Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Robin Wasserman (5)

There were, Simon Lewis thought, so many ways to destroy a letter. You could shred it into confetti. You could light it on fire. You could feed it to a dog—or a Hydra demon. You could, with the help of your friendly neighborhood warlock, Portal it to Hawaii and drop it into the mouth of a volcano. And given all the letter-destroying options available, Simon thought, maybe the fact that Isabelle Lightwood had returned his letter intact was of significance. Maybe it was actually a good sign.

Or at least a not-entirely-terrible sign.

That, at least, was what Simon had been telling himself for the last few months.

But even he had to admit that when the letter in question was a sort-of-maybe love letter, a letter that included heartfelt, humiliating phrases like “you’re amazing” and “I know I am that guy you loved”—and when said letter was returned unopened, “RETURN TO SENDER” scrawled across it in red lipstick—“not-entirely-terrible” might be overly optimistic.

At least she had referred to him as “sender.” Simon was pretty sure that Isabelle had devised some other choice names for him, none quite so friendly. A demon had sucked out all of his memories, but his observational faculties were intact—and he’d observed that Isabelle Lightwood wasn’t the kind of girl who liked to be rejected. Simon, in defiance of all laws of nature and common sense, had rejected her twice.

He’d tried to explain himself in the letter, apologize for pushing her away. He’d confessed how much he wanted to fight his way back to the person he once was. Her Simon. Or at least, a Simon worthy of her.

Izzy—I don’t know why you would wait for me, but if you do, I promise to make myself worth that wait, he’d written. Or I’ll try. I can promise I am going to try.

One month to the day after he sent it, the letter came back unread.

As the dorm room door creaked open, Simon hastily shoved the letter back into his desk drawer, careful to avoid the cobwebs and pockets of mold that coated every piece of furniture no matter how diligently he cleaned. He didn’t move hastily enough.

“Not the letter again?” Simon’s roommate at the Academy, George Lovelace, groaned. He flung himself down on his bed, sweeping an arm melodramatically across his forehead. “Oh, Isabelle, my darling, if I stare at this letter long enough, maybe I’ll telepathically woo you back to my weeping bosom.”

“I don’t have a bosom,” Simon said, with as much dignity as he could muster. “And I’m pretty sure if I did, it wouldn’t be weeping.”

“Heaving, then? That’s what bosoms do, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t spent much time around them,” Simon admitted. Not much that he could remember, at least. There had been that aborted attempt at groping Sophie Hillyer back in the ninth grade, but her mother busted him before he could even find the clasp on her bra, much less master it. There had, presumably, been Isabelle. But Simon tried very hard these days not to think about that. The clasp on Isabelle’s bra; his hands on Isabelle’s body; the taste of—

Simon shook his head violently, almost hard enough to clear it. “Can we stop talking about bosoms? Like, forever?”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your very important moping-about-Izzy time.”

“I’m not moping,” Simon lied.

“Excellent.” George grinned triumphantly, and Simon realized he’d fallen into some kind of trap. “So then you’ll come out to the training field with me, help break in the new daggers. We’re sparring, mundies versus elites—losers have to eat extra helpings of soup for a week.”

“Oh yeah, Shadowhunters really know how to party.” His heart wasn’t in the sarcasm. The truth was, his fellow students did know how to party, even if their idea of fun usually involved pointy weapons. With exams behind them and only one more week before the end-of-year party and summer vacation, Shadowhunter Academy felt more like camp than school. Simon couldn’t believe he’d been here the whole school year; he couldn’t believe he’d survived the year. He’d learned Latin, runic writing, and a smattering of Chthonian; he’d fought tiny demons in the woods, endured a full moon night with a newborn werewolf, ridden (and nearly been trampled by) a horse, eaten his weight in soup, and in all that time, he’d been neither expelled nor exsanguinated. He’d even bulked up enough to trade in his ladies’-size gear for a men’s size, albeit the smallest one available. Against all odds, the Academy had come to feel like home. A slimy, moldy, dungeonlike home without working toilets, maybe, but home nonetheless. He and George had even named the rats that lived behind their walls. Every night, they left Jon Cartwright Jr., III, and IV a piece of stale bread to nibble, in hopes they’d prefer the crumbs to human feet.

This last week was a time for celebration, late-night carousing, and petty wagering over dagger fights. But Simon couldn’t quite find the will for fun. Maybe it was the looming shadow of summer vacation—the prospect of going home to a place that didn’t feel much like home anymore.

Or maybe it was, as it always was, Isabelle.

“Definitely you’ll have much more fun here, sulking,” George said as he changed into his gear. “Silly of me to suggest otherwise.”

Simon sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

George had a movie-star face, a Scottish accent, a sun-kissed tan, and the kind of muscles that made girls—even the Shadowhunter Academy girls, who until they met Simon had apparently never encountered a human male without a six-pack—giggle and swoon. Girl trouble, particularly the brand involving humiliation and rejection, was beyond his comprehension.

“Just to be clear,” George said, in the rich brogue that even Simon couldn’t help but find charming, “you don’t remember anything about dating this girl? You don’t remember being in love with her, you don’t remember what it was like when the two of you—”

“That’s right,” Simon cut him off.

“Or even if the two of you—”

“Again, correct,” Simon said quickly. He hated to admit it, but this was one of the things about demon amnesia that bothered him the most. What kind of seventeen-year-old guy doesn’t know whether or not he’s a virgin?

“Because you’re apparently running low on brain cells, you tell this gorgeous creature that you’ve forgotten all about her, reject her publicly, and yet when you pledge your love to her in some goopy romantic letter, you’re surprised when she’s not having it. Then you spend the next two months mooning over her. Is that about right?”

Simon dropped his head into his hands. “Okay, so when you put it that way, it makes no sense.”

“Oh, I’ve seen Isabelle Lightwood—it makes all the sense in the world.” George grinned. “I just wanted to get my facts straight.”

He bounded out the door before Simon could clarify that it wasn’t about how Isabelle looked—although it was true that she looked, to Simon, like the most beautiful girl in the world. But it wasn’t about her curtain of silky black hair or the bottomless dark brown of her eyes or the deadly liquid grace with which she swung her electrum whip. He couldn’t have explained what it was about, since George was right, he didn’t remember anything about her or what the two of them had been like as a couple. He still had some trouble believing they ever were a couple.

He just knew, on a level beneath reason and memory, that some part of him belonged with Isabelle. Maybe even belonged to Isabelle. Whether he could remember why, or not.

He’d written Clary a letter too, telling her how much he wanted to remember their friendship—asking for her help. Unlike Isabelle, she’d written back, telling him the story of how they first met. It was the first of many letters, all of them adding episodes to the epic, lifelong story of Clary and Simon’s Excellent Adventure. The more Simon read, the more he remembered, and sometimes he even wrote back with stories of his own. It felt safe, somehow, corresponding by letter; there was no chance that Clary could expect anything of him, and no chance that he would fail her, see the pain in her eyes when she realized all over again that her Simon was gone. Letter by letter, Simon’s memories of Clary were beginning to knit themselves together.

Isabelle was different. It felt like his memories of Isabelle were buried inside a black hole—something dangerous and ravenous, threatening to consume him if he got too close.

Simon had come to the Academy, in part, to escape his painful and confusing double vision of the past, the cognitive dissonance between the life he remembered and the one he’d actually lived. It was like that cheesy old joke his father had loved. “Doctor, my arm hurts when I move like this,” Simon would say, setting him up. His father would answer in an atrocious German accent, his version of “doctor voice”: “Then . . . don’t move like that.”

As long as Simon didn’t think about the past, the past couldn’t hurt him. But, increasingly, he couldn’t help himself. There was too much pleasure in the pain.

Classes may have been over for the year, but the Academy faculty was still finding new ways to torture them.

“What do you think it is this time?” Julie Beauvale asked as they settled onto the uncomfortable wooden benches in the main hall. The entire student body, Shadowhunters and mundanes alike, had been summoned first thing Monday morning for an all-school meeting.

“Maybe they finally decided to kick out all the dregs,” Jon Cartwright said. “Better late than never.”

Simon was too tired and too uncaffeinated to think up a clever retort. So he simply said, “Suck it, Cartwright.”

George snorted.

Over the last several months of classes, training, and demon-hunting disasters, their class had grown pretty close—especially the handful of students who were around Simon’s age. George was George, of course; Beatriz Mendoza was surprisingly sweet for a Shadowhunter; and even Julie had turned out to be slightly less snotty than she pretended to be. Jon Cartwright, on the other hand . . . The moment they met, Simon had decided that if looks matched personalities, Jon Cartwright would look like a horse’s ass. Unfortunately, there was no justice in the world, and he looked instead like a walking Ken doll. Sometimes first impressions were misleading; sometimes they peered straight through to a person’s inner soul. Simon was as sure now as he’d ever been: Jon’s inner soul was a horse’s ass.

Jon gave Simon a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to miss your witty repartee this summer, Lewis.”

“I’m going to hope you get eaten by a spider demon this summer, Cartwright.”

George slipped an arm around both of them, grinning maniacally and humming “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”

George had, perhaps, embraced the spirit of celebration a little too enthusiastically of late.

Up at the front of the hall, Dean Penhallow cleared her throat loudly, looking pointedly in their direction. “If we could have some silence, please?”

The room continued chattering, Dean Penhallow continued clearing her throat and asking nervously for order, and things could have gone on like that all morning had Delaney Scarsbury, their training master, not climbed up on a chair. “We’ll have silence, or we’ll have one hundred push-ups,” he boomed. The room hushed immediately.

“I suppose you’ve all been wondering how you would keep busy now that exams are past?” Dean Penhallow said, her voice rising at the end of her sentence. The dean had a way of turning almost everything into a question. “I think you’ll all recognize this week’s guest speaker?”

An intimidating barrel-chested man in gray robes strode onto the makeshift stage. The room gasped.

Simon gasped too, but it wasn’t the appearance of the Inquisitor that had blown his mind. It was the girl trailing after him, glaring fiercely at his robes like she hoped to set them on fire with her mind. A girl with a curtain of silky black hair and bottomless brown eyes: the Inquisitor’s daughter. Known to friends, family, and humiliatingly rejected ex-boyfriends as Isabelle Lightwood.

George elbowed him. “You seeing what I’m seeing?” he whispered. “You want a tissue?”

Simon couldn’t help remembering the last time Izzy had shown up at the Academy, for the express purpose of warning every girl in school away from him. He’d been horrified. Right about now, he couldn’t imagine anything better.

But Isabelle didn’t look inclined to say anything to the class. She simply sat beside her father, arms crossed, glowering.

“She’s even prettier when she’s angry,” Jon whispered.

In a miraculous triumph of restraint, Simon didn’t spear him in the eye with a pen.

“You’ve nearly completed your first year at the Academy,” Robert Lightwood told the assembled students, somehow making it sound less like a congratulations than it did like a threat. “My daughter tells me that one of the mundanes’ great heroes has a saying, ‘With great power comes substantial responsibility.’  ”

Simon gaped. There was only one way Isabelle Lightwood, as far from a comics nerd as a person could get, would know a line—even a mangled one—from Spider-Man. She’d been quoting Simon.

That had to mean something . . . right?

He tried to catch her eye.

He failed.

“You’ve learned a lot about power this year,” Robert Lightwood continued. “This week I’m going to talk to you about responsibility. And what happens when power runs unchecked, or is freely given to the wrong person. I’m going to talk to you about the Circle.”

At those words, a hush fell across the room. The Academy faculty, like most Shadowhunters, were very careful to avoid the subject of the Circle—the group of rogue Shadowhunters that Valentine Morgenstern had led in the Uprising. The students knew about Valentine—everyone knew about Valentine—but they learned quickly not to ask too many questions about him. Over the last year, Simon had come to understand that the Shadowhunters preferred to believe their choices were perfect, their laws infallible. They didn’t like to think about the time they’d been nearly destroyed by a group of their own.

It explained, at least, why the dean was hosting this session, rather than their history teacher, Catarina Loss. The warlock seemed to tolerate most Shadowhunters—barely. Simon suspected that when it came to former members of the Circle, “barely” was too much to hope for.

Robert cleared his throat. “I’d like all of you to ask yourselves what you would have done, were you a student here in Valentine Morgenstern’s day. Would you have joined the Circle? Would you have stood by Valentine’s side at the Uprising? Raise your hand, if you think it’s possible.”

Simon was unsurprised to see not a single hand in the air. He’d played this game back in mundane school, every time his history class covered World War II. Simon knew no one ever thought they would be a Nazi.

Simon also knew that, statistically, most of them were wrong.

“Now I’d like you to raise your hand if you think you’re an exemplary Shadowhunter, one who would do anything to serve the Clave,” Robert said.

Unsurprisingly, many more hands shot up this time, Jon Cartwright’s the highest.

Robert smiled mirthlessly. “It was the most eager and loyal of us who were first to join Valentine’s ranks,” he told them. “It was those of us most dedicated to the Shadowhunter cause who found ourselves the easiest prey.”

There was a rustling in the crowd.

“Yes,” Robert said. “I say us, because I was among Valentine’s disciples. I was in the Circle.”

The rustling burst into a storm. Some of the students looked unsurprised, but many of them looked as if a nuclear bomb had just gone off inside their brains. Clary had told Simon that Robert Lightwood used to be a member of the Circle, but it was obviously hard for some people to reconcile that with the position of the Inquisitor, which this tall, fearsome man now held.

“The Inquisitor?” Julie breathed, eyes wide. “How could they let him . . . ?”

Beatriz looked stunned.

“My father always said there was something off about him,” Jon murmured.

“This week, I will teach you about the misuses of power, about great evil and how it can take many forms. My able daughter, Isabelle Lightwood, will be assisting with some of the classwork.” Here he gestured to Isabelle, who glanced briefly at the crowd, her impossibly fierce glare somehow growing even fiercer. “Most of all, I will teach you about the Circle, how it began and why. If you listen well, some of you might even learn something.”

Simon wasn’t listening at all. Simon was staring at Isabelle, willing her to look at him. Isabelle studiously stared at her feet. And Robert Lightwood, Inquisitor of the Clave, arbiter of all things lawful, began to tell the story of Valentine Morgenstern and those who had once loved him.

1984

Robert Lightwood stretched out on the quad, trying not to think about how he’d spent this week the year before. The days after exams and before the summer break were, traditionally, a bacchic release of pent-up energy, faculty looking the other way as students pushed the Academy rules to their limits. A year ago, he and Michael Wayland had snuck off campus and taken a boldly illicit midnight skinny-dip in Lake Lyn. Even with their lips firmly sealed shut, the water had taken its hallucinogenic effect, turning the sky electric. They had lain on their backs side by side, imagining falling stars carving neon tracks across the clouds and dreaming themselves into a stranger world.

That was a year ago, when Robert had still imagined himself young, free to waste his time with childish delights. Before he had understood that, young or not, he had responsibilities.

That was a year ago, before Valentine.

The members of the Circle had co-opted this quiet, shady corner of the quad, where they would be safe from prying eyes—and where they, in turn, would be spared the sight of their classmates having their pointless, meaningless fun. Robert reminded himself that he was lucky to be huddled here in the shade, listening to Valentine Morgenstern declaim.

It was a special privilege, he reminded himself, to be a member of Valentine’s coterie, privy to his revolutionary ideas. A year ago, when Valentine had inexplicably befriended him, he’d felt nothing but intense gratitude and a desire to hang on Valentine’s every word.

Valentine said the Clave was corrupt and lazy, that these days it cared more about maintaining the status quo and fascistically suppressing dissent than it did carrying out its noble mission.

Valentine said the Shadowhunters should stop cowering in the darkness and walk proudly through the mundane world they lived and died to protect.

Valentine said the Accords were useless and the Mortal Cup was built to be used and the new generation was the hope of the future and the Academy classes were a waste of time.

Valentine made Robert’s brain buzz and his heart sing; he made Robert feel like a warrior for justice. Like he was a part of something, something extraordinary—like he and the others had been chosen, not just by Valentine, but by the hand of destiny, to change the world.

And yet, very occasionally, Valentine also made Robert feel uneasy.

Valentine wanted the Circle’s unquestioning loyalty. He wanted their belief in him, their conviction in the cause, to suffuse their souls. And Robert wanted desperately to give that to him. He didn’t want to question Valentine’s logic or intent; he didn’t want to worry that he believed too little in the things that Valentine said. Or that he believed too much. Today, showered in sunlight, the infinite possibility of summer opening up before him, he didn’t want to worry at all. So, as Valentine’s words washed over him, Robert let his focus drift, just for a moment. Better to tune out than to doubt. Just for now, his friends could do his listening for him, fill him in later. Wasn’t that what friends were for?

There were eight of them today, the Circle’s innermost circle, all sitting in hushed silence as Valentine ranted about the Clave’s kindness to Downworlders: Jocelyn Fairchild, Maryse Trueblood, Lucian and Amatis Graymark, Hodge Starkweather, and, of course, Michael, Robert, and Stephen. Though Stephen Herondale was the most recent addition to the crowd—and the most recent addition to the Academy, arriving from the London Institute at the beginning of the year—he was also the most devoted to the cause, and to Valentine. He’d arrived at the Academy dressed like a mundane: studded leather jacket, tight acid-washed jeans, blond hair gelled into preposterous spikes like the mundane rock stars who postered his dorm room walls. Only a month later, Stephen had adopted not only Valentine’s simple, all-black aesthetic but also his mannerisms, so that the only major difference between them was Valentine’s shock of white-blond hair and Stephen’s blue eyes. By first frost, he’d sworn off all things mundane and destroyed his beloved Sex Pistols poster in a sacrificial bonfire.

“Herondales do nothing halfway,” Stephen said whenever Robert teased him about it, but Robert suspected that something lay beneath the lighthearted tone. Something darker—something hungry. Valentine, he had noticed, had a knack for picking out disciples, homing in on those students with some kind of lack, some inner emptiness that Valentine could fill. Unlike the rest of their gang of misfits, Stephen was ostensibly whole: a handsome, graceful, supremely skilled Shadowhunter with a distinguished pedigree and the respect of everyone on campus. It made Robert wonder . . . what was it that only Valentine could see?

His thoughts had wandered so far astray that when Maryse gasped and said, in a hushed voice, “Won’t that be dangerous?” he wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Nonetheless, he squeezed her hand reassuringly, as this was what boyfriends were meant to do. Maryse was lying with her head in his lap, her silky black hair splayed across his jeans. He smoothed it away from her face, a boyfriend’s prerogative.

It had been nearly a year, but Robert still found it difficult to believe that this girl—this fierce, graceful, bold girl with a mind like a razor blade—had chosen him as her own. She glided through the Academy like a queen, granting favor, indulging her fawning subjects. Maryse wasn’t the most beautiful girl in their class, and certainly not the sweetest or the most charming. She didn’t care for things like sweetness or charm. But when it came to the battlefield, no one was more ready to charge the enemy, and certainly no one was better with a whip. Maryse was more than a girl, she was a force. The other girls worshipped her; the guys wanted her—but only Robert had her.

It had changed everything.

Sometimes, Robert felt like his entire life was an act. That it was only a matter of time before his fellow students saw through him, and realized what he really was, beneath all that brawn and bluster: Cowardly. Weak. Worthless. Having Maryse by his side was like wearing a suit of armor. No one like her would choose someone worthless. Everyone knew that. Sometimes, Robert even believed it himself.

He loved the way she made him feel when they were in public: strong and safe. And he loved even more the way she made him feel when they were alone together, when she pressed her lips to the nape of his neck and traced her tongue down the arc of his spine. He loved the curve of her hip and the whisper of her hair; he loved the gleam in her eye when she strode into combat. He loved the taste of her. So why was it that whenever she said, “I love you,” he felt like such a liar for saying it back? Why was it that he occasionally—maybe more than occasionally—found his thoughts straying to other girls, to how they might taste?

How could he love the way Maryse made him feel . . . and still be so uncertain that what he felt was love?

He’d taken to surreptitiously watching the other couples around him, trying to figure out whether they felt the same way, whether their declarations of love masked the same confusion and doubt. But the way Amatis’s head nestled comfortably against Stephen’s shoulder, the way Jocelyn carelessly threaded her fingers through Valentine’s, even the way Maryse idly played with his jeans’ fraying seams, as if his clothing, his body, were her property . . . all of them seemed so certain of themselves. Robert was certain only of how good he’d gotten at faking it.

“We should glory in the danger, if it means a chance to take down a filthy, rogue Downworlder,” Valentine said, glowering. “Even if this wolf pack doesn’t have a lead on the monster that—” He swallowed, hard, and Robert knew what he was thinking, because it seemed like these days, it was all Valentine was ever thinking, the fury of it radiating off him as if the thought were written in fire, the monster that killed my father. “Even if it doesn’t, we’ll be doing the Clave a favor.”

Ragnor Fell, the green-skinned warlock who’d taught at the Academy for nearly a century, paused halfway across the quad and peered over at them, almost as if he could hear their discussion. Robert assured himself that was impossible. Still, he didn’t like the way the warlock’s horns angled toward them, as if marking his target.

Michael cleared his throat. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk like that about, uh, Downworlders out here.”

Valentine snorted. “I hope the old goat does hear me. It’s a disgrace, them letting him teach here. The only place a Downworlder has at the Academy is on the dissection table.”

Michael and Robert exchanged a glance. As always, Robert knew exactly what his parabatai was thinking—and Robert was thinking the same. Valentine, when they first met him, had cut a dashing figure with his blinding white hair and blazing black eyes. His features were smooth and sharp at once, like sculpted ice, but beneath the intimidating veneer was a surprisingly kind boy roused to anger only by injustice. Valentine had always been intense, yes, but it was an intensity bent toward doing what he believed was right, what was good. When Valentine said he wanted to correct the injustices and inequities imposed on them by the Clave, Robert believed him, and still did. And while Michael may have had a bizarre soft spot for Downworlders, Robert didn’t like them any more than Valentine did; he couldn’t imagine why, in this day and age, the Clave was still allowing warlocks to meddle in Shadowhunter affairs.

But there was a difference between clear-eyed intensity and irrational anger. Robert had been waiting a long time now for Valentine’s grief-fueled rage to simmer down. Instead, it had sparked an inferno.

“So you won’t tell us where you got your intel from,” Lucian said, the only one other than Jocelyn who could question Valentine with impunity, “but you want us to sneak off campus and hunt down these werewolves ourselves? If you’re so sure the Clave would want them taken care of, why not leave it to them?”

“The Clave is useless,” Valentine hissed. “You know that better than anyone, Lucian. But if none of you are willing to risk yourselves for this—if you’d rather stay here and go to a party . . .” His mouth curled as if even speaking the word repelled him. “I’ll go myself.”

Hodge pushed his glasses up on his nose and leaped to his feet. “I’ll go with you, Valentine,” he said, too loud. It was Hodge’s way—always a little too loud or too quiet, always misreading the room. There was a reason he preferred books to people. “I’m always at your side.”

“Sit down,” Valentine snapped. “I don’t need you getting in the way.”

“But—”

“What good does your loyalty do me when it comes with a big mouth and two left feet?”

Hodge paled and dropped back to the ground, eyes blinking furiously behind thick lenses.

Jocelyn pressed a hand to Valentine’s shoulder—ever so gently, and only for a moment, but it was enough.

“I only mean, Hodge, that your particular skills are wasted on the battlefield,” Valentine said, more kindly. The shift in tone was abrupt, but sincere. When Valentine favored you with his warmest smile, he was impossible to resist. “And I couldn’t forgive myself if you were injured. I can’t . . . I can’t lose anyone else.”

They were all silent then, for a moment, thinking of how quickly it had happened, the dean pulling Valentine off the training field to deliver the news, the way he’d taken it, silent and steady, like a Shadowhunter should. The way he’d looked when he returned to campus after the funeral, his hollow eyes, his sallow skin, his face aging years in a week. Their parents were all warriors, and they knew: What Valentine had lost, any of them could lose. To be a Shadowhunter was to live in the shadow of death.

They couldn’t bring his father back, but if they could help him avenge the loss, surely they owed him that much.

Robert, at least, owed him everything.

“Of course we’ll come with you,” Robert said firmly. “Whatever you need.”

“Agreed,” Michael said. Where Robert went, he would always follow.

Valentine nodded. “Stephen? Lucian?”

Robert caught Amatis rolling her eyes. Valentine never treated the women with anything less than respect, but when it came to battle, he preferred to fight with men by his side.

Stephen nodded. Lucian, who was Valentine’s parabatai and the one he relied on most, shifted uncomfortably. “I promised Céline I would tutor her tonight,” he admitted. “I could cancel it, of course, but—”

Valentine waved him off, laughing, and the others followed suit.

“Tutoring? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Stephen teased. “Seems like she’s already aced her O levels in wrapping you around her little finger.”

Lucian blushed. “Nothing’s happening there, trust me,” he said, and it was presumably the truth. Céline, younger than the rest of the Circle, with the fragile, delicately pretty features of a porcelain doll, had been trailing their group like a lost puppy. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that she’d fallen hard for Stephen, but he was a lost cause, pledged to Amatis for life. She’d picked Lucian as her consolation prize, but it was just as obvious that Lucian had no romantic interest in anyone but Jocelyn Fairchild. Obvious, that is, to everyone except Jocelyn.

“We don’t need you for this one,” Valentine told Lucian. “Stay and enjoy yourself.”

“I should be with you,” Lucian said, the merriment faded from his voice. He sounded pained at the thought of Valentine venturing into dangerous territory without him, and Robert understood. Parabatai didn’t always fight side by side—but knowing your parabatai was in danger, without you there to support and protect him? It caused an almost physical pain. And Lucian and Valentine’s parabatai bond was even more intense than most. Robert could almost feel the current of power flowing between them, the strength and love they passed back and forth with every glance. “Where you go, I go.”

“It’s already decided, my friend,” Valentine said, and that simply, it was. Lucian would stay on campus with the others. Valentine, Stephen, Michael, and Robert would slip away from campus after dark and venture into Brocelind Forest in pursuit of a werewolf encampment that, supposedly, could lead them to Valentine’s father’s killer. They’d make up the rest as they went along.

As the others hurried off to the dining hall for lunch, Maryse grabbed Robert’s hand and pulled him close.

“You’ll be careful out there, yes?” she said sternly. Maryse said everything sternly—it was one of the things he liked best about her.

She pressed her lithe body against his, kissed his neck, and he felt, in that moment, a passing sense of supreme confidence, that this was where he belonged . . . at least, until she whispered, “Come home to me in one piece.”

Come home to me. As if he belonged to her. As if, in her mind, they were already married, with a house and children and a lifetime of togetherness, as if the future was already decided.

It was the appeal of Maryse, as it was the appeal of Valentine, the ease with which they could be so sure of what should be, and what was to come. Robert continued hoping that one day it would rub off on him. In the meantime, the less certain he was, the more certain he acted—there was no need for anyone to know the truth.

Robert Lightwood wasn’t much of a teacher. He gave them a neatly sanitized account of the early days of the Circle, laying out Valentine’s revolutionary principles as if they were a list of ingredients for baking a particularly bland cake. Simon, fruitlessly devoting most of his energy to telepathic communication with Isabelle, was barely listening. He found himself cursing the fact that Shadowhunters were so haughty about the whole we-don’t-do-magic thing. If he were a warlock, he’d probably be able to command Isabelle’s attention with the flick of a finger. Or, if he were still a vampire, he could have used his vampy powers to enthrall her—but that was something Simon preferred not to think about, because it raised some unsettling questions about how he’d managed to enthrall her in the first place.

What he did hear of Robert’s tale didn’t much interest him. Simon had never liked history much, at least as it was relayed to him in school. It sounded too much like a brochure, everything neatly laid out and painfully obvious in retrospect. Every war had its bullet-pointed causes; every megalomaniac dictator was so cartoonishly evil you wondered how stupid the people of the past had to be, not to notice. Simon didn’t remember much of his own history-making experiences, but he remembered enough to know it wasn’t so clear when it was happening. History, the way teachers liked it, was a racetrack, a straight shot from start to finish line; life itself was more of a maze.

Maybe the telepathy worked after all. Because when the speech ended and the students were given permission to disperse, Isabelle hopped off the stage and strolled right up to Simon. She gave him a sharp nod hello.

“Isabelle, I, uh, maybe we could—”

She flashed him a brilliant smile that, for just a moment, made him think all his worrying had been for nothing. Then she said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends? Especially the handsome ones?”

Simon turned to see half the class crowding in behind him, eager for a brush with the famous Isabelle Lightwood. At the front of the pack were George and Jon, the latter practically drooling.

Jon elbowed past Simon and thrust out a hand. “Jon Cartwright, at your service,” he said in a voice that oozed charm like a blister oozed pus.

Isabelle took his hand—and instead of jujitsuing him to the ground with a humiliating thump or slicing his hand off at the wrist with her electrum whip, she let him turn her hand over and bring it to his lips. Then she curtsied. She winked. Worst of all, she giggled.

Simon thought he might puke.

Unendurable minutes of torment passed: George blushing and making goofy attempts at jokes, Julie struck speechless, Marisol pretending to be above it all, Beatriz engaging in wan but polite small talk about mutual acquaintances, Sunil bouncing in the back of the crowd, trying to make himself seen, and through it all, Jon smirking and Isabelle beaming and batting her eyes in a display that could only be meant to make Simon’s stomach churn.

At least, he desperately hoped it was meant for that. Because the other option—the possibility that Isabelle was smiling at Jon simply because she wanted to, and that she accepted his invitation to squeeze his rock-hard biceps because she wanted to feel his muscles contract beneath her delicate grip—was unthinkable.

“So what do you people do around here for fun?” she asked finally, then narrowed her eyes flirtatiously at Jon. “And don’t say ‘me.’ ”

Am I already dead? Simon thought hopelessly. Is this hell?

“Neither the circumstances nor the population here have proven themselves conducive to fun,” Jon said pompously, as if the bluster in his voice could disguise the fire in his cheeks.

“That all changes tonight,” Isabelle said, then turned on her spiky heel and strode away.

George shook his head, letting out an appreciative whistle. “Simon, your girlfriend—”

“Ex-girlfriend,” Jon put in.

“She’s magnificent,” Julie breathed, and from the looks on the others’ faces, she was speaking for the group.

Simon rolled his eyes and hurried after Isabelle—reaching out to grab her shoulder, then thinking better of it at the last moment. Grabbing Isabelle Lightwood from behind was probably an invitation to amputation.

“Isabelle,” he said sharply. She sped up. So did he, wondering where she was headed. “Isabelle,” he said again. They burrowed deeper into the school, the air thick with damp and mold, the stone floor increasingly slick beneath their feet. They hit a fork, corridors branching off to the left and right, and she paused before choosing the one on the left.

“We don’t go down this one, generally,” Simon said.

Nothing.

“Mostly because of the elephant-size slug that lives at the end of it.” This was not an exaggeration. Rumor had it that some disgruntled faculty member—a warlock who’d been fired when the tide turned against Downworlders—had left it behind as a parting gift.

Isabelle kept walking, slower now, picking her way carefully over seeping puddles of slime. Something skittered loudly overhead. She didn’t flinch—but she did look up, and Simon caught her fingers playing across the coiled whip.

“Also because of the rats,” he added. He and George had gone on an expedition down this corridor in search of the supposed slug . . . they gave up after the third rat dropped from the ceiling and somehow found its way down George’s pants.

Isabelle breathed a heavy sigh.

“Come on, Izzy, hold up.”

Somehow, he’d stumbled on the magic words. She spun around to face him. “Don’t call me that,” she hissed.

“What?”

“My friends call me Izzy,” she said. “You lost that right.”

“Izzy—Isabelle, I mean. If you’d read my letter—”

“No. You don’t call me Izzy, you don’t send me letters, you don’t follow me into dark corridors and try to save me from rats.”

“Trust me, we see a rat, it’s every man for himself.”

Isabelle looked like she wanted to feed him to the giant slug. “My point, Simon Lewis, is that you and I are strangers now, just like you wanted it.”

“If that’s true, then what are you doing here?”

Isabelle looked incredulous. “It’s one thing for Jace to believe the world revolves around him, but come on. I know you love fantasy, Simon, but the suspension of disbelief can only go so far.”

“This is my school, Isabelle,” Simon said. “And you’re my—”

She just stared at him, as if defying him to come up with a noun that would justify the possessive.

This wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

“Okay, then, why are you here? And why are you being so nice to all my, uh, friends?”

“Because my father’s forcing me to be here,” she said. “Because I guess he thinks some delightful father-daughter bonding time in a slime-covered pit will make me forget that he’s a deadbeat adulterer who ditched his family. And I’m being nice to your friends because I’m a nice person.”

Now it was Simon who looked incredulous.

“Okay, I’m not,” she admitted. “But I’ve never actually been to school, you know. I figured if I have to be here, I might as well make the best of it. See what I’m missing. Is that enough information for you?”

“I get that you’re mad at me, but—”

She shook her head. “You don’t get it. I’m not mad at you. I’m not anything at you, Simon. You asked me to accept that you were a different person now, someone who I don’t know. So I’ve accepted that. I loved someone—he’s gone now. You’re nobody I know, and, as far as I can tell, nobody I need to know. I’ll only be here a few days, and then we never need to see each other again. How about we don’t make it harder than it has to be?”

He couldn’t quite catch his breath.

I loved someone, she’d said, and it was the closest she—or any girl—had ever come to saying I love you to Simon.

Except that it wasn’t close at all, was it?

It was a world away.

“Okay.” It was the only word he could force out, but she was already walking on down the corridor. She didn’t need his permission to be a stranger; she didn’t need anything from him. “You’re going the wrong way!” he called after her. He didn’t know where she wanted to go, but there seemed little chance she wanted to go slug-ward.

“They’re all wrong,” she called back, without turning around.

He tried to sense some subtext in her words, a glimmer of pain. Something that would give the lie to her claim, betray the feelings she still harbored for him—prove this was as hard and confusing for her as it was for him.

But the suspension of disbelief could only go so far.

Isabelle had said she wanted to make the best of her time at the Academy, and she’d proposed they not make it any harder than it needed to be. Unfortunately, Simon soon discovered, these two things were mutually exclusive. Because Isabelle’s version of making the best of things involved Isabelle stretched out like a cat on one of the student lounge’s musty leather couches, surrounded by sycophants, Isabelle partaking in George’s illicit supply of scotch and inviting the others to do so as well, so that soon all of Simon’s friends and enemies were drunk and giddy and in much too good a mood for his liking. Making the best of things apparently meant encouraging Julie to flirt with George and teaching Marisol how to smash statuary with a whip and, worst of all, agreeing to “maybe” be Jon Cartwright’s date for the end-of-year party later in the week.

Simon wasn’t sure whether any of this was harder than it needed to be—who knew what qualified as needed to be?—but it was excruciating.

“So, when does the real fun start?” Isabelle finally said.

Jon waggled his eyebrows. “Just say the word.”

Isabelle laughed and touched his shoulder.

Simon wondered whether the Academy would expel him for murdering Jon Cartwright in his sleep.

“Not that kind of fun. I mean, when do we sneak off campus? Go party in Alicante? Go swimming in Lake Lyn? Go . . .” She trailed off, finally noticing that the others were gaping at her like she was speaking in tongues. “Are you telling me you don’t do any of that?”

“We’re not here to have fun,” Beatriz said, somewhat stiffly. “We’re here to learn to be Shadowhunters. There are rules for a reason.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard that rules are meant to be broken? Students are supposed to get into a little trouble at the Academy—at least the best students are. Why do you think the rules are so strict? So that only the best can get around them. Think of it like extra credit.”

“How would you know?” Beatriz asked. Simon was surprised by her tone. Usually, she was the quietest among them, always willing to go with the flow. But there was an edge in her voice now, something that reminded him that, gentle as she seemed, she was a born warrior. “It’s not like you went here.”

“I come from a long line of Academy graduates,” Isabelle said. “I know what I need to know.”

“We’re not all interested in following in your father’s footsteps,” Beatriz said, then stood up and walked out of the room.

There was silence in her wake, everyone tensely waiting for Isabelle to react.

Her smile didn’t waver, but Simon could feel the heat radiating from her and understood it was taking a great deal of energy for her not to explode—or collapse. He didn’t know which it would be; he didn’t know how she felt about her father once being one of Valentine’s men. He didn’t know anything about her, not really. He admitted that.

But he still wanted to scoop her into his arms and hold her until the storm passed.

“No one has ever accused my father of being fun,” Isabelle said flatly. “But I assume my reputation precedes me. If you meet me here at midnight tomorrow, I’ll show you what you’ve been missing.” She took Jon’s hand in her own and allowed him to pull her off the couch. “Now. Will you show me to my room? This place is simply impossible to navigate.”

“My pleasure,” Jon said, winking at Simon.

Then they were gone.

Together.

The next morning the hall echoed with yawning and the groan of hangovers in (fruitless) search of grease and coffee. As Robert Lightwood launched into his second lecture, some tedious disquisition on the nature of evil and a point-by-point analysis of Valentine’s critique of the Accords, Simon had to keep pinching himself awake. Robert Lightwood was possibly the only person on the planet who could make the story of the Circle drop-dead boring. It didn’t help that Simon had stayed up till dawn, tossing and turning on the lumpy mattress, trying to drive nightmare images of Isabelle and Jon out of his head.

There was something going on with her, Simon was sure of it. Maybe it wasn’t about him—maybe it was about her father or some residual homeschooling issues or just some girl thing he couldn’t fathom, but she wasn’t acting like herself.

She’s not your girlfriend, he kept reminding himself. Even if something was wrong, it was no longer his job to fix it. She can do what she wants.

And if what she wanted was Jon Cartwright, then obviously she wasn’t worth losing a night of sleep over in the first place.

By sunrise he’d almost managed to convince himself of this. But there she was again, up onstage beside her father, her fierce and fiercely intelligent gaze evoking all those annoying feelings again.

They weren’t memories, exactly. Simon couldn’t have named a single movie they watched together; he didn’t know any of Isabelle’s favorite foods or inside jokes; he didn’t know what it felt like to kiss her or twine his fingers with hers. What he felt whenever he looked at her was deeper than that, dwelling in some nether region of his mind. He felt like he knew her, inside and out. He felt like he had Superman vision and could x-ray her soul. He felt sorrow and loss and joy and confusion; he felt a cavemanlike urge to slaughter a wild boar and lay it at her feet; he felt the need to do something extraordinary and the belief that, in her presence, he could.

He felt something he’d never felt before—but he had a sinking sensation that he recognized it anyway.

He was pretty sure he felt like he was in love.

1984

Valentine made it easy for them. He’d induced permission from the dean for an “educational” camping trip in Brocelind Forest—two days and nights free to do as they pleased, as long as it resulted in a few scribbled pages on the curative powers of wild herbs.

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 shunning 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.

Unthinkable that they had only one last year together before they’d be expected to part. Their parabatai bond would remain after the Academy, of course. They’d always be best friends; they’d always charge into battle side by side. But it wouldn’t be the same. They’d each marry, move into houses of their own, refocus their attention and their love. They would always have a claim on each other’s souls. But after next year, they would no longer be the most important person in each other’s lives. This, Robert knew, was simply how life worked. This was growing up. He just couldn’t imagine it, and he didn’t want to.

As if listening in on Robert’s thoughts, Michael echoed the question he’d dodged earlier. “What really is going on with you and Maryse?” he asked. “Do you think it’s for real? Like, for good?”

There was no need to put on a show for Michael. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t even know what that would feel like. She’s perfect for me. I love spending time with her, I love . . . you know, with her. But does that mean I love her? It should, but . . .”

“Something’s missing?”

“Not between us, though,” Robert said. “It’s like there’s something missing in me. I see how Stephen looks at Amatis, how Valentine looks at Jocelyn—”

“How Lucian looks at Jocelyn,” Michael added with a wry grin. They both liked Lucian, despite his irritating tendency to act like Valentine’s favor had given him insight beyond his years. But after all these years of watching him pine away for Jocelyn, it was hard to take him entirely seriously. The same went for Jocelyn, who somehow managed to remain oblivious. Robert didn’t understand how you could be the center of someone’s world without even realizing it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, wondering if any girl would ever be the center of his world. “Sometimes I worry there’s something wrong with me.”

Michael clapped a hand to his shoulder and fixed him with an intense gaze. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Robert. I wish you could finally see that.”

Robert shook off the hand, along with the weight of the moment. “How about you?” he said with forced gaiety. “It’s been, what, three dates with Eliza Rosewain?”

“Four,” Michael admitted.

He’d sworn Robert to secrecy about her, saying he didn’t want the other guys to know until he was sure it was real. Robert suspected he didn’t want Valentine to know, as Eliza was a particular thorn in Valentine’s side. She asked nearly as many disrespectful questions as he did, and harbored a similar disdain for the current policies of the Clave, but she wanted nothing to do with the Circle or its goals. Eliza thought that a new, united front with mundanes and Downworlders was the key to the future. She argued—loudly, and to the disgust of most of the faculty and students—that the Shadowhunters should be addressing the problems of the mundane world. She could often be found in the quad, shoving unwanted leaflets in students’ faces, ranting about nuclear testing, Middle East oil tyrants, some trouble no one understood in South Africa, some disease no one wanted to acknowledge in America . . . Robert had heard every lecture in full, because Michael always insisted on staying to listen.

“She’s very odd,” Michael said. “I like it.”

“Oh.” It was a surprise, a not entirely pleasant one. Michael never liked anyone. Until this moment, Robert hadn’t realized how much he had counted on that. “Then you should go for it,” he said, hoping he sounded sincere.

“Really?” Michael looked rather surprised himself.

“Yes. Definitely.” Robert reminded himself: The less certain you feel, the more certain you act. “She’s perfect for you.”

“Oh.” Michael stopped walking and settled under the shadow of a tree. Robert dropped to the ground beside him. “Can I ask you something, Robert?”

“Anything.”

“Have you ever been in love? For real?”

“You know I haven’t. Don’t you think I would have mentioned it?”

“But how can you know for sure, if you don’t know what it would feel like? Maybe you have without even realizing it. Maybe you’re holding out for something you already have.”

There was a part of Robert that hoped this was the case, that what he felt for Maryse was the kind of eternal, soul-mate love that everyone talked about. Maybe his expectations were simply too high. “I guess I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “What about you? Do you think you know what it would feel like?”

“Love?” Michael smiled down at his hands. “Love, real love, is being seen. Being known. Knowing the ugliest part of someone, and loving them anyway. And . . . I guess I think two people in love become something else, something more than the sum of their parts, you know? That it must be like you’re creating a new world that exists just for the two of you. You’re gods of your own pocket universe.” He laughed a little then, as if he felt foolish. “That must sound ridiculous.”

“No,” Robert said, the truth dawning over him. Michael didn’t talk like someone who was guessing—he talked like someone who knew. Was it possible that after four dates with Eliza, he’d actually fallen in love? Was it possible that his parabatai’s entire world had changed, and Robert hadn’t even noticed? “It sounds . . . nice.”

Michael turned his head up to face Robert, his face crinkled with an unusual uncertainty. “Robert, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . needing to tell you, maybe.”

“Anything.”

It wasn’t like Michael to hesitate. They told each other everything; they always had.

“I . . .”

He stopped, then shook his head.

“What is it?” Robert pressed.

“No, it’s nothing. Forget it.”

Robert’s stomach cramped. Is this what it would be like now that Michael was in love? Would there be a new distance between them, important things left unsaid? He felt like Michael was leaving him behind, crossing the border into a land where his parabatai couldn’t follow—and though he knew he shouldn’t blame Michael, he couldn’t help himself.

Simon was dreaming he was back in Brooklyn, playing a gig with Rilo Kiley to a club full of screaming fans, when suddenly his mother wandered onto the stage in her bathrobe and said, in a flawless Scottish accent, “You’re going to miss all the fun.”

Simon blinked himself awake, confused, for a moment, why he was in a dungeon that smelled of dung rather than his Brooklyn bedroom—then, once he got his bearings, confused all over again about why he was being awoken in the middle of the night by a wild-eyed Scotsman.

“Is there a fire?” Simon asked. “There better be a fire. Or a demon attack. And I’m not talking about some puny lower-level demon, mind you. You want to wake me up in the middle of a dream about rock superstardom, it better be a Greater Demon.”

“It’s Isabelle,” George said.

Simon leaped out of bed—or gallantly tried to, at least. He got a bit tangled in his sheets, so it was more like he tumbled-twisted-thudded out of bed, but eventually he made it to his feet, ready to charge into action. “What happened to Isabelle?”

“Why would anything have happened to Isabelle?”

“You said—” Simon rubbed his eyes, sighing. “Let’s start over again. You’re waking me up because . . . ?”

“We’re meeting Isabelle. Having an adventure. Ring a bell?”

“Oh.” Simon had done his best to forget about this. He climbed back into bed. “You can tell me about it in the morning.”

“You’re not coming?” George asked, as if Simon had said he was going to spend the rest of the night doing extra calisthenics with Delaney Scarsbury, just for fun.

“You guessed it.” Simon tugged the blanket over his head and pretended to be asleep.

“But you’re going to miss all the fun.”

“That is precisely my intention,” Simon said, and squeezed his eyes shut until he was asleep for real.

This time he was dreaming of a VIP room backstage at the club, filled with champagne and coffee, a gaggle of groupies trying to break down the door so that—in the dream, Simon somehow knew this was their intent—they could tear off his clothes and ravish him. They pounded at the door, screaming his name, Simon! Simon! Simon—

Simon opened his eyes to creeping tendrils of gray, predawn light, a rhythmic pounding at his door, and a girl screaming his name.

“Simon! Simon, wake up!” It was Beatriz, and she didn’t sound much in the mood for ravishing.

Sleepily, he padded to the door and let her in. Female students were most definitely not allowed in male students’ rooms after curfew, and it was unlike Beatriz to break a rule like that, so he gathered it must be something important. (If the pounding and shouting hadn’t already tipped him off.)

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong is it’s nearly five a.m. and Julie and the others are still off somewhere with your stupid girlfriend and what do you think is going to happen if they don’t come back before the morning lecture starts and who knows what could have happened to them out there?”

“Beatriz, breathe,” Simon said. “Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” She was nearly vibrating with fury. “She talked them into sneaking out—for all I know, they drank their weight of Lake Lyn and they’ve all gone mad. They could be dead for all we know. Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care,” Simon said, noting that he was alone in the room. George also had not returned. His brain, muddled with sleep, was functioning below optimal speeds. “Next year I’m bringing a coffeemaker,” he mumbled.

“Simon!” She clapped her hands sharply, inches from face. “Focus!”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little alarmist about this?” Simon asked, though Beatriz was one of the most levelheaded girls he’d ever met. If she was alarmed, there was probably a good reason—but he couldn’t see what it might be. “They’re with Isabelle. Isabelle Lightwood—she’s not going to let anything bad happen.”

“Oh, they’re with Isabelle.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I feel oh so relieved.”

“Come on, Beatriz. You don’t know her.”

“I know what I see,” Beatriz said.

“And what’s that?”

“An entitled rich girl who doesn’t have to follow the rules, and doesn’t have to worry about consequences. What does she care if Julie and Jon get kicked out of here?”

“What do I care if Julie and Jon get kicked out?” Simon muttered, too loudly.

“You care about George,” Beatriz pointed out. “And Marisol and Sunil. They’re all out there somewhere, and they trust Isabelle as much as you seem to. But I’m telling you, Simon, it doesn’t seem right to me. What she said about the Academy wanting us to screw up and get into trouble. More like she wants us to get in trouble. Or she wants something. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t like it.”

Something about what she said rang true more than he would have liked—but Simon wouldn’t let himself go there. It felt disloyal, and he’d been disloyal enough. This week was his chance to prove himself to Isabelle, show her that they belonged in each other’s lives. He wasn’t going to screw that up by doubting her, even if she wasn’t here to see it.

“I trust Isabelle,” Simon told Beatriz. “Everyone will be fine, and I’m sure they’ll be back before anyone knows they were gone. You should stop worrying about it.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Something!”

“Well, I am doing something,” Simon said. “I’m going to go back to bed. I’m going to dream of coffee and a shiny new Fender Stratocaster and if George still isn’t back by morning, I’m going to tell Dean Penhallow that he’s sick, so he won’t get in trouble. And then I’ll start worrying.”

Beatriz snorted. “Thanks for nothing.”

“You’re welcome!” Simon called. But he waited until the door had slammed shut behind her to do it.

Simon was right.

When Robert Lightwood began his lecture that morning, every member of the student body was there to hear it, including a very bleary-eyed George.

“How was it?” Simon whispered when his roommate slid into the seat beside him.

“Bloody amazing,” George murmured. When Simon pressed him for details, George only shook his head and pressed his finger to his lips.

“Seriously? Just tell me.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy,” George whispered. “But it’s only going to get better. You want in, come along with me tonight.”

Robert Lightwood cleared his throat loudly. “I’d like to begin today’s lecture, assuming that’s all right with the peanut gallery.”

George looked around wildly. “They’re serving peanuts today? I’m starving.”

Simon sighed. George yawned.

Robert began again.

1984

The pack was small, only five wolves. In their deceptively human form: two men, one even bigger than Robert, with muscles the size of his head, and another stooped and aged with scraggly hair spurting from his nose and ears as if his inner wolf were gradually encroaching. One child in blond pigtails. The girl’s young mother, her glossy lips and undulating curves prompting thoughts Robert knew better than to say aloud, at least where Valentine could hear. And finally, one sinewy woman with a deep tan and deeper frown who seemed to be in charge.

It was disgusting, Valentine said, werewolves stinking up a distinguished Shadowhunter mansion. And although the manor was decrepit and long abandoned—vines snaking up its walls, weeds sprouting from its foundation, a once noble estate reduced to rust and rubble—Robert saw his point. The house had a lineage, had been home to a line of intrepid warriors, men and women who risked and eventually gave their lives to the cause of humanity, to saving the world from demons. And here were these creatures, infected by their demonic strain—these rogue creatures who’d violated the Accords and killed with abandon, taking refuge in the home of their enemy? The Clave refused to deal with it, Valentine said. They wanted more evidence—not because they weren’t sure that these wolves were filthy, violent criminals, but because they didn’t want to deal with Downworlder complaints. They didn’t want to have to explain themselves; they didn’t have the nerve to say: We knew they were guilty, and so we dealt with it.

They were, in other words, weak.

Useless.

Valentine said they should be proud to do the job the Clave was unwilling to get done, that they were serving their people, even as they skirted the Law, and with his words, Robert felt that pride bloom. Let the other Academy students have their parties and their petty school melodramas. Let them think growing up meant graduating, marrying, attending meetings. This was growing up, just like Valentine said. Seeing an injustice and doing something about it, no matter the risk. No matter the consequences.

The wolves had a keen sense of smell and sharp instincts, even in their human bodies, so the Shadowhunters were careful. They crept around the decaying mansion, peered in windows, waited, watched. Planned. Five werewolves and four young Shadowhunters—those were odds even Valentine didn’t want to play. So they were patient, and they were careful.

They waited until dark.

It was disconcerting to watch the wolves in human form, impersonating a normal human family, the younger man washing dishes while the elder one made himself a pot of tea, the child sitting cross-legged on the floor racing her model cars. Robert reminded himself that these trespassers were claiming a home and a life they didn’t deserve—that they’d killed innocents and may even have helped slaughter Valentine’s father.

Still, he was relieved when the moon rose and they reverted to monstrous form. Robert and the others clung to the shadows while three members of the pack sprouted fur and fangs, leaping through a broken window and into the night. They went out to hunt—leaving, as Valentine suspected they would, their most vulnerable behind. The old man and the child. These were odds more to Valentine’s liking.

It wasn’t much of a fight.

By the time the two remaining werewolves registered attack, they were surrounded. They didn’t even have time to transform. It was over in minutes, Stephen knocking the older one unconscious with a blow to the head, the child cowering in a corner, inches from the tip of Michael’s sword.

“We’ll take them both for interrogation,” Valentine said.

Michael shook his head. “Not the kid.”

“They’re both criminals,” Valentine argued. “Every member of the pack is culpable for—”

“She’s a little kid!” Michael said, turning to his parabatai for support. “Tell him. We’re not dragging some child into the woods to throw her at the mercy of the Clave.”

He had a point . . . but then, so did Valentine. Robert said nothing.

“We’re not taking the child,” Michael said, and the look on his face suggested he was willing to back up his words with action.

Stephen and Robert tensed, waiting for the explosion. Valentine didn’t take well to being challenged; he had very little experience with it. But he only sighed, and offered up a charmingly rueful smile. “Of course not. Don’t know what I was thinking. Just the old man, then. Unless you’ve got some objection to that as well?”

No one had any objections, and the unconscious old man was skin and bones, his weight barely noticeable on Robert’s broad shoulders. They locked the child up in a closet, then carried the old man deep into the woods, back to the campsite.

They tied him to a tree.

The rope was woven with silver filament—when the old man woke up, he would wake to pain. It probably wouldn’t be enough to bind him in wolf form, not if he was determined to escape. But it would slow him down. Their silver daggers would do the rest.

“You two, patrol a half-mile perimeter,” Valentine told Michael and Stephen. “We don’t want any of its grubby little friends catching its stench. Robert and I will guard the prisoner.”

Stephen nodded sharply, eager as ever to do as Valentine willed.

“And when he wakes up?” Michael asked.

“When it wakes up, Robert and I will question it on the subject of its crimes, and what it knows about the crimes of its fellows,” Valentine said. “Once we’ve secured its confession, we’ll deliver it to the Clave for its punishment. Does that satisfy you, Michael?”

He didn’t sound like he much cared about the answer, and Michael didn’t give him one.

“So now we wait?” Robert asked, once they were alone.

Valentine smiled.

When he wanted it to, Valentine’s smile could worm its way into the most well-fortified heart, melt it from the inside out.

This one wasn’t designed for heat. This was a cold smile, and it chilled Robert to the core.

“I’m tired of waiting,” Valentine said, and drew out a dagger. Moonlight glinted off the pure silver.

Before Robert could say anything, Valentine pressed the flat side of the blade against the old man’s bare chest. There was a sizzle of flesh, then a howl, as the prisoner woke to agony.

“I wouldn’t,” Valentine said calmly, as the old man’s features began to take on a wolfish cast, fur sprouting across his naked body. “I’m going to hurt you, yes. But change back into a wolf, and I promise, I will kill you.”

The transformation stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

The old man issued a series of racking coughs that shook his skinny body from head to toe. He was skinny, so skinny that ribs protruded from pale flesh. There were hollows beneath his eyes and only a few sorry strands of gray hair crossing his liver-spotted skull. It had never occurred to Robert that a werewolf could go bald. Under other circumstances, the thought of it might have amused him.

But there was nothing amusing about the sound the man made as Valentine traced the dagger’s tip from jutting collarbone to belly button.

“Valentine, he’s just an old man,” Robert said hesitantly. “Maybe we should—”

“Listen to your friend,” the old man said in a pleading, warbling voice. “I could be your own grandfather.”

Valentine struck him across the face with the hilt of the dagger.

“It’s not any kind of man,” he told Robert. “It’s a monster. And it’s been doing things it shouldn’t be doing, isn’t that true?”

The werewolf, apparently concluding that playing aged and weak wouldn’t get him out of this one, drew himself up straight and bared sharp teeth. His voice, when he spoke, had lost its tremble. “Who are you, Shadowhunter, to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing?”

“So you admit it, then,” Robert said eagerly. “You’ve violated the Accords.”

If he confessed this easily, they could be done with this whole sordid affair, turn the prisoner in to the Clave, go home.

“I don’t give my accord to killers and weaklings,” the werewolf spat.

“Fortunately, I don’t need your accord,” Valentine said. “I need only information. You tell me what I need to know, and we’ll let you go.”

This wasn’t what they’d discussed, but Robert held his tongue.

“Two months ago, a pack of werewolves killed a Shadowhunter at the western edge of these woods. Where can I find them?”

“And exactly how would I know that?”

Valentine’s icy smile returned. “You better hope that you do, because otherwise you’ll be of no use to me.”

“Well then, on second thought, maybe I have heard tell of this dead Shadowhunter you’re talking about.” The wolf barked a laugh. “Wish I could have been there to see him die. To taste of his sweet flesh. It’s the fear that gives the meat its taste, you know. Best of all when they cry first, a little salty with the sweet. And rumor has it your doomed Shadowhunter wept buckets. Cowardly, that one was.”

“Robert, hold its mouth open.” Valentine’s voice was steady, but Robert knew Valentine well enough to sense the fury roiling beneath.

“Maybe we should take a moment to—”

“Hold its mouth open.”

Robert gripped the man’s feeble jaws and pried them open.

Valentine pressed the flat side of the dagger to the man’s tongue and held it there as the man’s shriek turned into a howl, as his scrawny muscles bulged and fur bloomed across his flesh, as the tongue bubbled and blistered, and then, just as the fully transformed wolf snapped its bindings, Valentine sliced off its tongue. As its mouth gushed blood, Valentine slashed a sharp line across the wolf’s midsection. The cut was sure and deep, and the wolf dropped to the ground, intestines spilling from its wound.

Valentine leaped upon the writhing creature, stabbing and slicing, tearing through its hide, flaying flesh to pearly bone, even as the creature flailed and spasmed helplessly beneath him, even as the fight drained out of it, even as its gaze went flat, even as its broken body reclaimed human form, lay still on bloody earth, an old man’s face bled pale and turned lifelessly to the night sky.

“That’s enough,” Robert kept saying, quietly, uselessly. “Valentine, that’s enough.”

But he did nothing to stop it.

And when his friends returned from their patrol to find Valentine and Robert standing over the disemboweled corpse, he didn’t counter Valentine’s version of events: The werewolf had slipped free of its bonds and tried to escape. They had endured a fierce battle, killed in self-defense.

The outline of this story was, technically, true.

Stephen clapped Valentine on the back, commiserating with him that he’d lost the potential lead to his father’s killer. Michael locked eyes with Robert, his question clear as if he’d spoken it aloud. What really happened?

What did you let happen?

Robert looked away.

Isabelle was avoiding him. Beatriz was fuming at him. Everyone else was buzzing with too much excitement about the previous night’s adventure and the secret one to come. Julie and Marisol only echoed George’s cryptic promise—that something good was on the horizon, and if Simon wanted to know about it, he would have to join them.

“I don’t think Isabelle would want me there,” he told Sunil as they picked warily through the steamed heap of vaguely vegetable-shaped objects that passed for lunch.

Sunil shook his head and grinned. The smile fit his face poorly; Sunil with a grin was like a Klingon in a tutu. He was an unusually somber boy who seemed to consider good cheer as a sign of unseriousness, and treated people accordingly. “She told us to convince you to show up. She said ‘whatever it takes.’ So, you tell me, Simon.” The unsettling smile grew. “What’s it going to take?”

“You don’t even know her,” Simon pointed out. “Why are you suddenly so willing to do whatever she tells you to do?”

“We are talking about the same girl here, yes? Isabelle Lightwood?”

“Yes.”

Sunil shook his head in wonder. “And you even have to ask?”

So that was the new order: the cult of Isabelle Lightwood. Simon had to admit, he could completely understand how a roomful of otherwise rational people could fall completely under her spell and give themselves to her entirely.

But why would she want them to?

He decided he was going to have to see this for himself. Simply to understand what was going on and make sure it was all on the up-and-up.

Not at all because he desperately wanted to be near her. Or impress her. Or please her.

Come to think of it, maybe Simon understood the cult of Isabelle better than he wanted to admit.

Maybe he’d been its charter member.

“You intend to do what?” On the last word, Simon’s voice jumped two octaves above normal.

Jon Cartwright snickered. “Simmer down, Mom. You heard her.”

Simon looked around the lounge at his friends (and Jon). Over the past year, he’d come to know them inside and out, or at least, he thought that he did. Julie bit her nails bloody when she was nervous. Marisol slept with a sword under her pillow, just in case. George talked in his sleep, usually about sheep-shearing techniques. Sunil had four pet rabbits that he talked about constantly, always worried that little Ringo was getting picked on by his bigger, fluffier brothers. Jon had covered one wall of his room with his little cousin’s finger paintings, and wrote her a letter every week. They’d all pledged themselves to the Shadowhunter cause; they’d gone through hell to prove themselves to their instructors and one another. They’d almost finished out the year without a single fatal injury or vampire bite . . . and now this?

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Simon said, hoping he was doing an acceptable job of keeping the desperation out of his tone. “Nice joke on me, get me back for wussing out last night. Utterly hilarious. What’s next? You want to convince me they’re making another crap Last Airbender movie? You want to see me freak out, there are easier ways.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “No one wants to see you freak out, Simon. Frankly, I could take or leave seeing you at all.”

“So this is serious,” Simon said. “You’re seriously, not at all jokingly, actually, for real planning to summon a demon? Here, in the middle of the Shadowhunter Academy? In the middle of the end-of-year party? Because you think it will be . . . fun?”

“We’re obviously not going to summon it in the middle of the party,” Isabelle said. “That would be rather foolish.”

“Oh, of course,” Simon drawled. “That would be foolish.”

“We’re going to summon it here in the lounge,” Isabelle clarified. “Then bring it to the party.”

“Then kill it, of course,” Julie put in.

“Of course,” Simon echoed. He wondered if maybe he was having a stroke.

“You’re making it sound like a bigger deal than it is,” George said.

“Yeah, it’s just an imp demon,” Sunil said. “No biggie.”

“Uh-huh.” Simon groaned. “Totally. No biggie.”

“Imagine the look on everyone’s faces when they see what we can do!” Marisol was nearly glowing at the thought of it.

Beatriz wasn’t there. If she had been, maybe she could have talked some reason into them. Or helped Simon tie them up and stuff them in the closet until the end of the semester had safely passed and Isabelle was back in New York where she belonged.

“What if something goes wrong?” Simon pointed out. “You’ve never faced off against a demon in combat conditions, not without the teachers watching your back. You don’t know—”

“Neither do you,” Isabelle snapped. “At least, you don’t remember, isn’t that right?”

Simon said nothing.

“Whereas I took down my first imp when I was six years old,” Isabelle said. “Like I told your friends, it’s no big deal. And they trust me.”

I trust you—that’s what he was meant to say. He knew she was waiting for it. They all were.

He couldn’t.

“I can’t talk you out of this?” he asked instead.

Isabelle shrugged. “You can keep trying, but you’d be wasting all our time.”

“Then I’ll have to find another way to stop you,” Simon said.

“You gonna tell on us?” Jon sneered. “You gonna go be a crybaby and tattle to your favorite warlock?” He snorted. “Once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet.”

“Shut up, Jon.” Isabelle whacked him softly on the arm. Simon probably should have been pleased, but whacking still required touching, and he preferred that Isabelle and Jon never come into physical contact of any sort. “You could try to tell on us, Simon. But I’ll deny it. And then who will they believe—someone like me, or someone like you? Some mundane.”

She said “mundane” exactly like Jon always did. Like it was a synonym for “nothing.”

“This isn’t you, Isabelle. This isn’t what you’re like.” He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince her or himself.

“You don’t know what I’m like, remember?”

“I know enough.”

“Then you know that you should trust me. But if you don’t, go ahead. Tell,” she said. “Then everyone will know what you’re like. What kind of friend you are.”

He tried.

He knew it was the right thing to do.

At least, he thought it was the right thing to do.

The next morning, before the lecture, he went to Catarina Loss’s office—Jon was right, she was his favorite warlock and his favorite faculty member, and the only one he would trust with something like this.

She welcomed him in, offered him a seat and a mug of something whose steam was an alarming shade of blue. He passed.

“So, Daylighter, I take it you have something to tell me?”

Catarina intimidated him somewhat less than she had at the beginning of the year—which was a bit like saying Jar Jar Binks was “somewhat less” annoying in Star Wars: Episode II than he’d been in Star Wars: Episode I.

“It’s possible I know something that . . .” Simon cleared his throat. “I mean, if something were happening that . . .”

He hadn’t let himself think through what would happen once the words were out. What would happen to his friends? What would happen to Isabelle, their ringleader? She couldn’t exactly get expelled from an Academy where she wasn’t enrolled . . . but Simon had learned enough about the Clave by now to know there were far worse punishments than getting expelled. Was summoning a minor demon to use as a party trick a violation of the Law? Was he about to ruin Isabelle’s life?

Catarina Loss wasn’t a Shadowhunter; she had her own secrets from the Clave. Maybe she’d be willing to keep one more, if it meant helping Simon and protecting Isabelle from punishment?

As his mind spun through dark possibilities, the office door swung open and Dean Penhallow poked her blond head in. “Catarina, Robert Lightwood was hoping to chat with you before his session—oh, sorry! Didn’t realize you were in the middle of something?”

“Join us,” Catarina said. “Simon was just about to tell me something interesting.”

The dean stepped into the office, furrowing her brow at Simon. “You look so serious,” she told him. “Go ahead, spit it out. You’ll feel better. It’s like throwing up.”

“What’s like throwing up?” he asked, confused.

“You know, when you’re feeling ill? Sometimes it just helps to get everything out.”

Somehow, Simon didn’t think vomiting up his confession straight to the dean would make him feel any better.

Hadn’t Isabelle proven herself enough—not just to him, but to the Clave, to everyone? She had, after all, pretty much saved the world. How much more evidence would anyone need that she was one of the good guys?

How much evidence did he need?

Simon stood up and said the first thing that popped into his mind. “I just wanted to tell you that we all really enjoyed that beet stew they served for dinner. You should serve that again.”

Dean Penhallow gave him an odd look. “Those weren’t beets, Simon.”

This didn’t surprise him, as the stew had had an oddly grainy consistency and a taste reminiscent of dung.

“Well . . . whatever it was, it was delicious,” he said quickly. “I better get going. I don’t want to miss the beginning of Inquisitor Lightwood’s final lecture. They’ve been so interesting.”

“Indeed,” Catarina said dryly. “They’ve been almost as delicious as the stew.”

1984

For most of his time at the Academy, Robert had watched Valentine from a distance. Even though Robert was older, he looked up to Valentine, who was everything Robert wanted to be. Valentine excelled at his training without visible effort. He could best anyone with any weapon. He was careless with his affection, or at least seemed to be, and he was beloved. Not many people noticed how few he truly loved back. But Robert noticed, because when you’re watching from the sidelines, invisible, it’s easy to see clearly.

It never occurred to him that Valentine was watching him, too.

Not until the day, toward the beginning of this year, that Valentine caught him alone in one of the Academy’s dark, underground corridors and said quietly, “I know your secret.”

Robert’s secret, that he told nobody, not even Michael: He was still afraid of the Marks.

Every time he drew a rune on himself, he had to hold his breath, force his fingers not to tremble. He always hesitated. In class, it was barely noticeable. In battle, it could be the split-second difference between life and death, and Robert knew it. Which made him hesitate even more, at everything. He was strong, smart, talented; he was a Lightwood. He should have been among the best. But he couldn’t let himself go and act on instinct. He couldn’t stop his mind from racing toward potential consequences. He couldn’t stop being afraid—and he knew, eventually, it would be the end of him.

“I can help you,” Valentine said then. “I can teach you what to do with the fear.” As if it were as simple as that—and under Valentine’s careful instruction, it was.

Valentine had taught him to retreat to a place in his mind that the fear couldn’t touch. To separate himself from the Robert Lightwood who knew how to be afraid—and then to tame that weaker, loathed version of himself. “Your weakness makes you furious, as it should,” Valentine had told him. “Use the fury to master it—and then everything else.”

In a way Valentine had saved Robert’s life. Or at least, the only part of his life that mattered.

He owed Valentine everything.

He at least owed Valentine the truth.

“You don’t agree with what I did,” Valentine said quietly as the sun crept above the horizon. Michael and Stephen were still asleep. Robert had passed the hours of darkness staring at the sky, sifting through what had happened, and what he should do next.

“You think I was out of control,” Valentine added.

“That wasn’t self-defense,” Robert said. “That was torture. Murder.”

Robert was seated on one of the logs around the remains of their campfire. Valentine lowered himself beside him.

“You heard the things it said. You understand why it had to be silenced,” Valentine said. “It had to be taught its lesson, and the Clave couldn’t have mustered the will. I know the others wouldn’t understand. Not even Lucian. But you . . . we understand each other, you and I. You’re the only one I can really trust. I need you to keep this to yourself.”

“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 demons, 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.

She was always there, day or night, and that night was no different.

Well, slightly different: That night she wasn’t alone.

She stood behind her desk with her arms crossed, flanked by Robert Lightwood and Dean Penhallow, the three of them looking so somber it was almost like they were waiting for him. He didn’t let himself hesitate or think of the consequences.

Or think of Izzy.

“There’s a group of students trying to raise a demon,” Simon panted. “We have to stop them.”

No one seemed surprised.

There was a soft throat clearing—Simon turned to discover Julie Beauvale creeping out from behind the door he’d flung open in her face.

“What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are,” Julie said. Then she blushed and gave him an embarrassed little shrug. “I guess you made a good case.”

“But how did you get here before me?”

“I took the east stairwell, obviously. Then that corridor behind the weapons room—”

“But doesn’t that dead-end at the dining hall?”

“Only if you—”

“Perhaps we can table this fascinating cartographic discussion until later,” Catarina Loss said mildly. “I think we have more important business at hand.”

“Like teaching your idiot students a lesson,” Robert Lightwood growled, and stormed out of the office. Catarina and the dean strode after him.

Simon exchanged a nervous glance with Julie. “You, uh, think we’re supposed to follow them?”

“Probably,” she said, then sighed. “We might as well let them expel all of us in one shot.”

They traipsed after their teachers, letting themselves fall more and more behind.

As they neared Jon’s room, Robert’s shouts were audible from halfway down the corridor. They couldn’t quite make out his words through the thick door, but the volume and cadence made the situation quite clear.

Simon and Julie eased the door open and slipped inside.

George, Jon, and the others were lined up against the wall, faces pale, eyes wide, all of them looking steeled for a firing squad. While Isabelle was standing by her father’s side . . . beaming?

“Failures, all of you!” Robert Lightwood boomed. “You lot are supposed to be the best and brightest this school has to offer, and this is what you have to show for yourselves? I warned you about the dangers of charisma. I told you of the need to stand up for what’s right, even if it hurts the ones you love most. And all of you failed to listen.”

Isabelle coughed pointedly.

“All of you except two,” Robert allowed, jerking his head at Simon and Julie. “Well done. Isabelle was right about you.”

Simon was reeling.

“It was all a stupid test?” Jon yelped.

“A rather clever test, if you ask me?” Dean Penhallow said.

Catarina looked as if she had some things to say on the subject of foolish Shadowhunters playing cat-and-mouse games with their own, but as usual, she bit her tongue.

“What percentage of our grades will this be?” Sunil asked.

With that, there was a lot of yelling. Quite a bit of ranting about sacred responsibilities and carelessness and how unpleasant a night in the dungeons of the Silent City could be. Robert thundered like Zeus, Dean Penhallow did her best not to sound like a babysitter scolding her charges for stealing an extra cookie, while Catarina Loss put in the occasional sarcastic remark about what happened to Shadowhunters who thought it would be fun to slum it in warlock territory. At one point, she interrupted Robert Lightwood’s tirade to add a pointed comment about Darth Vader—and a sly look at Simon that made him wonder, not for the first time, just how closely she was watching him, and why.

Through it all, Isabelle watched Simon, something unexpected in her gaze. Something almost like . . . pride.

“In conclusion, next time, you’ll listen when your elders talk,” Robert Lightwood shouted.

“Why would anyone listen to anything you had to say about doing the right thing?” Isabelle snapped.

Robert’s face went red. He turned to her slowly, fixing her with the kind of icy Inquisitor glare that would have left anyone else whimpering in a fetal ball. Isabelle didn’t flinch.

“Now that this sordid business is concluded, I’d ask you all to give me and my dutiful daughter here some privacy. I believe we have some things to settle,” Robert said.

“But this is my room,” Jon whined.

Robert didn’t need to speak, just turned that Inquisitor glare on him; Jon flinched.

He fled, along with everyone else, and Simon was about to follow suit when Isabelle’s fingers snatched for his wrist.

“He stays,” she told her father.

“He most certainly does not.”

“Simon stays with me, or I leave with him,” Isabelle said. “Those are your choices.”

“Er, I’m happy to go—” Simon began, “happy” being his polite substitute for “desperate.”

“You stay,” Isabelle commanded.

Robert sighed. “Fine. You stay.”

That ended the discussion. Simon dropped down onto the edge of Jon’s bed, trying to wish himself invisible.

“It’s obvious to me that you don’t want to be here,” Robert told his daughter.

“What gave it away? The fact that I told you a million times that I didn’t want to come? That I didn’t want to play your stupid game? That I thought it was cruel and manipulative and a total waste of time?”

“Yes,” Robert said. “That.”

“And yet you made me come with you anyway.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Look, if you thought enforced bonding time was going to fix anything or make up for what you—”

Robert sighed heavily. “I’ve told you before, what happened between your mother and me has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me!”

“Isabelle . . .” Robert glanced at Simon, then lowered his voice. “I would really prefer to do this without an audience.”

“Too bad.”

Simon tried even harder to fade into the background, hoping maybe if he tried hard enough, his skin would take on the same pattern as Jon Cartwright’s surprisingly flowered sheets.

“You and I, we’ve never talked about my time in the Circle, or why I followed Valentine,” Robert said. “I hoped you kids would never have to know that part of me.”

“I heard your lecture, just like everyone else,” she said sullenly.

“We both know that the story tailored for public consumption is never the whole truth.” Robert frowned. “What I didn’t tell those students—what I’ve never told anyone—is that unlike most of the Circle, I wasn’t what you’d call a true believer. The others, they thought they were Raziel’s sword in human form. You should have seen your mother, blazing with righteousness.”

“So now it’s all Mom’s fault? Nice, Dad. Really nice. Am I supposed to think you’re some awesome guy for seeing through Valentine but going along with him anyway? Because your girlfriend said so?”

He shook his head. “You’re missing my point. I was the most to blame. Your mother, the others, they thought they were doing what was right. They loved Valentine. They loved the cause. They believed. I could never muster that faith . . . but I went along anyway. Not because I thought it was right. Because it was easy. Because Valentine seemed so sure. Substituting his certainty for my own seemed like the path of least resistance.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Some of the venom had drained from her voice.

“I didn’t understand then, what it would mean to be truly certain of something,” Robert said. “I didn’t know how it felt to love something, or someone, beyond all reservation. Unconditionally. I thought maybe, with my parabatai, but then—” He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say. Simon wondered how it could be worse than what he’d already confessed to. “Eventually, I assumed I just didn’t have it in me. That I wasn’t built for that kind of love.”

“If you’re about to tell me that you found it with your mistress . . .” Isabelle shuddered.

“Isabelle.” Robert took his daughter’s hands in his own. “I’m telling you that I found it with Alec. With you. With . . .” He looked down. “With Max. Having you kids, Isabelle—it changed everything.”

“Is that why you spent years treating Alec like he had the plague? Is that how you show your kids that you love them?”

At that, if possible, Robert looked even more ashamed of himself. “Loving someone doesn’t mean you’re never going to make mistakes,” he said. “I’ve made more than my share. I know that. And some of them I will never have the chance to make up for. But I’m trying my best with your brother. He knows how much I love him. How proud I am of him. I need you to know it too. You kids, you’re the one thing I’m certain of, the one thing I’ll always be certain of. Not the Clave. Not, unfortunately, my marriage. You. And if I have to, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove to you that you can be certain of me.”

It was a lame party, the kind that even Simon had to admit might have been livened up by a demon or two. The decorations—a few sad streamers, a couple of underinflated helium balloons, and a hand-drawn poster that (mis)spelled out “CONGRATULATONS”—looked as if they’d been grudgingly thrown together at the last minute by a bunch of fifth graders in detention. The refreshment table was crowded with whatever food had been left over at the end of the semester, including stale croissants, a casserole dish filled with orange Jell-O, a vat of stew, and several plates heaped with unidentifiable meat products. As electricity didn’t work in Idris and no one had thought to hire a band, there was no music, but a handful of faculty members had taken it upon themselves to improvise a barbershop quartet. (This, in Simon’s mind, didn’t qualify as music.) Isabelle’s posse of demon summoners had been let off with a stern warning, and even allowed to attend the party, but none of them seemed much in the mood for revelry—or, understandably, for Simon.

He was lingering alone by the punch bowl—which smelled enough like fish to preclude him actually pouring himself any punch—when Isabelle joined him.

“Avoiding your friends?” she asked.

“Friends?” He laughed. “I think you mean ‘people who hate my guts.’ Yeah, I tend to avoid those.”

“They don’t hate you. They’re embarrassed, because you were right and they were stupid. They’ll get over it.”

“Maybe.” It didn’t seem likely, but then, not much that had happened this year fell into the category of “likely.”

“So, I guess, thanks for sticking around for that whole thing with my dad,” Isabelle said.

“You didn’t exactly give me much of a choice,” he pointed out.

Isabelle laughed, almost fondly. “You really have no idea how a social encounter is supposed to work, do you? I say ‘thank you’; you say ‘you’re welcome.’  ”

“Like, if I said, thank you for fooling all my friends into thinking you were a wild-and-crazy demon summoner so that they could get in trouble with the dean, you would say . . . ?”

“You’re welcome for teaching them all a valuable lesson.” She grinned. “One that, apparently, you didn’t need to learn.”

“Yeah. About that.” Even though it had all been a test—even though, apparently, Isabelle had wanted him to report her, he still felt guilty. “I’m sorry I didn’t figure out what you were doing. Trust you.”

“It was a game, Simon. You weren’t supposed to trust me.”

“But I shouldn’t have fallen for it. Of all people—”

“You can’t be expected to know me.” There was an impossible gentleness in Isabelle’s voice. “I do understand that, Simon. I know things have been . . . difficult between us, but I’m not deluded. I may not like reality, but I can’t deny it.”

There were so many things he wanted to say to her.

And yet, right at this high-pressure moment, his mind was blank.

The uncomfortable silence sat heavily between them. Isabelle shifted her weight. “Well, if that’s all, then . . .”

“Back to your date with Jon?” Simon couldn’t help himself. “Or . . . was that just part of the game?”

He hoped she wouldn’t catch the pathetic note of hope in his voice.

“That was a different game, Simon. Keep up. Did it ever occur to you I just enjoy torturing you?” There was that wicked smile again, and Simon felt like it had the power to light him on fire; he felt like he was already burning.

“So, you and he, you never—”

“Jon’s not exactly my type.”

The next silence was slightly more comfortable. The kind of silence, Simon thought, where you gazed googly-eyed at someone until the tension could only be broken with a kiss.

Just lean in, he told himself, because even though he couldn’t actually remember ever making the first move on a girl like this, he’d obviously done so in the past. Which meant he had it in him. Somewhere. Stop being such a coward and freaking LEAN IN.

He was still mustering up his courage when the moment passed. She stepped back. “So . . . what was in that letter, anyway?”

He had it memorized. He could recite it to her right now, tell her that she was amazing, that even if his brain didn’t remember loving her, his soul was permanently molded to fit hers, like some kind of Isabelle-shaped cookie cutter had stamped his heart. But writing something down was different from saying it out loud—in public, no less.

He shrugged. “I don’t really remember. Just apologizing for yelling at you that time. And that other time. I guess.”

“Oh.”

Did she look disappointed? Relieved? Irritated? Simon searched her face for clues, but it was impervious.

“Well . . . apology accepted. And stop staring at me like I have a bug on my nose.”

“Sorry. Again.”

“And . . . I guess . . . I’m sorry I returned it without reading it.”

Simon couldn’t remember whether she’d ever apologized to him before. She didn’t seem the type to apologize to anyone.

“If you wrote me another one sometime, I might even read it,” she said, with studied indifference.

“School’s over for the semester, remember? This weekend I go back to Brooklyn.” It seemed unimaginable.

“They don’t have mailboxes in Brooklyn?”

“I guess I could send you a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge,” Simon allowed—then took a deep breath, and went for it. “Or I could hand deliver one. To the Institute, I mean. If you wanted me to. Sometime. Or something.”

“Sometime. Something . . .” Isabelle mulled it over, letting him twist in the wind for a few endless, agonizing seconds. Then her smile widened so far that Simon thought he might actually self-combust. “I guess it’s a date.”