The Other World (A Shadowhunters Fanfiction)

Chapter 9: Chaotic Resolve

(This particular chapter is the title of an album by Plumb, and there are actually only two songs on that album I've ever heard but I liked those songs at the time that I originally named this chapter, sooo...)

Cordelia touched her fingertips to the necklace James had given her as the carriage trundled along. She closed her eyes and played a memory in her head.

One night, they'd been playing chess, the way they often did—it was Cordelia's favorite of the games they played, so it was the one both of them picked most frequently. They were laughing about something that Matthew had said, according to James. When James laughed, it always made her want to smile, and when she made him laugh, she always felt her heart would stop beating in her chest.

But then he'd gotten up to come toward her, and she stood, holding her teacup, and the teacup went tumbling to the parlor floor. It broke with a crash; it was some of Will's mother's tea set, and it was expensive, so Cordelia immediately wanted to melt into oblivion. "I'm so sorry," she said. "James, I—"

And suddenly he was very close, so close that Cordelia caught the faint scent of his soap, and could see the faint brown threads amidst the gold of his irises—and his hands were cupping her face, warm and gentle, tender as though he were holding a butterfly. "No, no, Daisy—don't be."

She had to catch her breath at the sudden shock of desire that went through her, the inexplicable need to kiss him. She knew it would be the end of her, if they ever did that consummating marital act, but in that moment she might not have hesitated to give all of herself to him.

Now, in the carriage... she played the memory over and over again, and wished that she had kissed him, consequences be damned. She was going to die, now, without ever having told him that she loved him, and she found herself wishing she had just told him, even though he didn't love her in return.

She wished, consequences be damned, that she had given all of herself to him. She wished she had not been so afraid of the pain, because she knew all the pain in the world couldn't justify going to her grave like this, never having uttered a word of her love to him.

The carriage ride was shorter than she expected it to be. When the carriage came to a stop, she looked out the window and saw a building that she guessed was the house of the Dark Sisters—purportedly the place in which Belial and his automatons now resided.

Belial set that strange, small hand—that hand which belonged to Tessa—on Cordelia's shoulder. They left the carriage, and the automatons were already waiting to escort Cordelia down the gravel drive, their cold-fleshed hands tightly wound around her arms. She considered trying to break free, but suddenly, even freedom was an overwhelmingly bleak picture. No one was coming to help her; James loved Grace; even within this realm, no one knew she was in danger, and they certainly wouldn't make it to save her in time, even when they did realize she was missing.

She would need to sustain herself here—somehow, she needed to figure out a way to escape Belial and his army of automatons, and she would need more than her own two fists to do it. She would need weapons, and the element of surprise.

She decided to bide her time. Surely, Belial did not have much need to imprison people in this old manor. And perhaps, if he underestimated the strength and will of a young Shadowhunter woman, he would be careless with her.

The automatons took her deep into the building, to a room lit only by a few candles and a witchlight. The walls were charavcterized by peeling mauve wallpaper, and both the floor and ceiling were black with scorch marks. She felt a sense of dread creep up her spine for the first time. You will pay for the crimes you perpetrated against me.

What did Belial intend to do to her?

Cordelia began to panic in earnest. The automatons threw her to the ground, and she let herself cry out, let herself show her honest fear when she looked up at Belial. A heavy metal door shut behind the automatons, and then she and Belial were alone.

He was strangely silent, and Cordelia's breath hitched with fear; she felt like trapped prey, pinned down beneath the gaze of a hungry predator, a wolf or a coyote. She was cornered, alone—and Belial was angry with her. It all rushed in at once, the primal fear, the knowledge that she had no way to escape what was about to happen to her.

"You stabbed me," Belial began, "twice, with the sword Cortana. Now you must pay for what you have done. Have you anything to say?"

Cordelia was silent, shaking.

"No?"

Suddenly, Belial's face was right in front of her own, Belial's voice booming through the room. "Beg for your life," he said. "Beg, because I am a Prince of Hell, and you are nothing."

Before she could think better of it, she said, "But you're not going to kill me, are you? You're going to torture me."

The silence sent sheer dread down her spine, and Belial's slow smile chilled her to the bone. It contorted Tessa's features, made them almost inhuman, and it looked utterly wrong on Tessa's face, a face Cordelia had only ever seen kindness on. Cordelia stumbled to her feet, stepped back until she hit the wall.

"Yes," Belial said.

Cordelia trembled head to foot—reached for James' necklace, desperate for the assurance it gave her, for some semblance of the courage she had felt when she faced Belial in battle just days ago. But that was false courage, she realized—courage she only felt because of Lilith. She wished she had never hidden Cortana, wished she had had it with her all along—wished she had James here, or Alastair, or Lucie. Anyone, anybody at all, to hold her through this. I will find my way back to you, she vowed silently. I will not die in this place, and I will not die at Belial's hand.

I will not die today.

"You are afraid," Belial said. "And you should be. I can reach into your mind. Fill it with anything I wish."

It swept through her all at once: a terrible and all-consuming knowledge that she always had been, and always would be, alone. James did not love her, and he never had, and he never would. Her father had never cared for her more than he cared for his next drink, and her own brother had hidden that from her, had left her ignorant of her own reality, like she was nothing more than a child. And, she supposed, it was true; she had been a child, all this time. A stupid, petulant child, who wanted more from this world than she deserved to be given.

She crumpled to her knees and clawed at her hair. "Stop," she sobbed. It wracked her, the certainty that she would not make it out of this place alive, that she did not deserve to make it out of this place alive—that no one, even the people she loved most in the world, loved her enough to save her from this. Cordelia's story ended here, like this—not the noble death of a warrior.

Hers would be the death of someone weak, like her father.

Cordelia knew, logically, that none of it was real. It was Belial's fingers in her mind—a creeping venom, a poison.

But it felt real.

"You reality," Belial whispered, kneeling down beside her, "is whatever I want it to be. And oh, you cannot even begin to comprehend a fraction of the suffering I wish upon you, Cordelia Carstairs."

"Please—"

And then it took over.

The pain was like nothing Cordelia had ever known. It was the acid in her stomach, churning and roiling and flooding until she felt like it was eating her alive, melting her from the inside out. Her very flesh became like a series of tiny lit wires, every interval of her skin burning, melting off her bones, scorching her marrow. Her head ached as though every blood vessel in her brain was bursting, one by one by one, and her eyes ached so badly she pictured reaching into the sockets with her fingernails to scrape them out.

When she began to vomit, she saw blood spatter her Gear, dribbling off her chin.

It felt like an eternity passed before she could find her voice in her throat, and even then, she only heard herself scream as though from very far away.