"Not quite like this," he says, looking around. "Thanksgiving isn't exactly a Shadowhunter holiday and once Valentine came into all our lives, things were... they were different." He and Jocelyn had been the first two under Valentine's influence, so there had never really been a time when he'd known Maryse and Robert without Valentine being there, too, but there had been evenings when he would be off somewhere, doing something he felt he was unable to tell them about and they weren't all uncomfortable or cold.

"I never much liked your father," he admits, figuring Alec might at least understand why Luke would feel that way. "But he didn't particularly like me either. I was too close to Valentine for him to feel comfortable around me and even when I left the Circle, it wasn't Robert that was promoted to take my place. I hope he's grateful for that now, even if at the time it would have seemed an insult."

The fact that he hadn't been Valentine's second in command is part of why the Lightwoods had been given a relatively light punishment. Had Robert been in Stephen Herondale's place, Luke is almost entirely certain he'd be dead now.

"Sometimes, though, Valentine would go off on some secret mission and leave the rest of us wondering where he'd gone or what he was doing," he says. "Often we'd get together on those evenings, those of us who were closer to him, and we'd have dinner and wine. I know what we did was wrong, I know the Circle is nothing to remember fondly, but I do have good memories of some of those nights. I was so happy to be near Jocelyn and I always liked your mother. We got along well until I was bitten." That friendship had been one of the reasons he'd gone into the Institute to speak with her. He knows it's long gone, broken and discarded in the rubble of the Circle, but he'd banked on her memory of it to give him the few minutes to speak with her.