“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 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. You always do.”
“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. S
he 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.”
A new cover will be revealed each month as the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy continue!
Continue the adventures of the Shadowhunters with Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn in
Lady Midnight
The first book in Cassandra Clare’s new series, The Dark Artifices.
Emma took her witchlight out of her pocket and lit it—and almost screamed out loud. Jules’s shirt was soaked with blood and worse, the healing runes she’d drawn had vanished from his skin. They weren’t working.
“Jules,” she said. “I have to call the Silent Brothers. They can help you. I have to.”
His eyes screwed shut with pain. “You can’t,” he said. “You know we can’t call the Silent Brothers. They report directly to the Clave.”
“So we’ll lie to them. Say it was a routine demon patrol. I’m calling,” she said, and reached for her phone.
“No!” Julian said, forcefully enough to stop her. “Silent Brothers know when you’re lying! They can see inside your head, Emma. They’ll find out about the investigation. About Mark—”
“You’re not going to bleed to death in the backseat of a car for Mark!”
“No,” he said, looking at her. His eyes were eerily blue-green, the only bright color in the dark interior of the car. “You’re going to fix me.”
Emma could feel it when Jules was hurt, like a splinter lodged under her skin. The physical pain didn’t bother her; it was the terror, the only terror worse than her fear of the ocean. The fear of Jules being hurt, of him dying. She would give up anything, sustain any wound, to prevent those things from happening.
“Okay,” she said. Her voice sounded dry and thin to her own ears. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Hang on.”
She unzipped her jacket, threw it aside. Shoved the console between the seats aside, put her witchlight on the floorboard. Then she reached for Jules. The next few seconds were a blur of Jules’s blood on her hands and his harsh breathing as she pulled him partly upright, wedging him against the back door. He didn’t make a sound as she moved him, but she could see him biting his lip, the blood on his mouth and chin, and she felt as if her bones were popping inside her skin.
“Your gear,” she said through gritted teeth. “I have to cut it off.”
He nodded, letting his head fall back. She drew a dagger from her belt, but the gear was too tough for the blade. She said a silent prayer and reached back for Cortana.
Cortana went through the gear like a knife through melted butter. It fell away in pieces and Emma drew them free, then sliced down the front of his T-shirt and pulled it apart as if she were opening a jacket.
Emma had seen blood before, often, but this felt different. It was Julian’s, and there seemed to be a lot of it. It was smeared up and down his chest and rib cage; she could see where the arrow had gone in and where the skin had torn where he’d yanked it out.
“Why did you pull the arrow out?” she demanded, pulling her sweater over her head. She had a tank top on under it. She patted his chest and side with the sweater, absorbing as much of the blood as she could.
Jules’s breath was coming in hard pants. “Because when someone—shoots you with an arrow—” he gasped, “your immediate response is not—‘Thanks for the arrow, I think I’ll keep it for a while.’”
“Good to know your sense of humor is intact.”
“Is it still bleeding?” Julian demanded. His eyes were shut.
She dabbed at the cut with her sweater. The blood had slowed, but the cut looked puffy and swollen. The rest of him, though—it had been a while since she’d seen him with his shirt off. There was more muscle than she remembered. Lean muscle pulled tight over his ribs, his stomach flat and lightly ridged. Cameron was much more muscular, but Julian’s spare lines were as elegant as a greyhound’s. “You’re too skinny,” she said. “Too much coffee, not enough pancakes.”
“I hope they put that on my tombstone.” He gasped as she shifted forward, and she realized abruptly that she was squarely in Julian’s lap, her knees around his hips. It was a bizarrely intimate position.
“I—am I hurting you?” she asked.
He swallowed visibly. “It’s fine. Try with the iratze again.”
“Fine,” she said. “Grab the panic bar.”
“The what?” He opened his eyes and peered at her.
“The plastic handle! Up there, above the window!” She pointed. “It’s for holding on to when the car is going around curves.”
“Are you sure? I always thought it was for hanging things on. Like dry cleaning.”
“Julian, now is not the time to be pedantic. Grab the bar or I swear—”
“All right!” He reached up, grabbed hold of it, and winced. “I’m ready.”
She nodded and set Cortana aside, reaching for her stele. Maybe her previous iratzes had been too fast, too sloppy. She’d always focused on the physical aspects of Shadowhunting, not the more mental and artistic ones: seeing through glamours, drawing runes.
She set the tip of it to the skin of his shoulder and drew, carefully and slowly. She had to brace herself with her left hand against his shoulder. She tried to press as lightly as she could, but she could feel him tense under her fingers. The skin on his shoulder was smooth and hot under her touch, and she wanted to get closer to him, to put her hand over the wound on his side and heal it with the sheer force of her will. To touch her lips to the lines of pain beside his eyes and—
Stop. She had finished the iratze. She sat back, her hand clamped around the stele. Julian sat up a little straighter, the ragged remnants of his shirt hanging off his shoulders. He took a deep breath, glancing down at himself—and the iratze faded back into his skin, like black ice melting, spreading, being absorbed by the sea.
He looked up at Emma. She could see her own reflection in his eyes: she looked wrecked, panicked, with blood on her neck and her white tank top. “It hurts less,” he said in a low voice.
The wound on his side pulsed again; blood slid down the side of his rib cage, staining his leather belt and the waistband of his jeans. She put her hands on his bare skin, panic rising up inside her. His skin felt
hot, too hot. Fever hot.
“I have to call,” she whispered. “I don’t care if the whole world comes down around us, Jules, the most important thing is that you live.”
“Please,” he said, desperation clear in his voice. “Whatever is happening, we’ll fix it, because we’re parabatai. We’re forever. I said that to you once, do you remember?”
She nodded warily, hand on the phone.
“And the strength of a rune your parabatai gives you is special. Emma, you can do it. You can heal me. We’re parabatai and that means the things we can do together are . . . extraordinary.”
There was blood on her jeans now, blood on her hands and her tank top, and he was still bleeding, the wound still open, an incongruous tear in the smooth skin all around it.
“Try,” Jules said in a dry whisper. “For me, try?”
His voice went up on the question and in it she heard the voice of the boy he had been once, and she remembered him smaller, skinnier, younger, back pressed against one of the marble columns in the Hall of Accords in Alicante as his father advanced on him with his blade unsheathed.
And she remembered what Julian had done, then. Done to protect her, to protect all of them, because he always would do everything to protect them.
She took her hand off the phone and gripped the stele, so tightly she felt it dig into her damp palm. “Look at me, Jules,” she said in a low voice, and he met her eyes with his. She placed the stele against his skin, and for a moment she held still, just breathing, breathing and remembering.
Julian. A presence in her life for as long as she could remember, splashing water at each other in the ocean, digging in the sand together, him putting his hand over hers and them marveling at the difference in the shape and length of their fingers. Julian singing, terribly and off-key, while he drove, his fingers in her hair carefully freeing a trapped leaf, his hands catching her in the training room when she fell, and fell, and fell. The first time after their parabatai ceremony when she’d smashed her hand into a wall in rage at not being able to get a sword maneuver right, and he’d come up to her, taken her still-shaking body in his arms and said, “Emma, Emma, don’t hurt yourself. When you do, I feel it, too.”
The Evil We Love (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Book 5) Page 8