The Mortal Guardians

Chapter 6

Maryse Lightwood stood in the head office of the New York institute, her mind drifting off in all different directions inside of her head. Finally her thoughts landed on the twins she had given up almost 20 years ago.  Alexander and Avalon, her precious first born's. Not a day went by since that rainy night that she didn't think of them. So many questions invaded her mind, what were they like? Did they wonder were they came from? Do they hate her for giving them up? A single tear escaped her eye as she thought of all of these questions. "Mom?" Maryse hear the voice of the second daughter, Isabelle. She quickly wiped the tear away and turned to face her. 

"What's wrong?" Isabelle asked, seeing the fake smile that her mother had plastered on her face.

"Nothing." Maryse replied, her voice croaking as she placed her hand on her hips.

"Did something happen in Idris?"

"Nothing  we can do about it now." Maryse looked at her daughter as they both sat down on the couches in the office.

"There's always something we can do. You taught me that." Isabelle smiled softly, trying her best to cheer her mother up.

"That can't be said for everything." Maryse mumbled as she looked down with a heavy and sadness in her eyes as she played with her nails. Both of them sat in silence for a while until Isabelle spoke up. 

"You were think off the twins again, weren't you?" Maryse looked at her daughter, guilt written all over her face as she bit her lip and nodded slowly. 

"Their never far from my thoughts Isabelle, never, and Valentine's return makes it worse. I should have done more, more to protect them." Since the day she gave the twins to Luke, a protective wall went up in her mind, an act almost. To make everyone else think that the twins were truly gone, even though she knew they were safe with Luke. The act she'd put up for so many years now, ate away at her soul, pretending that everything was fine one the outside, but in reality she was dying a little bit inside each day.

"Mom, you have to stop blaming yourself for there disappearance, you couldn't have known it would happen." Isabelle spoke gently, earning a brief smile from her mother. "You still have me and Max."

"And I glad for that, but now day's there are consequence for what people do or don't do Isabelle." A smirk appeared on Isabelle's face as she pushed herself off the couch. 

"We're Lightwoods. We break noses and accept the consequences." Maryse chuckled a bit at her daughter's comment, but she still wondered about the twins. More specifically if Valentine would go after them.

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Over at Magnus apartment, Clary was sketching on a drawing pad Magnus had magicked up to try and calm her, while Alec and Avalon sat on the couch across from where Luke way lying, anxiously waiting for Jace and Simon to return. Alec's leg bounced up and down in as he became more and more nervous with each passing minute, worrying about Luke. Avalon put her hand on her brothers, which seem to calm him down a bit as they listened to Magnus as he told the story of Clary's father and the Circle. 

"When I first heard about your father, around the time he and Jocelyn first got together, long before the Uprising and the Circle, Valentine elevated the Morgenstern name to be synonymous with virtue. And your mother was at his side. But by the time my people came to know him, barely two years later his name had become synonymous with devastation." A heaviness filled the room as silence took over. The twins had heard the story of the Circle and the uprising before, when Luke told them they were the Mortal guardian's, he wanted them to understand why they'd been chosen. But it was hard to hear every time. Alec looked at Magnus seeing the weight of the memories that filled his head from that time.