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

There was pain.

There was the pain that seared through him like a lightning strike and the pain that ebbed and flowed like a tide. There was the pain in his body, lines of agony radiating from the Mark, burrowing from his flesh to his organs to his bones—and then, so much worse, there was the pain in his mind, or maybe it was his soul, an ineffable sensation of hurt, as if some creature had burrowed into the depths of his brain and gotten hungrier with the firing of every neuron and synapse. It hurt to think, it hurt to feel, it hurt to remember—but it felt necessary to do these things, because, even in the heart of this agony, some dim part of Robert stayed alert enough to know that if he didn’t hang on, didn’t feel the hurt, he would slip away forever.

Later he would use all these words and more to try to describe the pain, but none of them captured the experience. What had happened, what he had felt, that was beyond words.

There were other torments to endure, through that eternity he lay in bed, insensible to all around him, imprisoned by his Mark. There were visions. He saw demons, taunting and torturing him, and worse, he saw the faces of those he loved, telling him he was unworthy, telling him he was better off dead. He saw charred, barren plains and a wall of fire, the hell dimension awaiting him if he let his mind slip away, and so, through it all, somehow, he held on.

He lost all sense of himself and the world around him, lost his words and his name—but he held on. Until finally, one month later, the pain abated. The visions faded. Robert awoke.

He learned—once he’d recovered himself enough to understand and care—that he’d been semiconscious for several weeks while a battle had been raging around him, members of the Clave warring with his parents over his treatment as two Silent Brothers did their best to keep him alive. They had all wanted to strip him of the Mark, his parents told him, the Silent Brothers warning daily that this was the only way to ensure his survival and spare him further pain. Let him live out his life as a mundane: This was the conventional treatment for Shadowhunters who couldn’t bear Marks.

“We couldn’t let them do that to you,” his mother told him.

“You’re a Lightwood. You were born to this life,” his father told him. “This life and no other.”

What they didn’t say, and didn’t need to: We would rather see you dead than mundane.

Things were different between them, after that. Robert was grateful to his parents for believing in him—he too would rather be dead. But it changed something, knowing his parents’ love for him had a limit. And something must have changed for them, too, discovering that a part of their son couldn’t handle the Shadowhunter life, being forced to bear that shame.

Now Robert could no longer remember what his family had been like before the Mark. He remembered only the years since, the coldness that lived between them. They acted their parts: loving father, doting mother, dutiful son. But it was in their presence that Robert felt most alone.

He was, in those months spent recovering, frequently alone. The kids he’d thought of as his friends wanted nothing to do with him. When forced into his presence, they shied away, as if he were contagious.

There was nothing wrong with him, the Silent Brothers said. Having survived the ordeal with the Mark intact, there was no risk of future danger. His body had teetered on the edge of rejection, but his will had turned the tide. When the Silent Brothers examined him for the last time, one of them spoke somberly inside his head, with a message for Robert alone.