Son of the Dawn (Ghosts of the Shadow Market #1)

Raphael staggered over to the rail and pretended to vomit. Then he straightened up.

“Oh wait, I’m a vampire and we don’t get seasick,” he said. “I came over all nauseous for a second. Can’t think why. I heard Silent Brothers were withdrawn. I was looking forward to withdrawn!”

I am not a typical Silent Brother, observed Brother Zachariah.

“Just my luck I got the touchy-feely Silent Brother. Can I request a different one in future?”

So you think there might be a time when your path crosses with Shadowhunters again?

Raphael made a disgusted noise and turned away from the sea. His face was pallid as moonlight, ice white as the cheek of a child long dead.

“I am going belowdecks. Unless, of course, you have any other brilliant suggestions?”

Brother Zachariah nodded. The shadow of his hood fell across the scar of a cross on the vampire’s throat.

Have faith, Raphael. I know you remember how.




With the vampires safely hidden below and Robert Lightwood steering the ship towards Manhattan, Brother Zachariah took on the task of cleaning up the deck, moving the bodies out of sight. He’d call on his brothers to help him attend to them, and to the survivors, who were currently secured in one of the cabins. Enoch and the others might not approve of his decision to help Raphael, but they would still fulfill their mandate to keep the Shadow World hidden and safe.

Once Brother Zachariah had finished, all there was to do was wait for the ship to carry them to the city. Then he would have to return to his own city. He took a seat and waited, enjoying the sensation of the light of a new day on his face.

It had been a long time since he felt the light, and longer since he could truly enjoy the simple pleasure of it.

He sat near the bridge, where he could see Robert and young Jonathan Wayland in the morning light.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Robert said.

“Yes,” said Jonathan.

“You don’t look much like Michael,” Robert added awkwardly.

“No,” said Jonathan. “I always wished I did.”

The boy’s thin back was braced to be a disappointment.

Robert said: “I am sure you’re a good boy.”

Jonathan did not look sure. Robert saved himself from awkwardness by conspicuously examining the controls.

The boy left the bridge, graceful despite the lurch of the boat and how weary he must be. Zachariah was startled when young Jonathan advanced across the deck to where Zachariah himself sat.

Brother Zachariah pulled his hood close around his face. Some Shadowhunters were disquieted by a Silent Brother who did not appear exactly as the rest did, though the Silent Brothers looked fearsome enough. He did not want to distress the boy, either way.

Jonathan carried Brother Zachariah’s staff back to him, balanced flat as a tightrope along his palms, and laid the staff with a respectful bow on Zachariah’s knees. The boy moved with military discipline unusual in one so young, even among Shadowhunters. Brother Zachariah had not known Michael Wayland, but he guessed he must have been a harsh man.

“Brother Enoch?” the boy guessed.

No, said Brother Zachariah. He knew Enoch’s memories as his own. Enoch had examined the boy, though his memories were gray with lack of interest. Brother Zachariah briefly wished he could have been the Silent Brother at hand for this child.

“No,” the boy repeated slowly. “I should’ve known. You moved differently. I just thought it might be, since you gave me the staff.”

He bowed his head. It struck Zachariah as a sorry thing, that the child would not have expected even the smallest mercy from a stranger.

“Thank you for letting me use it,” Jonathan added.

I am glad it was useful, returned Brother Zachariah.

The boy’s glance up at his face was shocking, the flare of twin suns in what was still almost night. They were not the eyes of a soldier, but a warrior. Brother Zachariah had known both, and he knew the difference.

The boy took a step back, nervous and agile, but stopped with his chin high. Apparently he had a question.

Zachariah was not expecting the one he asked.

“What do the initials mean? On your staff. Do all Silent Brothers have them?”

They looked together at the staff. The letters were worn by time and Zachariah’s own flesh, but they had been struck deep into the wood in the precise places where Zachariah would put his hands on them when he fought. So, in a way, they would always be fighting together.

The letters were W and H.

No, said Brother Zachariah. I am the only one. I carved them into the staff on my first night in the City of Bones.

“Were they your initials?” the boy asked, his voice low and a little timid. “Back when you were a Shadowhunter, like me?”

Brother Zachariah still considered himself a Shadowhunter, but Jonathan clearly did not mean any offense.

No, said Jem, because he was always James Carstairs when he spoke of what was dearest to him. Not mine. My parabatai’s.

W and H. William Herondale. Will.

The boy looked struck yet wary at the same time. There was a certain guardedness about him, as if he was suspicious of whatever Zachariah might say before he even had the chance to say it.

“My father says—said—a parabatai can be a great weakness.”

Jonathan said the word weakness with horror. Zachariah wondered what a man who had drilled a boy to fight like that might have considered weakness.

Brother Zachariah did not choose to insult an orphan boy’s dead father, so he arranged his thoughts carefully. This boy was so alone. He remembered how precious that new link could be, especially when you had no other. It could be the last bridge that connected you to a lost life.

He remembered traveling across the sea, having lost his family, not knowing that he was going to his best friend.

I suppose they can be a weakness, he answered. It depends on who your parabatai is. I carved his initials here because I always fought best with him.

Jonathan Wayland, the child who fought like a warrior angel, looked intrigued.

“I think—my father was sorry he had a parabatai,” he said. “Now I have to go and live with the man my father was sorry about. I don’t want to be weak, and I don’t want to be sorry. I want to be the best.”

If you pretend to feel nothing, the pretense may become true, said Jem. That would be a pity.

His parabatai had tried to feel nothing, for a time. Except what he felt for Jem. It had almost destroyed him. And every day, Jem pretended to feel something, to be kind, to fix what was broken, to remember names and voices almost forgotten, and hoped that would become truth.

The boy frowned. “Why would it be a pity?”

We battle hardest when that which is dearer to us than our own lives is at stake, said Jem. A parabatai is both blade and shield. You belong together and to each other not because you are the same but because your different shapes fit together to be a greater whole, a greater warrior for a higher purpose. I always believed we were not merely at our best together, but beyond the best either of us could be apart.

A slow smile broke across the boy’s face, like sunrise bursting as a bright surprise upon the water.

“I’d like that,” said Jonathan Wayland, adding quickly: “To be a great warrior.”

He flung his head back in a sudden, hasty assumption of arrogance, as if he and Jem might both have imagined he meant that he would like to belong to someone.

This boy, hell-bent on fighting rather than finding a family. The Lightwoods guarding against a vampire, when they could have extended some trust. The vampire, holding every friend at bay. All of them had their wounds, but Brother Zachariah could not help resenting them, for even the privilege of feeling hurt.

All these people were struggling not to feel, trying to freeze their hearts inside their chests until the cold fractured and broke them. While Jem would have given every cold tomorrow he had for one more day with a warm heart, to love them as he once had.