My Beautiful One

24. Hope is lost

I picked the diary up again with shaking hands. I hadn't come across those three words, My Beautiful One, other than in my own thoughts, since I was ten years old.

Fear began to spread through me, coursing through my veins and making me feel cold all over, like my blood had turned to ice. I tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence, but I knew it was pointless.

I would have to read that diary if it killed me.

And Sebastian did say you could have anything off the shelf...  I reasoned, stretching a shaking hand towards the diary and picking it up. It was solid and quite heavy, and I noticed that pieces of stationary foreign to the diary were taped in. It was like some kind of journal- not something written all in one long session, but in many different snatched moments when the diary had not been at hand.

I opened it onto the first page.

Here begins the document of all my known recordings of My Beautiful One.

 It said.

She is a girl. A girl like none other. She is like me because she is different. 

The writing, though neat, was not on the same level as some of Sebastian's writing, like that I'd seen on the pages scattered around the room. It was bigger and slightly more uneven, and... Childish.

My breath caught as I read the next paragraph.

My name is Jonathan Morgenstern. I am eleven years old. I am a Shadowhunter, but also a demon. Her name is Amari Silverdown. She is ten years old. She is a faerie, but also part Shadowhunter. She is brave. She is strong. She is pretty. She is my friend. She is my Beautiful One.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling very dry. My name had been mentioned, and all hope of those words just being random was gone.

 Okay... I thought haltingly, still clinging to what little hope I had left. Maybe he just got hold of a document of Jonathan's.

How he'd got that document though, I refused to let myself think about. I didn't want to ruin what I had with Sebastian from any link to Valentine's son, and I knew that if I carried on reading...

But I had to. 

The subject of My Beautiful One had been something I'd kept locked up in my mind for so long it had started to torment me. And now that I was expected to fight in the war against the boy that had saved my life, I needed to know more.

Turned the page and carried on reading.

My name is Jonathan Morgenstern.

This time the script was more sophisticated, smaller, and it was on different paper.

Paper that appeared to be spotted with drops of dark brown that I hoped weren't blood.

I am thirteen years old. I have the power of a Shadowhunter, but I my father said that I can't ever really be one. I can't love, and nobody can love me because I am a demon. I also can't be a Shadowhunter because I can't feel. I am not merciful. I do not understand empathy.

Those words made me uneasy. Hadn't Sebastian been telling me only days ago that his father said he couldn't love?

Her name is Amari Silverdown. She must be twelve by now. In the times I've managed to leave the manor, I've been watching her.

He'd been watching me? I didn't know whether to be happy, touched, or creeped out.

 She is part faerie and part Shaodwhunter, and neither of them accept her. She is still brave- she lives and survives entirely on her own. She is still strong- I saw her fend off a mundane mugger using only a pocket knife. She is even more pretty now she isn't emaciated and harmed by my fathers torture. She is my friend. She is my Beautiful One.