Scars of her Blood • Shadowhunters

Chapter 19: Betrayal

Celia was checking if any messages or missions had come in while she was gone, when Magnus stormed into her office.

"What is it these days with people just walking in here?!", Celia exclaimed before he could get even a single syllable out. But he immediately rolled his eyes:

"Well, pardon me, but your almost-sister-in-law was just nearly beaten to death."

Celia jumped up from her chair and slammed the laptop shut:

"Where?"

"In her office.", Magnus still sounded annoyed.

Celia went passed him and sprinted down the corridor. After everything that had happened the last few weeks, she could not use a dead Clave representative. When Celia stumbled through the door, Alec was kneeling on the ground beside Lydia, who was unconscious.

He immediately turned around to her:

"Go check the surveillance footage for this room! Lydia said something about Hodge."

Celia nodded and went back the same way she came.

It only took her a few clicks to pull up the footage of the camera in Lydia's office. Alec crouched down next to her:

"I brought Lydia into the infirmary.", he pointed at the screen, "do you have anything yet?"

Celia shook her head:

"I rolled back half an hour, but..."

She stopped, when something was actually happening in the footage. The person that entered the room behind Lydia was only visible from the back for now, but the build and hairstyle made Celia sure of who it was. Hodge hit Lydia, who fell and hit her head. As she was lying on the ground, Hodge grabbed the Mortal Cup from her and left the room again.

"Where did he go then?", Alec asked, clearly agitated.

"Where did who go?", Jace asked from behind Alec. He, Izzy and Clary had arrived only seconds ago. Celia played back the video footage she had just watched with Alec to get them in the picture. Jace gasped:

"Son of a..."

Izzy reached past Celia and tapped something on the keyboard, which made the footage from all of the cameras appear on the screen:

"There he is again!", she pointed in the upper corner. Celia nodded and enlarged the picture. Hodge was standing in the room where Jocelyn was floating in her magic bubble. He put a ring on his finger – and started talking to someone who was out of range of the camera.

"Can we see who that is?", Clary asked. Celia shook her head:
"You guys need to update your camera set up.", she mumbled, "just like so many other things..."

"Can you maybe lecture us on that later -", Alec began, but then everybody froze.

"It's Hodge...", Izzy whispered.

"Oh my God...", Celia sighed. She was just as stumped as the others. Hodge had been here as long as Celia had and even though in the beginning she hated him for being a Circle member, the two of them had grown a little closer during training. Now she was watching as Izzy switched through the cameras once again, looking for Hodge, trying to find out where he had gone after taking the Cup.

"Wait, there he is!", Alec pointed out. Now Hodge was standing next to Clary's mom, talking to someone outside of the view of the camera.

"Who is he talking to?", Clary asked.