older brother wouldn't be as hospitable, especially considering all I've had since my arrival was a sliver of dried bread and some water. Jace, I realized, had done way more for me than I cared to acknowledge. Under his care, his watch, I was free despite my constraints. And comfortable.
There were the human maids and house servants as well, perhaps even more than what I remembered, littering the hallways and working at a bee's pace. Most happened to be facing the wall, dusting frames or polishing wood, and while they didn't turn around, I watched their backs stiffen, their heads turn ever so slightly, tensely, and eyes follow the uproar of the prince and his cabal. Most of these women were born into their servitude; it was their parents who betrayed the human race and, as a result, were without a choice in the matter but to follow in their footsteps. I felt bad for most of them—ached even at their skinny frames and nervous hands—but then there was still some of them out their just like Aline. Cowards.
"You'll be pleased to hear, Clarissa, that my chambers are much more extravagant than my little brother's," Sebastian called over his shoulder, almost skipping with his surprising energy. I quickly came to the conclusion that it was because of the large set of double doors at the end of the hallway; they took up an entire wall. So, maybe Sebastian's chambers were larger than Jace's. 'Extravagant' wasn't the right word. "I have a better bed as well."
I rolled my eyes at his back, if only to hide my uneasiness, huffing indignantly. "If you continue to do that, your eyes will get stuck," he said, chipper as ever.
"I didn't realize vampires had mom-eyes," I said.
He stopped at that, turning with furrowed brows. I took it as a good sign that he wasn't necessarily angry, just curious. But with Sebastian's explosive mood swings, I need only tell him that he had feminine lips and he'd go on another tirade. "What?"
"'What?'" I mocked him, grinning tightly. The soldiers stopped in a delayed fashion, much to Sebastian's disproval, and I found myself lightly jostled in their hold. "You've never heard the expression that moms all have eyes in the backs of their heads? That they can see everything? It was a very mom-like thing for you to notice me."
Sebastian shifted on his feet, narrowing his eyes. "You're forgetting that vampires can take in their surroundings—in this case, you, so childishly rolling your eyes—with superior senses."
"I'm still a child. What's your excuse?"
He breathed through his nose. "Excuse me, little girl?"
I bit back a growl, leveling my eyes with his clearly blank ones. "All I'm saying is that you're an old man in a young one's body yet you still feel the need to make innuendos every other sentence. I believe that qualifies you as childish," I enunciated.
"Or maybe I've just exacted euphemism," Sebastian drawled, suddenly taking a languid step towards me. "It's for your sake, really, because what I'm really going to do to you is presumably difficult for a child to hear. Don't think that because I'm making you my wife that I won't make you wish you were dead every day of our eternity together; I'm sure Jace let you get away with talking back to him but I sure as hell won't."
I was testing him but all I had managed to do was give Sebastian my limits. His deep voice rumbled, dark eyes pierced, dared, and his smile turned lethal. "I can tell you, though. If you want to know what I'll do to you—down to every little painful detail—you need only ask." His words were like a double-sided blade; light, dark, promising, threatening. "Or maybe you're more for experiencing it on your own. Tell me, what's the most pain you've been in?"
"Talking with you, in this moment, about sums it up," I said. He was closer then, staring into my eyes as if measuring how badly I wanted to take it back. He didn't have to say a word, but I knew everything that he was thinking: I don't think you really want to test me—with an added little girl at the end for extra measure. "When you fed from me the first time," I tried again, swallowing thickly.
His lip curled pleasantly, dangerously. "Ah. Was it the part where my fangs ripped into your delicate flesh—" he cooed, rubbing at the area of skin along my neck with a single finger, his touch like the worst of winter; his pronounced teeth marks, still sore and severely bruised, were accompanied by Jace's latest bite. Though his had nearly faded already, as he had taken all the care in the world in handling me gently. "—or seeing Jace's eyes roll into the back of his head, screaming your name but unable to reach you? Or, was it the state your brother was in?" Sebastian sucked in a harsh breath, as if recalling Jon's many cuts and helplessness like I was. "That arm was definitely broken. What's to expect from a human, though? I'm sure you mean well, but...you're all so very weak."
Sebastian grinned, straightening up—throughout his little monologue, his face had grown severely close in distance to mine, each of his words hitting either of my cheeks and nose with his breath—and smoldering his expressing. "So, I'm curious. What was so painful about it?"
I shuddered, feeling my insides deflate. "A little bit of all three," I told him.
He seemed oddly pleased at this, like he was expecting my answer to prove some point of his. "I'll make you doubt that humanity of yours. Once you're mine, Jace will be strung up from the ceiling, your family will most probably be dead, and blood will be on your hands; you'll be left with nothing and no one. Far past your emotional turmoil, I'll make physical torment apart of our daily regime. You won't want to live anymore—and why would you if you have nothing left to live for?—but, as soon as I turn you into a vampire, you won't be able to escape. Unlike the queen, my mother, I won't be so kind as to end your pathetic life as my father ended hers."
I didn't doubt that he wasn't lying. Sebastian didn't feel emotions, not like his younger brothers or even his own father. He mimicked them in order to manipulate people, to mock them and make them doubt themselves and their worth. He just so happened to have mastered anger. "And what makes you so sure that we don't stand a chance?" I said, my gut knocking in warning. "That Jace, who you were so pettily jealous of growing up that you had to take away his sight just to feel superior, won't storm in here and use what you and your so-called father lack in order to take the both of you down? Here, you guys have soldiers and a whole lot of them at that, but if you were to face Jace just one-on-one, I think you know that you'd lose every single time. He's stronger, better, humbler, and more worthy of respect—"
The thing about vampires is that they always had an all-or-nothing reaction, so when Sebastian growled and his hand connected with the side of my face—so fast that I don't even think he'd given himself enough time to raise his supposed hand into the air—and I found myself and line of sight jarred to the immediate right, knotted, dirty curls obscuring my vision, I was startled into a pain-wracked haze. I was spared all of two seconds until the initial numbness wore off, and at that point I could taste the coppery tinge of my own blood painting my teeth and dribbling down my chin from my newly-split lip. The force of it rattled my brain for a good unstable moments, and only when I turned back towards him and the world left a blurry streak behind my blinking vision, did I acknowledge the fact that I probably would've fallen right over if it weren't for the soldiers on either side of me who had been forced to hold fast.
"But I bet you he's never done that before," Sebastian grinned, his lips pulled back into a lethal snarl. "And in that sense, he's weak. I'm sure he's told you all about how much he wants to kill us, but do you really think that if he were given the stake and nothing stood in his way that he could do it?" He barked out a laugh, shaking his head; my mouth ached, especially as I spluttered out excess blood, but his constant bickering and audacity gave me all the time in the world to recompose myself. My thoughts were clear now, sharp like diamonds, and because I was human, I didn't have to fein emotion like Sebastian. I was truly angry. "He didn't bother correcting your childish behavior when he very well could've beat out your nerve the first chance he got. Now I have to take it upon myself to put a leash on that...well, savage attitude."
His eyes sparkled as they dropped to the blood chain still secured—burning and tight as ever—around my neck, apparently for dramatic effect. I growled. "Down, kitty," he mused, carefully touching the corded leash and giving a slight tug that grated against the skin there. "I guess I can't blame you, a poor, delusional girl raised by barbarians. It's only natural that you feel the need to speak out of turn." His hand, wrapped in the thin but long chain, clenched, pulling me forward in an unexpected and brash motion. His lips were pressed against my cheek, words hot and cold at the same time, sharp and nowhere near soft. "But I won't tolerate it. If you do continue to run that mouth of yours, I can always resort to other means of shutting you up."
With a slight curl of his lips—which I could feel pressing into my skin as if they were pokers—he pulled away, dropping the chain, a heavy tumble of fluttering gold until it fell back against my side, and turned to face his room's doors again. "You hit like a bitch," I spat. I was so mad that my voice didn't even waver; it was loud, it was heard, and it was going to get me into a whole lot of trouble.
Like the butterfly effect—except a lot more transfixing and not in a good way—the muscles of his back folded taught, one over the other, and he stood rigid, just facing the doors for a baited moment and not making a sound. Sociopath or not, he was dangerous when provoked, like a grizzly woken up early from hibernation, like a man dying of thirst who need only kill to reach a running stream of crystal water. But bloodier. I had severely pissed him off.
The hallway was suddenly cleared of the flittering maids, of sound, of movement. It all weighed heavily on my shoulders as I waited, but I would've taken back my comment about the dark prince and his female dog-like qualities, no matter how much satisfaction it inflated me with, to save me for when the time ran out. The clock hit zero, everything down to the last termite had evacuated the area—except for the mindless lackeys still partially-supporting my weight, but I'm sure if they didn't wear invisible leashes themselves that they'd be gone, leaving a trail of fire behind them—and Sebastian turned, sorely peeved. His eye twitched, stance broad, hands thrumming with the urge to strangle me, I'm sure.
"What did you just say?" he hissed, though his voice was low, saving the many picture frames from the inevitable earthquake his untamed composure would've set off. But maybe I preferred him yelling; at least then he had an obvious drive and his features weren't so damn unsettling. Talk about an unpredictable bomb going off... He could, in the turn of events that spanned the earth a thousand times over, do anything under the sun from actually strangling me to setting fire to the world. Precision was dangerous when the person who had it was a walking weapon.
I rose my chin hesitantly, unblinking as he stared me down hard enough to melt the skin off of my bones. "Do you really want me to say it again?" I said, and this time my voice did shake with nervous anticipation. At the moment, it had felt great—finally getting one up on the intangible vampire—but now I wished that I had just kept my big mouth shut. It would've worked in my favor a long time ago.
"I think I do," Sebastian told me. "So then I can be sure in my dealing with you."
"Well," I started, cocking my head to the side. "I said that you hit like a...bitch—"
But Sebastian couldn't really do anything without killing me. That's how I found myself, fed, bathed, and pampered, back sitting chained up in the throne room without so much as a slap on the wrist. Of course Sebastian wasn't happy about this, not as he caught my grin before he turned to exit through the rotting entry-way wall, swinging his fist against a poor vampire jabbering its fangless jaw in his direction and punching its face completely inward; brains oozed out of the pasty and severely dented head, but no blood fell. There was only dust and heavy rasping that was drowned out in the sea of corpses around it. And my stomach threatening to throw up the first real meal I'd had in over a week.
"That wasn't pleasant," the king tutted, shaking his head down at his lap, bothered only by the mess his son had left for some poor human maid to stumble upon later.
I think the dark prince was giving our plans of spending an eternity together a second thought. But I'd give him hell before that ever happened.
So, nothing really happens here. Just know that Jace is on the way and that things are going to pick up soon. And then, that's the end.
I was looking back at some of my earlier chapters and it's pretty obvious that they were written by a thirteen year old. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'd rather have my work be better (more mature?) through and through. Don't worry—I'm not deleting anything—I'm just editing some chapters from before and adding details that make the story have better flow.
What did you guys think about no-filter Clary? I'm sorry, but, shut up, Clary! Do you want to die?!
Anyways, I haven't edited, I'd love some reviews, and I hope you all had a happy holidays!
Until next time, peace(: