Helen sighed. "Isabelle told me what you said about the fey, Simon. About how you think it's wrong to discriminate against them. That faeries can be good, just as much as anyone else."
He didn't understand where she was going with this, but he wasn't sorry to have the chance to confirm it. "She was right, I do think that."
"Isabelle believes that too, you know," Helen said. "She's been doing her best to convince me."
"What do you mean?" Simon asked, confused. "Why would you need convincing."
Helen kneaded her fingers together. "You know, I didn't want to come here to tell a bunch of kids the story of my mother and father--I didn't do that voluntarily. But I also didn't make it up. That's what happened. That's who my mother was, and that's what half of me is."
"No, Helen, that's not--"
"Do you know the poem 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'?"
Simon shook his head. The only poetry he knew was by Dr. Seuss or Bob Dylan.
"It's Keats," she said, and recited a few stanzas for him by memory.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd--Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried--"La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
"Keats wrote about faeries?" Simon asked. If they'd covered this in English class, he might have paid closer attention.
"My father used to recite that poem all the time," Helen said. "It was his way of telling me and Mark the story of where we came from."
"He recited you a poem about an evil faerie queen luring men to their deaths as a way of telling you about your mother? Repeatedly?" Simon asked, incredulous. "No offense, but that's kind of . . . harsh."
"My father loved us despite where we came from," Helen said in the way of someone trying to convince herself. "But it always felt like he kept some part of himself in reserve. Like he was waiting to see her in me. It was different with Mark, because Mark was a boy. But girls take after their mothers, right?"
"I'm not really sure that's scientifically accurate logic," Simon said.
"That's what Mark said. He always told me the faeries had no claim on us or our nature. And I tried to believe him, but then, after he was taken . . . after the Inquisitor told me the story of my birth mother . . . I wonder . . ." Helen was looking past Simon, past the walls of her domestic prison cell, lost in her own fears. "What if I'm luring Aline to that cold hill's side? What if that need to destroy, to use love as a weapon, is just hibernating in me somewhere, and I don't even know it? A gift from my mother."
"Look, I don't know anything about faeries," Simon said. "Not really. I don't know what the deal was with your mother, or what it means for you to be half one thing and half another. But I know your blood doesn't define you. What defines you is the choices you make. If I've learned anything this year, it's that. And I also know that loving someone--even when it's scary, even when there are consequences--is never the wrong thing to do. Loving someone is the opposite of hurting her."
Helen smiled at him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "For both our sakes, Simon, I really hope that you're right."
In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before . . .
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel.
Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side.
And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her.
And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing.
She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild.
Some nights they heard Arthur's screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal's nature.
She did not lie, for she could not lie.
Humans are animals.
Pain is their nature.
For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn't know; the lady didn't care; and so they were happy.
Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other.
The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie.
The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself.
The lady subjected herself to the useless brother's attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her.
The lady let her lover renounce her and run away.
And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him.
As she had given him his story, she gave him his children.
She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer.
This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know.
This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction.
I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that.
I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever.
This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.
A new cover will be revealed each month as the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy continue!
Continue the adventures of the Shadowhunters with Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn in
Lady Midnight
The first book in Cassandra Clare's new series, The Dark Artifices.
Emma took her witchlight out of her pocket and lit it--and almost screamed out loud. Jules's shirt was soaked with blood and worse, the healing runes she'd drawn had vanished from his skin. They weren't working.
"Jules," she said. "I have to call the Silent Brothers. They can help you. I have to."
His eyes screwed shut with pain. "You can't," he said. "You know we can't call the Silent Brothers. They report directly to the Clave."
"So we'll lie to them. Say it was a routine demon patrol. I'm calling," she said, and reached for her phone.
"No!" Julian said, forcefully enough to stop her. "Silent Brothers know when you're lying! They can see inside your head, Emma. They'll find out about the investigation. About Mark--"
"You're not going to bleed to death in the backseat of a car for Mark!"
"No," he said, looking at her. His eyes were eerily blue-green, the only bright color in the dark interior of the car. "You're going to fix me."
Emma could feel it when Jules was hurt, like a splinter lodged under her skin. The physical pain didn't bother her; it was the terror, the only terror worse than her fear of the ocean. The fear of Jules being hurt, of him dying. She would give up anything, sustain any wound, t
o prevent those things from happening.
"Okay," she said. Her voice sounded dry and thin to her own ears. "Okay." She took a deep breath. "Hang on."
She unzipped her jacket, threw it aside. Shoved the console between the seats aside, put her witchlight on the floorboard. Then she reached for Jules. The next few seconds were a blur of Jules's blood on her hands and his harsh breathing as she pulled him partly upright, wedging him against the back door. He didn't make a sound as she moved him, but she could see him biting his lip, the blood on his mouth and chin, and she felt as if her bones were popping inside her skin.
"Your gear," she said through gritted teeth. "I have to cut it off."
He nodded, letting his head fall back. She drew a dagger from her belt, but the gear was too tough for the blade. She said a silent prayer and reached back for Cortana.