Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

1984

Michael let a week pass before he asked the question Robert had been dreading. Maybe he was waiting for Robert to bring it up himself. Maybe he’d tried to convince himself he didn’t need to know the truth, that he loved Robert enough not to care—but apparently he had failed.

“Walk with me?” Michael said, and Robert agreed to take one last stroll through Brocelind Forest, even though he’d hoped to stay away from the woods until the next semester. By then, maybe, the memory of what happened there would have faded. The shadows wouldn’t seem so ominous, the ground so soaked in blood.

Things had been strange between them this week, quiet and stiff. Robert was keeping his secret about what they’d done to the werewolf, and mulling over Valentine’s suggestion, that he be Robert’s conscience and Robert’s strength, that it would be easier that way. Michael was . . .

Well, Robert couldn’t guess what Michael was thinking—about Valentine, about Eliza, about Robert himself. And that’s what made things so strange. They were parabatai; they were two halves of the same self. Robert wasn’t supposed to have to guess. Before, he’d always known.

“Okay, so what’s the real story?” Michael asked, once they were deep enough in the woods that the sounds of campus had long since faded away. The sun was still in the sky, but here in the trees, the shadows were long and the dark was rising. “What did Valentine do to that werewolf?”

Robert couldn’t look at his parabatai. He shrugged. “Exactly what I told you.”

“You’ve never lied to me before,” Michael said. There was sadness in his voice, and something else, something worse—there was a hint of finality in it, like they were about to say good-bye.

Robert swallowed. Michael was right: Before this, Robert had never lied.

“And I suppose you’ve never lied to me?” he charged Michael. His parabatai had a secret, he knew that now. Valentine said so.

There was a long pause. Then Michael spoke. “I lie to you every day, Robert.”

It was like a kick in the stomach.

That wasn’t just a secret, that wasn’t just a girl. That was . . . Robert didn’t even know what it was.

Unfathomable.

He stopped and turned to Michael, incredulous. “If you’re trying to shock me into telling you something—”

“I’m not trying to shock you. I’m just . . . I’m trying to tell you the truth. Finally. I know you’re keeping something from me, something important.”

“I’m not,” Robert insisted.

“You are,” Michael said, “and it hurts. And if that hurts me, then I can only imagine—” He stopped, took a deep breath, forced himself on. “I couldn’t bear it, if I’ve been hurting you like that all these years. Even if I didn’t realize it. Even if you didn’t realize it.”

“Michael, you’re not making any sense.”

They reached a fallen log, thick with moss. Michael sank onto it, looking suddenly weary. Like he’d aged a hundred years in the last minute. Robert dropped beside him and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

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