Time has gone excruciatingly slow before. Time has blown by faster than the blink of an eye before. Time has escaped between the gaps in my fingers and has choked me with a blindingly tight grip before. But never has time stopped like it just did now.
I can barely see anything through the crack in the doors, but I see enough. I hear Malachai's grunt of disapproval, Valentine's yell of anger, but it all takes a backseat to the small gasp Alice makes as her watery blue eyes fly open. Her delicate elderly face seems to age another ten years right before me, little bits and pieces of frozen time floating in my mind. Alice's frail fingers grasp the two arm rests, her entire frame seizing before crumpling against the blade in her chest. The pale and worn garments all maids were given to wear to formal events that she had lovingly kept spotless seemed to drench itself with blood, unfurling slowly in a dark red stain. Her eyes didn't leave mine.
Releasing me suddenly, the moment stops. The clock ticks again. And now Valentine slowly removes his sword, and Alice's body is no longer there. Instead it crashes to the ground at Valentine's feet, small and pitiful like a broken doll cast aside by its owner. I fall backwards out of shock, the door silently slipping closed as my hands scrabbled backwards on the plush carpet. The hallway seems too bright. Too quiet. Too innocent for what had just happened.
Malachai's reproaching tone finally clears the buzzing in my ears, muffled behind the heavy wooden door. I need to get out before they see me. Before they kill me.
The heavy cloak around my neck pulls at me as I flip onto my hands and knees, pushing myself into a standing position and barrelling down the adjoined hallway as fast as my weak knees allow. Alice was murdered.
Everything is spinning out of control, the stones I'm running on seeming to fall out from underneath me even as I step on them. The walls of my childhood home seem to twist and melt until it's my own personal hell. By the angel, Alice was just murdered.
I keep running, wishing to get lost in the familiar corridors, wishing to bleed out the image in my mind. Oh angel, please. Someone please tell me I'm dreaming.
My heel catches onto the thick carpet and sends me plummeting to the floor, knocking the wind out of me. I just sob, burying my face deeper into the rug and clenching it tight with my fingers in defeat. Alice. Jonathan. Both gone, both murdered. By my father.
Stifling my sobs with the floor, it takes everything in me to not reach up and start clawing out my own hair by the handful, just in a lack of not knowing anything else to do.
Jonathan was murdered.
She's alive.
Alice was murdered.
Go to the dungeons.
My mother had died in a carriage accident.
She's alive.
Go to the dungeons.
Eyes burning from tears and dust, I blink and raise my head to look behind me. No signs of pursuit from Valentine or Malachai. The heavy dress and cloak drag on me, yet I still struggle to my feet. Muscles burning under strain, I catapult myself farther down the corridor, going off of memory of the set of stairs I had always been forbidden to go to. The castle seems infinitely larger, more complicated than ever before. But I refuse to stop. That glimmer of hope flickering faintly in my chest fuels me to go forward, to keep running, right until I collide with someone.
The force of another person sends me barreling to the ground again, head smacking painfully against the floor. Blinking stars out of my eyes dazedly, I look around the blurry room to see someone else sprawled on the floor, a tray of freshly cleaned wine flutes now half shattered next to them. Crawling onto my hands and knees, I realize I had crashed into a maid. She slowly sits up, rubbing her head reproachfully until she looks up at me.
"Your Majesty!" She cries with valor, attempting to curtsy so low her thin brown hair pools onto the glass littered ground, I hastily stand up, reaching down and grabbing her wrist and pulling her up alongside me. She averts her wide, shocked eyes from me until I tsk at her.
"Look at me!" I didn't mean to sound harsh, yet she still flinches as her eyes meet mine. They're a lovely shade of hazel, calming the building frenzy of my nerves. She's even shorter than me, looking small and frightened. Sighing impatiently, I gently grasp her bony shoulders and look deep into her eyes, hoping she doesn't notices the tear stained glimmering under my own. I know she does.
"You know who I am, correct?" A small nod. "Good. Now listen to me, very carefully." I pause to make sure she's listening before I continue with explicit instructions. "What I'm about to tell you to do goes against what my father taught you, but you need to do it. Find King Herondale. Did you see him when we entered?" Her breathing is shallow, but she manages another nod. "Good. Tall, blonde curly hair. Waring very fine clothes. You need to go, interrupt the funeral, and tell him that Clary needs him to come to the dungeons and bring guards and weapons. Tell him to gather every man he can, tell them there's a terrible emergency and I am in terrible danger or whatever he needs to say to convince them. You need to make sure he gets to the dungeons with a small army at most. Do you understand me?"
Her small lips hang open in an oh, eyes wide as she takes in everything I say without a word. I gaze imploringly down at her, begging the Angel to let her understand. "And you must make sure Valentine or his personal men do not find out. This goes against everything you were taught to do. But this is much more important than you duty to Valentine. This is your duty as a shadowhunter."
"Your Majesty," she whispers, not quite understanding yet, but a flicker of realization seems to burn in those hazel eyes. That's all I need. "I am not a shadowhunter. That's why I'm a maid."
I lower myself just so slightly, until she's eye level with me. She seems young, but no younger than me. A little part of me wonders just then, if I wasn't a queen, if I hadn't been burdened with this life, would I be just like this girl? Just a normal 17 year old in normal clothes and no idea what to do with responsibility? Oh, how sweet that sounds. "You don't have to be part \angel to be brave. Not all shadowhunters are brave. You just have to be part human."
What seems like an eternity passes by as I clutch her, begging her with my eyes to understand. "This is more important than you may ever know. But you need to find Jace. You can't be afraid of him. You can't be a servant addressing a king. But he needs to know what to do."
And finally, she nods her affirmation.
I barely wait to mouth a thank you before I'm running again, the shattered wine flutes crunching underneath me as I fly down more corridors, the weight of what to do if my fear and hope is right lifted off of my shoulders.
My feet dig into the carpet, coming to a faltering stop before a mellow gold and white banister. On the heavy cloth is the image known across Idris of the angel Raziel rising from lake lyn, the intense blue parted by his overwhelmingly gold body. Though the image doesn't intrigue me as it once did. What does is the hidden staircase behind it.
Vividly remembering the screaming I had earned when I tried to explore the staircase and Valentine had caught me many years ago, I know I'm in the right place, my suspicions heightening. Valentine had always warned Jonathan and I of ever stepping foot into the basement. And I never questioned it too much as a child, always resigning to the fact it would just be another unsolved mystery of my life. That is, until now.
I don't hesitate another moment before lifting the heavy, embroidered edge and slipping behind it.
Holding it open ever so slightly to allow light in, I make out the long, sloping steps that lead down into darkness. Next to my head, propped on a small shelf, I see a witchlight stone.
Grasping the cool rock between my fingers, I squint through the sudden white brightness and let the banister fall shut behind me. Heels slipping on the stone steps, I proceed slowly until I'm faced with the door at the end of the staircase. The heavy knob doesn't budge.
In the small space, my frustrated groan reverberates back to me, hauntingly loud. Silently thanking the angel I had some common sense, I reach into the hidden folds of my dress that seems to illuminate itself, retracting the slim, engraved stele I had packed. Thank the angel.
The unlock rune comes easily to the forefront of my mind, the sizzle of the run the only sound in the breathless space. The door swings open.
My blood is rushing, pounding in my ears and making it hard to swallow against the tight knot in the back of my throat. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. All I know is that little flicker of hope is burning a little bit brighter.
Even without the silence rune on my skin, I don't make a sound as I creep forward, willing the stone to illuminate only the few feet of ground in front of me. There's no dust settled onto the pathway- people came down here regularly.
The walls aren't walls. They're cells set into building itself, the bars varying from thin metal to thick bars of what seems to be silver to bars set with religious scriptures and runes of strength. Though most prisoners were sent to the dungeons of the city of bones, each castle had a few cells for personal prisoners or temporary holding. They all stand empty, not doing much to ease the fright building in my veins; but as I creep around the single corner, my heart stops.
As if reading my body, the witchlight flares so bright I'm temporarily blinded. The blue light outshine the few bars of sunlight that creep in from the high, thin windows, illuminating the farthest corner of the cell right at the end of the dungeon. Instead of standing empty and dusty with disuse, the corner seems to contain a pile of rags and dirty strips of cloth that moves.
Eyes wide, I stumble forward until only the thin metal bars block me. I sink to my knees, hands grasping the metal and sending the witchlight skittering to the floor. However it still glows, bright enough to see the face that turns and appears from the mess of rags and looks at me with shock. Bright gold eyes, tawny and bronzed stare me through frail and dry tendrils of gold hair intermingling with gray that's lost its shine. A dirty, thin face, small and still holding former elegance with the set of the chin and raised brow bone, regards me with stupification. I stare back in surprise, sinking further into the floor as confusion douses that raging fire of hope in my chest.
I've seen her before. Once when I was young, the thin hair long and thick and lustrous with golden color, those eyes twinkling and lines and surrounded by a youthful, healthy face that had nicknamed my younger self sweetheart whenever she visited. And again in the past few months, every single time I passed the two large oil paintings in the Herondale castle of a king and a queen in their prime that hung over the staircase. And though the face that stares at me now through the cell bars seems so utterly different, so much more aged, and though she's supposed to be dead, though she's supposed to be long gone and there's absolutely, one hundred percent, absolutely no way she can be who I think she is, It doesn't stop me from blurting out-
"Celine?!"
Anyways
So I know this chapter is incredibly short, about half of my normal chapter, I honestly wasn't feeling my writing today. Do you just get in the mood where you're frustrated at yourself for not being better at something that's supposed to be your talent so much that you seriously consider quitting altogether? Because that's currently me lmao. Relax, I do have a rational best friend who keeps me from rage quitting and deleting all my stories, pretty sure I'd regret that. But I just feel eh about my writing today, I'm just in a bit of a funk. So I'm sorry if this chapter wasn't great! I really, really tried but I understand if it's not up to par. Hope all you lovely people can cut me some slack :)
Next chapter will probably be very long, and I have another big chapter to write for Love Isn't Optional, so don't be surprised if it's gonna take me a minute to get another chapter up! I hope you all still liked this chapter, and thank you for all the lovely replies I got for my last chapter. You all are INCREDIBLY sweet ! :) I love you all and I do love writing, so even if I think I suck I promise I won't rage quit. Well, I promise for my best friend because she may or may not be my voice of reason (Love you too hoe- also go check out her account LilithRisen because girl is a bombass writer!). Thank you all for your amazing support!
Shitty life advice for today- everything happens for a reason. No matter how shitty the situation is, I swear on my harry potter book collection there's a good reason for it that you will one day know and appreciate. And for now, cry and maybe smash something. ALSO NEVER MAKE A COFFEE SCRUB OFF OF PINTEREST. IT WILL LOOK LIKE SHIT AND GET EVERYWHERE. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NOT WORTH IT. TAKE YOUR BROKE ASS TO LUSH.
Love, Em :)