My Beautiful One

3. The Institute

Coming into the Institute was like walking into a prison. Everyone that saw me stared, and since the Mortal War had produced many Shadowhunter refugees, there were a lot of people in the Insitute. I suppose I did look like a faerie to them, but the reason for their stares was that I was a faerie who had managed to get inside the Institute, despite the iron gates and iron nails that defended it against the Fair Folk.

"What can I do to stop them staring at me?" I muttered under my breath as Jace, Clary, and I stepped inside the elevator and watched the doors clang shut.

"It's the way you're walking." Said Jace, not looking at me, but obviously answering the question I hadn't aimed at anyone. "The Fair Folk kind of... glide. And they don't frown or hunch over; they smirk like the demons they descended from, and hold their pretty heads high like their seraphic ancestors."

Casually, I straightened up and tried to twist my lips into a smile. I looked at myself in the mirror of the elevator, and immediately frowned again. The smile made me look half crazy, combined with how messed up my hair was, and the way my eyes reflected the light like a cat's the way all faerie's do. Next to my scowling figure, the mirror portrayed a gleeful looking Jace, who was looking in the mirror to watch my dismal attempts at smiling, and also to admire his reflection, I bet. 

The elevator doors came open with a ding, and we strode down a long corridor carpeted with antique rugs. Eventually a large oak door with a cross nailed above it came into our path, and Clary turned to face me.

"Look, I am sorry about all this." She said earnestly. "I know this isn't your battle specifically, but right now, we need all the help we can get. The world needs everything we can get, and..."

"You could do with another weirdo supernatural to fight on your side?" I raised my eyebrows. "You don't need to convince me, but you do need to treat me as equal. After all, you're no weirder than I, Valentine's daughter."

Jace snorted. "Quite a trio we are here: Valtentine's daughter, Valentine's son, and Valentine's experiment."

I glared at him. "Don't put a label on me, Jace Herondale; I am nothing of Valentine's. You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Believe me, I do." Jace said quietly, his gaze moving to Clary, who she shot him a sympathetic look. By the time the door swung open, they had joined hands, and I walked into the office behind them feeling slightly lonely. I didn't know what Jace had endured, but it was obvious that he had Clary there for him.

I had never had someone like that; I was seventeen and had lived mostly on my own since the age of ten, not quite faerie and nowhere near Shadowhunter enough to be a full part of either community when the tensions brought about by the Morgenstern family started to rumble the Shadow World. But I didn't like the Shadow World anyway, and though I had the house my father left me in the faerie kingdom, I spent most of my time in my small, cozy Manhattan apartment.

"And you are?" An amused voice jerked me back to reality, and I turned to see a tall Shadowhunter girl about the same age as me leaning against a huge mahogany desk.

"Amari Silverdown." I replied. The girl nodded, a strand of dark hair escaping her ponytail only to be inconspicuously put back into place within a second. "I'm Isabelle Lightwood, and this grump over here is my brother, Alec." She gestured to a someone I hadn't noticed before, a boy with floppy dark hair and a slouching posture worse than mine. I slouched to be less noticed, but I had a feeling this Alec guy did it out of pure self-hatred, like even he couldn't stand the sight of himself. I wondered what it was that made him feel that way, but thought better than to ask.

"Hey Izzy. We're looking for Maryse; have you seen her?" Asked Clary.

Isabelle's amused expression faded rapidly, and she looked down at her impeccably manicured nails. "Something happened this morning. Big business, but mom won't tell me what. She told me to keep watch over the office for a while."

"This is big business as well." Said Jace, sounding frustrated. "We have a new race here, Iz. Amari can fight like a Shadowhunter and even take runes like a Shadowhunter, but she's as fast and pretty as a faerie. I fought her myself, and she was an even better fighter than those backwards Shadowhunters the Infernal Cup made! If there are more like her-"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, Jace, but I'm one of a kind." I interrupted, and leaned back against the wall. "I've spent seven years looking for others like me, and the closest I have come is the Blackthorn family. If it's any help, my mother was Ivy Blackthorn who was quarter faerie and my uncle is her brother, Andrew Blackthorn. You might have heard of him; he runs the Los Angeles Institute. If you want faerie hybrids fighting for you, I'm afraid you've already got them all, so don't get your hopes up about using some super race to help you win the war."

Isabelle's dark eyes went wide. "If Andrew's your uncle than that means Helen Blackthorn is your cousin." She said. "You look quite a bit like her, actualy, but just a little more faerie. You have those eyes, you're paler, and you have that weird shiny-hair thing going on that faeries are so lucky to have."

I flashed a smile. "Thanks."

Just then, the door burst open so suddenly and loudly that both Jace and I had drawn weapons in anticipation of danger by the time a fierce-looking dark-haired Shadowhunter lady stormed into the room, her tall heels clacking on the floor. At recognition of the lady, Jace's knife was back in his belt in a flash, so I stowed my weapon as well before the lady could notice.

"Who, or rather what is this, Jace?" She snapped, hastily shuffling through some papers on her desk.

"The point, Mom, is that we don't exactly know yet." Jace replied. "But her name is Amari Silverdown and she doesn't like to be objectified."

"Yeah, well..." The Shadowhunter lady abandoned the papers suddenly and looked at me through slitted eyes. "Where does your allegiance lie, Amari?"

"The side that won't end up in a fiery descent into doomsday, ma'am." I replied. She raised an eyebrow. "Your side." I clarified, and she looked satisfied.

"Well in that case, hello. I'm Maryse, leader of this Institute, and your host, if you can explain to me just how you managed to get in here?"

I shrugged. "It's a long story."

Maryse narrowed her glacial blue eyes and looked to the other three teens in the room.

"Basically, her mom was Ivy Blackthorn and her dad's a faerie." Filled in Isabelle. "Which for whatever reason made Jace drag her into the Institute. From the fact that Jace could drag her into the Institute, we think she has a case we need to explore."

Maryse's eyes flew wide again, and she stalked towards me until she was so close I wanted to back away. "I know exactly what you are." She said, and her thin lips quirked up slightly in what I gathered to be as close as she could get to a smile. And then as suddenly as she had come towards me, she turned away and marched to the door. "Isabelle, get Amari a room. She'll be staying here for a while."

"What?" I spluttered at exactly the same time Alec said 'why?'.

"Because," Maryse said, pausing in the doorway, "I think she has a way we can get to Jonathan Morgenstern."