“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’ll hope that you 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.”
“How did you know him so well?” Simon asked. “I thought back then, warlocks and Shadowhunters weren’t exactly . . . you know. On speaking terms.” Actually, Simon had thought it was more like killing terms; from what he’d learned from the Codex and his history classes, the Shadowhunters of the past had gone after warlocks and other Downworlders the way big-game hunters went after elephants. Sportingly and with bloodthirsty abandon.
“That’s a different story,” Catarina chided him. “I’m not telling you my story, I’m telling you Tobias’s. Suffice it to say, he was a kind boy, even to Downworlders, and his kindness was remembered. What you know, what all Shadowhunters today think they know, is that Tobias was a coward who abandoned his fellows in the heat of battle. The truth is never so simple, is it? Tobias hadn’t wanted to leave behind his wife when she was ill and pregnant, but he went anyway, doing as he was told. Deep in those Bavarian woods, he encountered a warlock who knew his greatest fear, and used it against him. He found the chink in Tobias’s armor, found a way into his mind by convincing him his wife was in terrible danger. He showed him a vision of Eva, bloody and dying and screaming for Tobias to save her. Tobias was held spellbound and stricken, and the warlock hurled vision after vision of all the horrors in the world Tobias could not bear. Yes, Tobias ran away. His mind broke. He abandoned his fellows and fled into the woods, blinded and tormented by waking nightmares. Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse. When he thought Eva was dead, he shattered. I know who I blame for the destruction of Tobias Herondale.”
“They can’t have known he was driven mad!” Simon protested. “No one could punish him for that!”
“They did know,” Catarina told him. “That didn’t matter. What mattered was his treason against his duty. Eva was never in danger, of course—at least, not until Tobias abandoned his post. That was the last cruel irony of Tobias’s life: that he doomed the woman he would have died to save. The warlock had shown him a glimpse of the future, a future that would never have come to pass if Tobias had been able to resist him. He could not resist. He could not be found. The Clave came for Eva.”
“You were there,” Simon guessed.
“I was,” she agreed.
“And you didn’t try to stop them?”
“I did not waste my time trying, no. The Nephilim do not pay heed to interfering Downworlders. Only a fool would try to get between the Shadowhunters and their Law.”
There was something about the way she said it, wry and sorrowful at the same time, that made him ask, “You’re a fool, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “It’s dangerous to call a warlock names like that, Simon. But . . . yes. I tried. I looked for Tobias Herondale, using ways the Nephilim do not have access to, and found him wandering mad in the forest, not even knowing his own name.” She lowered her head. “I couldn’t save him or Eva. But I saved the baby. I managed that much.”