Vantage
Princewater Palace, Alicante, September 1540
As their progress ended, the King was most relieved to get back to the capital. He was more grateful to get back to familiar halls, to the halls he'd been born in, though this palace looked different back then and bore another name.
Scarcely did Valentine wash the grit of the road off before his son requested a private audience.
"Very well," Valentine sighed, "Send him in."
He had seen no more or less of his son than usual, he supposed, over the course of the summer travels. Nay, more often he sent for his daughters. Clary was shrewd and Isabelle, the daughter he'd chosen also remained a worthy conversationalist. Valentine came to miss their talks from long ago. Isabelle was the only one he could think of that sat before him and did try to wrangle something from him. She was one of the few who didn't approach with some scheme or plea they'd try to wrangle their discussions towards. No, Isabelle was an extraordinary listener. That was what Valentine liked about her, he decided. He'd summoned her back to his table dozens of times over the summer, each time seeking a reprieve from his councillors.
Isabelle listened, and she watched, and whatever thoughts she compiled she kept to herself.
It was not a quality her husband cultivated.
However, she'd been teaching Jonathan something else of great value, this past year. Self-control. Restraint. Temperance, of a kind.
And yet, even as Valentine noted the ways his firstborn softened at the edges and lighter since his wedding, he reckoned Jonathan required more lessons.
"I mean to stay, Sire," Jonathan puffed out his shoulders in the King's presence chamber, hands on his hips; the same way Valentine stood for his most recent portrait. Jonathan had to remain standing; his King hadn't invited him to sit. "I mean to take up my seat on the Privy Council for good, as is my due."
Why must this boy always ramble on about his dues? Valentine massaged his pounding temples. He'd never caused his own sire such headaches, had he? He couldn't have. Valentine couldn't imagine bursting into his father's chambers and asserting such entitlements. He wouldn't have dared; the strap had cured him of ever supplicating his father or worse, lecturing his father. There wasn't a single thing Valentine ever dared ask or demand of his lord father. In fact, Valentine didn't believe he'd ever sought out or spoken to his father unless he'd been explicitly summoned to. Most of their father-son conversations consisted of instructions for improvement, followed by a meek, "Yes, sire." Valentine hadn't spared the strap with Jonathan either, yet he often wondered. Jonathan must get that damnable impertinence from his mother.
"It is high time I took up my position at court permanently and proved my worth, Father. It's time I was useful." He shuffled his stance, "I can be useful."
"Useful?"
There was no time for this heckling, no time for these petty feuds. Why was Valentine the only one who could see it? He could not stake the hope of dynasty and the prosperity of a kingdom on two girls. He needed a grandson. Clary hadn't provided one.
The day grew late and the night grew dark. Valentine needed a male babe in arms now even more than he had when he first contrived Clary's match with the Herondale heir.
I can be useful. Jonathan asserted it with such certainty. He was cocksure and over-proud, like always, but his words rang of possibility. Perhaps he was right. No, it was not what Valentine prepared and hoped for. But God often answered the prayers and pleas of his herd in unexpected ways. For some reason the Lord saw fit to send Valentine's daughter only female issue. God planned something else for Valentine's legacy, it would seem.
Clary persistently failed to deliver. Perhaps her new sister might prosper better. Isabelle certainly did seem to prosper with Jonathan.
Jonathan nodded again, his hastily gathered determination already crumbling. Valentine's hands gripped the sides of his chair. Claws. With a small struggle, he hauled himself up on quaking legs, "If you truly mean to be useful to me and to your country, Jonathan, the best thing you could possibly do now is put a son in the Lightwood girl's belly." Until such a time as he succeeded… Valentine sighed. There was little need to keep his Prince's flaws and deficiencies immediate to the King and cast in sharp relief for the whole court. "That task you can do anywhere and accomplish anywhere, I think. But you will do it at Estoncurt."
-000000000000000-
Being sent for by the King was not unusual. When he called, Isabelle came to him. They'd settled somewhat into their old rhythm as the summer passed by. They talked of the goings on of the world, but never those of the family they now shared.
The night everything changed began like any other. They supped wine and played a round of cards together. Then, as the candles grew on their wicks, they talked of the abrupt end of King of England's latest marriage to a German princess. Valentine thought it a good thing that King Henry was decrying a Protestant bride, he hoped this indicated Henry might yet be enticed back to the fold of Rome. Isabelle thought it the better thing this Anne kept her head.
When she stated her dry observation, Valentine laughed. Then, just as sharply, the laughter halted. He choked.
Isabelle departed Valentine's chambers minutes later with the sight of spat blood still splitting through her head.
An hour later, her hands were still tremoring. Isabelle went through the motions of dressing for the evening numbly, barely feeling the hands of her maids tugging and tucking everything into place for the evening's feast. Her skirts, her bodice, her hood, her veil. She nodded to the black pearls when they asked her to choose her jewels. when they were done, she stared at her own reflection, at the girl in the sumptuous black kirtle and the ochre silk over it. Isabelle no longer knew who or what she was looking at.
The dress was beautiful, but even with her eyes trained on the polished looking glass Isabelle was seeing a scarlet stain on the pale kerchief. Through the complementary murmuring of her ladies behind her, she was hearing the hacking as Valentine spit up a mouthful of bloody phlegm.
She'd never imagined herself as Valentine's confidante, not at all. She told the King as few of the specifics of what she'd learned and seen at Estoncurt as he did what he intended for her in his grand scheme. It was an odd, delicate and often resentful camaraderie which they'd struck between them, each having no one else they could speak to in such a way. Isabelle knew there were those at court who whispered that she was taking advantage of an ageing, lonely man.
She wasn't. But now she was compromised, in a way, she was embroiled in something she'd never intended to be. Isabelle didn't share Valentine's confidence, necessarily, but she did now hold his secret. The truth of his weakness. So now here she was, in a gown fit for a Princess, the girl from Adamant who'd come to Alicante with holes in her stockings. In one hand, the secret of a Prince, in the other that of a King. Orb and sceptre.
Valentine clearly hadn't intended for Isabelle to see it. He appeared more taken by her shock than he was by the sight of his own blood. The reaction suggested it wasn't the first occasion the King of Idris had coughed up blood.
As they tightened the jewelled chain around her narrow waist, Isabelle's hands flexed open and closed on empty air.
When he finally caught his breath, Valentine said but one thing to Isabelle. He reached out, taking her arm in a death grip; "My grandfather held his throne by a hairsbreadth, girl. Do you understand?"
Simply desperate to get away from the King's wild eyes and red flecked lips, she swore she did. What did she know of Valentine I, the first Morgenstern king? Other than that he'd been a man with a tenuous claim to the throne but a very good sword arm, precious little. Isabelle wasn't lingering to gain whatever history lesson Valentine was trying to give her. Not when her mind was now so firmly on the future.
Isabelle's chamber was filled with the blaze of a dozen candlesticks, her women hastened to draw curtains on a world of pitch darkness beyond the panes.
Isabelle could see it all clearly. The clarity she was not sure she welcomed.
She'd left the King in a state of shock, yet as she dressed it ebbed away. At first Isabelle felt she had been winded, as though from a great fall. While each outer layer of her grand dress was applied, Isabelle began to suck in her first few staggering breaths. The daze lifted and the clock ticked on.
How much had she missed all these months she was gone from court? No. She hadn't missed a thing. If she had, Clary or one of her brothers would have told her. Jace might not see eye to eye with her just now, but she and Clary had sworn themselves to one another. Even if they hadn't, Alec would tell Isabelle if he suspected for a moment Valentine was ill because he knew what it would mean for Isabelle. What it would mean for all of them.
No one had told her a thing.
From that it was safe to surmise nobody else knew.
Christ, Isabelle was a fool. What was it she had told Jonathan before; that she was wide awake? It hadn't been entirely true, then. She felt it was now.
It played again in her mind, over and over. The blood. King's blood. Spilled. Isabelle slipped on her rings, each feeling like a loop of ice on her fingers. She'd been clinging to a rope she thought tethered her to safety all this time, only to finally learn the end had been cut. She'd been scrabbling at nothing but a shredded scrap of hope in her hand. There was no safety.
Isabelle may not have been clinging to Valentine, exactly, but she had felt sure of his tug at the end of the line. All those months at Estoncurt she'd been hiding behind him or holding the promise of Valentine's power over Jonathan. Now she was on her own. Or very soon she would be.
There was no safety, Isabelle reiterated silently to herself as she made her descent to the waiting celebrations. None save that which she made for herself. Her face had looked too white in the looking glass, so she gave each cheek a fierce, fortifying pinch to send some colour there before she made her entrance.
Valentine didn't appear phased, sipping from his wineglass coolly on the dais. Then again, his family had been rotting around him for years and he hadn't blinked. Why would he start at his body rotting from the inside out?
Isabelle found a smile and she also found it in her to nod and wave to other esteemed guests of the King, to give all the necessary pleasantries.
She scanned the room while others spoke at her. She couldn't find her brothers. Alec was nowhere to be seen and Magnus was absent too, which solved that mystery. With all the court diverted they would have stolen off together long ago. Aline Penhallow looked a perfectly content jilted betrothed. She cradled some wine and nodding along with whatever her mother was telling her. Jace was dancing with Clary, looking down at her with the sort of soft smile he would hate to realise others could see. Holding his hands tight in hers as they swept around the floor together, Clary laughed at something he said to her as they swished by Isabelle. Try as she might she could not catch their eye. Jace's eyes were filled with Clary, as though she were the only other person on this earth. Isabelle took a half step toward them and tried to catch Clary's eye instead. Then she caught herself.
It was too late to cleave to the Brocelands now. They'd disappointed Valentine twice already and their time was nigh on up, though they did not yet know it.
In her moment of weakness, Isabelle's eyes darted for Robert, a visitor for Alec's impending wedding. For a heartbeat Isabelle felt, as she did in any moment of fear or despair, a hateful desperation to have her father mend it with his big, strong hands. But Robert was at the card table toward the back of the hall. Even from her distance Isabelle saw his cheeks were beetroot red and could hear him laughing boisterously.
There was no one else, she realised, with hollow dread. There was no one left for her to turn to, nor to run to. She felt a child, lost in a market square, turning here and thereabouts trying to fend off tears and find a familiar face. Her blood ties were no good to her now. Lightwood blood meant nothing. Even Herondale blood was of little consequence now, the only heirs to it were two infant girls who could barely sit and walk unaided.
Isabelle clasped her hand together, tightly. Under the pressure of her own grip, the thick edges of her rings bit into the soft skin of her palms. A startling, centring pain. Enough. Her pain served its purpose. Isabelle stiffened her spine and bore up the weight of the costly garments. Then she levelled out her shoulders and bit the inside of her mouth sharply for good measure.
Are you playing this game or not?
She swallowed back the tang of blood from her bitten lip and went to find Jonathan.
-000000000000000-
Jonathan was sulking in the shadows with Verlac, having just lost a throw of the dice, when his wife found him.
He ought to have escorted Isabelle down to the evening's dancing, he knew that. However, over the course of the past few months he'd been very good. He sat with her at meals, attended Mass at her side. He'd even gifted her more jewels besides the black pearls, though they appeared to remain a favourite.
Isabelle was wearing them now. They gleamed in the low light, glimmering like tiny dark stars, looped down over her black and pearl studded bodice. The sight of her tampered with the tempo of Jonathan's heart. She always dressed well, even at Estoncurt where there was never any reason to. However fine her gowns, she reserved the bold colours and best garments for an occasion. She was beautiful in the worn sleeves and hems she had arrived at this court in, now she dressed a princess she was stunning. Like tonight; a riot in muted brass and ebony. She'd taken to dressing in dark colours, increasingly black, these past few months. The colour suited her.
No, the only aspect of husbandry Jonathan still neglected was bedding her. She didn't invite it and Jonathan would never beg. Now he couldn't look at Isabelle and not hear his father's latest instruction.
Isabelle made her presence clear with an urgent, emphatic squeeze to his upper arm. For a moment, he thought she was about to ask him to dance. Then he remembered Isabelle was not the sort to care about such empty, fickle gestures. "I need to speak with you," she told him with simple intensity, "Now."
Jonathan followed her, without protest or question. They shuffled together out of the hall. Anyone who glimpsed them merely nudged one another and laughed, shooting off teasing comments about newlyweds. It was almost a year since he had married her, Jonathan realised, following the flickering sable train of her gown. He wasn't sure they still qualified as newlyweds.
Isabelle led him to the chamber where the King's Privy Council ordinarily sat. After its hours of use it lay empty, cold and unusually silent. It was eerie to see the room thus, the grand table naked and surrounded by unoccupied chairs. Though it was long and rectangular Jonathan found himself seeing a ghostly Camelot, the Round Table awaiting King Arthur's return. Or in this instance, King Valentine's.
Jonathan's gaze moved instinctively toward the grand throne at the table's head. His seat at this table had sat empty for the past year as it did tonight, the chair his father still wished to deny him. Meanwhile Jace Herondale filled Jonathan's place, leaning ever closer to the King, whispering and trying to get his own way. Sebastian was here, of course, as were Starkweather and Blackwell who watched and listened for Jonathan, but it was not the same. It was not enough when it left Herondale here for long periods virtually unchallenged, while Jonathan paced the floors in Estoncurt and thought useless thoughts of Isabelle.
Isabelle turned to face him. Their faces were very close. His cheeks were flushing from the wine and the indignance of losing at the games table, hers from the heat of the hall. They could still hear the revellers beyond; the crash of falling feet and spilled drinks and laughter. It was all hushed by the closed door. More immediately, he could hear the hitching of her breathing.
Isabelle's back pressed against the table, her white hands cupping its edge, curling tight. Her weight tilted backward, and the smell of her filled Jonathan's nostrils. She smelled of rosewater and lemon, which he was now so used to only scenting in passing draughts as she breezed past him, a scent which lingered in his rooms after she was gone.
He couldn't work out what it was about this woman, he couldn't puzzle out what the allure for him was. He'd bedded beautiful women before. Jonathan couldn't understand why he shirked from making such advances to Isabelle, even now. At first he'd pretended it was to keep their unwilling union easily dissoluble. Now he wasn't sure what was stopping him. Isabelle had pride to match his and she'd seen so much of him, the sorts of things he'd never have wished for the enemy he presumed her to be to see-things more than just the fits.
Was she his enemy any longer? Had she ever been? If her role at Estoncurt was to learn his mistakes and weaknesses, she'd ample knowledge of them now. Isabelle possessed more than enough to agree to remain at Chatton and let Clary wield the knowledge she'd gathered however she would.
Instead Isabelle kept his secrets, without being threatened to silence. She'd stayed at Jonathan's side, even after the Blackthorn disaster. It may not have been possible to run from him, exactly, but Isabelle hadn't kept the distance from that unhappy affair as he'd thought she would. She'd sullied her hands for him and she'd turned the key in Mark Blackthorn's door as surely as he had. And this summer… she hadn't run back to Clary when the prospect presented itself, Isabelle denied Clary's offer of a retreat to Chatton. She'd stayed here, with Jonathan.
Though her choice left Jonathan clueless where he stood with her. He was doubly clueless as to why, even in Alicante where he had dozens other options to amuse him, other women no longer seemed to have faces. Their smiles looked wrong, their laughs sounded wrong, they didn't smell the correct blend of rosewater and lemon.
No woman had denied him before. Perhaps that was it. Mayhap that was what made her so thrilling, so doubly desirable. Except, Jonathan wasn't sure she had denied him. Isabelle hadn't taken him to her bed, but neither was she shutting him out much lately either.
He left a space between them for safety nevertheless, their chests not quite touching.
"What is it?" He heard himself ask in a low voice, though he knew no one else was listening. "What's wrong?"
He could almost taste her uncertainty, he could sense her still holding herself back. Barely.
"The King asked to see me today."
"I know," He prompted, looking at the gold fringing of her hood rather than her face, "He's done that often since we came back to court."
"He's not well, Jonathan."
Jonathan snickered, "He seems well enough to me." Valentine was plainly well enough to issue callous orders and insist on holding tight to every shred of authority he held, permitting his heir not a breath of it, nor even a taste of the power he'd one day hold. No, everything Valentine had he held to tight.
Isabelle tilted her head until he had to look right her. "No. Truly, Jonathan. He did not say so but I think the sickness is… inside. Earlier, he coughed blood before me."
The silence pulsed between them, their breathing loud in the quiet.
Jonathan had several cups of the cellar's finest wine, but they'd been spaced out since dinner much earlier this afternoon. He was not drunk, though now he felt it. The haze of intoxication returned, the one which made the shape of everything fuzzy and his thoughts and reactions slow. He heard her words, and he heard just as clearly what she was not saying; the insinuation which would be treasonous to voice aloud.
The rest of the kingdom kept laughing and dancing- oblivious. Meanwhile, Jonathan and Isabelle- part-adversaries, part-allies; two bound by name and law and by something else, some other unnamed and unacknowledged bond born of months of solitude and weeks of falling asleep and waking up together on opposite sides of the same bed- stared at one another as the awful, jarring comprehension struck.
"Are you," He swallowed and tried again, "Are you certain?"
Even as he asked, he did not doubt her. Why would she invent some fable of such grave import? She possessed her secrets, he knew that, but Isabelle and his father retained their strange intimacy. Valentine liked her, this daughter he had chosen. Valentine thought her clever, he thought her keen. He'd thought enough of Isabelle to dispatch her to spy on his son for him.
Without dipping her eyes from his, Isabelle nodded. It would appear Valentine's most valuable spy just turned informant.
His whole life, Jonathan's father had seemed inviolable, eternal. Yet Jonathan's position relied upon Valentine's mortality. There was no point in an heir if the ruler was eternal. One day, Valentine would die. Jonathan often longed for the freedom and power that inevitability would bring. However, he'd never once felt secure here, at this court, in that position. Had he not just been thinking how perturbing Herondale's influence was already? And with that little vixen Clary urging him on nothing was certain.
If Valentine was gone, it would leave a chasm. Anyone's chasm to fill.
Jonathan's hands lifted of their own volition, he gripped Isabelle. She didn't seem perturbed by his fierce hold, she was staring directly at him, perhaps even through him. Her eyes flickered back and forth, from one of his to the other.
"Does Clary know?"
"I don't know for sure, but I doubt it."
He exhaled, perplexed. She kept staring back at her with just as much intensity, with just as many questions.
"Are you going to tell my sister, Isabelle?"
Why was she telling him, and like this? The girl he'd once thought Isabelle to be would have come to him, lashing fluttering and hips swaying; she'd surely have said nothing on the subject and done plenty about it. She might have seduced her way in marital security, or simply played seductress long enough to keep his head turned while Clary and Jace made their play.
Yet here she was, telling Jonathan and not touching him. She'd run to him, not Clary. This was no declaration of loyalty, this was no play on his lust. So, what was it?
Isabelle shook her head.
His fingers tightened. "Why not?"
"Because I am not stupid." She stated tartly.
"What does that mean, pray tell me?"
She exhaled though her nose, "It means that I am not Clary. I am not like Clary. The blood flowing in my veins is entirely ordinary. It holds no power. I am not fortunate." She sucked in another quick breath before admitting, "What I am is bound to you. What God has joined let no one cast asunder. I do not intend to shackle myself to a sinking ship, Jonathan. I have come too far and given too much to do so now. This is the closest I have come-that I will likely ever come- to having the upper hand in this game. I will not squander it."
Jonathan released his hold on her. He paced away, skirting the table, possessing too much pent-up energy to stand still any longer. He heard the whistle of moving fabric as she came after him. He halted again, shivering by the wide windows on the other side of the throne. Their twin faces looked back at them, seeming small and white in the dark glass, wobbling in the passing candlelight.
The usually empty platitudes the courtiers swarmed them with rang true in some regards. The pair of them did make a handsome couple. In their season's best, they even looked stately. Regal. Like they belonged together.
"What does that mean for us," Jonathan asked of her, abruptly, "If you are whispering confidences to me now?"
Isabelle had no answer for him, at first.
He tried one final time for the tested comfort of their usual mocking, "Are we to be firm friends forevermore?" When her silence stretched, he offered some more plain fact, "You cannot be both Clary's friend and mine."
Isabelle turned back to him abruptly, away from the reflection of him and toward the real thing.
Jonathan heard his reluctant spouse tell enough lies to the world before that he heard with perfect clarity the shuddering surrender of veracity in the reply she aimed at that lofty, coveted seat; "I do not want to be your friend."
There was naught he could say to that, Jonathan concluded. They crossed into unknown, unchartered territory, Isabelle Lightwood and he, two who had never been friends. He did not know where that admission left them.
So, no. That play was no more. She wasn't Clary's little spy, nor Valentine's. Not anymore. Isabelle was in it for herself now. It brought him a coil of glee. At last, commonality. Isabelle, acting for Isabelle, simply taking what she wanted and using her wit to twist her way into what the world would never let her have otherwise- it was a ruthlessness that sang to Jonathan's blood as much as her beauty did.
He and she were running a new, different gambit now. Very slowly, Jonathan's wife looked away from him, toward the vacant throne.
Isabelle had chosen him tonight, if he believed her that she told no one else what she had seen and that she would tell no one. Somehow, Jonathan found that he did believe her. He, who had never believed in anything other than himself, never trusted in anyone other than himself, wanted to trust Isabelle. Jonathan was not a fool either. He did not imagine Isabelle loved him. Loyalty could be built on many things besides that. She was correct, they two were bound. After tonight, they had common cause. Come what may, his fate was hers. No one had ever chosen Jonathan before. Not like this. There were those who sided with him because they thought it the smart choice, but that was not all she had said. She'd said that they were joined, in name and law. They had to be together on this.
All Jonathan ever wanted since he was small was for someone to be on his side, to really be on his side. To be by his side. He wanted Isabelle to choose him over Jace. It was not something he had ever trusted Valentine to do, certainly not something he could ever trust Clary to do. Jocelyn never spared her son a thought and he refused to give her one in return.
Here and now, Isabelle did precisely that. She weighed her options and loyalties, considered carefully and chose him. She chose Jonathan. Isabelle chose to be with Jonathan, in this.
He didn't know where that left them either, but he hopeful. For the first time in so very long, Jonathan Morgenstern was hopeful.
"I do not want to be your friend." Isabelle repeated, turning back to him. Then, when they were eye to eye, she lifted her hands to cup his face. Without thought, without further hesitation, Jonathan kissed her. He kissed her with a crushing, desperate claiming.
She didn't shirk from that either. Isabelle answered him with rough tongue, she met him with a scrape of teeth. The hands that fisted in Jonathan's hair weren't gentle, they left his scalp tingling with needles. Those same hands gripped in his overcoat and angrily pushed it off. He hauled her up onto the table, his hands no more tender than hers as he ripped at the bedecked cage of her skirts. They gripped one other like they could easily tear each other part, like they wanted to; prising apart fine garments and masks and ploys to finally, finally taste and know what lay underneath.
He heard fabric tearing and the ripping of heavy breaths, both hers and his. There was a whining sound too. It was coming from him, Jonathan realised. He clamped down on it and she laughed, a light sound that wasn't cruel. There was a wildness and a heady disbelief to it. It thrilled him, because she thrilled him. With a clunk, a jewelled belt hit the floorboards and her nails raked down the back of his neck. Then came a clatter of hairpins as her veil crumpled under his palms until, at last, Jonathan's fingers were in the real silk of her hair, curling and tugging. Her fingers were equally impatient on the ties of his breeches.
He relished in her haste too, because he'd wanted her for so long. He thought he might have told her so, as she touched him. Jonathan even thought he may have begged her for it. For more. For all of her.
With her body against him, Isabelle was every bit as reckless as Jonathan imagined. Their coming together was frantic and it was coarse. They wasted little time in the consummation of their new accord, for they'd wasted ample time already. Even as Jonathan felt the trim of her stockings and the bare heat of Isabelle's thighs, he felt the bite of her teeth and he tasted metal through their hot kisses.
No she'd never be easy and pliant. It was exactly what Jonathan wanted, she was everything he needed. She'd tease and taunt, and then sweep it all away with her kisses. God, the things he'd do to her. The things he'd let her do to him, hereafter.
In the dark, Isabelle's legs clasped tight around him and she gasped out as she let him sink into her at last, her mouth pressed to Jonathan's throat with a graze of teeth answering his thrusts.
In a calculated move that was less than obedience and more than prudence, he hoisted her forward, as close as he could get her. Her legs locked around his waist and it was done. Isabelle and Jonathan joined fast beneath an empty throne.
-000000000000000-
Clary shook Jace awake, her face over his and stricken in the grey light of an early morning. "They're gone."
Rolling over and wincing through smarting eyes, Jace tried to collect the cause of her anguish, "What?"
Awaking to find her side of the bed cooling was not unusual. Being rudely shaken to join her was. Usually Clary was content to let Jace slumber a little longer until they might break their fast together. This morning Clary was fully dressed and wide eyed, her fingers bearing into Jace's shoulder hard enough to almost hurt. She'd taken to early risings with fervency of late. To pray, or to converse with her trusted ladies ahead of the day, Jace knew not which. Possibly both.
"Jonathan and Isabelle." She informed him breathlessly, "I woke for first Mass and Isabelle wasn't there. She always meets me there in the mornings. When I enquired at their apartments, the servants told me Jonathan left Princewater last night and Isabelle left with him. They've taken my father at his word. But I told Izzy to wait, Jace, to give me but a little more time to talk the King around. I meant for them to stay here, close to us, and she agreed. She agreed with me it was best they stay in Alicante and she agreed to trust in me to make it so. Now she's gone. She left with him for Estoncurt. Jace, she didn't tell me."
Jace wasn't sure why this was the sorest point for Clary. Isabelle hadn't let them in on the inner workings of her mind for some time now, not since she took this quest to tame Jonathan into her head. Better men had tried and failed to curtail the King's errant son and instil in him some principle. Jace wished to believe Izzy capable, but he couldn't see why a woman should succeed where Starkweather, the Cardinal and Valentine all failed.
"What," He scrabbled up in the bed, shivering and hauling the sheets with him, sharing her urgency, but lacking her direction, "What do you want me to do, Clary?"
Even through her panic, Clary's eyes sharpened, and her gaze grew steady. "It's barely light. Though they left before the dawn, they cannot have gone far. A good rider, a fast rider, could easily catch them." Her lip quavered, "I cannot go."
"No," Jace agreed, casting the covers back and getting to his feet, her distress and the distressing news she'd brought of Izzy wakening him completely. He began to cobble together yesterday's clothes. "There's no question of that."
Even if Clary was an accomplished and confident rider, which she was not, there was no question of her taking a horse after Isabelle. Not when they had good cause to suspect another little life was beginning inside her, though it was too early to bring their suspicions before the King. They required at least another month and more proof to precede an announcement, but it was enough that Jace wouldn't risk her on the roads, not even to accompany him.
"I'll be quicker." He laced up his doublet, panic and fatigue making his fingers clumsy. Clary's firmer hands hastily replaced his.
She put Jace together in no time at all. Done with his sleeves, she gripped his wrists and looked him in the eye, "Be swift, my love, but above all be careful. Please be careful."
He kissed her quickly but firmly, "I'll bring her back to us," he promised Clary, cradling her cheek.
There was no time for fond, extended goodbyes. The sooner Jace could locate Isabelle, the sooner he'd get back to Clary.
She nodded, a strong queen dispatching her loyal knight, "Make haste."
Jace did.
-0000000000000000-
Estoncurt Palace, Northern Idris, early October 1540
For several days Isabelle eluded him. Jace found Jonathan's train less than an hour outside of Alicante but the Prince and Princess themselves were long gone. The servants entrusted with shepherding their belongings informed Jace they'd galloped off on their fastest horses, seemingly in a breakneck race to the summits of Edom.
The Duke swore, then hastened back to Princewater to pack a bag for a longer journey. He swapped his steed for a horse better equipped for endurance than speed and he made for the mountains.
Despite the setback, he made good time. He was at the gates of Estoncurt several days later, before he had time to fully consider the wisdom of coming here alone and uninvited. The last person to do so was dead. But lightening was not like to strike twice in the one spot. Two dead dukes in the same house within the same year would be too much, even for Jonathan.
"Tell the Princess the Duke of Broceland is here to see her," Jace told the groom when he finally got off his horse, saddle sore and shivering. The winds up here were every bit as brutal as he'd heard. Cold air grated his throat and it was difficult to catch his breath. He'd climbed so fast and so quickly that he even felt a touch dizzy. He pointed a gloved finger, "You tell the Princess, not the Crown Prince, that I'm not leaving until I speak with her alone."
The returning answer was swift. "You may speak with the Princess, Your Grace. But the Prince insists upon an audience first. After he has spoken with you, he says you are welcome to have the Princess alone."
Jace was guided inside, to where Jonathan awaited him, lounging in a seat by the great fireplace as if it were indeed a throne. Jace barely spared him a glance. To his right, her hands folded delicately over her stomacher, stood Isabelle.
Her eyes followed Jace as he crossed the long, open space to where Jonathan awaited, lazily ceremonial. Jace tried to extract the meaning of all this from her face; he strained to see if she might give some small signal or plea to him. Isabelle watched Jace's impatient, anxious advance barely blinking.
She was dressed all in black, down to the very pearls at her throat. Jace knew the colour of mourning for Idrisian royalty wasn't black, but her choice of colour was still unsettling. He opted to focus on the ruby at her throat instead, a reminder of who the aloof woman standing before him really was. She was still the girl who'd snapped at his and Alec's ankles and kicked their shins.
"Now this is an unexpected delight," Jonathan declared, dourly cavalier. He spoke in much the same manner which a physician might announce a limb needed removing. Jace slowed his advance, halting several feet away. He was in Jonathan's territory now. He recalled Clary's plea for caution. She had reason to fret, for up here there was no Valentine to break up a fight or intervene and dispel one. Up here, Jonathan had reason to look so smug and propriety; Jace was the one creeping along the lion's den.
Jonathan gestured to a platter of fruit on the table before him, "Do eat. You must be hungry after your long journey." Yes, Jonathan delighted in Jace having to scamper all this way after him like a puppy. "It's not poisoned," Jonathan asserted this with eyes wide and guileless, "See?" He bit off a grape and chewed it for a long moment into Jace's thunderous expression. He offered out the rest of the cluster, shaking it pertly in mid-air. Jace waved it away.
"I'm not here to dine."
"I'm trying to be hospitable, little brother."
Jace gripped tight to the cap clenched in his hands, He unclenched his jaw, "That is a kindness I did not look for. Fear not, Your Highness's hospitality is already well renowned."
"You were so kind to receive us at Chatton." Jonathan licked grape juice off his finger, "I'll always return the favour, Jace."
Isabelle's expression hadn't changed in the slightest. She watched the two of them snipe with boredom. She sighed, turning away only to freshen her wine glass, "The two of you squabble worse than tailor's wives. How predictable."
It was spoken with persistent boredom and with a huff of faint, nasty amusement. And yet, Jace heard her. He'd known Isabelle Lightwood much, much longer than Jonathan had. They'd learned to pass notes in the schoolroom together and they'd learned to hide the worst of their mischiefs from her parents and Alec. They'd devised their codes and clues long ago as troublesome, bored children. Those same unspoken languages were refined at one of the greatest courts of Europe. They both knew how to say nothing to one another and still be heard. Countless times before Isabelle shot Jace a gesture to reveal whether or not the Queen of France was susceptible to a would-be diplomat's advance and she'd learned to tell him in a flick of the wrist or a slip of her shoulders whether the Queen was in a fair mood or foul without ever looking Jace's way.
Against Estoncurt's black and white tiled floor, Isabelle did look at him. And Jace saw her. He saw all of them- himself and Clary, Alec and Valentine, each standing on their squares, facing the opposition. Most clearly he saw Isabelle and Jonathan, clad all in black, King and Queen on the far end of the board. Black, the robes of mourning. Jace's pulse quickened as he thought of her white falcon banner and her dour dress today. He saw his little sister as she'd positioned herself in this- to be the most mobile and useful piece in the game. The queen.
How predictable.
The game wasn't over yet. In that breath of disdain Jonathan delighted in hearing Isabelle direct at Jace, it was Jace who properly heard her.
"Jonathan," Jace dispelled of all pride, of all posturing. Jace lowered his shoulders and looked at the man opposite him. Neither of them could ever be the son Valentine wanted. They'd each been pawns most of their lives and eventually, in the not so distant future, they'd have to fight for control of the board. It wasn't to Isabelle Jace directed his plea.
"We've been pitted against one another all our lives. We were taught from infancy to mock each other's weaknesses and loathe the other's strengths. That rivalry may have been intended to refine our characters, to push us each to better ourselves, but it never did so. We've been thrown into the pit like fighting cockerels or dogs, riled up to savagery at the first taste of blood. They all bet on us, the lords of this realm and even our King hedges his bets on who might emerge victor." Jace exhaled, more than the pressing climb wearying him. "We're supposed to be brothers, twice over by marriage!" He shook his head, "We don't have to give them fight they long for. We don't have to behave like caged beasts. This doesn't have to end that way."
Jonathan tilted forward in his seat, "You mean to fight me, Jace?"
Jace shook his head, "I am saying it need never come to that. It ought not to come to that. I am saying that we need never have been enemies at all. We may not be able to undo the past, but we do not have to let it dictate our futures."
The chorus seemed to have primed them all for this play to end a tragedy, but it need not be one. Jace and Jonathan may never love one another, but for their wives sakes, if not the kingdoms, they might be able to move past loathing.
"What precisely is it you are asking of me? If you need my goodwill, all you need to do is surrender. Yield, Jace." Jonathan's eyes glinted, the idea gathering momentum. He flicked his finger toward the tiles, "Bow here before me today, and I'll accept your fealty. Provided, of course, you go back to Alicante and relinquish your seat on the Privy Council so I may have mine. After that, take yourself away, out of my sight and the King's. I care not where. You seem so fond of Chatton, so perhaps it will serve. You leave my sister be and you can keep your girls with you. The Crown will decide where they marry of course, in time, but you'll keep your title and your estates as a token of my goodwill."
Jace chuffed a scoff. Even where his hands bound and bleeding, no man would ever accede to anything as punitive as all that. "Are those really your terms?"
Jonathan grinned. He couldn't resist. At the first moment Jace opted to offer him his soft belly, Jonathan opted to be vile and vicious.
"I did not come here to offer you a surrender. Even if I had, there's not a single one of those terms I'd accept."
Jonathan's vulpine grin only grew. He knew as much. They weren't ever extended with the expectation of acceptance. No, he was simply taunting Jace. Worse, all but openly spitting in his face. After so many years at Valentine's court, Jonathan was unable to look at sincerity and see it as aught other than a ploy or a ruse, a means of settling Jonathan and lulling him while Jace stabbed him from behind.
Jonathan took stock of Jace, of his words and his faces. After a taut pause, the sword dangling over the two of them fell.
There'd be no truce. This had gone too far. Indignation and frustration rising, Jace ground his teeth. "Was there anything else Your Highness wishes to parlay of? Or might I have a moment with your wife now?"
Jonathan shook his head. He turned over his shoulder to Isabelle, reaching for her hand. She took hold of it and he drew her in closer still, until for a dreadful moment Jace feared he was about to pull Isabelle into his lap. Instead, Jonathan stared up at her and she looked back, each of them caught.
It took Jonathan a while to remember Jace was there, "No. I have nothing more to say to you." He peeked up at Isabelle again, the two of them still hand clasped. Her other hand, the one not in Jonathan's, braced over the back of his chair. "Isabelle can speak with you if she wishes to."
With a swipe of her thumb over the vein at his wrist, Isabelle released him. "I'll see him out."
Astonished, feeling much as if he'd been kicked by a horse, Jace cast another glance at Jonathan. Rather than do him the courtesy of looking back, Jonathan looked out the window over his barren kingdom of banks and stones and little else.
Isabelle swept past her erstwhile foster brother on self-assured strides, leaving Jace to hasten after her once again.
Outside in the corridor they moved past a young lord with sketching paper who smiled at Isabelle. In fact, several of the household staff they encountered had warm looks and deep curtsies for Isabelle. She'd positioned herself as a well-regarded mistress, then. Jace supposed that was hardly surprising. Compared to Jonathan's whims and mercurial tempers he was sure anyone else looked good.
Jace they stared at with open curiosity, scrutinising eagerly the man positioned to be their lord's nemesis.
Isabelle never slowed her pace, "It's still early in the day. If you ride straight down the pass- I'll furnish you a fresh horse and dispatch Jon to ensure you get the swiftest and safest route down- there's a tavern right at the bottom. If I were you, I'd eat there and then keep riding. If you make good time, and you area good rider that should, you may even reach Blid by dusk. It's the biggest town in these parts. Far better you break for the night there."
Jace, still stiff from the punishing ride up, was not relishing being back in the saddle so soon. That was indeed a great deal of ground she'd urged him to cover in one day. "Are you seeing me out to ensure I leave?"
She didn't look at him, "The locks on our guest chambers have been known to stick."
True, he hadn't seen any trace of Mark Blackthorn thus far, though Jace was on the look out for him. For all he knew, the dead Duke's eldest son was a pile of bones in a mountain creek by now.
Which returned Jace to the urgency with which he'd come this far in the first place.
As they reached the outer doorway, the brisk autumn air slicing through, Jace whirled and caught her shoulder. This was the last chance he'd get for the foreseeable future.
"Izzy."
Isabelle's lower lip jutted out slightly, a small tell that only someone who could remember her childhood complaints against sibling and parental injustices would be able to trace as a hint of upset.
"What would you have me do, Jace? What would you have me say?"
Jace pushed their faces closer together, the two of them crammed together almost comically under the stone arch of an ancient threshold. Isabelle lifted her head, setting the small, dark emeralds hanging from her ears rocking back and forth.
Few would suspect it, given the way he and Alec leaned on one another now, but upon arrival at Adamant it was Izzy that Jace warmed to first. She seemed, even at so tender an age, as angry at the world around her as Jace felt. She'd blazed with it all, that self-righteous anger. At ten she never minced her words, unlike Alec, who was determined to seem polite and play perfect host in their father's absence. Alec tried hard to make Jace like him, visibly thrilled to finally have a noble born boy of his own age in their castle. Meanwhile, Isabelle scorned Jace. She never treated him with care in the way both Alec and their mother did. She refused to share her pony, she told Jace he was neither clever nor funny, and questioned why he- their guest- should get the first, choice slice of the pie come dinner time.
Jace relished her hostility and her frankness. It was, in the end, closer to Jonathan's taunts and jealousy and more like Valentine's unwavering demands and indifference. Nor could she, his new sister, have been more different to Clary's fawning. Of course Jace gravitated to her.
Isabelle appreciated in turn that he would not treat her as a fragile thing. She liked that Jace did not see her as an annoying younger sister, unlike Alec. No, Jace had always treated her as one who could bear it if he pushed back and if he challenged her. It made for greater competition in their childhood japes.
The games they played these days were not the larks of their childhood.
They'd never treated each other gently, Jace and Isabelle. Yet he had been skirting around her, for months. Without truly meaning to he'd treated her as some poor, trapped animal that needed to be treated with kindness, who one must be careful not to spook, because Jace was ashamed of himself for letting Valentine use her, the sister he should have protected.
He was mistaken.
Isabelle would not ask for help, even if she needed it. She did not respond to simpering, or extended hands. She was staring up at him now, with flaring dark eyes, and Jace was reminded of the girl in Adamant he had first met- the girl squaring up to him with scraped knees and bruised elbows. You push me and I'll push you back, alright?
At first, Jace laughed at her, that skinny, scruffy hemmed girl with dirty fingernails. He'd soon stopped laughing when she'd landed a punch to his stomach. He ought to have realised then and there what a worthy adversary she could make.
Isabelle didn't like to be handled with care. He hadn't insulted her by pandering to supposed feminine weakness as youngsters in Adamant, so Jace wouldn't start now.
"You have broken Alec's heart and now you are breaking Clary's. What are you doing, Izzy? Why flee Alicante in the dead of night?"
"Why should I stay there? What for?"
Jace shook his head, losing the last of his patience for this dance. He would not suffer his questions to be answered with more questions.
"Whose side are you on?" He growled, both a demand and a challenge. It was the question he- they- so sorely wanted to ask.
Isabelle scoffed, "My own." She insisted flatly, "The same as everyone else."
"What is it Valentine whispers to you, Izzy?" There was a piece missing here, a piece that would make all he did not understand make sense. Isabelle possessed some knowledge, there was no doubting that, something she had held fast to for herself, for self-assurance or self-protection, for which Jace could hardly begrudge her. Surely after everything, Isabelle could see they had reached the moment for sharing confidences? They were allies! Or at least Jace presumed they were.
"There is nothing I know" Isabelle insisted, exhaustion splintering her tone, "That you do not, deep down, also know."
"I don't know anything, anymore." Jace could feel patches of heat break out on his own face, "Enough riddles, Isabelle, enough games!"
He struck out at the opposite door frame with the flat of his left hand, caging Isabelle in.
"You know," He began in a low grumble, "What the King intends to do. You must also understand the threat he," Jace did not need to jerk his chin or move his eyes to indicate whom he meant, "Poses to all of that. You heard him in that room!"
"What did you expect? He's never going to roll over and take it, no more than you would. Certainly not while you strive to take what is undeniably, rightfully his. However little you may like the prospect."
Jace came here hoping to soothe divides, to mend them, not exacerbate tensions. Yet there was more discord here than a sole conversation would fix. He had come to extend an olive branch which Jonathan threw back in his face. Now Isabelle seemed set to do likewise.
Once, 'family' had represented to him a security he had longed for, the comfort of a promise of unconditional love. Once, the thought of 'family' would have drawn this woman's smiling face to mind, and there would have been no sting of doubt to it. Now, alas, family also meant the Morgensterns and their crown, which consequently lay between the Lightwoods as a poisoned chalice.
Isabelle straightened up to full height. Jace hadn't been this close to another woman that was not Clary for quite some time. It was disconcerting to find himself facing one who did not have to strain to look him in the eye.
"This plan you speak of as though it is a surety is anything but, Jace. You know as much, even if you dare not acknowledge it, else you would not have come here today."
"The King's intentions have never wavered," Jace insisted hoarsely.
"The King's plan is preposterous! Any sane person can see it as such! You would think it too, Jace, had anyone other than Valentine presented it!"
She stared up at his flushed, stunned expression and shook her head, the picture of frustration and despair. Isabelle snapped her fingers, "It will dissipate in the breeze, a hope and nothing more."
Jace cast down the only card he had left, "Clary thinks she might be with child again."
Isabelle shook her head, "Even if she is and even if it's a boy, it will be of little consequence in the end. Jace, you are still clinging to that child you once were, a boy so desperate to please Valentine and prove himself useful that you have deafened yourself to what everyone else thinks. What everyone else knows."
"You imagine yourself to have a finger on the pulse of the kingdom, do you, sequestered up here for months on end?"
Isabelle's dark eyes were glassy, but her tone remained impatient. "It is quite the vantage point. I evidently see more than you from up here."
"He'd make a terrible king," Jace hissed it, scarce more than a breath. It was no secret that he thought as much of Jonathan but to openly, audibly declare as much- in the doorway of the Prince's house no less- could only be perceived as a direct challenge. The kind Jonathan would happily answer with a blade. It'd been years since Jace crossed Jonathan in the sword yard because they'd been forbidden from sparring after their practice bouts grew much too violent. Jace carried the smarting, sickening suspicion Jonathan had always been better than him and may still be.
"But he will be the King." Isabelle blinked, every inch as frustrated with Jace as he was with her, "It is time to open your eyes Jace. You do not have a son. Even should you have one next year, or the year after that, time only runs one way." She huffed impatiently. Her voice lifted slightly, so as to be better heard over the piercing wind. Jace did not know how she stood the cold up here. It seeped into your bones. Isabelle's voice remained grave. "When the moment comes, and it fast approaches, the lords of this land will stand behind the heir that they know. The heir that they've always known. No one with an army will throw him over for an infant, not even a Herondale one."
Jace's hand dropped from the door.
Isabelle plucked her skirts back from her feet and began to turn away. As they pirouetted out of each other's way, she tilted up to hiss in Jace's ear. "When the crown is on his head Jace, who will keep yours on your shoulders?" She slid away, back into the shadows of the hall, her face set back into steely composure, her cheeks dry, not a hint of bitterness or self-pity to be seen. "That is what I am doing here."
Chastened, chafed and reeling, Jace stuck his hands back in his belt loops and moved to where his shivering, jittery horse waited.
He felt the gaze on him, and lifted his eyes upward at the last moment, to where Jonathan was smirking down at him from the window, awaiting his bride's return. Confident of Isabelle and much else besides.
No, there would be no more avoidance. Alas, it would seem it was set in stone how this story must end, or it very soon would be. It was too late to divert the course, for the waters here were too deep flowing.
Clary was right about one thing; no Council would tolerate them both. The kingdom would never tolerate both. Neither one could live while the other ruled, for neither could rule while the other lived.
-000000000000000-