Fragile Hearts (TID - Will Herondale fanfic)

Chapter 14: Mrs Dark

Will looked over at his parabatai. "What's Nora's story?"

  "Why do you call her that?" Jem asked curiously, avoiding the question.

  "Call her what? Nora?"

  Jem nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. "She calls you 'Liam.' You don't seem to mind."

  Will shrugged. He actually liked it now. How it was so private and special between the two of them.

  "You are not answering my question."

  "I don't understand your question."

  "There's no way a girl like Nora has a simple past. What is her story?"

  "What do you mean, 'a girl like Nora'?" Jem said.

  "She's so... confusing. One minute she's silent, and the next, she's a person bursting with energy. She's mean one moment and then the next she is kind," Will said, slightly thoughtful.

  A sad look passed over Jem. "Her Father was a harsh man. He drilled it in Ella how to act. To act mean and vicious. They have to put up different acts to please and push away different people. She'd never had a Friend before me."

  "And Gabriel?"

  "That was only recently. Last year."

  "Is her Father alive? I never hear her talk of him."

  Jem frowned. "I don't know. She avoids questions about her Father."

  "What was her Mother like?"

  Jem smiled. "Her Mother... she was a strong woman, like Ella. The Nightstorm family has many secrets. Ella was very close to her Mother."

  Will nodded. "We're here."

  They hopped out of the carriage and walked toward the black metal gate of the mansion's walls.

  "Could you hand me your stele?" Jem asked, outstretching his.

  "Where's yours?" Will asked, handing Jem his stele.

  "I had lent it to Ella."

  Jem drew an open rune on the door and it swung open. After leaving the carriage just inside the gate, the two Shadowhunters found themselves on the curving drive that led up to the house's front entrance. The path was weed-ridden and overgrown, and the gardens stretched out around it, dotted with crumbling outbuildings and the blackened stumps of dead trees.

  Jem turned to Will, eyes feverish. "Shall we get on with it?"

  Will drew a seraph blade from his belt. "Israfel," he whispered, and the weapon blazed up like a fork of contained lightning. He remembered Nora, using her seraph blade to decapitate the automaton just yesterday, her blade swinging down in a perfect arc.

  "Indeed," he said to Jem. "It's time."

  They ascended the front steps and tried the doors. Though Will had expected them to be locked, they were open, and gave way at the touch with a resonant creaking. He and Jem edged inside the house, the light of their seraph blades illuminating the way.

  They found themselves in a grand foyer. Before Will and Jem, a great curving staircase swept upward, toward the shadowy first floor.

  "This can't be right," Jem whispered. "It's as if no one's been here in fifty years."

  Barely had he finished speaking when a sound rose on the night air, a sound that lifted the hairs on Will's neck and made the Marks on his shoulders burn. It was singing—but not pleasant singing. It was a voice capable of reaching notes no human voice could reach. Overhead, the chandelier's crystal pendants rattled like wineglasses set to vibrating at the touch of a finger.