Chapter 45
Font Size:
AA+A++
ric inclined his massive head to her. “We have
met.”
ry stared, rmed. “Have we?”
“At the Hotel Dumort,” he said. “You put your knife in
my ribs.”
She shrank against the wall. “I, ah … I’m sorry?”
“Don’t be,” he said. “It was an excellent throw.” He slid
a hand into his breast pocket and removed Jace’s
dagger, with its winking red eye. He held it out to her.
“I think this is yours?”
ry stared. “But—”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I cleaned the de.”
Wordlessly, she took it. Luke was chuckling under his
breath. “In retrospect,” he said, “perhaps the raid on
the Dumort was not as well nned as it might have
been. I had set a group of my wolves to watch you,
and go after you if you seemed to be in any danger.
When you went into the Dumort …”
“Jace and I could have handled it.” ry slid the
dagger into her belt.
Gretel aimed a tolerant smile at her. “Is that what you
summoned us for, sir?”
“No,” said Luke. He touched his side. “My wound’s
opened up, and ry here has some injuries of her
own that could use a bit of tending. If you wouldn’t
mind getting the supplies …”
Gretel inclined her head. “I will return with the healing
kit,” she said, and left, ric trailing her like an
outsize shadow.
“She called you ‘sir,’” said ry, the moment the cell
door closed behind them. “And what do you mean by
your second and your third? Second and third what?”
“Inmand,” said Luke slowly. “I am the leader of
this particr wolf pack. That’s why Gretel called me
‘sir.’ Believe me, it took a fair bit of work to break her
of the habit of calling me ‘master.’”
“Did my mother know?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re a werewolf.”
“Yes. She’s known since it happened.”
“Neither of you, of course, thought to mention this to
me.”
“I would have told you,” said Luke. “But your mother
was adamant that you know nothing of
Shadowhunters or the Shadow World. I couldn’t
exin away my being a werewolf as some kind of
isted incident, ry. It’s all part of therger
pattern that your mother didn’t want you to see. I don’t
know what you’ve learned—”
“A lot,” ry said tly. “I know my mother was a
Shadowhunter. I know she was married to Valentine
and that she stole the Mortal Cup from him and went
into hiding. I know that after she had me, she took me
to Magnus Bane every two years to have my Sight
taken away. I know that when Valentine tried to get
you to tell him where the Cup was in exchange for my
mom’s life, you told him she didn’t matter to you.”
Luke stared at the wall. “I didn’t know where the Cup
was,” he said. “She’d never told me.”
“You could have tried to bargain—”
“Valentine doesn’t bargain. He never has. If the
advantage isn’t his, he won’t evene to the table.
He’s entirely single-minded and totally without
compassion, and though he may have loved your
mother once, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. No, I
wasn’t going to bargain with Valentine.”
“So you just decided to abandon her?” ry
demanded furiously. “You’re the leader of a whole
pack of werewolves and you just decided she didn’t
even really need your help? You know, it was bad
enough when I thought you were another
Shadowhunter and you’d turned your back on her
because of some stupid Shadowhunter vow or
something, but now I know you’re just a slimy
Downworlder who didn’t even care that all those years
she treated you like a friend—like an equal—and this
is how you paid her back!”
“Listen to you,” Luke said quietly. “You sound like a
Lightwood.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t talk about Alec and
Isabelle like you know them.”
“I meant their parents,” said Luke. “Who I did know,
very well in fact, when we were all Shadowhunters
together.”
She felt her lips part in surprise. “I know you were in
the Circle, but how did you keep them from finding out
you were a werewolf? Didn’t they know?”
“No,” said Luke. “Because I wasn’t born a werewolf. I
was made one. And I can already see that if you’re
going to be persuaded to listen to anything I have to
say, you’re going to have to hear the whole story. It’s a
long tale, but I think we have the time for it.”
III
THE DESCENT BECKONS
The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned.
—William Carlos Williams, The Descent
21
THE WEREWOLF’S TALE
THE TRUTH IS, I’VE KNOWN YOUR MOTHER
SINCE WE WERE children. We grew up in Idris. It’s a
beautiful ce, and I’ve always regretted that you’ve
never seen it: You would love the glossy pines in
winter, the dark earth and cold crystal rivers. There’s a
smallwork of towns and a single city, Alicante,
where the ve meets. They call it the ss City
because its towers are shaped from the same demon-
repelling substance as our steles; in the sunlight they
sparkle like ss.
When Jocelyn and I were old enough, we were sent to
Alicante to school. It was there that I met Valentine.
He was older than I was by a year. By far the most
popr boy in school. He was handsome, clever, rich,
dedicated, an incredible warrior. I was nothing—
neither rich nor brilliant, from an unremarkable country
family. And I struggled in my studies. Jocelyn was a
natural Shadowhunter; I was not. I could not bear the
lightest Marks or learn the simplest techniques. I
thought sometimes about running away, returning
home in shame. Even bing a mundane. I was
that miserable.
It was Valentine who saved me. He came to my room
—I’d never even thought he knew my name. He
offered to train me. He said he knew that I was
struggling, but he saw in me the seeds of a great
Shadowhunter. And under his tutge I did improve. I
passed my exams, bore my first Marks, killed my first
demon.
I worshipped him. I thought the sun rose and set on
Valentine Morgenstern. I wasn’t the only misfit he’d
rescued, of course. There were others. Hodge
Starkweather, who got along better with books than
he did with people; Maryse Trueblood, whose brother
had married a mundane; Robert Lightwood, who was
terrified of the Marks—Valentine brought them all
under his wing. I thought it was kindness, then; now I
am not so sure. Now I think he was building himself a
cult.
Valentine was obsessed with the idea that in every
generation there were fewer and fewer
Shadowhunters—that we were a dying breed. He was
sure that if only the ve would more freely use
Raziel’s Cup, more Shadowhunters could be made.
To the teachers this idea was sacrilege—it is not for
just anyone to choose who can and cannot be a
Shadowhunter. Flippantly, Valentine would ask: Why
not make all men Shadowhunters, then? Why not gift
them all with the ability to see the Shadow World?
Why keep that power selfishly to ourselves?
When the teachers answered that most humans
cannot survive the transition, Valentine imed they
were lying, trying to keep the power of the Nephilim
limited to an elite few. That was his im, at the time
—now I think he probably felt the coteral damage
was worth the end result. In any case, he convinced
our little group of his rightness. We formed the Circle,
with our stated intent being to save the race of
Shadowhunters from extinction. Of course, being
seventeen, we weren’t quite sure how we would do it,
but we were sure we’d eventually aplish
something significant.
Then came the night that Valentine’s father was killed
in a routine raid on a werewolf encampment. When
Valentine returned to school, after the funeral, he
wore the red Marks of mourning. He was different in
other ways. His kindness was now interspersed with
shes of rage that bordered on cruelty. I put this new
behavior down to grief and tried harder than ever to
please him. I never answered his anger with anger of
my own. I felt only the sick sense that I had
disappointed him.
The only one that could calm his rages was your
mother. She had always stood a little apart from our
group, sometimes mockingly calling us Valentine’s fan
club. That changed when his father died. His pain
awakened her sympathy. They fell in love.
I loved him too: He was my closest friend, and I was
happy to see Jocelyn with him. When we left school,
they married and went to live on her family’s estate. I
also returned home, but the Circle continued. It had
started as a sort of school adventure, but it grew in
scale and power, and Valentine grew with it. Its ideals
had changed as well. The Circle still mored for the
Mortal Cup, but since the death of his father, Valentine
had be an outspoken proponent of war against
all Downworlders, not just those who broke the
ords. This world was for humans, he argued, not
part demons. Demons could never be fully trusted.
I was ufortable with the Circle’s new direction,
but I stuck with it—partly because I still couldn’t bear
to let Valentine down, partly because Jocelyn had
asked me to continue. She had some hope that I
would be able to bring moderation to the Circle, but
that was impossible. There was no moderating
Valentine, and Robert and Maryse Lightwood—now
married—were almost as bad. Only Michael Wand
was unsure, as I was, but despite our reluctance we
followed still; as a group we hunted Downworlders
tirelessly, seeking those who hadmitted even the
slightest infraction. Valentine never killed a creature
who had not broken the ords, but he did other
things. I saw him fasten silver coins to the eyelids of a
werewolf child, blinding her, in an attempt to get the
girl to tell him where her brother was …. I saw him—
but you don’t need to hear this. No. I’m sorry.
What happened next was that Jocelyn became
pregnant. The day she told me that, she also
confessed that she had grown afraid of her husband.
His behavior had turned weird, erratic. He would
disappear into their cers for nights at a time.
Sometimes she would hear screams through the walls
….
I went to him. Heughed, dismissing her fears as the
jitters of a woman carrying her first child. He invited
me to hunt with him that night. We were still trying to
clean out the nest of werewolves who had killed his
father years before. We were parabatai, a perfect
hunting team of two, warriors who would die for each
other. So when Valentine told me he would guard my
back that night, I believed him. I didn’t see the wolf
until it was on me. I remember its teeth fastened in my
shoulder, and nothing else of that night. When I
awoke, I was lying in Valentine’s house, my shoulder
bandaged, and Jocelyn was there.
Not all werewolf bites result in lycanthropy. I healed of
the injury and passed the next weeks in a torment of
waiting. Waiting for the full moon. The ve would
have locked me in an observation cell, had they
known. But Valentine and Jocelyn kept silent. Three
weekster the moon rose full and bright, and I began
to change. The first Change is always the hardest. I
remember a bewilderment of agony, a ckness, and
waking up hourster in a meadow miles from the city.
I was covered in blood, the torn body of some small
woond animal at my feet.
I made my way back to the manor, and they met me
at the door. Jocelyn fell on me, weeping, but Valentine
pulled her away. I stood, bloody and shaking on my
feet. I could scarcely think, and the taste of raw meat
was still in my mouth. I don’t know what I had
expected, but I suppose I should have known.
Material ? N?velDrama.Org.
Valentine dragged me down the steps and into the
woods with him. He told me that he ought to kill me
himself, but, seeing me then, he could not bring
himself to do it. He gave me a dagger that had once
belonged to his father. He said I should do the
honorable thing and end my own life. He kissed the
dagger when he handed it to me, and went back
inside the manor house, and barred the door.
I ran through the night, sometimes as a man,
sometimes as a wolf, until I crossed the border. I burst
into the midst of the werewolf encampment,
brandishing my dagger, and demanded to meet in
combat the lycanthrope who had bitten me and turned
me into one of them. Laughing, they pointed me
toward the n leader. Hands and teeth still bloody
from the hunt, he rose to face me.
I had never been much for singlebat. The
crossbow was my weapon; I had excellent sight and
aim. But I had never been very good at close range; it
was Valentine who was skilled in fighting hand to
hand. But I wanted only to die, and to take with me
the creature who had ruined me. I suppose I thought if
I could avenge myself, and kill the wolves who had
murdered his father, Valentine would mourn me. As
we grappled, sometimes as men, sometimes as
wolves, I saw that he was surprised by my fierceness.
As the night faded into day, he began to tire, but my
rage never abated. And as the sun began to set
again, I sank my dagger into his neck and he died,
soaking me with his blood.
I expected the pack to set on me and tear me apart.
But they knelt at my feet and bared their throats in
submission. The wolves have aw: Whoever kills the
n leader takes his ce. I hade to the ce of
the wolves, and instead of finding death and
vengeance there, I found a new life.
I left my old self behind and almost forgot what it was
like to be a Shadowhunter. But I did not forget
Jocelyn. The thought of her was a constant
companion. I feared for her in thepany of
Valentine, but knew that if I came near the manor
house, the Circle would hunt me down and kill me.
In the end she came to me. I was asleep in the camp
when my second inmand came to tell me that
there was a young Shadowhunter woman waiting to
see me. I knew immediately who it must be. I could
see the disapproval in his eyes as I raced to meet her.
They all knew I had once been a Shadowhunter, of
course, but it was considered a shameful secret,
never spoken of. Valentine would haveughed.
She was waiting for me just outside the encampment.
She was no longer pregnant, and looked drawn and
pale. She had had her child, she said, a boy, and had
named him Jonathan Christopher. She cried when
she saw me. She was angry that I had not let her
know I was still alive. Valentine had told the Circle I
had taken my own life, but she had not believed it.
She knew that I would never do such a thing. I felt her
faith in me was unwarranted, but I was so relieved to
see her again that I didn’t contradict her.
Source:
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
Articles you may like
Ads by