Page 27 of Better in Black
Secrets breed like rats. I know that now, but who knows much of anything when you’re young? As it turned out, I went to the Academy two years late—I was fourteen—but before you did, as you were kept at home by your brother’s illness. I carried my secrets there, my silent burdens, invisible to everyone.
Everyone but Valentine.
That was always his great skill: his ability to read people and to know what they wanted to hear, what they most yearned for, and what they were hiding. He must have watched me as I went to classes alone, and ate alone in the refectory. I was quiet, polite, and the other students were polite to me, but I possessed nofriends.I did not know how to make them: I had always had you, for so long that I did not recall any first meeting, any decision to bond ourselves together. It had simply happened, and I did not know how to make it happen again.
I admired the other students, especially those I secretly thought of as the Chosen Ones. Their laughter, their freedom, their lack of fear, their obvious enjoyment of each other’s company. Stephen Herondale, golden and beautiful, Robert Lightwood—dark, serious, intense—and hisparabatai,Michael Wayland. Hodge Starkweather, who was so brilliant, and glamorous Maryse Trueblood. And the leader of the whole pack, Valentine Morgenstern. He drew people to him like a moth to a flame: It was like magic, a glamour—he had only to reach out his hand and people would run to fetch anything he wanted.
He barely knew me the day he sidled up to me at archery training. I was watching Stephen Herondale aim at a target and miss; it didn’t seem to bother him. He only grinned and leaned against Robert’s shoulder while the other students laughed and clapped.
Valentine smiled at me. It’s shameful to remember now, how easily I fell for that smile. How I came to crave it. Theknowingnessof it, the sense that he could see straight through me. It always amused him, my stubborn determination to pretend away what was so clear to him. “You’re a better shot than him, you know. You just hold yourself back because you’re afraid people will think you’re showing off.”
I ducked my head, looked down. “If you say so.”
He handed me his own bow. “Go on.”
I went to stand before the target. Raised the bow, strung the arrow. Took my shot.
It hit, dead center. This time the laughter and clapping was for me. I turned around and grinned at Valentine, who was leaning against a nearby tree. He grinned lazily, beckoning me over. “Have lunch with me today,” he said.
You know what he was like. It was impossible to say no to him, and why would I have wanted to? I wanted to be his friend, and incredibly, somehow, from that moment on, I was.
I believed he saw something special in me. He must have, to single me out—to pair off with me in training classes, to study with me for exams, to choose me, again and again, when he had his choice of anyone. He told me I was brave and clever; he told me I was unlike the others who scurried around, snatching up crumbs of his attention, Robert and Michael and Hodge and even Maryse. I believed it all—that he saw in me not a follower, but an equal.
I fell behind in my letters to you. In fact, I don’t think I’d sent one since my friendship with Valentine had been cemented. I was always with him, and with the others; there was always something to do: a party, a game, a training session, a study group in the library. But that’s an excuse. The real truth was that I felt as if I was anew person. I was Luke, not Lucian. I was the best friend of the most popular boy in the school. In all of Idris. How could I write a letter full ofhim,full of names you didn’t know, activities you couldn’t take part in?
A year went by like this. Your brother died, and I finally wrote you a letter, which you never replied to. I spent the summer at Valentine’s manor house, learning to ride horses, training with him, listening to him talk about his passion for change within the Clave, about the dangers of Downworlders, about how things needed to be done differently.
When we returned to school the next year,youwere there. I was stunned, then, that you hadn’t told me you were coming, though I came to understand why. I was sitting in the refectory with Valentine and the others, laughing at a prank Stephen had just played on Hodge, when you walked in. You were fifteen, as was I. A child to me now, but then, to my younger self—you were radiant in a way that seemed to me, who had known you so long, entirely new. You wore a simple green dress, your hair loose, and all eyes followed you as you walked calmly through the room, looking neither to the right nor the left.
Stephen looked over at you and whistled. Hodge’s eyes widened. And Valentine looked at me, looking at you, and he smiled. “So,” he said to me, as my heart turned circles inside my chest. “Who’sthat?”
Who’s that?
Jocelyn, my Jocelyn.
I loved you so much. I still do.
—
I had to apologize to you, of course. I went to your room after lunch, where you were unpacking. Your roommate, Madeleine Bellefleur,seemed impressed to see me. Valentine’s best friend, one of the Chosen Ones, coming toherroom.
I could see how little that impressedyou.
I apologized for not going over to you in the refectory, for not writing. For not coming to your brother’s funeral. You were gracious, even kind. I invited you to eat dinner with my new group of friends, and you came, and they were eager to meet you. They showed off, were silly and ridiculous, but they made me laugh. Hodge gazed at you worshipfully. Maryse was delighted to have another girl there, and Valentine, as always, was eager to have someone new to charm, to draw in. To talk to about his ideas, his beliefs, his passion for change.
And it was awful.
Suddenly I could see them throughyoureyes. I could see that their jokes, their pranks, were edged with cruelty. I saw you wince when Maryse mocked Madeleine for staring at us from across the room. And I saw that—incredibly, unbelievably—you were unimpressed with Valentine. His charm, his charisma, the tools of his power: They didn’t work on you.
You excused yourself before dinner was over. Walked out of the room. I saw Valentine’s black eyes narrow; he was angry, but didn’t want to show it. I threw down my napkin and chased after you, catching up to you outside, in the long grass near the archery range. Where I had first met Valentine. I could almost see the ghost of him now, leaning against that oak tree, looking at me with that smile.
“I’m not sure I like your new friends,” you said. You were always direct.
“They’re not so bad,” I said. “They can be kind of…”
“Cruel?” you suggested.
“They mean well,” I said. “They’re just messing around.”
