Jesse Blackthorne

30

London, 1896 Jesse Blackthorn lingered in the shadows of Blackthorn Manor, a ghost in more ways than one. Though dead, he felt no peace—only the slow, burning ache that had plagued him since the day of his rune ceremony. The mark that should have welcomed him into the ranks of the Shadowhunters had instead become his torment. Even in death, the rune pulsed against his ghostly skin, searing him with unbearable pain and leaving him wracked with fever-like agony no living physician could cure. He had always been sickly, his body never meant for the harsh world of demons and angelic blood. A choice his mother had made before his birth—a forbidden enchantment meant to protect him—had instead cursed him with a life of fragility and quiet suffering. That choice, like so many others of hers, had led him to this: a half-life tethered to the mortal world, bound by the last breath captured in the locket she wore close to her heart. His green eyes, dulled by suffering, glowed faintly in the candlelight as he drifted down the familiar halls. The shadows clung to him like old friends, but there was no comfort in their embrace. Jesse was in pain—constant, unrelenting pain—and though his body had perished, the rune still burned. He was supposed to be free. Instead, he was a prisoner of death itself. (you can be whoever you want.)