XXX CHARACTERS BELONG TO CASSANDRA CLARE WITH SOME EXCEPTIONS XXX

The residents of the Los Angeles Institute were under the impression that they were under attack judging by the amount of shouting happening from the front entry way. They ran, each and every one of them, with weapons out towards the noise, only to find that there was no emergency, just two very angry Herondales shouting at each other.

"I'm trying to keep the peace and you offer her to murder her husband!" Christopher shouted as his cousin, Jace, paced from one corner of the foyer to the other.

"You were thinking the same thing!"

"I was thinking of following the law," Kit argued.

"The law is ridiculous. She's unhappy, he's an idiot, and that father-in-law of hers needs to disappear!"

The other Shadowhunters rolled their eyes and started to disperse back to their duties, all but Julian Blackthorn. He was looking around, seemingly uninterested, but it was evident that he was looking for the blond head of his wife. When she didn't turn up, he approached the two cousins cautiously.

"I assume it didn't go well," Julian said as he stepped between the two.

"At first they didn't even recognize him!"

"And what impeccable timing! Two more minutes and Jose would have nullified the marriage and she would have been free!"

"You should have seen the Council fold."

"The second Wolverston mentioned separating the Barriers, as if they were objects that only work together instead of people, that's when they caved."

Julian looked from one to the other as the cousins fired their comments to him. The gravity of their words sunk in.

"Amanda didn't get the divorce?"

"Amanda got nothing. Not even an apology," Kit replied.

"And you offered to kill him?" He looked at Jace, who just shrugged.

"I was being polite," Jace pointed out. "Your heathen of a wife wouldn't have even asked."

Julian knew that to be true. Once again the looked around the room. It was a miracle Emma hadn't found her way down here yet. "I thought you liked James. You said he was one of the best students you ever had."

"I had to re-evaluate which one I liked best and I chose Amanda."

"How bad is it really? How is she?"

"She's the way she always is. Hard, unrelenting, but you could see how upset she was." Coming from Kit that meant something.

Jace, who was starting to calm down, rubbed his eyes. There was a weariness to the man that Julian didn't envy. He was the head of an Institute, just like Jules, father to three children, uncle to four more, adviser to the Consul and a potential pick for Inquisitor. Jace had a lot on his plate now to add Amanda to it.

But he wanted to be there for her, just like the rest of them did. It was killing him to not be able to defend her in the way he would have been if he were still twenty-one years old and a rebel instead of a thirty-five year old head of his family and Council member.

"When you tell Emma, let her know that I'll be looking into. Tell her not to worry, I'll figure this out."

There he was, once again taking the lead in defending their extended family. Taking the weight and responsibility away from Emma, who wasn't at a good place to worry about Amanda at all.

"And what should I tell Tessa? And Ty? What are you going to tell Isabelle that will convince her not to level the Wolverstons to dust? And everyone else who feels like Amanda's marriage is a mistake they need to correct, too?"

"Tell them I'll fix this."

"You can't fix the world, Jace." He knew that feeling; he felt it every time anything unexpected happened around his family. Jace, included.

"Watch me."

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Amanda had to admit, now that she was alone with Hawkgreen that her very first thought upon laying eyes on James Wolverston for the first in nine years had been to run. The man, suntanned and tattooed and so incredibly large, simply could not be her James.

No, not her James. Just James.

The way the man had stood in front of all those Council members, shoulders wider than anyone else's she'd met in her lifetime, the way his hazel eyes calmly moved over the room, the color of skin, his tattoo, and the way his voice sounded.

James didn't look like that, and he had been too shy to stand up in front of that kind of crowd. He'd been too weak to even stand up to his father.

But, of course, she was wrong.

It was him.

She knew him like she knew the beat of her heart.

As her head cleared, she became aware of the sardonic look her horse was giving her as she pulled him in the stables behind Bloodgood Manor. She resented him almost as much as she resented her would-be husband. The last thing she wanted was to be pitied by her horse, too.

It was extremely inconsiderate of James to even show up. Why would he bother coming back from where ever the hell he'd been festering at the exact time she'd planned on coming before the Council?

And he'd been in Idris for days!

He could have stopped this whole thing before she even stepped inside Council Hall. The fact that he had bothered to pretend that he cared about her, that he wanted to save their farce of a marriage, was just another reason to hate James.

It made her feel unloved, lonely, as if the very ground shifted under feet, as if all the years of transforming herself from a forgotten orphan into a force of nature had been for nothing, completely destroyed by the fact that James had just waltzed into Council Hall in front of all these people she worked for and looked up to.

Except Jace and Kit, of course.

All the anguish she'd felt when James had left, when she'd told him to get the hell out of Bloodgood Castle and never come back, flooded right back as she pushed Hawkgreen into his usual stall and pulled his saddle from him. She was normally very careful with him, he was the only horse she currently owned and he was the only one capable of getting her through the mountains. She depended heavily on him so whenever they came home she spent hours grooming him, feeding him fattening treats and letting him rest in the comfort of the warmest stall she had.

Today was different, though.

For some reason, her eyes were watering and she thought maybe her nose was getting a bit stuffed. She did the motions with precise but fast movements, dumping food into Hawk's trough before kissing his nose and giving his neck another pat.

"Don't judge me, Hawk. Please," she whispered as her vision threatened to get blurry. "You're all I've got."

He didn't reply, so she had to leave him alone to enjoy his supper.

It was starting to get dark, but she knew Bloodgood lands better than she knew her own body.

Here, at the foot of the mountains, away from Alicante and its well-kept streets and the civility of Shadowhunters rested the massive grey stone edifice that rose in majestic and unapologetic against the wrath of mountains.

This was home. Bloodgood Castle.

The heavily-fortified square keep, added to and rebuild by several generations of Bloodgoods, was the central and dominant feature of her home, its crenellated battlements rising above the lower roofs of the other wings. The keep faced north, looking directly up a stretch of forest, cliffs, sharp summits, and snow. In ancient times, the castle had been the strongest hold other than Alicante against demons and Downworlders alike.

Wolverstons, the Wolves of the Sheer Peaks, knew the mountains better than anyone else, but the Bloodgoods knew the Wards. They had been trained by warlocks, Marked by the Silent Brothers, and kept the mysteries of Wrangel Island in Idris.

The Two Barriers.

Two halves of one coin.

She banished the thought from her mind as she made her way to the kitchen garden. It had been a long time since anyone used the front doors. She wasn't even sure if they worked anymore. It's not like the other Shadowhunters ever made it this way and she herself was barely ever home now that she did her job and Gregory's both.

When she pushed the heavy oak door open, dozens of witch lights flickered to life inside of her kitchen. She marched in and went straight to the kettle, left sitting to the side of hob; taking it to the pump over the sink, she started filling it. Then she crossed to the stove, hunkered down, opened the furnace door, piled in kindling, then a few split logs, and struck steel to flint.

Once the fire was blazing, she shut the furnace door and rose. Her whole body ached from the hard ride she'd taken back here. Reaching across, she set the kettle to heat, and went looking for the right blend of tealeaves to use.

Her kitchen, like her life, was organized around her comings and goings. She knew where every thing was and she only kept things around that she would use. She either grew her food or hunted it down every day and little to indulge in other than the occasional cookie or two that she bought from the marketplace in Alicante.

She pulled those cookies from her saddlebag and placed them on a plate before setting out a saucer and cup and returning to her kettle.

Chamomile. For her nerves, she decided. Snagging the kettle, she poured the boiling water over the leaves into the teapot and left it to steep. In the meantime, she took her dirty clothes from the saddlebag and dumped them by the kitchen door before kicking off her boots and pulling off her socks as she leaned against the door jab.

And then there were her weapons.

A four-foot long, double-bitted axe, two tomahawks, three daggers, and a handful of push knifes. They had been specially made for her, weighted perfectly to her proportions and never used by any hand other than hers. Her axe was a source of much intrigue amongst Shadowhunter for few had ever seen adamas crafted into sharp, heavy axe blades until hers had been forged and left for her one night in the dead of winter.

A seraph blade that wasn't a sword was something to talk about.

She was just as deadly with a kusarigama,in fact, she was just as deadly with any weapon. It was the only true gift that she had. Something that was entirely hers that hadn't been taught or learned, but simply ingrained in her being. A stick could kill anything in her hands. Still, the axe, unnamed despite the many years they spent together, was still her favorite.

Let the Blackthorn woman have her Cortana. Amanda had her battleaxe and she needed nothing else.

Those weapons could use a thorough cleaning, too.

Fetching the tea, she poured into the delicate teacup and returned the pot to the sink. The heat of the porcelain against her hands was reassuring even when the deafening silence of the house weighed down on her.

She drank her tea as she leaned against the kitchen table, one finger idly tracing the smooth surface. She'd learned to read and write at this table, watched her father cook dinner and her grandmother had cradled her to her chest in this kitchen while she taught her the demonic verses.

When she was done, Amanda put everything in the sink and gathered her axe. She left the kitchen heading towards the guests' quarters. Years ago she'd moved her room from the family wing closer the kitchen since it made no sense whatsoever to cross nearly a mile every morning just eat breakfast. Besides, her new room wasn't four floors up in a tower and she liked being able to jump out of her window when necessary.

Glancing to her right, through the long, uncurtained windows that gave onto the rear courtyard with its fountain and flower beds, she decided she wouldn't bother with dinner. She was bone-weary. All she wanted was to peel off her clothes, wash off the dirt and sweat of her last journey, and then tumble under the covers of her bed and sleep.

At the end of the gallery, she headed down the corridor; the much smaller bedchamber had been hers for the past five years and she was happier away from the old wing where her parents' things were still where they'd left them.

She threw her bedroom door open and heaved a sigh of utter disgust. "If you found your way in, I'm certain you'll be able to find your way out."

Her skin prickled with him there, tall and broad shouldered in the darkness behind her.

"This isn't your room." His voice was deep, so different from that pretty singing voice he'd had as a child, seductive even. If her brain thought like that.

"Sure it is. And now, if you don't mind, I've had a rather long day."

"Your front door wasn't properly guarded."

"There are no Wards against missing husbands as far as I know."

She tried to shut the door, but it stopped just inches of the jam. She pushed again, mumbled a curse under her breath as she leaned her forehead against the door.

"All right, be difficult."

She stopped pushing him back and settled for scowling at him as he followed her into her room.

James saw her brushes on the dresser, glanced at the closet, noting the boots she'd left by it, then he looked at the bed, confirming that she still slept in something that more resembled a cloud than anything else. All in the time it took him to prowl, long-legged, arrogantly assured, to the armchair before the window. His gaze returned to her as he sat. Not that the word adequately described the motion; he was all fluid grace arranging long, muscled limbs into an inherently masculine, innately elegant sprawl.

"May I ask what moved you to return at this specific time?"

"I live here, remember?" before she could responded, he added, "My family is here, my wife, and my future."

A curl of his brown hair fell over his eyes. He looked terribly like his father. A harsh-featured, aristocratic face with dramatically arched browns over large, deep-set eyes, strong sculpted nose and jaw, and lips she'd been in love with as a girl.

For the space of a few heartbeats, she studied him; even through the dimness of the witch light.

"You got two out of three right." Amanda had never been more proud of herself than when her voice contained not even a drop of reproach. Exquisite self-control had got her through the humiliations his father had put her through and it was serving her well now. She refused, absolutely refused, to let James know how much his nonchalant attitude made her want to kill him.

"Life is full of surprises. I might get three out of three yet."

"Give me a divorce and you can find that wife you want."

For the first time he flinched and she was glad. What good was self-control, anyway? Maybe if he saw the contempt she felt for the man who had betrayed his marriage vows and not bothered to return for years.

James was silent again. The boy she remembered would have yielded to her glare, but the man just crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her thoughtfully. "I take my vow to you very seriously. I want no other wife."

"You wanted no wife to begin with. You married me under false pretenses. Our marriage has been irrelevant to me for many years and I'm rather surprised you don't feel the same. It's been nine years after all. No note, no appearance. I even thought you might have died were it not for the fact your father bragged about you at every opportunity."

Unhurriedly, he stood; his gaze on her, he walked, as unthreateningly as she imagined he could, to the bed and propped one shoulder against the post at its end. Her gaze hadn't left him; he looked down into her eyes. "I'll tell you why, exactly why I'm here, if in return you'll explain to me why, exactly why, our bond slipped five months ago. Why did the world go dark for me? What happened to you?"

She froze.

Fire licked at her heart and brain. It thrummed through her veins. She wanted her axe. She wanted to hack him to pieces.

If she killed him, she could have a future. Finally have a future.

Amanda waited a heartbeat; when he said nothing else, she looked up at him.

A knot inside her eased; the tension flowed away. He had no clue…

"This is my home. Leave."

For a moment she thought he wouldn't. He didn't look the type.

But then he straightened.

"I won't lose you. Even if you're not my wife, I won't lose you again."

Then he walked through the door and closed it behind him.

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