The Evil We Love (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #5)

By sunrise he’d almost managed to convince himself of this. But there she was again, up onstage beside her father, her fierce and fiercely intelligent gaze evoking all those annoying feelings again.

They weren’t memories, exactly. Simon couldn’t have named a single movie they watched together; he didn’t know any of Isabelle’s favorite foods or inside jokes; he didn’t know what it felt like to kiss her or twine his fingers with hers. What he felt whenever he looked at her was deeper than that, dwelling in some nether region of his mind. He felt like he knew her, inside and out. He felt like he had Superman vision and could x-ray her soul. He felt sorrow and loss and joy and confusion; he felt a cavemanlike urge to slaughter a wild boar and lay it at her feet; he felt the need to do something extraordinary and the belief that, in her presence, he could.

He felt something he’d never felt before—but he had a sinking sensation that he recognized it anyway.

He was pretty sure he felt like he was in love.

*





1984


Valentine made it easy for them. He’d induced permission from the dean for an “educational” camping trip in Brocelind Forest—two days and nights free to do as they pleased, as long as it resulted in a few scribbled pages on the curative powers of wild herbs.

By all rights, with his uncomfortable questions and rebellious theories, Valentine should have been the black sheep of Shadowhunter Academy. Ragnor Fell certainly treated him like a slimy creature who’d crawled out from under a rock and should be hastily returned there. But the rest of the faculty seemed blinded by Valentine’s personal magnetism, unable or unwilling to see through to the disrespect that lay beneath. He was endlessly dodging deadlines and ducking out of classes, excusing himself with nothing more than the flash of a smile. Another student might have been grateful for the latitude, but it only made Valentine loathe his teachers more—every loophole the faculty opened for him was only more evidence of weakness.

He had no qualms about enjoying its consequences.

The werewolf pack, according to Valentine’s intel, was holed up in the old Silverhood manor, a decrepit ruin at the heart of the forest. The last Silverhood had died in battle two generations before, and was used as a name to spook young Shadowhunter children. The death of a soldier was one thing: regrettable, but the natural order of things. The death of a line was unimaginable.

Maybe they were all secretly apprehensive about it, this illicit mission that seemed to cross an invisible line. Never before had they struck against Downworlders without the express permission and oversight of their elders; they had broken rules, but never before had they strayed so close to breaking the Law.

Maybe they just wanted to spend a few more hours like normal teenagers, before they went so far they couldn’t turn back.

For whatever reason, the four of them made their way through the woods with a deliberate lack of speed, setting up camp for the night a half mile from the Silverhood estate. They would, Valentine decided, spend the day staking out the werewolf encampment, gauging its strengths and weaknesses, charting the rhythms of the pack, and attack at nightfall, once the pack had dispersed to hunt. But that was tomorrow’s problem. That night, they sat around a campfire, roasted sausages over leaping flames, reminisced about their pasts, and rhapsodized about their futures, which still seemed impossibly far away.

“I’ll marry Jocelyn, of course,” Valentine said, “and we’ll raise our children in the new era. They’ll never be warped by the corrupt laws of a weak, sniveling Clave.”

“Sure, because by that time, we’ll run the world,” Stephen said lightly. Valentine’s grim smile made it seem less like a joke than a promise.