By all rights, with his uncomfortable questions and rebellious theories, Valentine should have been the black sheep of Shadowhunter Academy. Ragnor Fell certainly treated him like a slimy creature who’d crawled out from under a rock and should be hastily returned there. But the rest of the faculty seemed blinded by Valentine’s personal magnetism, unable or unwilling to see through to the disrespect that lay beneath. He was endlessly dodging deadlines and ducking out of classes, excusing himself with nothing more than the flash of a smile. Another student might have been grateful for the latitude, but it only made Valentine loathe his teachers more—every loophole the faculty opened for him was only more evidence of weakness.
He had no qualms about enjoying its consequences.
The werewolf pack, according to Valentine’s intel, was holed up in the old Silverhood manor, a decrepit ruin at the heart of the forest. The last Silverhood had died in battle two generations before, and was used as a name to spook young Shadowhunter children. The death of a soldier was one thing: regrettable, but the natural order of things. The death of a line was a tragedy.
Maybe they were all secretly apprehensive about it, this illicit mission that seemed to cross an invisible line. Never before had they struck against Downworlders without the express permission and oversight of their elders; they had broken rules, but never before had they strayed so close to breaking the Law.
Maybe they just wanted to spend a few more hours like normal teenagers, before they went so far they couldn’t turn back.
For whatever reason, the four of them made their way through the woods with a deliberate lack of speed, setting up camp for the night a half mile from the Silverhood estate. They would, Valentine decided, spend the next day staking out the werewolf encampment, gauging its strengths and weaknesses, charting the rhythms of the pack, and attack at nightfall, once the pack had dispersed to hunt. But that was tomorrow’s problem. That night, they sat around a campfire, roasted sausages over leaping flames, reminisced about their pasts, and rhapsodized about their futures, which still seemed impossibly far away.
“I’ll marry Jocelyn, of course,” Valentine said, “and we’ll raise our children in the new era. They’ll never be warped by the corrupt laws of a weak, sniveling Clave.”
“Sure, because by that time, we’ll run the world,” Stephen said lightly. Valentine’s grim smile made it seem less like a joke than a promise.
“Can’t you just see it?” Michael said. “Daddy Valentine, knee deep in diapers. A busload of kids.”
“However many Jocelyn wants.” Valentine’s expression softened, as it always did when he said her name. They’d only been together a couple of months—since his father died—but no one questioned that they were together for good. The way he looked at her . . . like she was a different species than the rest of them, a higher species. “Can’t you see it?” Valentine had confided once, early on, when Robert asked him how he could be so sure of love, so soon. “There’s more of the Angel in her than in the rest of us. There’s greatness in her. She shines like Raziel himself.”
“You just want to flood the gene pool,” Michael said. “I imagine you think the world would be better off if every Shadowhunter had a little Morgenstern in them.”
Valentine grinned. “I’m told false modesty doesn’t suit me, so . . . no comment.”
“While we’re on the subject,” Stephen said, a blush rising in his cheeks. “I’ve asked Amatis. And she said yes.”
“Asked what?” Robert said.
Michael and Valentine only laughed, as Stephen’s cheeks took fire. “To marry me,” he admitted. “What do you think?”
The question was ostensibly directed to all of them, but his gaze was fixed on Valentine, who hesitated an impossibly long time before answering.
“Amatis?” he said finally, furrowing his brow as if he’d have to give the matter some serious thought.
Stephen caught his breath, and in that moment, Robert almost thought it was possible that he needed Valentine’s approval—that despite proposing to Amatis, despite loving her so deeply and desperately that he nearly vibrated with emotion whenever she came near, despite writing her that abominable love song Robert had once found crumpled under his bed, Stephen would cast her aside if Valentine commanded it.
In that moment, Robert almost thought it was possible that Valentine would command it, just to see what happened.
Then Valentine’s face relaxed into a wide smile, and he threw an arm around Stephen, saying, “It’s about time. I don’t know what you were waiting for, you idiot. When you’re lucky enough to have a Graymark by your side, you do whatever you can to make sure it’s forever. I should know.”
Then everyone was laughing and toasting and plotting bachelor party schemes and teasing Stephen about his short-lived attempts at songwriting, and it was Robert who felt like the idiot, imagining even for a second that Stephen’s love for Amatis could waver, or that Valentine had anything but their best interests at heart.
These were his friends, the best he would ever have, or anyone could ever have.
These were his comrades in arms, and nights like these, bursts of joy beneath starry skies, were their reward for the special obligation they’d taken upon themselves.
To imagine otherwise was only a symptom of Robert’s secret weakness, his inveterate lack of conviction, and he resolved not to let himself do so again.
“And you, old man?” Valentine asked Robert. “As if I even have to ask. We all know Maryse does what she wants.”
“And inexplicably, she seems to want you,” Stephen added.
Michael, who had fallen unusually silent, caught Robert’s eye. Only Michael knew how little Robert liked to think about the future, especially this part of it. How much he dreaded being forced into marriage, parenting, responsibility. If it were up to Robert, he would stay at the Academy forever. It made little sense. Because of what had happened when he was a kid, he was a couple of years older than his friends—he should have been chafing at the restrictions of youth. But maybe—because of what had happened—part of him would always feel cheated and want that time back. He’d spent so long wanting the life he had now. He wasn’t ready to let go of it quite yet.
“Well, this old man is exhausted,” Robert said, dodging the question. “I think my tent is calling.”
As they extinguished the fire and tidied up the site, Michael shot him a grateful smile, having been spared his own interrogation. The only one of them still single, Michael disliked this line of conversation even more than Robert did. It was one of the many things they had in common: They both enjoyed each other’s company more than that of any girl. Marriage seemed like such a misguided concept, Robert sometimes thought. How could he care for any wife more than he did for his parabatai, the other half of his soul? Why should he possibly be expected to?
He couldn’t sleep.
When he emerged from the tent into the silent predawn, Michael was sitting by the ashes of the campfire. He turned toward Robert without surprise, almost as if he’d been waiting for his parabatai to join him. Maybe he had. Robert didn’t know whether it was an effect of the bonding ritual or simply the definition of a best friend, but he and Michael lived and breathed in similar rhythms. Before they were roommates, they’d often run into each other in the Academy corridors, sleeplessly roaming the night.
“Walk?” Michael suggested.
Robert nodded.
They traipsed wordlessly through the woods, letting the sounds of the sleeping forest wash over them. Screeches of night birds, skitters of insects, the hush of wind through fluttering leaves, the soft crunch of grass and twigs beneath their feet. There were dangers lurking here, they both knew that well enough. Many of the Academy’s training missions took place in Brocelind Forest, its dense trees a useful refuge for werewolves, vampires, and even the occasional demons, though most of those were unleashed by the Academy itself, an ultimate test for particularly promising students. This night the forest felt safe. Or
maybe it was simply that Robert felt invincible.
As they walked, he thought not of the mission to come but of Michael, who had been his first true friend.
He’d had friends when he was young, he supposed. The kids growing up in Alicante all knew each other, and he had vague memories of exploring the Glass City with small bands of children, their faces interchangeable, their loyalties nonexistent. As he discovered for himself the year he turned twelve and got his first Mark.
This was, for most Shadowhunter children, a proud day, one they looked forward to and fantasized about the way mundane children inexplicably fixated on birthdays. In some families, the first rune was applied in a quick, businesslike fashion, the child Marked and sent on his way; in others, there was great festivity, presents, balloons, a celebratory feast.
And, of course, in a very small number of families, the first rune was the last rune, the touch of the stele burning the child’s skin, sending him into shock or madness, a fever so intense that only cutting through the Mark would save the life. Those children would never be Shadowhunters; those families would never be the same.
No one ever thought it would happen to them.
At twelve Robert had been scrawny but sure-footed, quick for his age, strong for his size, sure of the Shadowhunting glory that awaited him. As his extended family looked on, his father carefully traced the Voyance rune across Robert’s hand.
The stele’s tip carved its graceful lines across his pale skin. The completed Mark blazed bright, so bright Robert shut his eyes from the glare of it.
That was the last thing he remembered.
The last he remembered clearly, at least.
After that there was everything he’d tried so hard to forget.
There was pain.
There was the pain that seared through him like a lightning strike and the pain that ebbed and flowed like a tide. There was the pain in his body, lines of agony radiating from the Mark, burrowing from his flesh to his organs to his bones—and then, so much worse, there was the pain in his mind, or maybe it was his soul, an ineffable sensation of hurt, as if some creature had burrowed into the depths of his brain and gotten hungrier with the firing of every neuron and synapse. It hurt to think, it hurt to feel, it hurt to remember—but it felt necessary to do these things, because, even in the heart of this agony, some dim part of Robert stayed alert enough to know that if he didn’t hang on, didn’t feel the hurt, he would slip away forever.
Later he would use all these words and more to try to describe the pain, but none of them captured the experience. What had happened, what he had felt, that was beyond words.
There were other torments to endure, through that eternity he lay in bed, insensible to all around him, imprisoned by his Mark. There were visions. He saw demons, taunting and torturing him, and worse, he saw the faces of those he loved, telling him he was unworthy, telling him he was better off dead. He saw charred, barren plains and a wall of fire, the hell dimension awaiting him if he let his mind slip away, and so, through it all, somehow, he held on.
He lost all sense of himself and the world around him, lost his words and his name—but he held on. Until finally, one month later, the pain abated. The visions faded. Robert awoke.
He learned—once he’d recovered himself enough to understand and care—that he’d been semiconscious for several weeks while a battle had been raging around him, members of the Clave warring with his parents over his treatment as two Silent Brothers did their best to keep him alive. They had all wanted to strip him of the Mark, his parents told him, the Silent Brothers warning daily that this was the only way to ensure his survival and spare him further pain. Let him live out his life as a mundane: This was the conventional treatment for Shadowhunters who couldn’t bear Marks.
“We couldn’t let them do that to you,” his mother told him.
“You’re a Lightwood. You were born to this life,” his father told him. “This life and no other.”
What they didn’t say, and didn’t need to: We would rather see you dead than mundane.
Things were different between them, after that. Robert was grateful to his parents for believing in him—he too would rather be dead. But it changed something, knowing his parents’ love for him had a limit. And something must have changed for them, too, discovering that a part of their son couldn’t handle the Shadowhunter life, being forced to bear that shame.
Now Robert could no longer remember what his family had been like before the Mark. He remembered only the years since, the coldness that lived between them. They acted their parts: loving father, doting mother, dutiful son. But it was in their presence that Robert felt most alone.
He was, in those months spent recovering, frequently alone. The kids he’d thought of as his friends wanted nothing to do with him. When forced into his presence, they shied away, as if he were contagious.
There was nothing wrong with him, the Silent Brothers said. Having survived the ordeal with the Mark intact, there was no risk of future danger. His body had teetered on the edge of rejection, but his will had turned the tide. When the Silent Brothers examined him for the last time, one of them spoke somberly inside his head, with a message for Robert alone.
You will be tempted to think this ordeal marks you as weak. Instead, remember it as proof of your strength.
But Robert was twelve years old. His former friends were tracing themselves with runes, shipping off to the Academy, doing everything normal Shadowhunters were supposed to do—while Robert hid away in his bedroom, abandoned by his friends, cold-shouldered by his family, and afraid of his own stele. In the face of so much evidence for weakness, even a Silent Brother couldn’t make him feel strong.
In this way, nearly a year passed, and Robert began to imagine this would be the shape of the rest of his life. He would be a Shadowhunter in name only; a Shadowhunter afraid of the Marks. Sometimes, in the dark of night, he wished his will hadn’t been so strong, that he’d let himself be lost. It would have to be better than the life he’d returned to.
Then he met Michael Wayland, and everything changed.
They hadn’t known each other very well, before. Michael was a strange kid, allowed to tag along with the others, but never quite accepted. He was prone to distraction and strange flights of fancy, pausing in the middle of a sparring session to consider where Sensors had come from, and who had thought to invent them.
Michael had shown up at the Lightwoods’ manor one day asking if Robert might like to go for a horseback ride. They’d spent several hours galloping through the countryside, and once it was over, Michael said, “See you tomorrow,” as if it were a foregone conclusion. He kept coming back. “Because you’re interesting,” Michael said, when Robert finally asked him why.
That was another thing about Michael. He always said exactly what was in his head, no matter how tactless or peculiar.
“My mother made me promise not to ask about what happened to you,” he added.
“Why?”
“Because it would be rude. What do you think? Would it be rude?”
Robert shrugged. No one ever asked him about it or referred to it, not even his parents. It had never occurred to him to wonder why, or whether this was preferable. It was simply the way things were.
“I don’t mind being rude,” Michael said. “Will you tell me? What it was like?”
Strange, that it could be that simple. Strange, that Robert could be burning to tell someone without even realizing it. That all he needed was someone to ask. The floodgates opened. Robert talked and talked, and when he trailed off, afraid he was going too far, Michael would jump in with another question.
“Why do you think it happened to you?” Michael asked. “Do you think it was genetic? Or, like, some part of you just isn’t meant to be a Shadowhunter?”
It was, of course, Robert’s greatest, most secret fear—but to hear it tossed off so casually like this defused it of all its power.
“Maybe?” Robert said, and instead of shun
ning him, Michael’s eyes lit up with a scientist’s curiosity.
He grinned. “We should find out.”
They made it their mission: They probed libraries, pored over ancient texts, asked questions that no adult wanted to hear. There was very little written record of Shadowhunters who’d experienced what Robert had—this kind of thing was meant to be a shameful family secret, never spoken of again. Not that Michael cared how many feathers he ruffled or which traditions he overturned. He wasn’t particularly brave, but he seemed to have no fear.
Their mission failed. There was no rational explanation for why Robert had reacted so strongly to the Mark, but by the end of that year, it didn’t matter. Michael had turned a nightmare into a puzzle—and had turned himself into Robert’s best friend.
They performed the parabatai ritual before leaving for the Academy, swearing the oath without hesitation. By then they were fifteen years old, a physically unlikely pairing: Robert had finally hit his growth spurt, and loomed over his peers, his muscles thick, his shadow of a beard growing in thicker every day. Michael was slim and wiry, his unruly curls and dreamy expression making him look younger than his age.
“Entreat me not to leave thee,
Or return from following after thee—
For whither thou goest, I will go,
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge.
Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.
The Angel do so to me, and more also,
If aught but death part thee and me.”
Robert recited the words, but they were unnecessary. Their bond had been cemented the day he turned fourteen, when he finally got up the nerve to Mark himself again. Michael was the only one he told, and as he held the stele over his skin, it was Michael’s steady gaze that gave him the courage to bear down.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 24
