Scars of her Blood • Shadowhunters

Chapter 8: Younglings

Celia was finishing up the paperwork for yesterday's mission when her phone rang. At first, she was expecting it to be Álvaro once again, since they had talked so much over the last days, but the number on the screen was someone else's: the leader of the local Hybrid army base, Richard Lance. Celia rolled her eyes, she really could not stand this man.

"What do you want?", she asked him, not even bothering with a proper greeting.

"I need you to come over.", he sounded equally amused about this conversation, "we have a Shadowhunter here that was bitten by a werewolf and is transitioning. We need to see if he wants to join our society."

"That's not my jurisdiction...", Celia began, but was immediately interrupted by Lance:

"I already talked to César. He said you should do it."

Right in that second, a notification popped up from at the bottom of Celia's screen, showing her a message from César, confirming exactly that. She sighed:

"I'll be there as soon..."

Lance hung up. Celia slammed the phone on the table. The pure prospect of having to spend time in the same room as Lance made her feel sick. He was one of those people that were convinced that Celia had gone too far out of her lane by joining the army:

Seventeen years ago, when Celia was eight years old, Álvaro had offered to train her. Just a few days prior, Celia had told him that she wanted to be a soldier like him. The Council however had not been happy about this development. They continuously tried to convince Celia that she could not join the army, not even for a short time.

César sighed:

"But Celia... what about the education required for you as a princess?"

Celia looked him straight in the eyes and said:

"I can do both!"

And that was what she had done for the next years, under the disapproving gazes of the Council members, just waiting for her to fail at something so they could prove her wrong.

Most Hybrids in leading positions in this territory had some kind of chip on their shoulder when it came to Celia. It did not help that she had actually been successful with her enterprise of joining the army. But she had to deal with them despite all that.

Celia snatched her jacket from the back of her chair and went on her way to the base. Luckily, she only needed another twenty minutes to get there from the Institute. Already on the way there, Celia realized she was getting a headache. She did not really understand why César was making her do this, since technically, only the leader of the territory was permitted to allow new members into the Hybrid society. It did not happen often that a Shadowhunter with the immunity gene was discovered and actually wanted to become a fully enabled Hybrid. It was a whole procedure consisting of multiple steps and involving many people, starting with an evaluation of the case – which was now Celia's part. This was probably another one of César's lessons on Celia's way to the throne. During the last years, he had been delegating some of his own tasks to Celia, telling her that she had to practice for being in charge herself.

The base was a small office building, reaching six stories high – at least for Celia. Since it was covered by a glamour, Celia knew that Mundanes would only see an abandoned building site. Like most parts of the Downworld, it was glamoured. Often, the things that were glamoured were way bigger for the Shadowworld than what the Mundanes saw on the outside. The Downworld part of Mexico City was almost as big as the mundane city, containing all of the government and army buildings, the palace with housing for the whole staff and the mansions of the higher families, with the entrance being no bigger than an apartment in the middle of the city.