Thirty-Six: Valentine's Daughter

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I apologize for this chapter taking so long. It was a combination of being gone for a week with terrible service and no computer, packing for a trip where I won't even have my phone, and my practices being upped due to approaching competitions. I don't know when the next update will be, but I hope it will be soon. In the meantime, enjoy the chapter.

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of death throughout entire chapter, breakdown, extreme pain, weapons, and fighting/sparring.


The room was in chaos. Valentine's cheek had been split by her rings and he was watching her with an infuriatingly calm curiosity. The guards outside the cell were tense and watching, ready to intervene if necessary. Clary was pacing and muttering frantically to herself. Jace was swearing violently under his breath as he hauled Everest off of Valentine. Everest didn't fight him. She didn't want to fight anymore. She just wanted answers. She just wanted Izzy home safe.

Once Jace had dragged her several steps away from Valentine, far enough that he could intervene if she tried to hit him again, he stepped in front of her.

"You can't beat him up right now," he said calmly. "That will get us nowhere. Believe me, if I thought it would help, I'd be right there next to you beating him into the ground. But it won't help, not now. Maybe later, but not now. Okay?"

Her body was tense and the backs of her eyes stung with oncoming tears of frustration, but she nodded. "Okay. I won't try to attack Valentine," she agreed.

He gave her a grateful look and then turned back to Valentine, whose gaze hadn't strayed from Everest once.

"Explain," he snapped in a low, threatening voice. Clary stopped pacing and whirled around to look at Valentine with a murderous glare.

Valentine glanced at Jace and Clary momentarily and then looked back at Everest. She hated the attention, hated the way he looked at her like she was an exhibit in a zoo.

"Do you want to do the honors or shall I?" he asked, echoing his words from earlier.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she snarled, looking at Jace and Clary in hopes that they would believe her. She had no clue what Valentine was talking about. While weird things had happened to her (spending most of her childhood befriending people from the ShadowWorld without knowing about it being a prime example), she didn't have magical powers or anything. The only weird thing that had happened that couldn't immediately be explained by saying 'It's the ShadowWorld' was her being freezing cold on Valentine's ship and feeling like she was suffocating as soon as she walked into Iris's house.

Jace nodded at her and her breathing got a little easier. She looked at Clary. Her sister's eyes searched her face and then she inclined her head to the left with a nod. Everest very nearly sighed in relief, despite the underlying anger still filling Clary's face. Her sister might believe her about her not knowing what Valentine was talking about, but Clary was still upset that she hadn't been told about Jace not being their brother.

"Explain," Clary snapped at Valentine, stepping forward. She reminded Everest of a lion, hair curling around her face like a mane and body tense but graceful at the same time.

Valentine's gaze shifted between the three of them again, staying on Clary longer than before but still ending on Everest. Her nails dug into her upper arms.

"Before Everest and Jace left the ship, I took a sample of Everest's blood."

"Why?" Jace interrupted.

Valentine sighed slightly, as if exasperated by the interruption. "She was in the kitchen looking for something to eat when she opened a cabinet that had granola bars on the shelf."

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