The Mortal Instruments | Morgenstern Blood

Human:

I walk straight to my room and open the bottom drawer of my desk. I rummage through it for a minute before I feel the cold metal of a key. I pull it out and unlock the cupboard on the wall, putting in the ingredients and locking it.

I put the key away in the drawer then walk back out into the hall way. I walk by Clary's room, stopping outside quietly to see if I can work out what she's doing through the closed door. The room is silent so I can only presume she's asleep or focused. I tiptoe back and forth a few times, trying to peer through the crack between the door and the frame.

Finally, I stop and knock on the door.

"Get lost, Sebastian."

I sigh and walk into the living room. Jace is slouched across the sofa, his feet kicked up to rest on the arm rest. His boots lie, kicked, onto the floor at the bottom of the sofa and in his hand is a gaming controller.
His fingers slide over each control, spamming the buttons to unlock the combos on screen.

I sit down next to him, shoving him over roughly so there's another room for me. I pick up my controller from the table and join in the game, equally spamming all the buttons, copying Jace's technique.

Clary's POV-

I sigh as I hear Jace's shout of protest from the other room, something to do with his unfair loss or something, probably. He's different around Sebastian. Much rougher.

I don't prefer this side of Jace. I don't like this side of Jace at all. He's not my Jace. He's Sebastian's. And everything about him shows that.

The words that come out of his lips are plagued with his thoughts. The roughness of his tone does not belong to his usual soft voice and the harshness of his words only adds to that.

I roll my eyes at a second shout followed by a fit of girly laughter. I open my door and decide to go see what the fuss is all about, so I walk to the living room.

The two boys lie sprawled across the sofa, eyes fixed on the screen, hands tense on their controllers. Then it hits me.

Sebastian is just a boy. He's just a teenage boy. And he wants to burn down the world.

It makes me think, wonder with hatred at what he must have seen in order to hate the world so strongly, or whether the emotions had just been bred into his blood.
I'm staring at two skinny boys and besides the runes and scars they could be human. They look human.

Sebastian? Human?

He turns his head and his eyes fix on my face. His lips curl up into a gentle smile and without me realising, I smile back.