“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: L.A. 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 wor
d 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.
Mark lowered his bow. “I see nothing,” he said, pronouncing the lie with a certain satisfaction. “And nothing should go—now.”
“Oh, boy, you will pay for this,” hissed the rider on the roan.
The horses and the riders shrieked like pterodactyls, circling him, but Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute stood his ground.
“Run!” he shouted. “Get home safe! Tell the Clave that I have saved more Shadowhunter lives, that I will be a Shadowhunter and be damned to them, that I will be a faerie and curse them! And tell my family that I love them, I love them, and I will never forget. One day I will go home.”
Simon and Isabelle ran.
George threw himself on Simon the instant he and Isabelle appeared in the grounds of the Academy, his arms strangling-tight. Beatriz and, to Simon’s amazement, even Julie flew at him only a second behind George, and both of them mercilessly pummeled his arms.
“Ow,” said Simon.
“We’re so glad you’re alive!” said Beatriz, punching him again.
“Why must you hurt me with your love?” asked Simon. “Ow.”
He disentangled himself from their grip, touched but also mildly bruised, then looked around for another familiar face. He felt a cold touch of fear.
“Is Marisol all right?” he demanded.
Beatriz snorted. “Oh, she’s better than all right. She’s in the infirmary with Jon waiting on her hand and foot. Because you mundanes can’t be healed with runes and she is milking that for all it’s worth. I’m not sure which has Jon more terrified, the thought of how fragile mundanes are, or the fact that she keeps threatening to explain X-ray machines to him.”
Simon was very impressed that even elfshot could not slow down Marisol and all her evil.
“We thought you might be dead,” said Julie. “The Fair Folk will do anything to vent their spite against Shadowhunters, those evil, treacherous snakes. They could have done anything to you.”
“And it would have been my fault,” George said, pale-faced. “You were trying to stop me.”
“It would have been the faeries’ fault,” said Julie. “But you were careless. You have to remember what they are, less human than sharks.”
George was nodding humbly. Beatriz looked as if she was in full agreement.
“You know what?” said Simon. “I’ve had enough.”
They all stared at him in blank incredulity. But Isabelle glanced at him and smiled. He thought he finally understood the fire that burned in Magnus, what made him keep talking when the Clave would not listen.
“I know you all think I’m always criticizing the Nephilim,” Simon went on. “I know you believe I don’t think enough of—the sacred traditions of the Angel, and the fact that you are ready to lay down your lives, any day, to protect humans. I know you think it doesn’t matter to me, but it does matter. It means a lot. But I don’t have the luxury of only seeing things from one perspective. You all notice when I put down Shadowhunters, but none of you check yourselves when you talk about Downworlders. I was a Downworlder. Today I was saved by someone the Clave decided to condemn as a Downworlder, even though he was brave as any Shadowhunter, even though he was loyal. It seems like you want me to just accept that the Nephilim are great and nothing needs to change, but I won’t accept anything.”
He took a deep breath. He felt as if all the comfort of the morning had been stripped away. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe he’d been getting too comfortable.
“I wouldn’t want to be a Shadowhunter if I thought I was going to be a Shadowhunter like your father or your father’s father before him. And I wouldn’t like any of you as much as I do if I thought you were going to be Shadowhunters like all the Shadowhunters before you. I want all of us to be better. I haven’t figured out how to change everything yet, but I want everything to change. And I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I’m going to keep complaining.”
“Later,” said Isabelle. “He’s going to keep complaining later, because we’re going to a wedding right now.”
Everyone looked mildly stunned that their emotional reunion had turned into a speech on Downworlder rights. Simon thought Julie might beat him about the head and face, but instead she patted him on the back.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll listen to your tedious whining later. Please try to keep it brief.”
She walked off with Beatriz. Simon squinted after her, and noticed that Isabelle was squinting after as well, a look of faint suspicion on her face.
Simon had a moment of doubt. George had meant Beatriz when he was talking about a girl liking Simon, right?
Surely not Julie. It couldn’t be Julie.
No, surely not. Simon was pretty certain he was just getting a pass on account of the narrow escape in Faerie.
George hung back. “I really am so sorry, Si,” he told Simon. “I lost my head. I—I maybe wasn’t quite ready to lead a team. But I’m going to be ready one day. I’m going to do what you said. I’m going to become a better Shadowhunter than any Shadowhunters before us. You won’t have to pay for my mistakes again.”
“George,” Simon said. “It’s fine.”
None of them was perfect. None of them could be.
George’s sunny face still looked under a cloud, unhappy as he almost never did. “I’m not going to fail again.”
“I believe in you,” said Simon, and grinned at him, until finally George grinned back. “Because that’s what bros do.”
Once he arrived in Idris, Simon found himself plunged into a state of wedding chaos. Wedding chaos seemed to be very different from normal kinds of chaos. There were, in fact, many flowers. Simon had a sheaf of lilies shoved upon him and he stood holding it, afraid to move in case the flowers spilled and he was responsible for ruining the whole wedding.
Many wedding guests were running about, but there was only one group that was all kids and no adults. Simon clutched his lilies and focused his attention on the Blackthorns.
If he had not met Mark Blackthorn, he was pretty sure he would’ve thought of them as a riot of anonymous kids.
Now, though, he knew they were someone’s family: someone’s heart’s desire.
Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, Octavian. And Emma.
Willow-slim, silver-fair Helen, Simon already knew. She was in one of the many rooms he was forbidden to go into, having mysterious bridal things done to her.
Julian was the next oldest, and he was the calm center of a bustling Blackthorn crowd. He had a kid in his arms, who was a little big for Julian to carry but was clinging tenaciously to Julian’s neck like an octopus in unfamiliar surroundings. The kid must be Tavvy.
All the Blackthorns were dressed up for the wedding, but already a little grubby around the edges, in that mysterious way kids got. Simon wasn’t sure how. They were all, aside from Tavvy, a little too old to be playing in the dirt.
“I’ll get Dru all cleaned up,” volunteered Emma, who was tall for fourteen, with a crown of blond hair that made her stand out among the dark-haired Blackthorns like a daffodil in a bed of pansies.
“No, don’t bother,” said Julian. “I know you want to spend some quality time with Clary. You’ve only been talking about it
for, oh, fifteen thousand years, give or take.”
Emma shoved him playfully. She was taller than he was: Simon remembered being fourteen and shorter than all the girls too.
All the girls except one, he recalled slowly, the real picture of his fourteenth year sliding over the false one, where the most important person in his life had been clumsily photoshopped out. Clary had always been tiny. No matter how short or awkward Simon had felt, he had always towered over her and felt it was his right to protect her.
He wondered if Julian wished Emma were shorter than he was. From the look on Julian’s face as he regarded Emma, there was not one thing about her he would change. His art and his Emma, Mark had said, as if they were the two essential facts about Julian. His love of beauty and his wish to create it, and his best friend in all the world. They were going to be parabatai, Simon was pretty sure. That was nice.
Emma sped away on a quest to find Clary, with one last grin for Julian.
Only, Mark had been wrong. Art and Emma were clearly not all that occupied Julian’s thoughts. Simon watched as he held on to Tavvy and stooped over a small girl with a round beseeching face and a cloud of brown hair.
“I lost my flower crown and I can’t find it,” whispered the girl.
Julian smiled down at her. “That’s what happens when you lose things, Dru.”
“But if I’m not wearing a flower crown like Livvy, Helen will think I’m careless and I don’t mind my things and I don’t like her as much as Livvy does. Livvy still has her flower crown.”
The other girl in the group, taller than Dru and in that coltish stage where her arms and legs were thin as sticks and too long for the rest of her body, was indeed wearing a flower crown on her light brown hair. She was sticking close to the side of a boy who had headphones on in the midst of the chaos of the wedding, and winter-gray eyes fixed on some distant private sight.
Livvy would walk over hot coals and hissing serpents for Ty, Mark had said. Simon remembered the infinite tenderness with which Mark had said: my Ty.
“Helen knows you better than that,” Julian said.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 36