herondale | shadowhunters

7

I wake up from a deep, dreamless sleep and am suddenly panicking before I remember where I am. The horror of last night comes flooding back to me and I sit up quickly, suddenly realising that it was real. It has to have been real.

I get up out of bed, my bare feet cold on the stone floor. The room is lit up perfectly by the mid-summer sunshine shining through the window. I open the curtains to see a huge plot of flat grass with a small water fountain in the centre which looks like it has been there for hundreds of years. I see behind it the fields which haunt me from the previous night, the thought of it makes me turn away from the window quickly.

When I hear distant voices coming from outside of the door, I hesitate to open it.

"We can't just keep her here, she knows nothing. She's practically a mundane, Magnus. Besides, what are the Clave going to do when they find out we've been keeping her here without permission?"

"Since when did you care what the Clave thought, Alec? She's staying here. She can't go back, it's not safe."

"Jace isn't going to care about meeting her when he finally realises that his little sister has been growing up with the life of a mundane who has the Shadowhunter age of a 4 year old."

I storm out of the door to see Alec, Isabelle and Magnus stood at the end of the corridor. I look at them warily.

"I have to go home." I say, pretending not to have heard their whole conversation even though it was obvious I had. I march past the three of them towards where I remember the doors to be.

"You can't go home-"

"I need answers," I interrupt Magnus.

"I can give you answers. Your brother's name is Jace Herondale, he lives in New York and he's a Shadowhunter-"

"Explain to me! Please! I don't understand any of this and I don't know what or who to trust." I say, determinedly. I want to scream out in anger.

"Your father was Stephen Herondale." Magnus says, carefully. I feel tears well up in my eyes even though I'd never met my dad. "He was a Shadowhunter and so are you."

What is a Shadowhunter?

I take a deep breath before speaking. "How do you know everything about me?" I say, steadily.

Isabelle, Alec and Magnus exchange looks and I stare at the three of them blankly.

"Madeleine, my dear. There is an entire world that you have been deprived from. This other world is so vast and complex and yet the entire thing has been kept a secret from you. By your mother." Magnus says. "If you stay here, I can explain what I intended to explain when I first made contact with you."

"And what is that?"

*

"We protect the human world from the demon world." Alec says.

Isabelle, Alec, Magnus and I sit at the head of a long, formal dining table in the Institute which I am told seats 200 Shadowhunters for Enclave meetings. The Cornwall Institute was the first Institute on the British Isles to be built, and Institute's sole purposes are to be asylums for Shadowhunters, who are otherwise known as Nephilim, half-angel, half-human blooded beings.

"The demon was real..." I trail off, thinking back to the strange man who walked into Merlin's Cafe who most certainly didn't look human, as well as the horror of the previous night.

"The demon was real." Magnus repeats. "The demons have always been real, you just haven't seen them before because you haven't been prepared to see them. All these visions you've been having, they're because you've grown older and trained yourself to be able to see the things that have always been there. The grief of your grandfather's death has fuelled it even more and they knew that you were vulnerable."

"Demons live on pain and suffering," Isabelle says distantly.

"Your mother, Alison, was born a mundane, though she had The Sight. When she met Stephen and soon after found out that he was a Shadowhunter, I feel, that she rushed into doing what she did because she was blinded by love." Magnus says. "It is forbidden for a Shadowhunter to marry a mundane, so with the Clave's approval, Alison ascended and became a Shadowhunter, and married your father. She was Stephan's third wife, after Céline, making Jace your half brother."

I stare at Magnus, speechless and trying to comprehend all this information.

"Though after Stephen died, Alison broke her promised allegiance to The Clave, and was stripped of her Marks and forced to live as a mundane again." Magnus went silent for a second.

"What did she do?" I ask, quietly.

"That, my dear, is a completely separate matter." Magnus says, looking down. "Though I'm sure once Ally had returned to her old life, she was much more content."

"So, you knew her well?" I ask.

"Alison I'm sure valued my favours a lot more than she'd like to admit. When you were born and your father had grown attached to The Circle, she was left to look after you all on her own. She was in a dark place and I'd helped her through." Magnus says, quietly.

"And... what about my brother?" I ask, carefully.

"Jace Herondale as well as Clary Fray have become famous in the Shadow world, they are celebrated for their bravery in the Dark War and the years leading up to it." Magnus says, almost proudly.

"And now they run the New York Institute." Isabelle says, with a smile.

"Though all that is important is that you are kept safe." Magnus says. "It's such a shame that your mother decided to deprive you from all of this."

"I guess she just didn't want me to get hurt." I say, quietly.

"But look at what it's spiralled into," Magnus replies. "I'm sure this was never what she wanted."

"And now I suppose she isn't allowed to associate herself with the Shadow world?" I ask.

"No." Magnus says, simply.

I have no idea how much time goes by, just being sat talking to Magnus, Isabelle and Alec. Though Alec doesn't talk much, I am told how he and my half brother Jace have a special bond called parabatai, a bond stronger than any other. Parabatai fight together as lifelong partners, bound together by oath.

I am told of Jace's past and being brought up by Valentine, only learning who his true father was before the Dark War, which I'm told was horrific. I am told about Jace's girlfriend Clary and how she was brought up as a mundane just like me, though I sense that there is much more to everything that I am being told which neither Magnus, Alec or Isabelle think I'll ever understand.

Magnus tells me that I can't go back home because of the demons, and I'm not trained like a Shadowhunter my age would be.

"I've altered you mother's memories, she thinks that you've gone away on a school trip for 6 weeks, but it's only a matter of time." Magnus says.

"6 weeks?" I ask, suddenly properly realising that I wasn't going back.

"6 weeks isn't long, my dear. By the time that time is up, you're going to have to go back home. We're going to have to work that out." Magnus says.

"And... will I be able to meet Jace?" I ask, apprehensively.

"That, we shall see."