“But how? Where—?”
“I used a certain amount of magic and cunning to make my way into the prison of the Shadowhunters, where you were held once,” said Catarina, nodding to him. “I made the baby come early, and cast a spell to make it seem as if she was still carrying the child. Eva was steel that night, relentless and bright in the darkness that had come upon her. She did not falter and she did not flinch and she did not betray herself by any sign as she walked to meet her death. She kept our secret to the very end, and the Shadowhunters who killed her never suspected a thing. After that, it was almost easy. The Nephilim seldom have any interest in the doings of Downworlders—and Downworlders often find their blindness very convenient. They never noticed when I sailed away to the New World with a baby. I stayed there for twenty years, before I went back to my people and my work, and raised the child until he was grown. He has been dust for years, but I can close my eyes and see his face when he was as young as you are now. Tobias and Eva’s child. He was a sweet boy, kind as his father and fierce as his mother. The Nephilim believe in living by hard laws and paying high prices, but their arrogance means they do not fully understand the cost of what they do. The world would have been poorer without that boy in it. He had a mundane love, and a mundane life filled with small acts of grace, which would have meant very little to a Shadowhunter. They did not deserve him. I left him as a gift to the mundane world.”
“So you’re saying there’s another Herondale out there somewhere? Maybe generations of Herondales that no one knows anything about?” There was a line from the Talmud Simon’s father had always liked to quote: He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.
“It’s possible,” Catarina said. “I made sure the boy never knew what he was—it was safest that way. If indeed his line lives on, his descendants surely believe themselves mundane. It’s only now, with the Shadowhunters so depleted, that the Clave might welcome their lost sons or daughters back to the fold. And perhaps there are those of us who might help that along. When the time is right.”
“Why are you telling me this, Ms. Loss? Why now? Why ever?”
She stopped walking and turned to him, silver-white hair billowing in the wind. “Saving that child, that’s the biggest crime I’ve ever committed. At least, according to Shadowhunter Law. If anyone knew, even now . . .” She shook her head. “But it’s also the bravest choice I’ve ever made. The one I’m most proud of. I’m bound by the Accords just like everyone else, Simon. I do my best to live by the rule of Law. But I make my own decisions. There’s always a higher law.”
“You say that like it’s so easy to know what it is,” Simon said. “To be so sure of yourself, that you’re right, no matter what the Law says.”
“It’s not easy,” Catarina corrected him. “It’s what it means to be alive. Remember what I said, Simon. Every decision you make, makes you. Never let other people choose who you’re going to be.”
* * *
When he returned to his room, his mind spinning, George was sitting on the ground in the hallway, studying his Codex.
“Um, George?” Simon peered down at his roommate. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do that inside? Where there’s light? And no disgusting slime on the ground? Well . . .” He sighed. “Less slime, at least.”
“She said I have to wait out here,” George said. “That you two need your privacy.”
“Who said?” But the question was superfluous, because who else? Before George could answer, he was already opening the door and charging inside. “Isabelle, you can’t just throw my roommate—”
He stopped short, so suddenly that he nearly tripped over himself.
“It’s not Isabelle,” said the girl perched on his bed. Her fire-red hair was pulled into a messy bun and her legs were folded beneath her; she looked utterly at home, as if she’d spent half her life lounging around in his bed. Which, according to her, she had.
“What are you doing here, Clary?”
“I Portaled in,” she said.
He nodded, waiting. He was glad to see her, but it also hurt. Just as it always did. He wondered when the pain would go and he would be able to feel the joy of friendship that he knew was still there, like a plant under frozen ground, waiting to grow again.
“I heard what happened today. With the vampire. And Isabelle.”
Simon lowered himself onto George’s bed, across from her. “I’m fine, okay? No bite marks or anything. It’s nice of you to worry about me, but you can’t just Portal in and—”
Clary snorted. “I can see your ego’s unharmed. I’m not here because I’m worried about you, Simon.”
“Oh. Then . . . ?”
“I’m worried about Isabelle.”
“I’m pretty sure Isabelle can take care of herself.”
“You don’t know her, Simon. I mean, not anymore. And if she knew I was here, she’d murder me, but . . . can you just try to be a little nicer to her? Please?”
Simon was appalled. He knew that he’d disappointed Isabelle, that his very existence was a constant disappointment to her, that she wanted him to be someone else. But it had never occurred to him that he, the non-vampire, non-heroic, non-sexy iteration of Simon Lewis, could have the power to hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “Tell her I’m sorry!”
“Are you kidding me?” Clary said. “Did you not hear the part about how she’d murder me if she knew I was talking to you about this? I’m not telling her anything. I’m telling you. Be careful with her. She’s more fragile than she seems.”
“She seems like the strongest girl I’ve ever met,” Simon said.
“She’s that, too,” Clary allowed. She shifted uncomfortably then, and hopped to her feet. “Well, I should . . . I mean, I know you don’t really want me around here, so . . .”
“It’s not that, I just—”
“No, I get it, but—”
“I’m sorry—”
“I’m sorry—”
They both laughed, and Simon felt something loosening in his chest, a muscle he hadn’t even known was clenched.
“It didn’t used to be like this, huh?” he asked. “Awkward?”
“No.” She gave him a sad smile. “It was a lot of things, but it was never awkward.”
He couldn’t imagine it, feeling so at ease with a girl, much less a girl like her, pretty and confident and so filled with light. “I bet I liked that.”
“I hope so, Simon.”
“Clary—” He didn’t want her to leave, not yet, but he wasn’t sure what to say to her if she stayed. “Do you know the story of Tobias Herondale?”
“Everyone knows that story,” she said. “And, obviously, because of Jace . . .”
Simon blinked, remembering: Jace was a Herondale. The last of the Herondales. Or so he thought.
If he had family out there, lost for generations, he would want to know, wouldn’t he? Was Simon supposed to tell him? Tell Clary?
He imagined a lost Herondale out there, some golden-eyed girl or boy who didn’t know anything about the Shadowhunters or their sordid legacy. Maybe they would welcome finding out who they really were—but maybe, if Clary and Jace came knocking at their door, telling them stories of angels and demons and a noble tradition of death-defying insanity, they would run screaming in the opposite direction.
Sometimes, Simon wondered what would have happened if Magnus had never found him, never offered him the chance to reenter the Shadowhunter world. He would have been living a lie, sure . . . but it would have been a happy lie. He would have gone to college, kept playing with his band, flirted with some non-terrifying girls, lived on the surface of things, never guessing at the darkness that lay beneath.
He guessed that in his other life, telling Clary what he knew wouldn’t even have been a question; he guessed that they were the kind of friends who told each other everything.