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 car
e 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 Celine 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. Celine, three years younger, 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 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 tha
t 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.