16Clary
All of them.
The words ricochet through my body, rebounding again and again against my skin.
And, for a moment, the world around me has paused and I'm alone, on a blank field with my thoughts sprouting from the ground, my fears manifesting into things alive around me. I can see what'll happen, see the meticulous tapestry of my plans and efforts being unraveled, thread by thread.
Jonathan Wayland is the strangest, strongest anomaly in the Keep's ranks, but still they'll tie his arms and watch the life slowly slither from his eyes. They'll find out he has the magic of our earth tracing his veins, a timeless, divine power, and exploit it as much as they can, as they've been doing for decades.
Then, they'll exploit me, too, all over again.
The fear hovering over me shrivels, replaced by a crooked anger-determination mix. Alone, I'll have no way of sneaking past the town's borders. I'll be caught too easily, as if picking the petal from a flower. Using Wayland, however . . . using Wayland, the margin that I'll truly make it out stretches, as if picking a root from soil.
My eyes lift to him now, and I'm struck with how many emotions tumble out of him. His eyes are gold works of stifling tactic, the same tactic bred into those of the Keep, and the muscles in his jaw feather when he looks at the disheveled woman at the door, whose unrelentingly loud mouth is starting to spark the annoyance in me.
On a whim, if just to stop her useless, trivial rant, and to not feel entirely helpless, I say, allowing irritation to twirl in my tone, "Fix the daggers you've broken, Wayland." I glance at the woman—who has, indeed, shut up—briefly, and I'm selfishly proud that I'm not a thawing mess on the outside, like she is, though I've all the more reason to be. "They look ridiculous like that. Surely, you'd have been perfectly capable of making a more interesting shape with them."
His smile is sarcastic and sugary, but with a careless twitch of his hand, the daggers once again twinkle confidently under the moonlight dripping through the window.
A retort to what I'd said brims on his lips, but the woman abandons her babbles and speaks understandably now, a tick more composed. "Under the sink, in washroom three rooms down to your left, there's a stash of food and clothes and maps." The balanced, calm shell encasing me cracks when she looks up and down the hallway; her mist-colored eyes seem to tremble. "They'll be in here within minutes—grab the materials and run, Jace. I'll tell them you're staying on the top floor, tell them you're sound asleep. I'll stall." My heart wants to break for her, the small strip of her remaining life she's laying bare for the Keep's soldiers to destroy, but I don't allow it to.
I only feel this bud of respect for her, and then she's gone, footsteps only a fragile whisper on the floors.
Quickly, Wayland says, "Come on," while producing a blade from his backpack, before slinging it on his back. The daggers resting beside me find their way into my steady hands, and as I trail him down the hall, hyperaware of every tremor around me, I find a grin wriggling its way onto my face. Above it all, my life hasn't swelled with this much anticipation, this much danger, in years. It's been a constant stream of boredom and pain, alternating as they pleased. But now, it's all out of balance.
I feel in control, yet it all could erupt into a conflagration of radiant disaster at any moment.
We reach the washroom, and surely, there it is: a heavy-duty satchel made for long journeys across plains of snow and sand, a few weeks' worth of questionable food, a couple of clothes, plus a neatly folded map.
"And we get out of here, how?" I inquire, and, as if a leash is tied from my eyes to his, I trace his vigilant gaze to the window in the room. "Tell me what I'm going to do if someone from the Keep is perched outside that window, Wayland?"
The look he gives me is a sketch of disinterest. "That's not going to happen; amusingly, they all have the stealth of a moping whale." The sentence seems to tie a knot, since I'm suddenly heaving the satchel in my arms, he's promptly lifted the glass of the window, and then, swift as the stroke of a paintbrush, he flips himself out of the room.
"Wonderful," I mumble dully. Following Wayland's every move—every breath, footstep, mannerism—because I've not a chance without him, makes the muscles beneath my skin falter and twitch. He split my shackles, but for what worth? Nevertheless, the perfect shadow, I mirror his movements out of the window, the new shoes on my feet crinkling the lush grass.
A moment of peace drapes itself over my ears, and then it's ripped apart by armies of screams and cries and panic. One glance at the surrounding town tells me the Keep has spread its cunning claws over this place. One glance shows how the doors of houses are being torn open by the Keep's forces, ravaging all that they can in order to find what's been lost. In order to find me.
"Look for cloaks in the bag," Wayland instructs beside me, picking out our surroundings.
My fingers make fast work of undoing the belts of the satchel, lifting the boxes of food and careful not to cut myself on the daggers I'd placed in it. "And if there are none?"
"We'll be noticed far too easily." Wool snags at my fingertips, and I pull at it until the entire piece is in my lap. Indeed, a traveling cloak it is, and it's on my body in seconds. I toss the satchel at Wayland, then take it back once he's found a larger fit of what I'm wearing.
Our thoughts hum the same thing, and we're both melding to the backside of the inn, darkness dancing dynamically around us. I feel suffocated, as if the air itself is plotting to come together and choke me. But while we inch towards the storage houses eastward of the inn, the shouts of the townsfolk building and bubbling, a barrage of footsteps plays loudly to my left, and before any reactions ignite in my brain, Wayland grabs my arm and has me running to catch up with him.
A cluster of petite houses can barely be seen behind the curve of the hill the inn is built on, but the fumes of smoke folding through the sky are indicator enough that they're there.
The footsteps grow louder, and mine grow quicker, skidding down the steepness of the slope. At a point, a truly very inconvenient stone has nudged into my shoes, and another has made me trip, the skin of my hands and face grating against grass, dotted with coarse clumps of dirt.
Wiping my face with a chunk of my cloak, my legs pushing forward automatically, ease floats gently through me at the sight of the soft light from the houses breaking the depthless night. I catch Wayland's form sliding slickly behind one of the homes, simply a cut of shadow clipping in and out of sight. I'm envious of it, how awfully skillful he seems to be.
The cobble of the houses is laced with vines and moss, the warm lights velvety to look at, and it all encloses me as I'm trying to find where Wayland went. My eyes hurtle from one side of me to another, my hands reaching for one of the daggers buried in the satchel. An eerie feeling drips from my heart to my feet, then seeps back up again—the feeling of being watched, every twitch of my body monitored, judged.
I figure quickly enough that it's Wayland, and I turn to glare at him, but then a hand gloved in thick, black material cages my mouth, and an arm, clad in black, pushes against my stomach. It hits the guard that my hands clutches a dagger, because he's twisting my arms around my back, letting go of my mouth.
And I can't even scream. Because then the Keep will know my whereabouts, and I'll be pulled back like a door.
"Not so bright at escaping from anything, are you?" So, so much anger eddies through my very bones, and it's unlikely I'll ever be calm when Velasquez opens his bastard mouth.
"I didn't think I'd have to put in an effort," I say lowly, allowing that anger to singe my voice. "But now, seeing as the most pitiful one of you has found me, it won't be too hard to pull free of you."
A short-lived grin pulls my lips upwards as he snarls, "How I'll savour watching you scream and bleed once I've returned you to where you belong." He slams me against the nearest house, the beautiful cobble now my greatest enemy as it thrashes against my head, my shoulders. It saddens me that the daggers I'd once held are now biting into the exposed flesh of my throat. The rasp of his voice, a voice I've grown to hate, along with many others, is uncomfortable by my ear while he growls, "I'd kill you if I could, filthy bitch. Pity that Valentine treasures you so dearly."
"Jealous of a filthy bitch, Velasquez?" Another voice that twists my veins in the most unnerving, furious way slices in: Wayland. "Frankly, I'd expected a bit worse from you. You were always the most disappointing, I suppose."
A sour laugh trudges from Velasquez's mouth, and he pulls me in front of him once more, the blade fitting itself nicely against my skin. "Don't fucking speak down to me, you son of a whore." The arm at my chest presses with a building's force against me, and I realize it—serum. To increase strength, agility. He could overpower us in less than a minute.
"Call me that again," Wayland challenges, warning blotting the majority of his tone. "I dare you."
"You're a son of a whore, Wayland," Velasquez states, the words oddly cold. "You're a son of a whore and a lying fucking traitor. We gave you everything—everything!" Despite the hood partially casting his face in darkness, the scalding fury shaping to his features is clear as the first puddle of sunlight after a storm. And as he draws his blade from his belt, a sharp zing of pain blossoms on my throat as the chilled metal of the dagger tears my skin. "I'll cut her if you move, Wayland. I'll drain her of her dirty, foul blood, and it'll be all because of you."
For the first time, webs of shock tangle around Wayland. "You wouldn't."
The agility that the serum gives him annoys me, since he's managed to drag the dagger along my right arm before I can take my next breath, and warm crimson slathers my skin. "Oh, but I would."
"You're sick," Wayland throws the words at Velasquez with so much venom that the world seems to shake.
"But you're so much worse, aren't you? You were nothing before the Keep, and you'll be nothing without us. I'd always wondered how a weak fuckup like you could have gotten to such a high position—general Wayland." He lets out a great back-slapping laugh. "And now I know, don't I? Now I know you can lie your way into ruling the world, if you wanted to! Now I know you'd betray and betray until you've got no one." His voice gains a delirious twist to it. "Any more lies, Jonathan Wayland? Or have you gotten sick of yourself?"
"Would it interest you if I had one more lie to tell, Bat? It's quite the exquisite one, though. Even the duller ones would be a bit moved." If Wayland aimed to anger, he hit bull's eye. But his posture is confident, as if he could shift the orbit of the earth if he so wished.
"Burn in hell, Wayland. Burn until you've got nothing but bone left in your pathetic body."
My eyes clack against the tumultuous landscape of Wayland's, and then I understand. I understand this last lie.
And then it happens, all at once. The blade at my throat crumples, metal fragile as paper under Wayland's power. Bolts of rock and mud and sand like lightning in striking Velasquez and me, but I expect the force of the earth revolting against me. As I heave for breath, wanting to clutch my entire body from unrelenting pain, I grab the contorted dagger—maybe I'll just frame this one instead of getting it fixed again—from Velasquez's bruised hand, then I watch the world blend together, an odd painting where all the colors are swished together out of confusion, as I sprint away from both of them.
I haven't noticed until now, but men and women from the surrounding homes have clumped together, and I rush to the closest person, begging for some sort of bandage or water or anything to stop my eyes from zipping closed, to dam the agony rushing through my body.
A small family embraces my battered form, leading me carefully up the steps to their home, where I hope a wonderfully fluffy blanket and divinely warm water reside.
Wayland does say one thing more, so bitter and final that gratification sweeps cleanly through me. "It's written that I burn. But you? You'll live and live until you wish you could have my fate."
A/N: okay but really, this chapter needs heavy editing if anyone's up to beta this story then PM me or smth oof, bc I'm too scared to look over my chapters jdjsjd
I recommend listening to Roslyn by Bon Iver and St. Vincent, btw. I named the story after one of the lyrics. The entire song is layers of just guitar and Bon Iver and St. Vincent singing together. It's simply heavenly, I love it.
Tell me what you think of the chapter and the song, if you listen to it, I'd love to hear it all!
Review for a preview, as always
I watched Aladdin, and it disappointed me more than I expected it to. It's a good movie, right, but then everyone's acting is so mediocre, except for Will fucking Smith. The "oh that's hot!" guy has better acting skills than the whole cast. yikes. i also dreamed of meeting all of Coldplay last night and broke into sobs.
okay bye lol, see you all soon!
- RWMS