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

You will be tempted to think this ordeal marks you as weak. Instead, remember it as proof of your strength.

But Robert was twelve years old. His former friends were tracing themselves with runes, shipping off to the Academy, doing everything normal Shadowhunters were supposed to do—while Robert hid away in his bedroom, abandoned by his friends, cold-shouldered by his family, and afraid of his own stele. In the face of so much evidence for weakness, even a Silent Brother couldn’t make him feel strong.

In this way, nearly a year passed, and Robert began to imagine this would be the shape of the rest of his life. He would be a Shadowhunter in name only; a Shadowhunter afraid of the Marks. Sometimes, in the dark of night, he wished his will hadn’t been so strong, that he’d let himself be lost. It would have to be better than the life he’d returned to.

Then he met Michael Wayland, and everything changed.

They hadn’t known each other very well, before. Michael was a strange kid, allowed to tag along with the others, but never quite accepted. He was prone to distraction and strange flights of fancy, pausing in the middle of a sparring session to consider where Sensors had come from, and who had thought to invent them.

Michael had shown up at the Lightwoods’ manor one day asking if Robert might like to go for a horseback ride. They’d spent several hours galloping through the countryside, and once it was over, Michael said, “See you tomorrow,” as if it were a foregone conclusion. He kept coming back. “Because you’re interesting,” Michael said, when Robert finally asked him why.

That was another thing about Michael. He always said exactly what was in his head, no matter how tactless or peculiar.

“My mother made me promise not to ask about what happened to you,” he added.

“Why?”

“Because it would be rude. What do you think? Would it be rude?”

Robert shrugged. No one ever asked him about it or referred to it, not even his parents. It had never occurred to him to wonder why, or whether this was preferable. It was simply the way things were.

“I don’t mind being rude,” Michael said. “Will you tell me? What it was like?”

Strange, that it could be that simple. Strange, that Robert could be burning to tell someone without even realizing it. That all he needed was someone to ask. The floodgates opened. Robert talked and talked, and when he trailed off, afraid he was going too far, Michael would jump in with another question.

“Why do you think it happened to you?” Michael asked. “Do you think it was genetic? Or, like, some part of you just isn’t meant to be a Shadowhunter?”

It was, of course, Robert’s greatest, most secret fear—but to hear it tossed off so casually like this defused it of all its power.

“Maybe?” Robert said, and instead of shunning him, Michael’s eyes lit up with a scientist’s curiosity.

He grinned. “We should find out.”

They made it their mission: They probed libraries, pored over ancient texts, asked questions that no adult wanted to hear. There was very little written record of Shadowhunters who’d experienced what Robert had—this kind of thing was meant to be a shameful family secret, never spoken of again. Not that Michael cared how many feathers he ruffled or which traditions he overturned. He wasn’t particularly brave, but he seemed to have no fear.

Their mission failed. There was no rational explanation for why Robert had reacted so strongly to the Mark, but by the end of that year, it didn’t matter. Michael had turned a nightmare into a puzzle—and had turned himself into Robert’s best friend.

They performed the parabatai ritual before leaving for the Academy, swearing the oath without hesitation. By then they were fifteen years old, a physically unlikely pairing: Robert had finally hit his growth spurt, and loomed over his peers, his muscles thick, his shadow of a beard growing in thicker every day. Michael was slim and wiry, his unruly curls and dreamy expression making him look younger than his age.

“Entreat me not to leave thee,