Shadowwings – Genesis

Title: Shadowwings – Genesis
Author: Claire Watson (myredturtle)
Fandom: Shadowhunters
Warnings: Canon child neglect, canon violence
Content Rating: M
Word Count: 18,400
Summary: For as long as Alec could remember, he had been fascinated by wings.

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Chapter one

For as long as Alec could remember, he had been fascinated by wings. His earliest memories around the subject were vague; the one that stuck out the clearest was of looking at a glorious statue of an angel, wings outspread, bow in hand. He’d wanted to stay and look, but his mother had no patience for his meandering and dragged him away. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he saw that statue again, on a rare trip to London.

Then his sister, Isabelle, was born, capturing the lion’s share of his previously single-minded attention. Alec was a practical boy, though and combined his two obsessions by sharing his thoughts and ideas on the subject with his baby sister. It was wonderful to have someone that would listen to him.

Izzy—growing and developing under his watchful eye and enthusiastic instruction—was almost as entranced with wings as her brother was. Together they would search out what information they could find, starting with illustrations and then—as they grew a little older and started reading—the text that accompanied them.

Maryse and Robert Lightwood allowed, rather than encouraged, this pursuit. Their principal concern was that their children were excelling in all the areas that Shadowhunter children were supposed to excel in. With that taken care of, the Lightwood parents showed indifference to leisure pastimes; providing they weren’t bringing shame to the family name with uncouth behaviour, of course.

Alec quickly learned that it was useless to ask them for help to do anything that wasn’t furthering the future already planned out for him. He instead searched for ways to make his ongoing preoccupation fit in with his training. He hit pay-dirt when he discovered a copy of an ancient Shadowhunter text that depicted Jonathan Shadowhunter, flanked by his sister Abigail and his parabatai David, all three of them sporting massive wings. This was very promising indeed.

After careful evaluation of the adults available to him, he asked his primary teacher and trainer, Hodge Starkweather, about it.

Hodge laughed. “Hoping to fly, little angel?” he teased. “I’m going to have to disappoint you, I’m afraid. They’re just pictures. Historically, all Nephilim were portrayed as having wings, no doubt as a symbolic reference to our angelic heritage. About five hundred years later, they only bothered to give the most revered figures’ wings, and then a couple of centuries after that the trend of adding wings to illustrations and statues dropped off entirely.”

Alec stared up at his teacher, thinking about what he’d said. The most useful part was the implication that older books would have a lot more wings in them. He already knew that there were older and rarer tomes held in special preservation chambers in the Great Library. If he wanted to get his hands on them, he’d need to convince his parents to take him and Izzy to Alicante and then to arrange for them to have access to ancient texts. Or—and this seemed an easier and altogether more realistic undertaking—if he developed a reputation as a serious historian then he might get access on his own merits. He might even be able to get some of the less critical works sent out to the Institute.

Alec blinked at Hodge and gave him a solemn nod. Might as well get started right away. “David the Silent broke his parabatai bond to become a Silent Brother,” he ventured. “Did that hurt Jonathan? Did David know it was going to?”

v^v^v^v

Aside from his ‘wing thing’—as his parents called it—Alec worked hard to become the ideal Shadowhunter. In memory of that statue so long ago, he chose the bow as his primary weapon; although that didn’t mean that he slacked off with his staff or blade training, or his hand-to-hand practice.

On his ninth birthday, he had his rune ceremony. A week later, Alec left for Idris and the Great Library in Alicante. Maryse and Robert had a meeting with the head of the Athens Institute, so Izzy and Hodge saw him off at the portal. Hodge clapped him on the shoulder and stood back. Izzy—who had done a good job of hiding how unhappy she was that he was going somewhere that she didn’t yet have the clearance to follow—hugged him tightly.

“Stay out of trouble, big brother.”

“You too.” Alec tweaked her nose. “I’ll be back before you know it, and I’ll bring back copies of anything interesting I find.”

Izzy wrinkled her nose. “While you’re gone I’m going to take a look at the more mechanical side of things. I was thinking of biology and the workings of mammalian and avian bodies—with a side speciality of Downworlder physiology and anatomy. After all, Downworlders sometimes have wings. We’ve got to have some documentation on it.”

“That’s a great idea, Iz,” Alec said thoughtfully. “Get Hodge to send me a fire message if you discover something you want from Alicante.”

Izzy pushed him gently towards the portal. “Go! The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back.”

v^v^v^v

Alec had made quick trips to Alicante before, but being there by himself felt different. The Lightwood house, always large and quiet, seemed daunting when he was the only one inside. He’d never slept there before and found himself lying wide awake well into the night. He missed the smell of his bed. He missed Izzy and the familiarity of their schedule. He missed the familiar warmth of the New York Institute, never having been away for longer than a few hours.

For all that most of the Shadowhunters that he met daily praised Idris and spoke of their longing to be back there, Alec really couldn’t see the draw. There was an emptiness there, a sterility that was foreign to what he was used to. There wasn’t even anything that he could put his finger on; it was just the way the place made him feel. Still, he had his self-imposed mission to accomplish and resolved to just put up with it for a while.

He might have been looking for information on wings and how they related to Shadowhunters, but that wasn’t all that Alec found in his search of the archives in Alicante. He was leafing through a book on recent Clave history while waiting for a librarian to be free when mention of his family name caught his eye.

That was how he discovered the part that his parents had played in the Uprising. The book didn’t go into detail, but their names were there in black and white, right next to the sentences they’d received when they were found guilty.

Alec stared at the book as he considered the implications this information had on him and his sister.

Suddenly his parents’ insistence that he and Izzy be perfect and do nothing that might disgrace the Lightwood name took on new significance. With that thought came the realisation that nothing they did would ever be good enough. This expectation of constant perfection was never going to end. Izzy and Alec were to be proxies for their parents, countervailing their crimes and expiating their guilt.

“Fuck that,” Alec said aloud, slamming the book closed and pushing it away. There was no way he was going to allow them to treat Izzy like this anymore.

Then there was Hodge to consider.

It was no secret that Hodge had been a Circle member, that he’d been tried and found guilty, and that he was sentenced to the New York Institute, unable to leave the wards on pain of death. His mark, the circle on his neck, was on display for all to see. Hodge’s relative isolation, as a result, had been understandable. He spent most of his time training, sparring with active Shadowhunters, or assisting with weapons-care.

Despite his criminal status, for years now he had been listed as the primary practical instructor to Alec and Izzy, whose parents were too busy with important Institute business to see to the matter themselves.

Though he was only obliged to train them physically, Hodge had always been on hand to help them with whatever they needed. Aside from Izzy, Alec would have said that Hodge was the person he was closest to.

The unfairness of it struck him, as he sat there mulling over the fact that this was hidden from him and his sister. His parents were free to come and go, were actually running the New York Institute, and Hodge was a shackled prisoner. It didn’t seem right. It was all too obvious how it had happened. Robert and Maryse Lightwood were from old, moneyed and previously reputable and influential families; and Hodge Starkweather was poor, unknown, had no influential friends who were willing to speak for him, nothing but his fighting skills and knowledge of history to recommend him to anyone.

Privilege and politics. The misdeeds of the wealthy ignored while the poor were made to pay again and again.

Court records related to the Uprising were in the restricted section. Alec fully intended to find out just what his parents had done since it was obvious that they never intended to tell him.

The civilian who ran the library repeatedly refused him access. It was a frustrating few days, in which Alec was first fobbed off with obvious falsehoods and then told that he shouldn’t worry about it because it didn’t concern him and that he was too young to understand.

Fuming, Alec finally realised that if he wanted honesty, he was going to have to talk to the Silent Brothers. They might refuse to answer his questions; they might even refuse to see him. What he could be certain they would not do, at least, was lie to him. It was worth a try.

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. People weren’t allowed to ‘pop in’ to the Silent City. Visitors were screened, their entries and exits were logged, and they were escorted at all times.

Fortunately, Alec’s prior efforts to gain a reputation as a history buff came in handy. This—along with his generally serious demeanour and several earnest but extremely esoteric questions to the Clave representative in charge of admission—managed to get him a pass to examine some of the older tomes, books that were essentially relics. They were kept under specific conditions for their safety and were available for viewing only by appointment. Alec’s appointment was scheduled for the next day.

That done, Alec went back to the Lightwood house and spent several hours in the basement training room, trying to psych himself up for what was going to happen. The Silent Brothers were scary. They looked scary, with their sewn-together mouths and their pale skin. Everything he’d ever read about them only enhanced that impression. He’d only ever seen one once in person, and that was at the Institute and while he was surrounded by normal people. He’d felt brave for facing Brother Samuel unflinchingly at his rune ceremony. Being alone with one in the City of Bones was going to be another level of scary altogether.

Jittering with nerves, Alec arrived early. With an hour to spare, he took some time to walk around the public part of the museum dedicated to the Nephilim and everything they’d done since Jonathan Shadowhunter had first drunk from the Mortal Cup.

He ended up in front of an out of the way alcove that held a sculpture of the moment that Raziel bestowed the Mortal Instruments on his chosen one. It was old and worn, and once again Jonathan Shadowhunter had wings, although close inspection showed that they were depicted merely as smaller versions of Raziel’s more magnificent plumage. Alec wondered if this was another expression of artistic licence or if he could add it to the evidence that he’d been collecting. He was now sure that in the beginning, Shadowhunters all had wings. Where or why they disappeared, he hadn’t been able to figure out yet, but he was certain—in a way that he couldn’t explain—that his theory was correct.

Hour nearly up, he made his way back to the arched doorway and presented his token. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and walked through.

v^v^v^v

His entry into the Silent City gave him something new to think about. All of the reading he’d done had talked of the City of Bones as a place to be feared, warned that its very walls exuded a sense of its purpose that made those traversing it feel small and unwelcome.

Instead, he was enveloped in a sensation of warmth similar to what he’d been missing from home. He followed the clearly delineated path; small glowing lights were hanging magically in the air, lighting his way. They led him to a large room, once more lit only by a few of those glowing lights. In the dim distance, he could make out rows of books, their spines facing towards him in invitation.

Alec really wanted to go over and look, to see what amazing things might be kept here, but he figured it would probably be better to wait for some guidance, or at least till he got permission. No one who cared for their books wanted a stranger messing them up, and that was a pretty impressive shelving job, after all.

Dragging his eyes away from the siren call that the books were sending his way, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Without him noticing, seven Silent Brothers had appeared and were now arrayed behind him.

Seeing so many of them standing together, in the flesh…it was a pretty big shock.

“Uh, hi,” he said, trying to sound calm, in control, and not like he was three seconds away from running screaming back to the New York Institute to hide under his bed.

‘Welcome,’ one of the Brothers projected into his mind. ‘We have been waiting a long time for one such as you, Alexander Gideon Lightwood.’

v^v^v^v

Alec returned to New York with a new area of focus in addition to his ongoing obsession with wings. His interest in history had been diverted less into ancient battles, and more into ancient treaties.

The night of his return Izzy sneaked into his room so that they could talk privately about things they didn’t necessarily want getting back to their parents.

“So, what did the Silent Brothers say?” she asked, excitement making her eyes gleam in the dim light. They were sitting curled up on his bed, eating from the box of fancy chocolates he’d brought back for her.

“We were right!” Alec replied, remembering the feeling of triumph that had slid through him at the confirmation of his theory. “That’s pretty much all they would tell me, though. Brother Samuel told me that for the moment, that was all that was allowed; if I pass the tests, I’ll learn more.”

Izzy frowned. “Well, that’s a bummer. What tests?”

“I know,” Alec agreed. “And he wouldn’t tell me, only that they would come and that I’d know them when they did. It was kind of weird how excited they all were about it, though.” He made a face. “But he also said that if the circumstances dictate, he and the other brothers would be happy to be of service.”

“‘Be of service?’” Izzy parroted. “What a strange thing for them to say. Be of service, how?”

“I know,” Alec said feelingly. “I think I know why he said it though. I ‘happened’ to find a text that laid out the oaths a Silent Brother takes, and they have to do their best to obey the most recent directives of the highest-ranking Shadowhunter.”

“No single Shadowhunter holds the position of highest rank,” Izzy pointed out. “Technically the Council holds that position collectively.”

Alec just shrugged.

“The Silent Brothers somehow expect you to become highly ranked enough that they’ll be able to answer your questions,” Izzy said slowly. “Alec, you’re nine. That’s a whole lot of expectation from a group of strangers. Unless that’s not what they meant. Do you think that’s what they meant?”

“That’s the only conclusion that I’ve come to,” Alec agreed. “Brother Samuel sounded pretty final, so I’m pretty sure that’s all I’ll be getting from them for now.”

“So, not the full revelation we were hoping for, but not a kick in the teeth either,” Izzy concluded.

“Exactly. On a different note, a little bird told me that you’ve been pretty busy while I haven’t been here to keep you out of trouble.”

Izzy flushed with pleasure and gave him an update on what had gone on with her.

Before Alec’s trip to Idris, he had pretty much been the focus of Izzy’s days. They would train together, study together, eat and do their chores together. In the void left by his absence, Izzy had tentatively dipped her toe into science. She’d quickly discovered that her strong interest in the biological side of the profession they had been born to matched an aptitude that had the healers and researchers alike drooling at the thought of being able to grow her potential.

Aside from her enjoyment at being good at something she found fascinating, Izzy was thrilled to find an area of expertise where she could shine, well out from under her brother’s shadow. It felt amazing to not always have her achievements measured against his and found wanting.

“I love you, big brother,” she said earnestly, “and I’m proud as anything when you cane the academy trained snots whenever they get too uppity, but it’s nice to have something all of my own.”

“It’s not fair to compare yourself to someone with two whole years more training than you have,” Alec said firmly. “And wow, Izzy, that’s incredible! Have you thought about where you’d like to specialise? I know you too well to think for one second that you’d be content to be anything less than the best in some field or other.”

Izzy dropped her eyes to where her hands were twisting in her lap. “You don’t think I should concentrate on healing, since it’s the most prestigious and lucrative? Mom said that—”

Alec stiffened. “Ignore what she said,” he instructed her, not trying to keep just how angry he was out of his voice and body language.

Izzy stared at him. “What?”

“Mom made her own choices,” Alec said carefully. “So did dad. They did what they thought was best for them. You should concentrate on what you think is best for you.” He tried for a lighter tone. “Unless I think it’s a bad idea, of course. Then you have to stop what you’re doing right away and obey my commands.”

Izzy uncurled one leg and shoved him off the bed with her foot. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” She waited until he’d retaken his seat before looking at him searchingly. “What’s going on, big brother?”

Alec sighed. “I wanted to get my head around it a bit more before sharing this with you.” He propped a pillow up behind his back and got comfortable, waiting for Izzy to do the same. “So. Think about what we know about the Uprising, about the Circle. Rebellion against the Clave, Shadowhunters fighting and murdering each other, and Downworlders dropping like flies. I know you’re aware that Hodge was a Circle member, that he was punished with exile and that he can’t leave the Institute on pain of death. That’s pretty much what you know, right?”

Izzy nodded with a slight frown. “I did look deeper into it, but there isn’t much available,” she replied. “The Clave is too afraid it’ll give us fledglings ideas, I suppose.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Alec agreed. “Well, in Alicante, I found out the true reason why all the literature we have here has been rather heavily redacted. It’s not some edict handed down by the Clave so that we don’t find out something unsavoury about them; it’s an edict handed down by mom and dad so that we don’t find out that they were members of Valentine’s Circle.”

Izzy recoiled, shock written all over her face. “What!?”

“Oh yes,” Alec said grimly. “Rather prominent members, in fact.”

Izzy’s eyes lit with fury. “Our parents come and go all the time! They run this Institute! Why would Hodge be stuck here, and not them?” She blinked. “Is it because his family was poor? Is that the vaunted Clave justice that we’re expected to serve?” She took several calming breaths. “Okay, sorry. I know you would have looked into it. Why such different sentences?”

“Yes, well it seems that while Maryse and Robert were happy enough murdering Downworlders with Valentine and their bunch, they were less enthusiastic about killing fellow Shadowhunters. I wasn’t able to find much on the circumstances of Hodge’s capture—to be honest, I didn’t look that hard—but mom and dad surrendered to the Clave when it was clear that their attack was doomed,” Alec said. “Personally, I just think that they realised that there was no way the Uprising could succeed and decided to accept defeat. They were granted leniency. Hodge…was not.”

“So, two prominent and wealthy people get a slap on the wrist, while the poor loner is sentenced to something that amounts to daily torture,” Izzy said furiously. “How long are they going to keep this up? Will his sentence ever be over, or is this all he has to look forward to until he dies?”

“Hodge can’t talk about anything Circle related,” Alec revealed. “It’s part of his sentence, enforced by the same curse that keeps him here.”

“He trains us so well,” Izzy said, voice softening, “that you and I are both considered by pretty much everyone to be ‘naturally skilled,’; we’re rated that highly for our age. It’s not just the fighting skills, either. If you think about it, he’s been teaching us that we should be wary; that we shouldn’t trust sweet words but should demand to see evidence. He’s always pushing us to do our own research before accepting something. He’s been training us so that we don’t become him. So that we get the benefit of his mistakes. Our parents, on the other hand…”

“Our parents don’t care if we’re miserable or if we’re happy, so long as everything we do reflects well on the Lightwood name,” Alec finished. “Well, dad seems less obsessed with it, but mom…”

“I thought there must be something wrong with me,” Izzy said, dropping her chin again. “Even at the top of my year group, nothing I do ever pleases her enough, I’m never as good as—”

“As me,” Alec said with a sigh. “I’ve told you before, that’s an unfair comparison. I’ve had twice the training that you have, and I’m taller and have longer reach. I don’t know if the way she constantly gets on your back about not being better than me is some weird way to get you to train harder or something, but it’s utter rubbish. You are incredible, and skilled, and smart, and—”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Izzy said with one of the sweet smiles that were becoming rarer the older she got. “I love you too, big brother.”

Alec smiled back, and they leaned companionably together, shoulder to shoulder. Finally, he spoke. “At first I was angry with Hodge as well as mom and dad,” he said. “He knew and didn’t tell us. But over the last week I’ve come to see that once he was sentenced, there was no real way he could have done anything differently. Well,” he corrected himself, “he could have not bothered to train us so hard, I guess. No one would have blamed him if he’d just done what was required. No one was forcing him to devise strategies for us, and to work so hard on our situational awareness.”

Izzy laughed. “If I never see another water gun again, I won’t complain.”

Alec hesitated for a moment and then decided to just come out and say it. “I want to try and find a way to set him free,” he said all in a rush.

She stared at him. “You’re nine. I’m seven. You really think that we can do that? Undo whatever it is that the Clave did to him and let him go, all without getting caught and winding up taking his place?”

“Yes,” Alec replied, heart in his throat. “Brother Samuel told me that due to their oaths, the Silent Brothers had to perform certain actions as the Clave commanded, but that it was a perversion of the runes. He didn’t come right out and tell me that there would be a way around it, but when you read between the lines…”

Izzy was silent for a minute. “You know that if we let anyone know that we know and that we think that what they’re doing is wrong, if we even look like we want to free him, it will only end up worse for him.”

“I know,” Alec agreed, relieved that she was on the same page as him. “Brother Samuel was very helpful, actually, for someone who didn’t give me what I actually went for. I’m pretty sure he wants me to come back. Would you be interested in coming with me? When you’ve gone through your Rune Ceremony, that is?”

“That won’t be for another two years, at least,” Izzy reminded him.

Alec shrugged. “Or more, if you want to split your focus, concentrate harder on the squidgy internal organs and stuff. The runes aren’t going anywhere, after all. Neither are the Silent Brothers. In the end, the only one you have to answer to is yourself.”

Izzy’s smile lit her face like a rising sun. “You’re right,” she nearly breathed. “I don’t have to hold myself to her impossible standards anymore.”

“Unless you want to,” Alec amended. “So long as you know that you tried your best, I think that’s enough. You and me, we’re done paying a price that we could never hope to pay, trying to make up for something that we never took part in. What we do from now on? We’ll do it for us, we’ll do it for our fellow Shadowhunters and the Downworlders who share this world with us, and we’ll do it for the Angel. Screw anyone else.”

“Screw everyone else!” Izzy echoed, eyes gleaming with fire and purpose.

Chapter two

True to the promise they’d made each other, both Izzy and Alec stopped trying so hard to please their exacting mother, striving to make each other proud instead. It’s possible that no-one but Hodge noticed though since he was the only one who seemed to really care about why they were driving themselves to new heights of excellence.

Hodge had no incentive to mention their training motivations to anyone and just seemed glad to see his charges excel, telling them that the skills they were learning would help keep them alive once they started going on regular missions. He frequently squashed any overconfidence they showed, and he ensured that no aspect of battle was neglected.

Then, just before Izzy’s Rune Ceremony—held when she was ten, unlike her brother who had his at nine—Jace Wayland came to live with them.

Jace’s upbringing had been similar to what theirs had been, only without Hodge’s kindness to offset his father’s harsh training, and without a sibling to confide in and keep close. Then, his father had been killed as some sort of revenge—whether it was on Valentine’s instructions or because he’d been part of Valentine’s Circle, it was unclear. But Jace was determined to avenge his father in either case and, given his skills, he would probably manage to achieve that, so long as he didn’t go off half-cocked.

Suddenly Alec was no longer the best fighter in his age bracket. Jace was over a year younger than him and was stronger, faster, and generally better. He tried not to take it to heart, tried to use it as an impetus to train harder and improve, and did his best not to blame Jace. He comforted himself that it was probably good for him and that if it was bothering him this much, then his ego had probably needed to be punctured.

There was also something almost magnetic about Jace, and Alec found himself drawn to him on more than one level. Maryse and Robert were thrilled with their new son, with his excellence at all the things a Shadowhunter was supposed to be excellent at. Izzy liked him too, and before too long it seemed—to the Lightwoods at least—like Jace had always been living with them. It took Jace a little longer to accept that he really fit, but that was only to be expected.

Not long after Jace joined them, Maryse announced a new pregnancy. Alec was thrilled at the thought of having another sibling and immediately began planning ways to ensure that his new brother or sister had as much support as they needed. Alec and Izzy had drawn strength from each other and his new sibling wouldn’t have that bond. Hopefully, they wouldn’t need it.

Max’s birth ended up being the catalyst that made Jace truly commit himself to being one of the family. As Alec watched, the prickly and sometimes aloof boy was broken open and remade by the simple fact that he was trusted with this small and delicate being that adored him. He stopped trying to convince Alec and Izzy that personal attachments were a weakness to be exploited and began to respond to, and return, their care.

Despite the pull he felt to Jace, Alec wasn’t quite ready to trust him with all of his secrets immediately—the ongoing quest to find a way to free Hodge, in particular, was too precarious to risk. Given Jace’s perfectly natural feelings about Valentine and the Circle, Alec and Izzy decided it was best to just keep that part—and Maryse and Robert’s history—to themselves.

Alec did tell Jace about his investigations into angelic wings, though. To start with, Jace seemed to pass it off as a harmless obsession, much the same as Robert and Maryse did. As time went by, and Alec and Izzy discussed new evidence as it was gathered, his interest was piqued. He began to see just why Alec and Izzy were so intrigued and started wondering what it could all mean. Why Shadowhunter history used to be awash with pictures of wings and poetical references to wings, and the possible reasons why that changed over the centuries.

On the morning of his thirteenth birthday, Alec woke up feeling like he’d been run over by a steamroller, or like he’d done a nine-hour training session with no breaks. Every muscle in his body ached, particularly the ones over his shoulders and down his back.

It was pure luck that Izzy came in while he was getting dressed, walking in with her usual unconcern for his modesty.

“Alec!” she gasped, eyes wide and mouth open.

Alec looked down at the jeans he was just buttoning. Was there something wrong? Did they have something on them that he hadn’t noticed? He looked up again, seeing that Izzy had moved around so that she could get a good view of his back. “Are these jeans stained or something? Izzy? Izzy!”

“By the Angel, Alec, they’re beautiful!” Izzy whispered. “When did you get them done? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Get what done?” Alec asked, getting annoyed. “What are you talking about, Izzy? You’re not making any sense.”

“Very funny Alec,” she replied, looking unimpressed. Her expression slowly changed. “Oh. You actually…you don’t know!”

“Know what?”

“Here,” she said, dragging him over to stand with his back to the dresser with the mirror on it that was tucked into a corner. “Now, look over your shoulder.”

Alec did as she asked, and then nearly sprained something in his neck trying to get a better look. There on his back was a stylised representation of—

“Wings,” Alec breathed. “There are wings on my back.”

v^v^v^v

He got into a lot of trouble for ‘sneaking out to get an illegal tattoo, what were you thinking, Alec?’ but decided that it was probably better for him, in the long run, to be thought slightly rebellious than to become some sort of test subject for the Clave.

Izzy and Jace were the only ones in the Institute that he felt comfortable revealing the true nature of his new wings to, that they had appeared on their own. “Maybe the Silent Brothers will know more?” he suggested, running fingers over his skin, trying to feel the edge of the markings. As of yet, he was unable to discern any textural difference between marked skin and his usual skin.

“I’m coming with you this time,” Izzy declared.

“Me too,” Jace promised. “We need to find out if having these here is going to hamper your ability to use runes, or if they’re going to affect a parabatai bond.”

v^v^v^v

Alec had never seen the Silent Brothers so excited. They couldn’t—or maybe wouldn’t—tell Alec anything about where his new wing markings had come from or why, but they were able to assure Jace that there would be no negative impact on a parabatai bond. They also advised Alec that he would only be able to use runes on areas of skin that didn’t have any wing markings on them.

“Maryse and Robert are going to be pissed,” Izzy said, sounding slightly too gleeful at the prospect.

“I really don’t care,” Alec replied, wondering if he could put his shirt on again. It wasn’t as if he was ashamed of his bare skin, but the City of Bones was a weird place to be shirtless in. He’d already stood still while one of the Brothers made a careful record, including a sketch that looked almost as real as a photograph.

Three more Silent Brothers approached, obviously hoping to get a glimpse of his new back art. He sighed and turned so they had a better view. That made nearly thirty all up. Until that day he hadn’t been aware that there even were thirty Silent Brothers. Seeing them all in one place was kind of eerie.

“They sure are excited,” Jace observed with a smirk. “Mind you, it’s probably years since they’ve seen naked skin. Hey Alec, do you think if you did a little dance, they might stuff money in your waistband?”

Alec just gave Jace a withering look before turning to Brother Samuel. “How much longer is this going to take?” he asked.

‘Two more of our Brothers are on their way,’ Brother Samuel replied. ‘Forgive us our interest, Alexander. There were many who believed that the days of blessed were gone, never to return. You bring much joy and hope to us.’

“Well, I’m glad I could help,” Alec said. “You sure that there’s nothing you can tell me? Nothing at all?”

‘I’m afraid we are unable to help any more than we already have,’ Brother Samuel said, regret clear in his eyes. ‘I promise you that there will come a time when all your questions will be answered.’

v^v^v^v

It was around that time that Alec came to the inescapable conclusion that he was gay.

In a lot of ways, it was extremely scary. Shadowhunter society didn’t openly persecute homosexuality, but there was an unspoken stigma against it. Those with ‘leanings’ were encouraged to ignore them and concentrate on producing the next generation. Arranged marriages amongst the more influential families were not uncommon, and Alec had grown up knowing that, as the eldest, his parents would probably pick his wife for him.

Discovering he was gay was like being able to shed the last of the chains that had been holding him to his parents’ expectations. His parents didn’t bother to hide their horror, but both Izzy and Jace were fully supportive of him.

Hodge only shook his head when they told him. “You just can’t do anything the easy way, can you?” he asked. “I do admire your bravery. The path that you walk just got so much harder.”

Hodge was right. While Alec wasn’t precisely flaunting his sexuality, he had decided that there was no point in hiding it either. It didn’t take long before the whispers started, before he stopped being praised when he outfought his peers, before his ideas and strategies were no longer considered great and became merely acceptable.

It hurt, of course it did. Sometimes Alec wondered if it would really have been so bad to have squashed that part of him down, to have accepted a life of duty and service without hoping for more. Izzy was always there to assure him that he’d done the right thing.

There were a number of people who tried to get Jace to change his mind about taking Alec as his parabatai. Even Alec’s parents spoke to him about it, hinting delicately that he might find Izzy to be a better bond-mate.

“It’s like they never bothered to get to know you at all!” Jace said angrily after one such intervention. “I don’t know why the Clave doesn’t do something about it! Come on, Alec, let’s spar. I suddenly have a lot of energy I need to work off.”

“Remember what we said?” Izzy said, looking Alec in the eye. “Screw anyone else. Screw everyone else. It’s you and me, Alec. And Jace too, of course. We don’t need to conform to anyone’s expectations but our own.”

So Alec walked tall, worked hard, and did his best to ignore the whispers and the slurs, and the times he was excluded from exercises that some instructors ‘didn’t think he’d need.’ Hodge was more skilled and a better teacher than any of those puffed-up windbags from Idris, anyway.

v^v^v^v

Over the next couple of years, the wing markings changed slightly, somehow becoming more there.

“It’s almost like they’re more wing-like,” Izzy commented. “I can’t see any actual changes to the lines, they’re not thinner or thicker, they haven’t changed colour or placement. But the overall effect is more somehow.”

Alec flexed his shoulders, watching the markings move with his skin. “Sometimes I can almost see them in the corner of my eye,” he confessed. “They never are, of course, but sometimes it’s like they’re just out of sight.

Then, on Izzy’s thirteenth birthday she awoke with wing markings too. “Alec, look!” she whispered, having woken him up at four in the morning. She turned so that her back was to him. Her wings looked less stylised than his were, more chaotic.

Still blinking to focus his eyes properly, Alec reached out a hand to touch the dark lines. They were warmer than the skin surrounding them, and Izzy shivered as he ran his fingertips along the outside edge. Filled with a joy he didn’t know how to articulate, Alec pulled his sister into a hug.

When he released her, it was to the disconcerting realisation that she was crying. Izzy didn’t cry very often—as Shadowhunters they were expected to deal with trials and tribulations calmly and without excess emotion—and it twisted something deep inside him to see her eyelashes clumped together and her eyes glassy with tears.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, pulling her into another hug. “Don’t you like them?”

“I love them!” Izzy insisted. “It’s just that…it will sound silly.”

“Nothing that makes you cry is silly,” Alec said firmly, giving Izzy a squeeze for emphasis. “I won’t laugh, I promise.”

“I’ve been so afraid that you would leave me behind,” she said in a rush, the words slightly muffled by the t-shirt that he slept in. “There were the wings, and the parabatai bond with Jace, and I’m just your little sister—”

“Hey, you are not just anything,” Alec interrupted her. “You’re the smartest person I know, the best person I know. You’re my sister, and no-one can get in the way of that, not Jace, not our parents. Blood siblings can’t form a parabatai bond, or you would definitely be my first choice. And Jace…”

“Jace really wants it,” Izzy said, sounding calmer. “It’s like he’s determined to bind us to him as a family as much as he possibly can.”

“I’m happy to do it too,” Alec said. “Jace is an amazing fighter, and loyal, and smart. I think the bond could be great, as well as maybe settling him down a bit. I do want it, but not at the expense of your happiness, Iz. If it’s going to hurt you, then it’s off the table. I’ll find a way to break it to Jace so that it doesn’t sound like a rejection.”

“No,” Izzy said with a sigh, relaxing into his arms. “You don’t need to do that. Go ahead with the parabatai ritual, I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Are you sure?” Alec asked.

“Yes, I’m sure. I think maybe I just needed to hear that you wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want you to. Selfish, I know, but there it is.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, okay? You’re not just my sister, you’re my best friend. A parabatai bond with Jace isn’t going to change that. For starters, he’s really not interested in talking about cute boys with me.”

She smothered her laugh in his sleep-shirt.

“Hey,” Alec said as a thought struck him, “remember how thrilled the Silent Brothers were when I showed up with my markings? Imagine how they’re going to react to this!”

Izzy pulled away, eyes bright with mirth. “You think we’re going to see a bunch of scary mind readers have their first collective orgasm?”

Alec scrunched up his face in disgust. “Ew, gross Izzy. Are you trying to put me off my food?”

Alec went with Izzy to show Jace what had happened, and he noticed the insecure expression that flashed across his adopted brother’s face. No doubt Jace was wondering why Alec and Izzy had the markings, but he didn’t. It made Alec glad that Izzy hadn’t actually asked him to not go through with the parabatai bond after all. Jace was clearly already feeling left out.

v^v^v^v

‘It is happening,’ Brother Gamaliel’s excitement was almost tangible. ‘It is happening, just as was foretold!’

“You know, I’m getting pretty sick of all this cryptic crap,” Izzy said testily as she waited for the Brother who was making a detailed sketch to finish. “Why can’t they just come out and tell us what’s happening?”

“They have their reasons,” Alec said with a shrug, long since inured to not getting proper answers to his questions. “It all works out in the end. Sometimes when I search the records for things that they won’t tell me I find some pretty amazing stuff. Like that portal rune.”

In the background, Alec could hear Brother Samuel ‘talking’ to Jace, who was sulking slightly, still feeling left out. ‘Do not fear, young one; you will not be left behind. Wait but awhile longer, and have faith.’

“Ugh,” Jace replied, pulling a face. “I hate having faith.” But his expression cleared, and he seemed comforted.

v^v^v^v

When Maryse and Robert found out that Izzy had markings that were similar to Alec’s, they allocated most of the blame to their eldest son. Alec stood and listened to the chewing out they gave him and accepted the restrictions they placed on him without comment.

“I don’t know why you don’t just tell them,” Jace said, still slightly baffled by Alec and Izzy’s relationship with the elder Lightwoods. Maryse and Robert had been delighted to welcome Jace into their family and doted on him in a way that neither Alec nor Izzy could ever remember experiencing.

“You think they would believe us?” Izzy asked, raising one finely sculpted eyebrow. “You note that they never actually asked any proper questions just now. They’ve already decided what happened, and I doubt ‘It was magic, honest’ would be very convincing anyway.”

v^v^v^v

It was just over a year later that Jace woke up with his own markings. Just like Izzy, he stole into Alec’s room first thing in the morning to share the news. Then they had to visit Izzy, who was just as thrilled as Alec was.

“Whatever’s happening, it’s happening to all three of us,” Izzy said, reaching out to trace her fingers over Jace’s back.

“Just as it should be,” Jace said stoutly. “We go together, after all.”

“That’s right,” Alec agreed. “We go together.”

“We go together,” Izzy echoed. An impish smile crossed her face. “We go together to the Silent Brothers, to see if they’re willing to give us answers yet.

v^v^v^v

The Silent Brothers remained as silent as ever, although Brother Samuel was able to pull Alec to one side and provide him with a small booklet.

“What’s this?” Alec asked, glancing over to where Jace was being fawned over by a group of Brothers, having careful drawings done the same way that they’d done for Alec and Izzy. Jace was revelling in the attention, happy to pose again and again.

‘A copy of a recent translation of an ancient tome,’ Brother Samuel replied. ‘It holds the answer that you sought many years ago. Be very careful how this is used, young Lightwood. In the wrong hands, it could cause much damage.’

“I’ll be careful,” Alec assured him, tucking the small booklet away in a convenient pocket on the inside of his jacket.

‘Once you have used the information therein, you must destroy that copy,’ Brother Samuel insisted.

Alec nodded. “I promise,” he swore.

v^v^v^v

The information in the booklet was indeed pretty shocking. It contained detailed instructions on how to remove runes—both plain and enchanted—quickly and painlessly.

Izzy naturally wanted to test the method. Alec was fine with that until he realised that she intended to run the test on herself. He had objected, tried to get her to use him as a test subject, but she refused him. “I’ll have a better idea of what actually happens if I can feel it, Alec,” she said patiently. “Look, who’s the scientist here? Who knows all about the workings of angelic bodies?”

“You do,” Alec said with a sigh. “I suppose when you put it like that…”

“Hah!” Izzy said and proceeded to use her stele to burn an Acceleration rune into her arm; that one was fairly common and wouldn’t excite much interest if their experiment failed.

“Right, let’s give this a go,” Izzy said. “Hold that book for me, Alec, I need to be able to read it while I do this.”

Alec held the book and watched anxiously as Izzy spoke what sounded like gibberish as she ran her steele over her new rune. Even though he was expecting it, it was still a shock to see it disappear as if it was never there.

“They say that deruning is agony,” Izzy said, staring at her bare forearm. “That didn’t even tickle.”

“Maybe the Clave wants to make it hurt?” Alec suggested. “It is a punishment, after all.”

“We should memorise this,” Izzy said, reaching for the book that Alec had closed as soon as she was finished.

“We can’t,” Alec replied. “Brother Samuel was right when he said this could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.”

Izzy glared at him. “I wasn’t going to go around telling anyone.” She sounded exasperated and a little bit hurt.

“What if someone was holding me hostage?” Alec asked, eyebrows raised. “What if they told you they were going to torture me to death unless you gave them what they wanted to know? Would you still be able to keep the secret? I know I couldn’t, not if it was you.”

Izzy folded her arms across her chest and frowned at him. “Sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass that you’re always so reasonable,” she said crossly. “Fine. We’ll do what we have to do and not make any attempt to hold on to this priceless knowledge.”

“The Silent Brothers still have the original that this came from,” Alec reminded her. “If we really need it again, we can always go and ask them.”

“I already agreed with you, Alec, you don’t need to keep convincing me.”

“Oh, come on,” Alec said, poking her gently in the ribs and causing her to flinch as he hit her ticklish spot. “You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t know you’re wondering how bad it could really be, and that maybe it would be okay if you only memorised a little bit?”

“You can stop any time now,” Izzy tried to keep frowning, but it was obviously an effort. She gave a sigh and put her stele away. “So, who’s going to tell Hodge the good news? You know, that we know all about our parents’ sordid past and have been planning to work directly against the Clave, and set him free?”

“I’ll do it,” Alec volunteered. “It was my idea from the start, after all.”

“You don’t think we should tell him together?”

Alec shook his head. “No, I think that if I was in his shoes, I would want as few people around as possible.”

“Okay,” Izzy said. “I’ll leave it up to you then. Make sure you let me know how it goes. I’ll need to help you with the actual process, so maybe warn him about that.”

v^v^v^v

Alec decided that there was no point in wasting any time, and asked to speak with Hodge in private the next day. Jace had been taken into Alicante by Maryse and Robert to see to some details of his dead father’s estate, and Izzy was assisting with the autopsy of an extremely rare demon that had been killed several nights previous.

There were only a few places in the Institute that weren’t under constant surveillance. Naturally, Alec and his siblings knew them all. The best one for his purposes was the tiny chapel that was connected to the graveyard.

Without going into a lot of detail, Alec told Hodge about the information in the booklet, and offered to set him free, if he wished it.

“You know how to free me,” Hodge said, his entire body tense and his hands shaking.

“I do,” Alec affirmed gently. “It’s your choice, of course. I won’t force this. But Izzy and I both agree that the Clave was wrong to sentence you the way they did. We want to make it right for you.”

“No,” Hodge said hoarsely, shaking his head. “You can’t understand what I’ve done…”

“Yes, I do,” Alec told him. “Izzy and I have both read the uncensored transcript of your trial, the one held in the City of Bones. We know. We offer you this anyway.”

“I have to— I have to think about it,” Hodge said.

Alec shrugged. “You know where to find me when you’ve come to a decision.”

v^v^v^v

It took three weeks for Hodge to bring up the subject again. He opened up one afternoon when they were recovering after a particularly tough hand-to-hand session, sitting side-by-side with their backs to a stone wall, sipping from water bottles.

Alec waited for Hodge to speak. He’d expected Hodge to give him an answer as soon as he realised where they would be training. It wasn’t unheard of to train in the graveyard, but it wasn’t a common location either.

“I don’t think you can know what your offer means to me,” Hodge said, staring across the yard. “At first, it wasn’t so bad. I deserved it, after all, being imprisoned here like some sort of pet Circle member.” He gritted his teeth as his mark activated. “Perhaps if we’d all been treated the same, I might have kept that mentality. But watching others, others who did worse, being let off with just a slap on the wrist? Being given a coveted post, even? For what, because they had the contacts that come with having an old and honoured name, because they conveniently had a young son that they argued shouldn’t be punished for their crimes?” His eyes flashed for a moment, and then he was calm again. “Although I suppose I do agree with that part. Their son bears no blame for their crimes. He shouldn’t have to suffer. I can’t help but feel that there were other ways to achieve that than letting his parents off with a warning and a superficial punishment.”

“You don’t have to beat around the bush,” Alec said, tilting his head back to stare at the clouds scudding overhead. “It wasn’t just your transcript I looked through; I know that child was me. I know what my parents were accused of and how they leveraged their name and my existence.”

“Oh. They told you?”

“No, they’ve quite carefully kept all written references away from this Institute,” Alec replied dryly. “My parents have yet to tell any of us of their past. They’re as vocal as ever about how Izzy and I must do nothing to ‘disgrace the Lightwood name,’ they’re quick to emphasise that our reputation with the Clave is the most important consideration in every decision. But nothing at all about how that reputation was brought into disgrace in the first place.”

Hodge’s lips took on a wry twist. “No, well they wouldn’t, would they?” He shook his head and then emptied his water bottle in three big gulps. “Going back to your offer… The thing is that you and Izzy, and Jace too for that matter, you shouldn’t have to put yourselves on the line for the likes of me. You’re young, you have your whole lives ahead of you. Much as I want to be free of this nightmare, I made my own decisions and now I have to pay for them.”

“It’s your choice,” Alec said with a shrug. “The knowledge of what we’d need to do isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, so if you change your mind, just let either me or Izzy know.”

“Not Jace?”

Alec hesitated. “Jace…is in love with the idea of the Clave. Not that I can blame him, the idea of the Clave is—” He broke off, uncertain of how to continue.

“The idea of the Clave does not reflect the reality of the Clave,” Hodge finished for him.

“Yes,” Alec said gratefully. “It’s understandable. If I hadn’t done so much reading on history, looked so hard into how the Clave is actively pursuing—or not, as the case may be—the ideals it’s supposed to stand for, I would probably have been the same way. Worse, even. And knowing what I do about the flaws in the system makes it easier to see just how the Circle got started in the first place.”

“You want to be very careful who you express those ideas to,” Hodge warned. “Dissatisfaction with the current system is how a lot of—” he winced as the rune on his neck began to burn again, “—the Circle members were pulled in.”

Alec watched with some concern. “Don’t worry, I have no plans to start or take part in anything like the Circle or the Uprising,” he said when it looked like Hodge’s mark wasn’t hurting him anymore. “Even without that as an example, history makes it clear that terrorists never actually solve the problems they claim to be working towards. And I’m pretty sure that Downworlders were here before we were, it would be rude to try and wipe them out in some bigoted, prejudiced killing spree.”

Hodge shook his head and got to his feet, reaching down to give Alec a hand up. “I wish I’d had your clear-sightedness when I was your age.”

“My teacher taught me well,” Alec replied, brushing dirt and twigs off his clothes. “You’ve always done your best for us, Hodge. How could we do any less for you?”

Hodge shook his head again, but he was smiling. The smile slowly faded, and he sighed. “There’s something that you should probably know,” he said slowly. “Jace—I’m pretty sure he’s not really a Wayland.”

“What?” Alec asked, staring in shock. “If he’s not a Wayland, then who is he?”

“I’m not one hundred per cent sure,” Hodge said, “but I think he’s the son of Stephen and Céline Herondale.

Chapter three

That was a bombshell all right. Alec wasn’t sure what to do with that information, so he took Jace with him to consult Izzy.

“The Mundanes have something called a DNA test,” she told him. “It compares DNA markers between samples and can give you an approximation of an answer. It’s not foolproof, of course, but it’s fairly reliable.”

“Can we do that then?” Jace asked, eyes hard in a way they hadn’t been for some time now. “I want to know one way or the other.”

“We’d need DNA to compare it to,” Izzy said gently.

Alec crossed his arms across his chest. “Imogen Herondale is Stephen Herondale’s mother,” he offered. “Would that be close enough for a match?”

“A direct parental sample would be better.”

“Would Imogen have kept anything of her son’s that we could get a sample off?” Jace wondered.

“Probably,” Izzy agreed. “But do you want to be the one to go to her and ask for it?”

“I’ll go,” Alec said abruptly.

“What? No!” Jace and Izzy said at the same time.

“This is my heritage we’re looking into, I should be the one to ask.” Jace set his jaw stubbornly. He blinked, and his mouth dropped open slightly. “I’ve passed my tests too. If this turns out to be true, it will mean that the Inquisitor is my grandmother.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Alec asked, looking between Jace and Izzy. “Hodge isn’t sure, he only suspects. And it’s not like we’ll be able to use that, because she was on the Council at the time of the Uprising, and it’s entirely likely that she’s not going to take Hodge’s word for it. Not to mention that Hodge said that if you were their son, then the circumstances of your birth were hardly ideal. No. I’m the one with a reputation as an historian, so she’s more likely to accept an interview request from me in the first place. The Silent Brothers also know me quite well now, and I’m sure that Brother Samuel will assist me if I ask him too. I have the best chance of success; therefore, I should do it.”

Izzy watched him with narrowed eyes. “You know that if you do manage to convince her and this turns out to be wrong, she’s going to blame you, and suspect you of some kind of evil,” she pointed out.

Alec shrugged, avoiding her eyes.

“He absolutely knows that,” Jace said, frustration warring with gratitude on his face. “That’s part of his plan, after all!”

Izzy sighed. “Of course it is. You don’t always have to protect us, you know, Alec. We’re strong enough to fight our own battles.”

“I know you are,” Alec said. “But if I can help you out, then what kind of brother would I be if I didn’t try?”

v^v^v^v

Alec got his way exactly as he had expected to. It wasn’t that much of a victory, considering that Izzy and Jace didn’t really want the job. To be honest, neither did he. But it had to be done, and he was the best person to do it.

Getting an interview with Imogen Herondale went much as he imagined it would. Brother Samuel endorsed his application and gave a testimonial as to his character and truthfulness, and the date and time were set.

Izzy and Jace made sure that he dressed the part. “You want to look serious and responsible, but not like you’re trying to look serious and responsible,” Izzy informed him.

Alec raised an eyebrow at her. “You don’t think I normally look serious and responsible?”

Izzy sighed. “Yes, but you also need to look like you’re taking her seriously, which your usual training or fighting gear—which I happen to know are the only clothes in your wardrobe—will not achieve. You’re not even sixteen yet, Alec, you’re already at a disadvantage. So wear this and get taken seriously. Or don’t, and it will all be a waste of time.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

That’s how he ended up holding an A4 envelope in one of the poshest looking offices he’d ever seen. It was austere but still managed to convey immense wealth and taste. Alec had a feeling that if they could ever meet each other as equals, Imogen Herondale and Izzy would get on like a house on fire. Probably better for everyone else if that never happened.

“You wanted to see me,” Inquisitor Herondale asked sternly, her steady gaze fixed on Alec. He found himself studying her, and it might have been what he wanted to see, but he fancied there were bits of Jace in the shape of her eyes, the line of her jaw. It gave him confidence, and he felt himself standing taller. Jace was going to be his parabatai, and this was one of no doubt many fights Alec would undertake on his behalf.

He decided not to beat around the bush and to come straight out with it. “I’ve recently discovered that there’s a possibility that my adopted brother isn’t the son of Michael Wayland after all, but of Stephen and Céline Herondale,” Alec said. She stiffened, whether in warning or shock he couldn’t be sure He plunged on. “Our informant wasn’t sure of this, you understand, but said it was possible as he did know that Céline was survived by a son. Jace is the right age, and according to our informant has a look of Stephen about him.”

The look the Inquisitor was giving him could have frozen molten lava.

Alec opened the envelope and extracted the three photographs that he and his siblings had picked out—with Hodge’s help—that showed Jace at several different angles. In the first Jace was smiling at Max, in the second he was training with Hodge, and the third was one that Izzy had taken without his knowledge while he was brooding on his heritage.

Alec spread the photographs on the table.

Madam Herondale had already begun rising to her feet with a thunderous frown on her face, but the photos of Jace stopped whatever she had been about to say.

“These—” she sat down again and pulled the photographs closer to her, fingertips brushing over Jace’s eyes. “These could almost be him. They look alike enough to be brothers. What? How—”

“My sister is an accomplished scientist,” Alec said gently. “She tells me that there is a test the Mundanes do, a DNA comparison that might be able to tell us the truth one way or another. But in order to get the best possible result, we should compare Jace’s DNA against DNA from his parents. I was hoping that if you had anything of your son’s that might contain viable samples, we could run the test and know for sure. Jace…Jace would really like to know.”

“You need something of Stephen’s,” she repeated. “What sort of thing?”

“Oh,” Alec removed a piece of paper from the envelope. “Izzy has made a list of the sorts of items that might have samples that we can use, here.” He handed the list over.

“Will Stephen’s DNA be enough?” she asked. “Would it help if you had something of Céline’s as well?”

Alec nodded. “Yes, the results will be more certain with samples from both of them.”

“Then wait here, please,” Madam Herondale instructed, coming out from around the desk. “I’ll have my assistant send in coffee while you wait, but I would prefer to take care of this myself. Feel free to read any of the books on the shelves, if they take your fancy.”

“Thank you,” Alec said, eyes going immediately to the bookshelf. “I’ll take you up on that.”

He watched her leave, no longer the stern and intimidating woman that she’d first appeared to be, but a grieving mother hoping to discover a lost link to her dead son. He wondered, while he waited, where she was going to find the samples that he’d asked for. She seemed fairly certain that she would be able to get her hands on them, and he had a brief vision of a lonely house, a sort of museum to the past where the rooms were left as though the owners might one day come back. Imogen Herondale had buried her husband and her only son, and it had been thought that the Herondale name and heritage were lost forever.

Now, there was a chance that she had a grandson. Alec supposed she had reason to be flustered.

A young man with a decided limp brought Alec a tray with coffee and tea and a couple of fancy little cakes, the sort of things that would probably be offered to the Inquisitor’s most respected visitors. The assistant was clearly extremely curious, but he’d been trained well and didn’t say anything after mentioning that he’d be back in half an hour, if Madam Herondale hadn’t returned yet, to see if Alec needed anything else.

Madam Herondale was gone for about an hour all up, just long enough for Alec to get absorbed in a history of demon sightings in South East Asia over the last millennium.

“Here you are,” she said, holding out two plastic zip-lock bags. “And here.” With her other hand, she proffered a framed photograph of a young man smiling.

Alec realised instantly that this was Stephen Herondale. As familiar as he was with Jace, Alec was able to spot several similarities easily. The same eyes and jaw, and the same nose too, something that they must have received from Imogen’s husband since she didn’t have it.

“I thought that the young man,” she swallowed. “Jace, that is, would like to have this.”

“Thank you,” Alec said, putting the samples in the envelope. “I’ll give it to him.” He hesitated. “Would you like us to get copies of the results sent to you as well?”

“No, you’ve been vouched for by the Silent Brothers,” Madam Herondale said. She’d gained most of the poise she’d lost earlier, but she was still looking a little pale. Alec wanted to ask if she was alright but didn’t want her to feel condescended to, so he just nodded and left.

He did stop by her assistant’s desk on the way out. “Maybe you could bring the Inquisitor a drink of something she likes?” he suggested to the young man “Although you should probably knock before you go in.”

The young man looked startled, and a bit wary, but nodded.

Alec left, feeling relieved. He was a little surprised that she hadn’t been more concerned about where the information had come from, but then the news was a bit shocking, so there was that.

He carefully carried the envelope and the photograph and made his way back to the City of Bones. Brother Samuel would want to know the results of his mission, and there was a portal to the New York Institute practically next door.

v^v^v^v

“He looks just like me,” Jace said, staring at the photo. “How come no-one’s seen it before?”

“I think technically you look just like him,” Izzy put in. When he glared at her, she rolled her eyes. “Keep glaring, little brother,” she said unmoved. “You’re starting to look like Alec. As for why no-one’s really seen the resemblance—well, it’s been a long time, you know. And it’s not like most people know that there’s a possibility that Stephen Herondale’s son is out there running around. Probably, people look at you, realise you look familiar, and think it must be the Waylands that they’re thinking of.”

“Were any of the samples in good enough condition for the test?” Alec asked Izzy, not wanting to get into a discussion about hypotheticals with Jace right at that moment.

Izzy looked slightly shifty. “I’m sure the Mundane lab I’ve chosen will be able to find something to work with.”

Alec frowned at her. “You should be able to lie better than that, Izzy.”

“Wait, Izzy was lying just now?” Jace asked, looking alarmed. “What about? How could you tell?”

“See, big brother, I lie just fine,” Izzy said with a toss of her head.

“Don’t avoid the subject.”

Izzy sighed. “Well, I may have asked a warlock for a little assistance in making sure that the samples were viable.”

“Izzy!”

“It’s fine!” Izzy said, throwing her hands up. “Catarina Loss is a well-respected member of the medical profession! She knew exactly what I was talking about when I asked for her help, and she assured me that what she did would work! She has an impeccable reputation; the Clave uses her services all the time!”

“Warlocks don’t hand out their magic for free,” Alec said, concerned. “What did you pay her with?”

Izzy looked at the floor. “I traded for a future favour.”

“And she just took your word for it,” Alec said sceptically. “Because warlocks are so trusting of Shadowhunters.”

Izzy squirmed.

Jace looked concerned. “Izzy, what have you done?”

“I’ve given her a blood oath,” Izzy said reluctantly. “One favour of her choice, so long as no-one’s life is endangered, and it breaks no laws.”

“That’s so dangerous,” Jace breathed.

“Look, it was worth it, alright?” Izzy snapped. “You need to know, and this is the best way to be sure. Alec walked into the lion’s den, so I did what I had to do too.”

“But I can’t— I don’t know how—” Jace stuttered to a stop and dropped his eyes to the photo that he was still holding. “Why would you—”

“Because you’re our brother, and we love you,” Izzy said gently. “Now, if that’s everything, then I do actually have work that I need to get done, you know. My exams don’t just pass themselves.”

“Thank you,” Jace said as he stumbled out.

Alec followed him and guided him back to his room since he didn’t seem to be looking where he was going.

v^v^v^v

To the surprise of absolutely no one involved, the results came back positive for Jace as the child of Stephen and Céline Herondale. This time Izzy and Jace both came with Alec when he called on Madam Herondale. The appointment request was approved right away.

Imogen Herondale was standing beside her desk, waiting for them. Her eyes went straight to Jace, and she didn’t even wait for Alec to say anything.

“It’s true,” she whispered. “You’re really my Stephen’s son.”

“It looks that way, yes,” Jace said cautiously. He threw a nervous glance at Alec. Alec tried to motion him forward by a twitch of his eyebrows. “Uh, it’s nice to meet you, I suppose, Grandmother.”

At that, she lost hold of whatever had been keeping in one place and flung herself at Jace, wrapping him in a desperate hug.

It was only seeing her beside Jace that Alec realised just how small she was. Imogen Herondale, a woman who gave off an appearance of indomitable strength, was shorter than Izzy. Not that it really mattered, but it was slightly amusing to see Jace with a terrified look on his face as he awkwardly patted the Inquisitor on the back.

Madam Herondale finally drew back, sniffling slightly. “I apologise,” she said, gathering some of her tattered dignity about her. “I didn’t intend to do that. You can call me Grandmother if you want, Jace, or Imogen, or Grand-Mère. Anything you want, really, provided it’s suitably respectful.”

Jace smiled, and Alec groaned.

Madam Herondale shook her head with a slight smile and gestured towards a low table with several seats around it that hadn’t been there last time Alec had visited. “Please, take a seat,” she said. “I know I didn’t really give you a chance to break the news to me. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t need a lab test to know that your informant was correct. I should have said so at the time.”

“You may have been in shock still,” Alec said, ducking his head slightly when her laser-blue gaze settled on him. “It would have been a big shock for anyone in your position, I think.”

“Yes,” Madam Herondale said, before moving her inspection to Izzy. Izzy, used to exacting inspections carried out by her mother in which there was always some fault to be found, returned the look with one of her own, head held high. Madam Herondale chuckled. “Ah, I bet young Maryse doesn’t know what to do with you, young Lightwood. A true chip off the old block. I imagine you drive her mad.”

“Izzy is already shaping up to be one of the foremost biologists in our society,” Alec said sharply, not willing for Izzy to receive any more disparagement than she already did.

Madam Herondale looked surprised. “Oh, it wasn’t a criticism. Quite the opposite. Maryse Trueblood was always a driven woman. Her abilities and ambition were never in question, it was more…” she paused, and looked at the three of them and obviously decided not to continue with that line of discussion. “But she seems to have taught you better, Isabelle. Even in Idris, we’ve heard of your skill and dedication. Maryse must be proud.”

Alec didn’t know if it was something that he or Jace did that gave it away, or if it was the way that Izzy’s chin tilted slightly at that last comment. Madam Herondale’s eyes sharpened for a moment, then grew momentarily sad. Alec was just grateful that she didn’t say anything.

“Thank you, Madam Herondale,” Izzy said only slightly stiffly.

“Please, you’re both part of the family now. Call me Imogen, at least in informal settings.”

Izzy relaxed slightly, a smile hovering around her mouth. “Then thank you, Imogen.”

Imogen directed her next comment at Jace, who looked stiff and uncomfortable in his seat. “I’ve also heard that you and young Alec Lightwood are planning to undergo the parabatai joining ritual.”

“Yes, we are,” Jace said, almost pugnaciously. “I’m not going to change my mind, so if you were planning to try, you can just not bother.”

Imogen blinked bemusedly. “Of course I wasn’t going to try and change your mind,” she said with faint surprise. “The parabatai bond is deeply personal, and quite frankly it’s the business of no one other than the two Shadowhunters involved. Why would you even think that I would try to— Have there been those that have tried to dissuade you from the path you’ve chosen?”

Jace visibly relaxed. Concern over Imogen’s thoughts as to their upcoming bond had probably been troubling him. “I think the count is up to what, eight? Nine? Yes, I think it’s nine. Nine times I’ve been pulled aside and gently reminded that until the bond is completed, I can always bow out, and that perhaps I should look around for a more suitable person to be my parabatai.”

Imogen’s eyebrows rose. “The two of you have held the top two places in your age bracket for the last four years, at least,” she said, revealing that she’d been snooping since Alec had dropped a metaphorical bomb on her. “You, Jace, are the acknowledged best at a number of the more physical requirements of Shadowhunting, but you, Alec, are known to have the best tactical mind and the most leadership potential. Providing you both wish for the bond, I can’t think of a better match for either of you.”

Alec had had enough of dancing around the subject. Either Imogen already knew, and was playing dumb for some reason, or she didn’t know and might as well be told right away, given her relationship with Jace. A relationship that she was giving every sign that she wished to nurture.

“They think that I’m an inappropriate choice because I’m gay,” he said bluntly.

To his surprise, Imogen laughed. “Oh, this habit you have of frank speaking is quite refreshing, young Alec. I’ve spent so much time amongst career politicians that someone who speaks the truth without dancing around it for half an hour is rather a novelty.”

Alec exchanged a confused glance with his siblings. That wasn’t really the reaction he’d expected.

“You can’t think that you’re the first Shadowhunter who has been homosexual, do you?” Imogen said with some amusement. “Things swing in roundabouts, you know. When I was a girl, it wasn’t as uncommon a thing or as frowned on, as it is now. Really, the only people to whom the possibility of anyone having a gay parabatai should concern are the ones intending to bond. And my grandson certainly seems fine.”

Jace lost some of his belligerence. “I figure that without him to compete with—I mean, have you seen him?—I’ll be able to pull whoever I want.”

Imogen smiled wryly. “Such charming modesty; something else that you inherited from Stephen. Just remember that, adult Shadowhunter or not, it’s not legal for you to have sex until you’re sixteen.”

Jace blanched slightly. “Yes, ma’am.” He nudged Alec with his elbow. “We can chalk another one up in the ‘not a homophobic asshole’ column.”

Imogen shook her head. “I’ve heard some of my older friends blame this new intolerance on too much interaction with the Mundanes, but I personally think we have to take most of the blame ourselves. All it takes is one or two people in powerful positions who have prejudices to influence us all. We’re not a large society, as you know, and because we are—above all else—a military one, we tend to emphasise the importance of rank. Generally, that has served us well, but I can’t deny that over time it has lead to some of the Clave’s original purposes becoming muddied and ill-defined, and some ideas being taught as fact when they are, in truth, nothing but bitter diatribes from the mouths of disappointment.”

Izzy frowned. “That’s quite the revolutionary speech coming from someone on the High Council,” she said with more than a hint of challenge in her tone.

Imogen sighed. “In my youth, I was quite the firebrand, I assure you. I was certain that the Clave needed to change, certain that if I worked hard enough, gained enough influence, I’d be able to make those changes.”

“Well, what happened?” Jace blurted.

“I grew older, I suppose. Tired. From the inside, the problems seem even more insurmountable than from the outside. Not to mention that Valentine’s Uprising set back even the small amount of progress we’d been making. So much lost, and for what? For one megalomaniac with dreams of dominion?” Imogen shook her head. “The right-leaning conservatives slid into ultra-conservativism, the middle slid to the right, and the left was either picked off one by one by Valentine and his thugs or recruited. The Clave—as it stands now—isn’t even as flexible as it was when I was a girl. There is a solid core to the Council that is adamant on staying in that fixed position, and the rest of us must be careful to toe the line or find ourselves ousted in disgrace. It’s a waiting game. I live in fear that one day we’ll find that we’ve waited too long and that events have caught up with us again, and we won’t be ready.”

Jace looked thrilled. “Wow! My grandmother’s a secret rebel, guys!”

“A secret rebel who’s doing a rather poor job of keeping her own secret,” Alec remarked dryly. He leaned back and studied her. He hadn’t been able to discern any hint that she’d been lying, but all of his training was shouting at him that only an idiot takes the words of someone so wholly unknown at face value, especially when her revelations had been largely unsolicited. He wanted to believe her but was quick to remind himself that she had already warned him that career politicians were unlikely to speak the unvarnished truth.

Rather than offended, Imogen looked amused. “One does not survive in this world as long as I have, young Lightwood, without learning to make quick judgements.” She shrugged. “I might be wrong, of course, you may yet betray me, and this could be the end of my career. At this point, I don’t know if I would even care. I lost my husband long ago and then my son, twice. First to Valentine, and then to death and disgrace. I thought all that I had left was duty to an Institution that I wasn’t even sure I believed in anymore. Then you give me this great gift.”

Jace went rigid. “Wait, my father was a member of the Circle?”

Imogen blinked. “I have to apologise,” she said carefully. “It must be a shock to discover that all of your fathers were part of the Circle at one time or another. Valentine drew a great many to him. It was, and still is, the great tragedy of our time.”

“What do you mean, ‘all my fathers’?’” Jace asked, voice rising.

Imogen spared a glance to Alec and Izzy but directed her words to Jace. “I mean that Michael Wayland, Stephen Herondale and Robert Lightwood were all members of the Circle.”

Jace also glanced at Alec and Izzy, frowning. “You two don’t look terribly shocked.”

“We knew already,” Alec admitted. “We’ve known since before you came to live with us. At the time, I decided that it was best not to tell you.”

Jace looked betrayed. “But why? Why wouldn’t you…?”

“You were so angry at Valentine,” Alec reminded him. “You used to talk about the things you would do, how you planned to avenge your father, how much you hated Valentine and anyone who stood with him. I was worried that telling you might cause you to do something precipitous. After that, the longer I left it, the harder it became. I promise I would have told you before we took our oaths; I’ve been rehearsing it for months. Then we learned that your parentage was in doubt and I thought that it would come out sooner rather than later.”

“It wasn’t just your choice, Alec,” Izzy insisted. “I chose not to tell him too. I know you like to take the burden and the blame upon yourself, but this was a choice we made together, and we carried it out together as well.”

Jace shook his head. “If Maryse and Robert were Circle members—is that why you don’t get on? Do they know you were planning to tell me?”

“Our parents have never spoken of the matter to us,” Alec said bitterly. “For all I know they think us blissfully unaware. We certainly weren’t going to bring it up. Instead, Izzy and I decided that it wasn’t our responsibility to fix their mistakes, that we would live for ourselves and not for our parents’ unrealistic expectations.”

“Maryse must be tearing her hair out,” Imogen said with a smile. “She was always so passionate, so determined to bend the world to her way of thinking. It was expected that she would go far, be one of the rising stars of that generation. It was a great shock to many of us to discover that she had been lured into Valentine’s rebellion. And now, here the two of you are. Both of you showcasing all of the best qualities that she showed; all of that potential, with none of her rigidity of thinking. If what she desired was for you to be ambassadors for your family; to prove that the Lightwoods were a name to be respected, to have the Council believe her to be redeemed; then you have succeeded beyond what she could possibly have expected. You are known to all as smart, capable, loyal members of the Clave, and Maryse and Robert are credited with raising you.”

Alec snorted. “If any adult raised us, it was Hodge,” he said. “Also, I’m not sure just how far you will let me speak on matters that you wouldn’t consider to be my business…but what you’ve done with Hodge—the punishment the Clave meted out to him, I mean—it was not well-conceived of. Unless your purpose was to create a honed fighter with a grudge against the Clave, of course. In which case, good job.”

“What?” Imogen said, the first signs of offence in her voice since they’d sat down.

“The only thing that he has, that he can do, is train,” Alec pointed out. “He’s an exceptional fighter, strategist and tactician. His tutelage has been a major factor in my success, and Izzy has told me she believes the same.”

“Are you sure that you’re not exaggerating?” Imogen said slowly.

“No, they’re really not,” Jace put in unexpectedly. He saw both his siblings looking at him with raised eyebrows. “What? People have been falling over themselves to be assigned as my primary trainer for years, you know. But Hodge is better, so I never took any of them up on it. Why settle for second best when the best is already available to you? It would be stupid.”

“It doesn’t really make any difference. Regardless of his prowess and his grudge, Hodge Starkweather cannot leave the New York Institute,” Imogen stated. “It was a sentence he didn’t fight when it was handed down to him.”

“No, he can’t leave,” Izzy agreed. “Not yet at any rate, although it is a fool who believes that any prison is inescapable. As to his feelings… He may not have objected in the beginning to being kept captive within the Institute. He possibly even believed it a just and fair sentence. But he’s been watching our parents swan around the place, leaders of the Institute, free to come and go as they please. They’ve behaved as if they’ve done nothing wrong, while he is confined and reviled and left to raise their children. You think a situation like that won’t make even a repentant man bitter? You want to drive him—a man honed to peak fitness and trained in every type of fighting that we practice—into the arms of the first of the Clave’s enemies to find him and realise what an exceptional resource he could be?”

Imogen frowned. “He confessed to treason. Treason must be punished.”

Alec raised his eyebrows. “Then why were my parents given barely a slap on the wrist?”

“You know why. They had a young son to consider. You, in fact.”

“I’m not so young now,” Alec pointed out. “I would say I’m well old enough to take responsibility for my siblings. Yet, my parents are still free, and Hodge is still shackled.”

Imogen sighed. “Alright then. What do you think should be done?”

“I would have the Clave be consistent,” Alec said firmly. “If something is a punishable offence, then, by all means, punish it. But punish all who commit it the same way. If it is not, then punish none. If Maryse and Robert have paid their dues and no longer deserve incarceration, then surely Hodge has done the same.”

Alec tried to sound certain and sure, but in the privacy of his own mind, he marvelled at his boldness. Imogen Herondale had been Inquisitor for years, and it was decisions that she had made that he was now criticising so openly. A side glance at his siblings showed Izzy looking proud, and Jace looking at him as if he was crazy. Who knows, maybe he was?

Imogen sighed. “What you say has merit,” she admitted, her brow creased with thought. “Very well. I will think on this and speak over it with some of my peers. Now, I have had enough of such gloomy topics of conversation. I want you to tell me what you think of the group training sessions that have been making the rounds of the Institutes recently. Have you found them beneficial?”

Chapter four

Jace was silent from the moment they left Imogen’s office. He didn’t speak to either Alec or Izzy until they were back at the Institute, where he whirled on them, finally releasing the anger that had been simmering. “How could you not tell me? How can we be parabatai if you’re okay keeping this kind of secret from me? How can I trust you? Do you know how it felt when I realised that I was the only person in the room who didn’t know?”

Alec heard him out in silence. Izzy was wringing her hands together, and he hated to see both of his beloved siblings upset. “I didn’t keep it a secret to hurt you. I made the choice that I thought was right,” he said simply. “I don’t honestly know if I would have told Izzy if I’d had more time after finding out before she got hold of me and dragged it out of me.”

“Why, when did you find out?” Jace asked belligerently.

“I was nine,” Alec replied. “It was the week after my rune ceremony. I visited Alicante, and well, let’s just say that their library hasn’t been picked clean of every reference that might lead to Lightwood shame.”

“Nine,” Jace said, sounding calmer. “That means that Izzy would have been…”

“Seven,” she supplied, taking a seat and crossing her arms defensively.

“And that’s the reason for the rift between you and them? You discovered that they were Circle members and hadn’t told you?” Jace asked, brow furrowed in thought.

Alec and Izzy exchanged a glance.

Izzy sighed. “The way that my parents have treated us since you’ve known us—that wasn’t a result of us drawing away from them, Jace. That’s the way they’ve always interacted with us. The only difference between before we knew and after?” She shrugged, then shook her head. “Finding out might have been one of the best things that ever happened to me. Alec and I decided that day that we didn’t need to drive ourselves into the ground for them anymore. We agreed that we would no longer care that nothing we did was good enough.”

“Screw anyone else,” Jace murmured, remembering their mantra from whenever either of them was upset or had been feeling down.

“Screw everyone else!” Izzy and Alec chorused together.

“The information was equally as available to you as it was to me,” Alec pointed out. “You’ve spent time in Alicante with us. No one ever tried to stop you from finding out.”

“But they welcomed me,” Jace said, looking distressed. Izzy scooted closer and hugged him from one side while Alec enfolded him in an embrace on the other. “They made me feel like I was one of the family and told me that they’d always be there for me.”

“And they told me that it was my duty to uphold the family honour or die trying,” Alec said with a shrug. “With death being preferable before even the hint of dishonour. You must have seen how they distanced themselves from me when it became known that I was gay. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that they’re only waiting until Max has his Rune Ceremony to officially disown me.”

Jace had gone from looking distressed to looking devastated.

“Look, we’re not saying you have to hate them…” Alec pointed out.

“We don’t even hate them,” Izzy put in. “They are our parents, after all.”

“If you don’t want anything to change, then nothing has to change between you,” Alec continued. “We’re all still the same people we were this morning.”

“But now I know,” Jace said solemnly. “And I can never un-know.” He sighed. “What you said about Hodge, about his sentence…”

“Yes?” Alec said, warily.

“I think that I agree with you,” Jace said. “It’s not fair that he’s being punished so much when others walked free. I’ll join my voice to yours in the hope to get his sentence lifted, or at least reduced. And you know what? I bet the Silent Brothers would be able to find a way to let him go if we asked them nicely. They’re pretty keen on us, after all.”

He looked confused when Alec and Izzy both broke into laughter.

v^v^v^v

They told Hodge that his suspicions had proven correct and that Jace was indeed a Herondale.

“Thank you,” Jace said seriously. “I didn’t know how much I needed to know that I had some living blood family left until we found out for sure. You didn’t have to say anything, and you did, and so you have my thanks.”

Hodge looked awkward and soon turned the conversation around to tactics.

Now that one of the secrets was out of the way, Alec started to seriously consider asking Hodge to help them come up with winged combat tactics. He wanted to be ready if his dreams came to fruition. He was almost positive that he and his siblings would manifest wings someday. If it happened—when it happened—he wanted to be ready.

v^v^v^v

That night Alec suggested to Jace and Izzy that they bring Hodge into their wing conspiracy. “If our wings ever emerge into reality, then the way we currently fight isn’t going to be enough,” he said. “We’ll have new advantages and new disadvantages. If we can, I want to start training for them now.”

“Could we just ask for the training without revealing what we think is happening?” Jace asked.

Alec shook his head. “Hodge isn’t stupid. He was the one who drilled it into me that I should always verify information before I act on it if there was time, which there very nearly always is. He’ll know as soon as we start practising that we’re serious. We should either tell him everything upfront or not at all.”

Jace shrugged. “Then I say we do it.”

Izzy took the time to think the matter over a bit longer. Alec was so proud of her that he wanted to burst. “It’s a risk,” she said eventually. “But I think that it’s a risk worth taking. Hodge is one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen; if anyone can help us with winged combat, it would be him.”

Alec was the one nominated to tell him, although this time, he was looking forward to it.

Hodge listened to what he had to say in silence. “You’re serious about this,” he said when Alec had finished talking. “You think that the tattoos on your backs are going to manifest into real wings.”

“Yes,” Alec replied simply. “I might be wrong, of course. The Silent Brothers haven’t given me a clear answer one way or the other, but they have shown an incredible amount of interest in the three of us since our markings appeared.”

“I’m really not sure why you’re telling me all of this,” Hodge said, head cocked slightly to one side as he spoke. “This obviously isn’t a new thing for any of you. Why now?”

Alec cleared his throat. “I genuinely believe that it will happen,” he said. “But I have no way of knowing when, or how. It might happen on a significant birthday, although a big part of me doubts that. My gut instinct tells me that it will be caused by stress. Like, it might happen when we’re fighting a demon that’s too strong or something. Regardless of the whole flying issue, it would probably be good to learn how to fight with heavy appendages hanging off our backs, just in case. I don’t want to find myself in a life or death situation where I have to wing it, if you’ll pardon the pun. Then there’s aerial combat…”

Hodge was nodding. “A lot will depend on the size and weight of the wings,” he pointed out. “Also, the amount of control you have over them. I wonder if there would be some way to armour them? It would have to be done in such a way as to allow you to use them as battering ram while not affecting flight…”

Alec grinned across the yard to where Izzy and Jace were lurking beside the chapel door, hearing runes activated, as Hodge began to put together a training regime to help them cope with hypothetical wings.

v^v^v^v

Two months later, a Clave delegation headed by two Silent Brothers arrived unexpectedly at the New York Institute. Robert and Maryse met with them in private for several hours before Hodge was called in. Fifteen minutes later, the delegation—accompanied by Maryse, Robert, Hodge, and several other Shadowhunters that had been long-time members of the New York Institute—left for Alicante. A representative of the Clave, Howard Monteverde, remained behind to take temporary leadership until further notice. Alec was notified that he was responsible for Max’s care until his parents returned.

Rumours abounded.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Izzy asked that night, huddled in bed with Alec the way she used to when they were younger. “Do you think it would be more likely for them to free Hodge, or to imprison Mom and Dad?”

“I have no idea,” Alec said honestly. He shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable placement for his legs. The way that Jace was sitting meant that they were at an awkward angle, and he could already feel his right foot going numb. “I’m glad something’s been done about it, though.”

Izzy squirmed closer and tucked her head under Alec’s chin. “You think anyone will tell them that it’s our fault that this is all being brought up again?”

Jace snorted. “Right. Like it’s our fault they somehow thought it was okay to murder the Whitelaws and then just take over and waltz around the place like they’d done nothing wrong.”

Jace had made a point of reading over the original trial transcripts and had come away even more conflicted than before. He’d spent years hating Valentine and everything he’d touched, and nursing his plans for revenge on the remainder of the Circle; only to find out that not only was Michael Wayland not actually his father—and surely Michael must have known that, and for some reason never saw fit to tell the boy he was raising as his son that he wasn’t—but the people who’d taken him in had also sworn themselves to Valentine, and then hid that from him. The murder of the Whitelaws had hit him especially hard. His grandmother had been a Whitelaw before her marriage, and they were therefore extended family.

Jace had been simmering with anger ever since. He’d forgiven Alec and Izzy for their part in the deception after a week or two of sulking, but his relationship with Maryse and Robert was probably irreversibly harmed.

“It doesn’t actually matter, one way or the other,” Alec said. “We can’t affect the outcome, we can only plan for the possibilities. Really, it’s Max we need to worry about.”

“He didn’t even ask where they were,” Izzy said, starting to sound more angry than worried. “I was on tenter-hooks all evening, wondering how we were going to explain everything, thinking about what we should say. But he just accepted their absence like he was used to it. He’s only just turned four!”

“I know,” Alec agreed. “We need to make more time for him, make sure that he knows we can be relied on; regardless of what the Clave decides.”

Izzy brightened. “We can make a point of taking him out regularly,” she said with a return to her usual enthusiasm. “Let him see that there’s more to life than being perfect Shadowhunters.”

Jace flopped over onto his back. “Michael Wayland would be horrified,” he remarked. “Taking time out of training to take part in frivolous activities? Never!” He lifted his head and shot Alec and Izzy a wide, demented looking smile. “Let’s do it!”

“It’s a plan,” Alec agreed.

v^v^v^v

It was close to a week before official answers arrived from Idris. The news was huge. Inquisitor Imogen Herondale had ruthlessly used all the power of her office to recall every single Shadowhunter implicated in the Uprising and had formally interrogated each one, either with the Soul Sword or under truth spell. They were asked about their introduction to the Circle and the actions they had taken while members, the names of any and all members of the Circle and if their current whereabouts were known, and where their true loyalties now lay.

As previously unknown Circle members were identified, they too were brought in for questioning. No one had been exempt, not Institute Heads, not Iron Sisters, not even the Consul.

It was a bold move, unprecedented in Clave history, and could easily have been Imogen Herondale’s last act as Inquisitor. But the questioning had uncovered the shocking news that Valentine was still alive; he was still planning on eradicating the Clave, and a number of high-level Clave members were receiving instructions from him on a semi-regular basis. Including the Consul.

Under the Inquisitor’s direction, every single person who admitted to either being a Circle member, or committing crimes at Valentine’s behest, or loyalty to him, was remanded for later sentencing. The Gard wasn’t equipped to deal with those numbers, and so—for the first time in centuries—the City of Bones was used as a prison.

The impact on the Clave’s structure was enormous, and the effect of those blows was felt all throughout the Shadow World. A group of highly respected warlocks had been present for the questioning—Imogen had insisted, both for transparency and to facilitate the truth spells—and demanded that they be a part of the team that was sent to apprehend and bring in Valentine Morgenstern.

Valentine was taken completely by surprise. He had been completely outnumbered, having only one other person with him at the time. Both Valentine and the young man—who was later identified as Valentine’s son Jonathan Morgenstern—fought to the death, finally taking poison rather than be defeated.

The apprehension team was left with two dead bodies on their hands. Concerned about some unusual magical emanations that both Morgensterns had displayed, the warlocks in the group teamed together and incinerated the bodies before they could be brought back to Idris. Upon being questioned about the decision afterwards, their spokesperson; Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn; argued that the Clave had already bungled Valentine’s death once and that he and his fellow warlocks had done nothing wrong.

“He has a point,” Izzy remarked three months later as they finished going through the latest Clave announcements. “Given what was found in that creepy hideout of his, who knows if he was dead dead, or only mostly dead and waiting for one of his loyal followers to cure him? It’s common knowledge that not everyone was apprehended. There are known Circle members still in hiding; who knows what they might have done?”

“I wish we could have gone,” Jace said, slumped in his chair while he stared broodily out the nearest window. “I wanted to help kill him.”

Alec shook his head. “I’m just glad that the whole thing came out into the open,” he said. “If he’d been able to complete his schemes, it would have led to war. Most of his plans have been turned over to the Silent Brothers for safekeeping and Brother Samuel has let me look through a few of them. Valentine was heavily into experimentation. His son, Jonathan, that was killed with him? Brother Samuel told me that he was given demon blood in utero.” He shuddered. “If he was willing to do that to his own son, imagine what he would have done to everyone else. The Downworld would have lost all trust in the Clave, and they would have been right to.”

There was silence for a few moments while they all pondered that.

“My grandmother’s a total badass though, right?” Jace said eventually, looking a bit more cheerful.

“She really is,” Alec agreed.

“Don’t sell yourself short, big brother,” Izzy said. “You were the one who told her to her face that the decisions that she and the rest of the Clave made at the end of the Uprising were faulty and would only lead to problems down the road.”

“All three of us were there for that,” Alec reminded her.

“We might have been in the same room, but you were the one who did all the talking,” Jace pointed out. “Imogen might be my grandmother, but she’s terrifying! There was no way that I would have been able to tell her that she’d made a mistake so bluntly.”

“Me either,” Izzy admitted. “You should just face it, hermano, the ‘Inquest’ never would have happened without your input.”

“That was the easy part,” Alec demurred. “Imogen was the one who stood up in front of the Clave and used some of the crazier laws to make everyone do what she wanted. It’s astonishing that she hasn’t been demoted yet. I’d have thought it would be the first thing on the agenda immediately afterwards.”

“I think everyone was still in shock,” Izzy said, the corner of her lips curling up in a smirk. “She completely blind-sided them. And to find out the Consul was a secret member of the Circle? It’s like some trashy novel, only real.”

“Where have you been getting trashy novels from?” Jace asked, distracted.

Izzy gave a careless shrug. “Catarina Loss likes them and doesn’t mind me borrowing them. Of course, our mother caught me reading one once and forbid me to bring them inside the Institute.”

“Which meant you immediately resolved to read as many as you possibly could,” Jace said, nodding. “Do you even like them?”

“I do, actually,” Izzy confessed. “I don’t know what it is about them… The plots are implausible, the relationships are unrealistic, quite often the writing is terrible. But they’re a great way to just, I don’t know, turn off from the world for a while.”

“It’s not like our mother has the power to forbid you to do anything anymore anyway,” Alec said with a sigh.

Maryse and Robert Lightwood had not fared as well in the interrogations as they might have hoped to. The leniency they’d been operating under during their first trials was no longer in effect, and while their subsequent loyalty to the Clave had kept them from being imprisoned with several of their fellow ex-Circle members—who were less reformed than they had been pretending to be—they were no longer allowed to hold any position where they could give commands to an active Shadowhunter.

Since that meant that any Institute posting would have them on the bottom rung of command—in the same bracket as children who had recently undergone their Rune Ceremony—they had chosen to move to Alicante and take up roles that supported the Clave without belonging to it. Their exile from Idris had been revoked, or their only other option would have been to find work amongst the Mundanes.

Alec and Izzy had not volunteered to go with them. Jace had made the offer, but it was half-hearted at best and made more out of a sense of obligation than any real wish to. He’d been relieved when Maryse and Robert had declined.

Alec had been adamant that their younger brother, Max, needed to spend a significant portion of his time in New York with him, Izzy and Jace. The main reason he gave was the excellence of the training that he could receive in New York with Hodge Starkweather, but that was really just a smokescreen. Alec wanted to make sure his brother grew up with the same love and affection that he and Izzy, and later Jace, had been able to give each other.

Hodge was back at the New York Institute but was no longer shackled there. It was deemed that as he’d served his time without complaint and could swear under truth spell that he’d completely forsaken Valentine and the values of the Circle, he would be given his freedom. His exile from Idris was upheld, but that didn’t seem to concern him overly much. When Alec asked him about it, he shrugged. “I wasn’t able to swear complete loyalty to the Clave. I understand that they might not want me in Idris after that.”

Alec nodded. Being one of those hardest hit by the sentencing inconsistencies after the Uprising, it made sense that Hodge’s loyalty—what remained, anyway—would have been strained beyond repair. “I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t de-rune you and exile you, then.”

Hodge shook his head with a half-smile. “I can’t swear my loyalty to the Clave, but I did swear my service. The Inquisitor seemed satisfied enough with my answers to give me a position here.”

After the personnel reshuffle caused by ‘the Inquest,’ Hodge had emerged as New York’s senior physical trainer. As a convicted Circle member, he couldn’t be included on the patrol roster, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a member of Security. He was soon known as a stickler for demanding professional behaviour while on duty.

Alec sometimes wondered if that was about Hodge’s time with the Circle or his time as an outcast in New York. Either way, Hodge had yet to volunteer that information.

Izzy yawned, stretching. “I’d better get some sleep, I’m on dawn patrol tomorrow.” She got to her feet slowly. “Good night, big brother. Goodnight, little brother.”

That night Alec spent several minutes tracing the edges of his wing markings with his fingertips. He hoped they would manifest one day, but even if they didn’t, their presence on his back had given him the confidence to strive for his own freedom. Having Izzy and Jace to share this wonder with him, having Max to teach and guide and love…life was good.