Unedited Clace Smut

unpublished LoS

Clary was standing over her own dead body.

There was wasteland all around, and a dull wind stirred Clary's hair. It reminded her a little of the volcanic bare countryside around the Adamant Citadel, though the sky here looked almost burned — there were streaks of red and black char hanging in the air instead of clouds.

She could hear voices calling in the distance. She heard them every time she was here. They never got close enough to help her. She was lying on the ground, and there was blood on her face, in her hair, on her gear. Her eyes were open, green, staring sightlessly at the sky.

Clary began to kneel, to touch herself on the shoulder, when the ground beneath her gave a shudder and a jerk, and she heard someone shout her name — she whirled, and it all slid away from her as if she were tumbling from the crest of a wave. She gasped, choking, and jerked awake.

For a moment, disoriented, she had no idea where she was. She was lying on a blanket on grass, staring up at a sky full of multicolored stars. They seemed to turn above her as if she was staring into a kaleidoscope. She could hear music in the distance, soft and insistent. An unfamiliar tune, but a singular kind of melody.

Faerie. She was in Faerie. With —

"Clary?" It was Jace's sleepy, puzzled voice. He had rolled onto his side next to her. They both slept in their training clothes here, never knowing if they'd be safe during the night. Their weapons were close at hand, too, and Clary was glad the nights were warm because she had kicked her way free of the light blanket while she was dreaming. "Are you all right?"

She swallowed. She could still feel the goosebumps on her skin. "Bad dream."

"You've been having a lot of those." He moved closer, concern in his pale gold eyes. His light hair was tousled, starting to get too long again, a little in his eyes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She hesitated. How did you tell someone that your dreams weren't dreams, they were visions? You knew it. And that you were seeing yourself dead, over and over, on a day that was getting closer and closer. That one day you would be looking down at your own body and knowing you were gone forever from the world you loved and the people you loved and who loved you.

No. She couldn't tell Jace that. Sometimes she thought she was the only person in the world who thought of him as fragile (well, except for Alec, of course). To most people, he was the boy with the angel blood, the Head of the New York Institute, one of the warriors who had gone to Edom and ended the Dark War.  To her he was always the skinny boy with desperate eyes who'd survived an abusive father and a soul-crushing lack of childhood love; the boy who'd learned that to love was to destroy, and that what you loved died in your hands.

She knew Alec understood, that in many ways he had the stronger ability to bear up under tragedy, to remain calm in the face of fear for his loved ones. Isabelle, maybe? But neither of them could be told, anyway; she wouldn't ask them to keep a secret from Jace. Simon wouldn't be able to bear it any more than Jace could. The only person who might be able to help at all was Magnus, she thought; struggling up onto her elbows; when they got back, she'd go to Magnus. She hadn't wanted to tell him when he was ill, but she might have no choice.

"Just a really bad nightmare," she said. It was true, as far as that went. "Sorry I woke you up."

He propped himself up on his bent arm. "The music would have done that, anyway." It was loud: Clary could hear pipes and fiddles echoing from the other side of the hills. He flashed a grin, the crooked one that always made her heart jump. "Should we check out the revel?"

"Isn't that kind of the opposite of being undercover?" she said. "You know, showing ourselves at a major Faerie event. Plus, your dancing is memorable."