“If you’re so sure you did the right thing, then why keep it a secret?”
Valentine laughed gently. “Always so skeptical, Robert. It’s what we all love most about you.” His smile faded. “Some of the others are starting to have doubts. About the cause, about me—” He waved away Robert’s denials before they could be voiced. “Don’t think I can’t tell. Everyone wants to be loyal when it’s easy. But when things get difficult . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t count on everyone I would like to count on. But I believe I can count on you.”
“Of course you can.”
“Then you’ll keep what passed this night a secret from the others,” Valentine said. “Even from Michael.”
Much later—too late—it would occur to Robert that Valentine probably had some version of this conversation with each member of the Circle. Secrets bound people together, and Valentine was smart enough to know it.
“He’s my parabatai,” Robert pointed out. “I don’t keep secrets from him.”
Valentine’s eyebrows shot sky-high. “And you think he keeps no secrets from you?”
Robert remembered the night before, whatever it was Michael had been trying so hard not to say. That was one secret—who knew how many more there were?
“You know Michael better than anyone,” Valentine said. “And yet, I imagine there are things I know about him that might surprise you. . . .”
A silence hung between them as Robert considered it.
Valentine didn’t lie, or issue empty boasts. If he said he knew something about Michael, something secret, then it was true.
And it was temptation, dangling here before Robert.
He needed only to ask.
He wanted to know; he didn’t want to know.
“We all have competing loyalties,” Valentine said, before Robert could give in to temptation. “The Clave would like to make these things simple, but it’s just another example of their obtuseness. I love Lucian, my parabatai. I love Jocelyn. If those two loves were ever to come into conflict . . .”
He didn’t have to complete the thought. Robert knew what Valentine knew, and understood that Valentine loved his parabatai enough to allow it. Just as Lucian loved Valentine enough never to act on it.
Maybe some secrets were a mercy.
He held out his hand to Valentine. “You have my word. My oath. Michael will never know about this.”
As soon as the words were out, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. But there was no going back.
“I know your secret too, Robert,” Valentine said.
At this, an echo of the first words Valentine had ever said to him, Robert felt the ghost of a smile.
“I think we covered that,” Robert reminded him.
“You’re a coward,” Valentine said.
Robert flinched. “How can you say that after everything we’ve been through? You know I would never shy away from a battle or—”
Valentine shook his head, silencing him. “Oh, I don’t mean physically. We’ve taken care of that, haven’t we? When it comes to taking on physical risk, you’re the bravest there is. Overcompensating, perhaps?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Robert said stiffly—afraid he knew all too well.
“You’re not afraid of death or injury, Robert. You’re afraid of yourself and your own weakness. You lack faith—you lack loyalty—because you lack the strength of your own convictions. And it’s my own fault for expecting more. After all, how can you be expected to believe in anything or anyone if you don’t believe in yourself?”
Robert felt suddenly transparent, and didn’t much like it.
“I once tried to teach you to master your fear and your weakness,” Valentine said. “I see now that was a mistake.”
Robert hung his head, waiting for Valentine to cast him out of the Circle. Exile him from his friends and his duty. Ruin his life.
Ironic that it was his own cowardice that had made his worst fears come true.
But Valentine surprised him. “I’ve given the matter some thought, and I have a proposition for you,” Valentine said.
“What is it?” He was afraid to hope.
“Give up,” Valentine said. “Stop trying to pretend away your cowardice, your doubt. Stop trying to ignite some unshakable passion in yourself. If you can’t find the courage of your convictions, why not simply accept the courage of mine?”
“I don’t understand.”
“My proposition is this,” Valentine said. “Stop worrying so much about whether or not you’re sure. Let me be sure for you. Rely on my certainty, on my passion. Let yourself be weak, and lean on me, because we both know I can be strong. Accept that you’re doing the right thing because I know it to be the right thing.”
“If only it were that easy,” Robert said, and couldn’t deny a stab of longing.
Valentine looked mildly amused, as if Robert had betrayed a childlike misunderstanding of the nature of things. “It’s only as hard as you make it,” he said gently. “It’s as easy as you let it be.”
Isabelle brushed past Simon on his way out of the lecture.
“Nine p.m., Jon’s room,” she whispered in his ear.
“What?” It was like she was informing him of the exact time and place of his death—which, if he was forced to imagine what she might be doing in Jon Cartwright’s dorm room, would be imminent.
“Demon o’clock. You know, in case you’re still determined to ruin our fun.” She gave him a wicked grin. “Or join it.”
There was an implied dare on her face, a certainty that he wouldn’t have the nerve to do either. Simon was reminded that though he might have forgotten ever knowing Isabelle, she’d forgotten nothing about him. In fact, it could be argued that she knew him better than he knew himself.
Not anymore, he told himself. A year at the Academy, a year of study and battle and caffeine withdrawal had changed him. It had to.
The question was: Changed him into what?
She’d given him the wrong time.
Of course she had. By the time Simon burst into Jon Cartwright’s room, they were nearly ready to complete the ritual.
“You can’t do this,” Simon told them. “All of you, stop and think.”
“Why?” Isabelle said. “Just give us one good reason. Persuade us, Simon.”
He wasn’t good at speeches. And she knew it.
Simon found himself suddenly furious. This was his school; these were his friends. Isabelle didn’t care what happened here. Maybe there was no deeper story, no hidden pain. Maybe she was exactly what she seemed, and no more: a frivolous person who cared only for herself.
Something at his core revolted against this thought, but he silenced it. This wasn’t about his nonrelationship with his nongirlfriend. He couldn’t let it be about that.
“It’s not just that it’s against the rules,” Simon said. How were you supposed to explain something that seemed so obvious? It was like trying to persuade someone that one plus one equaled two: It just did. “It’s not just that you could get expelled or even taken before the Clave. It’s wrong. Someone could get hurt.”
“Someone’s always getting hurt,” George pointed out, ruefully rubbing his elbow, which, just a couple of days before, Julie had nearly sliced off with a broadsword.
“Because there’s no other way to learn,” Simon said, exasperated. “Because it’s the best of all bad options. This? This is the opposite of necessary. Is this the kind of Shadowhunter you want to be? The kind that toys with the forces of darkness because you think you can handle it? Have you never seen a movie? Read a comic book? That’s always how it starts—just a little temptation, just a little taste of evil, and then bam, your lightsaber turns red and you’re breathing through a big black mask and slicing off your son’s hand just to be mean.”
They looked at him blankly.
“Forget it.”
It was funny, Shadowhunters knew more than mundanes about almost everything. They knew more about demo
ns, about weapons, about the currents of power and magic that shaped the world. But they didn’t understand temptation. They didn’t understand how easy it was to make one small, terrible choice after another until you’d slid down the slippery slope into the pit of hell. Dura lex—the Law is hard. So hard that the Shadowhunters had to pretend it was possible to be perfect. It was the one thing Simon had taken from Robert’s lectures about the Circle. Once Shadowhunters started to slide, they didn’t stop. “The point is, this is a no-win situation. Either your stupid imp gets out of control and eats a bunch of students—or it doesn’t, and so you decide next time you can summon a bigger demon. And that one eats you. That is the definition of a lose-lose situation.”
“He makes a fair point,” Julie said.
“Not as dumb as he looks,” Jon admitted.
George cleared his throat. “Maybe—”
“Maybe we should get on with things,” Isabelle said, and tossed her silky black hair and blinked her large, bottomless eyes and smiled her irresistible smile—and as if she’d cast some witchy spell over the room, everyone forgot Simon existed and busied themselves with the work of raising a demon.
He’d done everything he could do here. There was only one option left.
He ran away.
1984
Michael let a week pass before he asked the question Robert had been dreading. Maybe he was waiting for Robert to bring it up himself. Maybe he’d tried to convince himself he didn’t need to know the truth, that he loved Robert enough not to care—but apparently he had failed.
“Walk with me?” Michael said, and Robert agreed to take one last stroll through Brocelind Forest, even though he’d hoped to stay away from the woods until the next semester. By then, maybe, the memory of what happened there would have faded. The shadows wouldn’t seem so ominous, the ground so soaked in blood.
Things had been strange between them this week, quiet and stiff. Robert was keeping his secret about what they’d done to the werewolf, and mulling over Valentine’s suggestion, that he be Robert’s conscience and Robert’s strength, that it would be easier that way. Michael was . . .
Well, Robert couldn’t guess what Michael was thinking—about Valentine, about Eliza, about Robert himself. And that’s what made things so strange. They were parabatai; they were two halves of the same self. Robert wasn’t supposed to have to guess. Before, he’d always known.
“Okay, so what’s the real story?” Michael asked, once they were deep enough in the woods that the sounds of campus had long since faded away. The sun was still in the sky, but here in the trees, the shadows were long and the dark was rising. “What did Valentine do to that werewolf?”
Robert couldn’t look at his parabatai. He shrugged. “Exactly what I told you.”
“You’ve never lied to me before,” Michael said. There was sadness in his voice, and something else, something worse—there was a hint of finality in it, like they were about to say good-bye.
Robert swallowed. Michael was right: Before this, Robert had never lied.
“And I suppose you’ve never lied to me?” he charged Michael. His parabatai had a secret, he knew that now. Valentine said so.
There was a long pause. Then Michael spoke. “I lie to you every day, Robert.”
It was like a kick in the stomach.
That wasn’t just a secret, that wasn’t just a girl. That was . . . Robert didn’t even know what it was.
Unfathomable.
He stopped and turned to Michael, incredulous. “If you’re trying to shock me into telling you something—”
“I’m not trying to shock you. I’m just . . . I’m trying to tell you the truth. Finally. I know you’re keeping something from me, something important.”
“I’m not,” Robert insisted.
“You are,” Michael said, “and it hurts. And if that hurts me, then I can only imagine—” He stopped, took a deep breath, forced himself on. “I couldn’t bear it, if I’ve been hurting you like that all these years. Even if I didn’t realize it. Even if you didn’t realize it.”
“Michael, you’re not making any sense.”
They reached a fallen log, thick with moss. Michael sank onto it, looking suddenly weary. Like he’d aged a hundred years in the last minute. Robert dropped beside him and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “What is it?” He knocked softly at Michael’s head, trying to smile, to tell himself this was just Michael being Michael. Weird, but inconsequential. “What’s going on in that nuthouse you call a brain?”
Michael lowered his head.
He looked so vulnerable like that, the nape of his neck bare and exposed, Robert couldn’t bear it.
“I’m in love,” Michael whispered.
Robert burst into laughter, relief gushing through him. “Is that all? Don’t you think I figured that out, idiot? I told you, Eliza’s great—”
Then Michael said something else.
Something that Robert must have misheard.
“What?” he said, though he didn’t want to.
This time, Michael lifted his head, met Robert’s eyes, and spoke clearly. “I’m in love with you.”
Robert was on his feet before he’d even processed the words.
It seemed suddenly very important to have space between him and Michael. As much space as possible.
“You’re what?”
He hadn’t meant to shout.
“That’s not funny,” Robert added, trying to modulate his voice.
“It’s not a joke. I’m in—”
“Don’t you say that again. You will never say that again.”
Michael paled. “I know you probably . . . I know you don’t feel the same way, that you couldn’t . . .”
All at once, with a force that nearly swept him off his feet, Robert was flooded by a rush of memories: Michael’s hand on his shoulder. Michael’s arms around him in an embrace. Michael wrestling with him. Michael gently adjusting his grip on a sword. Michael lying in bed a few feet away from him, night after night. Michael stripping down, taking his hand, pulling him into Lake Lyn. Michael, chest bare, hair soaked, eyes shining, lying in the grass beside him.
Robert wanted to throw up.
“Nothing has to change,” Michael said, and Robert would have laughed, if it wouldn’t so surely have led to puking. “I’m still the same person. I’m not asking anything of you. I’m just being honest. I just needed you to know.”
This is what Robert knew: That Michael was the best friend he’d ever had, and probably the purest soul he’d ever know. That he should sit beside Michael, promise him that this was okay, that nothing needed to change, that the oath they’d sworn to each other was true, and forever. That there was nothing to fear in Michael’s—Robert’s stomach turned at the word—love. That Robert was arrow straight, that it was Maryse’s touch that made his body come alive, the memory of Maryse’s bare chest that made his pulse race—and that Michael’s confession didn’t call any of this into doubt. He knew he should say something reassuring to Michael, something like, “I can’t love you that way, but I will love you forever.”
But he also knew what people would think.
What they would think about Michael . . . what they would assume about Robert.
People would talk, they would gossip, they would suspect things. Parabatai couldn’t date each other, of course. And couldn’t . . . anything else. But Michael and Robert were so close; Michael and Robert were so in sync; surely people would want to know if Michael and Robert were the same.
Surely people would wonder.
He couldn’t take it. He’d worked too hard to become the man he was, the Shadowhunter he was. He couldn’t stand to have people looking at him like that again, like he was different.
And he couldn’t stand to have Michael looking at him like this.
Because what if he started wondering too?
“You’ll never say that again,” Robert said coldly. “And if you insist on it, that will be the last thing you ever say
to me. Do you understand me?”
Michael just gaped at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.
“And you will never speak of it to anyone else, either. I won’t have people thinking that about us. About you.”
Michael murmured something unintelligible.
“What?” Robert said sharply.
“I said, what will they think?”
“They’ll think you’re disgusting,” Robert said.
“Like you do?”
A voice at the back of Robert’s mind said, Stop.
It said, This is your last chance.
But it said so very quietly.
It wasn’t sure.
“Yes,” Robert said, and he said it firmly enough that there would be no question that he meant it. “I think you’re disgusting. I swore an oath to you, and I will honor it. But make no mistake: Nothing between us will ever be the same. In fact, from now on, nothing is between us, period.”
Michael didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything. He simply turned, fled into the trees, and left Robert alone.
What he’d said, what he’d done . . . it was unforgivable. Robert knew that. He told himself: It was Michael’s fault, Michael’s decision.
He told himself: He was only doing what he needed to do to survive.
But he saw the truth now. Valentine was right. Robert wasn’t capable of absolute love or loyalty. He’d thought Michael was the exception, the proof that he could be certain of someone—could be steady, no matter what.
Now that was gone.
Enough, Robert thought. Enough struggling, enough doubting his own choices, enough falling prey to his own weakness and lack of faith. He would accept Valentine’s offer. He would let Valentine choose for him, let Valentine believe for him. He would do whatever he needed to hang on to Valentine, and to the Circle, and to its cause.
It was all he had left.
Simon ran through the dingy corridors, skidded across slimy floors, and raced down dented stairways, the whole way cursing the Academy for being such a labyrinthine fortress with no cell reception. His feet pounded against worn stone, his lungs heaved, and though the journey seemed endless, only a few minutes passed before he threw himself into Catarina Loss’s office.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 27
