Kingdom of Lies

Chapter 19

(A/N: This chapter could have a lil violence warning so if you're sensitive to that stuff, take caution while reading please and thanks <3 )

It isn't Jocelyn.

The face I had imagined would be staring at me, the silent question I've been too afraid to ask myself, all of it vanishes.

It's Celine.

Her face is dirty and shallowed, but her eyes are wide as they slowly adjust to the blue witchlight, fingers clutching at the thin, grey shawl wrapped around her. There's no way this is Celine.
She's dead.

But here she is.

"Jocelyn?" Her voice is barely a whisper, dry and croaky but not so loud
in the silent cells.

It takes me a minute, but I finally manage to speak without my voice threatening to break.
"Jocelyn is dead. I'm her daughter, Clarissa."

She keeps staring me down, narrowing her eyes. "You've never appeared to me before." She turns away now, nestling further into her rags.

"Maybe I'm finally dead, thank the Angel." She mutters.

At a lost for words, all I can do is just stare. She thinks she's hallucinating.
"Angel- how long have you been down here??" I whisper, horrified.
She doesn't answer.

I snatch the witchlight off of the ground, willing it to shine brighter.
It pools all throughout the cell, causing Celine to turn around and squint into the light, the shadows making her face appear even more thin.
All I want is to run away and throw myself into a corner, crying about the loss of my mother ten years later and still fresh.
Instead, I just press myself harder against the bars, willing her to realise she isn't hallucinating.

"Celine, is it you? Is it really you?"
I whisper, afraid of what the answer would mean. Afraid of what this confirms and the questions it raises. But I have to know.

Surrounded by pale skin and thin hair, her eyes seem bigger and brighter than reality.
"You look just like your mother." Her voice is a bit stronger now, and her whole body turns towards me.
"Nothing like that monster that wears the face of your father."

I barely notice as she starts to creep towards me, dragging against the slick stone. Her face still holds that breathtaking beauty I know she once had, once kind and opening.
Yet now there's only desperation, only fear.

"Yes, child. I am Celine Herondale. But after spending years in this cell and rotting away not knowing what has happened to my kingdom or child, by the Angel I wish I wasn't."

"I thought you were dead." My voice does break now. "We all thought you and Stephen were dead."

She's near the bars now, her face coming into even more detail.
Still lovely, still holding a beauty nothing but death could take. Though she doesn't seem real, almost like a faded memory in my own dreams of childhood.

"My husband is dead." Comes her faint reply. "He was murdered by Valentine. He was murdered for your fathers own selfish needs, and I've been here waiting for death ever since."

My tears have started to fall.
I don't know what's going on, I don't know why she's here, but by the Angel nobody deserved this fate.
Nobody deserved to want to die.

"How did you find me?" Concern rings through Celine's tone, her eyes darting behind Clary to see if she had been followed. "Your father will find us-"

"Don't worry about that." I reassure her. "Jace and his men should be on their way-"

"Jace?" Celine's eyes are wide, lips trembling at the sound of her son. "He's here?! My son is here?!"