A/N: I do not own Mortal Instruments, or the names of its characters. I do however own my characters as are written in this story, and this story itself. Thank you for reading! Please enjoy.

Chapter 14

"… deceptively devoid …"

Four years later. 8742 FA

Sphere Lasan. House of Valentine

"I know, Clar. I've thought about it. But you need to stop. You know we aren't allowed to talk about it. Do not test her on this one. Don't you understand? We will all suffer if you pursue it," Simon charged.

Clary had never seen her friend this aggravated in all of their six years together. Dousing the desire to snap something rude she dragged her hands down her face, gently gripping the skin of her jaw line, before turning away with a sigh of lingering frustration.

"You know I can't," came the insistent demand.

"No, I know you won't," Simon countered.

"What I don't understand is why you won't!"

Simon observed Clary, before softly replying, "Because it is dangerous. Because we were told not to. Because the people we care about could be harmed beyond repair if we don't leave it alone. Because I don't want us to get into trouble and be sent away. Because I like it here, and I want to stay." He paused. "Because I don't want to."

Clary's foot began tapping the floor with an intermittent and irregular tick belying her agitation at the words she was hearing.

"Don't you think I know that? I don't want to leave here either. But there must be a reason why, and if we could find out what that reason is, if we could find out how he did it, then maybe we can set them both free forever. Isn't that worth it? How can you say you care about Maryse or Jace when you are so afraid you're unwilling to even bloody act!"

Simon's eyes narrowed in anger and irritation. "Stop yelling at me!"

Clary dead stopped in the middle of her tirade. Simon, her quiet, soft-spoken, painfully-shy Simon, had just yelled back at her. A sudden, beaming grin swept her face.

"Well look at you. Didn't think ya had it in ya."

Simon's face flushed before turning away. "I do care about them. Very much. You know I do," his tone once again quiet, if not plaintive. "I simply don't believe telling her anything for the sake of mere revenge is worth ruining all of our lives here for."

The smile on Clary's face faded as suddenly as it appeared. "Then you're a fool," she retorted. "This pretty little life you're so desperate to keep is a lie. That man could explode on us all at any moment. Anyone who is capable of doing what he did, could. This isn't about some petty revenge for the sheer sake of the thing. It's about freedom for us all. Life won't be truly wonderful until we take Va…"

"Did you hear that?" Simon asked anxiously. Clary paused, before rolling her eyes, getting up and walking over to the door. "You are so paranoid." Yanking the door open, her eyes inspected the hallway with her customary indifference before slamming the door closed again. "Nothing there."

"Alright. Let's not argue about it anymore," Simon said returning to his reading.

Clary felt like hitting something.

"You do this every time we discuss it! You pretend the walls have ears to distract me and end the conversation!"

Simon set his book aside and looked his best friend in the eye. "I do not want to talk about this anymore, Clary."

His eyes narrowed again in defensiveness as Clary turned away. "Where is your courage, Si?" she asked before she exited their room through its second-storey window.

Jace leaned against the wall around the corner from the children's room and gazed up at the ceiling, thankful for the carpet that muffled his shifting feet.

Though his heart rate and breathing were controlled, his mind raced with thoughts and questions about what he had just overheard, and his eyes narrowed, curious, suspicious and shrewd as he replayed Clary's short diatribe in his head.

He didn't know what they were talking about. Only that it had something to do with him, his mother and to the degree that he could discern his father as well. He nodded his head to himself with this conclusion. So long as the word 'dangerous' was mentioned, that could only mean Valentine was somehow surely involved.

Lingering in that hallway, Jace was poised and inclined to dismiss all he had heard. He found the idea of two silly ten year old children plotting to defeat the King of the most powerful sphere in the spiral of Nescada positively preposterous, and knew they would be crushed were Valentine to detect their treachery, if only to serve as an example of his zero tolerance when it came to treason of any kind.

The only thing inhibiting him from writing it off fully however, was that he intuitively knew this had to do with his mother's past. He would never admit it aloud, but he often wondered about his mother and her story and why it seemed like the past simply didn't exist before he was born.

No one spoke of it. No one ever spoke of his golden hair and ochre eyes, so very different from the darker and more exotic colouring of his parents. No one ever spoke of how his mother came to be Queen of the House of Valentine, capital-kingdom of the island-planet Lasan or about why Maryse and Valentine were barely ever seen together or of why his father treated him more as a prized soldier than like a son.

These things were never spoken of … not even by his mother … and he had never asked. As Jace stood there in that hallway with its high, airy ceiling deceptively devoid of the answers to his questions, his head bowed beneath the weight of his imposed isolation and for the first time in his ten years of existence, he felt utterly lost. Though he could never admit it aloud, he yearned to know the secrets surely being kept from him, and vowed, there and then, to learn about his mother's past and his true identity.

Obviously he would never actually consider betraying Valentine to find out what those children had been talking about. He was no fool and knew firsthand what the King of Lasan's capital-kingdom was quite capable of doing. Eyes narrowing to scheming slits, Jace pushed himself away from the wall, flexing and clenching his left fist as he calculated how best to deceive the children and get what he wanted. He wanted to know about his mother. He wanted to know about himself. He would be damned if he let two little children get in the way. He stood straight. Whatever they knew, he would know. Whatever they'd been told, he would be told.

A/N: Thank you again for taking the time to read this story! Things are getting tense, and as secrets and deception abound ... what will happen to our three young protagonists? Until next time ... And thanks for reviewing!