Chapter Six
Clarissa Fray.
The girl stumbled into their life, dragging them into her family drama and while he didn't hate her at first, it's a near thing. He hates how his siblings seem willing to drop everything on her whim, how she seems so eager to drag them into trouble, as if the most precious people in his life wouldn't be punished for the unsanctioned missions and trouble with downworlders she constantly stirs up.
He hated how she trampled all over their laws and customs, not even taking the time to learn about the world she seemed so eager to prove that she was a part of. The way she looked at him with the "knowing" look in her eyes, constantly accusing him of being in love with Jace.
Which, what?
He hadn't had a crush on Jace in years, not since-
All things considered, he'd considered helping her, had been willing to try if only to protect his siblings, until now.
"She's Valentine's daughter?" The question is delivered in a deadpan, anything to mask the panic because oh.
Suddenly some parts of the girl's personality, parts that had rubbed at him and nagged at him made sense.
Her stubbornness, her conviction that her way was the right way. The way she'd snap at people when things didn't go her way.
No.
No.
He'd finally been healing. Finally trying to move on from that man, and now faced with her, he could feel the ice guarding his heart tremor if only slightly.
Valentine did not willingly part with what was his and if he really did have the girl's mother, if she truly was his daughter, he'd be coming for her.
For everyone that stood in his way in his path to get her...including Alec.
Staring at the girl in horror, carefully masked as it is, he's barely able to hear Jace defending her. Could barely see the look of disapproval on his sister's face and the hurt on the girl's face.
Instead, he shook his head and turned away, trying to keep his hands from trembling.
*/*
Beautiful.
Glancing over the security footage he'd received from his spy in the New York Institute, he couldn't help but allow his eyes to linger on the form of the current acting head. His love had grown even more alluring in the eight years that they'd been apart, his hair having grown out of his preferred mohawk into a mess of dark curls. His eyes, once a doorway into everything he was feeling, seemed to have iced over, his thoughts shielded by a truly fearsome scowl. He'd broadened, no longer slender as he had been all those years ago, muscle packed onto his lean frame, his shoulders broad and powerful and he couldn't help but picture what the younger man would look like beneath him once more.
If he would scream and whimper and beg as he had each time they'd fallen into bed together, or did his new found stoicism extend into the bedroom.
A dark smile curled his lips at the thought, then he turned his attention to the others in the footage.
Jonathan Weyland seemed to have grown up as well, and he couldn't help but snort at the boy's obvious infatuation with Clarissa. While he held very little in the way of paternal love towards the boy, he couldn't help but wonder if the child had retained any of the lessons he'd tried to teach him. Anything beyond his training with his blades which he seemed to be doing well in. He doubted it, and he knew that it was his beloved's fault. Him and his damn heart.
Beside him stood the girl who could only be Maryse's daughter, Isabelle. She was dressed much like her mother had at her age, tight clothing designed to entice and hold one's attention. If he remembered correctly from Alexander's previous talk of them, the girl was one of the brightest of their generation and so far everything he'd seen seemed to attest to that fact. However, unlike her mother, the girl seemed eager to partake in relations with downworlders, something that sent a tremor of disgust down his spine because she wasn't doing it to gain anything. No she was doing it simply because she wanted to, although she normally played it off as intelligence gathering.
Clarissa stood between her and Jonathan, all doe eyes and soft smiles, and he found himself wondering why he barely felt anything for the girl. Perhaps it was her resemblance to Jocelyn. Oh, how he loathed his ex-wife and all that she'd stolen from him, and as he looked at his daughter, at the strong likeness she bore to her mother, he couldn't help the sharp spike of loathing that shot through him. Yet there was also a trill of possessiveness, of interest, because the girl was close to Jonathan. Close to the man who shared a part of his beloved's soul and it would be easy to lure her in. After all, his gaze shifted to Jocelyn's unconscious form, He already had something she wanted.
His gaze moved back to his lover, who's attention had moved from the group to another.
A child.
The boy, no older than ten years old, had shaggy curly hair similar to Alexander's, his eyes a kaleidoscope of hazel and green that looked too much like Alexander's glamoured eyes to be coincidence. He was staring up at the archer, pride and heroship in every feature and unbidden Valentine felt his breath catch in his throat.
Was this boy-
Could he be-
He turned to his spy.
"Who is that boy?"
She frowned slightly, then smiled thinly. "Maxwell Lightwood, sir. He is Maryse and Robert's youngest son."
"How old?"
"He just turned eight."
A truly frightening smile crossed the man's lips, and the woman backed away slightly. "Oh Heylel," He crooned, low and dangerous. "Did you really think that you could keep this from me?"
Beside him, his spy shivers.
*/*
He knows the second their eyes meet that the shadowhunter that entered the Institute in a glamour isn't Valentine.
He knows it in the way that there is barely any recognition in those eyes, the lack of possessive rage he'd grown so used to seeing in them everytime the man gazed upon him. He knows it in the way that there is no anger, no betrayal in the man's eyes when he sees him.
He knows the person isn't Valentine, and as he pushes Max behind him, and raises his bow at the threat he tells himself that's the only reason he's able to fire at them.
The shadowhunter catches his arrow mere inches from their face, then the glamour falls to reveal a blonde haired woman only a year or so older than him. A woman he remembers meeting with Him back when he still believed him to be Lucian.
Lydia Branwell.
He remembered befriending her while "Lucian" was away on a mission, how she'd reassured him that the older man only had eyes for him...and suddenly he realizes she must be high in His operations for him to allow her to be seen by him.
So what was she doing here?
What was she doing coming to his Institute? No doubt, she realized that he would know who she was.
She met his gaze steadily, and a tiny glint of remorse flashing in her eyes.
"Poor reaction time. Only one of you saw the threat as it came in." She sent him a tight smile. "Nice job."
Turning to his subordinates, she raised her voice. "I am Lydia Branwell, the current envoy from the Clave. I will be here until further notice, so please, continue your daily operations as normal." Behind him, he saw a few of his people exchange looks, another few glancing over at his siblings.
He couldn't breathe.
Turning, still partially shielding Max from her gaze, he leaned forward. "Maxie, go to mom. Stay there until I come for you."
The child frowned at him, but seeing the tension lining his shoulders nodded and fled the room. Once he was gone, Alec turned back to the so-called envoy.
"We can speak in my office." She nodded.
Once they reached his office, he scowled at her. "How are you here?"
"I'm assuming you found out who Lucian was then?"
He sent her a sardonic smile, yet his eyes remained icy. "Hard not to when he nearly beats you to death and leaves you comatose on the steps of your institute."
She flinched slightly, then sighed. "He said you wouldn't remember me since we'd only met once. I'm supposed to gather information on the institute, specifically your parents."
His brow furrowed. "My parents?"
Lydia sighed. "Your parents were part of His Inner Circle and they betrayed him. He wants them dead. The only thing stopping him...is you."
A snort slipped past his lips,even with the shock coiling through him, and the derision in his face was plain for all to see. "Did you miss when I said he nearly killed me?"
"But he didn't." She replied and he almost cringed at the argument he'd once used to justify himself to his mother, was used against him. "And even if I wanted to leave, I can't. The Clave has an alternate reason for sending me here."
He stared at her and she hesitated. "They want us to get married."
*/*
"You should go talk to him."
Magnus hummed thoughtfully as Isabelle moved into place beside him, his gaze stuck on the handsome shadowhunter before him.
Isabelle's brother, Alexander.
The young man was gorgeous, with his thick dark hair and eyes, and yet, for all that Magnus continued to flirt with him he seemed to be just the slightest bit oblivious.
Yet, despite what his siblings thought, he could tell the boy wasn't.
He understood that Magnus was flirting, and several times, he'd caught those hazel eyes skating over him in obvious attraction. He'd seen the way he would blush when Magnus commented on his appearance, the way he seemed to be fighting their attraction to each other as much as he could and while he wanted to blame it on Alec's crush on Jace...he couldn't.
Not when such a crush seemed absent.
In fact, whenever Alec looked at his Parabatai there was nothing but a deep familial love, though he could see how the others could mistake it for something else when Alec so heavily protested Clarissa's presence.
And yet, he'd seen something in Alec pertaining to her too.
Fear.
Something about Clarissa, about her arrival had spooked the young Head of Institute and he had a feeling that it had nothing to do with his supposed feelings for Jace. No, this fear ran deeper, stronger than he'd seen on anyone not in Valentine's direct path, a place Alexander had no place to be.
Not when he was so obviously denying himself what he wanted to continue being the prime example of Shadowhunter.
"I do not believe he wishes to speak to me. Not with his wedding looming so close."
Isabelle scowled at the reminder.
Like him, she had been stunned when Alexander proposed the Clave envoy, her betrayal strong in her gaze. He had watched them, his heart aching for what could've been and yet he couldn't fault the other for what he had done. Not when he knew how the Clave treated those that didn't conform to their standards.
"He doesn't love her." The huntress protested and his lips curled wryly.
"And he doesn't know me."
Her scowl darkened. "But he wants to."
He shook his head with a sigh, turning away just as Alexander looked up at him. "Goodbye Isabelle."
*/*
He didn't want this.
She could see it, in line of his body, every tense feature that her "fiancee" didn't want this, and worse...neither did she.
When she had joined Valentine all those years ago, she had done so to get revenge on the Clave, on the elders that had sent her beloved to his death. The elders that had sent him into an ambush, then coldly, clinically told her that he had died a hero.
Then expected her to bury her pain and move on.
She had joined Valentine, who had promised her an outlet for the angry, hurting thing living inside her, convinced that even if she didn't manage to get her revenge, she would at least be able to join her love in the afterlife.
She had become one of his most trusted almost immediately, her tactical mind and steadfast loyalty binding her to him, and before she knew it he was tasking her with guarding his most treasured secret while he and a few others went on a critical mission.
His lover.
Her leader, one of the coldest people she'd ever met, one of the most passionate, had a lover and when she thought about it she had imagined someone just as cold, just as passionate.
She hadn't expected Alexander Lightwood.
When she met him, he'd been just a few months past his seventeenth birthday, slender but strong, with sharp eyes but a soft heart. He had invited her in, exasperation on his face as he apologized that she was wasting her evening to appease his lover's overprotectiveness.
She had taken his invitation and before she knew it...she'd befriended him.
It had made lying to him so much more painful, especially when she saw his relationship with her boss slowly change into something more possessive and controlling.
She hadn't told anyone that she'd been relieved to return one day to find him gone.
Thinking this, she couldn't help but push him toward Magnus Bane when the man crashed into the room. She had seen his interactions with the warlock and something about them tugged at her heart in a way she'd long since forgotten.
"It's okay," She whispered, seeing the fear in his eyes. "Go." (Go to him, Alec. Don't let Him ruin this for you.)
He swallowed thickly then turned and walked toward the warlock, pulling him into a burning kiss and she smiled, even as her heart leapt into her throat.
Valentine would not be happy once this development reached him.
Yet she couldn't find it in herself to regret it.
TBC...
