a rush of blood to the head | isabelle lightwood

DIX

CHAPTER TEN.
( A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD )

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HER hands had done many things in her many years of immortality. Perhaps some people thought she was coldhearted, and that her hands wove the lies that spilled over her rosy lips. Or, perhaps they thought her hands wove the scarlet energy that seeped out of her palms and encircled her hands. They thought that she had killed many people.

Their gnashing teeth and criminal tongues spat insults at her face, beating her to a bloody pulp with their words. These were the demons that threatened the mundanes' lives. These were the  arrogant Shadowhunters who believed that all Downworlders were anything but ethical. These living things merely believed that her hands bore the malice they believed to be locked inside a barred cage in her heart.

What they didn't know, was that her hands longed to brush over the ivory keys of a piano, the mellifluous tone resonating throughout Magnus's cavernous apartment. They longed to bury themselves between the silken strands of another's hair. They longed to hold a pencil as it gracefully danced across the yellowing pages of an outdated sketchbook.

Athena was as pure as they came.

So, perhaps it was surprising to find that she could be broken so easily.

When she had awoken the next morning, the sun filtering through the tiny opening of the velvet curtains, she had found that the place on the opposite side of her body was void of a certain Shadowhunter.

Athena was not disappointed in the least. She knew she shouldn't have partaken in the events that had occurred with Isabelle the night before. Athena would have rather opted to forget it.

Athena haphazardly tossed the sheets off of her body and removed herself from the elaborate bed she slept in. She vaguely remembered a piano shoved against an otherwise barren section of one of the corridors in Magnus's apartment. Athena carefully walked out of her bedroom so as not to make the floorboards creak against the weight of her body.

After a few minutes of searching, Athena finally stumbled upon the object she had been searching for. A grand piano covered in paint as black as tar sat untouched in a corner of the corridor she now stood in, a seat to match placed directly in front of it.

She carefully placed herself onto the creaky seat and traced the keys of the piano, frigid against her fingertips. She pushed upon one of the keys her index finger was resting on, to make sure the thing wasn't out of tune, and, to her surprise, it was not.

Her fingers danced across the various keys scattered across the surface, creating gorgeous tunes that echoed throughout the apartment. She completely immersed herself in the rhythm she had created with her fingers, a faint smile creeping its way onto her face.

Athena pondered what to do next with her day. Perhaps she could place herself upon the soft comforter of her bed and open the crinkled pages of an old book that lay discarded on her shelves. Or, she could visit the Institute. After her outburst at Isabelle, she hadn't been in the cathedral since.

Athena decided that she would do just that. She quickly made a Portal, and stepped into its murky depths thinking of the Institute glamoured as an old gothic cathedral.

-

WHEN she had made her way into the Institute, after being let in by a surprised Alec, she found Clary and Isabelle sitting on a wooden bench. Clary's back was pressed against the cool wooden walls and it looked as if she had been previously crying. Both girls were immersed in a conversation when Athena had entered the corridor they sat in.