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

“So you won’t tell us where you got your intel from,” Lucian said, the only one other than Jocelyn who could question Valentine with impunity, “but you want us to sneak off campus and hunt down these werewolves ourselves? If you’re so sure the Clave would want them taken care of, why not leave it to them?”


“The Clave is useless,” Valentine hissed. “You know that better than anyone, Lucian. But if none of you are willing to risk yourselves for this—if you’d rather stay here and go to a party . . .” His mouth curled as if even speaking the word repelled him. “I’ll go myself.”

Hodge pushed his glasses up on his nose and leaped to his feet. “I’ll go with you, Valentine,” he said, too loud. It was Hodge’s way—always a little too loud or too quiet, always misreading the room. There was a reason he preferred books to people. “I’m always at your side.”

“Sit down,” Valentine snapped. “I don’t need you getting in the way.”

“But—”

“What good does your loyalty do me when it comes with a big mouth and two left feet?”

Hodge paled and dropped back to the ground, eyes blinking furiously behind thick lenses.

Jocelyn pressed a hand to Valentine’s shoulder—ever so gently, and only for a moment, but it was enough.

“I only mean, Hodge, that your particular skills are wasted on the battlefield,” Valentine said, more kindly. The shift in tone was abrupt, but sincere. When Valentine favored you with his warmest smile, he was impossible to resist. “And I couldn’t forgive myself if you were injured. I can’t . . . I can’t lose anyone else.”

They were all silent then, for a moment, thinking of how quickly it had happened, the dean pulling Valentine off the training field to deliver the news, the way he’d taken it, silent and steady, like a Shadowhunter should. The way he’d looked when he returned to campus after the funeral, his hollow eyes, his sallow skin, his face aging years in a week. Their parents were all warriors, and they knew: What Valentine had lost, any of them could lose. To be a Shadowhunter was to live in the shadow of death.

They couldn’t bring his father back, but if they could help him avenge the loss, surely they owed him that much.

Robert, at least, owed him everything.

“Of course we’ll come with you,” Robert said firmly. “Whatever you need.”

“Agreed,” Michael said. Where Robert went, he would always follow.

Valentine nodded. “Stephen? Lucian?”

Robert caught Amatis rolling her eyes. Valentine never treated the women with anything less than respect, but when it came to battle, he preferred to fight with men by his side.

Stephen nodded. Lucian, who was Valentine’s parabatai and the one he relied on most, shifted uncomfortably. “I promised Céline I would tutor her tonight,” he admitted. “I could cancel it, of course, but—”

Valentine waved him off, laughing, and the others followed suit.

“Tutoring? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Stephen teased. “Seems like she’s already aced her O levels in wrapping you around her little finger.”

Lucian blushed. “Nothing’s happening there, trust me,” he said, and it was presumably the truth. Céline, three years younger, with the fragile, delicately pretty features of a porcelain doll, had been trailing their group like a lost puppy. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that she’d fallen hard for Stephen, but he was a lost cause, pledged to Amatis for life. She’d picked Lucian as her consolation prize, but it was just as obvious that Lucian had no romantic interest in anyone but Jocelyn Fairchild. Obvious, that is, to everyone except Jocelyn.