Bitter of Tongue (Tales from Shadowhunter Academy 7)

"No, I'm the grateful type," Simon said firmly. "So here I am, humbly awaiting rescue. I hope you can see your way clear to saving me."

"I think I could possibly be persuaded," Isabelle said. "Given an incentive."

"Oh, please," Simon said. "I languished in prison, praying that someone brave and strong and babelicious would swoop in and save me. Save me!"

"Brave and strong and babelicious? You don't ask for much, Lewis."

"That's what I need," Simon said, with growing conviction. "I need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero, in fact, until the morning light. And she's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon--because I have been kidnapped by evil faeries--and she's gotta be larger than life."

Isabelle did look larger than life, like a girl on a big screen with her lip gloss glittering like starlight and music playing to accompany every swish of her hair.

She opened the cage door and stepped inside, twigs crackling under her boots, and crossed the floor of the cage to slide her arms around Simon's neck. Simon drew her face to his and kissed her lips. He felt the luxurious give of her ruby mouth, the slide of her tall strong beautiful body against his. Isabelle's kiss was like rich wine laid out for him alone, like a challenge offered and a promise kept.

He felt, curving against his mouth, her smile.

"Why, Lord Montgomery," Isabelle murmured. "It's been such a long time. I was worried I'd never see you again."

Simon wished he had braved the showers in the Academy this morning. What did dead rats matter, in the face of true love?

There was a rush of blood in his ears, and the sound of a tiny creak: the cage door swinging shut again.

Simon and Isabelle pulled abruptly apart. Isabelle looked ready to spring, like a tiger in lace. Hefeydd did not look particularly worried.

"Two Shadowhunters for the price of one, and a new bird for my cage," Hefeydd said. "And such a pretty bird."

"You think your cage can hold this bird?" Isabelle demanded. "You're dreaming. I got in, and I can get out."

"Not without your stele and your bag of tricks," Hefeydd said. "Throw them all through the bars of the cage, or I shoot your lover with elfshot and you watch him die before your eyes."

Isabelle looked at Simon and, stone-faced, began to strip off her weapons and shove them through the cage bars. Simon was now, perhaps unsettlingly, aware of the placement of many of Isabelle's weapons, and he noted that she had skipped the knife on the inside of her left boot. Oh, and the long knife in the sheath at her back.

Isabelle had many, many knives.

"It will not be so long until you need water to live, pretty bird," said Hefeydd. "I can wait."

He shimmered away. Isabelle collapsed at the bottom of the cage as if her strings had been cut.

Simon stared at her in horror. "Isabelle--"

"I am so humiliated," said Isabelle, her face in her hands. "I didn't even hear him coming. I have brought shame upon the Lightwood name. Utter shame. Total, total humiliation."

"I'm really flattered, if that helps."

"I got distracted making out with a boy, and then locked up by a goblin," Isabelle moaned. "You don't understand! You don't remember, but I was never like this before you. No boy ever meant anything to me. I had poise. I had purpose. I didn't get dumb crushes, because I was never dumb. I was pure battle skill in a bustier. Nobody could shatter my sheer demon-hunting sangfroid. I was cool before I met you! And now I spend my time chasing after a guy with demon amnesia and losing my head in enemy territory! Now I'm a chump."

Simon reached out for one of Isabelle's hands, and after a moment Isabelle let him peel the hand off her face and link her fingers with his. "We can be two chumps in a cage together."

"You're definitely a chump," Isabelle snapped. "Remember, you're still a mundane."

"How could I forget?"

"Did it never occur to you that I might be a faerie wearing a strong glamour, sent to deceive you?"

Do you remember the name of your heart?

"No," said Simon. "I'm a chump, but I'm not that much of a chump. I don't remember everything about our past, but I remember enough. I haven't learned everything about you now that we have another chance, but I have learned enough. I know you when I see you, Isabelle."

Isabelle looked at him for a long moment, and then smiled her lovely defiant smile.

"We're two chumps going to a wedding," she said. "I hope you noticed that I let him think I busted my way into this cage myself. Of course, I secured the key before I ever stepped into the cage." She pulled the key out of the front of her dress and held it up, glittering in the light of Faerie. "I may be a chump, but I'm not an idiot."

She leaped to her feet, her lace skirts swaying around her like a bell, and let them out of the cage. She picked up her weapons and stele from where they were lying in the dirt, and once her weapons were secured, she took Simon's hand.

They were only a few steps into the faerie forest when a shadow swooped down and upon them. Isabelle went for her knives, but it was only Mark.

"You have not escaped yet?" Mark demanded, looking harried. "And you stopped to acquire a paramour?"

Isabelle stopped dead. She, unlike Simon, recognized him right away. "Mark Blackthorn?" she asked.

"Isabelle Lightwood," Mark noted, mimicking her tone of voice.

"We met earlier," said Simon. "He helped me get that key."

"Oh now," said Mark, tilting his head in a birdlike movement. "It was no uneven bargain. You gave me some very interesting information about the Shadowhunters, and the great loyalty they have shown one of their own."

Isabelle's back straightened as it did at any challenge, black hair flying like a flag as she took a step toward him. "You have been done a terrible wrong," she said. "I know you are a true Shadowhunter."

Mark took a step back. "Do you?" he asked softly.

"For what it's worth, I disagree with the Clave's decision."

"That's the Clave, isn't it? I mean, I like Jia Penhallow okay, and it's not that I . . . dislike your dad," Simon, who did not actually like Robert Lightwood, said awkwardly. "But the Clave, basically assholes, am I right? We all know that."

Isabelle held her hand out, palm down, and rocked it back and forth in a gesture that said You've got a point but I refuse to agree with it out loud.

Mark laughed. "Yeah," he said, and he sounded a little more sane, a little more human, as if the laugh had grounded him somehow. There was an accent to his words that made Simon think not

faerie but: LA boy. "Basically assholes."

There was a rustle in the trees, a rising of the wind. Simon thought he could hear laughter and calling voices, hoofbeats upon the cloud and the currents of the air, the baying of hounds. The sounds of a hunt, the Hunt, the most remorseless hunt in this or any world. Faint, but not far enough away, and coming closer.

"Come with us," said Isabelle suddenly. "Whatever price there is to be paid, I will pay it."

Mark gave her a look that was equal parts admiring and disdainful. He shook his fair head, leaves quivering and light lancing through the bright locks.

"What do you think would happen if I did? I would go home . . . home . . . and the Wild Hunt would follow me there. Do you imagine I have not dreamed of running home a thousand times? Every time, I see gentle Julian pierced with the spears of the Wild Hunt. I see little Dru and baby Tavvy ridden down. I see my Ty, ripped apart by their hounds. I cannot go until there is some way to go to them without bringing destruction down on them. I will not go. You go, and go fast."

Simon pulled Isabelle backward, toward the trees. She resisted, her eyes still on Mark, but she let him draw her away into concealing leaves as more faerie horses hurtled down, lightning amid the trees, shadows against the sun.

"What trouble are you causing now, Shadowhunter?" asked a faerie on a roan horse, laughing as the steed whirled. "What is this word of more of your kind?"

"No word," said Mark.

There were more horses joining the roan, more and more of the Wild Hunt. Simon saw Kieran, a white silent presence. The faerie on the roan turned his horse toward the place where Simon and Isabelle stood, and Simon saw the roan sniff the air like a dog.

The rider pointed. "Why do I spy Shadowhunters, then, in our land and answerable to us? Should I ask them what they are about?"

He rode forward, but he did not make it far. He was wearing a cloak embroidered with silver, showing the constellations, the silver enchanted to move as though time were sped up and planets spun fast enough for the eye to see. His horse stopped short, its rider almost falling, when his beautiful silvery cloak was suddenly pinned to a tree by a well-placed arrow.