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CHAPTER FOUR:
❝ City Of Ashes ❞
Alec was waiting for them outside the library. He was wearing black leather Shadowhunter armor over his clothes. Gauntlets protected his arms and Marks circled his throat and wrists. Seraph blades, each one named for an angel, gleamed at the belt around his waist. "Are you ready?" he said to his brother. "Is Max taken care of?"
"He's fine." He held out his arms. "Mark me."
As Alec traced the patterns of runes along the backs of Nico's arms and the insides of his wrists, Esme glanced over to where Isabelle was marking Clary. Nico whispered something to Alec who looked at him studiously, then said, "You should probably head home." It took Esme a moment to realized he was talking to her. "You don't want to be here when the Inquisitor gets back."
"I want to go with you," Esme said, the words spilling out before she could stop them. "I am going with you."
"But you haven't got any training," Alec argued. "You'll just be a liability."
Esme glared at him. Then at Nico. "Don't make your brother fight your battles," she said. It stung. She didn't care. Alec looked at Nico with delicate caution - there was a fire behind his eyes that was indescribable.
Nico said, "Well, maybe I don't want you crying in our ears when we face a demon."
Esme scoffed. Decidedly not in love with him. "It wasn't me who was doing the crying, the last time we faced a demon."
Clary jumped in then, putting her arm out to hold Esme back before she ripped out anyone's hair. She said, "Hey, maybe you should go back. You won't be able to go inside the Silent City anyway."
Now Esme looked at her, eyes narrowed in skepticism. She reviewed her words, ran them over and over in her head to see if she was lying, then sighed. "Whatever," she said. She pulled herself out of Clary's hold harshly and threw another venomous look towards Nico before leaving them.
She hated it. She hated this. Being stuck in the middle of these worlds - having the knowledge of it, but not being able to do anything about it. But if they thought she'd go away just like that, they had another thing coming.
When Nico ducked out of the Silent City, he did not expect there to be a flood of light, blinding him. He blinked as adjusted his vision as Jace said, "Witchlight."
They'd found him badly battered up, bands of blood around his wrists where he'd tried to rip his manacles from. Inside the City was a massacre, a terrible sight he had not expected to see. Spattered all along the walls were blood and strewn across the floor were the bodies of the Silent Brothers. The Silent Brothers were supposed to be indestructible, and they had found them tossed aside like rag dolls, joints broken, neck twisted, drenched in their own blood. The images tainted his mind, and he could not forget them even if he blinked hundreds of times. The Bone City might have been beautiful once, but it was terrifying now.
