Child of Glass (The Unbreakable Descendants #1)

9. Falling Apart

When she opened her eyes, Irina didn't know what came first; the bright light or the excruciating pain.

Disoriented, she blinked several times to get a better look of her surroundings. She was in her room, lying in her bed. She recognized the dark, red wallpaper and her dresser, where she had placed the only picture she had left of her mother. She noticed then that someone was standing in front of it.

It was a woman with brown skin, long, black hair and runes wearing a white shirt and pink sweatpants with a pattern of... pugs? Her back was facing Irina and through the mirror's reflection she could see that the woman was holding Irina's mother's picture while looking at it.

Suddenly, Irina must have made a movement loud enough for the woman to turn around. As soon as she did she put the picture down and Irina realized with a shock that the woman was Aida. Her lack of recognition worried her for a second, but then she remembered Aida's expression before passing out (though she had no memories of passing out) which made her look different, almost unrecognizable.  The last thing she remembered was peaking inside Dollys' room.

Aida quickly sat down on Irina's bed and grabbed her hand. "Gracias al Ángel."

Irina flinched. The gentle touch hurt too much. Everything did, it was surprising how much her small body could hurt so much. Specially when breathing. Aida must have noticed something was wrong since she, gently and slowly, put Irina's hand down.

Right after that, Aida pulled out her stele and drew an iratze on Irina's arm, which disappeared almost immediately. The overall pain barely seemed to decrease, but it was slightly better than before.

Aida sighed.

"W-What...?" Irina's throat was dry. Too dry.

Aida looked at her. Her eyes were sad. "I remember the day you arrived as if it was yesterday," she looked down at the spot where the iratze had been and kept staring at it. "I was so happy that two Shadowhunters had decided to spend their travel year here that I overlooked your's and Dimitri's relationship.

"I knew you were parabatai because you introduced yourselves as that, but the way you treated each other, the way he treated you, threw me off. As our first guests I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable by minding your business so I kept telling myself that you would figure it out. I even thought for a hot second that that was the way Russian Shadowhunters treated each other. That you were raised to treat each other a bit colder and more violent than others, that it was somehow part of your culture. 'Who am I to judge?' I thought," Aida paused, and after a long silence, she continued. "But as time went on I realized that it wasn't normal."

Aida looked back at Irina and continued. "Irina, I'll cut to the chase," she took a deep breath, as if she was holding something in and needed to calm herself down before continuing. "Dimitri did this to you, didn't he? Yesterday after I left the Training Room."

The memories of yesterday flashed back into Irina's mind at once. She remembered the anger and the desperation and her last words to Dimitri.

"I wish you would've died instead of mom..."

Now, Irina understood that her pain wasn't only physical, but that her heart was also broken in a way she had hoped to never have to experience again. She felt empty and cold and numb and destroyed with the knowledge that her world wouldn't be the same. She was in the shadows of the deepest, darkest part of her mind. Alone. So alone.

The air felt toxic with each breath and her whole body was shaking.  The last time she had felt this way was when her mother died.