Black || Jace Wayland [1]

| 07. so hot

******

"BY THE ANGEL, JACE! I told you not to do anything stupid!"

Asher left for about ten minutes tops, only to find Jace in the Ops Center with a second mundane on his hands. Her stance went rigid as she stalked over to where he stood in front of the monitor. Despite the baggy hoodie swishing around in result of her pace, any Shadowhunter would shrink under her protruding glare. This was confirmed by the handful of Shadowhunters that stepped out of her path and scurried away to not be in close proximity with what they thought was about to go down.

"I didn't do anything stupid." Jace defended himself. His arms were crossed and his stature loomed over her. However, her height never affected her ability to make someone squirm with just a twitch of her eye. "Oh really?" Asher scoffed. "Then why is there another mundane inside the Institute?" She leaned to the left to see the man awkwardly standing behind Clary. He mustered up a small smile and waved, but quickly shrunk back due to her narrowed eyes.

"What is going on here?" Alec came over besides Asher. The brunette shrugged, turning back to Jace. "You tell me."

Jace sighed. "A circle member followed him to get to Clary." "Circle runes just like the guys that took my mother." Clary spoke up, her voice not wavering one bit. Asher's composure wavered due to what she just heard. This definitely didn't go unnoticed by Jace or Alec. "Wait, but how is that possible?"

"What exactly is a circle member?" The mundane, Simon, questioned from the side, completely disregarding Asher's voice of concern. "And why are they trying to kill us?"

"All we know is a long time ago, the Circle let a revolt. A lot of Shadowhunters got killed." Jace explained. "Including my father." "And since the revolt, we've been forbidden to even hear about the Circle." Alec added from behind.

Asher rolled her eyes. "We definitely know more than that." "In case you didn't hear Alec," Jace glanced in her direction. "We aren't allowed to know more that what we already stated. It isn't in one of your geeky books." Alec pretended to look at something else as the brunette clenched her jaw; the majority of the Shadowhunters knew better than to get on Asher's bad side.

"Look, princess." Asher seethed venomously as she stood her ground against Jace. "As I recall, you were the one begging for my help. Do you want it or not?" Her tone made Clary gulp in fear and take a step back.

Jace tapped his foot irritably and pursed his lips, but decided with his better judgement to not retort back. Asher took his silence as confirmation. "So if there aren't any more mindless comments, I would like to proceed." She eyed Jace for a moment, who responded with a sarcastic smile and a small flick of his hand as a gesture for her to continue.

Alec brought his attention back as Asher started her explanation. "The Circle is a group of people who originally wanted to overthrow the Clave's rules of being hidden from the mundane world." She explained to them. "They wanted to integrate Shadowhunters with mundanes so that they could live together. However, something changed along the way and then all they wanted to do was destroy all the Downworlders. They would kill anyone who sympathized with them, including Shadowhunters, and including mundanes."