9
Low-burning fires flickered across a grassy hillside somewhere in Scotland, dotting the darkened landscape as the sun slowly sank below the horizon at the close of another day. Its fading bloody light washed over the Hunters that were crouched or sprawled around the Faerie-made fires and it painted their faces with swaths of shadow that gave them half-masks as the evening dimmed.
Rayce left his Hunters behind and drifted away from the pack, alone. He took a deep breath of fresh air to clear his head of the lingering effects of riding through the lands of deep Faerie. Memories of his father whispered at the edges of his mind and he angrily shoved them away. They oozed back insistently. Fresh air can't sweep away who you are, Rayce, they whispered.
He pushed his hands back through his hair, his eyes dark and serious as he watched the sun slipping below the horizon, and he sighed heavily. How many days had passed in the Mortal world since he had gone to the Eternal Forest? Was it even possible to mark the time between the two? It felt like only hours since he had left his sister in the throne room of the Seelie Court. Bitterly, he now understood why Gwyn had not allowed the others even attempt to track the days as they fell away from the calender. Better to accept what was lost and only look forward, endlessly forward.
Once he could no longer see the light from the fires behind him, he settled down in the long grass and wrapped his arms around his knees. Despite all of the cautions and warnings he could find in Gwyn's memories of Veralysia, he let himself think of Sera. He closed his eyes and brought her to life in his mind, every beat of his heart adding another layer and more colour until she was perfectly restored. I have to remember, he berated himself. I don't care what it'll cost me. I won't let the Hunt take her, too. He held on to the image of her and relaxed back into the hillside comfortably as the sky darkened overhead and the stars winked to life.
The moors were nearly silent around him. Only the gentle humming of insects filtered through the night, and Rayce felt his lips gently curl up into the first smile he could remember since he had been ensnared by the cloak. Sera's crooked grin smiled back at him from behind his eyelids and he exhaled softly.
Sera.
Another Hunter lay in the long grass with his eyes closed, but the light of a fire flickered across his face, illuminating his swollen eyes and broken nose. Dried blood had spilled from his mouth, his nose, and from deep cuts made by the Morgenstern family ring, and it had crusted down across his split lips to give him a macabre mask. His right hand had been hastily bandaged by Caelus when he had been lifted from the isolated cavern under Cadair Idris.
Slim, blue hands unwound the dressing carefully and set it aside when they had coaxed it free. The lips of an inch and a half-long cut were pursed open and the wound began bleeding again as the clots were broken.
What a mess, Baelerithon thought to himself. He gently slipped his left hand over Kieran's right palm until he could lightly clasp the boy's injury. Bael focused his gift and let it trickle into the Unseelie slowly. In his mind's eye, he could see the wound begin to close over where Kieran's enchanted dagger had pierced his own hand once more. It happened slowly at first with an angry red scar, but then it soon faded to nothing more than a white ridge across the back of his hand and his palm.
Kieran stirred as his muscles and tendons knitted back together, but did not wake. Bael unhooked a waterskin from the boy's belt and poured some water over the rag that had been used to bind the injured hand. Working carefully, he began to clean away the blood from Kieran's face.
At the cool touch of the water, the young prince's swollen eyes fluttered, but he was unable to open them fully to see who had come to care for him. Bael's fingers brushed down Kieran's face and the swelling slowly subsided until black and silver eyes stared up at him curiously.
"You should consider yourself fortunate that my brother has a soft heart, Prince Kieran," Bael said quietly, returning to his work with the rag.
Kieran's bloodied lips twitched up weakly into a bitter sneer and he closed his eyes once more. "Forgive me if I find it difficult to feel fortunate right now."
"But you are," Bael insisted. He spread his healing magic to probe at Kieran's shattered nose and the boy inhaled sharply at the pain when it began to edge back into place. "You should consider yourself fortunate to have been given such a useful ally."
The Unseelie grimaced as cartilage reformed under Bael's guidance. "Fortunate indeed," he gasped, "that your gift seems to run toward healing." He clenched his eyes more tightly and bared his teeth as his nose straightened once more.
Bael waited until he knew the young prince would again be listening, and then he continued in an undertone that would not carry beyond their fire, "I think you'll find that I have many gifts."
As his pain faded under Bael's touch, Kieran opened his eyes once more and saw Bael in a new light, and he veiled his gaze as he reached down to stroke his fingers lightly across the other Faerie's hand. He let his own magic slip across their connection and then looked back up at Bael from under his eyelashes. "As do I," he purred.
The hand that had been trailing healing magic into the Unseelie drew back and slapped the prince hard across his half-healed face. Kieran gasped in pain, but was cut off as Bael clapped his palm down over the boy's mouth and leaned down to hiss in his ear. "No, you don't. You have one gift that you use with all the subtlety and finesse of a club."
Kieran's expression furrowed in furious indignation at both the slap and the insult, and he growled wordlessly into Bael's hand, but the older Faerie did not relent. "You are sloppy and careless, and you allow your heart to rule your actions like a sullen child. You lack the discipline and training that you would have received in your father's Court if you had not been so brash and foolish to have had your plot uncovered so easily."
The boy's eyes widened in surprise and Bael sighed. "Your face betrays you at every turn and your mind is slow and unimaginative." He glanced over his shoulder to ensure that they were still unobserved by the others. "Since it appears that I must guide you through the simple explanation, I will remind you that I have spent years visiting the Unseelie Court in my pursuit of the throne. Do you truly believe that I would not have heard the whispers behind hidden hands of your own failure?"
Silver and black eyes turned downward in shame and Bael removed his hand from Kieran's mouth. "You are young, but you are not without promise," he offered. "With the right guidance, you may actually live long enough to successfully take your revenge."
Kieran arched his eyebrow and sat up as Bael reached over to continue healing the Hunter. The Unseelie gave him a doubtful look. "And how do you propose to pursue vengeance?"
"By first extracting your promise to accept that you will never master my brother. He will never replace the Blackthorn boy; Rayce is far too dangerous. You made a fool of yourself in the tournament of champions a decade ago, and you were punished again for repeating your mistake." He touched the new scar on Kieran's hand to make his point. "Too many know your weakness. Cut it loose. Do you understand?"
Glowering, Kieran nodded reluctantly. "I should warn you that the Lord of the Hunt can stop you with a word; Hunters must obey his commands. How will you get around that?"
Bael thought back to the unfortunate Kratus. It had certainly been a poignant lesson, but he smiled confidently at Kieran. "Patience, young prince. I am new to this game, but I only need time to study the pieces and learn the rules before I will be ready to begin playing. Until then, do nothing to attract his notice and do not speak to me where he may see."
"You will have no protection from the others," Kieran said, nodding at the Hunters around the other fires and then shooting a meaningful look at where the ruined stumps of Bael's wings jutted upward from his back. "They lost brothers in the fight for the Seelie Court."
Bael finished mending the last of the damage to Kieran's face and watched as the bruising quickly faded away. His eyes were filled with condescending pity as he regarded his new ally. "It is difficult to believe that you were ever a prince of the Courts when you are so hopelessly short-sighted." He paused as annoyance flickered across Kieran's features, but the younger Faerie held his tongue, at last. Perhaps he can be taught after all. Bael spread his hands innocently. "Your fellow Hunters did not give their lives for me in the Seelie Court. They died by my brother's orders, and they died for my lovely, devious sister."
A slow smile spread across Kieran's lips as he nodded thoughtfully. Maybe Baelerithon was right. He felt a rush of savage pleasure at the thought of breaking Rayce, of seeing him cut down in his pride.
A part of Kieran even began to feel... fortunate.
Sera lifted her crossbow out of the hidden cache under her bedroom floor and pulled out two tubes of bolts to go with it. She tossed a pair of short swords, a pair of boot knives, and a brace of throwing knives onto the duvet and then carefully covered the stash again.
After getting back from the Grand Canyon and its haunting lessons, she had figured out what to do about her mother's stele, but she was decidedly worried about the implications. Her dream had felt like it was going to happen soon, but there was no telling how soon. If she left now, she could be days early, or she could have already missed her window of opportunity while she had been in Veralysia's domain. There was no way to know.
She was clad once more much the way she had been on the night she had finally met her prince face-to-face. Tough, black leather pants encased her long legs, buttressed by her favourite boots, and she had thrown on her favourite jacket over a plain tank top. Black for hunting through the night, she mused to herself absently. She pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail before strapping the throwing knives to her right thigh. The short swords were hung from the same weapons belt she had worn in Toronto, and her fingers shook as she fastened the clasp while remembering the feeling of pulling it tight against Rayce's waist to keep pressure of the Elf-bolt wound.
"Get a grip, Sera," she muttered.
The crossbow settled into place across her back without a thought and she clipped the bolts to her belt to leave her with only one thing left to do to finish her preparations.
Her mother's stele still rested on her bedside table, and Sera jammed it down into the inside pocket of her jacket where she had once kept her dream diary. Trading the future for the past, she thought darkly. Not a good image. She scribbled a quick warning on a sheet of pilfered hotel stationary and slipped it into the same pocket before zipping it up.
She braced her right hand against the bedroom wall and fixed the image of the battlefield from her dream in her mind. It had been so real... The Portal swirled open to show gently-waving stalks in darkened fields and she felt a surge of relief as she recognized the area. Without another thought, she leaped through the portal.
Sera's ponytail was whipped sideways in the rush of wind from the Portal and her boots hit the ground solidly as the gateway closed behind her. Then screams ripped through the air to her right and she snapped around to seek out the source.
Dozens of Mundanes were running flat-out across an adjacent field that had been left fallow for the season, and a pack of a dozen Hellhounds was growling and snapping at their heels. Even as Sera watched, one of beasts pulled down a woman who was trailing behind the mob of terrified humans. It paused to savagely tear out her throat before returning to the hunt with a bloody muzzle.
A pair of Hellhounds had caught sight of the glow of Sera's Portal and were staring back at her curiously even as she stared at them. Their ears pricked forward and their lips drew back as they sensed another predator in their territory. Sera heard the deep, rumbling growls that vibrated through those massive black and brown chests as they assessed the threat.
"Fuck me, I hate being early," Sera whispered under her breath when two pairs of black demon eyes fixed on her with deadly intent and the Hellhounds launched themselves toward her. Her hands flew to the short swords at her waist and she slipped them free in an instant to quickly run her hands down the flats and Mark them with some fast runes.
She surprised the demons by running straight at them, blades flashing in the moonlight as she pretended to brace herself for the impact.
At the last possible moment, Sera dodged sideways and sank her right blade deep into the chest of the first hound even as she spun to slash down hard with her left to separate the other demon's head from its body. She yanked her blade free in a shower of blood and didn't spare a glance down at where the Hellhounds were collapsing in on themselves. Her eyes were already tracking the fading group of humans running for their lives.
Her heart pounded with adrenaline as she kicked herself into a run and began to trail runes along her collarbones and up her neck. Night-vision bloomed to bring her quarry back into view across the field, and a new burst of speed propelled her across the torn ground.
Well, that part was accurate at least, she thought sarcastically as she raced away in pursuit. But there weren't any goddamn demon dogs in my dream!
Empowered by her Marks, she closed the gap between herself and the rear of the pack swiftly, willing herself not to see the torn bodies of the Mundanes in her path who hadn't run fast enough. She caught the first hound from behind, unaware, and sheared through its rear legs with one powerful stroke of her left-hand sword. It howled in pain, but she silenced it by jamming her other blade down through its throat.
Others from the pack turned on her at the keening cry of one of their brothers, and Sera howled at them in challenge to try to taunt as many away from the humans as possible. She caught sight of a man in a familiar bright red flannel shirt running with a little girl screaming in his arms. God, I can still save them. There weren't any demons in my dream... she struggled for a moment before it hit her: ...because I was here to stop them!
Realization swept through her in an instant and she hooked the hilts of her weapons back to her belt in a heartbeat as a half dozen of the Hellhounds broke off their pursuit to bring her down. Her hands flashed down to her thigh and drew a pair of throwing knives. Runes hissed into the metal with the force of her fury as her fingers caressed the blades, and then she let them fly, deadly and true as they sank into maddened black eyes to take down the first two demons.
She sent two more hastily-runed blades whistling through the night to thud into the beasts, killing one and tripping up a fourth as it lodged deep in its shoulder joint to jam the socket. Sera closed her hands back around the grips of her swords and whipped them up defensively as the remaining two demons barrelled into her.
Sera slashed upwards while spinning to the right to deflect the weight of the pair, and she just barely managed to twist her shoulder out of the way in time as a set of massive jaws snapped shut inches away. She continued the spin and brought her off-hand around and down blindly at where a flash of future-sight showed her the other hound would be. The edge of her sword bit deeply into the back of the demon's neck and sent a rush of satisfaction through her. Still got it!
The Hellhound bayed in pain and shook its massive frame in an effort to either free itself from her sword or take her arm off; she honestly couldn't tell the difference. Sera released her grip on her left-hand sword and stepped nimbly away from the slavering bite of the first hound without even being consciously aware of it. She spun down to her left knee, staying around the edges of the pair to avoid being pinned between them, and ripped free her left boot knife to drive it forward right through the gaping maw diving for her face. Sulphurous breath washed over her in a gagging cloud of reek as the demon shrieked in pain and rage when it was dispatched to its home dimension.
The last hound snarled viciously as it bowled over Sera, and she was knocked backwards from her unbalanced position on one knee. Gasping as her breath was knocked out of her lungs, she managed to get her right foot under the beast's belly, but she couldn't leverage upwards with enough force to send it over. Trapped under the weight of the massive demon, Sera struggled to breathe. She whipped her head sideways in panic as she pushed its neck away with two handfuls of oily fur, her ruined swords dropped on impact. Her crossbow lay flung out to her left side on its shoulder strap, useless in close quarters.
The demon strained downwards to bite at the exposed flesh of her throat, and she screamed in pain as a thick rope of drool dangled down from its jaws and hissed against her skin. Her night-vision faded as the rune burned away and she gritted her teeth against the agony. Sera's hands flared red-hot for a moment and then it was the demon screeching impossibly in the darkness as seraphic runes were burned directly into its hide. Her lips were drawn back in a snarl as she scorched the very language of heaven itself into the demonic flesh, and then the creature simply dissolved into an insubstantial mist.
Sera rolled over to her knees as her head swam dizzyingly from the pain. She wanted to retch from the combination of stink and the sticky feeling of ichor clinging to her, and she even dry-heaved once before regaining control. Being trained to fight was one thing, but if she had to be honest with herself, she really hadn't had a lot of opportunities to fight actual demons.
She raised her head to look for the humans again, and caught sight of the father and his daughter once more, this time less than eighty yards away, where the last three Hellhounds were dragging down a man as he screamed for mercy.
I can make it.
Sera dug the toe of her boot into the churned-up dirt and then sprinted forward, legs pumping as she flew over the distance between herself and the beleaguered humans.
A flash of teeth was all the warning she got as she leaped to clear the body of a Hell- wait, shouldn't the bodies vanish- Sera's world exploded in agony as the demon she had only disabled with her throwing knife lunged upward at her. Its jaws closed around her right boot and tore into her calf sickeningly. She was jerked down abruptly and she fought to hold onto consciousness, knowing that blacking out now was a death sentence.
She scrabbled to draw her remaining boot knife, but she couldn't get her fingers around the hilt without risking them becoming dog treats, so she curled in closer to clamp her hands around the Hellhound's muzzle. Growls transitioned into horror-struck howls, and then the demon was gone.
Sera's boot was shredded, but she was more than a little afraid to take a closer look at the damage. She made herself to look away and find the last of the demons, now just thirty yards away. Through sheer force of will, she levered herself up to her right knee and brought her crossbow around. She hooked the cocking stirrup around the toe of her left boot, bore down, and silently thanked her father for giving her the strength needed to cock it back manually. In a flash, she had a bolt loaded, runed and ready to fly, and she watched it punch right through the skull of one of the remaining Hellhounds to send it screaming back to the Void.
The other two looked back at where she had lowered the bow to reload, their eyes burning with hatred. One broke for her immediately, but the other tore forward into the man with the red flannel jacket instead, ripping into his back as he turned away to protect his daughter from the onslaught.
With her heart in her throat, Sera dropped a second runed bolt into the flight groove and lifted the weapon just in time to squeeze the trigger and blow the shaft through the demon's eye socket in a shower of gore. She turned her face away to avoid the worst of the splatter, but she felt the burning sting of the blood as it landed on her unprotected skin.
Fingers burning from the bite of the cables, she cocked the crossbow for one more shot even as she saw that she was too late. The field was eerily silent around her as she locked eyes with the final demon and fired the third bolt to dispatch it back to Hell.
Panting shallowly, Sera slipped one of her throwing knives free and used it to cut a slit up her pant leg, baring the skin above her now chew-toy status boot. She wrapped both of her hands around her leg and sent iratzes spiraling outwards to deal with the worst of the damage that she was still unwilling to assess. Tired and shaking, she pushed herself up and hobbled across the distance separating her from the two humans she had seen so clearly in her dream that morning.
She collapsed heavily at the man's side and groaned as shocks went through her battered body. He lay curled around his daughter, just as before.
I couldn't save them.
Sera closed her eyes and swayed sideways. Even her extraordinary constitution had its limits.
Black spots danced in her vision when she opened her eyes again and she struggled to stay awake. One trembling hand reached into her jacket to pull out her mother's stele and her hastily-scrawled note to Rayce. With a flash of guilt, she rolled the folded page around the stele and slid it halfway into the front pocket of the flannel jacket. Rayce would eventually stand right here. He would recognize the stele for what it was, and he would get her message before it was too late.
Unwillingly, Sera looked down at where her calf had at least stopped bleeding from what she could tell. The iratzes had already faded, spent, and she renewed them tiredly.
Unable to hold unconsciousness at bay any longer, Sera sank backwards and passed out among the dead.
Sera found herself falling through a snowstorm that swirled through the grey sky around her.
Freezing winds ripped at her leather jacket to mock its protection, and shining tresses dampened by sweat and blood froze in the icy chill. Sera squinted through the storm and spun to find the ground rushing up to meet her, but she was a veteran of the dream world and slowed her fall before she could hit the blasted rock.
A tiny cabin was hunkered down in the snow, and Sera pushed toward it on legs that were already frozen, her right pant leg flapping in the gale. Her mind raced to take in this strange location, and even as she watched, the storm faded away. The cabin's wooden facade was bluff and plain, rough walls obscured by the scrub of ice and snowed crusted along the faces.
She took a deep breath and stepped through the door to the cramped interior. Mismatched couches and armchairs were crowded into the main room, and a small kitchen nook bumped off the back behind a raised counter top. Three narrow doors stood closed on the left wall to hint at the rooms beyond, but Sera's eyes were drawn to the girl sitting on the floor in front of the wood stove.
Her knees were draw up to her chest and she had her arms wrapped tightly around them as she stared into the flickering flames through the grate. Firelight danced off her blond hair and in golden eyes that were so like Sera's own.
Sera crouched down next to Aspen Herondale and looked more closely at the girl's face. Tears were slipping down her cheeks silently to fall unchecked. The despair in her expression was heartbreakingly easy to read. Whatever she had been dealing with, she wasn't coping well, and Sera felt guilty again about neglecting her promise. She stretched out a ghostly hand to grip the girl's shoulder, knowing that it was a useless gesture.
What was going on behind that troubled gaze?
Aspen's eyes glowed in the flickering light of the fire inside the stove of Helen and Aline's cabin. She hated it here; it was always cold, and the adults dropped their voices to a hushed whisper whenever they were around her or Hunter, as if someone was dying. Last night, when they had all thought she and Hunter were asleep, she had listened at the door while they spoke in low voices around the living room.
Jem had gently broken the news to her mother. Aspen hadn't been able to bear doing it herself and seeing the disappointment in her mother's eyes. He had carefully tested her and Hunter for most of the day, and it was clear that Aspen's strength with runes had been shattered by the binding. Her ability was now, perhaps, weaker than an ordinary Shadowhunter's, save when she Marked Hunter. Even then, her runes were barely adequate.
Physically, Jem had explained, both teenagers were healthy, despite Hunter's pale face and general lethargy. What he was still having trouble working out was the waxing and waning of one or the other during their testing. Aspen had bent over double, gasping, while Hunter had jogged laps around the cabin outside.
The ex-Silent Brother's eyes had darkened with concern when he saw her reaction, and he had seemed to war with himself mentally before calling Hunter over. Clary, Helen, and Aline had taken Tessa out to the ritual site to give Jem and the kids some space, but he had still looked over his shoulder before asking them very quietly if there was anything between them romantically.
Hunter had been appalled; Aspen was practically his sister, he had protested. Was it even possible to think of her like that? Aspen had vehemently agreed with him. Siblings?In love? Gross.
Assured that there was no blooming love of eros, Jem had sighed with relief and waved off the increasingly insulting declarations of mutual disgust coming from the kids.
Listening to the adults last night had made Aspen's stomach twist with fear as Jem had tried to explain what he could about the strange parabatai link. At one point, she had heard her mother's voice shake as she had asked if it was anything like the twisted bond that Jace had briefly shared with Sebastian. Jem had been quick to allay her fear, and Aspen had silently agreed with him. Earlier that day, she had held her breath and sliced her thumb at Jem's behest, waiting to see if Hunter would manifest the same injury, but nothing had happened.
Jem's leading theory right now was that they both just need to rest and remain under observation. It had been a terrible shock to both of their systems, he had said, and perhaps only time would repair the damage to Aspen's gift.
But she could already feel the truth. It wasn't coming back.
The log inside the stove had become little more than glowing embers while she sat and brooded, and Aspen grabbed the poker to carefully hook open the grate and shove in more wood. A Thermis rune sounded like a great idea, but she didn't want to risk it. Aspen jabbed at the new log a bit more forcefully than was necessary as it started to burn brightly. She was just so frustrated with living like this. It wasn't fair.
The fire snapped and crackled as it began to consume the wood, and Aspen continued to spear the poker into the embers idly. Fire is where this all started, she thought to herself. She remembered the flames racing up her walls, and she saw the heavy wardrobe crush Hunter again in her memory.
When her uncle Alec and Magnus had arrived, she had thought that everything was going to be okay. Magnus could fix anything. But he'd only been able to get the burn on Alec's shoulder mending before iratzes had been used to get it on its way properly. He had had no idea what to do for Aspen and Hunter, and then it had been too late; they had left for Buenos Aires to hold back the demon invasion.
Aspen's breath caught in her throat as she thought about her uncle's shoulder again. He had deliberately burned himself to destroy the Clave's house-arrest rune that had been keeping him imprisoned in his home. If he hadn't freed himself, he would have been trapped until the other half of the rune was consumed by the fire, and by then it might have been too late.
A crazy idea started to take shape in the back of her mind, and Aspen's eyes gleamed in the rising firelight as she looked down the length of the poker to where it was still buried in the ashes of the stove.
We could start over. Hunter could take all the time he wanted to heal properly, and then we could do the parabatai ceremony together the way it was meant to be done. Everything could go back to the way it was.
She slowly turned the handle of the poker in the fire, fascinated by the idea of essentially hitting the reset button. She was Aspen Sophia Herondale, daughter of Clarissa Fairchild and Jace Herondale, and the world would expect great things from her. How could she possibly amount to anything when she was stuck like this? There were probably dregs in the Academy who were stronger than her now. She loved Hunter, and she thanked the Angel that he had lived, but a tiny part of her resented that she had given up everything that made her special.
I didn't know it would be like this, she insisted, talking herself into it. That same, tiny, annoying part of her wondered if she would have still made the same choice if she had known the price. But now there was a chance to change it.
Aspen pulled the poker out of the fire and stared at it. This is going to hurt like hell. She adjusted and shortened her grip on the tool to make it easier to manoeuvre, and then pulled the neck of her sweater down to expose the parabatai rune that lay over her heart. She took in a deep breath through her nose and held it, clamping her mouth shut against the scream she already knew she wasn't going to be able to hold back.
The cabin door crashed open with a bang and a chilling gust of wind as a blond woman stumbled through wildly toward Aspen, her hands outstretched to snatch the poker away and throw it back through the open door. She slammed the door closed once more and sank down against it, gasping and breathing hard as she shivered.
Aspen's mouth gaped open in shock at the abrupt interruption. "Who are you?" she asked in a quavering voice.
"Holy God, that was close," the woman huffed as she pushed her blood-stained tangle of gold and platinum hair back from her face. Her eyes caught Aspen's and she nodded in greeting. "We've met, but I didn't look like this last time."
What the hell is she talking about? Aspen took in the shredded boot, the flap of leather hanging from above the woman's knee, and the overall spatter of gore across her clothes and face, but she still couldn't connect the image to any memory she had. When she didn't look like she had been wrestling demons (and losing, by the looks of it), the woman was probably beautiful beyond comparison.
"Here," the stranger offered. "See if this helps." She reached her right hand into her jacket and slipped it over the back of her left shoulder, and then her entire appearance rippled under the effects of a glamour. A middle-aged woman with grey-streaked brown hair and kind, dark eyes now leaned against the door and smiled faintly. "Just tell me that you didn't actually force your friend to eat tomato soup with mangoes. That's truly horrific."
The girl's eyes widened in surprise. "How can you do that? I have the Sight and I have my Voyance rune. You shouldn't be able to use a glamour like that!"
Sera cancelled the glamour rune and faded back to her true appearance. "I can do it because we're more alike than you know, Aspen. My runes are more powerful than even your mother's."
"How can that be possible?" Aspen whispered.
"Just trust me when I tell you that I'm working with a significantly higher concentration of Angel blood, okay?" She extended a bloody hand across the distance between them. "I'm Sera, by the way."
Aspen's lips quivered and she fought to keep herself from crying again. "We were alike then, if that's the case. But now I've ruined everything." She buried her face in her hands and Sera watched uncomfortably, letting her outstretched hand fall back to her side awkwardly.
"I doubt you've ruined anything, let alone everything," Sera said as she levered herself back up to her feet. She had ripped herself out of her dream once she had seen what Aspen had intended with the poker. She had lost her chance to potentially see Rayce again, but she couldn't ignore the urgency with which she had woken. Grateful that she had just proved that she could Portal to a location she had seen in one of her true visions, she'd thrown herself forward into the freezing air with a flash and a gasp as an icy blast had cut through her leather jacket, and her injured leg had sunk into the snow outside the cabin.
"How did you even know to come here? And why would you?" the girl asked, eyes still wide at this strange woman who had appeared so suddenly.
"I came because I, probably more than anyone else, understand why you were about to do what you were going to do what that poker. I know what it's like to be... different; what it's like to have your whole identity tied up in being special. I know you probably believed that you were going to fix whatever you think you've ruined, but believe me – I just stopped you from making the worst mistake of your life."
Aspen turned her eyes down in shame and then heard the handle of the bedroom door turn behind her.
Hunter poked his head out, dark brown hair sticking up wildly on one side, and then his jaw dropped when he saw Sera. Bloody or not, Sera was still hot.
Sera's eyes flicked to Hunter briefly, but then returned to where the girl was still hanging her head. She limped over and lifted Aspen's chin, pained by the tears she found there. "As for how I got here... well... that's a bit of a long story. I'll give you the Coles Notes version if you promise to do the same for me with what happened to you two."
"Who's Cole?" Hunter asked, bewildered.
Sera smiled and shook her head, then asked if there was anything to eat. She needed to recharge after using so much energy against the Hellhounds and Portaling twice in such a short span of time while sustaining serious injuries from the demons. The iratzes she had reapplied before passing out were long-since faded, and she finally let herself unzip the remnants of her right boot to see how bad it was.
A double-U of deep puncture marks were scarring over on her calf, their points joined by an angry red line of burned skin where the demon's slobber had eaten away at her flesh. She winced when she considered what her neck probably looked like. Going to need to stock up on Vitamin E for these scars. Sera was surprised at how self-conscious she was already starting to feel about them, and having Hunter gawping at her wasn't helping her confidence.
Aspen set down a plate with a pair of PB&Js on it for Sera next to where the Shadowhunter was running her fingers along the new ridges of her calf. Sera looked up and raised her eyebrow. "Actually peanut butter and jam, right? Nothing weird?"
The girl giggled, as intended, and promised that the sandwiches were safe. Sera urged Aspen to start telling her story while Sera wolfed down the food.
Sera fought to keep her face neutral as she listened, but it became more difficult as the girl attempted to explain what she had tried to do to save her parabatai from death. The feeling of desperation hit a little too close to home. She felt like she understood, though, and she continued to analyze the possibilities as Aspen told her about the tests that the ex-Silent Brother had put them through, and their subsequent results.
When she had finished, Aspen looked at Sera with hope in her eyes. "You have to know how to fix this, Sera. I didn't think anyone could ever be better than my mom with runes, but you are. You've gotta help us; why else would you be here?"
Sera dragged her finger through a smear of peanut butter on the plate thoughtfully. She had an idea, and even if it didn't work, it wouldn't hurt to try. But she wanted them to make an informed decision this time. Both of them.
"I'll tell you what I'm thinking, and then you tell me if it sounds right, okay?"
The pair nodded in unison, and Sera took a deep breath before starting. "Basically, Aspen, it sounds like you made a parabatai bond with a guy who was almost dead." She turned her eyes to Hunter and held up her hand apologetically. "No offense."
"None taken," Hunter answered graciously.
"In addition," Sera continued, "you cheated the bond by making him 'Mark' you in return. For absolutely anyone else, this never would have worked. Your rune on him would have melted away and refused to form, and the one you drew on yourself with his hand... I don't even know."
Aspen was nodding minutely as she remembered her mother's iratze failing to take effect on Hunter's shoulder.
Sera held up her finger. "However, and please understand that I am guessing on instinct here, I think that you invoked both of your parents' gifts that night. You gathered up all of the strength that your father's legacy gave you, then you used it to power your mother's ability and propel it beyond the natural bounds of what should and should not work. You forced the rune to hold on to a life that was fading away."
Hunter's lips parted in surprise and he looked at Aspen in disbelief. "Asp, did you... did you rune-rape me?"
She gaped back at him. "Not even funny," she whispered. She yanked the tattered throw pillow of the loveseat out from behind her back and started hitting him with it, emphasizing each whack with a huff. "Not. Funny. At. All."
Sera watched, amused, then reached out to pluck the pillow from Aspen's hands. "But surprisingly accurate, I think," she said, causing Hunter stick his tongue out at Aspen. "The parabatai bond is dragging both of you back toward that low point where you were joined, but you're sharing a mutual pool of strength that's allowing you to stay just ahead of the curve."
Inspired, Sera pulled the elastic out of her hair and folded it in half around the index finger of her right hand so that she could hold one loop on her right thumb, and hook the other with her left index finger. The teenagers looked on in confusion.
"It's like this," she explained. "My right index finger is the point of death, and the elastic represents your combined strength." Sera pulled down on the elastic with her left index finger, effectively dragging her thumb back until it was trapped against the 'death' finger. "So if I pull, let's say, 'Aspen', further away from death, it drags 'Hunter' closer." She reversed the mini tug-of-war by opening the gap between her right thumb and forefinger, which forced her left pointer back against the imaginary point of death.
Fear shone in Aspen's eyes as she watched the crude demonstration. As weird as it sounded, it was exactly how they had been feeling.
Sera evened out the distance of 'Aspen' and 'Hunter' from the finger of death. "It can be balanced, but it leaves you both too weak. How am I doing?"
They exchanged a meaningful glance and then nodded slowly.
Aspen swallowed as she stared at the elastic. "What can we do, though?"
Sera grinned. "We need to increase the amount of available strength in your pool."
The girl shook her head. "I already tried that. I can Mark Hunter with Fortitude runes, but it doesn't change anything."
"Because you're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. You can't pay off your credit card bill with the same credit card, can you?"
"Dad said I can't get a credit card until I'm eighteen," Hunter offered. Both women stared daggers at him and he shrank back. "Sorry," he whispered apologetically. "I use humour to deal with stress. I think I get it from dad."
Aspen rolled her eyes at her parabatai and looked back at Sera. "Then how are you proposing we pay off the credit card?"
"With a permanent loan from a wealthy investor." Aspen's eyes lit up as she immediately grasped the metaphor. Hunter still looked lost, but at this point he was too afraid to ask. Aspen turned to him, smiling radiantly, and she pulled him into a crushing hug.
Hunter gasped as the air whooshed out of his lungs. "I think," he wheezed, "I'm missing something."
Sera's eyes danced with the same excitement that shone in Aspen's, and she smiled back at him fiercely. "I'm offering you a permanent Fortitude rune, but I'm going to pack one hell of a punch into it."