6A/N: So here's a teaser from yet another new fic. The first chapter is almost done, but I got distracted by my school fic, The Circle Game. And I really ought to be getting on with the next chapter of Odi et Amo! So I'm going with another sneak preview for now. So many stories, so little time...
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Fairchild Manor, 1987
The studio was at the top of the house: a wide, airy room with tall dormers let into the slates at regular intervals that flooded the space with light. Long ago, before she was born, it had been a training room, but for decades now — ever since the injury which grounded her father for good — it had lain disused and empty, the ropes gently decaying on the walls, the varnished floorboards dulled by layers of grime. She and Luke played up there occasionally as children; she could remember the way their shouts echoed from the rafters, oddly loud in the silence, and the smeary tracks their feet left in the dust. Even at that age, she'd found something melancholy about the vast, derelict room.
Her mother had always had her own studio in of one of the handsome Georgian outbuildings ranged round the stableyard — she liked to say, with a twinkle in her grey eyes that took the sting from her words, that a little distance between an artist and her family was no bad thing. But Jocelyn couldn't imagine using her mother's studio for her own painting. Anyway, Valentine liked the idea of her painting in the house. He said it cleared his mind just knowing she was there under the same roof. "You're the cornerstone of all that I do, Jocelyn — my inspiration and my refuge," he told her again and again. "You know that."
As for getting away from family, that wasn't an issue, not yet anyway; though she supposed she might reconsider her mother's dictum, if and when — a little flutter of elation and apprehension brushed her nerves at the thought — she bore Valentine a child.
So the defunct training gear had been carted away, the windows cleaned, the walls revived with a fresh coat of paint; leaving her mistress of this ridiculously large and splendid studio.
"I'll have to be insanely good to justify a space, like this," she'd protested. "The next Lucian Freud." But Valentine only laughed, his eyes glowing with love and pride.
"You will be, Duchess. You are."
Which was of course preposterous, even making major allowances for the delusions of a newly-married man in love. Privately, Jocelyn sometimes wondered if she'd even manage fair-to-middling, with so many other calls on her time. Between their regular Shadowhunting duties and their work for the Circle, which was expanding in scope and seriousness by the day, it seemed sometimes like she barely got her hands on a paintbrush from one week to the next — not that her art mattered, not compared with the rest; they both knew that.
But today was that rare gift: a totally — miraculously — empty day. Freshly returned from a dangerous and satisfyingly tricky mission clearing up an outbreak of Oni demons beneath an East German stadium, they'd be at the bottom of the Clave's duty roster for some days. Valentine had ridden out early this morning to the Glass City for one of his eternal Council meetings: a plenary session on the proposed reorganization of the network of Shadowhunter Institutes 'to reflect changing mundane geopolitical realities'.
"Fiddling while Rome burns," he'd said bitterly. "As if the infernal worlds cared a toss whether the Third World is industrializing, or the Soviet bloc is in decline."
Or no, that was tomorrow's session, wasn't it? Today was the subcommittee to examine proposals for relaxing the wards that barred foreign Downworlders — those who weren't native-born — from entering Idris. "The Working Party for the Destruction of Idris," Valentine had called it with a flash of savage humour, adding that he'd probably be back late.
"Michael asked me to stop by on my way home." He spoke over his shoulder, already pulling on his riding gloves. "You know how keen he is for news of the Clave's latest follies." The light from the hall window glimmered on his aristocratic cheekbones, the wry curve of his mouth as it twisted in an apologetic half-smile.
His smile hardened. "Though how any idiocy the Council commits can come as news to him, Angel only knows. Our blind march to destruction under Whitelaw's so-called leadership is entirely predictable. But I promised I'd report back on the proceedings. Tell the kitchens they needn't keep supper for me. I'll get something to eat with Michael."
He'd kissed her, rather longer and more thoroughly than either of them had quite intended, and ridden away while the dew was still heavy on the grass.
So it was particularly frustrating that with an entire day lying sparkling before her like a sunlit reach of sea, her painting was going so infuriatingly badly...
All in all, Jocelyn Morgenstern is finding newly-wedded life thoroughly agreeable. But when you're a Shadowhunter, you learn to expect the unexpected — especially if you're married to Valentine! The arrival of two unlooked-for recruits to the Cause will upend more than her quiet day at the easel. The Circle itself may never be quite the same again...
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I hope to start posting this story properly in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for more of the young Jocelyn and Valentine there's my school-era fic, The Circle Game — or fast-forwarding twenty tragic years ahead, you might enjoy Odi et Amo, my Valentine-and-Jocelyn fic set just before City of Bones. You'll find a different sort of glimpse of their relationship in the second chapter of my Jace and Valentine story Discipline. For more romance, you might try my Jace and Clary fic, Permanent Marks.
** UPDATE: now posting this fic under the title of Wednesday's Children **