Chapter Two

A/N: Thank you to inkblotblue, Geekgirl - book lover and Lmb111514 for reviewing my first chapter.

The first thing Jocelyn noticed when she awoke was the smell. Rosewater. It was a smell that had surrounded her all through childhood, one that she had missed desperately when she had first left Idris, when the only smells surrounding her were petrol fumes and refuse. Jocelyn had never smelt such a scent outside of her home country. In fact, the roses in Idris were unique.

The redhead gasped quietly as a wave of realisation swept over her. She was back at home.

The house was, of course, not the manor house she had grown up in, for fifteen years ago, that house had been reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble and cinder reeking of demonic influence, but this room was decorated in a startling similar way to her old bedroom. The bedroom she had once shared with...

Jocelyn's eyes grew wide as everything came into focus. Instinctively, she tried to get up, tried to run away just as she had done before, but found something holding her back. Her wrists were chained to the headboard of the bed, making any attempts at escape completely futile. 'I'm trapped.' she thought despairingly. 'Trapped with the one person I had prayed to never have to see again.'

As if summoned from her thoughts, Jocelyn heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching the door of the bedroom. Those footsteps had been a warning for her before, a herald of fear, and once again she used that warning to prepare herself. She closed her eyes and lay down as flat as she could, trying to ignore her racing heart and breathe evenly, as if she were still sleeping. After so long apart, she could only hope her husband had forgotten her skills as an actress.

She had hardly been settled for a few seconds when Valentine entered the room and tried not to flinch as the door clicked shut behind him. All these years, she had thought she had left her past behind her; over that time, she had barely considered how much he still frightened her.

Valentine's footsteps were slower now, as he approached the bed she lay on. It was almost as if he had been running, in the hope that she was awake. 'Could he really have been so desperate to see me?' Jocelyn wondered. There was the tiniest section in her heart that remembered the warmth of their former relationship and how special she had always felt when Valentine was by her side; now that he was near her again, that section somehow seemed to be growing.

The bed creaked slightly as the man sank down onto it, the sound merging seamlessly with his sigh of disappointment. Jocelyn could feel the warmth coming from her husband's body, such was his proximity. She had not been so close to him in so long.

"Hello, Jocelyn." Valentine greeted, stroking a stray tendril of hair from across her face.

Jocelyn froze with terror, fighting to keep her expression neutral. 'He knows I'm awake.' she told herself and almost winced with fear. But just as she was about to give the game away, to open her eyes and face him with the same determination and strength she had shown in her youth, her husband continued to speak.

"I know that you probably cannot hear me, but I wanted to speak to you nonetheless. I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I never thought I would have the chance, but now that I do..." the Shadowhunter began, his voice laced with melancholy. 'He thinks I'm still sleeping.' Jocelyn realised, much to her relief. However, her relief was short-lived, for shock was quick to replace it. "I wanted to tell you how sorry I am."

Jocelyn bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from gasping. Of all the things Valentine could have said to her, that was the last she would have anticipated. He was apologising. All he had done wrong, all the heartache he had caused her, all the sleepless nights in the last two decades... and now he was apologising for them.

"I know that I've been an awful husband, an awful father." Valentine confessed, taking heaving, shuddering breaths, as if he feared that he would begin to cry at any moment. It was a rarity to hear Valentine Morgenstern sound so vulnerable. "I promised in the Great Hall that day, when I took you for my wife, that I would always keep you safe, that I would cherish and care for you until the day I died. I failed in that and in my duty to Jonathan. You were the most important things in my life and yet steadily I tore you both to pieces."

Valentine paused a moment, choking on the sobs that threatened to overwhelm him. He fought on, of course, as a Shadowhunter always would. 'Once a fighter, always a fighter.' Jocelyn thought, though a great deal less bitterly than she would have done in the past.

"I know that no words can change what I've done, but I hope that my actions from now on may start to make up for the pain I have put you through." Valentine rose from the bed, his speech now completed. His footsteps began to recede, along with the sound of the man violently wiping tears from his face, as if he was ashamed he had ever cried. 'He was never ashamed to cry, not with me.' Jocelyn thought. 'But then again, that was only with me, and I have been gone for fifteen years. Perhaps he hasn't cried since then.'

He was so quiet that Jocelyn had thought he had gone from the room. She had been about to sit up properly in her bed when she heard the whisper from the doorway.

"I love you, Jocelyn. You never left my heart."

Then he was gone. For a moment, Jocelyn considered calling after him, to tell him that she had heard what he said. But he was still Valentine Morgenstern and she still hated him. Or at least she should have done.

For once, Jocelyn listened to her head rather than her heart and bit her tongue. There would be plenty of time to speak to him in the future, for sure, as she knew her husband all too well. Now that he had found her once more, she was under no illusion that he would ever let her go.

A/N: Please review!