She's My Parabatai

Chapter 25

"Izzy!" I shouted hoping she had finished dinner and was in her room by now. Sure enough my door opened and she rushed in.

"What is it? Are you okay?" She asked. I showed her the note. "Erchomai," she read. "I am coming? Is this from Sebastian?"

I nodded. "I'm going to meet him, tomorrow morning, alone."

"Wait what? Clary you're not meeting your psychotic brother alone!" Izzy yelled.

"Izzy! Think about it! He's not gonna want the four of us ambushing him and trying something. I told him I'd go alone with he came alone," I explained.

"You can't trust him, Clary, he's lied about so much already he-"

"He's still my brother," I told her.

Izzy sighed, frustrated. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe Sebastian is being controlled like you were? That everything was a lie? That this is all going to be a trap."

"It's the first thing I thought," I told her. "But I know he's not."

"How in the world do you know?"

"The fire message," I reminded her. "When we were kids starting to learn the runes and Latin we came up with a game with fire messages. One of us would send the other one and the other would reply with one word in Latin. If he was being controlled by the warlock he wouldn't reply in Latin like that. I do know my own brother, Izzy."

"Isn't that worse, Clary? Knowing that he truly had your father killed?" Izzy asked.

"It's better knowing that he's still Sebastian. He's still my brother. He won't hurt me, if he wanted to he could have done it a thousand times since our father's death," I told her.

"What if he's planning something? What if he wants to do something worse than kill you?" My parabatai tried to knock some sense into me.

"Izzy, I love that you care for me enough to try and talk me out of this but I'm going to meet him, I've already made up my mind," I informed her.

"You're not going alone," Izzy argued. "If I can't talk you out of going then at least I'm going with you."

"He's not going to talk to me if I bring anyone!" I raised my voice slightly before I realized. "Izzy, I'm the only one who may be able to talk some sense into him. I could get him to turn himself into the Clave. I have to try at least and I'm not going to be able to if you or anyone else tags along!"

Izzy let out a heavy sigh before walking away from me for a moment. When she looked back at me I could feel my heart crack because my parabatai was nearly crying.

"Izzy..."

"I can't lose you Clary," she said. "You know how terrified I was earlier today? That something had taken over you and I had lost you forever? If you go to see Sebastian alone and something happens to you...I'll never forgive myself."

I walked up to Izzy and hugged her. "I'm always going to be here, you're stuck with me." I told her. We both knew it could be a lie, shadowhunters died in the line of fighting all the time. But the two of us liked to promise that we would grow old and cranky together. "We're meeting him at nine."

Izzy looked surprised. "Then that means...?"

"You're coming with me. What was I thinking? We're two halves of a whole," I was lying through my teeth but I hoped Izzy wasn't picking up on it. "Sebastian will probably expect it anyway. He knows how close we are. But you can't tell Jace or Alec."