Chapter 11 "A Turning World"

Jonathan's triumphant smile vanished the second the nails of my left hand had reached his cheek and scratched it open. His head tilted in an elusive move, his legs staggered for a brief moment, but he had expected me to throw myself at him. His head hit the stone-floor and a gasp escaped his lips.

He needed exactly three seconds to orient himself. I felt the muscles of his arms tense up and then, he pushed me aside. My sight was weak. Due to the pain I could barely see his outlines, and when I lost the contact to the ground and his body, I was at his mercy.

Confused and disoriented, I wheezed for air and blindly tried to get his arms away from my shoulders. My body's pain came back all at once. Angrily, I pressed my lips together, so no sound would come across my lips. I was too weak to flee his grasp. All I could do was to look up, in hopes to identify anything.

When the next wave of pain ebbed away, my sight became clearer. I heard quiet murmurs from the background. Then, my body lost contact to the floor, and someone pulled me to my feet. I stumbled backwards and almost plunged again.

Valentine had ascended from my mother's body and interposed himself between Jonathan and me. He rose his hand imperiously. His face equaled an emotionless mask, the lips firmly pressed together. But his hands were shaking.

"This isn't the way siblings should behave", he finally said with a toneless voice, but he still sounded authoritative. "Clarissa, it'd be stupid of you not to accompany us back to Idris. All those sacrifices would've been in vain." Unlike Jonathan, he gave me a choice. He didn't want to have anyone by his side who didn't support his actions and ideologies themselves.

And now I was standing there, staggering and covered in blood. Meanwhile, the room spun slower, but it was still difficult to breathe. This short moment of silence made me pause and I wondered what I was doing here all along. I turned my head and looked at Adam, who was withhold from reaching us by a horde of demons, just as all the other Shadowhunters. No party attacked the other. For the Nephilim, a fight would have ended in a defeat anyway.

Alec still lay motionless on the marble floor while Isabelle knelt over him. Maryse stood behind her but seemed at odds as to which event to focus her attention on. Jace stood to one side, in a combat ready stance, his seraph blade in his right hand. He had to squeeze his hand with all his strength, because from here I could see his veins bulging on his forearms. My gaze traveled up to his face and for a moment his eyes met mine and time stopped again.

The look in his eyes had changed. The painful expression had been replaced by a cool, almost detached one. I felt my stomach twist. I didn't know what think of this.

"Clarissa." I flinched as if he had hit me. My father was waiting for a response, but I had already come to a decision.

I nodded and tried to approach him with steady steps. Valentine's face softened as he saw my reaction and outstretched his hand in my direction. With huge effort, I raised my arm and took hold of his hand. His skin felt rough and uneven. When I stood directly in front of him, I stopped and looked up at him. Then, I flung my arms around his neck.

I felt my father tense for a second, surprised by my reaction. Then he responded to my hug. Valentine had never been a man of huge emotions. I broke away from him and glanced over his shoulder to Jonathan, who eyed us skeptically.

Slowly and cautiously, I made a step aside and stood askew to my father now, Jonathan was only two meters away. "To be honest, I didn't expect you to change your mind", my brother said, and his voice was ice cold.

"Sometimes people surprise you", I answered and this time he was the one who didn't see it coming. With surpassing speed, my hand wandered to my father's belt, grabbed a dagger and tossed it at Jonathan at full tilt. A split second later, the dagger bored into his chest, directly into his heart.

When he tried to react, it was already too late. Jonathan screamed and I flinched. My father turned around with lightning speed and wanted to grab my arm, but I had known that he would do so. I had already closed my eyes, collected my last power and jumped backwards. My feet landed in safe distance to both of them.

The pain in my limbs forced me to crouch down. My knees touched the ground and Jonathan started to yell in anger, while he surveyed the dagger still sticking in his chest. I caught my breath. With an angry snort and a contemptuous movement, he ripped the dagger out of his chest and threw it to the ground, clanking. A dark gush of blood gushed from the wound, down his fighting gear. Too much blood. But he didn't seem to care, as if I hadn't harmed a hair on his head. He fixed me with a wild expression in his eyes instead and teared forward.

Just now, I realized that I had no weapon to defend myself. I perched on the floor, breathing hard, and could barely feel my legs beneath me. Every inch of my body screamed in pain and the demon's poison still ran through my veins.

But Jonathan didn't reach me. Several things happened coincidently. Before Jonathan could run his sword through my chest, Jace had sneaked past the demons and was now standing with his back turned on me. He shielded me. All his muscles were tensed, and he defensively held his seraph blade in the air in front of him. I could catch a glimpse of Jonathan, he hadn't slowed down and struck the Soul Sword down at Jace's blade with all his power. The metallic sound made me cringe.

When Jonathan lunged for a next hit, a cracking noise from the corridor that led to the hall resonated. Not a second later, a mass of people in black clothes stormed into the hall. Shadowhunters.

"The Clave", I heard Valentine say. "Jonathan, it's time."

But Jonathan shook his head and clutched his teeth. "I'll kill both of you", he hissed. "You for your foolishness, Herondale. And you, little sister, I will kill slowly and painfully." Nothing more than an agonizing sound escaped my lips.

"Jonathan", Valentine called again. The Clave had immediately started to attack the demons and tried to fight their way through to Valentine. The man they had believed dead for eighteen years.

This time, Jonathan obeyed, if only reluctantly. "I can't wait to see you again. We'll find you." Then, he turned around and ran towards my father. A moment later, they were gone, vanished into thin air. The demons disappeared with them.

My legs couldn't hold me anymore and I fell on my knees again. For a short period of time, I just crouched there at the ground and didn't know what to do next. There was no next step for me. I slowly raised my head and my eyes looked for my mother. Her red hair was shaggy scattered at the marble ground and blood-soaked. Her light skin seemed to have lost every color. The soft hands were clenched to fists and the Shadowhunter gear looked heavy and misshapen over her body, its color darker than usual.

It felt as if I went through a portal. My gaze was directed away into the distance and in front of my inner eye, I was at a completely different place, far away from here. From afar, I heard voices calling my name. I felt numb touches across my body and at the edge of my view, I perceived some human shadows. But I couldn't move; I was unable to answer. It felt like a never-ending nightmare. A couple of pictures ran past me. Moments, memories and emotions. Laughter, crying, anger, fear, love.

Only the burning pain of an Iratze brought me back to the present. Maryse, Adam and a Shadowhunter I didn't recognize sat in front of me. Maryse squeezed my arm, saying something I didn't understand, and I could see tears in her eyes. Adam had bended forward and drew another rune on my skin. But it would avail to nothing. Iratzes didn't help against demonic poison, it could only be treated on another way.

I didn't regard any of them. Instead, I stared past them up to Jace, who was still standing at the exact same spot as minutes before, only that he was now facing me. He looked at me with a disconcerting expression in his eyes. I couldn't endure any of this a second longer.

Ignoring Maryse and Adam, I sat up. I must have looked terrible and I felt just like that, like a wreck. Without any vital energy left to live. I said nothing, turned around and tried to walk as stable as possible while I left the hall through one of the corridors. I never looked back. I didn't want my eyes to rest on my mother's body. I wasn't sure if I was able to bear it. They called my name but didn't follow me. If they had seen the demon bite me, they wouldn't have let me go. Only Jace had seen it.

Nobody took note of me while I heaved myself through the hallway. As soon as I was out of sight, I stopped faking the stable walk. The pain and disorientation grew with every step I took. Every step that brought me further away from my mother's body made it worse. As if she didn't want me to leave her there, alone with foreign Shadowhunters. At some point, I started whimpering and my sight blurred. I didn't know where I was walking. My fingers stretched towards the wall and with a sob, I let myself fall forward.

With my head leaning against the wall, I sat on the ground and screamed my lungs off. My body shook so heavily I had the feeling that my heartbeat accommodated itself to the shakes. I tasted the salty tears on my tongue and felt the warmth in my reddened cheeks. I didn't care if someone heard me. Should the archangel himself hear me and liberate me from this misery. My hysterical cries gave me the last anchor that I had at this moment. I didn't care what would happen to me when the demonic poison reached my vital organs or when Jonathan came back to finish me.

"Come on, then", I heard myself shout while I hit my first against the wall in anger. An agonizing sob followed my outcry. "Kill me, there's no reason for me to stay!"

But Jonathan didn't come, didn't free me from my pain. Instead, another voice answered me and called my name in an almost careful manner. In a way I had never heard him speak to me before. And in every other situation, I would have probably been surprised or even relieved about it, but right now I wasn't ready for him to turn soft.

"Go away", I snapped at Jace without raising my head from the wall. It should have sounded angry and threatening, but it was nothing than a miserable cry instead.

I kept my eyes closed and still felt his presence when he crouched next to me on the floor. "You have to be treated by someone", he just retorted. Of course, I knew what he was talking about, but I didn't care at all.

"Since when are you interested in my wellbeing? It was you who wanted to kill me by your own hands. Here's your chance." I tried to control my sobbing. To cry in front of him gave me the feeling of weakness.

"Clary", said Jace and this time, I raised my head and a boiling pain shot down my back and let me gasp. His golden eyes rested on me and again, there was this pain in his look. Brokenness. As if he tried to weigh something.

My eyelids fluttered and dizziness captured me. The sight of him blurred in front of my eyes. His grip around my waist was the last thing I felt.