“Yes, but . . .” Drusilla tugged at his sleeve so he would bend down and she could say, in an agonized whisper: “She’s been gone such a long time. Maybe she doesn’t remember . . . everything about me.”
Julian turned his face away, so none of his siblings could see his expression. Only Simon saw the flash of pain, and he knew he wasn’t meant to. He knew he wouldn’t have seen it, if he hadn’t seen Mark Blackthorn, if he hadn’t been paying attention.
“Dru, Helen has known you since you were born. She does remember everything.”
“But just in case,” said Drusilla. “She’s going away again really soon. I want her to think I’m good.”
“She knows you’re good,” Julian told her. “The best. But we’ll find your flower crown, all right?”
The younger kids did not know Helen in the same way Julian did, as a sibling who was there all the time. They could not rely on someone who was so far away.
Julian was their father, Simon thought with a dawning of horror. There was nobody else.
Even though the Blackthorns had family who wanted to be there for them, wanted it desperately. The Clave had ripped a family apart, and Simon did not know what effects that would have in the future or how the wounds the Clave had inflicted would heal.
He thought, again, as if he were still speaking to his friends at the Academy: We have to be better than this. Shadowhunters have to be better than this. We have to figure out what kind of Shadowhunters we want to be, and show them.
Maybe Mark had not known Julian as well as he thought. Or maybe Mark’s little brother, with no choice, had changed quietly and profoundly.
They all had to change. But Julian was so young.
“Hey,” said Simon. “Can I help?”
The two brothers did not look much alike, but Julian flushed and lifted his chin in the same way Mark had: as if no matter what, he was too proud to admit he might be hurting.
“No,” he said, and gave Simon a bright warm smile that was actually very convincing. “I’m fine. I have this.”
It seemed true, until Julian Blackthorn had gone out of Simon’s reach, and then Simon noticed again that Julian was carrying a kid who was too big for him to carry, with another kid holding on to his shirt. Simon could actually see how much there was on those thin young shoulders.
Simon did not fully understand the traditions of the Shadowhunter people.
There was a lot in the Law about whom you could and could not marry: If you married a mundane who did not Ascend, you got your Marks stripped and were out on your ear. You could marry a Downworlder in a mundane or a Downworlder ceremony, and you wouldn’t be out on your ear but everyone would be embarrassed, some people would act like your marriage did not count, and your terribly traditional Nephilim great-aunt Nerinda would start referring to you as the shame of the family. Plus with the Cold Peace functioning as it was, any Shadowhunter wanting to marry a faerie was probably out of luck.
But Helen Blackthorn was a Shadowhunter, by their own Law, no matter how many people might despise or distrust her for her faerie blood. And Shadowhunters had not actually built it into their precious Law that Shadowhunters could not marry someone of the same sex. Possibly this was just because it hadn’t occurred to anyone even as an option way back when.
So Helen and Aline actually could be married, in a full Shadowhunter ceremony, in the eyes of both their families and their world. Even if they were exiled again right afterward, they got this much.
In a Shadowhunter wedding, Simon had been told, you dressed in gold and placed the wedding rune over each other’s hearts and arms. There was a tradition a little like giving away the bride, for both parties in a marriage. The bride and groom (or in this case, the bride and bride) would each choose the most significant person to them from their family—sometimes a father, but sometimes a mother, or a parabatai or a sibling or chosen friend, or their own child or an elder who symbolized the whole family—and the chosen one, or suggenes, would give the bride or groom to their beloved, and welcome the beloved to their own family.
This was not always possible in Shadowhunter weddings, on account of sometimes your whole family and all your friends had been eaten by snake demons. You never knew with Shadowhunters. But Simon thought it was kind of beautiful that Jia Penhallow, Consul and most important member of the Clave, was standing as suggenes to give her daughter Aline to the tainted, scandalous Blackthorns, and to receive Helen into the bosom of her family.
Aline’d had some nerve suggesting it. Jia’d had some nerve agreeing to it. But Simon supposed that the Clave had already effectively exiled Jia’s daughter: What more could they do to her? And how better to politely spit in their eye than to say: Helen, the faerie girl you spat on and sent away, is now as good as the Consul’s daughter.
What is a Shadowhunter made of, if they desert their own, if they throw away a child’s heart like rubbish left on the side of the road?
Julian was the one standing to give Helen away. He stood in his gold-inscribed clothes, his sister on his arm, and his sea-in-the-sunlight eyes shone as if he was happy as any kid could be. As though he had not a care in the world.
Helen and Aline were both dressed in golden gowns, golden thread glittering like starlight in Aline’s black hair. They were both so happy, their faces outshone their gowns. They stood at the center of the ceremony, twin suns, and for a moment all the world seemed to spin and turn on them.
Helen and Aline drew the marriage runes over each other’s hearts with steady hands. When Aline drew Helen’s bright head down to her own for a kiss, there was applause all throughout the hall.
“Thank you for letting us come,” whispered Helen after the ceremony was over, embracing her new mother-in-law.
Jia Penhallow folded her daughter-in-law in her arms and said, in a voice considerably louder than a whisper: “I am sorry I must let you be sent away again.”
Simon did not tell Julian Blackthorn about meeting Mark, any more than he had told Mark that Helen was not there to care for the Blackthorn children. It seemed hideous cruelty, to load another burden on shoulders already burdened almost past bearing. It seemed better to lie, as faeries could not.
But when he went to Helen and Aline to congratulate them, he stepped up and kissed Helen on the cheek, so he could whisper to her: “Your brother Mark sends you his love, and his happiness for your love.”
Helen stared at him, sudden tears in her eyes but her smile even more radiant than before.
Everything is going to change for the Shadowhunters, Simon thought. For all of us. It has to.
Simon had special permission to stay the night in Idris, so he would not have to leave the wedding celebrations early.
There was going to be dancing later, but for now people were standing about in groups talking. Helen and Aline were sitting on the floor, in the center of the Blackthorns, like two golden flowers who had sprung up from the ground and bloomed. Tiberius was describing to Helen, in a serious voice, how he and Julian had prepared for the wedding.
“We went through any potential scenario that might occur,” he told her. “As if we were reconstructing a crime scene, but in reverse. So I know exactly what to do, no matter what happens.”
“That must have been a lot of work,” Helen said. Tiberius nodded. “Thanks, Ty. I really appreciate it.”
Ty looked pleased. Dru, wearing her flower crown and beaming ear to ear, tugged at Helen’s golden skirts for her attention. Simon thought he had rarely seen any group of people who all seemed so happy.
He tried not to think of what Mark would have given to be here.
“You want to go for a walk down the river with me and Izzy?” Clary asked, nudging him.
“What, no Jace?”
“Ah, I see him all the time,” said Clary, with the comfort of familiar and trusted love. “Not like my best friend.”
Jace—who was sitting talking with Alec, Alec who once again had not addressed a single word to Simon—made an obscene gest
ure to Simon as he left with Isabelle and Clary on either arm. Simon was not actually fooled that Jace was angry. Jace had hugged him when he saw him, and more and more Simon was coming to believe that he and Jace had not had a relationship in which they hugged before.
But apparently they were huggers now.
Simon, Isabelle, and Clary went walking down by the river. The waters looked like black crystal in the moonlight, and in the distance the demon towers gleamed like columns of moonlight itself. Simon walked a little more slowly than the girls, not used as they were to the strangeness and magic of this city, a city most of the world did not know existed, the shining heart of a secret and hidden land.
Simon was used to the Academy now. He would no doubt get used to all of Idris in time.
So much had changed, and Simon had changed too. But in the end, he had not lost what was most precious to him. He had been given back the name of his heart.
Isabelle and Clary looked back at him, walking so close that Isabelle’s waterfall of raven hair mingled with Clary’s fiery sunset of curls. Simon smiled and knew how lucky he was, lucky compared to Mark Blackthorn, who was locked away from what he loved best, lucky compared to a billion other people who did not know what it was they loved best of all.
“Are you coming, Simon?” Isabelle called out.
“Yes,” Simon called back. “I’m coming.”
He was lucky to know them, and lucky to know what they were to him, what he was to them: beloved, remembered, and not lost.
The Fiery Trial
By Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
He turned his head back down to tell Clary to look at the statue, but Clary was gone. He spun around, a full rotation. She was nowhere in sight.
—The Fiery Trial
Simon was starting to wonder about the fires. The fires didn’t like him. The fires moved around.
That seemed paranoid.
Outside, the trees were bare and the grass was brown. Inside, even the mold had retreated to its winter quarters between the stones in the basement walls. Shadowhunters didn’t believe much in central heating. The Academy had fireplaces, never too close together, and never near enough to anyone. No matter where Simon sat, they were at the far end of the room, crackling away. The elites tended to get into rooms first, and they took the fireside seats. But even when they didn’t—even when everyone entered at once—Simon ended up farthest from the fire. When you’re cold, a crackling fire starts to sound like gentle, mocking laughter. Simon tried to dismiss this thought from his head, because clearly the fires were not laughing at him.
Because that was paranoid.
There were several fireplaces in the cafeteria, but George and Simon had stopped trying to get seats near them. Simon had enough to worry about. He was looking at his plate. He had also told himself to stop doing this. Stop thinking about the food. Just eat the food. But he couldn’t help himself. Every night he teased it apart. Tonight looked to be some kind of stir-fry, but it appeared to have bread in it. There were peppers. There was something red.
It was pizza. Someone had stir-fried a pizza.
“No,” he said out loud.
“What?”
His roommate, George Lovelace, was already shoveling down his dinner. Simon just shook his head. These things didn’t bother George in the same way. Back home in Brooklyn, if Simon had heard that someone had stir-fried a pizza he would not have been upset. He would have assumed that some hipster restaurant had decided to deconstruct the pizza, because that is what hipster restaurants in Brooklyn do. Simon would have laughed, and maybe at some point it would have become popular, and then there would be trucks that sold stir-fried pizza, and then he would have eaten it. Because that is how Brooklyn works and because pizza. Best guess in this situation? Maybe someone dropped the pizza, or it broke up in the middle of cooking and for some reason the only conceivable solution was to put it in a pan and wing it.
The problem wasn’t the pizza, not really. The problem was that the pizza made him think of home. Any New Yorker confronted with bad pizza will mentally return home for at least a few moments. Simon was born and raised a New Yorker in the same way the elites were born and raised Shadowhunters. It was a part of him—the hum and the throb of the city. It could be as rough as the Academy. He knew to look down for rats on the subway tracks or near the edges of public squares. He was trained instinctively to swerve to avoid getting splashed with dirty snow slush by cabs. He didn’t even need to look down to step over puddles left by dogs.
Obviously, there were better parts than that. He missed coming over the Brooklyn Bridge at night and seeing the sweep of it all—the city lit up for the night; the grand, man-made mountains; the river surging underneath. He missed the feeling of being around so many people doing and making amazing things. He missed the constant feeling of the whole thing being a magnificent show. And he missed his family and friends. It was the holiday season now, and he should have been at home. His mother would have already taken out the menorah that he had painted at the do-it-yourself clay workshop when he was a kid. It was bright, decorated in thick, messy strokes of blue, white, and silver paint. He and his sister were in charge of making potato pancakes together. They’d all sit on the sofa and exchange gifts. And everyone he cared about was just a short walk away, a subway stop at the most.
“You’ve got that look again,” George said.
“Sorry,” Simon said.
“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay to be miserable. It’s the holidays, and we’re here.”
This was what was so great about George—he always got it, and he never judged. There were many downsides to Shadowhunter Academy, but George made up for most of them. Simon had had good friends before. George was like having a brother. They shared a room. They shared their misery and their small triumphs and their terrible meals. And in the competitive atmosphere of the Academy, George always had his back. He never reveled in doing something better than Simon (and being built like one of the lesser Greek gods, George often did excel at physical things). Simon felt his spirits buoy again. Just that George knew what he was thinking—just having his friend there—it was everything.
“What’s she doing here?” George asked, nodding his head at someone behind Simon.
Dean Penhallow had appeared at the far end of the room (near the laughing fireplace). She didn’t usually come to dinner in the cafeteria. She never came near the place.
“Your attention, please,” she said. “We have some wonderful news to share with all students at the Academy. Julie Beauvale. Beatriz Mendoza. Please join me.”
Julie and Beatriz stood at the same time and looked at each other with a smile. Simon had seen that kind of smile before, that kind of synchronized movement. That was Jace and Alec all over. The pair made their way through the room. Chairs scraped as people made way, and there was the lightest murmur. The fire laughed and laughed and popped and laughed. When they reached the end of the room, the dean put an arm around each, and they all faced the school body.
“I am pleased to announce that Julie and Beatriz have decided to become parabatai.”
A sudden rush of applause. Several people stood, mostly in the elite track, and hooted and called out. This was allowed for a few moments, and then the dean raised her hand.
“As you all know, the parabatai ceremony is a serious commitment, a bond broken only by death. I know this news will cause many of you to consider whether you will find a parabatai. Not all Shadowhunters have a parabatai, or even want one. In fact, most of you will not. That is very important to remember. If you feel, as Julie and Beatriz do, that you have found your parabatai, or if you want to speak to someone about any part of the ceremony or what it means, you can speak to any of us. We are all here to help you make this most important of decisions. But again, congratulations to Julie and Beatriz. In their honor, there is a cake this evening.”
As she spoke, the lurking evil that was the Academy cooks were bringing out a large, uneven cake.
“You may now resume your meal, and please do have some cake.”
“Where did that come from?” George asked. “Those two? Parabatai?”
Simon shook his head. Shadowhunter families twined around each other like climbing vines. It was easier to find your lifetime partner when you started from birth. Many at the Academy were strangers. Julie and Beatriz, in the elite track, had more connections to each other, but Simon had never gotten the idea that they were that close.
“Well, that was a surprise,” George said in a low voice. “You all right?”
It had hit Simon like a bit of a blow. He had thought of asking Clary to be his parabatai. But parabatai were like Alec and Jace, training together as Shadowhunters since they were kids. Sure, Simon and Clary had known each other that long, but not in the throwing-knives-and-killing-demons way (except in video games, which, unfortunately, did not count). Simon started to move the idea of parabatai into the mental category of things he probably would not have. He was training all the time. He hadn’t seen her. He was . . .
. . . very good at making up excuses.
He’d chickened out. He had seen his birthday coming, like a giant countdown clock. Every day he told himself it was too late. Clary had come the day before his birthday, bringing him a Sandman Omnibus as a gift. By then, he told himself, the countdown was over. The buzzer went off in his mind. He was nineteen.
He’d tried to put it out of his mind. But now, looking at these two newly announced parabatai, he delivered himself a mental kick.
“It’s not for everyone, Si,” George said. “Come on. Eat up, and we’ll go back and you can tell me more about Firefly.”
In the evenings, Simon had been expanding George’s cultural education by explaining the plot of every episode of Firefly, one by one. This had become a pleasant ritual, but it, too, had a countdown. There was only one more episode to go.
Before they could do this, the dean made her way past their table and stopped.
Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy Page 37