“Best of three,” he suggested.
Matthew’s staff was a blur between his hands, suddenly. James did not have time to shift position before a jarring blow landed on the arm that was holding his staff, then his left shoulder so he could not defend. James blocked the staff when it came toward his midsection, but that turned out to be a feint. Matthew scythed him off at the knees again and James wound up flat on his back in the grass. Again.
Matthew’s face came into view. He was laughing, as usual. “Why stop at three?” he asked. “I can stand around and beat you all day.”
James hooked his staff behind Matthew’s ankles and tripped him up. He knew it was wrong, but in the moment he did not care.
Matthew landed on the grass with a surprised “Oof!” which James found briefly satisfying. Once there, he seemed happy enough to lie in the grass. James found himself being regarded by one brown eye amid the greenery.
“You know,” Matthew said slowly, “most people like me.”
“Well . . . congratulations!” James snapped, and scrambled to his feet.
It was the exact wrong moment to stand up.
It should have been the last moment of James’s life. Perhaps because he thought it would be the last, it seemed to stretch out, giving James time to see it all: how the battering ram had flown through the hands of Christopher’s team in the wrong direction. He saw the horrified faces of the whole team, even Christopher paying attention for once. He saw the great wooden log, sailing directly at him, and heard Matthew scream a warning much too late. He saw Ragnor Fell jump up, his deck chair flying, and lift his hand.
The world transformed into sliding grayness, everything still moving slower than James was. Everything was sliding and insubstantial: the battering ram came at him and through him, unable to hurt him; it was like being splashed with water. James lifted a hand and saw the gray air full of stars.
It was Ragnor who had saved him, James thought as the world tipped from bright, strange grayness into black. This was warlock magic.
He did not know until later that the Academy class had all watched, expecting to see a scene of carnage and death, and instead seen a black-haired boy dissolve and change from one of their own into a shadow cast by nothing, a wicked cutout into the abyss behind the world, dark and unmistakable in the afternoon sun. What had been inevitable death, something the Shadowhunters were used to, became something strange and more terrible.
He did not know until later how right he was. It was warlock magic.
*
When James woke up, it was night, and Uncle Jem was there.
James reared up from his bed and threw himself into Uncle Jem’s arms. He had heard some people found the Silent Brothers frightening, with their silent speech and their stitched eyes, but to him the sight of a Silent Brother’s robe always meant Uncle Jem, always meant steadfast love.
“Uncle Jem!” he gasped out, arms around his neck, face buried in his robe, safe for a moment. “What happened? Why do I—I felt so strange, and now you’re here, and—”
And the presence of a Silent Brother in the Academy meant nothing good. Father was always inventing excuses for Uncle Jem to come to them—once he had claimed a flowerpot was possessed by a demon. But this was Idris, and a Silent Brother would be summoned to Shadowhunter children only in a time of need.
“Am I—hurt?” asked James. “Is Matthew hurt? He was with me.”
Nobody is hurt, said Uncle Jem. Thanks be to the Angel. It is only that there is now a heavy burden for you to bear, Jamie.
And the knowledge spilled out from Uncle Jem to James, silent and cold as a grave opening, and yet with Uncle Jem’s watchful care mingled with the chill. James shuddered away from the Silent Brother and clung to Uncle Jem at the same time, face wet with tears, fists clutching his robes.
This was his mother’s heritage, was what came from mingling the blood of a Shadowhunter with that of a demon, and then with a Shadowhunter again. They had all thought because James’s skin could bear Marks that James was a Shadowhunter and nothing else, that the blood of the Angel had burned away all else.
It had not. Even the blood of the Angel could not burn away a shadow. James could perform this strange warlock trick, a trick no warlock Uncle Jem knew could perform. He could transform into a shadow. He could make himself something that was not flesh or blood—certainly not the blood of the Angel.
“What—what am I?” James gasped out, his throat raw with sobs.
You are James Herondale, said Uncle Jem. As you always were. Part your mother, part your father, part yourself. I would not change any part of you if I could.