Author's Note: This chapter contains torture, psychological trauma, manipulation, fear, mentions of rape/nonconsensual sex, mentions of incest, nonconsensual touching, annndddd Sebastian.
Chapter Nineteen
"Good morning."
Despite the ache in her back and in the crest of her hip where it dug into the hard floor beneath her, Clary was comfortable. Warm. She could feel sunlight streaming in, the rays heating her face, and she stretched her arm out slightly, fingertips feeling over the sun-warmed wooden floor as she turned her face into the pillow with a deep sigh.
She felt an arm reach around her side, pulling her backwards just a bit, and then there was more warmth all along her back, steady in its presence. It felt even better than the sunlight, being surrounded by such comfortable heat, and she sighed again contentedly.
"Hey, sleepyhead…wake up."
Clary groaned at the thought. She really, really did not want to wake up. It was so nice where she was right now, so warm, and easy. It was incredibly easy allowing her eyes to remain shut, easy letting her head sink further into the pillow.
And the hand that started rubbing at her shoulders certainly wasn't helping this matter of "waking up." It kneaded at knots she hadn't even known were there, pressed out the tension in her shoulders before working down her back, leaving her melting into the floor. Even when the hand rubbed at her hip and down her thigh she didn't startle, and began slowly falling back to sleep.
"You're stubborn even when you're half asleep, you know that? Is it always this hard to wake you?"
The voice was clearer now, right up behind her ear, and she could feel the rumble of the chest against her back, the husky depth of a morning voice. The breath behind her tickled loose curls across her neck and she shivered slightly despite the perfect warmth.
A kiss was pressed to her shoulder, then up the side of her throat. She unconsciously lifted her chin, stretching her neck out across the pillow.
Clary smiled a bit at the image of golden eyes that came into her mind, and basked in the familiarity of his touch.
"Wake up, love. I want to ask you something." His hand ran through her sleep-mussed hair, pulling strands away from her face and tucking them behind her ear so he could stroke a thumb over her cheek.
"Hmm?" Clary hummed, at last turning to look over her shoulder at him, her eyes cracking open. The room was bright with the morning light spilling in the window, and the man leaning over her smiled as she tried to blink away the sleep in her eyes, his hair so bright it seemed nearly reflective in the sunlight.
"What does it do?" he asked, fingers still running over her cheek, thumb sliding down to brush under her chin.
Clary frowned lightly, not understanding the question. What does what do?
Couldn't she sleep just a minute longer? She was sleeping so soundly….
After a minute of nodding back to sleep, the wonderful body heat pressed up behind her shifted back a bit, his warm palm pulling away from her face, and she was about to groan out a complaint, or flop her face back down into the pillow, when her leg was suddenly jerked backwards.
Clary hissed in pain as her foot, which had been tucked comfortably under the covers, her knees bent up as she lay on her side, was wrenched forcefully behind her, his grip pulling until her ankle was nearly touching the small of her back.
She yelped as he pulled higher, the painful stretch in her thigh shoving away the grogginess of sleep.
Clary gasped, abruptly aware of Sebastian's presence behind her—any embarrassment of the strange moment between them just seconds earlier, while she was still partially asleep, was overpowered by confusion and hate. She reached back, grabbing at his wrist, trying to pry his fingers from her ankle. They didn't budge.
"What. Does. It. Do?" Sebastian asked again, voice a deadly growl, and it was then that Clary snapped to complete wakefulness at the threat in his tone. She felt him brush his thumb over her heel, just as gently as he had stroked her cheek.
For a blissful moment, she had no idea what he was asking about.
And then, as he pressed his thumbnail down into her heel, the details of the night before came crashing down on her: the sex, the forgotten stele, the rune.
Her eyes snapped to his, instantly wide and terrified, thousands of excuses rising and dying in her throat all at once. He stared down at her, his face hard set in anger, thin muscles bulging in his temples from the force at which he clenched his jaw.
When Clary could think up no lies that would sound realistic she snapped her mouth shut and tried to stop the tears that were stinging her eyes from falling. But when Sebastian began slowly twisting her ankle in a direction it by all rights shouldn't bend, her plan to simply not answer him crumbled. She cried out and pulled harder at his wrist, her other hand scratching at the floor as her back arched and she tried to impossibly shift her leg with the motion. When it felt like her ankle was about to snap, she gave in.
"Birth control," Clary gasped, "it means birth control! Now, please—!"
Sebastian immediately released her foot and she quickly pulled it to herself, rolling onto her stomach and then sitting up right so she could cradle her ankle in front of her. She panted, a few tears slipping free, and she couldn't help but think that it was far too early in the morning to be crying.
After a moment of silence, she hesitantly looked up to try and judge the damage, peering at him through her eyelashes, her hair falling in curtains beside her face. Sebastian was sitting completely still on his side with one arm propping him up, his other hand curled in a fist, so tense she thought she could practically see him shaking. His face, though, was a perfect and controlled impassive expression, his dark eyes narrow and unreadable.
Clary cowered, waiting for another wave of his infamously explosive anger, but a second later he was standing. He tossed the blanket and pillow at her as he rose, making her flinch.
"I don't ever want to find you sleeping on the floor again," he said, towering over, and she lowered her head further, rubbing her thumbs into her aching ankle.
"Okay," she whispered, and then he was walking towards the door. It clicked shut softly behind him.
Sebastian's hands clenched tightly, veins rising over his arms, his knuckles sharp under the skin. What had been words before, pleading, died into sputtering coughs and gags, and it echoed through the basement. The wide brown eyes beneath him reflected only fear, and he couldn't help but see Clary, superimposed over the man's rapidly redding face.
He couldn't shake the events of the morning, and it hung over him, clouding his thoughts, even as—or, perhaps, especially as—he throttled the man beneath him.
"Sir…."
Sebastian sighed at the Endarkened's warning, releasing his grip and freeing the Shadowhunter's airway, and the man beneath him hacked until he could pull in a stuttering breath. Sebastian took a step back as the man collapsed forward, folding over his knees, uncaring of the way the position tore at the sockets of his shoulders, his arms chained behind him to the wall.
"You're starting to bore me, Hasani. Shall we move back to the blade?"
The shadowhunter, Jahan Hasani, he'd learned earlier was his name, only gasped, shaking his head slightly.
"Then you know what I want to hear," Sebastian said, but he was already moving towards the wall, snatching up a particularly nasty, serrated dagger. The barest brush of the pad of his thumb over the edge left a thin cut, and he smiled stiffly.
Normally, he took pride in his excellence in interrogative technique, and openly relished demonstrating his skill. He at least had the decency not to deny it. But the events of the morning seemed to be diverting his attention, throwing off his usual precision in extraction of information, and for the first time in a very long time, Sebastian felt distracted.
The begging began anew as he strode back to the captive, and he again saw Clary's face from just hours earlier, tear streaked and flushed.
When he awoke to an empty bed, his first thought was that she had woken first, crept out of the room to wander the halls or hide away in the library.
But then he stood and pulled on his pants, and had no more than rounded the end of the bed when he spotted a flash of red and white on the hardwood that stopped him in his tracks.
Curled up on the floor next to her side of the bed was Clarissa. She'd taken the throw off the bed, and a pillow was bunched under her head, her arms and legs tucked up to her chest. It couldn't have been comfortable on the floor, and yet, she looked so at peace there.
It made his temper flare. As if she was only able to sleep soundly when apart from him.
But, as pissed as it made him, she also looked beautiful. The morning sun shone in through the window, layering strips of soft, golden light across her small frame, her pale face finally looking like it had a little color to it, her cheeks slightly pink. Her hair was spread out in messy curls across the pillow and over her back and shoulder, the blanket pulled all the way up to her chin.
Surely she must have gotten cold in the night, lying on the hard flooring. Served her right for sneaking out of bed.
"Clary," he called, and watched as her brows furrowed ever so slightly in her sleep, her mind still lost to dreams. Sighing, he came up behind her, toeing gently at her back, his irritation at her childish rebellion against their bed fading the longer he watched her. When she didn't stir further, he got down on the floor behind her, stretching out on his side.
"Good morning…."
He draped his arm over her, pulling her back to his chest just slightly, and instead of kicking and flailing, or tensing up, she welcomed it, and leaned against him, curling up into herself so that she was cradled to his torso. Clary always did fit so perfectly against him.
She let out a deep sigh then, and Sebastian watched her fingers drag slowly across a sunbeam that fell over the floor.
"Hey, sleepyhead…wake up," he tried again, but she only groaned in protest and turned her face further into the downy pillow. Sebastian grinned despite himself. She might not want to sleep in the same bed as him, but she still craved physical affection. He started rubbing her back, massaging her shoulders, reveling in each delicate sigh and subtle reciprocation of touch.
His heart began pounding.
He let his hands drift lower, slipping under the blanket to squeeze at her hip and trail down her thigh. Her skin was so warm, and when he leaned in closer he could smell the rose scented shampoo from her still slightly damp hair.
"You're stubborn even when you're half asleep, you know that?" he chuckled, ducking his lips to her ear. "Is it always this hard to wake you?"
She shivered, and when he placed a kiss on her bare shoulder and she sleepily bore her neck, it sent his pulse racing quicker. He knew she wasn't truly awake. Knew she likely didn't know who he was at all. He just didn't care.
It was gentle. Loving, even, if he dared to define it as so. Like nothing he'd had before. More than lust, more than raw craving. Just a gentle, pure, openness. And although he knew his sister's vulnerability wasn't truly meant for him, it made his heart beat faster all the same.
A chorus of pleas and swears to cluelessness layered under the memory, and Sebastian, for a moment, was drawn back to the prisoner.
This was not gentle. But it was meant for him.
"I already told you, I—I do not know anything," Jahan wheezed, and the more exhausted he grew, the more heavily accented his words became. He curled in on himself further, his hands nearly purple in their bindings as he tried to guard his abdomen.
"Let's go over it again one more time then," Sebastian said, sliding the flat of the blade down Jahan's chest. "Just to be thorough."
"Nn—fuck you."
"What do you know?" Sebastian asked, ignoring the slight, and he let the tip of the dagger hover over the Shadowhunter's abdomen, which he'd cut to pieces an hour ago. What skin hadn't been flayed away in strips was sliced and checkerboarded. Muscle trembled under metal, flinching away.
"Nothing, I—nothing," he gasped, but when he looked up through sweat and dirt-matted hair, Sebastian could see in his terror-stricken eyes that he was hiding something.
"Let's see," Sebastian drawled, as if Jahan had said nothing at all. "We've tried asphyxiation and waterboarding. We've tried carving up that stomach of yours. What's left? We could test out a new torture rune I've been wanting to try. Or perhaps something a bit more classic….?" He let the knife skip up to the man's shoulder, pushed it up his arm until it came to rest at Jahan's bound hands, twisted up painfully behind his back. Sebastian rapped the edge of the blade over Jahan's knuckles, like a school teacher scolding a student with a switch, and the man winced with each strike.
At last, he dragged the tip down Jahan's thumb until it landed at the fingernail. "I can still take these," Sebastian hummed consideringly, as if he hadn't already decided, and he watched his captive's face pale, a terrified understanding of what was going to happen next.
It was the same look he'd seen on Clary's face that morning, when she had finally come to her senses.
He let his hand wander further down the side of her thigh, the blanket bunching up and falling forward, and saw her feet slide out from under the fabric. The rune caught his eye immediately, the swirling mark the size of a silver dollar like a brand on her left heel, and he was suddenly conscious of the weight of the stele on his back, still tucked in his belt.
His face twisted, part grimace of anger, part smile.
Did she think he wouldn't notice?
The longer he stared at it, the more the meaning of it evadded him, and he nearly laughed at the realization that it was a new rune, one she'd created.
He watched her smile to herself in her half-sleep, listened to her breathing slow again.
"Wake up, love. I want to ask you something," he said, dragging the curls from her face, stroking her cheek. When, after some more gentle coaxing, she finally turned to face him, looking over her shoulder, it was everything he ever wanted from her. The absolute comfortability in his touch, that lazy look of affection.
That was the way she looked at Jace.
She was so cute, all sleepy and bedhead-ed. When he asked what the rune was, the most adorable little line of confusion creased the space between her brows. She was so vulnerable, leaning back against him, trying to fall back asleep, trying to steal more of his warmth—to steal just a few seconds more of this intimate moment.
It was all he wanted, and yet, when he twisted her delicate ankle in his grip, it was just as thrilling seeing the terror light up her eyes as her reality crashed down around her, swept away the warmth of dreams, and she realized who he was.
That terror, it fed a pit in his gut that could never be filled. A voidless, swirling, black thing that only consumed—and it wanted to swallow her whole.
He chased that same feeling now, as he pressed the tip of the blade under Jahan's thumbnail and began to twist, forcing the serrated edge up underneath the nail until it began to tear up at the seams. The screams were bravely choked back for a laughably short moment before they rang free through the basement.
The screaming continued even moments after the nail came free, and they cloaked the sound of it falling to the floor with a sickening tak. When the captive at last regained his breath, Sebastian moved the blade to the pointer finger.
"Wait, wait," Jahan whispered, and the continuous tremor that spread through his body shook his voice.
"Well?" Sebastian snapped, and Jahan winced, his fingers curling in slightly.
"Just—t-they recalled all Shadowhunters—"
Sebastian sighed. "Everyone knows that, you half wit. It was announced to all fucking shadowhunters. I want to know why, after receiving intel that your Institute would be portalling to Alicante today, I learned that my Endarkened found themselves ambushed upon their attack. I want to know how you knew we were coming. I want to know if there's a rat. Which should be quite impossible considering the unwavering loyalty of my soldiers, so you must understand my concern when I discovered that someone knew we were coming."
"No rat. There is no—"
Sebastian grabbed at the man's hand, forcing his fingers to uncurl.
"No—wait! It was a setup!" he cried, and Sebastian grinned, just slightly.
Torture was like sculpting, like chiseling bit by bit away until you found what you were looking for, careful not to crack the block apart entirely; all it took was one misplaced strike for the stone to split into useless pieces. Sometimes the stone was hard, and needed force to shape it—others soft and easily chipped away. After over an hour of torture, Sebastian was finally beginning to see fissures in the stone man before him.
He paused, drawing the blade back just slightly to encourage the train of thought. "How?" he demanded, and though Jahan drew in a deep breath, relieved by the given space between his fingers and the knife, Sebastian still saw his jaw set defiantly.
"You really are just like your father," the man growled, and the insult only confirmed that he was starting to break—one last bite of rebellion before he spilled everything Sebastian wanted to know.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Sebastian mused, spinning the blade in his palm. "See, the fundamental difference between Valentine and I is that he would tell you he tortured for the good of the Shadowhunter race, whereas I…well," he laughed, his smile bright, "I just do this for fun. I don't tend to make a habit of keeping prisoners in the basement to torture. You're just special."
"Special? Along with Jace Lightwood and Clarrisa Morgenstern? Which basement are you keeping them in?" the Shadowhunter snarled, his lip curling, and Sebastian's eyes glinted dangerously.
"Oh, that's right. It is just Clarissa that you have now, is it not?" he said, and his laugh showed his teeth, red-brown with blood. "They managed to track you down once. They will do it again."
The flare of anger Sebastian felt was hot and sharp, like an icepick driven into his gut, but his grin never dropped. "Very well. If you don't want to answer my question…."
He pinned the index finger in his left hand and started on the nail, agonizingly slowly. Screams filled the room once more, and Sebastian closed his eyes, letting the wretched wailing fade into a white noise, letting it soothe the anger into a smug satisfaction. He let his mind wander as he worked, his hands switching to autopilot as he thought of Clary.
He saw her face, turned up to look at him over her shoulder, morning light turning her flyaways to threads of glowing bronze, her body relaxed and open. He wanted that again. Needed her to look at him that way. And yet, as he pried the nails from this man's fingers, shredding the nail beds and nearly breaking the bone from where he gripped the digit so hard, he imagined the screams as Clary's, pictured the way her face and neck paled so pretty when she was in pain, and the way she flushed high on up her cheeks when she cried, and the pit in his stomach longed for it just the same.
Through the screams, Jahan was starting to stutter out words, and Sebastian paused halfway through the removal of the nail on his right thumb, having already worked through the rest of the fingers on the left hand, to let him speak. As soon as the prying of the knife stopped, the man collapsed forward with heaving breaths, his sobs pitiful and shaky.
"Spit it out," Sebastian said, impatient, and the Shadowhunter nodded rapidly. The stone was at last chipped away, bravado and insults gone.
"Th-there is no rat. But—but the Clave saw you were attacking Institutes. And they…they factored in all the ones you had already hit, and made a list of the Institutes you were most likely to hit next."
"Go on."
"Many of the Shadowhunters around the world are returning to Alicante. But they…the Clave, ordered several Institutes to remain, to…to await your attack, to get the jump on your men."
Sebastian laughed slightly. "And how did getting the 'jump on my men' work out for you?"
Hasani cringed.
Sebastian hadn't been there. His Endarkened had been running the attacks on their own since he'd been dealing with Jace and Clary—bringing captives back to be turned, leaving everyone else a corpse—but he still heard about everything that went on. With the most recent report, that the Tehran Institute had staged an ambush, his Endarkened brought three Shadowhunters to be turned, and set one man aside for interrogation at Sebastian's request.
He released the man's finger, a bit disappointed that the fun part was over. "Which Institutes?" he asked, and the man trembled, looking up slowly.
"L-Lima, Oslo, Amsterdam…and mine. Tehran Institute…. Are…are they all dead? My family?" His voice trembled.
Sebastian ignored his question. "Why the ambush? To what end?"
For a moment, he looked about to protest, but then he let out a deep, stuttering breath, his chest caving downward. "To capture as many Endarkened as possible."
"Why?"
Jahan looked up for a moment, confused. "To–to torture them for information? To study them? To give them to the Silent Brothers? To test the Mortal Sword on them? To…find a cure? I-I do not know. We were just following orders."
Sebastian's eyes narrowed. It seemed quite the last ditch effort by the Clave to order several random Institutes to stage an ambush. They had no way of knowing when they might be attacked, or by how many soldiers. In addition, the Endarkened were made to Sebastian's will. There would be no torturing them for information. They would die before a single word was gotten out of them. And the Mortal Sword, well, that wouldn't work on a Shadowhunter whose alignment had shifted so far towards demonic powers. It was a blind, stupid move. They were getting desperate.
Panicked by his silence, the captive started again, his eyes flicking to the dagger Sebastian still fidgeted with. "I tell the truth, I do not know, I—"
"Quiet." Sebastian at last stood, tossing the knife on the workbench. He flicked a hand at the Endarkened in the corner, and the woman stood, heading towards the far wall. "We're done here," Sebastian said, and he turned back to Jahan to see him collapse forward again with a sigh of relief.
Sebastian had to give him some credit: he'd held out surprisingly long for such a trivial piece of information.
In a moment Adele was back at his side, passing off a large cup to him, and the captive looked up as he accepted it. Sebastian watched Hasani's face pale, his head beginning to shake back and forth.
"N-no, no, please. Just kill me. Kill me, ple—"
"Now, now. Why would I waste a perfectly good soldier?" Sebastian asked, and Jahan shrunk back into the wall as he approached, crushing his arms behind him, his flayed abdomen rising and falling rapidly in his panic.
"Oh, and to answer your question from earlier: no, those from your Institute are not all dead. Some of them are already among our ranks. Your eldest son, I believe, is already shaping up to be an excellent addition to our army. You did a fine job raising him." If it was possible, after hours of torture and blood loss, even more color drained from the man's face at the mention of his son, and he began openly sobbing.
"This should make for a wonderful family reunion, don't you think?" Sebastian grinned, swirling the contents of the cup as if it were a delicate wine that needed to breathe.
"No. No, you can't. W-why torture me if you were going to turn me all along? You could have asked these questions when I'm turned, when I cannot lie to you!"
Sebastian laughed, dropping to one knee in front of the cowering man. "I already told you. I did this for fun. And perhaps, in part, to let off some steam. It would be so boring to just turn you and get the answers the easy way."
Except that was only partially true. Really, Sebastian just needed an un-turned captive in case those they attempted to turn died in the process. But Hasani didn't need to know that.
"Plus, interrogative skills are like a muscle; one has to exercise them every so often to keep them strong."
"You—you're psychotic!"
"Yes, well," Sebastian shrugged, lifting the cup in a toast to himself, "just one of my many charms."
"Please! Na, lotfan—!"
Sebastian grabbed for Jahan's jaw as he began spouting pleas and prayers in Farsi, managing to pry his jaw open even as he bucked and jerked his head.
"I'm afraid God can't help you now," he muttered, and then his own blood, and Lilith's, was poured down the Shadowhunter's throat. He tried to spit it up at first—they all did—the dark fluids spilling down his chin and neck, but it only took the slightest drop to begin the change, and in a moment Hasani was coughing wetly, the blood sucked down his throat. Sebastian released his chin and returned the cup to Adele, who returned it to its place as he dusted off the knees of his jeans and observed the now writhing man.
He would never grow tired of watching the transformation, the way their angelic runes burned off them, like wax melted away under a flame, and the way their eyes darkened to match his own.
When the screaming and shuddering ceased, Sebastian was almost surprised to see that Hasani was still breathing. The transformation might have killed a weaker man considering the state he was in, but instead Jahan leaned back slowly, looking around the room with a calculating gaze, his injuries no longer seeming to bother him.
"Welcome to your new life Jahan Hasani," Sebastian declared, and at another flick of his wrist, Adele was undoing Jahan's restraints. "Adele will get you fixed up and provide you with some fresh gear."
"Yes, sir," he replied, and though his voice was hoarse, it was no longer pained, or resentful, or terrified.
"I will be placing you in charge of a group of Endarkened. You will take these men and attack the Institutes which you listed off to me before, the ones the Clave asked to remain behind to see if we would attack them. You will bring back as many as you can to be turned, and you will kill any Shadowhunters that you leave behind. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir. I am glad to be a part of your plan," Jahan said as he climbed to his feet, and Adele took his arm to begin marking it with a demonic healing rune. The raw flesh on his stomach began slowly closing, the bleeding ends of his de-nailed fingers starting to harden.
"It's quite funny, really," Sebastian mused, "I wasn't planning on taking many more Institutes, but the Clave has just guaranteed me success at four more. We will 'get the jump' on them, instead."
"It was not a smart move," Adele agreed as she finished Jahan's runes. "They seem to be getting desperate."
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Sebastian said, his grin widening.
By the time Sebastian left Adele to finish getting Hasani accommodated, it was already past noon; time in the basement always went by so fast. The adrenaline of the events of the morning was finally starting to fade, the excitement and satisfaction, and annoyance, leveling out to a dull, flat effervescence, as his mind started to wander back to thoughts of Clary.
He wondered if she had had lunch, or if she'd even had breakfast yet, as he headed up the stairs to the main floor. Just as he was about to turn the knob of the basement door, it opened from the other side, and Leon's large frame paused under the door frame at the sight of Sebastian.
"I was just coming to find you," he said, stepping back to let Sebastian through.
"Yes?"
"The warlock finished…the ring," he said, dropping his voice at the end.
Ah. The ring. Sebastian had almost forgotten with everything that had gone on within the past week.
"Excellent," he declared, holding out his hand, and when Leon fished the item out of his pocket, and dropped the cold, silver ring into his palm, a light shiver of anticipation crawled up his spine. He rolled it between his fingers, tracing the M carved along the outer surface. It was still hanging on the chain that Clary usually wore it on, and Sebastian wrapped it around his palm before shoving it into his own pocket.
He dismissed the Endarkened and started for the library.
All morning he had been distracted. It was getting hard to deny the fact that Clary was starting to affect his work. As he thumbed the ring, he again thought back to that morning with her. The fear, the vulnerability. It tugged at him like two opposing poles. He was magnetized to both, terror and trust, and yet, the two only repelled each other.
It confused him. And Sebastian didn't get confused. It was infuriating.
Now that he finally had Clary, what was it that he really wanted from her?
Pain and punishment would earn him obedience—submission. But was it really submission that he wanted? The way she'd looked at him that morning, the way she'd moved against him, before she'd known it was him—that wasn't submission.
Fear. Passion. Pain. Vulnerability. Terror. Comfort. Suffering. Warmth. He wanted it all. Sebastian wanted Clary. He needed her, and from the moment he'd laid eyes on her, from the moment he'd first kissed her, he'd known it. She was to be by his side through it all. He just needed to help her see that, too, and he was starting to realize that doing so would take some delicate work.
As infuriated that it made him that she'd slept on the floor and taken his stele, as much as he wanted to cut off the mark, or tie her to the bed for a week, he couldn't deny that the anger, the fight, excited him.
Birth control, she had said. As if Sebastian would give her a child right now. He had much bigger plans for her than becoming a mother. That would come much later.
But the fact that she'd taken the stele, perhaps that was a good thing. At the very least, it let him know that she wasn't too afraid of him. It was a fragile balance, getting her to obey without eradicating the very fight that made Clary herself. Last night she'd taken a chance. A stupid one, and a brave one. And that was a part of her he wanted to keep.
He needed to shape obedience without erasing who she was: the fire in her eyes when she was pissed, the fight in her, the independence and stubbornness, the passion. All the qualities that enraged him, but still made his chest feel tight, made his hands shake as he fought to push the feeling down.
Stripping these away would leave her loving, maybe. But she would be no more willful than his Endarkened.
And perhaps that wasn't what he wanted.
He didn't want a slave. He wanted all of her. Her love, her trust and obedience, for her to look at him the way she looked at Jace. For that to happen, there were still two pieces left he needed to remove.
First, her urge to leave.
Sebastian had assumed that the glamor of him turning Clary would have been enough to dash her hopes of rescue, but it seemed to have only inspired her to break herself out. At the very least, Sebastian was certain it had discouraged the rest of her troublesome group from attempting any stupid rescues—that, along with the Clave's order to withdrawal all Shadowhunters to Alicante. But now that Clary believed Jace and the others weren't coming to save her, he could see in her eyes how determined she was to find her own way out. That urge would need to be suppressed.
And that brought him to the next piece: Jace.
When he had started this plan, Jace had been included. He had taken them both. A sister and a brother. Though he knew it might be more trouble, and knew that Jace was an entirely different level of infuriating to deal with, Sebastian had wanted to control him just as badly as Clary. During the time when Lilith's twinning spell still had a hold over Jace, Sebastian had had nearly all that he wanted—except for Clary. Because, as he was now coming to realize, as long as Jace was in the picture, loving Sebastian would never be possible for Clary.
So he had taken Jace. Not only to regain control over him, not only to take out his anger on him, or to keep him under his thumb, but also to use him as a bargaining chip with Clary. But Sebastian had to admit that things seemed to be working better without Jace locked up in the basement. When Jace was with them, his condition was all Clary could think of. Now, though, Clary was more…susceptible. But still, Jace was a ghost hanging over her, a lingering longing, and it needed to end.
And this was where the ring came in.
It had taken a lot of convincing to get it done, including the efforts of the best perceptions warlock he could find, a bit of fae magic, and the help of Lilith, and he hadn't gotten his hopes up on it actually working, but Lilith hadn't failed him so far, and now that it was finished, he could so perfectly picture the end results this would bring.
The wearer, as Lilith had informed him, would find themselves bending to whatever impressions the warlock set. And, per Sebastian's instructions and threats, the warlock had set those impressions to help him deal with both the urge to escape and the Jace problem.
The magic placed on the ring wasn't a love potion. It couldn't make one person stop loving another—no magic could do that, even magic as dark as Lilith's—or, for that matter, cause someone to start loving another, nor could it completely erase a primal desire, like that of the instinct to escape when one felt trapped. But it could shape certain perceptions. It could make the wearer feel more comfortable where they were, more at home; cause them to be more trusting of those they normally wouldn't; cause nightmares that pushed certain ideas into the psyche; cause thoughts so subtle and pervading that they went unnoticed, or blended so finely into the person that they would believe they were there own.
It was a barely-there possession. A nudge in the right direction. An implanted seed of trust.
And if it worked, it would let Sebastian shape Clary into just what he wanted, let her open her mind, allow her to see the truth: that they were meant to be, that she was his and his alone.
Clary would find herself more comfortable around him, more trusting of what he said, more open with him and more shut down to the idea of Jace, all without damaging her fire and passion.
When he reached the door to the library, he pulled her Morgenstern ring out of his pocket—Jace's ring, really—and turned it over in his hand once more. How ironic that it would be Jace's ring, the ring he gifted to Clary, that would be the thing that let her finally love Sebastian. The same ring Sebastian had slipped from around her neck when he'd first taken her to the mountain house, the silver cradled between her breasts on the soft skin of her chest as she laid out on the bed, unconscious and in nothing but her undergarments.
It looked no different than before the perception spell had been placed on it—heavy, silver, a simple yet intricate M forged into the metal—but the power of it practically hummed in his hand.
Clary wouldn't be able to sense it, and yet, it would be the beginning of her new life, a life with her brother, by his side where she belonged, trusting and vulnerable and fearful and loving all the same.
Clary stared blankly at the underpainting of burnt sienna she had applied to the canvas nearly an hour ago, and bit at the end of the rosewood-handled brush in her hand. It was a bad habit, she knew, especially considering the teeth marks it left on such beautiful paintbrushes, but a low anxiety had been building in her all morning, and she just couldn't figure out where to start on the painting.
Throughout the past few days, that was how most of her time in the library had gone so far, her staring at a blank page or canvas, but it was the one thing that helped her to pass the time here. She'd managed to draw a few, simple still lifes of objects around the desk that she'd made into her workspace—an ornate vase, a mini grandfather style clock serving as a bookend—but the main drawing she'd started, one of Jace, remained half finished and lifeless in the sketchpad, her inability to complete it mocking her at every glance.
Clary just couldn't get his features right. It wasn't that she couldn't remember what Jace looked like—no, that would be burned into her mind for eternity—but everytime she tried to draw his face, it came out pained and desperate, the last expression she'd seen on him before being pulled through the portal. She saw the cuts and bruises left by Sebastian, the circles under his eyes, his hand reaching out for her. She didn't want to immortalize that moment in drawing, and so, unable to shape his expression into anything else, she had pulled out the paint supplies.
Except now she was just staring at an empty canvas, its surface as blank as her mind was busy.
Since that morning, Clary couldn't shake the feeling of Sebastian twisting her ankle, the joint throbbing just at the recollection. It wasn't the worst thing he had done to her by a long shot, but something about the way he'd just walked away—despite looking as though he wanted to strangle her—after she'd literally stolen his stele in the night, had left her feeling like there was bound to be more to the punishment.
And just as persistent was the memory of how nice it had felt to have him cuddled up behind her. She told herself over and over that it wasn't anything to be ashamed of, that she'd been groggy, and half-asleep, and dreaming of Jace, and that Sebastian had taken advantage of that, but she still couldn't help but feel like there was something wrong with her for even being comfortable with it for a second. Still, the mantra played in her head: it wasn't her fault.
She was lonely, and tired, and it wasn't her fault for finding enjoyment in another person's body heat. Just like it wasn't her fault that her body betrayed her everytime Sebastian….
Fuck.
She really needed to get out of here. She didn't think she could take another night with him without having a certifiable mental breakdown.
His nails digging into her skin, his breath over her ear, the pain, the heat, the way her muscles ached, the way her tears dried on her cheeks. Her fingers started to tremble and she bit down on the wooden handle harder, the memory of every time he'd ever touched her, every violation, every hungry glare he'd ever thrown her way, clung to her, his presence a sickening ghost, haunting her senses.
She had to be crazy to not have known instantly that it was Sebastian, that it was those same haunting hands that were on her that morning.
But it wasn't her fault.
Letting out a shaky sigh, she released the paintbrush from between her teeth, tore her eyes away from the canvas, and began scraping off the now hardening paint on the bristles. Just as she looked down, she heard the latch of the library door click as it slid out of the doorframe, and the sound of someone clearing their throat as they entered had her stiffening all over.
Speak of the devil.
"Ah. I knew I would find you in here," Sebastian's voice said from behind her, and though he didn't sound angered, she turned to look at him slowly, as if any sudden movements might set him off.
There was no telling when that cool, relaxed tone might turn sharp.
He was dressed in his usual style, plain-patterned but expensive, his jeans black and his white shirt close fit to his torso. His eyes skipped from hers to the canvas, to the graphite sketches laid across the desk—lingering on the half-finished Jace only for a moment—and then the paintbrush in her hand.
She quickly looked away, shifting her focus back to the penny-tipped bristles, half turning away from him to grab a washcloth to run over the brush.
Her ankle ached.
She knew that after that morning that she should be placating, but now that he was standing next to her, she couldn't bring herself to say anything, and swallowed thickly over the lump in her throat.
Had he finally come to punish her?
But he only stood there, watching her, letting the awkward silence drag on, until she couldn't stand it any longer.
"There's no paint thinner," she blurted, and then immediately winced at her obvious floundering for something to say. But Sebastian only laughed a bit. "What, you mean like acetone?"
"...Or turpentine. Or mineral spirits, or something," she nodded, working harder at the dried oil to belabor the point.
The leather chair next to the desk creaked as he sat down. "You promise you're not just asking for it so you can slip it into my coffee?"
Clary looked up, a bit on guard at the comment, unsure if it was a genuine question, but she found only a playful smirk on his face. "Hah," she said nervously, a half-hearted laugh, and then, thinking aloud, she added, "I don't…I don't think turpentine would hurt you anyway."
You're demon blood's so damn thick that even acetone wouldn't thin it, she thought to herself.
"Hmm. You're probably right. I am damn near invincible," he gloated.
There was another awkward silence, where Clary couldn't think of anything to say, and then he was toeing at the base of the rolly chair she was in, pulling her away from the desk with a startled yelp, her hands gripping the edge of the seat. He rolled her over until she was just between his knees, and though he was leaning back into his own chair lazily, hands in his lap, she still shrunk back.
"I'll make sure to get some for you. I'm glad you're putting the art supplies to good use, though," he said, his foot sliding away from the wheeled base. She didn't dare roll herself back to the desk, no matter how badly she wanted to.
"Yeah, uh…. Thank you for…all of this," she muttered, looking down again, unable to look him in the eye as she forced herself to express thanks. But he seemed pleased with it regardless, nodding curtly, before leaning forward and reaching a hand out.
And Clary was so tensely waiting for him to retaliate after that morning that when she sensed his hand nearing her face, she jolted back, clenching the brush in her hand so hard that the thin handle snapped in two. She gasped in shock, staring down at the splintered wood, and then a wave of terror hit her so hard that she could practically feel the color drain from her face.
"Jesus, Clary," he hissed, his hand continuing forward to tuck some hair behind her ear.
She looked up, her jaw dropped and her eyes watery. "I'm sorry," she whispered, clutching the broken handle to her chest. "I'm so sorry, I'll—I can fix it—I didn't mean to—"
Great. Now she had to pay for her transgressions from that morning, and for flinching, and for breaking one of the gorgeous paintbrushes.
She blinked rapidly, shaking her head as he stared at her in a mix of confusion and something else she couldn't quite read. "I just, I thought that you were…angry…I mean, after…." She broke off, closing her eyes tight and taking a deep breath.
God, what was wrong with her? She shouldn't be apologizing to this bastard. He had no right to act surprised that she was scared of him. She'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the moment he'd walked out of the bedroom that morning.
This was so infuriating. How could he expect them to just interact normally after everything he'd done. Clary wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and yell and tackle him to the floor and gouge his eyes out with the fractured slivers of wood in her hand, over and over and over—
"Stop freaking out. I don't care about the brush, Clarissa," he sighed. "And, admittedly, I should be the one apologizing. I could have reacted better this morning. "
"What?" Clary's jaw gapped again, this time in disbelief. Was that the second apology he'd given her in two days? Sebastian didn't apologize.
"Here. I came to the library because I have something for you," Sebastian said, changing the subject, and Clary had been working herself up so much that until now, she hadn't noticed that he was holding something clutched in one palm. She eyed it suspiciously as he plucked it up with his other hand, stretching out a long, thin, silvery chain.
It wasn't until she saw what was attached to the bottom of the chain that she understood what it was.
"My ring," Clary whispered, and it was like the thing was the swinging pocket watch of a hypnotist, everything she had been worried about just moments ago falling away at the sight of it. "Where did you…?" she began, stopping herself as she realized the answer to her own question.
She hadn't thought much of it since she'd been kidnapped, besides noting its absence and assuming it'd been lost in the struggle, but to be fair, she had bigger things to worry about since her brother had taken her. But of course the ring didn't go missing when Sebastian attacked her and Jace—he'd taken it.
Clary changed her question. "Why?"
Sebastian smiled faintly, slyly. "Are you asking why I took it, or why I'm giving it back?"
"Both?"
He leaned forward again, twisting the top of the chain so that the ring spun back and forth. "I took it when I brought you to the mountain house. I didn't want you to have anything from before, or anything that reminded you of Jace, so—"
"Because his literal blood on your hands was reminder enough, huh?" Clary snapped, and though she shut her mouth as fast as it had opened, any fear she'd felt just seconds ago was burned away, all the resentment for her brother bubbling to the surface as she recalled the blood on his hands when he came into her room the first time.
"I don't think you want to see him right now. He looks pretty…rough," Sebastian had teased, his grin wolfish and satisfied, flecks of Jace's blood in his hair and on his clothes.
Clary wiped angrily at her eyes, still wet from when she'd thought Sebastian was about to hit her. He looked like he might now, his eyes narrowed and his fingers gripping the necklace chain tighter, but instead, he continued speaking. "I took Jace, too, because I wanted my brother and my sister with me. I wanted us all to be together."
"And because you wanted to torture him. Because you wanted to use him against me."
"That was just an added benefit," he admitted. "But you didn't let me finish. I realized, after he was gone, that you're all I need. Just you and me." He smiled like what he'd just said was a compliment. Like she should thank him.
"Right. We were meant for each other," she scowled, voice dripping in sarcasm.
Smile gone, his free hand snapped forward, gripping her thigh to pull her chair closer to him. "You were so scared of me just a moment ago that you flinched so hard you broke your paintbrush," he scoffed, and then before she could pull away, his hand was gripping her jaw forcefully. "And now you're mocking me. What, you're not scared anymore?"
Clary grit her teeth, trying to hold his gaze, those black eyes boring into hers menacingly. "Maybe your mood swings are starting to rub off on me."
He smirked, tilting his head, though his eyes were no less hard. "Or maybe it's just that talking about your golden boy pisses you off, hmm?"
When she tried to lift her chin defiantly, he let go of her, yanking her head down as he did so, and the curls he'd tucked behind her ear earlier fell loose.
"Take it, while I'm still in a giving mood," he said, thrusting the ring forward. It swung on its chain, just in front of her face, and she eyed it hesitantly.
"Before I change my mind, Clarissa," he added impatiently, and she quickly snatched it up, closing her fingers around it tightly as he sat back in his chair.
"While you're in a giving mood…you wouldn't happen to have my phone stashed away somewhere, too?" she asked quietly.
"Ha ha," he said, clearly unamused, and Clary slowly rolled her chair back to the desk, setting the broken paintbrush and rag aside before looking down at the ring. She ran her fingers over the rim, tracing all the features, trying to commit them to memory in case this was all a joke and Sebastian was going to take it back. Logically, Clary knew it was just a ring, but finally holding it again felt like regaining a piece of herself, and a piece of Jace.
As she lifted the chain and slipped it around her neck, almost letting out a sigh of relief at the familiar weight of it against her chest, she realized he hadn't actually said why he was returning it to her.
Was it his way of apologizing? Or maybe he was just trying to win her over? Maybe he was starting to understand that being a perverted, sadistic, psychopath wasn't earning him any points with her, and he was trying to be nicer. If that was the case, the joke was on him for thinking he was fooling anyone with that act. Either way, perhaps it was best not to ask why he'd given it back.
When she looked up again, she found that Sebastian was watching her closely, his eyes calculating, as if trying to read her thoughts.
She swallowed, rolling the ring between her fingers. "So…you're not mad. About this morning," she said slowly.
"Of course I'm mad," he said matter-of-factly. "But you didn't try to open a portal, or send a fire message, did you?"
Clary frowned, unsure what that had to do with anything.
"Well?" he urged.
"...No. I figured the stupid bracelet would shock me if I tried, and you would wake up, or, more likely, that this place was warded against anyone portaling or messaging except you."
"Smart girl," he said.
"But the last time I took your stele, you whipped me until I was literally unconscious," she said, not bothering to cover the resentment in her tone.
"And since then, you've learned your lesson, haven't you? The next time you got your hands on a stele, you didn't try to escape, or attack me with it. You only marked yourself. And with a relatively unhelpful rune at that," he chuckled, and Clary bristled, part in anger, part shame. The fact that he saw this as a win, that he thought she'd learned something from the whipping because she didn't try to escape this time, was maddening. It wasn't as though she didn't want to leave, she just needed to see if she could get away with marking herself, or using a stele at all. And as for the rune itself, a birth control mark might not mean much to him, but to Clary it meant one less thing to worry about.
"How did you know, anyway?"
"That you took my stele?" he asked, and when she nodded, he smiled amusedly, rising to his feet. "Your foot slid out from under the blanket while you were busy snuggling up to me."
She felt her face flush instantly, and her hand tightened around the ring.
"Honestly, Clarissa, you could have at least worn socks to sleep," he laughed, and her stomach dropped in embarrassment. Why hadn't she fucking thought of that? He likely would have found out about the rune eventually, but it certainly would have taken longer than a few hours if she'd just slipped on a pair of socks.
"Anyway, quit being all jumpy. I'm not going to punish you this time," he said, walking over to the desk, his form towering over her for a second time that day. "But, Clarissa?" Sebastian hooked a finger under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. He ran his thumb slowly, possessively, over her bottom lip, pulling it down slightly, and a chill raced up her spine.
"Next time I find you sleeping on the floor, I'll tie you to our bed for a week."
Clary's face burned, and she glowered as he grinned at the thought, his eyes darkening.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, you fucking creep," she spat, jerking her face away from him, but he only laughed, turning to head for the door.
"I really, really would."
Author's Note: Sorry, I know this was a long one. It just didn't feel right breaking it into seperate parts. As always, thanks for reading! And thank you, also, for all the comments and reviews. It means a lot to see what you all think of the story. See you next chapter!