“Thank you for letting us come,” whispered Helen after the ceremony was over, embracing her new mother-in-law.
Jia Penhallow folded her daughter-in-law in her arms and said, in a voice considerably louder than a whisper: “I am sorry I must let you be sent away again.”
Simon did not tell Julian Blackthorn about meeting Mark, any more than he had told Mark that Helen was not there to care for the Blackthorn children. It seemed hideous cruelty, to load another burden on shoulders already burdened almost past bearing. It seemed better to lie, as faeries could not.
But when he went to Helen and Aline to congratulate them, he stepped up and kissed Helen on the cheek, so he could whisper to her: “Your brother Mark sends you his love, and his happiness for your love.”
Helen stared at him, sudden tears in her eyes but her smile even more radiant than before.
Everything is going to change for the Shadowhunters, Simon thought. For all of us. It has to.
Simon had special permission to stay the night in Idris, so he would not have to leave the wedding celebrations early.
There was going to be dancing later, but for now people were standing about in groups talking. Helen and Aline were sitting on the floor, in the center of the Blackthorns, like two golden flowers who had sprung up from the ground and bloomed. Tiberius was describing to Helen, in a serious voice, how he and Julian had prepared for the wedding.
“We went through any potential scenario that might occur,” he told her. “As if we were reconstructing a crime scene, but in reverse. So I know exactly what to do, no matter what happens.”
“That must have been a lot of work,” Helen said. Tiberius nodded. “Thanks, Ty. I really appreciate it.”
Ty looked pleased. Dru, wearing her flower crown and beaming ear to ear, tugged at Helen’s golden skirts for her attention. Simon thought he had rarely seen any group of people who all seemed so happy.
He tried not to think of what Mark would have given to be here.
“You want to go for a walk down the river with me and Izzy?” Clary asked, nudging him.
“What, no Jace?”
“Ah, I see him all the time,” said Clary, with the comfort of familiar and trusted love. “Not like my best friend.”
Jace—who was sitting talking with Alec, Alec who once again had not addressed a single word to Simon—made an obscene gesture to Simon as he left with Isabelle and Clary on either arm. Simon was not actually fooled that Jace was angry. Jace had hugged him when he saw him, and more and more Simon was coming to believe that he and Jace had not had a relationship in which they hugged before.
But apparently they were huggers now.
Simon, Isabelle, and Clary went walking down by the river. The waters looked like black crystal in the moonlight, and in the distance the demon towers gleamed like columns of moonlight itself. Simon walked a little more slowly than the girls, not used as they were to the strangeness and magic of this city, a city most of the world did not know existed, the shining heart of a secret and hidden land.
Simon was used to the Academy now. He would no doubt get used to all of Idris in time.
So much had changed, and Simon had changed too. But in the end, he had not lost what was most precious to him. He had been given back the name of his heart.
Isabelle and Clary looked back at him, walking so close that Isabelle’s waterfall of raven hair mingled with Clary’s fiery sunset of curls. Simon smiled and knew how lucky he was, lucky compared to Mark Blackthorn, who was locked away from what he loved best, lucky compared to a billion other people who did not know what it was they loved best of all.
“Are you coming, Simon?” Isabelle called out.
“Yes,” Simon called back. “I’m coming.”
He was lucky to know them, and lucky to know what they were to him, what he was to them: beloved, remembered, and not lost.
The Fiery Trial
By Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
He turned his head back down to tell Clary to look at the statue, but Clary was gone. He spun around, a full rotation. She was nowhere in sight.
—The Fiery Trial
Simon was starting to wonder about the fires. The fires didn’t like him. The fires moved around.
That seemed paranoid.
Outside, the trees were bare and the grass was brown. Inside, even the mold had retreated to its winter quarters between the stones in the basement walls. Shadowhunters didn’t believe much in central heating. The Academy had fireplaces, never too close together, and never near enough to anyone. No matter where Simon sat, they were at the far end of the room, crackling away. The elites tended to get into rooms first, and they took the fireside seats. But even when they didn’t—even when everyone entered at once—Simon ended up farthest from the fire. When you’re cold, a crackling fire starts to sound like gentle, mocking laughter. Simon tried to dismiss this thought from his head, because clearly the fires were not laughing at him.
Because that was paranoid.
There were several fireplaces in the cafeteria, but George and Simon had stopped trying to get seats near them. Simon had enough to worry about. He was looking at his plate. He had also told himself to stop doing this. Stop thinking about the food. Just eat the food. But he couldn’t help himself. Every night he teased it apart. Tonight looked to be some kind of stir-fry, but it appeared to have bread in it. There were peppers. There was something red.
It was pizza. Someone had stir-fried a pizza.
“No,” he said out loud.
“What?”
His roommate, George Lovelace, was already shoveling down his dinner. Simon just shook his head. These things didn’t bother George in the same way. Back home in Brooklyn, if Simon had heard that someone had stir-fried a pizza he would not have been upset. He would have assumed that some hipster restaurant had decided to deconstruct the pizza, because that is what hipster restaurants in Brooklyn do. Simon would have laughed, and maybe at some point it would have become popular, and then there would be trucks that sold stir-fried pizza, and then he would have eaten it. Because that is how Brooklyn works and because pizza. Best guess in this situation? Maybe someone dropped the pizza, or it broke up in the middle of cooking and for some reason the only conceivable solution was to put it in a pan and wing it.