Clary's breath puffed through the crust of ice that had built up on her scarf, and she adjusted the goggles she was wearing to cut the glare from the sun on the snow. She had been out at the ritual site with Tessa and Jem all morning, but it was time to head back to the cabin and thaw out over lunch once they met up with Helen and Aline.

She shook her head in amazement at the dedication of the two women. They had been combing the wards obsessively ever since the breaches had started; Clary wasn't even entirely sure they had managed to get any sleep in the last few days. The seemingly random scattering of incursions across the globe had frustrated them to no end, but they had dutifully recorded the locations and forwarded them in duplicate to Alicante and Alec. Everyone on Wrangel Island was tense about how many pinpricks had appeared. Never anything big, but it was enough to send small pockets of demons tearing through remote areas where there weren't any Shadowhunters on patrol.

Clary slowed and looked back over her shoulder as she waited for Tessa and Jem to catch up. They had fallen behind while engaged in a spirited debate about the demonic runes burned into the rocks. Clary could just make out Tessa's voice as the couple climbed the rise along a now well-worn path through the snow.

"The Ergothian markings are the easiest to read, and they will give us the best chance of deciphering the other ones that we don't recognize or that have been obscured over the centuries." Her light-brown curls bounced along on the back of her heavy coat from under where they were trapped by the coils of her scarf.

Jem sighed good-naturedly in a cloud of misted breath. "My Ergothian is terribly rusty. Will was always the clever one with languages." The sting of remembering his parabatai had faded in the time since he had reclaimed his mortality, and now it was a pleasant warmth in his breast to call up memories of a black-haired boy laughing over their lessons of demonic languages.

Tessa found Jem's hand and clasped it as best she could through the thick mittens they were both wearing. The years had been kind to Jem, but they were still marching forward inexorably. How many more years did she have left with him? Her heart clenched up as it always did when she allowed herself to dread their inevitable parting. She forced her voice to sound bright as she breathed life back into her first husband, if only for a moment. "Could you imagine if Will was here?"

Jem's smile was hidden by his scarf, but Tessa could see his goggles rise on his cheekbones as he smiled at the thought. "No," he replied. "Will wouldn't be up here. He would be charging about with Jace like a madman to see which one of them could single-handedly stem the demon tide first."

"What's that about Jace?" Clary asked innocently as they reached her.

Jem cleared his throat and looked sideways at Tessa. "Fond memories," he answered vaguely.

Clary arched an eyebrow at him. "He really has grown up, you know. He's only half-mad now."

Tessa laughed as they trudged forward in their heavy boots. "A half-mad Herondale is still twice as mad as anyone else." She tried to wag a finger at Clary, but the effect was ruined by the mittens. "I know why he was sent on his most recent 'sabbatical'."

Clary rolled her eyes behind her goggles, but was saved from defending her husband's sanity any further as they spotted Helen and Aline. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted down that it was time for lunch.

The two women climbed out of the shallow valley toward where Clary, Tessa, and Jem were waiting patiently for them, all conversation about mad Herondales temporarily set aside.

"You guys have perfect timing," Aline said as she and her wife reached the group. "We need to get back to the cabin ASAP."

Clary immediately felt a stab of worry in her chest. "What did you find?"

Aline exchanged a dark look with Helen before her eyes found Clary's. "A big breach. Bigger than Buenos Aires or Cairo."

All of the lighthearted chatter and academic conjecture was forgotten. Clary swallowed thickly. "Where?"

"Northern California. We'll pin down something more exact when we get back to the cabin, but Alec is going to need to hear about this. I know Jace thinks that all the little tears were placed to draw Shadowhunters away from Institutes, or barring that, to inflict maximum casualties without interference, but this one is huge. Whatever came through... it's going to be bad."

"Simon said that he and Izzy have just about reached the end of their contact list," Clary said hopefully. "So maybe Alec and Jace won't have to fight this one quite so short-handed. And who knows?" She threw up her hands. "Maybe Everett will actually listen this time. Even he can't ignore what happened in Egypt and Argentina."

"We can only hope," Helen said quietly.

The cabin came into view ahead, its chimney sending up a thin trailer of smoke from the fire within. As they approached the front door, Jem hurriedly thrust out his arm for them to stop, and he raised one mitten to his mouth to ask for silence. The four women looked at him in confusion as his hand moved slowly to point out a churned-up trail in the snow where someone had crashed through carelessly. The prints appeared out of nowhere and led straight to the cabin.

Aline's sharp eyes caught sight of the fireplace poker sticking out of a snowbank, and she crunched across the snow as quietly as she could to heft it questioningly.

Clary's eyes traced the path, and then widened in surprise. She pulled down her scarf, heedless of the cold, and mouthed to the others in horror. Portal! If Everett's cronies had found them here... The kids!

Jem stepped forward lightly into a fighting stance and nodded to the others for them to ready themselves as he shucked off his gloves. They would need to be quick.

Sera tilted her bowl of microwaved chicken noodle soup and slurped the last of it down happily. What was it about chicken noodle soup that was so goddamn good? She was tired, no, exhausted, from what she had done for Hunter and Aspen, but she felt great.

Having suffered through one disappointment after another in her search for Rayce's salvation, it was a relief to finally feel like she had accomplished something.

Hunter was stretched out full-length on the worn area rug that covered the middle of the cabin's common area, and he was energetically going through a workout of body-weight exercises to test his returning strength while Aspen watched with hope in her eyes. As the boy flipped over and started counting off push-ups, Sera was given another look at her handiwork.

Under a thin sheen of sweat across Hunter's muscular back, a huge Fortitude rune sprawled over his skin. The curving edges of the top of the rune crossed both of his shoulder blades, and the tail end of the Mark snaked all the way down to his lower back. Sera had never seen or heard of a rune either made or used like this, and she felt a small tingle of satisfaction that she been the first to do it.

She had, as promised, packed a punch into the rune as it had settled onto Hunter's back permanently, and she had been left gasping and struggling to stay conscious when she had taken her hands off him. She hadn't felt so drained by a rune since she had placed a powerful mendelin on Rayce to hide him from the eyes of the Fey in the Seelie Court when they had stolen the crown. It seemed like ages ago, now.

Sera's vision flashed unexpectedly and she caught a glimpse of a fireplace poker before throwing herself sideways off the loveseat and skidding under the table with a startled, "Oh, shit!" Her bowl hit the floor just as the door crashed open and a man slipped inside, somehow managing lithe grace while bundled up in heavy winter clothes.

Icy air sliced into Sera and chased away whatever happy warmth she had been enjoying from the soup. Enough with this effing cold! She held up her hands defensively from under the meagre cover of the table just as a woman pounced forward, fireplace poker in hand.

"Woah, woah,woah!" Sera shouted into the confusion as three more people crowded into the cabin.

"Mom, wait -"

"No, Jem -" Hunter and Aspen's cries tangled as both of them shot forward. The boy managed to rugby-tackle Jem from the side as Aspen sank her fingers into the back of Clary's coat, not close enough to reach Aline.

Everyone drew up short and the tableau froze; bloody-haired Sera in her shredded clothes huddled under the table, Aline with the poker held high to strike, Jem groaning in a heap with the shirtless Hunter, Aspen desperately clutching her mother's coat, and Tessa and Helen bringing up the rear, trying to make sense of the strange scene.

Clary caught sight of Sera around Aline's legs and inhaled sharply. "Sera?"

The others looked back and forth between Clary and Sera. They had already heard about the extraordinary Shadowhunter, but they had a hard time reconciling the image with the reality of the exhausted woman before them.

Aline let the poker swing down sheepishly and instead held out an open hand to help her up. "Sorry about that."

Sera breathed a sigh of relief. "No worries. I would have done the same thing." She winced as she stood, rubbing thoughtfully at where she had landed hard on her elbow. "Although I probably would have bashed first and asked questions later."

Jem was sorting out which arms and legs were his own as Hunter apologized profusely from under him, and then the boy rolled over to push himself to his feet. Five shocked gasps followed the revelation of his new Fortitude rune.

"By the Angel, Hunter..." Clary whispered.

Aspen pulled at her mother's coat to turn her around until they were facing each other. Her gold eyes shone with excitement. "Mom, he's better," she breathed. "We're better. Sera... she helped us." Aspen looked over at where Hunter was standing a little self-consciously, and her mother turned to stare as well.

Jem recovered first, closing his mouth to cover his surprise. He reached out toward Hunter hesitantly, his dark eyes seeking permission, and the boy turned around slowly to allow the ex-Silent Brother examine the rune more closely. Slim fingers trailed over the edges of the Mark delicately.

"Permanent," he murmured quietly to himself.

Clary was mesmerized as she moved over to stand next to Jem in awe. She pulled off her gloves and gaped at the scope of the rune. Permanent. Her mind slipped back a quarter of a century to when she had been young and foolish, barely aware of her own ability. She remembered all the times she had used her gift with nothing more than her instinct to guide her, with nothing more than a hope and a prayer that she would have the strength to make it work. The years had taught her patience and caution, and she had nearly forgotten the insanity of experimenting with lives at stake; most often her own, as she exceeded the limits of that strength.

She turned her head to find Sera. "The risk..."

Sera shared a knowing look with Clary and nodded reassuringly. "Was worth it. I know my limits." She held the red-head's gaze confidently.

"This," Clary said, gesturing at Hunter's Mark, "doesn't have any precedence. You couldn't have known what it would do to him... or yourself." Her green eyes flashed with the beginnings of a fiery challenge as her protective instincts flared up, but it was Tessa's quiet voice that cut her short.

"Adele Starkweather." Everyone in the room except Jem looked confused, so Tessa continued haltingly. "It was a mistake - a Mundane child exchanged for a Shadowhunter's by vengeful Faeries. She was weak, sickly, never born to live in our world." Tessa spread her hands helplessly. "Her first Mark was going to be a Strength rune to counteract her chronic weakness... but she was not Nephilim. She..." Silence fell, and Tessa bowed her head respectfully before finishing, "They never had a chance to see if it would work, but the Silent Brothers believed in it."

Jem nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I can understand why." He looked at Sera appreciatively. "A pity that there are no Silent Sisters, Sera. You are gifted in many ways, it would seem."

Under his gentle gaze, Sera blushed at the unexpected praise. Actually blushed. She pushed her matted hair back behind one ear, embarrassed, as she tried to shrug it off. "I think I'd have a really hard time with the 'silent' part. And staying put in the City of Bones..." she trailed off as she shuddered. "I get itchy feet."

At the mention of travelling, Clary suddenly remembered the footprints in the snow outside and gasped again, drawing looks from the others. "Sera. How did you get here?"

Sera's eyebrows knit in confusion. "I Portalled."

"No!" Clary yanked the zipper down on her jacket as she felt a hot flash of fear course through her. "I warned you - the Clave can track runic Portals! You might have led them right to us!"

"Relax, I've been Portalling all over the world ever since Rayce accidentally became the new Lord of the Wild Hunt," Sera protested, shaking off Clary's concerns. "Nothing's happened. The Clave has bigger problems right now..." she trailed off as Clary's eyebrows practically climbed into her hairline.

"Rayce what?" she squeaked.

Sera rubbed tiredly at the bridge of her nose, flaking off a bit of blood that had dried there. "Right. Yeah. So, a lot's happened..." As she had promised Hunter and Aspen earlier, she gave the assembled group a quick summary of everything that had happened since she and Rayce had left Idris. Stunned silence greeted her when she finished her tale.

She scratched at the back of her neck uncomfortably while trying to avoid seven sets of wide eyes, but she couldn't escape the shimmering blue-green gaze where tears sparkled like liquid crystal. Helen's delicate lips trembled.

"You spoke to my brother..." she began, and Sera was dumbstruck as she made the connection between the two half-faerie Blackthorns. Too many Blackthorns... but only two shared Faerie blood! Idiot! She had been so wrapped up thinking about Rayce that she had never stopped to consider how far the ripples of her search could carry. She nodded mutely to Helen, silently inviting her to continue, to pass judgement on the insensitivity she had shown.

Helen drew a shuddering breath. "Then you know what fate awaits your prince even if you manage to free him from the cloak."

Sera nodded gravely. "I understand. But there must be a way to reverse what was done. I just haven't found it yet." Her gold eyes looked around the room and she pushed away the pity that she could feel from the others. I won't give up! Don't look at me like that!

It was Jem who broke the quiet with his melodious voice. "Perhaps you must turn your search away from the Mortal world, Sera. If there is a way to free Rayce from the Hunt, it seems logical to think that the answer would be found in the realm of the Fey."

"Like the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer," Helen said. "My brother and I were told the tale when we were children - it's both a story and instructions on how to break someone free from Faerie."

"Yes!" Clary clapped her hands excitedly, red curls bobbing as she bounced on her toes. "I remember Alec using it to figure out which road led to Edom when the Seelie Queen tried to trick us!" She paused as she dredged deeper for the memory. "Something about paths to Heaven and Hell, or something like that..." She frowned as the rest of the story eluded her.

Jem nodded, and then looked back to Sera. "The Fey have many secrets Sera. The trick is figuring out how to get them to tell you what you want without losing more than you gain in the bargain."

Clary snorted. "Yeah. Actually, don't bargain with Faeries at all. They suck at coming through on their end."

Even Helen agreed, still bitter over how Iarlath and Kieran had so carefully worded their offer to allow her brother the choice between staying with his family or returning to the Hunt.

Sera's mind was already racing ahead. Look for answers in the Courts? I'm sure they'll welcome me with open arms, she thought sarcastically. Stole the Seelie crown.... killed a few Faerie knights on the way out... no big deal. Water under the bridge now, right? Musing about bridges and water made her think about her unscrupulous and unlikely ally, Otherios. Hmm...

"Since you're already here," Clary interrupted Sera's chain of thought, "can you come and have a look at the ritual site? You only got to see my sketches before, but those all went up in flames with the manor." To her credit, her face stayed strong even with the reminder that she had lost everything when the Unseelie had betrayed Alicante.

Aspen put her arm around her mother's shoulders comfortingly, and Sera felt a tug in her chest. Not everything. She looked around the tiny living space in the cabin and felt an overwhelming connection to this ragtag band of survivors. She had never had a real family before, but she was getting the feeling that this is what it might be like. Their faces were so open, so filled with concern for her that she ached inside. They didn't even know her, but here they were, ready to jump in and offer advice and support to help save Rayce.

And some of them really are Rayce's family, she remembered, trying to untangle the branches of his family tree. He was Helen's uncle; Clary's nephew; Aspen's cousin. He had more family than he knew, if only he could be broken free of the Hunt.

"Sure," Sera said. She found herself desperately wanting to give back, to help someone aside from herself for a change. What she had done for Hunter and Aspen had filled a void that she hadn't even been aware of, and she was hungry for more.

"I'll come, too," Tessa volunteered.

Aline and Helen exchanged a glance, and Aline answered for them, "We'll stay. Alec needs to be warned about California. And we'll see how Everett responds to my kind of warning." Her dark eyes narrowed threateningly.

Jem opted to remain in the cabin as well to begin studying the effects of Hunter's new Fortitude rune. Fascination sparkled in his eyes, and it was easy to see the shadow of his Brotherhood reawaken with his curiosity.

Sera touched Hunter's shoulder as Helen began gathering winter gear that would fit their unexpected guest, and the boy looked at her, still a little awestruck. "You'll have to be careful to protect your rune," she warned. "I'd rather not find out what would happen if it was damaged in any way."

Hunter's face lit up like Hanukkah had come early. "So what you're trying to tell me is that I can completely justify having..." he dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper, "a super-suit."

Aspen's eyes widened in horror. "Hunter, no!"

"Hunter, yes!" he shot back, grinning wolfishly. "Dad is going to be so jealous..."

His parabatai moaned audibly and shot a pained look at Sera, who only shrugged and held up her hands as if to say, Not my problem.

Sera shoved her feet into Helen's boots after discarding the remains of her own, mourning silently for them as she pulled on a heavy coat and the rest of the outerwear for her trek to the ritual site. She was curious to see it, but she felt like she was being pulled in too many different directions at once. Her heart wanted to follow Rayce, her head wanted to follow Clary, and her stomach was wondering if it would be impolite to ask for some lunch to-go.

The three women left the cabin as Hunter excitedly began brainstorming concepts for his proposed super-suit. They headed back out into the cold gratefully and followed a path through the snow that sloped gently down toward the west side of the island. It wasn't long before they reached an area where the ice had been painstakingly cleared down to the bedrock right up against where it dropped off sharply to the rocky shore below. Frigid water churned off the coast, occasionally splashing up violently in a wall of foam as waves broke against the stone.

The area wasn't particularly large; it was probably less than twenty feet square. Sera could see piles of rubble that had been pushed to the edges of the site to reveal what had lain beneath them for centuries. Clary's sketches hadn't done the scene justice. She had come armed with a sketchpad and a Sharpie to dutifully continue documenting the area, though.

When they reached the transition from ice to stone, Sera was brought up short. There was a charged feeling in the air, but it was laced with a creeping menace that made her shiver from more than just the cold. The diminutive redhead caught the involuntary flinch and nodded in understanding. "You can feel it, right?"

"Yes," Sera answered faintly, nauseated by the sensation that the conflicting runes were creating. "I can definitely feel it." Her boots left the crunching crust of the snow path as she stepped gingerly onto the cleared rock and winced. She carefully avoided the scorched runes that marked where Lilith and Sammael had made a permanent dent in the world's wards.

"Its quite alright, you can step on them," Tessa said lightly. She proved the point by walking across the demonic sigils herself and joining Sera in the centre of the area while Clary crouched down and started sketching a detailed copy of the rune at her feet.

Two concentric circles of angelic runes carved in adamas enclosed the two women, with the outer ring bearing larger markings than the inner. A third ring of ugly, blackened runes was laid over the original configuration like a chain of scars, but it was more elliptical, mocking the perfection of the circles it crossed. Spokes of both types of runes radiated outward to the edges of the site in a seemingly-random pattern.

Tessa gestured to the ellipse unnecessarily. "That's the problem up here. When Clary showed this to me and told me the theory that she's been working on with Helen and Aline, I performed a few minor tests to see what could be learned, and it wasn't encouraging."

"What's the theory?" Sera asked.

"That when Sammael and Lilith did this, they made sure that it couldn't be changed unless they returned. The runes of the ellipse are Ergothian, a demonic language that has fallen off a bit in our world ever since the archangel Michael hunted down Sammael and killed him a little over nine hundred years ago. Lilith and Sammael's blood was mixed to draw these runes, and then scorched into the rock with powerful dark magic."

Tessa continued in a more scholarly tone as she gave her impromptu lecture. "For someone to take control of the circle once more, they would need re-draw the sigils with the mixed blood of Sammael and Lilith. You can see the difficulty this presents? Even if Sammael was still alive, it would be nearly impossible to take blood from not one, but two Greater Demons and then live long enough to do anything with it."

"But what did they do?" Sera was turning on the spot slowly to gape at the enormity of the site's intricacy.

Clary looked up from where she had knelt down, and she pointed to the concentric rings of adamas runes. "The smaller circle represents us, the Mortal world. The ring around it symbolizes the protection laid down by Heaven's hand to guard us from the Void. The theory goes that the ellipse of demonic power pressing up against our happy little bubble is allowing corruption to seep over and create raw spots where the demons can force their way through."

Sera blinked. She had never really given any thought to any of this. The runes scattered across the rock tugged at her and she shuffled closer carefully, aghast at the thought of stepping on either set of markings. It felt sacrilegious. She could feel her memory soaking up the patterns, and more importantly, the feeling of the place. As she had previously hammered into Steven, sometimes the answers weren't always found in what was seen, but in what was sensed.

Clary waved her hand vaguely back in the direction they had come. "The anchor points located across the island are like the intersections of the strands on a spider's web. When an insect becomes snared, the spider can feel the vibrations and follow them to the source. Helen and Aline have developed an incredible process for tracking the disturbances that larger demons, or groups of demons, make then they step on our hypothetical web of protection, and that's how they are able to pin down the locations of breaches when they occur." Clary rose and gestured to the ritual site. "But this place has been covered in rubble, snow, and ice for centuries, probably since the Incursion, so we were never able to understand how the damage was done."

Sera's eyes flicked across each rune around her quickly, bouncing from one to the next. Extraordinary. The array was mesmerizing, and she felt a much stronger pull than she had felt in the conservatory of Herondale Manor while looking at a sketch of the site. She didn't notice when her breathing quickened into a shallow panting as each new symbol clambered for her attention in a crush of urgency, and so it came as a complete surprise when her knees buckled and she hit the stone.

The fingers of her right hand brushed against the edge of the closest demonic sign, and then Wrangel Island was swept away as a powerful vision dragged her down into a dark cavern where Rayce was bound to a twisted tree that had grown out of the rock impossibly.

Sera watched in horror as a silver whip whistled down and cracked across Rayce's back, leaving another bloody slash. He unclenched his jaw with a hiss and exhaled.

"Ten."

"Rayce!" Sera screamed. Her eyes flew open, wrenching her away from the Unseelie Court.

Both Tessa and Clary rested their mittened hands on Sera's back while she panted on her hands and knees, but they couldn't do anything to help. Sera knew the truth of what she had seen; it was happening now.

You were supposed to stay away! Sera clutched her arms around her chest tightly as she rocked back and forth, reeling from the abruptness of the vision that had been triggered so unexpectedly. What had happened to her warning?

"Sera?" Clary asked tentatively.

The younger Shadowhunter shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. What didn't I see? What went wrong? She had only planned for one possible outcome of her vision; she hadn't considered any of the other chains of causality that could have occurred. And now he's paying for my mistake.

She felt the reassuring, steady presences of the two women with whom she shared so much. One, protected by Ithuriel while he had been imprisoned within a clockwork angel, the other forever altered by his blood. But she couldn't linger in the safety and comfort they provided.

"I've been here too long," Sera whispered as she let her arms fall back to her sides. "I can't stay." She plucked the Sharpie from Clary's mitten and scribbled a phone number on a blank page. "Call my friend, Seraphine Lark. She can help you with all of this." Guilt about not being able to do enough gnawed at her, but she was falling behind, and Seraphine would be a huge help up here.

Clary's eyes were worried behind the brown tint of her goggles as she took the sketchpad back. "But where will you go?"

Sera exhaled slowly, watching as her breath rose in a fog. She hated asking for help, but the sickening vision she had just seen was more than enough to convince her to swallow her pride. Maybe Jem was on to something. She looked out over the ritual site once more before turning her gaze back up to Clary.

"To cash in a favour."

**Author's note:

To @CoraluvMalecForever - as promised, an update for your birthday. :D I stayed up until 3am to make it happen, but I'll be damned if I was going to let you down!

Hopefully the next one won't take so freakin' long. -.-