Fear

Runes and Excitement

Chapter 22- Runes and excitement

Clary POV

Consequently, I start to panic.

I quickly rinse the toothbrush under the cold water of the running tap and slam it down on the side before shooting into the room and asking Jace nonchalantly, "Looking for anything in particular?"

Startled, Jace's head flies up to look at me as I stand in the room with my arms folded up against my chest, each hand gripping onto the opposite arm, leaning against the walls of the bedroom.

"Hiding anything in particular?" he answers back immediately, as if it were a reflex.

"And what would I have to hide? I've not left the room all day," I say a little bit too defensive: if he wasn't suspicious before, he is now.

"You don't have to leave the room to draw, do you?" Jace turns back to the drawers and continues to sift through them. "If you're brother provided you with a pen and paper, then..." he pauses for a moment, before glancing at a piece of paper and exclaiming, "Aha!" He waves a crumpled sheet of paper over his head, in a childish triumph; except when he does it, his face is a mask of seriousness and nothing like a child's. He stands up and begins to study it.

"Jace, please don't-"I begin, but Jace holds his hand out, gesturing for me to shut up. "You're not supposed to-"

"Somnus," he mutters under his breath. "Why do you have a rune for sleep?"

"So that's what it means," I say awkwardly as I let my right arm drop to my side, my left arm still clinging onto my right elbow.

"Of course it is," he shakes his head at my apparently stupid question, "it's Latin."

"Alright," I laugh, holding my hands up in mock surrender. But Jace wasn't paying me any attention. Instead he was looking at the rune and studying it from different angles. "How do you know all of these languages anyway?"

Unfocused on the answer, he quietly says something like, "Shadowhunter lessons when I was younger."

"Really? I ask, trying to lighten the now reasonably awkward room. "I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners."

Rather than replying to me, Jace just pauses his studying of the rune, gives me an 'are you kidding me?' look, smirks and then lowers himself into the chair.

"I've never seen this rune before," he explains, gesturing for me to stand next to him. Hurriedly, I move to hover by his shoulder as he spreads out my drawing on the desk. "It's certainly not in the Grey Book; otherwise, I would recognise it."

"Do you memorize all of them?" I ask curiously, receiving another incredulous look from Jace.

"Can't believe he said you were a legendary shadowhunter," he absentmindedly mutters.

"That's because I wasn't," I tell him.

"Obviously you were; otherwise, you wouldn't be drawing these," he shoves the crumpled drawing forcedly into my hands.

"Could it be from an older version of the book?" I ask, sinking down onto the bed; watching Jace think things through.

"It's not impossible," he agrees, standing up and pacing the room (still shirtless, may I add). "But it's likely that I would have at least heard of it before."

"But then how-"

"I don't know," Jace cuts me off, practically growling in frustration.

The room plunges into an unwelcome silence as Jace paces the room and I watch him, transfixed by the way his muscles ripple. His long and slender fingers clench and unclench into fists at his sides as he paces, his gorgeous golden eyes glowing as he thinks. Suddenly, he stops and swings around to face me and says almost perplexed, "The only other way would be that you can create runes."

"Is that normal?" I naively ask and when he shakes his head, I am slightly unnerved. I sigh exasperated, "So all of a sudden, I'm thrown into a world of fantasy-"

"It's not fantasy," he automatically corrects me.

"Okay then, whatever you want to call it," I take a deep breath. "But not just that, I'm an unusual weirdo within the world who has abnormal powers? Is that even possible?"

"We'll have to try it out," he rushes over to me and pulls me up from the shoulder and moves me over to the chair before pushing down gently on my shoulders so that I sit. "Draw a rune for light."

"Light?" I twist my neck to look up at the golden boy curiously. His eyes are filled with the childish thrill of excitement as they catch mine and he nods his head enthusiastically. "Better get drawing then."

A/N

I am so sorry! I have been terrible at updating (IT'S BEEN TWO MONTHS)! how horrifying! I'm hopefully going to start writing this again and I'll just battle through the writer's block. Thank you to those who have been reading and voting and those who have commented asking me to carry on. If it weren't for you people, I probably wouldn't be posting right now. So I'm going to start writing the next chapter and I suppose I'm signing out. xx