10
White
“Are you sure about this?” Maia asked Jordan anxiously, clutching one hand tightly in the other. Her knuckles were white and she’d been biting her lip for so long, she’d begun to wonder if her teeth had managed to slice all the way through it.
Jordan placed a warm hand over Maia’s and nodded. She liked his presence. There’d been a time when Jordan had first come back into her life that Maia had constantly wanted to rip his throat out. Now, she didn’t even know how she’d survived the past few years without him, loving and supportive, by her side. “They’re our friends,” Jordan answered gently. “We’re here to offer our condolences to them.”
“And to let them know that we’re going to kill Sebastian for all the pain he’s caused,” Maia pressed.
“Yes,” Jordan agreed, smiling. “Though possibly in gentler terms?”
Maia grinned up at him briefly. “Possibly,” she conceded before moving to ring the doorbell of the Institute. In a matter of seconds, the front door opened and Clary stood before them, dressed in light gear, a slight sheen of sweat on her skin as though she’d been training. It had been a remarkable show of speed, even for a Shadowhunter. Even if Clary had been waiting in the chapel in the front of the Institute, she shouldn’t have been able to answer the door that fast. Strange. . .
Clary looked from Maia to Jordan and then back, as if sizing them up. “What do you want?” she demanded irritably.
“We wanted to come talk to everyone,” Maia answered, startled at Clary’s abrasive tone. “We wanted to know if there was anything we could do. We feel so terrible about what happened and—“
“Why?” Clary interrupted.
Maia stuttered, trying to follow the sudden turn in the direction of the conversation. Whatever she’d been expecting Clary to say, this certainly hadn’t been it.
“What?”
“Why?” Clary sneered at them. “Why do you guys even care?”
“Of course we care,” Jordan responded defensively, Maia’s words still stuck in her throat. “Isabelle was our friend. We’d fought together.”
“And Simon and Alec, they’re our friends too.” Maia finally found her voice again. “Even Jace. Well, most of the time. And they’re all going through Hell right now. And you of course,” Maia added, horrified for a moment that Clary, even though she stood right in front of her, had been an afterthought to her. It was just that, at least to Maia, Clary didn’t really seem to be feeling anything other than agitation, which was aimed at her and Jordan instead of someone like Sebastian. Then again, it was something most Shadowhunters excelled at quite early on in their lives—hiding their true emotions in times of distress. “We’re sorry for your loss, too.”
Clary laughed shortly and rolled her eyes, startling Maia yet again. “Oh, please. Just stop.”
“Clary—“
“I heard my father say once that you shouldn’t pretend to a grief you do not feel. My father may have been a lunatic but he knew what he was talking about then. You two barely knew Isabelle, just like you barely know Alec and Simon and the rest of the Lightwoods. Just like you barely know me.” Clary’s voice had risen to a shout and Maia was flinching back a little more with each sentence. There was something in Clary’s voice, in her eyes—a new coldness Maia had never heard or seen before. It wasn’t just different; it was positively frightening. “So you don’t get to tell me that you’re sorry for my loss. You don’t get to feel bad about losing someone you’ve only known a few weeks. She was my friend more than she was ever yours. I watched her die. I was there with her when it happened. But I’m not going to sit around and cry about it. I’m going to do something about it.”
