Magnus lifted Catarina’s hand, which he was still holding, to his lips. “Ragnor would have been proud.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Catarina, shoving him. “You’re so mushy since you fell in love. And now you’re going to be even worse, because you have a baby. I remember what it was like. They’re so small, and you put so much hope into them.”
Magnus glanced at her, startled. She almost never mentioned the child she had raised, Tobias Herondale’s child. Partly because it was not safe: It was not a secret the Nephilim could ever know, not a sin they would ever forgive. Partly, Magnus had always suspected, Catarina did not speak of him because it hurt too much.
Catarina caught the glance. “I told Simon about him,” she said. “My boy.”
“You must really trust Simon,” Magnus said slowly.
“Do you know?” said Catarina. “I really do. Here, take these. I want you to have them. I’m done with them.”
She picked up the old coin on the desk and put it in Magnus’s palm, in the hand that already held Raphael’s letter to Ragnor. Magnus looked at the coin and the letter.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Catarina. “I read the letter a lot during my first year in the Academy, to remind myself what I was doing here and what Ragnor would have wanted. I’ve honored my friend. I’ve almost completed my task. You take them.”
Magnus tucked away the letter and the good-luck charm, sent by one of his dead friends to another.
He and Catarina walked out of Ragnor’s room together. Catarina said she was going to eat dinner, which Magnus thought was extremely reckless of her.
“Can’t you do something safe and soothing, like bungee jumping?” he asked, but she insisted. He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Come by the attics later. The Lightwoods will be there, so I need protection. We’ll have a party.”
He turned and left her, unwilling to enter the dining hall and behold the slime lasagna again. As he made his way up the stairs, he met Simon on his way down.
Magnus looked at Simon consideringly. Simon seemed alarmed by this.
“Come with me, Simon Lewis,” Magnus commanded. “Let’s have a chat.”
Simon stood at the top of one of the towers in Shadowhunter Academy with Magnus Bane, looking out at the gathering twilight and feeling vaguely uneasy.
“I could swear this tower used to be crooked.”
“Huh,” said Magnus. “Perception’s a funny thing.”
Simon was just not sure what Magnus wanted. He liked Magnus. He’d just never had a heart-to-heart with Magnus, and now Magnus was giving him a look that said what is your deal, Simon Lewis? Magnus even made the tatty gray shirt he was wearing look faintly stylish. He was fairly certain Magnus was too cool to care about his deal.
He glanced over at Magnus, who was standing at one of the large, glassless windows in the tower, the night wind blowing his hair back.
“I said to you once,” Magnus offered, “that one day, of all the people we know, the two of us might be the only ones left.”
“I don’t remember,” said Simon.
“Why should you?” Magnus asked. “Barring some freak tornado that sweeps away everyone we love, that is no longer true. You’re mortal now. And even the immortal can be killed. Maybe this tower will collapse and leave everyone to mourn us.”
The view from the tower, the stars over the woods, was beautiful. Simon wanted to get down.
Magnus reached into his pocket and took out an old, carved coin. Simon could not see the inscription on it in the dark, but he could see that there was one.
“This belonged to Raphael once. Do you remember Raphael?” Magnus asked. “The vampire who turned you.”
“Only in bits and pieces,” Simon said. “I remember him telling me Isabelle was out of my league.”
Magnus turned his face away, not quite successfully hiding a smile. “That sounds like Raphael.”
“I remember—feeling him die,” said Simon, his voice sticking in his throat. That was the worst of his stolen memories, that the weight of the memory remained when all else was gone, that he felt loss without knowing what he had lost. “He meant something to me, but I don’t know if he liked me. I don’t know if I liked him.”
“He felt responsible for you,” Magnus said. “It occurred to me today that maybe I should have felt responsible for you in the same way. I was the one who performed the spell that brought you back your memories; I was the one who set you on the path to Shadowhunter Academy. Raphael was the first one to place you in another world, but I placed you in another world as well.”
“I made my own choices,” Simon said. “You gave me the chance to do that. I’m not sorry you did. Are you sorry you restored my memories?”
Magnus smiled. “No, I’m not sorry. Catarina filled me in on a little of what’s been going on at the Academy. It seems like you have been doing just fine making your choices without me.”
“I’ve been trying,” said Simon.
He had been shocked by Alec praising him, and it was not as if he had expected Magnus to do it. But he felt warmed by Magnus’s words, suddenly warm all over, despite the wind sweeping in from the crystalline coldness of the sky. Magnus was not talking about the bits and pieces of his half-forgotten past but about what he was now and what he had done with his time since then.
It wasn’t anything remarkable, but he had been trying.
“I also heard you had a little adventure in Faerieland,” said Magnus. “We’ve been having trouble in New York with faerie fruit sellers as well. Part of the faeries running wild is the Cold Peace itself. People who are not trusted become untrustworthy. But there is something else wrong as well. Faerie is not a land without rules, without rulers. The Queen who was Sebastian’s ally has vanished, and there are many dark rumors as to why. None of which I would repeat to the Clave, because they would only impose harsher punishments on the faeries. They become harsher, and the fey wilder, and the hate between both sides grows day by day. There are storms behind you, Simon. But there is another and a greater storm coming. All the old rules are falling away. Are you ready for another storm?”
Simon was silent. He didn’t know how to answer that.
“I’ve seen you with Clary, and with Isabelle,” Magnus continued. “I know you are on the path to Ascension, to having a parabatai and a Shadowhunter love. Are you happy with it? Are you certain?”