Valentine Morgestern

Valentine Morgenstern- Part 14

We carried on our plotting and a month before The Accords were due to be signed I realised something. I was pregnant, if my instinct to leave Valentine had not been great before now it was even greater upon learning this news. I hid it from him, concealed it. I was determined to leave him before he could destroy my second child the same way he had destroyed my first. He knew though.

My resolve was strengthened and Lucian and I tuned the fine details, I attended the meetings of a The Circle to find out more.

To my horror at one meeting Stephen Herondale and my husband produced a box. I frowned as I saw the seal of The Clave imprinted around the outside with the rune for angelic power embossed upon the top. I wanted to reach out and touch the box as curiosity overwhelmed me. Valentine smiled at us and invited us closer but left a space for me on his right with Stephen on his left.

"My friends, Stephen and I have finally been able to procure something very valuable in achieving our aim of the creation of more Shadowhunters!" Valentine spoke clearly and proudly with a smirk sketched across his face. "We have managed to borrow the Mortal cup!" With a great flourish he drew the lid off the box and reached into it and held the cup before him for all to see. I fought the urge to gasp, vomit. He'd stolen from the Clave! He was now the ultimate criminal and traitor in the eyes of the Clave. "We can now use Raziel's own cup to create more of the perfect race! The finest race!"

I felt my anger burning in my stomach and in my throat. The sweat was running down my back. The blood was running cold in my veins. He'd stolen from the Clave. He'd finally gone too far. Too far. He'd turn the mundanes who couldn't survive the process into forsaken and they'd be driven mad. Shadowhunters were created with the intent of preserving the lives of mundanes, not driving them insane like they were worthless. I hated him for this.

Finally I could see my husband for what he was. He was evil. He was conniving. He was flawed. Deeply flawed. I hated him for turning me into a paranoid and suspicious woman but at the same time I was grateful for what he'd done because I'd never trust anyone the way I'd trusted him and I'd protect my heart and stop people getting in too close. I'd never let anyone hurt me the way he'd hurt me. Especially for what he did to Jonathan. He had destroyed my child from inside me. He'd tricked me into drinking that vile draft so he could create a super race of Shadowhunters.

Two weeks later news came to the house. Stephen Herondale was dead.

Horrified I sobbed at the death of such a vibrant young man. I may have disliked him for how he co operated with my husband but I respected Stephen for the doting husband he had been to Celine. He would have been the best Father.

I was just recovering from my horror when more news came to my house. Celine had committed suicide so I wept for her death and the death of her child whom she had yet to deliver. I supposed she could hardly see a life beyond Stephen. Stephen had been the centre of her world and she had loved him as completely as one could love another.

"She went up to her room to get compose herself as she put it," Maryse Lightwood said as she ran his fingers through her thick curtain of raven black hair, "When she didn't appear within half an hour we went upstairs to find her." Maryse shuddered at the memory. "She was slumped against her bedroom wall and blood surrounded her. The poor girl committed suicide. What a waste of life."

"Perhaps she couldn't see beyond her life with him. All the girl ever wanted was to be loved," I said as I wiped away the tears from my eyes.

Maryse shrugged. "Must be sad to think like that."

"Must be nice to love someone so much that you don't want to live a life without them."

Maryse nodded reluctantly in agreement. "But to kill yourself whilst pregnant. She had so much to live for. Her child. She thought it was a boy. That boy could have been her saviour. She could have raised him to be honourable in the memory of Stephen yet she took the cowards way out and abandoned the world rather than take up her cross and bear it."

I bit my lip and thought carefully about what Maryse had said. "Maybe that is true but you never know what you'd do until you received the news she did. Did you ever think that maybe for her all she would see when she looked into the face of her child was Stephen and she would hate the child for it. Or perhaps worse she could have looked into her child's face to see nothing of Stephen but only herself and she would hate that she couldn't see the face of the man she loved with all her heart, soul and mind. In many ways staying alive and despising your own child would destroy you more than taking your own life and being together in death with your husband and child where you can all be happy together."

Maryse stared at me dumbstruck. She had only thought to judge and reject Celine's actions as wrong rather than look at her possible motives and measure them against her emotions before deciding to either condemn or permit the act.

I had only learnt a measured approach through my condemnation of my husbands actions. I judged all his actions against my own moral compass and stealing the mortal cup was an incorrect act, it was not Valentine's personally it belonged to all Shadowhunters. His intent to use the cup on all mundanes was wrong, he'd kill them or drive them into utter madness, I wasn't sure which was worse.