Sweet Little Serena (Original)

Chapter 46

Serena had never been angrier.

Usually, she took pride in her name, in being serene and calm. But today, she was the polar opposite.

She'd gone through three punching bags already, bare-knuckled and dripping with sweat, and was still no closer to working off her rage.

After interviewing them all, Aldertree had not only banned all Downworlders from the Institute, but issued a wanted order for Jace, dead or alive. Apparently, Clary's interview had convinced Aldertree that Jace was a traitor to the Clave seeing as how he had multiple chances to kill Valentine but still let him go. But in addition to that, he'd lifted the lockdown on the Institute, except for Jocelyn, Clary and Serena. He wanted to use them as bait to draw in Jace as well as keep a close eye on them. And he'd banned Izzy, Clary, Alec and Serena from helping find Jace, yet he still expected Serena to use her Downworld contacts to their advantage.

She'd stepped toe-to-toe with Aldertree and said, "Unless you have a signed order from Inquisitor Herondale, I don't answer to you when it comes to the Downworlders. You don't get to use me, or my colleagues to your 'advantage'. And punishing me for insubordination like I know you're contemplating right now would only result in an uprising of the entire Downworld. That is how good my relations are with them. I, nor them, will help you hunt my brother."

And so here she was, going through punching bag after punching bag in lieu of something alive to hit.

"Want to spar?" Alec asked as he walked in, dressed in his work out gear, he and Izzy having been threatened to be de-runed after trying to get Aldertree to revoke the dead-or-alive order.

"No. Because I'm angry. And I don't want to hurt that pretty face of yours, which I happen to love," she said as she continued in her motions, body on autopilot as she punched.

"Fair enough. I love your face too," he said as he set up a hitting dummy, locked in place with runes so they didn't move as you hit them, and Serena couldn't help the tiny smile that showed on her lips.

And as Alec started whaling on the dummy, he glanced at his wife, who was covered in sweat as he asked, "You never told me what it meant."

"What, what meant?"

"What Jace said to you. 'Set the falcon free'."

Serena's punches seemed to slow for a second before she remembered why they said that, and her next punch tore the bag from the ceiling.

"We used to say it when we were little," she said as she wiped her nose on the back of her bloodied knuckles and she switched to a hitting dummy like Alec's, imagining either Aldertree's face or Valentine's as she hit. "When we were six, Michael - Valentine - bought Jace a falcon for his birthday, told him to make it obedient. Instead, Jace earned its trust, taught it to love rather than obey. Valentine snapped its neck right in front of him."

"You always made your years with Michael sound so good, the both of you," Alec noted as they both moved in sync as they attacked the rubber dummy.

"It was more bad than good. We just chose to remember the good. Anyway, that night after his falcon was killed, Jace snuck into my room and he cried. He loved that bird in the short time he had it. So, I told him, the falcon wasn't dead. It was free. That the falcon had been set free into the next world and the next life to escape our father. From then on it became a message of help. If we were ever in trouble, especially with our father we'd say those words. Set the falcon free."

Serena finally stopped punching as she slowly faced Alec who'd stopped the second she had.

"He said those words to me knowing what he was walking into, one last plea for help, to let us know that he's still in there. And he's being tortured, waiting for me to save him! And I can't even leave the Institute!"

Alec wrapped her in a hug.

"That's it. We're going to find Jace," Alec declared as he picked up a small towel to wipe down his face and tossed one to his wife.

"How? Baby, I can't leave."

The glimmer in his eye was wicked.

"You remember my favourite quote from when we studied warfare? San Tzu. Art of war."

Serena was about to answer him when she realised what she was about to say and grinned at her clever husband.

"Leave in twenty. I'm going to go get Sparkles," he said in code before quickly kissing her lips and walking out.

And Serena went back to punching the practice dummy, but not out of anger, now it was just for show. 

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Know thy enemy. And to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.

How brilliant her husband was.

After showering and changing, Serena became her enemy, glamouring herself to look like Aldertree as she snuck out of the Institute to meet Alec at Magnus's and he'd told her.

Alec was going to use his parabatai bond to track Jace, something that could potentially break the bond between them if he let it go too far. But with Magnus's aid, it would be able to find Jace on water without their bond suffering any strain.

Alec had been encased by Magnus's blue magic and his wife about to draw the tracking rune over Alec's parabatai one when he stopped her.

Jace was on land and Alec could sense him.

Magnus's portal got them there just in time for Serena to jump in front of Jace and catch the arrow Jocelyn had fired at her own son with her shoulder and she fell to the floor.

Jocelyn had been tracking her son and used Clary and Simon to do it before they followed her, Clary also having snuck out of the Institute after Izzy told her how Serena did it.

"SERENA!" Jace bellowed as Valentine tried to pull him back to the portal and Clary, Simon and Alec ran for Jocelyn, trying to disarm her.

Jocelyn fired a second arrow, and the twins were shocked as they watched Valentine push Jace out of the way and take it himself.

While Simon and Clary tackled Jocelyn, Alec ran to his wife who was staring at Jace as she called out to him, "I will set the falcon free!"

And Jace pulled Valentine through the portal with him, gone again.

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Aldertree had soon arrived on the scene and escorted them all back to the Institute.

Alec and Izzy had gone with Serena to the infirmary while Clary had quite the discussion with her mother.

Jocelyn revealed that she never had twins. Or at least never remembered having twins. She couldn't remember giving birth the first time, but she remembered Jonathan. She remembered holding only one baby. And she remembered finding out what Valentine had done to the baby.

How he'd injected demon blood into Johnathan when Jocelyn was still pregnant with him, thinking that it would make their baby strong. But it made him sick, evil. And she showed Clary the memory she had that proved it.

Jocelyn then told her daughter that she went to Ragnor Fell, who told her that Jonathan would only leave death and destruction in his wake.

That only confused Clary even more.

Because If Jace was Valentine's son and he'd been injected with demon blood that made him evil before he was born, why had he never acted evil before?

And Serena was definitely his twin, so why wasn't she evil either?