“Sure,” he said, which wasn’t what he meant to say. “Yeah. I mean, come in.”
Clary entered wearing a green dress that perfectly complemented her hair, her skin, every part of her. And Simon had a revelation. If he still felt romantic attraction toward Clary, seeing her at that moment might have caused him to start sweating and stammering. Now he saw someone he loved, who looked beautiful, and was his friend. And that was all.
“Listen,” she said, shutting the door, “back at the ceremony, you looked . . . weird. If you don’t want to do it . . . The parabatai thing. It was a shock and I don’t want you to be . . .”
“What? No. No.”
Instinctively he reached for her hand. She squeezed it hard.
“Okay,” she said. “But something happened in there. I saw it.”
“In the hallucination I had, from the lake water, I saw Jace, and he kept telling me to remember how we met,” he said. “So I was trying to remember. And then right in the middle of the ceremony, I got the memory back. It just kind of . . . downloaded.”
Clary frowned, her nose wrinkling in confusion. “The memory of how you met Jace? Wasn’t it at the Institute?”
“Yes and no. The memory was really about us, you and me. We were in the coffee shop, Java Jones. You were naming all of these girls I could date and I was . . . I was trying to tell you that you were the one I liked.”
“Yeah,” Clary said, looking down.
“And then you ran out. Just like that.”
“Jace was there. You couldn’t see him.”
“That’s what I thought.” Simon studied her face. “You ran out while I was telling you how I felt. Which is okay. We were never meant to be . . . like that. I think that’s what my subconscious, in the annoying form of Jace, wanted me to know. Because I think we are meant to be together. Parabatai can’t like each other like that. That’s why it was important for me to remember. I had to remember that I felt like that. I had to know it was different now. Not in a bad way. In the right way.”
“Yes,” Clary said. She had gotten a little teary-eyed. “In the right way.”
Simon nodded once. It was too big to reply to in words. It was everything. It was all the love he saw in Jem’s eyes when he talked about Will, and the love in Alec’s face when he looked at Jace, even when Jace was being annoying, and a clear memory he had of Jace holding Alec while he was wounded and the desperation in Jace’s eyes, that terror that comes only from thinking you might lose someone you can’t live without.
It was Emma and Julian, looking at each other.
Someone was calling for them from downstairs. Clary brushed away a tear and got up and smoothed her already smooth dress.
“This is like a wedding,” she said. “I feel like they’re going to tell us we have to go pose for the photographer in a minute.”
Clary hooked her arm through his.
“One thing,” he said, remembering Maia, and Jordan. “Even when I’m a Shadowhunter, I’m still going to be a little bit a Downworlder. I’m never going to turn my back on them. That’s the kind of Nephilim I want to be.”
“I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” Clary said.
Downstairs, the two new parabatai were examining each other from across the room. Emma stood on one side, wearing a brown dress covered in twining gold flowers. Julian stood on the other, twitching inside his gray suit.
“You look amazing,” Clary said to them both, and they looked down shyly.
At the Accords Hall, Jace was waiting for them on the front step, looking like Jace in a suit. Jace in a suit was unbearable. He gave Clary a look up and down.
“That dress is . . .”
He had to clear his throat. Simon enjoyed his discomfiture. Not much ever threw Jace, but Clary had always been able to throw him like a Wiffle ball on a windy day. His eyes were practically cartoon hearts.
“It’s very nice,” he said. “So how was the ceremony? What did you think?”
“Definitely more fire than a bar mitzvah,” Simon said. “More fire than a barbecue. I’m going to go with Formal Event with the Most Fire.”
Jace nodded.
“They were amazing,” Clary said. “And . . .”
She looked to Simon.
“We have news,” she said.
Jace cocked his head in interest.
“Later,” she said, smiling. “I think everyone is waiting for us to sit down.”
“Then we need to get Emma and Julian over here.”
Emma and Julian were lurking in the corner of the room, heads close, but with an awkward gap between their bodies.
“I’m going to go talk to them,” Jace said, nodding at Julian and Emma. “Give them a few words of manly, thoughtful advice.”
As soon as Jace walked away, Clary started to speak, but they were immediately joined by Magnus and Alec. Magnus was about to start guest teaching at the Academy, and they wanted to know how bad the food was. Julian’s younger brothers and sisters—Ty, Livvy, Drusilla, and Octavian—were clustered together around the table with the appetizers. Simon glanced over his shoulder and saw Jace unloading Jacely advice onto the new parabatai. There was the delicious smell of roasting meat. Large platters of it were being placed on the tables now, along with vegetables and potatoes and breads and cheeses. The wine was being poured. It was time to celebrate. It was nice, Simon thought, in the midst of all the terrible things that could happen and sometimes did happen, there was also this. There was a lot of love.
As Simon turned back, he saw Julian hurrying out of the hall. Jace returned, his arm around Emma’s shoulders.
“Everything okay?” Clary asked.
“Everything’s fine. Julian needed air. This ceremony, it’s intense. So many people. You need to eat.”
This was to Emma, who smiled, but kept looking over at the door her parabatai had just gone through. Then she turned and saw Ty running across the Hall with a tray containing an entire wheel of cheese.
“Oh,” she said, “yeah, that’s bad. He can actually eat that entire cheese, but then he’ll throw up. I’d better get that or this will end badly for Jules.”
She ran after Ty.
“They have a lot on their hands,” Jace said, watching her go. “Good thing they have each other. They always will. That’s what being parabatai is about.” He smiled at Alec, who grinned back at him in a way that lit up his whole face.
“About that parabatai business,” Clary said. “We might as well tell you the news. . . .”
Born to Endless Night
By Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan
Magnus had left behind a sleeping child and his worn-out love, and he opened the door on a scene of absolute chaos. For a moment it seemed as if there were a thousand people in his rooms, and then Magnus realized the real situation was far worse.
—Born to Endless Night
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
—“Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake