“It doesn’t matter what’s in the Cup,” Julie said in her best obnoxiously knowing way, even though she clearly didn’t know any better than the rest of them. “The Cup’s magic. You could probably drink ketchup out of it and it would still work.”
“I hope it’s coffee, then,” Simon said with a wistful sigh of his own. The Academy was a caffeine-free zone. “I would be a much better Shadowhunter if I got to Ascend well-caffeinated.”
“Sunil said he heard that it’s water from Lake Lyn,” Beatriz said skeptically. Simon hoped she was right to be skeptical; his last encounter with Lake Lyn’s water had been unsettling, to say the least. And given that some unknown percentage of mundanes died upon Ascending, it seemed to him like the Cup didn’t need any additional help on the occasionally fatal front.
“Where is Sunil, anyway?” Simon asked. They hadn’t exactly made a plan to meet up tonight, but the Academy offered limited recreational options—at least if you didn’t enjoy spending your free time accidentally getting locked in the dungeons or stalking the giant magical slug rumored to slither through the corridors in the predawn hours. Most nights for the last couple of months, Simon and his friends had ended up here, talking about their futures, and he’d expected they would spend this last night the same way.
Marisol, who knew Sunil the best, shrugged. “Maybe he’s ‘considering his options.’?” She curled her fingers around the phrase. This was how Dean Penhallow had advised students on the mundane track to spend their final evening, assuring them there was no shame in backing out at the last moment.
“Humiliation. Lifelong embarrassment over your mundie cowardice and guilt for wasting all of our very valuable time,” Scarsbury had growled at them, and then, when the dean shot him a disapproving look, “But yeah, sure, no shame.”
“Well, shouldn’t he be ‘considering’?” Julie asked. “Shouldn’t you all be? It’s not like going to doctor school and taking the Hypocritical oath or something. You don’t get to change your mind.”
“First of all, it’s the Hippocratic oath,” Marisol said.
“And it’s called medical school,” Jon put in, looking rather proud of himself. Marisol had been schooling him on mundane life. Against his will, or so Jon had led them to believe.
“Second of all,” Marisol added, “why would you think any of us would be likely to change our minds? Are you planning to change your mind about being a Shadowhunter?”
Julie looked affronted by the idea. “I am a Shadowhunter. You might as well have asked if I’m planning to change my mind about being alive.”
“So what makes you think it’s any different for us?” Marisol said fiercely. She was the youngest of them by two years and the smallest by several inches, but Simon sometimes thought that she was the bravest. She was certainly the one he’d bet on in a fight. (Marisol fought well—she also, when necessary, fought dirty.)
“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Beatriz said gently.
“I really didn’t,” Julie said quickly.
Simon knew it was true. Julie couldn’t help sounding like a mundane-hating snob sometimes, any more than Jon could help sounding like—well, like an asshole sometimes. That’s who they were, and Simon realized that, inexplicably, he wouldn’t have it any other way. For better or worse, these were his friends. In two years they’d faced so much together: demons, faeries, Delaney Scarsbury, the dining hall “food.” It was almost like a family, Simon reflected. You didn’t necessarily like them all the time, but you knew, push come to shove, you’d defend them to the death.
Though he very much hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Come on, aren’t you a little nervous?” Jon asked. “Who can remember the last time anyone Ascended? It sounds utterly ridiculous when you think about it: One drink from a cup and—poof—Lewis is a Shadowhunter?”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous to me,” Julie said softly, and they all fell silent. Julie’s mother had been Turned during the Dark War. One drink from Sebastian’s Infernal Cup, and she’d become Endarkened. A shell of a person, nothing more than a hollow vessel for Sebastian’s evil commands.
They all knew what one drink from a cup could do.
George cleared his throat. He couldn’t stand a somber mood for more than thirty seconds—it was one of the things Simon would miss most about living with him. “Well, I for one am entirely ready to claim my birthright,” he said cheerfully. “Do you think I’ll become unbearably arrogant on first sip, or will it take a little time to catch up with Jon?”
“It’s not arrogance if it’s accurate,” Jon said, grinning, and just like that, the night righted itself again.
Simon tried to pay attention to his friends’ banter and did his best not to think about Jon’s question, about whether or not he was nervous—whether he should be spending this night in sober consideration of his “options.”
What options? How, after two years at the Academy, after all his training and study, after he’d sworn over and over again that he wanted to be a Shadowhunter, could he just walk away? How could he disappoint Clary and Isabelle like that . . . and if he did, how could they ever love him again?
He tried not to think about how it would be even harder for them to love him—or at least for him to appreciate it—if something went wrong in the ceremony, and he ended up dead.
He tried not to think about all the other people who loved him, the ones who, according to Shadowhunter Law, he was supposed to pledge never to see again. His mother. His sister.
Marisol and Sunil didn’t have anyone waiting for them back home, something that had always seemed unbearably sad to Simon. But maybe it was easier, walking away when you were leaving nothing behind. Then there was George, the lucky one—his adopted parents were Shadowhunters themselves, even if they’d never picked up a sword. He would still be able to go home for regular Sunday dinners; he wouldn’t even have to pick a new name.
George had been teasing him lately, saying that Simon shouldn’t have much trouble picking a new name, either. “?‘Lightwood’ has quite a ring to it, don’t you think?” he liked to say. Simon was getting very good at feigning deafness.
Secretly, though, a blush rising to his cheeks, he would think: Lightwood . . . maybe. Someday. If he dared let himself hope.
In the meantime, though, he had to come up with a new name of his own, a name for his new Shadowhunter self—which was approximately as unfathomable as everything else about this process.
“Um, can I come in?” A scrawny, spectacled girl of around thirteen stood in the doorway. Simon thought her name was Milla, but he wasn’t sure—the Academy’s new class was so large, and so inclined to goggle at Simon from a distance, that he hadn’t gotten to know many of them. This one had the eager but confused look of a mundane, one who, even after all these months, couldn’t quite believe she was really here.