Angels Twice Descending (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #10)

Only if you want to.

The Academy’s Shadowhunter students—Simon never thought of them as the “elites” anymore, just as he no longer thought of himself and the other mundanes as the “dregs”—sat in the first two rows of the audience. The students weren’t two tiers anymore; they were one body. One unit. Even Jon Cartwright looked proud of, and a little nervous for, the mundanes at the front of the chamber—and when Simon caught him locking eyes with Marisol and pressing two fingers to his lips and then his chest, it seemed almost right. (Or, at least, not a total crime against nature, which was a start.) There were no family members in the audience—those mundanes with living relatives (and there were depressingly few of them) had, of course, already severed ties. George’s parents, who were Shadowhunters by blood if not by choice, could have attended, but he’d asked them not to. “Just in case I explode, mate,” he’d confided to Simon. “Don’t get me wrong, the Lovelaces are hardy folk, but I don’t think they’d enjoy a faceful of liquefied George.”

Nonetheless, the room was almost full. This was the first class of Academy mundanes to Ascend in decades, and more than a few Shadowhunters had wanted to see it for themselves. Most of them were strangers to Simon, but not all. Crowded in behind the rows of students were Clary, Jace, and Isabelle, and Magnus and Alec—who had made a surprise return from Bali for the occasion—tag-teaming their squirming blue baby. All of them—even the baby—were intensely fixed on Simon, as if they could get him through the Ascension with sheer force of will.

This, Simon realized, was what Ascending meant. This was what being a Shadowhunter meant. Not just risking his life, not just carving runes and fighting demons and occasionally saving the world. Not just joining the Clave and agreeing to follow its draconian rules. It meant joining his friends. It meant being a part of something bigger than himself, something as wonderful as it was terrifying. Yes, his life was much less safe than it had been two years ago—but it was also much more full. Like the Council Hall, it was crowded with all the people he loved, people who loved him.

You might almost call them a family.

*

And then it began.

One by one the mundanes were summoned to the dais, where their professors stood in a somber line, waiting to shake their hands and wish them luck.

One by one the mundanes approached the double circles traced on the dais and knelt in their center, surrounded by runes. Two Silent Brothers stood by just in case something went wrong. Each time a mundane took position, they bent over the runes and scratched in a new one to symbolize that student’s name. Then they returned to the edges of the dais again, statue-still in parchment robes, watching. Waiting.

Simon waited too as one by one his friends brought their lips to the Mortal Cup. As a blinding flare of blue light encompassed them, then faded away.

One by one.

Gen Almodovar. Thomas Daltrey. Marisol Garza.

Each student drank.

Each student survived.

The wait was interminable.

Except that when the Consul called his name, it felt much too soon.

Simon’s feet were cement blocks. He forced himself toward the dais, one step at a time, his heartbeat pulsing like a subwoofer, making his whole body tremble. The professors shook his hand, even Delaney Scarsbury, who murmured, “Always knew you had it in you, Lewis.” A blatant lie. Catarina Loss gripped his hand tightly and pulled him close, her brilliant white hair sweeping his shoulder as her lips brushed his ear. “Finish what you started, Daylighter. You have the power to change these people for the better. Don’t waste it.”

Like most things Catarina said to him, it didn’t quite make sense, but some part of him still understood it completely.