He was quite good with the staff. He had beat Mike ten times out of ten, and Esme nine times out of ten, and he had been holding back with them. It was possible he would also have to hold back with Matthew.
Except that Matthew came out wearing gear, and looking—for a change—actually like a real Shadowhunter. More like a real Shadowhunter than James did, truth be told, since James was . . . not as short as Thomas, but not tall yet, and what his mother described as wiry. Which was a kind way to say “no real evidence of muscles in view.” Several girls, in fact, turned to look at Matthew in gear.
“Mr. Herondale has volunteered to teach you how to staff fight,” Ragnor Fell said. “If you plan to murder each other, go farther down the field where I cannot see you and won’t have to answer awkward questions.”
“James,” said Matthew, in the voice that everyone else liked to listen to so much and that struck James as constantly mocking. “This is so kind of you. I think I do remember a few moves with the staff from training with my mama and my brother. Please be patient with me. I may be a little rusty.”
Matthew strolled down the field, the sun brilliant on green grass and his gold hair alike, and weighed the staff in one hand. He turned to James, and James had the sudden impression of narrowed eyes: a look of real and serious intent.
Then Matthew’s face and the trees both went sailing by, as Matthew’s staff scythed James’s legs out from under him and James went tumbling to the ground. He lay there dazed.
“You know,” said Matthew thoughtfully. “I may not be so terribly rusty after all.”
James scrambled to his feet, clutching at both his staff and his dignity. Matthew moved into position to fight him, the staff as light and easily balanced in his hand as if he were a conductor gesturing with his baton. He moved with easy grace, like any Shadowhunter would, but somehow as if he was playing, as if at any moment he might be dancing.
James realized, to his overwhelming disgust, that this was yet another thing Matthew was good at.
“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 he 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.
James would. He would have burned away this part of himself, wrenched it out, done anything he could to be rid of it. He was meant to be a Shadowhunter, he had always known he was, but would any Shadowhunter fight alongside him, with this horror about him revealed?