Chapter Text
Chapter One: July-September 2013
Kit looked at the squat brown-brick building in front him, and then back at Tessa. She caught his eye, her mouth quirking up.
“So, is this where I give you the pep talk?” she asked. “As you know, I never attended myself, and James got expelled fairly quickly from the Academy-- so I’m not sure I have all that much wisdom but we can give it a try.”
“Nope, not at all,” said Kit, unbuckling his seatbelt, and grabbing the bag at his feet. “I’ll be fine.”
“Of course you will,” Tessa replied, a fond note creeping into her voice and Kit ducked his head, pleased at the trust she had in him.
Mina gurgled happily in the backseat, and Kit looked back at her with a smile.
“Don’t worry, I’m a Herondale, a Shadowhunter, a former Shadow Market vendor and… probably should have a minor criminal record if we’re honest. I think I can handle a British high school,” Kit said with a winning grin, as he opened the car door.
“Bye Min-Min, bye Tessa,” he said. He leaned into the door. “I also know about the bet that Jace and Jem made about how long I would last and-” he smiled even wider. “I plan to make them both lose.”
Tessa winked at him, and looked back at Mina. “All right then. I think we’re set here. Mina mine- let’s get on with our busy day of shopping and visiting the local library.” She turned her attention back to Kit briefly. “Do you want me to pick you up at half three?”
Kit shook his head. “I’ll take the bus back to the village and then walk. If there’s one thing I learned from high school movies, it’s that while you can get your pare- adults to drop you off, only losers get picked up after school. I should probably start off on the right foot.”
Tessa nodded at that. “Let’s go with the experts then,” she said mock-gravely. “See you after school. And have fun,” she said, with a tiny wave.
Kit straightened up and turned towards his new school. Altofts Sixth Form. “All right, let’s do this,” he muttered to himself as he walked towards the entrance.
*
It had all started with his early morning running. A terrible habit to have picked up. One that Jem had called him on back early in the summer when he had agreed to train with Kit.
Kit had actually taken to getting up early back in the winter. He hadn’t admitted it to Jem and Tessa, but his nightmares - swirling terrors of both mantid demons and black shapes with white burning eyes that had him waking up gasping and drenched in sweat - combined with the lack of central heating that turned his room into a freezer until the heat turned on again at seven... it just wasn’t conducive to sleeping in.
At first he had just tried to walk downstairs to get snacks from the kitchen and watch some tv. But he realised soon after Mina was born that any sound would be liable to wake her, given the bat-eared hearing that babies seemed to have. And he didn’t want to be the cause of further sleeplessness for Jem and Tessa.
So he started slipping down the back staircase by his room, into the garden. And well… no use freezing in the garden and he still had delusions he might still want to be a full proper Shadowhunter someday, or at very least, not die horribly when/if this whole First Heir thing caught up to him. It was also probably worth being fast enough to run away if he needed to.
And he had to admit, he liked it, Plus, the scenery was beautiful, given that Cirenworth was located close to the edge of Dartmoor. Running alongside the narrow, suicidal-for-more-than-one-car lanes, with trees forming tangled green arcs overhead, across old stone bridges into ancient woods and up high, rolling sparse hills, he had plenty of other things to look at, and not think about how he had messed things up, until the aching in his legs and burning in his lungs made him stop. Which was, admittingly, getting rarer, even in the occasional stifling heat of July.
He had a whole route figured out now, four months in. Which was why, Kit admitted to himself, he was irritated that someone else had found a similar path.
It was only for about two miles just on the outskirts of the village but Kit could see him out of the corner of his eye most days this last week.
He was taller than Kit (most guys his own age seemed to be, Kit noted sadly) and he usually wore what looked like a basketball jersey, shorter shorts than Kit figured most American teen boys would be comfy with, and had oversized headphones either on his head or around his neck. Other than that, he didn’t remind Kit of anyone.
The first time, the other boy had nodded at him in a friendly way as Kit had run past the tree where the boy was stretching, his white teeth flashing briefly in his dark-skinned face. Kit had nodded back and kept on running. It wasn’t that he wanted to be unfriendly… but he hadn’t really thought about making new friends, and figured given his background of Shadowhunter and part of a long-lost line of faerie royalty, it might be harder to relate to any new ones, especially mundanes.
Plus, he wasn’t sure he was that great of a friend, given the mess that had happened at the LA Institute. So he had been distant to any friendly overtures from local teens his age since he had arrived at Cirenworth, although he had to admit, he hadn’t minded the attention the giggling squad of girls outside the bakery gave him.
But a week into this new shadow, Kit had rounded a particularly tricky corner on the narrow path and found the other boy, frozen in place. And Kit could immediately see why. He was surrounded by cows.
Now, cows might not seem like a dangerous situation but after nearly being trampled by an angry bull early on in his explorations of the Devon countryside, Kit was inclined to give any other bovines as far a berth as he could while running. Or in any other situation honestly.
Kit met the other boy’s eyes. “You er- ok?” he called.
“Ahh. Maybe?” The boy looked a bit panicked as two cows started moving towards him, one cutting him off from the fence that Kit could see he was trying to inch towards.
Kit made his decision. “Hey cows!” he shouted. The cows ignored him. Kit summoned up his courage and started jogging towards the small herd, waving his arms. “You heifers! You lazy… demonic spawn!”
The boy goggled at him and Kit narrowed his eyes. “Hop the fence!” he yelled, as a couple cows started moving towards him. Kit gulped and summoned all his courage and ran directly towards him, hoping that the cow in the way would move and he wouldn’t have to dodge it or worse, attempt a leap over it. It did, and Kit stopped to grab at the boy’s arm, who finally started moving. They both scrambled up over the wide, stone fence to the next field over, which was thankfully cow-less.
“Thanks,” the boy said, as they both climbed down. “That would’ve been an embarrassing end.” He grinned, brushing off the dirt from his shorts. “I’m Ade.”
“Kit,” Kit answered cautiously, as the adrenaline in his system slowly started to leave.
“Yeah, I’ve seen you around,” Ade said. “Mate, you’re fast.”
Kit thought back to his time in the LA Institute and watching Emma run swiftly over miles of sandy beach, and even the time that he and the twins had run along the Thames to escape the Riders of Manan. He was slow, compared to others. “No, not really.”
“Ooh, an American! Didn’t expect that,” Ade whistled, disentangling his headphones from his short-cropped black curls as they both started walking towards the other side of the field to rejoin the road. “You here with your family on holiday?”
“No,” said Kit shortly. “I live just outside Sefton Crufts.” He glanced over, wondering if Ade knew about Cirenworth. A lot of the locals in the village did, and he knew that Tessa and Jem (alongside Mina) had basically gathered a fan club.
“No joke?” Ade said. “That’s cool. I live in...” He named a village that Kit thought he remembered was a few miles back. “What high school did you go to?”
“Oh, I erm- homeschooled,” Kit mumbled, looking down. Time for the lies.
Ade nodded. “I see.” They trudged through some bushes. At the edge of the road, Ade looked at Kit and gestured towards the buildings off in the distance. “Hey, given that you basically saved my life from… what was it you called them…. Demonic cow spawn? Do you want to get breakfast with me at ‘spoons? We’re pretty close to it - I’ll pay. ”
Kit started to shake his head but at that point, his stomach betrayed him and made a loud gurgling sound, reminding him that he had just run the better part of eight miles and had been up since six. Ade let out a big laugh. “Hah, you can’t argue with that, man,” he said, pointing at Kit’s midsection. “Let’s go eat.”
*
“Wow, this is really good,” Kit said, shovelling in the eggs and bacon.
Ade looked at him over a similar pile of breakfast, his friendly brown eyes puzzled. “Yeah, of course,” as if it were obvious. “Have you never had a Wetherspoons breakfast? When did you move here?”
“Last fall,” Kit said, figuring that as long as he stuck to the basics, he could manage it. “And no, I haven’t. But my- Jem and Tessa have taken me to the Bull and Hart. Food is also good there.”
“Ah,” Ade nodded wisely. “The gastropub,” he looked Kit over, as if assessing him. “Yeah, that tracks. I’m glad to give you some introduction to proper English pub food then.”
Kit thought that he had been vaguely insulted - or at least labelled. He changed the topic. “I’ve been running that route for a few months now. I only just saw you on it last week. Did you just move here too?”
Ade shook his head. “Nah, I’m not local either. But I’ve been here longer than you. My parents moved us down from London so my mum could take over a GP practice, but it was before I started GCSE’s.” He speared a couple of sausages and stuffed them in his mouth, chewing. He continued. “Football season starts in a couple weeks, and I’m starting at Altofts College and want to be on first squad. So I thought I should work on my endurance. Kinda spent most of the spring prepping for exams.” He lowered his voice. “I plan to go to Kings for medicine so was kind of a nerd for most of last year.”
Kit had only understood about half of the previous sentences but he nodded. “Plus you want to be able to outrun any further cow-based incidents,” he cracked.
Ade grinned cockily. “Well, let’s see. But I figured you seem to have that route down- how about you be my cow-guard?”
“If you’ll get my breakfast, sure,” Kit said, his mouth full of toast.
“It’s a deal Kit…” Ade trailed off.
“Kit Herondale,” Kit answered.
*
After that, while Kit and Ade kept to their respective routes, and were able to avoid further herds of cows, they started meeting up for Wetherspoons’ breakfasts a few times a week with the healthy appetite of the teenage boys they were. There they discovered that they while they didn’t support the same football teams (Kit didn’t understand the obsession really, but had adopted the same team Jem supported - Liverpool - and Ade was a hardcore Millwall fan), they had other common interests, including British absurdist comedies like Peep Show, the IT Crowd and the In-Betweeners.
Until the day that the pub greeted them with a ‘No electricity’ sign and Kit decided to invite Ade back to Cirenworth. He had told Jem and Tessa about Ade after the first couple of meetings, and while they were their typical low-pressure selves, Kit thought they were happy that he had made a friend and told Kit to invite him around sometime.
“Whoa, I had heard…” Ade said, trailing off as they walked up the long yard to the white-washed manor house, rain drizzling down the grey slates. English weather in August - one hour it was warm and sunny, and then the next like mid-November. “You like… a long-lost American heir to some posh Downton Abbey shit?”
Kit let out a rude noise. “As if.” He suddenly became nervous though. There were rarely mundanes in the house - sometimes builders, given Tessa and Jem were still making the place habitable, plus a couple of mums and babies sometimes from Tessa’s local baby group. It’s not as if Ade or anyone could tell that he was anything other than a normal person. Well… as long as they avoided the training room. And maybe keep Ade away from the old family photos. Tessa looked a bit too ageless at times, Kit thought.
But Kit hadn’t needed to worry, the visit went really well. Jem and Mina had made their usual pilgrimage to the bakery, and they had all sat in the now-sunny garden and feasted on pastries, thick, buttery toast and fresh orange juice. Ade had appropriately complimented Mina: “Your sister’s really cute. Almost as cute as my nieces.” And had asked polite enough questions to the lies that Jem and Tessa told him about what brought them to England and Cirenworth. “So you’re like- an art dealer, that’s really cool.” And had given them enough about his own background: “Yeah, so like my mum’s a GP, she moved here after studying medicine in Lagos and my dad was in the army but now he does security installations for rich footballers and bankers with second homes near Dartmoor. My sisters live in London- yeah, I’m the youngest. I can’t wait to go back to London. Devon’s okay but it’s not the city.”
He said with the fervor of a true believer and Kit remembered his brief time in London. He hadn’t been back since… well, since he had left with the Blackthorns.
He was briefly lost in his memories that he almost missed the next part of the conversation.
“Kit should come study at Altofts,” Ade said. “I know it’s probably not the same as the American system but it has a really good reputation- they sent like, three people to Oxbridge last year. And lots to Exeter, and the London unis.”
“I think that’s up to Kit,” Jem said, with a small smile, as he sipped his coffee.
Kit was confused. Attend a mundane high school? That had never been brought up. He cleared his throat. “Hey- should we go up to my room? I got Call of Duty on my playstation.”
“Yeah, tight,” Ade said cheerfully. “Thanks for breakfast,” he said nodding to Jem and Tessa, who were both looking bemused.
*
“He has a point,” Jem said, later on, as they finished up in the garden from their daily training regime.
Kit looked up from where he was currently doubled over in pain. Jem had run him hard today- they had ended with some hand-to-hand combat, and Jem had finished off by throwing him in some kind of super harsh judo flip. Kit was fairly sure he needed an iratze for his ribs...“What?”
“Your friend. You’re training with me but there’s only so much Shadowhunter training that we can do in a day- plus, I still have other responsibilities that I’ll need to see to. Going to this college could be a good thing.”
Oh. Kit’s chest went tight. He knew that Jem had other errands and things he needed to see to. He hadn’t realised that the training might be taking up too much of his time.
“And you can meet other kids your age,” Tessa called in her low, musical voice. She and Mina had been sitting on a plaid blanket a little ways off from the cleared training ground.
“You mean, you think I can pull off the dual roles of training for epic battles between good and evil and still do my calculus homework?” Kit said sarcastically but he started to feel a twinge of excitement. It wasn’t that he had been bored this past winter - he and Tessa had done enough homeschooling ahead of Mina’s birth and he had spent a lot of quality time wallowing in his room and shooting out his feelings on his playstation… but he wasn’t sure he could do that for a second winter in a row.
Tessa grinned. “Buffy did it. I think you could.”
“Heh, well- you’d probably know, right?” Kit shot back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tessa said slowly, her eyebrows raising.
“C’mon- you mean in the past century, you never pulled an Edward Cullen and went to high school again?” Kit asked sceptically.
“Read the book,” Tessa said automatically, as she shook her head and pulled Mina up into her lap. But a blush emerged on her cheeks and Kit saw an opening.
“Saw the movie,” Kit replied, fascinated. “Hah, you did! Nothing to be ashamed about, Tessa. I bet there’s a reason that so many vampire movies do it.”
Jem watched as they went back and forth, his face a study of confusion, as it so often did when they traded pop culture quips.
“No, I never attended a high school,” Tessa corrected him. “But I… may have a few English degrees.”
Jem looked at her fondly. “I know you did Cambridge in the 90s…” he said. “But what were the other ones?”
“Berkeley in 1965, and Columbia in the late 80s,” Tessa replied. “But the point is, Kit. You’re not a warlock. This is your chance to have a typical high school experience.”
“Shouldn’t I be having a typical Shadowhunter teen experience?”
Jem and Tess exchanged looks. “Well…” Tessa said gently. “There’s not really a typical experience but in terms of the more usual ones… most go to either the Academy, or are tutored in their local Institute.”
“Neither which are an option for me,” Kit said, suddenly feeling a bit bitter. “I need to avoid most Downworld or Shadowhunter places until we know more about the First Heir stuff.”
Jem was sympathetic. “We would’ve liked to have helped you with this, Kit. We did mean to get you a tutor but given the… upheaval in the last year with the Cohort… there are fewer Shadowhunters around anyway, and many of them are tied to their Institute or are helping out with the reformed Academy in New York.”
“I’m enjoying training with you, Jem,” Kit said slowly, not sure where the conversation was going. Did Jem want to stop?
Jem smiled. “I know. I am too. And I think it’s going well- and we’ll continue with it.” He stepped closer to Kit, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “But… I think it’s good to not just focus on Shadowhunter education to the exclusion of everything else.”
His eyes took on a sudden, far away look, and Kit thought he saw some sorrow pass through them. “Given the events of the past few years- I think there are going to be more changes and upheaval coming for Shadowhunters and the Downworld. Having some who understand both the Shadowhunter and mundane world, and who can bridge the two cultures and their histories- that will help us all navigate through it.”
Kit thought back to some of the conversations he had had with members of the Cohort, and even with Emma and the Blackthorns, all of whom had been fairly ignorant of twentieth century history and some of the parallels that were currently happening within Shadowhunter society.
He took a deep breath. “Yeah- I get that. When you put it that way- the hard job of getting high and making out with people under the bleachers to be this noble task…” he held his hand up, as he saw both Jem and Tessa take synchronised breaths as if to respond. “Jokes- I’m in.”
They both smiled. “We can go into Totnes tomorrow and pick you up a syllabus so you can choose your courses,” Tessa said, as Mina drooled on her shoulder. Kit didn’t think that was the right wording but he nodded.
“Oh, and don’t think if you go, you’re going to get that light a treatment on your Shadowhunter training. I’ve been in contact with several Institutes and people we know… it’ll be good for you to have exposure to different ways of fighting and training,” Jem informed him. “So- starting from next month, we’ll be hosting several guest tutors for you,” his smile had a wicked edge. “It’ll be fun, trust me.”
Kit gulped. “Yay?”
*
So, that was how, he, Kit Herondale, future Shadowhunter extraordinaire and heir to the First Heir or whatever, ended up at a sixth form college in South Devon. It wasn’t going to be entirely like he had seen in movies- this seemed more like a cross between community college and high school, Kit thought, as he pulled out the schedule he had been given from the front office. The secretary had almost swooned when he walked in, telling him she loved his accent and so Kit left feeling pretty smug. But that smugness had quickly drained away as other people streamed around him and he tried to figure out what the double and single blocks meant, and what the hell was his tutor group…?
“Yo, Herondale!” he heard a voice call. Kit looked up and saw Ade approaching. Kit had texted him earlier.
“You’re here,” Ade said, after he had clapped Kit on the back in greeting. “Noice.” He gestured to his friends around him. “This is Eamonn, Tom and Ben. Lads- this is Kit Herondale. He’s an American, from Los Angeles.”
The other boys looked vaguely impressed, and he made small talk with them as they threaded their way through the busy halls. Ade checked Kit’s schedule. “Awesome- we’re in the same tutor group, although…” his eyes danced down the page. “Nothing else-” he handed it back to back to Kit. “Not surprising though- I’m on a one way ticket study medicine in London with Chemistry, Bio, Physics and Maths and you’re- an artsy lad,” he said, with a friendly grin. “Which is good, no rivalry between us.”
“Yeah,” Kit mumbled. He had chosen Art (he wanted photography but it hadn’t been offered as a full A-Level), English Literature (for Tessa and because he actually did like reading the classics, he had discovered), History (because someone had to know about mundane history, according to Jem) and Film Studies (because duh).
Kit and Ade split off from the rest of his friends and went into a classroom.
The tutor group seemed to be like the American version of a homeroom, and Kit relaxed into his seat as the teacher in the front of the class droned on about regulations and expectations. As he leaned back in his chair, he took stock of his new classmates.
“Psst,” came a hiss from his right. Kit looked over, and saw a girl with brown hair cut in a severe bob smile at him. He smiled back; he planned to unleash the full Herondale charm at this school.
“I like your tattoo,” she whispered, pointing at his hand.
Kit froze. He looked straight ahead, ignoring her. Before heading out of the house in the morning, he had spent time painstakingly drawing a glamour rune on his arm, to hide his other runes, including the very obvious Voyance one.
Shit. There were mundanes here in the school with the Sight. Well… that was going to make things interesting…
*
To be continued...