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.
Simon knelt at the center of the circles and reminded himself to breathe.
The Consul stood over him, her traditional red robe brushing the floor. He kept his eyes on the runes, but he could sense Clary out there rooting for him; he could hear the echo of George’s laughter; he could feel the ghost of Izzy’s warm touch on his skin. At the center of these circles, surrounded by runes, waiting for the blood of the divine to run through his veins and change him in some unfathomable way, Simon felt profoundly alone—and yet, at the same time, less alone than he’d ever been in his life.
His family was here, holding him up.
They would not let him fall.
“Do you swear, Simon Lewis, to forsake the mundane world and follow the path of the Shadowhunter?” Consul Penhallow asked. Simon had met the Consul before, when she’d delivered a lecture at the Academy, and again at her daughter’s wedding to Helen Blackthorn. On both occasions she had seemed like your basic mom: brisk, efficient, nice enough, and none too surprising. But now she seemed fearsome and powerful, less an individual than the walking repository of millennia of Shadowhunter tradition. “Will you take into yourself the blood of the Angel Raziel and honor that blood? Do you swear to serve the Clave, to follow the Law as set forth by the Covenant, and to obey the word of the Council? Will you defend that which is human and mortal, knowing that for your service, there will be no recompense and no thanks but honor?”
For Shadowhunters, swearing was a matter of life and death. If he made this promise, there was no turning back to the life he’d once had, to Simon Lewis, mundane nerd, aspiring rock star. There were no more options to consider. There was only his oath, and a lifetime’s effort to fulfill it.
Simon knew if he looked up he could meet Isabelle’s eyes, or Clary’s, and draw strength from them. He could silently ask them if this was the right path, and they would reassure him.
But this choice couldn’t belong to them. It had to be his, and his alone.
He closed his eyes.
“I swear.” His voice did not shake.
“Can you be a shield for the weak, a light in the dark, a truth among falsehoods, a tower in the flood, an eye to see when all others are blind?”
Simon imagined all the history behind these words, all the Consuls before Jia Penhallow stretching back for decades and centuries, holding this same Cup before one mundane after another. So many mortals, volunteering to join the fight. They had always seemed so brave to Simon, risking their lives—sacrificing their futures to a greater cause—not because they’d been born into a great battle between good and evil, but because they had chosen not to live on the sidelines, letting others fight for them.
It occurred to him, if they were brave for making the choice, maybe he was too.
But it didn’t feel like bravery, not now.
It simply felt like taking the next step forward. That simple.
That inevitable.
“I can,” Simon answered.
“And when you are dead, will you give up your body to the Nephilim to be burned, that your ashes may be used to build the City of Bones?”
Even the thought of this didn’t frighten him. It seemed suddenly like an honor, that his body would live on in usefulness after death, that from this time forward, the Shadowhunter world would have a claim on him, for eternity.
“I will,” Simon said.
“Then drink.”
Simon took the Cup into his hands. It was even heavier than it looked and curiously warm to the touch. Whatever was inside it didn’t look much like blood, fortunately, but it didn’t look like anything else he recognized either. If he didn’t know better, Simon would have said the Cup was full of light. As he peered down at it, the strange liquid almost seemed to pulse with a soft glow, as if to say, Go ahead, drink me.
He couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen the Mortal Cup—that was one of the memories still lost to him—but he knew the role it had played in his life, knew that if it weren’t for the Cup, he and Clary might never have discovered the existence of Shadowhunters in the first place. It had all begun with the Mortal Cup; it seemed fitting that it should all end here too.
Not end, Simon thought quickly. Hopefully not end.
It was said that the younger you were, the less likely drinking from the Cup was to kill you. Simon was, subjectively, nineteen, but he’d recently learned that by Shadowhunter rules, he was only eighteen. The months he’d spent as a vampire apparently didn’t count. He could only hope the Cup understood that.
“Drink,” the Consul repeated quietly, a note of humanity creeping into her voice.
Simon raised the Cup to his lips.
He drank.