The Fiery Trial (6 page)

“Simon Lewis and Julian Blackthorn.” Jem’s voice resonated—for a moment Simon almost thought he heard it inside his mind, the way he had once heard Brother Zachariah’s. It still held a depth to it that seemed richer than human. “Cross to the other side of the circle, where they have made a space for you. When you get there, remain there. You will be told what to do.”

Simon looked to Julian, who had turned the color of copier paper. Despite looking like he might faint, Julian walked firmly across the room, and Simon followed. Clary and Emma took their places on the opposite side. Jem joined the circle of Silent Brothers, who all stepped back as one, widening the circle. Now the four of them were at the center.

Suddenly, two rings of white and gold fire appeared out of the floor, the flames rising just a few inches, but burning bright and hot.

Emma Carstairs. Step forward.

The voices rang in Simon’s head—it was all of the Brothers speaking as one. Emma looked to Clary, then took a single step into one of the rings. She fixed her eyes on Julian and smiled widely.

Julian Blackthorn. Step forward.

Julian stepped into the other ring. His step was quicker, but he kept his head down.

Witnesses, you will stand on the wings of the angel.

This took Simon a moment to work out. He finally saw that at the top of the circle, carved roughly into the floor, was another figure of an angel with outstretched wings. He took his place on one, and Clary the other. This brought him a little closer to the ring of fire. He felt the heat of it creep pleasantly over his cold feet. From this vantage point, he could see Emma and Julian’s expressions.

What was he seeing? It was something he knew.

We begin the Fiery Trial. Emma Carstairs, Julian Blackthorn, enter the center ring. In this ring, you will be bound.

A central ring appeared, joining the two. A Venn diagram of fire. As soon as Emma and Julian were in it, the center ring burned higher, reaching waist height.

Something flickered between Julian and Emma at that moment. It was so quick that Simon couldn’t tell which direction it had come from, but he’d seen it out of the corner of one of his eyes. Some look, something about the way one of them stood, something—but it was a look or a stance or
something
that he had seen before.

The fire flashed higher. It was up to their shoulders now.

You will now recite the oath.

Emma and Julian began speaking as one, their voices both with a small tremble as they recited the ancient Biblical words.

“Whither thou goest, I will go
 . . .
”

*   *   *

Simon was hit with a bolt of anxiety. What had he just seen? Why was it so familiar? Why did it put him on edge? He studied Emma and Julian again, as best as he could over the fire. They looked like two nervous kids about to do something very serious, while standing in a flaming circle.

There it was again. So quick. The direction was obscured by the flickering at the top of the ring. What the hell was it? Maybe this was precisely what witnesses were supposed to do. Maybe they were supposed to watch for this kind of thing. No. Jem said it was a formality. A formality. Maybe he should have asked this question before standing next to the giant ring of fire.

“Where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried
 . . .
”

Shadowhunter rituals, always cheery.

“The Angel do so to me, and more also
 . . .
”

Julian tripped on the words “do so to me.” He cleared his throat and finished the statement a second after Emma.

Something clicked in Simon’s mind. He remembered Jace, suddenly, in his hallucination, saying something about the first time they’d met. And then the memory flashed across his mind like one of those banners trailing off the back of the little planes that flew above the beach off Long Island . . .

He was sitting with Clary in Java Jones. They were watching Eric read poetry. Simon had decided this was the moment—he was going to tell her. He had to tell her. He had gotten them both coffees and the cups were hot. His fingers were burned. He had to blow on them, which was not a smooth move.

He could feel the burning. The feeling that he had to speak.

Eric was reading some poem that contained the words “nefarious loins.”
Nefarious loins, nefarious loins
 . . . the words danced in his head. He had to speak.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said.

Clary made some remark about his band name, and he had to get her back on point.

“It’s about what we were talking about before. About me not having a girlfriend.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Ask Jaida Jones out. She’s nice, and she likes you.”

“I don’t want to ask Jaida Jones out.”

“Why not? You don’t like smart girls? Still seeking a
rockin’ bod
?”

Was she blind? How could she not see? What exactly did he have to do? He had to keep it together. Also, “seeking a rockin’ bod”?

But the more he tried, the more oblivious she seemed. And then she became fixated on a green sofa. It was like that sofa contained everything in the world. Here he was, trying to declare his lifelong love, and Clary had fallen for the furniture. But it was more than that. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Clary, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll be right back,” she said. And with that, she put down the coffee and ran away. He watched her through the window, and somehow he knew that this moment was over, forever. And then he saw . . .

The ring of fire had extinguished. It was over. The oath was made, and Emma and Julian stood before them all. Julian had a rune on his collarbone, and Emma on her upper arm.

Clary was tugging his arm. He looked over at her and blinked a few times.

You okay?
her expression said.

His memory had chosen quite a moment to return.

*   *   *

After the ceremony, they returned to Alicante, where they were taken to the Blackthorn manor to change their clothes. Emma and Julian were taken by the staff to rooms on the main floor. Clary and Simon were led up the grand staircase.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to change into,” Simon said. “I didn’t get a lot of advance notice.”

“I brought you a suit from home,” Clary said. “I borrowed it.”

“Not from Jace.”

“From Eric.”

“Eric has a suit? Do you promise it wasn’t, like, his dead grandfather’s?”

“I can’t promise anything, but I do think it will fit.”

Simon was shown to a small, fussy bedroom on the second floor, overstuffed with furniture and crowded in by flocked wallpaper and the penetrating stares of some long-deceased Blackthorns who had taken up residence in the form of severe portraits. The suit bag was on the bed. Eric did have a suit—a plain black one. A shirt had also been provided, along with a silver-blue tie and some dress shoes. The suit was an inch or two too short. The shirt was too tight—Simon’s daily training had made him into one of these people who burst through a dress shirt. The shoes didn’t fit at all, so he wore the soft black shoes that were part of the formal gear. The tie fit fine. Ties were good for this.

He sat on the bed for a moment and let himself think about all that had happened. He closed his eyes and fought the urge to sleep. He felt himself wobbling and dropping off when there was a soft knock on the door. He snorted as he came back from the microsleep.

“Sure,” he said, which wasn’t what he meant to say. “Yeah. I mean, come in.”

Clary entered wearing a green dress that perfectly complemented her hair, her skin, every part of her. And Simon had a revelation. If he still felt romantic attraction toward Clary, seeing her at that moment might have caused him to start sweating and stammering. Now he saw someone he loved, who looked beautiful, and was his friend. And that was all.

“Listen,” she said, shutting the door, “back at the ceremony, you looked . . . weird. If you don’t want to do it . . . The
parabatai
thing. It was a shock and I don’t want you to be . . .”

“What? No. No.”

Instinctively he reached for her hand. She squeezed it hard.

“Okay,” she said. “But something happened in there. I saw it.”

“In the hallucination I had, from the lake water, I saw Jace, and he kept telling me to remember how we met,” he said. “So I was trying to remember. And then right in the middle of the ceremony, I got the memory back. It just kind of . . . downloaded.”

Clary frowned, her nose wrinkling in confusion. “The memory of how you met Jace? Wasn’t it at the Institute?”

“Yes and no. The memory was really about us, you and me. We were in the coffee shop, Java Jones. You were naming all of these girls I could date and I was . . . I was trying to tell you that you were the one I liked.”

“Yeah,” Clary said, looking down.

“And then you ran out. Just like that.”

“Jace was there. You couldn’t see him.”

“That’s what I thought.” Simon studied her face. “You ran out while I was telling you how I felt. Which is okay. We were never meant to be . . . like that. I think that’s what my subconscious, in the annoying form of Jace, wanted me to know. Because I think we are meant to be
together
.
Parabatai
can’t like each other like that. That’s why it was important for me to remember. I had to remember that I felt like that. I had to know it was different now. Not in a bad way. In the right way.”

“Yes,” Clary said. She had gotten a little teary-eyed. “In the right way.”

Simon nodded once. It was too big to reply to in words. It was everything. It was all the love he saw in Jem’s eyes when he talked about Will, and the love in Alec’s face when he looked at Jace, even when Jace was being annoying, and a clear memory he had of Jace holding Alec while he was wounded and the desperation in Jace’s eyes, that terror that comes only from thinking you might lose someone you can’t live without.

It was Emma and Julian, looking at each other.

Someone was calling for them from downstairs. Clary brushed away a tear and got up and smoothed her already smooth dress.

“This
is
like a wedding,” she said. “I feel like they’re going to tell us we have to go pose for the photographer in a minute.”

Clary hooked her arm through his.

“One thing,” he said, remembering Maia, and Jordan. “Even when I’m a Shadowhunter, I’m still going to be a little bit a Downworlder. I’m never going to turn my back on them. That’s the kind of Nephilim I want to be.”

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” Clary said.

Downstairs, the two new
parabatai
were examining each other from across the room. Emma stood on one side, wearing a brown dress covered in twining gold flowers. Julian stood on the other, twitching inside his gray suit.

“You look amazing,” Clary said to them both, and they looked down shyly.

At the Accords Hall, Jace was waiting for them on the front step, looking like Jace in a suit. Jace in a suit was unbearable. He gave Clary a look up and down.

“That dress is . . .”

He had to clear his throat. Simon enjoyed his discomfiture. Not much ever threw Jace, but Clary had always been able to throw him like a Wiffle ball on a windy day. His eyes were practically cartoon hearts.

“It’s very nice,” he said. “So how was the ceremony? What did you think?”

“Definitely more fire than a bar mitzvah,” Simon said. “More fire than a barbecue. I’m going to go with Formal Event with the Most Fire.”

Jace nodded.

“They were amazing,” Clary said. “And . . .”

She looked to Simon.

“We have news,” she said.

Jace cocked his head in interest.

“Later,” she said, smiling. “I think everyone is waiting for us to sit down.”

“Then we need to get Emma and Julian over here.”

Emma and Julian were lurking in the corner of the room, heads close, but with an awkward gap between their bodies.

“I’m going to go talk to them,” Jace said, nodding at Julian and Emma. “Give them a few words of manly, thoughtful advice.”

As soon as Jace walked away, Clary started to speak, but they were immediately joined by Magnus and Alec. Magnus was about to start guest teaching at the Academy and they wanted to know how bad the food was. Julian’s younger brothers and sisters—Ty, Livvy, Drusilla, and Octavian—were clustered together around the table with the appetizers. Simon glanced over his shoulder and saw Jace unloading Jacely advice onto the new
parabatai
. There was the delicious smell of roasting meat. Large platters of it were being placed on the tables now, along with vegetables and potatoes and breads and cheeses. The wine was being poured. It was time to celebrate. It was nice, Simon thought, in the midst of all the terrible things that could happen and sometimes did happen, there was also this. There was a lot of love.

As Simon turned back, he saw Julian hurrying out of the hall. Jace returned, his arm around Emma’s shoulders.

“Everything okay?” Clary asked.

“Everything’s fine. Julian needed air. This ceremony, it’s intense. So many people. You need to eat.”

This was to Emma, who smiled, but kept looking over at the door her
parabatai
had just gone through. Then she turned and saw Ty running across the Hall with a tray containing an entire wheel of cheese.

“Oh,” she said, “yeah, that’s bad. He can actually eat that entire cheese, but then he’ll throw up. I’d better get that or this will end badly for Jules.”

She ran after Ty.

“They have a lot on their hands,” Jace said, watching her go. “Good thing they have each other. They always will. That’s what
parabatai
is about.” He smiled at Alec, who grinned back at him in a way that lit up his whole face.

“About that
parabatai
business,” Clary said. “We might as well tell you the news. . . .”