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treatment as two Silent Brothers did their best to keep him alive. They had all wanted to strip him of the Mark, his parents told him, the Silent Brothers warning daily that this was the only way to ensure his survival and spare him further pain. Let him live out his life as a mundane: This was the conventional treatment for Shadowhunters who couldn’t bear Marks.
    “We couldn’t let them do that to you,” his mother told him.
    “You’re a Lightwood. You were born to this life,” his father told him. “This life and no other.”
    What they didn’t say, and didn’t need to: We would rather see you dead than mundane.
    Things were different between them, after that. Robert was grateful to his parents for believing in him—he too would rather be dead. But it changed something, knowing his parents’ love for him had a limit. And something must have changed for them, too, discovering that a part of their son couldn’t handle the Shadowhunter life, being forced to bear that shame.
    Now Robert could no longer remember what his family had been like before the Mark. He remembered only the years since, the coldness that lived between them. They acted their parts: loving father, doting mother, dutiful son. But it was in their presence that Robert felt most alone.
    He was, in those months spent recovering, frequently alone. The kids he’d thought of as his friends wanted nothing to do with him. When forced into his presence, they shied away, as if he were contagious.
    There was nothing wrong with him, the Silent Brothers said. Having survived the ordeal with the Mark intact, there was no risk of future danger. His body had teetered on the edge of rejection, but his will had turned the tide. When the Silent Brothers examined him for the last time, one of them spoke somberly inside his head, with a message for Robert alone.
    You will be tempted to think this ordeal marks you as weak. Instead, remember it as proof of your strength.
    But Robert was twelve years old. His former friends were tracing themselves with runes, shipping off to the Academy, doing everything normal Shadowhunters were supposed to do—while Robert hid away in his bedroom, abandoned by his friends, cold-shouldered by his family, and afraid of his own stele. In the face of so much evidence for weakness, even a Silent Brother couldn’t make him feel strong.
    In this way, nearly a year passed, and Robert began to imagine this would be the shape of the rest of his life. He would be a Shadowhunter in name only; a Shadowhunter afraid of the Marks. Sometimes, in the dark of night, he wished his will hadn’t been so strong, that he’d let himself be lost. It would have to be better than the life he’d returned to.
    Then he met Michael Wayland, and everything changed.
    They hadn’t known each other very well, before. Michael was a strange kid, allowed to tag along with the others, but never quite accepted. He was prone to distraction and strange flights of fancy, pausing in the middle of a sparring session to consider where Sensors had come from, and who had thought to invent them.
    Michael had shown up at the Lightwoods’ manor one day asking if Robert might like to go for a horseback ride. They’d spent several hours galloping through the countryside, and once it was over, Michael said, “See you tomorrow,” as if it were a foregone conclusion. He kept coming back. “Because you’re interesting,” Michael said, when Robert finally asked him why.
    That was another thing about Michael. He always said exactly what was in his head, no matter how tactless or peculiar.
    “My mother made me promise not to ask about what happened to you,” he added.
    “Why?”
    “Because it would be rude. What do you think? Would it be rude?”
    Robert shrugged. No one ever asked him about it or referred to it, not even his parents. It had never occurred to him to wonder why, or whether this was preferable. It was simply the way things were.
    “I don’t mind being