City of Shadows

Chapter 15: Walking Through the Fire (Part II)

They were in Faerie.

Ember's feet were planted firmly on the soft ground, though it felt that at any given second, they would give out from under her and she would fall crashing to the dirt once more.

But she wouldn't do that; she had to be strong. She could still feel Jaakobah's sharp, observant gaze on her, gauging her every reaction, every flit of her eyes, every twitch of her lips, every twist of her features. There was a sort of expectancy splayed across his face and a secret certainty hidden in the depths of his eyes, as if knowing that it was only a matter of time until she gave him the reaction he so surely awaited.

The realization was deeply unsettling, enough to make her heart pound in her chest, so loud that she could hear it in her own ears, as loud as the faerie drums thumping somewhere beyond the tunnel, where darkness opened up into all manner of life and beautiful wildness. She wondered if Jaakobah could hear the way her heart betrayed her too, whispering to him her greatest fear.

She turned her face to him, ready to search for an answer somewhere, and was not able to suppress her flinch when her eyes landed once again upon the shock of white hair, the pale skin, the startling black eyes looking back at her. She could do nothing but meet his gaze, but there was no knowing gleam in them, no cruel twist of his lips as he looked down at her.

Seeing that her secret was still safely concealed inside her heart, Ember quickly tore her gaze from his, ashamed by the fact that she had been caught gawking.

"What are we doing here, Jaakobah?"

His displeasure was instant and palpable at hearing her call him by that name. Disappointment along with faint hurt flickered briefly behind those black eyes, and the sharp edges of his lips tugged downwards in a deep frown.

It was strange, she thought, to find that he showed any sort of true emotion, and then another possibility surfaced to her mind. What if it wasn't? If that were the case, then he did a convincing imitation of the real thing.

"Why are we here?" she tried again, trying to hide her discomfort and the tremble in her voice.

Then, another pair of black eyes appeared in her mind, eyes that had belonged to another boy, one who had also claimed a different name other than the one designated at birth.

As people were so keen on reminding her, Sebastian had been a master pretender. Clary recognized that, even now, and Jocelyn did as well.

Sebastian Morgenstern had had no emotions. He simply donned and switched masks like a Roman actor. Valentine had taught him to pretend, to feign—a perfect actor hiding behind expertly-crafted masks—a boy with the face of an angel, but beneath it all, the ruthlessness of a demon, something less than human—a monster.

But that had been a different time, she reminded herself. She had seen past the masks once, had stared into the eyes of the monster and reached out to save what had been buried deeply underneath. She had seen the truth, the real truth, not the warped, twisted version the Seelie Queen provided.

Why was it so difficult then, she asked herself as she looked back at the stranger wearing Jacob's mask—or was it Sebastian's mask? It was hard to tell now. Why was it so difficult to believe that there was the possibility of something else lying behind his own mask?

And yet...Sebastian, Jonathan—it makes no difference. You are the same beneath it all.

She shook the Queen's voice from her mind, then forced herself to raise her eyes up to the figure in front of her once again.

"Jacob," she said, and a cold shiver ran down her spine. The name felt wrong on her lips, unnatural, like forcing life back into the dead. He seemed pleased by it, however, and his usual smirk regained control of his lips.