Jace spent the next few hours bounding around the house with his sword and a throwing knife he'd acquired from the manors weapons room. It was small compared to any institutes, but still hosted a variety of blades.

When he had finally calmed down he had managed to nick his arm on the knife and had blood streaming down his wrist. He seemed unaffected.

"Jace!" Tessa called to him worriedly. She scooped him up in her arms and held him close to her chest.

"Mummy, I think I need a healing rune," Jace said with a little smirk of excitement on his face, thinking he could get the better of her.

"You know you're too young for runes," Tessa reminded him. He didn't seem too sad: Tessa told him this often enough. She gave him a kiss on the head and set him down.

"Why don't you have runes?" Jace asked for the millionth time this year.

"Because I'm not like you," Tessa answered as she always did, dropping her head and hoping he would drop the matter. He did.

"Mummy, can we make cakes for Clary and her Mummy?" Jace asked with longing in his eyes. He had ceased hopping around and looked more like a puppy begging for food now. Tessa's baking skills weren't all that great, she and Jace had only made cakes a few times and the Penhallows had always been there to assist them when they had, but she couldn't say to no to her little boy when he looked like that.

"Sure," she answered, "do you remember how to make them?" Tessa asked. Jace shook his head.

"Right, well maybe there's a recipe in the kitchen?" Tessa said, though it sounded more like a question. As if Jace would know where there might be a mysterious recipe. She was sure Sophie Lightwood had given her one years ago when she was still alive, but she couldn't think where she might have put it, or if she even still had it.

Jace, however, rushed off to the kitchen. When Tessa reached him she found almost every cupboard open and Jace almost completely inside the fridge.

"Did you find anything?" Tessa asked. Jace held up several torn and crumpled pieces of paper in his hands and handed them to her.

The first in the pile was a recipe for scones. She remembered Bridget gave her the recipe a few years before she died. Tessa had taken a copy a few years later to preserve it and was surprised it was still (mostly) intact.

The second wasn't even a recipe, but instead a letter Ragnor Fell had given her years ago to pass onto Magnus about his trip to Peru - she'd completely forgotten about it. She quickly scrunched it up and hid the evidence.

The third was what she was looking for, carefully folded and written in Sophie's delicate handwriting was the recipe for cupcakes. She remembered making them with Will, James and Lucie many years before. They'd made a complete mess of the kitchen and Bridget had gone berserk! The cakes had been delicious though.

"This is the one," she told Jace, smiling down at the writing. She handed him the other papers to put back and set to finding the ingredients.

Butter: check.

Sugar: check.

Flour: check.

Eggs: checks.

Jace carried a large glass bowl out of the cupboard onto the kitchen top. Tessa cringed, waiting for him to drop it and for it to smash, but he lifted it and set it down with ease. He then carried one of the wooden dining chairs over to the counter and stood on it so he could reach. She didn't understand his strength or ease, but then remembered: shadowhunters; whatever to do with them.

"Okay Jace, what first?" she asked as he scanned the piece of paper, taking longer than he usually would since the letters were much smaller than he was used to.

"You need to mix the sugar and butter," he instructed. She poured the ingredients into the bowl and gave him the spoon to mix them. He wasn't so delicate this time. He stirred with as little grace as possible, spilling half the mixture on the floor and getting even more on his face, hands and clothes. They would have to have a washing session when they were done.

"Don't we have to turn the oven on?" Jace asked "last time we turned the oven on when we made them with Aline."

"Do you want to turn the oven on?" I ask. He nods his head and I turn it on.

"Next we mix in the eggs," Jace reads. He picks two eggs out of the box and drops them in without breaking them. He begins to stir again.

"Wait, JACE, wait!" Tessa ordered. He stopped stirring and looked over at her. "We need to break the eggs first," she reminded him. She didn't know much about baking, but she knew you didn't eat the egg shells.

Jace picked up one of the eggs and squeezed it between his fingers; it crumbled into yolk and shell. Tessa closed her eyes and sighed.

"Not like that," she muttered to herself, but Jace didn't seem to acknowledge her, he did the same thing to the other egg and continued stirring.

"Perhaps it won't matter," she told herself and watched the little boy stir. He seemed to be having so much fun that Tessa didn't dare interrupt. The mix was sloppy and lumpy and had bits of egg shell poking out here and there, but at least Jace had a smile on his face. It soothed her.

"What now?" She asked, though it was clear. The only thing they had left was the flour, but Jace was enjoying being in charge.

"Flour," Jace confirmed. She weighed it out on the scales and Jace poured it in. He slashed the wooden spoon through the bowl getting flour everywhere, even in his and Tessa's hair. It wasn't so bad for him, he was blond and small. She was brunette and full grown. It would have been embarrassing if they weren't the only ones in the manor, of if she wasn't laughing so hard.

"Well done," she muttered under her breath. There was no need Jace knowing she was angry. No need to spoil his day. He continued to mix until the mixture became thick and you could no longer see the flour.

"Do we have any cake cases?" Tessa asked. She crouched down to look in one cupboard as Jace looked in another. After repeating this several times Jace turned to her and shook his head.

"We could just..." he didn't finish. Instead he scooped out a blob of mixture on a desert spoon and plopped it in one of the dips in the cake tin. Tessa had no idea if it would work the same, but everything was worth a try. She joined him, filling the tray with mixture and then putting it in the oven. The two of them sat on the kitchen top and waited for fifteen minutes in silence before checking on them.

"Stand back," Tessa told Jace. He obliged and stood away from the oven as she opened it. "I think they're done, get the cooling rack!" she ordered. They didn't have any oven gloves so she folded her Jacket as a substitute so she wouldn't burn her hand.

In the ten minutes that followed, Jace repeatedly poked the cakes to see if they had cooled, sometimes keeping his finger on the cake for too long and flinching away when it burned him. He only stopped when he was satisfied and screeched happily "Mummy! Their cool, can I eat one now?" he started jumping around with a cake in his hand, half of which hadn't come out of the tray. It looked mangled and disguising, but he looked so excited.

"Sure," Tessa said, braising herself for the horror of having to try one herself. She was pretty sure they would taste awful, the only reason the ones she made with Will and her children in the London institute tasted good was because Sophie had been helping them along.

Jace bit down on the cake, chewed, made some obscure faces and swallowed. Tessa waited for him to comment on their vile taste, or say that the sharp edges of the egg shell hurt his throat, but instead he grinned.

"THEY TASTE AMAZING!" he screamed and took another bite. He then set of running, sprinting out of the kitchen and into the living room. He jumped onto the sofa and continued to eat as he picked up the book he was reading earlier. He opened it to the page he had folded over (personally Tessa hated folded pages) and began to read again.

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Hey! thanks for reading!

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