A Lonely Road

They Carried More Than Knives

Jace woke up again, in the early hours of the morning, with Kaelie's face pillowed on his chest, her arm across his torso and fingers entwined with his. He laid for a while, turning Kaelie's words from before over in his mind, before he realized that he desperately needed to pee. He tried moving slowly, but the second his weight shifted, Kaelie was clinging to him. "No," she muttered softly, so softly he wasn't sure she'd spoken at at all, and when he looked at her face, she was still asleep.

After several minutes of slow finagling, he made it up and into the bathroom, and when he was done, he studied himself in the mirror for a while, as if the last couple of weeks were going to show in his skin somehow. Moments later Kaelie wandered in, rubbing sleep from her mismatched eyes and looking relieved to have found him.

"Are you okay?" he asked her. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

She shook her head. "I'd have been up soon enough anyways. I just woke up and you weren't there, that's all. I was worried." Jace felt his heart swell at her words, and beat faster at the hoarseness that sleep had put into her voice.

"I should probably start training you, a little bit," she continued. "If I have to take your ass with me, you should at least know how to use a knife, how to defend yourself. Though, I don't intend to let anyone get close enough to you for it to matter. It'll make me feel better at least."

She was tense, he could see it in her shoulders and her jaw, but she managed to inject her voice with false calm. "Anyways, get some clothes on, pretty boy, and meet me out back in a few. The others will be there too." She left him there, and went to her room, supposedly to put some better clothes on of her own.

A few minutes later, after digging up a pair of sweats and a t-shirt- this whole training thing sound like exercise to Jace, so he may as well wear something he can move in- he made his way out to the back of the chateau. Kaelie had her back to him, tight leggings and a sports bra covered her skin, but when she shifted, he could see the sunlight catch on scars that marred her skin. Jace wondered if it was remnants of her time in the lab, he wondered if Lilith and Sarah, if Michael and Ben had scars like that too.

She turned around when she sensed his approach, and he was honestly beginning to think that Kaelie was trying to kill him, or at the very least make him go insane. It peeked out of the edge of her sports bra, starkly black against her pale skin, an unfolded flower mandala, delicate filigree looping out, stopping at her ribcage. A tattoo. Why am I even surprised? he thought to himself.

"Took you long enough," she said. "Got something to say?"

Jace shook his head fiercely, but Michael snickered from his place on the side, and Jace briefly considered punching him in the face. "What is it you want me to do?" he asked Kaelie.

"Watch, first," she told him. "See if you can pick up anything. I'll have Michael show you some basics."

She nodded at the others. "Lay it on me," she said, a smile overtaking her face, and Jace felt the energy rippling off of them, a reminder that they were not normal, no matter how they appeared, that anyone of them could do intense damage, he'd seen Lilith tear a man's head off his body.

He turned his focus back to Kaelie. Sarah stepped in front of her, the air seemed to crackle, and without warning, Sarah whipped the knife she'd been turning over in her hands at Kaelie's head, so fast Jace could have sworn her hand blurred. Kaelie tilted her head, flicking her hand out and catching it between her fingers, and Sarah took that moment as her chance to pounce, and Jace watched in awe as they moved, fluid, like they were dancing.

It was over almost as soon as it'd started, with Sarah on her back in the grass, Kaelie's knee on her chest and a knife to her throat. Michael was next, then Lilith, then Ben, and they all seemed to end up the same way. Kaelie looked formidable, like a warrior, and Jace remembered that she was supposed to be a soldier, this was what she was supposed to do. She was going to kill people tonight, a lot of people, and Jace was afraid to realize that the thought didn't phase him like it used to.