Alastair scoffed.
“My point,” Thomas went on, an edge to his voice, “is that I don’t think you believe the rude things you say. And I don’t understand why you say them. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s as if you want to drive everyone away.” He paused. “Why were you so awful to us in school? We never did anything to you.”
Alastair winced. For a long moment he was silent. “I was awful to you…，” he said at last, “because I could be.”
“Anyone can be a bastard if they want to be,” said Thomas. “You had no reason to do it. Your family are friends with the Herondales. You could at least have been kinder to James.”
“When I got to school,” said Alastair slowly, the effort clearly costing him, “loose talk about my father had preceded me. Everyone knew he was a failure, and some of the older students decided I was an easy target. They… let’s just say that by the end of the first week, I had been made to understand my place in the hierarchy, and I had the bruises to remind me should I ever forget.”
Thomas said nothing. It was bizarre to think of Alastair being bullied. He had always seemed like a prince of the school, striding about with his hair perfect and his chin in the air.
“After about a year of being knocked around,” Alastair went on, “I realized I could either become one of the bullies, or suffer for the rest of my school days. I felt no loyalty to my father, no need to defend him, so that was never a problem. I wasn’t very big—well, you know what that’s like.”
He eyed Thomas for a moment, speculatively. Feeling self-conscious, Thomas shrank back a bit. It was true that his muscles had come with his growth spurt, and he still wasn’t entirely comfortable taking up so much space in the world. Why couldn’t he have turned out more like Alastair—elegantly made and graceful?
“What I did have,” said Alastair, “was a savage tongue and a quick wit. Augustus Pounceby and the others would collapse laughing when I cut some poor younger student down to size. I never got my hands bloody, never hit anyone, but it didn’t matter, did it? Soon enough the bullyboys forgot they’d ever hated me. I was one of them.”
“And how did that turn out for you?” Thomas said in a hard voice.
Alastair looked at him matter-of-factly. “Well, one of us has a close-knit group of friends, and the other one has no friends at all. So you tell me.”
“You have friends,” Thomas said. But as he thought about it, he realized that whenever he saw Alastair at parties, he was either alone or with Cordelia. Or Charles, of course. Though that hadn’t been the case since Charles’s engagement…
“Then you lot arrived, a bunch of boys from famous families, too well brought up to understand at first what went on far from home. Expecting the world would embrace you. That you would be treated well. As I never had been.” Alastair pushed back a lock of hair with a shaking hand. “I suppose I hated you because you were happy. Because you had each other—friends you could like and admire—and I had nothing like that. You had parents who loved each other. But none of that excuses the way I behaved. And I do not expect to be forgiven.”
“I’ve been trying to hate you,” Thomas said quietly, “for what you did to Matthew. You richly deserve to be hated for what you have done.”
Alastair’s dark eyes glittered. “It wasn’t just his mother I slandered. It was your parents, too. You know it. So you don’t have to—to act all high-minded about this. Stop pretending you are only upset on behalf of Matthew. Hate me on your own behalf, Thomas.”
“No,” Thomas said.
Alastair blinked. His whole body seemed tensed, as if he were awaiting a blow, and part of Thomas wanted to deliver it—to say, Yes, Alastair, I despise you. You will never be anything but worthless.
But throughout the conversation, something had been building inside Thomas, having nothing to do with Alastair’s behavior at school and everything to do with events that had come later. All of Thomas’s instincts bade him to stay silent, to push these emotions back in the recesses of his being as he always did. But they had spoken more truthfully to each other in the last few minutes than they had in their entire lives, and Thomas suspected that if he did not say the rest now, he never would.
“The reason I cannot hate you is because—because of those days we spent in Paris together,” he said, and saw Alastair’s eyes widen. “You were kind to me when I was very alone, and I am grateful. It was the first time I realized you could be kind.”