SOOOO...sorry that it took forever to upload this, i've just been putting it off for so long. Trust me, this was the least fun chapter to write like EVER. It was mostly just Hodge explaining a whole bunch of stuff and it was so dull to write-especially since I've read the city of bones like six gazillion times.
But here it is and I know it's shorter than I originally thought-it seemed SOOO long when i was writing it because again, it was super-duper boring.
Okay, done with this too-long author note. On with the story!
"Valentine had a wife? He was married? I thought—" I started to yell, just as Clary began to as well. I tuned in towards the end of her shouting.
"—only ever married to my father! She didn't have an ex-husband!"
I watched her as she shouted, her hands balled into fists at her side and her face red and outraged. I couldn't help but feel bad for her. She was learning so much so fast. Sure, I'd learned that the big baddie of our world had a wife. But she'd learned—all in one day—that demons existed, her mother had been kidnapped, her mother had lied to her for her whole life, there was a country that didn't exist on her map, there was a race of people who she'd never known about, and her mother had been married to the big baddie of my world. Yeah, she had it a bit worse.
"Children," Hodge began, holding his hands up to silence us.
"I'm not a child," Clary burst out, spinning away from Hodge and taking a few steps away. "And I don't want to hear any more."
I followed her movements with my eyes, feeling a tiny bit amused at her fairly childish reaction to being called a child.
"Clary," Hodge said kindly. I looked back to him as Clary turned and took a slow step back towards him. She was chewing at her lip anxiously and I could see that she was deep in thought, her face slightly pained.
"My mother wouldn't…" She trailed off as her eyes shimmered the tiniest bit with unshed tears.
"Your mother left the circle," Hodge continued. I wanted to tell him to stop, that he was upsetting her, but I knew that we both needed to hear this. "Once we realized how extreme Valentine's views had become—once we knew what he was prepared to do—many of us left. Lucian was the first to leave. That was a blow to Valentine. They had been very close. Then Michael Wayland. Your father, Jace." I looked at him in surprise, but remained silent.
"There are those who stayed loyal. Pangborn, Blackwell, the Lightwoods—"
"The Lightwoods?" I burst out in surprise. "You mean Robert and Maryse?" This was becoming hard to listen to. All the information was too much. At this point, I had no idea how Clary was still standing. I was about ready to snap with just this information. She's stronger, I thought, looking over at her tiny, misleading frame. "What about you?" I asked, snapping myself out of thoughts about Clary. "When did you leave?"
"I didn't. Neither did they." I wanted to shout at him, and then shout at the Lightwoods. How could they be so damn stupid? "We were afraid, too afraid of what he might do. After the Uprising e loyalists like Blackwell and Pangborn fled. We stayed and cooperated with the Clave. Gave them names. Helped them track down the ones who had run away. For that we received clemency."
"Clemency?" His curse. His inability to leave here—
"You are thinking of the curse that binds me here, aren't you? You always assumed it was a vengeance spell cast by an angry demon or warlock. I let you think it. But it is not the truth. The curse that binds me was cast by the Clave." I couldn't hide the surprise I felt. I could, however, hide the hurt underneath it. He'd let us all believe something untrue for so long—it was almost as bad as a lie. So I let the surprise show and shoved the hurt down under it.
"For being in the Circle?" I asked.
"For not leaving before the Uprising." I was about to ask about the Lightwoods' punishment when Clary beat me to it.
"But the Lightwoods weren't punished. Why not? They'd done the same thing you'd done."
"There were extenuating circumstances in their case—they were married, they had a child." I thought I could detect the tiniest hint of bitterness in his tone. "But it is not as if they reside in this outpost, far from home, by their own choice. We were banished here, the three of us—the four of us, I should say; Alec was a squalling baby when we left the Glass City again."
I couldn't believe it all. And Hodge—he had the nerve to be bitter about his punishment? He had done the crime, aided in such destruction and death. He deserved what he'd gotten. "The Law is hard, but it is the Law."
"I taught you that," Hodge said with a bit of hollow amusement. "And now you turn my lessons back at me. Rightly too." I had nothing left to say. Of course this changed how I saw Hodge, but I still respected him.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" Clary asked, her voice tiny. "That my mother was married to Valentine? You knew her name—"
"I knew her as Jocelyn Fairchild, not Jocelyn Fray. And you were so insistent on her ignorance of the Shadow World, you convinced me it could not be the Jocelyn I knew—and perhaps I did not want to believe it. No one would wish for Valentine's return. When I sent for the Brothers of the Silent City this morning, I had no idea just what news we would have for them. When the Clave finds out Valentine may have returned, that he is seeking the Cup, there will be an uproar. I can only hope it does not disrupt the Accords."
"I bet Valentine would like that. But why does he want the Cup so badly?" All I knew about it was that it could make new Shadowhunters. So why could he possibly want the cup bad enough to be willing to trade his wife for it?
"Isn't that obvious? So he can build himself an army." My brows shot up in surprise.
"But that would never—"
"Dinnertime!" I looked up to Isabelle in exasperation and she twisted her mouth to the side. "Sorry if I'm interrupting."
"Dear God, the dread hour is night."
I heard Hodge stammering an excuse and nearly grinned. "I—I—I had a very filling breakfast. I mean lunch. A filling lunch. I couldn't possibly eat—"
"I threw out the soup," Isabelle interrupted with a flat look. "And ordered Chinese from that place downtown."
I stood up straight in relief, stretching. "Great. I'm starved."
"I might be able to eat a bite," Hodge said weakly. This time I did grin.
Isabelle scowled. "You two are terrible liars. Look, I know you don't like my cooking—"
"So stop doing it," I said with a smirk. "Did you order mu shu pork? You know I love mu shu pork."
Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Yes. It's in the kitchen."
"Awesome." I slipped out the door, ruffling her hair good-naturedly.
I hurried down the long corridors until I reached the kitchen. I waved to Alec as I walked in and sat down at the table with him. The mundane was sitting at the table as well but I ignored him when he asked where Clary was. He would see in three seconds. He seemed confused upon Hodge's entrance but when the two girls entered, his head snapped up to look at them. I rolled my eyes while taking a bite of mu shu pork.
Clary sat down and the mundane pushed a plate of Chinese noodles to her, clearly knowing what she liked. She gave him a tiny smile and put some food on her plate along with the others. Hodge did most of the explaining to the others, although I piped in every now and then.
"Well I think it's kind of romantic," Isabelle said thoughtfully. I gave her an incredulous look. What about this whole mess was romantic?
"What is?" the mundane asked promptly, suddenly interested in the conversation. I saw Clary frown at him before staring back down at her uneaten noodles. My brows furrowed when I realized that she hadn't eaten more than a bite.
"That whole business about Clary's mother being married to Valentine. So now he's back from the dead and he's come looking for her. Maybe he wants to get back together." I almost made a smart comment but I was too busy wondering why Clary wasn't eating. I knew she wasn't one of those girls who didn't eat much at all—I'd seen her scarf down sandwiches at Dorothea's like it was the last bit of food she would ever get.
"I kind of doubt he sent a Ravener demon to her house because he want to 'get back together'." I chuckled at Alec's comment.
"It wouldn't be my move. First the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order," I said, smirking at my sister.
"He might have sent her candy and flowers," Isabelle argued. "We don't know."
"Isabelle," Hodge sighed. "This is the man who rained down destruction on Idris the like of which it had never seen, who set Shadowhunter against Downworlder and made the streets of the Glass City run with blood."
"That's sort of hot," Isabelle said with a grin. "That evil thing."
I saw Clary shoot the mundane a look like twin daggers and looked to him to see him giving her an embarrassed look back. I wondered what he'd done but didn't want to irritate Clary.
"So why does Valentine want this Cup so bad, and why does he think Clary's mom has it?"
"You said it was so he could make any army," Clary spoke up, for the first time since we'd entered the kitchen. She was looking at Hodge. "You mean because you can use the Cup to make Shadowhunters?"
Hodge responded in the affirmative and I saw the mundane lean forward in interest.
"So Valentine could walk up to any guy on the street and make a Shadowhunter out of him? Just with the Cup? Would it work on me?" I saw Clary look at him in surprise and a little anger. Clearly he was adapting a little too well for her tastes. And he was getting too into Shadowhunter business for my tastes. Seems like he's on nobody's good side today.
"Possibly. But most likely, you're too old. The Cup works on children. An adult would either be unaffected by the process, or killed outright."
"A child army," Isabelle whispered, looking upset.
"Only for a few years," I argued. "Kids grow fast. It wouldn't be long before they were a force to contend with."
"I don't know," the mundane said. "Turning a bunch of kids into warriors, I've heard of worse stuff happening. I don't see the big deal about keeping the Cup away from him."
I felt like slapping the mundane and wondered if Clary would mind. I looked to her to gauge just how angry she was with him, but she just looked horrified by the idea of a child army.
"Leaving out that he would inevitably use this army to launch an attack on the Clave, the reason that only a few humans are selected to be turned into Nephilim is that most would never survive the transition. It takes special strength and resilience. Before they can be turned they must be extensively tested—but Valentine would never bother with that. He would use the Cup on any child he could capture, and cull out the twenty percent who survived to be his army.""
"How do you know he'd do that?"
Hodge looked slightly ashamed. "Because when he was in the Circle, that was his plan. He said it was the only way to build the kind of force that was needed to defend our world."
I turned to Izzy when she began to speak and she seemed to be near sick. "But that's murder. He was talking about killing children."
"He said that we had made the world safe for humans for a thousand years and now was their time to repay us with their own sacrifice." Anger rushed up in me at the words. Their sacrifice? It's their children! Shadowhunters may sacrifice a lot but even our children grow up safely! For the most part, at least.
"Their children?" I spat. "That goes against everything we're supposed to be about. Protecting the helpless, safeguarding humanity—"
"Valentine was insane," Hodge said sharply, cutting me off. "Brilliant but insane. He cared about nothing but killing demons and Downworlders. Nothing but making the world pure. He would have sacrificed his own son for the cause and could not understand how anybody else would not."
"He had a son?" Alec asked, sounding incredulous. I'd never heard anything about Valentine having a son. But then again, I'd never heard anything about him having a wife before today.
"I was speaking figuratively," Hodge said quickly. I caught the trembling of his hand when he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and wondered if it pained him to talk about Valentine due to his prior involvement with him.
"When his land burned, when his home was destroyed, it was assumed that he had burned himself and the Cup to ashes rather than relinquish either to the Clave. His bones were found in the ashes, along with the bones of his wife."
"But my mother lived," Clary said, speaking for only the second time. "She didn't die in that fire."
"And neither, it now seems, did Valentine. The Clave will not be pleased to have been fooled. But more importantly, they will want to secure the Cup. And more importantly that that, they will want to make sure Valentine does not," Hodge said grimly.
"It seems to me that the first thing we'd better do is find Clary's mother. Find her, find the Cup, get it before Valentine does," I suggested, feeling that it was the obvious plan of action. We could do it. How hard could it be? Especially since Clary's mother would surely be wanting to get into contact with her. I saw Clary's head snap to me, her eyes bright with hope. She wanted to follow my plan, I could tell.
But then again, I had to remind myself, she was only here so she could find her mother.
"Absolutely not," Hodge snapped, his voice hard.
"Then what do we do?" I asked snappily, frowning at him.
"Nothing," he said. "All this is best left to skilled, experienced Shadowhunters."
"I am skilled. I am experienced," I argued.
"I know that you are, but you're still a child. Or nearly one."
"I am not a child," I bit out at him, narrowing my eyes threateningly at my tutor. Screw respecting your elders if he wasn't going to respect me first.
Alec spoke up, shocking me with his opinion.
"Hodge is right." I snapped my head around to look at him, betrayal hitting me in the chest. I forced it down, to keep it off my face. "Valentine is dangerous. I know you're a good Shadowhunter. You're probably the best our age. But Valentine's one of the best there ever was. It took a huge battle to bring him down." I was about to snap at him when Isabelle spoke up.
"And he didn't exactly stay down, apparently."
"But we're here," I protested, looking between my siblings in outrage. "We're here and because of the Accords, nobody else is. If we don't do something—"
"We're going to do something," Hodge said, cutting me off for what had to be the tenth time in ten minutes. I gritted my teeth in irritation. "I'll send the Clave a message tonight. They coul have a force of Nephilim here by tomorrow if they wanted. They'll take care of this," he said in a tone that was clearly meant to be reassuring. "You have done more than enough."
I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "I don't lie it," I said, allowing my shoulders to slump in defeat.
"You don't have to like it," Alec said. I turned my head lazily to look at him. "You just have to shut up and not do anything stupid." But I'm best at doing stupid things and worst at shutting up.
"But what about my mother?" Clary asked, sounding as though she was fearful we'd forgotten. And I honestly had. I'd forgotten that although we were missing something important, Clary was missing something much more important to her. "She can't wait for some representative from the Clave to show up. Valentine has her right now—Blackwell and Pangborn said so—and he could be…" She cut herself off suddenly and I had to look away when her eyes began to glimmer with tears.
Clary was terrified for her mother and it was the worst feeling in the world to see her on the verge of tears and be incapable of doing anything to stop them. So I chose not to see it and looked down at my food.
The mundane finished her sentence with a less awful word than I was sure she was going to use. "Hurting her. Except, Clary, they also said she was unconscious and that Valentine wasn't happy about it. He seems to be waiting for her to wake up."
She didn't seem soothed by her words as she bit down harshly on her lip. "I'd stay unconscious if I were her," Izzy stated bluntly. I was unsure if she was trying to make a joke or if she was just thinking aloud, but either way I wanted to snap at her that she wasn't helping. Clary seemed to ignore her, though.
"But that could be any time. I thought the Clave was pledged to protect people. Shouldn't there be Shadowhunters here right now? Shouldn't they already be searching for her?" Not after she abandoned the Clave, I thought sadly.
"That would be easier if we had the slightest idea where to look," Alec snapped at her, clearly immune to the fact that she was obviously upset.
"But we do," I said, glad to have something to say that could finally help stop the shimmering in Clary's eyes.
"You do?" Clary asked, her back straightening as she spun to face me hopefully. "Where?"
Unable to help myself at the look she gave me, I leaned forward across the table and brushed my fingers against her temple, her soft curls tickling my knuckles. "Here," I said softly, pleased to see a blush creep onto her cheeks. "Everything we need to know is locked up under those pretty red curls."
I saw Alec and Izzy both shoot me looks—Alec a sharp, almost angry one that I didn't particularly understand and Izzy a smug and amused one. Frankly, I didn't understand hers either.
I saw Clary raise a hand to touch her hair, as though protective of it.
"So what are you going to do, cut her head open to get at it?" the mundane asked, sounding unreasonably angry. I bit back an angry retort about how I would much rather cut his head open, seeing the worry Clary held as she looked between her friend and I.
"Not at all," I responded instead. "The Silent Brothers can help her retrieve her memories."
"You hate the Silent Brothers," Izzy said, looking at me in shock.
"I don't hate them," I reasoned. "I'm afraid of them. It's not the same thing."
"I thought you said they were librarians." I looked at Clary with the tiniest bit of amusement.
"They are librarians."
"Those must be some killer late fees," the mundane said with a whistle.
"The Silent Brothers are archivists," Hodge explained, sounding exasperated. "in order to strengthen their minds, they have chosen to take upon themselves some of the most powerful runes ever created. The power of these runes is so great that the use of them—Well, it warps and twists thei physical forms. They are not warriors in the sense that other Shadowhunters are warriors. Their powers are of the mind, not the body."
"They can read minds?" Clary asked, sounding fearful.
"Among other things. They are the most feared of all demon hunters."
Well, way to terrify her, Hodge.
"I don't know," the mundane spouted out. "I'd rather have someone mess around inside my head than chop it off."
"Then you're a bigger idiot than you look," I snapped scornfully.
Izzy decided to continue on with the conversation as though the mundane had never interrupted.
"Jace is right. The Silent Brothers are really creepy."
Hodge seemed to be getting irritated with all of us.
"They are very powerful. They can walk in darkness and do not speak, but they can crack open a man's mind the way you might crack open a walnut—and leave him screaming alone in the dark if that is what they desire."
I saw Clary's bright eyes snap to me, her lips parted in terror. "You want to give me to them?"
I felt instantly guilty for bringing it up, just for seeing the fear on her face. But I knew I was right. She was only afraid because Hodge was telling horror stories—true horror stories but still.
"I want them to help you." I leaned close, trying to convince her I meant well. "Maybe we don't get to look for the Cup. Maybe the Clave will do that. But what's in your mind belongs to you. Someone's hidden secrets there, secrets you can't see. Don't you want to know the truth about your own life?"
I knew I had her now, I could see the stubbornness and curiosity budding in her eyes. But I also saw her bite her lip nervously.
"I don't want someone else inside my head," she said feebly.
"I'll go with you," I offered immediately. I would have gone anyway, but the fact that she was afraid made me even more determined to be the one with her. But then again, there was the fact that she might not be reassured just because I was there. Obviously she'd be more comfortable with someone she knew there, but it wasn't like she'd known me for long. Still, I was set on being the one with her. I couldn't imagine Izzy or Alec offering much comfort. "I'll stay with you while they do it."
Before Clary could respond, the mundane suddenly stood up, his face red in anger. And jealousy, I noticed. He was angry that I had offered to go with her because he knew I would be able to offer her reassurances there that he would never be able to. He was be just as clueless and fearful as she would be.
"That's enough," he snapped. "leave her alone." I saw Alec raise a brow as he glanced over at the mundie.
"What are you still doing here, mundane?"
"I said, leave her alone," the boy said, ignoring him and glaring at me. I nearly scoffed. It's not like we'd said anything new to her since he told us the first time. I gave him a sickly sweet smile in response, getting tired of his presence.
"Alec is right, the Institute is sworn to shelter Shadowhunters, not their mundane friends. Especially when they've worn out their welcome." I could only hope Clary wouldn't try to leave with him. Then he would have to stay. No way was I letting Clary leave the Institute.
I saw Isabelle stand up and grab the boy's arm.
"I'll show him out." I looked over to Clary to see her reaction. She looked at Simon and shook her head at him. Simon allowed Izzy to lead him from the room.
I felt a surge of unreasonable happiness that she hadn't even tried to defend him or keep him here. But as soon as they were gone, she stood up abruptly, shattering the internal happy dance I was doing.
"I'm tired," she said flatly. "I want to go to sleep."
I reached for her wrist as she stood, trying to stop her exit.
"You've hardly eaten anything," I protested.
"I'm not hungry."
I could only stare after her in bewilderment.
The next chapter WILL be up again, much quicker than this one was! I'm really excited to write how Jace felt through the whole Silent City visit ;)
Don't forget to favorite, follow, and review if you liked it :)
-Cassidy 3