“Somewhere else,” said James, and slammed the door behind him.
He could not believe the bad luck that had randomly assigned him to share a room with Matthew. He found another staircase and read in it until he judged that it was late enough that Matthew would certainly be asleep, and he crept back, lit a candle, and resumed reading in bed.
James might have read a little too long into the night. When he woke up, Matthew was clearly long gone—on top of everything else, he was an early riser—and James was late for his first day of class.
“What else can you expect from Goatface Herondale,” said a boy James had never seen before in his life, and several more people sniggered. James grimly took his seat next to Mike Smith.
*
The classes in which the elites were separated from the dregs were the worst. James had nobody to sit with then.
Or perhaps the first class of every day was the worst, because James always stayed up late into the night reading to forget his troubles, and was late every day. No matter what time he rose, Matthew was always gone. James assumed Matthew did this to mock him, since he could not imagine Matthew doing anything useful early in the morning.
Or perhaps the training courses were the worst, because Matthew was at his most annoying during the training courses.
“I must regretfully decline to participate,” he told their teacher once. “Consider me on strike like the coal miners. Except far more stylish.”
The next day, he said: “I abstain on the grounds that beauty is sacred, and there is nothing beautiful about these exercises.”
The day after that, he merely said: “I object on aesthetic principles.”
He kept saying ridiculous things, until a couple of weeks in, when he said: “I won’t do it, because Shadowhunters are idiots and I do not want to be at this idiot school. Why does an accident of birth mean you have to either get ripped away from your family, or you have to spend a short, horrible life brawling with demons?”
“Do you want to be expelled, Mr. Fairchild?” thundered one teacher.
“Do what you feel you must,” said Matthew, folding his hands and smiling like a cherub.
Matthew did not get expelled. Nobody seemed quite sure what to do with him. His teachers began calling in sick out of despair.
He did only half the work and insulted everyone in the Academy on a daily basis, and he remained absurdly popular. Thomas and Christopher could not be pried away from him. He wandered the halls surrounded by adoring throngs who wanted to hear another amusing anecdote. His and James’s room was always completely crowded.
James spent a good deal of time in the stairwells. He spent even more time being called Goatface Herondale.
“You know,” Thomas said shyly once, when James had not managed to escape his own room fast enough, “you could pal around with us a little more.”
“I could?” James asked, and tried not to sound too hopeful. “I’d . . . like to see more of you and Christopher.”
“And Matthew,” Thomas said.
James shook his head silently.
“Matthew’s one of my best friends,” Thomas said, almost pleadingly. “If you spent some time with him, I am sure you would come to like him.”
James looked over at Matthew, who was sitting on his bed telling a story to eight people who were sitting on the floor and gazing up at him worshipfully. He met Matthew’s eyes, trained in his and Thomas’s direction, and looked away.
“I feel I have to decline any more of Matthew’s company.”
“It makes you stand out, you know,” Thomas said. “Spending your time with the mundanes. I think it’s why the—the nickname for you has stuck. People are afraid of anybody who is different: It makes them worry everyone else is different too, and just pretending to be all the same.”
James stared at him. “Are you saying I should avoid the mundanes? Because they are not as good as we are?”
“No, that’s not—” Thomas began, but James was too angry to let him finish.
“The mundanes can be heroes too,” James said. “You should know that better than I. Your mother was a mundane! My father told me about all she did before she Ascended. Everyone here knows people who were mundanes. Why should we isolate people who are brave enough to try to become like us—who want to help people? Why should we treat them as if they’re less than us, until they prove their worthiness or die? I won’t do it.”
Aunt Sophie was just as good as any Shadowhunter, and she had been brave long before she Ascended. Aunt Sophie was Thomas’s mother. They should know this better than James did.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Thomas. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
It was as if people didn’t think at all, living in Idris.
“Maybe your fathers don’t tell you stories like mine does,” James said.
“Maybe not everyone listens to stories like you do,” Matthew said from across the room. “Not everyone learns.”