Pale Kings and Princes Read online

  Arthur was left to believe his brother had abandoned him, had chosen faerie love over flesh and blood, and that was the worst torture of all.

  Arthur was broken. It took only a year. The faeries spent the next six stomping and giggling over the rubble of his soul.

  And yet.

  Arthur was a Shadowhunter, and these should never be underestimated. One day, half-mad with pain and sorrow, he had a vision of his future, of thousands of days of agony, decades, centuries passing in Faerie as he aged into a wizened, broken creature, finally returned to his world to discover that only one day had passed. That everyone he knew was young and whole. That they would pray for his death, so they wouldn't have to live with what had become of him. Faerie was a land beyond time; they could steal his entire life here--they could give him ten lifetimes of torture and pain--and still stay true to their word.

  The terror of this fate was more powerful than pain, and it gave him the strength he needed to break free of his bonds. He was forced to fight against his own brother, who'd been enchanted into believing he should protect Lady Nerissa at all costs. Arthur knocked my father to the ground and used Lady Nerissa's own dagger to slice her open from neck to sternum. With that same dagger, he cut the enchanted silver from my father's throat. And together, both of them finally free, they escaped Faerie and returned to the world. Both of them still bearing their scars.

  After they made their report to the Inquisitor, they left Idris, and left each other. These brothers, once as close as parabatai, couldn't stand each other's sight. Each was a reminder of what the other had endured and lost. Neither could forgive the other for where they had failed, and where they had succeeded.

  Perhaps they would have reconciled, eventually.

  But Arthur went to London, while my father returned home to Los Angeles, where he quickly fell in love with one of the Shadowhunters training at the LA Institute. She loved him too and helped him forget those nightmare years. They married. They had a son. They were happy--and then, one day, their doorbell rang. My mother would have been feeding baby Julian or laying him down for a nap. My father would have been buried in his books. One of them would have answered the door and discovered two baskets on their doorstep, each of them bearing a sleeping toddler. My brother Mark and me. My father, in his bewitched state, never realized the Lady Nerissa had borne two children.

  My father and his wife, Eleanor, raised us like we were full-blooded Shadowhunters. Like we were their own. Like we weren't half-blooded monsters who'd been slipped into their midst by their enemy. Like we weren't constant reminders of destruction and torture, of the long nightmare my father had labored so long to forget. They did their best to love us. Maybe they even did love us, as much as anyone could. But I'm assured that Andrew and Eleanor Blackthorn were the best of Shadowhunters. So they would have been smart enough to know, deep down, that we could never truly be trusted.

  Trust a faerie at your own risk, because they care for nothing but themselves. They sow nothing but destruction. And their preferred weapon is human love.

  This is the lesson I've been asked to teach you. And so I have.

  *

  "What the hell was that?" Simon exploded as soon as they were dismissed from class.

  "I know!" George sagged against the corridor's stone wall--then quickly reconsidered as something green and sluggish wriggled out from behind his shoulder. "I mean, I knew faeries were little bastards, but who knew they were evil?"

  "I did," Julie said, her face paler than usual. She'd been waiting for them outside the classroom--or, rather, waiting for Jon Cartwright, with whom she now seemed to be somewhat of an item. Julie was even prettier than Jon and almost as big a snob, but still, Simon had thought she had slightly better taste.

  Jon put his arm around her, and she curled herself against his muscled torso.

  They make it look so easy, Simon thought in wonder. But then, that was the thing about Shadowhunters--they made everything look so easy.

  It was slightly disgusting.

  "I can't believe they tortured that poor guy for seven years," George said.

  "And how about his brother!" Beatriz Mendoza exclaimed. "That's even worse."

  George looked incredulous. "You think being forced to fall in love with a sexy faerie princess is worse than getting burned alive a couple hundred times?"

  "I think--"

  Simon cleared his throat. "Uh, I actually meant, what the hell was that with Helen Blackthorn, trotting her in here like some kind of circus freak, making her tell us that horrible story about her own mother?" As soon as Helen finished her story, Professor Mayhew had pretty much ordered her out of the room. She'd looked like she wanted to decapitate him--but instead, she'd lowered her head and obeyed. He'd never seen a Shadowhunter behave like that, like she was . . . tamed. It felt sickeningly wrong.

  "`Mother' is a bit of a technicality in this situation, don't you think?" George asked.

  "You think that means this was fun for her?" Simon said, incredulous.

  "I think a lot of things aren't fun," Julie said coldly. "I think watching your sister get sliced in half isn't so fun, either. So you'll excuse me if I don't care much about this halfling thing or her so-called feelings." Her voice shook on the last word, and very abruptly she slid out from under Jon's arm and raced off down the hallway.

  Jon glared at Simon. "Nice, Lewis. Really nice." He took off after Julie, leaving Simon, Beatriz, and George to stand around awkwardly in their hushed wake.

  After a tense moment George scratched his stubbled chin. "Mayhew was pretty harsh back there. Acting like she was some kind of criminal. You could tell he was just waiting for her to stab him with a piece of chalk or something."

  "She's fey," Beatriz pointed out. "You can't just let your guard down with them."

  "Half-fey," Simon said.

  "But don't you think that's enough? The Clave must have thought so," Beatriz said. "Why else send her into exile?"

  Simon snorted. "Yeah, because the Clave is always right."

  "Her brother rides with the Wild Hunt," Beatriz argued. "How much more faerie can you get?"

  "That's not his fault," Simon protested. Clary had told him the whole story of Mark Blackthorn's capture--the way the faeries had snatched up him during the massacre at the Los Angeles Institute. The way the Clave refused to bother trying to get him back. "He's there against his will."

  Beatriz was starting to look somewhat cross. "You don't know that. No one can know that."

  "Where is this even coming from?" Simon asked. "You've never bought into any of that anti-Downworlder crap." Simon might not have remembered his vampire days very well, but he made it his business not to befriend anyone inclined to stake first, ask questions later.

  "I'm not anti-Downworlder," Beatriz insisted, full of self-righteousness. "I don't have any problem with werewolves or vampires. Or warlocks, obviously. But the fey are different. Whatever the Clave is doing with them, or to them, it's for our benefit. It's to protect us. Don't you think it's possible they know a little more about it than you do?"

  Simon rolled his eyes. "Spoken like a true Shadowhunter."

  Beatriz gave him an odd look. "Simon--do you realize that you almost always say 'Shadowhunter' like it's an insult?"

  That stopped him. Beatriz rarely spoke to anyone sharply like that, especially not him. "I . . ."

  "If you think it's so terrible, being a Shadowhunter, I don't know what you're doing here." She took off down the corridor toward her room--which was, like the rest of the second-year elite rooms, high up in one of the turrets with a nice southern exposure and a meadow view.

  George and Simon turned the other way, toward the dungeons.

  "Not making many friends today," George said cheerfully, softly slugging his roommate. It was George-speak for don't worry, it'll blow over.

  They clomped down the corridor side by side. A summer cleaning had done nothing to address the dripping ceilings or puddles of suspicious-smelling slime tha
t cluttered the path to the dungeons--or maybe the Academy's janitorial ministrations just didn't extend to dregs' quarters. Either way, by this point Simon and George could have made it down the hallway blindfolded; they sidestepped puddles and ducked spurting pipes by habit.

  "I didn't mean to upset anyone," Simon said. "I just don't think it's right."

  "Trust me, mate, you made that perfectly clear. And obviously I agree with you."

  "You do?" Simon felt a rush of relief.

  "Of course I do," George said. "You don't fence off a whole herd just because one sheep's nibbling at the wrong grass, right?"

  "Er . . . right."

  "I just don't know why you're getting so worked up about it." George wasn't the type to get worked up about much of anything, or at least, not the type to admit it. He claimed apathy was a family credo. "Is it the vampire thing? You know no one thinks about you that way."

  "No, it's not that," Simon said. He knew that these days, his friends barely gave a thought to his vampire past--they considered it irrelevant. Sometimes Simon wasn't so sure. He'd been dead . . . how could that be irrelevant?

  But that had nothing to do with this.

  This simply wasn't right, the way Professor Mayhew ordered Helen around like a trained dog, or the way the others talked about the Fair Folk--as if, because some faeries had betrayed the Shadowhunters, all Faeries were guilty, now and forevermore.

  Maybe that was it: The question of guilt handed down through bloodlines, the sins of the fathers visited on not just their sons but their friends, neighbors, and random acquaintances who happened to have similarly shaped ears. You couldn't just indict an entire people--or in this case, Downworlder species--because you didn't like how a few of them behaved. He'd spent enough time in Hebrew school to know how that kind of thing ended. Fortunately, before he could formulate an explanation for George that didn't name check Hitler, Professor Catarina Loss materialized before them.

  Materialized, literally, in a rather theatrical puff of smoke. Warlock prerogative, Simon supposed, although showing off wasn't Catarina's style. Usually she blended in with the rest of the Academy faculty, making it easy to forget she was a warlock (at least, if you overlooked the blue skin). But he'd noticed that whenever another Downworlder was on campus, Catarina went out of her way to play up her warlockiness.

  Not that Helen was a Downworlder, Simon reminded himself.

  On the other hand, Simon wasn't a Downworlder either--or hadn't been for more than a year now--and Catarina still insisted on calling him Daylighter. According to her, once a Downworlder, always, in some tiny, subconscious, embedded-in-the-soul part, a Downworlder. She always sounded so certain of this, as if she knew something he didn't. After talking to her, Simon often found himself tonguing his canine teeth, just to make sure he hadn't sprouted fangs.

  "Might I speak with you for a moment, Daylighter?" she said. "Privately?"

  George, who'd been a bit nervous around Catarina ever since she had, very briefly, turned him into a sheep, had clearly been waiting for an excuse to run away. He took it.

  Simon found himself surprisingly glad to be alone with Catarina; she, at least, was certain to be on his side. "Professor Loss, you won't believe what just happened in class with Professor Mayhew--"

  "How was your summer, Daylighter?" She gave him a thin smile. "Pleasant, I trust? Not too much sun?"

  In all the time he'd known Catarina Loss, she'd never bothered with small talk. It seemed an odd time to start. "You did know Helen Blackthorn was here, right?" Simon said.

  She nodded. "I know most everything that goes on around here. I thought you'd figured that out."

  "Then I'm guessing you know how Professor Mayhew was treating her."

  "Like something less than human, I would imagine?"

  "Exactly!" Simon exclaimed. "Like something scraped off the bottom of his shoe."

  "In my experience, that's how Professor Mayhew treats most people."

  Simon shook his head. "If you'd seen it . . . this was worse. Maybe I should tell Dean Penhallow?" The idea seized him only as it was coming out of his mouth, but he liked the sound of it. "She can, I don't know . . ." It wasn't like she could give him a detention. "Something."

  Catarina pursed her lips. "You must do what you think is right, Daylighter. But I can tell you that Dean Penhallow has little authority on the subject of Helen Blackthorn's treatment here."

  "But she's the dean. She should--oh." Slowly but surely, the pieces slotted into place. Dean Penhallow was cousin to Aline Penhallow. Helen's girlfriend. Aline's mother, Jia, the Consul, was supposedly biased on the subject of Helen, and had recused herself from determining her treatment. If even the Consul couldn't intercede on Helen's behalf, then presumably the dean had even less hope of doing so. It seemed hideously unfair to Simon, that the people who cared most for Helen were the ones least involved in deciding her fate. "Why would Helen even come here?" Simon wondered. "I know Wrangel Island must suck, but could it be any worse than getting paraded around here, where everyone seems to hate her?"

  "You can ask her yourself," Catarina said. "That's why I wanted to speak with you. Helen asked me to send you over to her cabin after your classes end today. She has something for you."

  "She does? What?"

  "You'll have to ask that for yourself too. You'll find her lodgings at the edge of the western quad."

  "She's staying on campus?" Simon said, surprised. He couldn't understand why Helen would come here in the first place, but it was even harder to imagine her wanting to stay. "She must have friends in Alicante she could stay with."

  "I'm sure she does, even now," Catarina said, something kind and sad in her voice, as if she were, very, very gently, letting down a child. "But, Simon, you're presuming she had a choice."

  *

  Simon hesitated at the door of the cabin, willing himself to knock. It was his least favorite thing, meeting someone he'd known in his before life, as he'd come to think of it. There was always the fear they would expect something of him he couldn't deliver, or assume he knew something he'd forgotten. There was, too often, a gleam of hope in their eyes that was extinguished as soon as he opened his mouth.

  At least, he told himself, he'd barely known Helen. She couldn't be expecting much from him. Unless there was something he didn't know.

  And there must be something he didn't know. . . . Why else would she have summoned him?

  Only one way to find out, Simon thought, and knocked at the door.

  Helen had changed into a bright polka-dotted sundress and looked much younger than she had in the classroom. Also much happier. Her smile widened substantially when she saw who was at the door.

  "Simon! I'm so glad. Come on in, sit down, would you like something to eat or drink? Maybe a cup of coffee?"

  Simon settled himself on the small living room's only couch. It was uncomfortable and threadbare, embroidered with a faded flower pattern that looked like something his grandmother might have owned. He wondered who usually lived here, or whether the Academy simply maintained the ramshackle cabin for visiting faculty. Though he couldn't imagine there were many visiting faculty members who wanted to live in a broken-down hut on the edge of the woods that looked like somewhere Hansel and Gretel's witch might have lived before she discovered candy-based architecture.

  "No, thanks, I'm fine--" Simon stopped as her last word registered with him. "Did you say coffee?"

  Half a week into the new school year, Simon was already in serious caffeine withdrawal. Before he could tell her yes, please, a bucketful, Helen had already placed a steaming mug in his hands. "I thought so," she said.

  Simon swallowed greedily, caffeine buzzing through his system. He didn't know how anyone was supposed to be human--much less, in the Shadowhunter case, superhuman--without a daily dose. "Where did you get this?"

  "Magnus magicked me up a nonelectric coffeemaker," Helen said, grinning. "Kind of a parting gift before we left for Wrangel Island. Now I can't live without it.
"

  "How is it there?" Simon asked. "On the Island?"

  Helen hesitated, and he wondered if he'd made a mistake. Was it rude to ask someone how they were enjoying their exile in a Siberian-like wilderness?

  "Cold," she said finally. "Lonely."

  "Oh." What could he say to that? "Sorry" didn't quite seem to cover it, and she didn't look like she wanted his pity.

  "But we're together, at least. Aline and I. That's something. That's everything, I suppose. I still can't believe she agreed to marry me."

  "You're getting married?" Simon exclaimed. "That's amazing!"

  "It is, isn't it?" Helen smiled. "It's hard to believe how much light you can find in the darkness, when you have someone who loves you."

  "Did she come with you?" Simon asked, looking around the small cabin. There was only one other room, the bedroom, he assumed, its door closed. He couldn't remember meeting Aline, but from everything Clary had told him, he was curious.

  "No," Helen said sharply. "That wasn't part of the deal."

  "What deal?"

  Instead of answering, she abruptly changed the subject. "So, did you enjoy my lecture this morning?"

  Now it was Simon who hesitated, unsure how to answer. He didn't want to suggest he'd found her lecture dull--but it seemed equally wrong to suggest he'd enjoyed hearing her terrible story or seeing Professor Mayhew humiliate her. "I was surprised you'd want to give the lecture," he said finally. "It can't be easy, telling that story."

  Helen gave him a wry smile. "`Want' is a strong word." She got up to pour him another cup of coffee, then began bustling with a stack of dishes in the tiny kitchenette. Simon got the feeling she was just trying to keep her hands busy. And maybe avoid meeting his eye. "I made a deal with them. The Clave." She ran her hands nervously through her blond hair, and Simon caught a brief glimpse of her pointed ears. "They said if I came to the Academy for a couple days, let them parade me around like some kind of half-faerie show pony, then Aline and I could come back."

  "For good?"

  She laughed bitterly. "For one day and one night, to be married."

  Simon thought, suddenly, of what Beatriz had asked him earlier that day. Why he was trying so hard to become a Shadowhunter.

  Sometimes he couldn't quite remember.