Jace
I had never, not in all of my years, been so thankful that I couldn't sleep. Vampires had the worst case of prolonged and enduring insomnia; whether it was a vampire's appetite for blood or his condemned nature, any stretch of normalcy beyond appearance was an overturned cross. I might've envied humans and their nightlong dreaming sprees, especially after having known Clarissa, but all of that was the product of a fleeting and ludicrous and ignorant mentality. Back at the palace, Clarissa had always been in a state somewhere between sorely peeved (at me) and in desperation for her forest, but, come the darkening of a long awaited night, her eyes would eventually close and not a crease of worry would adorn her pretty face. In the bask of the moonlight, she was a silvery and ethereal site—an angel had I not known any better.
Sleep was supposedly an escape from all of the hustle and stress and festering emotion that came with consciousness. I saw firsthand its impressive effects, how it could distort the frown of even the grumpiest of people, diminish the blue bags under a pair of discontent eyes, and ease the tension of all the hours prior. When I had first brought Clarissa back to the palace, it took me a matter of days to recognize that she'd been sleep deprived long before she was snatched up by some vampire lackey of my father's. Somewhere between point A and B, though, she began to trust me and with that trust came a replenished vibrancy to her demeanor. I couldn't help it, I smiled. Just the thought of her lively smile and eyes, that bounce in her step, her incessant talking, it was all too much for the briefest of moments.
That was why I couldn't dwell on her memory for too long at a time. Sleep's absence, for that matter, was much appreciated. Thinking about her was dangerous—a mere fragment of her, like seeing the shade of her hair among the trees, feeling the warmth of the sun that might've held the same composure as her touch, the tinkling of the wind so alike her laugh, it all had my mind spinning out of control. I could be talking "civilly" to Bane one moment, and the next I see a flash of something that most probably has more dissimilarities than resemblance to Clarissa, and my muscles wind up, tighter, tighter, and I'm suddenly shaking. My eyes are hazed in red and I'm uncontrollably angry. I know from the moment I'm stalking off somewhere entirely away from Bane's soldiers to hopefully find something—and I wasn't particularly picky—that I can sink my fist into, that it's irrational. That I'm borderline close to losing my sanity.
"Well, you look like shit," my brother said. I didn't have to turn around to know that it was him, and distantly I registered that I wasn't even facing the right direction for Nick to have come to that oh-so enlightening conclusion. Either he was back at being an ass in his own right again, or he was just a good guesser. I felt the shuffling of his feet subside and could see just the outline of his profile in my peripheral. If my attraction towards a motionless tree wasn't an indication enough, it was safe to bet that Nick was close to my least favorite person on the planet. And he wasn't even my demented and misogynistic brother who kidnapped my girlfriend. Just my other brother who might as well have handed her over to him.
"Okay," Nick breathed, clearly understanding that he wouldn't be getting anything more out of me than my silence. In a sense, he should've considered himself lucky—I could very well be sinking my fist into him. "Look. I know you're angry with me—"
I scoffed. Angry wasn't quite the word I would've used.
"—or, so I take it you're furious? Livid? Am I making any ground yet?"
"Try this," I said before I could double-bolt my jaw shut. While the tree—a tall silver birch with a white neck and heedless head of green—was still my image of preference, my fingers itched to curve into tight fists, to build the momentum of a vampire out for his kill and embed my bared knuckles into my brother's shameless jaw. Sure, what I saw was a tree, but what I envisioned was Nick without his teeth. "I could very well stake every square inch of your body and bury you alive—well, dead if you want to get technical—or have you crucified in the company of my grand new kingdom without a shed of remorse, brother or not."
I heard Nick gulp. "A bit theatrical, don't you think?"
"No," I laughed without humor. "Theatrical would be me handing you over to our remaining family. Which is no better than what you did with Clarissa—"
"Jace—"
I whirled around to face him. I wanted him to see my eyes, to brand him with all of the fury I had for the ticking of days and nights spared him of; Nick didn't truly want me to speak with him. He'd have to be madder than our father. "You knew it was Sebastian the instant the first bomb hit! And you swore to me that she was your priority in all of this, that you would do what you had to do to keep her safe. Instead, you stayed behind to save people who didn't need saving and might as well have single handedly condemned one of them. They weren't our brother's target. Clarissa was, yet you didn't even think to come looking for us."
He lowered his head, but not by any means in regret or shame. No, he had the nerve to narrow his eyes at me, to lock his jaw, and to glare with all of the hatred of a thousand burning suns. Had we not physically looked so different from each other, I would've found myself looking into a mirror; his raised shoulders matched my broad ones, his widened stance, as if he preluded a fight, no different than my own. He didn't have the right to look superior and to stare back at me with distaste—he was the coward in this. All lion until he caught a glimpse of a bear, then he went off and scurried away like a mouse.
"I thought maybe that losing Clary to Sebastian was making you a little more mental than usual," Nick said in a low, steely voice. "But you're goddamned outright out of your mind. The Rogues came in from all angles Jace. I couldn't just walk through them like-like Moses parted the Red Sea. And do you, for one second, actually believe that she would've wanted me to just abandon her friends—people she considers as her family—for slaughter? Isabelle, Alec, and Simon all would've been dead had I not stayed behind. Our brother took her, yes, and I'm so, so sorry for that, but at least she has something to come back to when we do rescue her.
"Oh, and for the record, Clary would be absolutely disgusted with you right now," he added with a deranged scoff, rocking on his feet. "I didn't do a disservice. You're just angry at me because you have no one else around to beat up on, but you're old enough now Jace and you're our new king. I'm not saying that this is going to happen, but if you did lose her—"
I growled, shaking my head furiously back and forth. "Don't you dare."
Something in his emotions visibly shrunk, his eyes for the briefest of moments holding doubt, but more than that, concern. It didn't help that they were the same shade as our mother's, that she'd always looked down at me with undomesticated affection and care; she was probably one of the only people in the world who had ever truly loved me. But I knew Nick did as well. "What I'm saying, Jace, is that we both know how much she would've wanted you to overthrow our father. To bury him in a casket and trust that he makes his way to hell with Sebastian hot at his heels. I know how much she meant—how much she means to you. How good she's been for you. But I've seen the change she's already made and that won't just disappear along with her; Clary will always live in our hearts, even stronger in yours. What you need to take from that is her dream and make it so that it isn't a dream, but something both humans and vampires can wake up to every single day. You are the king now, as far as all of us here are concerned, and human or not, Clary will be the perfect queen. But you owe it to her—to all of us—to be just as strong a leader with or without her.
"But don't think for a second that if there was something I could've done to have her here with us now that I wouldn't have already done it. In a heart beat, Jace. I won't apologize for the fact that I could or couldn't have made a difference in her fate, but I will say sorry because you're my brother and you're hurting. I will always be there for you, and I promise to you that if I can prevent you from ever having to feel this way again, I'll do whatever it takes. And I mean anything."
I tore my gaze from his, like ripping skin from bone, a bitter taste in my mouth. The damn tree was just the perfect distraction, wasn't it? Not a hint of red among its leaves, despite the seasons having long since dialed into fall, and it didn't move, even as the wind threatened to upset the peace at any moment, and it was tall. So tall that it seemed to have grown by the inch in just these couple seconds alone. Sifting through the flashes of that last moment I'd had with Clarissa—her little body wrapped up in the pasty arms of Sebastian, her wide and fearful eyes all I could focus on through the elbows in my neck and thrusting into my gut, the Rogues holding me down, keeping me from her before the fingers in my hair had tightened, lifted, and dropped, and all that was left was the black of failure—that seemed permanently seared onto the backs of my eyelids whenever I so happened to blink, there was this tree. It was calm, promising somehow as it was haloed by the afternoon sun.
"I'm worried," I found myself saying. "There's no way of knowing what they could be doing to her, if...she's even still alive, but I can't help but feel like this will be too much to come back from. That she won't ever feel safe again, even when I do find her, and that she won't enjoy the little things she always taught me to do myself. I'll find her," I vowed, "but I don't know how much of her will be left."
Nick was silent for once, something I was immensely grateful for. I don't know when it happened, if my anger at him existed at all, but I had forgiven him and he knew it.
"How was the bro-on-bro talk?" Magnus drawled with a growingly deceitful smile. He sat on a conveniently placed log, one leg crossed over the other, his girlish hands gently placed on the overlapping kneecap. For a moment, I didn't see how weird it was for a flamboyant, spiky-haired vampire with more color to his attire than his stained lips sitting at the center of a hearty patch of forest, but it only took a blink and I could feel my eyes practically bulging out of my head. There was Alec Lightwood, the perhaps must lackluster and oblique specimen to have ever graced the planet, sitting not by him, but next to him, blushing. Oh, and there was something else about his cheeks.
Nick arched a brow. "I would say I like you in lipstick, Alec, but that color doesn't seem to suit you."
The human boy acted on instant, raising a hand to furiously wipe away at the lip imprint sitting bold on his cheek, dangerously close to his mouth. "Isn't he just the cutest?" Magnus purred, grabbing—no, wrapping his arms around Alec's head and pulling him to his chest. "Humans are all so...reactive," he dolloped, stroking Alec's hair before throwing him backwards altogether. Alec nearly fell over and off of the log with a startled gasp, but Magnus was already mounting to his feet, clasping his hands together and looking fondly over his shoulder at the boy, who was still having all of the difficulty in the world composing himself. "They're like interactive wind-up toys."
"Did you just see what I saw?" Nick murmured close to my ear, a little green looking.
"So is that what you were all up to while I stepped out?" I said, gesturing to the flustered Lightwood boy. "Kissing your hard feelings aside?"
"We weren't kissing!" Alec protested as he futilely landed on his ass, his legs thrown over the side of the log. This earned an amused smile from my brother.
"No?" Nick said, feigning confusion as he brought his own hand up close to the corner of his mouth. "You still got a little something right...there."
I rolled my eyes, trying to blur out the irrelevant components of this situation—including Alec back at again with his incessant face rubbing. Jocelyn stood on the outskirts of the group, her shoulder leaning up against a tree with her arms crossed over her slight torso. She'd regarded Nick and me with nothing short of an indifferent glance, but had resumed her staring off into the forest but a second's worth later. She didn't think very highly of me in light of her daughter's kidnapping, and I doubted she ever fully would again despite our team effort to keep Jonathan back in Idris. He'd fought against us tooth and nail, and nearly took out an eye of mine, before Jocelyn had taken the butt of her sword against the side of his head. But this, of course, was only after I'd ordered him to stay behind as he was still a patchwork of bandages and bruises.
It was a selfish move on my part, forcing Clarissa's brother to successfully veto all of our departures from Idris, if only because I couldn't bear it if she hated me if something else were to happen to him; Jonathan needed to stay out of the action, whether that be tied to tree or not, for her sake. He hadn't seen reason to that, and I'd found him packing a small bag with his one good arm, limping from one side of his room to the other, the night I commissioned our leave. I hadn't been in the mood to have a conversation with him at the moment, or with anyone for that matter, and snatched the bag from his hand to tear it open unceremoniously. That had been, perhaps, the most relaxed part of that particular encounter because it eventually ended with him unconscious at the hands of his other mother, sprawled out across his bed.
He wasn't fooling me for a second, either. As per my request, two of Bane's soldiers were currently watching over Jonathan to make sure he didn't make the stupid decision I knew he was oh-so capable of deciding upon and come after us. Isabelle was with him as well, in part because Alec didn't want her to get hurt like any older brother, but mostly because her boyfriend was still comatose and could very well wake up undead with a new set of dazzling fangs. If he did wake up a vampire, I couldn't imagine how Clarissa would take the news and I didn't want to think on it.
Only about a quarter of the humans taking up residency in Idris tagged along, whereas the majority of the vampires under Magnus Bane had signed on all within the matter of days after it was announced to them that I would be their new king, but I figured it was mostly because Bane had such a way with words:
"Yes. Not all of you will make it out alive. I'm sure a good half of you probably won't have all of their limbs intact by the end of this. But, as your leader, I make sacrifices, and you, my good people, are a begrudging sacrifice I have diligently chosen to make."
Secretly, though, I hoped it was because they had faith in me to do right by them. Even if it was only just a little.
At first, I had been opposed to all humans coming along for the ride. Likes were that Sebastian and the Rogues had walked both days and nights to shred days off of the time it would've taken them to arrive back at the kingdom. That meant, to my churning stomach, that Clarissa had already been faced with my father and who knows how many other countless tortures for the beginning half of the month; in that precious span of time, she could've been broken in more ways than I could ever hope to piece back together. I still held onto the notion with white knuckles that she was strong, but I knew my family. My sadist of a father hung his enemies as decoration in his throne room, and as far as I knew, the worst crime any of them had ever committed was talking badly behind his back. And Sebastian...he'd torn through thousands of bloodslaves, every one of them female, with a new pick or three every night; their corpses littered the floor—some of them not even fully dead—and piled up until a couple dozen servants of his were forced to remove them just so he could start all over again.
He used women, both human and vampire, as if they truly were wind-up toys. But unlike Magnus, he didn't care if they were interactive—or maybe he did. He liked the fear he could hold over people, even over Nick and myself, as if he were the bearer of fate and held the scissors that could end the fine line of life itself; I had seen it in his eyes from a young age, the darkness, the disconnect there. By age five, he'd busied himself with snapping the heads off of bunnies, or even just wringing out the poor creatures' miseries, taking hours on end to finally put a stop to their lives. By fifty, with a body of armor and destruction, mind of deranged likings and cunningness, he'd helped our father add a whole wave of wrong-doers to the throne room wall. Now, he moved whether or not the ground was prepared for it. He sought after innocent people residing in the kingdom to behead their very bodies on a public platform for crimes as low as stealing an extra pint of blood.
But my father's people were scared loyal. So long as they knew he was their puppeteer, they'd do anything to keep their strings. This, in short, meant that we were outnumbered and that we'd be damned if we didn't arrive prepared for a fight. A bloody one.
Clarissa, however, had always wanted a world of equality. The humans, in this case, would be on our side, fighting for their rights as well as the vampire's, and maybe, just maybe, that would give us a leg up that my father wouldn't be expecting. Sure, he had his fair share of humans, but even the most loyal of them wore uniforms and slaved after his pride; they weren't by any means free. The people under his care were all oppressed, tired, abused, scared, but if they had survived for as long as they had, it was for a reason. Even if it was subconscious, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that they wanted what I would stand for, and that they'd fight for it. If only the vampires went up against the vampires, it wouldn't be an overtaking, but a cyclic history. What Clarissa wanted was change and I'd give it to her. So, the humans, despite slowing us down considerably, were a price I was willing to invest in.
My small army of over three hundred had left Idris but two weeks ago, and we were mere miles away from where the journey to the capital had all started. Maybe it was cruel that I only let the humans sleep but a couple or so hours every night, that I was forcing them to make up for lost ground that Clarissa, Nick, Alec and Isabelle, Simon, Jonathan, and myself had driven in a cargo van, but time was impeding. Any more days, minutes, seconds away from her and she could be that much closer to falling, to becoming one of the women my older brother had never had any trouble at all discarding on his bedroom floor. But what made this worse than possibly anything was the fact that my brother had made it plainly clear that he had no intentions of simply discarding her when he grew bored.
You, however, won't ever be graced with an escape like so many before you were. Recalling his serpent-like voice, I could practically feel Clarissa at my side, still fuming over my older brother's confession as to just how I'd lost my eyesight, but at that point with Sebastian's promising drawl—hanging over all of our shoulders and squeezing like a real snake—early in admission, she'd been scared. Her little hands had been wracked with tremors, her breathing had hitched, heart nearly stopped altogether. I'd wanted so much to comfort her, to hide her away behind me. But, no. She was always so stubborn, brave as anything, infuriating.
No matter what happened, I'd save her from an eternity of the pain she was already undoubtedly in. But first, I had to face her father and potentially get my ass kicked. I had to rally his people with Bane's and make them see reason in each other. I had to prepare us all for what was to come, and I had to do it fast. Whatever it took, I'd get Clarissa her change and hand it to her on a silver platter, and if I couldn't wear a crown by the end of it, I'd still be the last one to leave battlefield, alive or not.
Because I was out for blood.
Not a lot of dialogue or of anything, but lots of people are worried that I've discontinued the story—despite my countless promises that I would never do that—and so I had to get something up. It isn't quite edited yet, but if felt good to be writing this again; starting with Jace's POV was just so difficult for some reason and I was seriously avoiding having to get through this chapter like the plague. But it's going to be a fun, emotional, and bloody ride from here as all that's left is the long awaited conclusion. Thanks for the reviews—I seriously appreciate them so much and have read every single one of them, and if I could respond, I totally would. I hope there's still people wanting to read this, but thanks for all of the PMs and "where are yous?"
Leave any predictions, comments, and concerns(:
Until next time, peace.