George shook his head warningly. “Simon, I don’t think—”
“If you hate it so much, why are you even here?” Beatriz cut in, an uncharacteristically hostile note in her voice. “You get to pick the life you want to live.” She stopped abruptly, leaving something unspoken hanging in the silence. Something, Simon suspected, like: Unlike the rest of us.
“Good question.” Simon set down his fork and pushed his chair back.
“Come on, you didn’t even finish your . . .” George waved toward the plate, as if he couldn’t bring himself to actually describe it as food.
“I just lost my appetite.”
Simon was halfway to the dungeons when Catarina Loss stopped him in the hallway.
“Simon Lewis,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“Can we do it in the morning, Ms. Loss?” he asked. “It’s been a long day, and—”
She shook her head. “I know about your day, Simon Lewis. We talk now.”
The sky was bright with stars. Catarina’s blue skin glowed in the moonlight, and her hair burned silver. The warlock had insisted that they both needed some fresh air, and Simon had to admit she was right. He felt better already, just breathing in the grass and trees and sky. Idris had seasons, but so far, at least, they weren’t like the seasons he was used to. Or rather, they were like the best possible versions of themselves: each fall day crisp and bright, the air rich with the promise of bonfires and apple orchards, the approach of winter marked by only a startlingly clear sky and a new sharp bite to the air that was almost pleasurable in its icy pain.
“I heard what you said at dinner, Simon,” Catarina said as they strolled across the grounds.
He looked at his teacher with surprise and a bit of alarm. “How could you?”
“I’m a warlock,” she reminded him. “I can a lot of things.”
Right. Magic school, he thought in despair, wondering if he’d ever have any privacy again.
“I want to tell you a story, Simon,” she said. “It’s something I’ve told a very few, trusted people, and I hope that you’ll choose to keep it to yourself.”
It seemed like a strange thing for her to risk on a student she barely knew—but then, she was a warlock. Simon had no idea what they were capable of, but he was getting better at imagining. If he broke her confidence, she’d probably know it.
And act accordingly.
“You were listening in class to the story of Tobias Herondale?”
“I always listen in class,” Simon said, and she laughed.
“You’re very good at evasive answers, Daylighter. You’d make a good faerie.”
“I’m guessing that’s not a compliment.”
Catarina offered him a mysterious smile. “I’m no Shadowhunter,” she reminded him. “My opinions on faeries are my own.”
“Why do you still call me Daylighter?” Simon asked. “You know that’s not what I am anymore.”
“We are all what our pasts have made us,” Catarina said. “The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we’ve been.” She held up a finger to silence him, as if she knew he was about to argue. “Forgetting those choices doesn’t unmake them, Daylighter. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?” he asked, his irritation more visible than he’d intended. Why did everyone in his life feel the need to tell him who he was, or who he should be?
“You’re impatient with me,” Catarina observed. “Fortunately, I don’t care. I’m going to tell you another story of Tobias Herondale now. Listen or not—that’s your decision.”
He listened.
“I knew Tobias, knew his mother before he was born, watched him as a child struggling to fit into his family, find his place. The Herondales are a rather infamous line, as you probably know. Many of them heroes, some of them traitors, so many of them brash, wild creatures consumed by their passions, whether it be love or hate. Tobias was . . . different. He was mild, sweet, the kind of boy who did as he was told. His older brother, William—now, there was a Shadowhunter fit to be a Herondale, just as brave and twice as headstrong as the grandson who later bore his name. But not Tobias. He had no special talent for Shadowhunting, and not much love for it either. His father was a hard man, his mother a bit of a hysteric, though few could blame her with a husband like that. A bolder boy might have turned from his family and its traditions, decided he was unfit for the Shadowhunter life and struck out on his own. But for Tobias? That was unthinkable. His parents taught him the Law, and he knew only to follow it. Not so unusual among humans, even when their blood is mixed with the Angel’s. Unusual for a Herondale, maybe, but if anyone thought that, Tobias’s father made sure they kept their mouths shut. And so he grew up. He married, a match that surprised everyone, for Eva Blackthorn was the opposite of mild. A raven-haired spitfire, somewhat like your Isabelle.”
Simon bristled. She wasn’t his Isabelle, not anymore. He wondered if she ever truly had been. Isabelle didn’t seem like the type of girl to belong to someone. It was one of the things he liked best about her.
“Tobias loved her more than he’d loved anything—his family, his duty, even himself. There, perhaps, the Herondale blood ran true. She was carrying her first child when he was called to the mission in Bavaria—you’ve heard how that story ended.”
Simon nodded, heart clenching all over again at the thought of the punishment visited on Tobias’s wife. Eva. And her unborn child.
“Lazlo Balogh knows only the version of this story as it’s been handed down to him by generations of Shadowhunters. Tobias is no longer a person to them, or an ancestor. He’s nothing but a cautionary tale. There are few of us left to remember him as the kind boy he once was.”