My Beautiful One

42. Catalyst

I could tell Sebastian was trying hard not to jolt me, but I woke up anyway when he got out of bed.

With one eyelid cracked just fractionally open, I saw him glance down at me and smile before walking into the en-suite bathroom and shutting the door.

He looks happy... I thought, closing my eye and snuggling down into the pillow. It smelled like him: spicy and pleasant, like black pepper. And I want to remember him like this before the battle today.

Strangely, thoughts of the battle to come didn't make me scared or even nervous. Maybe it was just that I was still in the haze of the barely-awake, but it seemed so far away that as I heard the shower turn on from the bathroom, I went back to sleep.

I didn't dream a memory that time. I dreamed of angels that danced on the clouds and had laughs that rang like a peel of bells. They all had the same face, Sebastian's, and one of them ran towards me, arms outstretched as if to embrace me. I laughed too, my mouth stretching into a grin as I picked up my pace to meet him.

"Faerie," Sebastian said, and though the voice was his, the tone was icy cold. The smile dropped from my features, and I stared at him in confusion, wondering why he sounded so horrible. "If you make a sound, I'll kill you."

I jolted awake to find that I was being held down. There was a woman, a woman with long black hair and an expression full of disgust, pinning my arms down on the bed beside me. I struggled against her, opening my mouth to scream, but she raised a claw-like hand and slapped me hard across the face.

"Weren't you listening, faerie?" She snapped, and I was so shocked that I couldn't even move. "Don't bother calling for your Morgenstern- you won't be able to anyway."

I tried anyway. "Sebastian!" I yelled, but the word came out as a noiseless puff of air, like my vocal chords had been cut.

"What the have you done?" I mouthed furiously at the woman, resuming my struggle and straining against her iron grip. She was strong- stronger than a human and even a Shadowhunter. Nobody had managed to make me feel quite this helpless since Sebastian had pinned me to the floor of the living room months ago. The worst thing about this situation was that I knew how close he was; I could hear the shower running in the bathroom and even a bit of off-key whistling.

So near yet so far...

"It's a demonic rune." The woman sneered, her nails digging into my arm. I glanced at it to see that on my upper arm, a rune had been slashed in the most horrible shade of red, like it had been drawn in my blood. "I just love the irony that it was your Jonathan who created them. It's great, isn't it?"

She grinned a smile full of bright white teeth, but it looked more like a snarl, or perhaps the rictus grin of a skull.

Putting every last iota of strength in my body into it, I managed to gasp, "Go to Hell." but only just audibly. I knew Sebastian wouldn't be able to hear me, and that because of this woman's strength and her power with the demonic runes, there was nothing I could do to escape.

"Already there, faerie." She said, and then, hands curled firmly around my wrists, she heaved me up, out of bed, and through the door. Pacified in an excruciatingly painful arm lock, I was pushed down the corridor and into the master bedroom.

How sick is this woman? She's going to kill me in my bedroom. I thought, gritting my teeth and struggling as she freed an arm to root around in the closet. Well, I guess Sebastian's room didn't make the cut because the sheets are all black. Here, my blood will show up nice and morbidly.

But she didn't want to kill me. Or at least, not in my room, because before long she found the secret entrance to the training room and was pushing me up the spiral staircase and into the room itself. Only then did she release me, and the moment I was free, I sprinted to the wall (covered floor to ceiling in weapons), grabbed a knife off it, and hurled at her. It stuck in her abdomen, and I smiled viciously when I realised I'd got a death shot.