Prince of the Courts

Prince of the Courts - Chapter 8

Sera tucked the white sheet more securely across her breasts and pushed her left hand back through her hair, silken curls tumbling back haphazardly as she drew up her right leg to help brace herself against the headboard. Rayce felt his mouth go dry, and Sera shook her head again.

"This isn't going to work very well if you can't stay coherent, Rayce."

She pressed her right palm against her left shoulder, and he had a quick glimpse of a glamour rune as she let her hand slide back down. Like water rippling from a stream, a new face slipped over her own, her hair darkening to a rich chocolate colour now, her golden eyes fading to a warm grey.

Rayce blinked at the transformation.

"I know," Sera said. "I hardly know where to begin, so I guess that's a pretty good start." She cleared her throat and played with the edge of the sheet in her lap.

"As you probably figured out last night, I am a Shadowhunter. I'm just a bit different than the ones you learned about." She looked uncomfortable as she spoke, and Rayce could feel the nervous energy in her posture.

"Seraphine told me it's because of the blood that runs in your veins, like how I'm different, too. What-, um, not that I-" Rayce broke off helplessly.

"It's okay, you can say it. What am I?" She laughed and a bit of the tension broke.

She took a deep breath, straining the sheet a bit Rayce noticed guiltily, and began to tell her story.

Springtime had come to Alicante at last in 2010 after a long, harsh winter. Restorations to buildings damaged or destroyed during the Dark War were still underway, Unseelie artisans working day and night to complete their contracts. The Cold Peace had exacted a heavy price from the Fey of both Courts, and some had whispered that perhaps it had been too harsh. A world without the Faeries was a world left unbalanced. But the voices were too few and too quiet to be heard over the grief of those who had lost loved ones to Sebastian Morgenstern's Endarkened and his Faerie allies.

The Glass City had never before been a home to so many orphans, and emergency measures had been taken to assure their safety and care. They would attend the Shadowhunter Academy when they were old enough, but there were still so many who were too young. The call had gone out to interested Shadowhunters to return to Alicante and help raise and protect the next generation of Nephilim.

Meridian Chasewell had answered that call eagerly, and in less than a week she was working with two other women in an orphanage stuffed with nearly twenty children left homeless and without guardians by the attacks. There was always an endless amount of work to be done, but Meridian and her new sisters were inspired by their charges, so the days had become months, and by now they had been together for over two years in the great canal-side home abandoned during the Dark War and seized by the Clave.

It was a clear, spring day when Meridian took several of her younger children to a park down by the canal. Clave officials had come that morning to scoop up some of the older children, though they were barely nine years old. The men had apologized, but reminded her that the world was in desperate need of Shadowhunters, and the sooner the children could begin training, the better. The children would be placed with Institutes and families all over the world so that they would not need to wait until they were 12 to begin at the Academy.

Meri's heart had broken again, as it had each time another of the children was taken. She knew she should be happy for them to find families, but they were hers. She had awoken in the night to soothe their nightmares, she had kissed the bumps and scrapes that came with being a child in a house filled with so many. And now the Clave had come again to take her babes.