Kingdom of Lies

Chapter 17

I'm numb.

Jace is sitting right beside me on top of the messed up sheets we didn't bother making, and I can feel his steady gaze fixated on me.
I don't bother looking back.

I just stare straight ahead, looking blankly at the wall.
But all I see is Jonathon.

All I see is his body, limp and twisted in a way it never was in life, being pried from my hands by guards.
His pallor wasn't creamy and cold, but that horrible colour of sickness I never saw on his face. Jonathon is dead.

I don't hear Jace's gentle questions, begging me to answer him and show him that I'm not as dead as my brother.
All I hear are the throat ripping screams I screamed after he took his final breath in my arms.
All I feel is his feather soft hair dripping in cold sweat clenched between my shaking fingers, the ends of the strands tickling my nose as I bury my face into his neck and rock back and forth with his body.
Jonathon is dead.
All I taste is the bitter tang of dried tears. Jonathon is dead.

The cloth that Jace presses against my forehead is damp and soft, his hands gentle and wary as he attempts to coax me into speaking. It doesn't work.

Jonathon is dead.

I wish I could cry more. I wish I could feel more.
It would be a distraction from the truth. Because it's even worse than the ingrained image of Jonathon's body painted onto the inside of my eyelids in the colour of his blood that seemed to never stop pouring from his chest.
Not his body. His corpse.

Jonathon is dead.

"Clary, talk to me." Jace's voice comes as a salve, soft and pleading and asking me of nothing and everything.
It doesn't help defrost the numbness encasing every single corner of my reality.

"Jonathon is dead."

The words aren't a soft echo in my head anymore. I open my cracked lips and whisper the words out, the razor sharp edges cutting up my throat as I choke on them. Yet in the silence of the room, my whisper may as well have been a shotgun. "Jonathon is dead."

I still can't look at him, but I see the pained look in his eyes from the corner of mine.
"Clary, please look at me. Please."

I don't.

"Clarissa, I promise you, we'll find out who did this. I swear it. We'll find justice for your brother."

Finally I slide my gaze over to his, though my expression remains frozen.
His eyes are wide and concerned, studying my face for any signs of another breakdown.
I know it won't come today.

He lowers the wet cloth from my forehead before I speak.And when I do, it's with ice.
"I know who did this Jace, and so do you."

Jace doesn't respond. He watches me carefully, not wanting to say it first.
"Clary, don't make any rash decisions-"

"My father made a rash decision when he murdered my brother."

The room rings with my declaration, and Jace doesn't respond. He just bites his lip and stares at me imploringly, sadness embedded in his eyes.
He didn't want to admit it, he didn't want to egg me on. But I knew.

"Clary, we don't know anything-"

"I know my brother is dead, Jace." I interject, "I know he's dead and I may not know for sure who killed him, but I am going to find out. Even if it kills me, I will avenge his death."

Jace reaches out over the sheets and grasps my cold fingers in his own, squeezing hard.
He leans in with earnest,gold locks framing his face as his shadowing eyes look up at me with determination.
It takes everything in me not to collapse in his arms and cry again.