Bitter of Tongue (Tales from Shadowhunter Academy 7)

Mark lowered his bow. "I see nothing," he said, pronouncing the lie with a certain satisfaction. "And nothing should go--now."

"Oh, boy, you will pay for this," hissed the rider on the roan.

The horses and the riders shrieked like pterodactyls, circling him, but Mark Blackthorn of the Los Angeles Institute stood his ground.

"Run!" he shouted. "Get home safe! Tell the Clave that I have saved more Shadowhunter lives, that I will be a Shadowhunter and be damned to them, that I will be a faerie and curse them! And tell my family that I love them, I love them, and I will never forget. One day I will go home."

Simon and Isabelle ran.

*

George threw himself on Simon the instant he and Isabelle appeared in the grounds of the Academy, his arms strangling-tight. Beatriz and, to Simon's amazement, even Julie flew at him only a second behind George, and both of them mercilessly pummeled his arms.

"Ow," said Simon.

"We're so glad you're alive!" said Beatriz, punching him again.

"Why must you hurt me with your love?" asked Simon. "Ow."

He disentangled himself from their grip, touched but also mildly bruised, then looked around for another familiar face. He felt a cold touch of fear.

"Is Marisol all right?" he demanded.

Beatriz snorted. "Oh, she's better than all right. She's in the infirmary with Jon waiting on her hand and foot. Because you mundanes can't be healed with runes and she is milking that for all it's worth. I'm not sure which has Jon more terrified, the thought of how fragile mundanes are, or the fact that she keeps threatening to explain X-ray machines to him."

Simon was very impressed that even elfshot could not slow down Marisol and all her evil.

"We thought you might be dead," said Julie. "The Fair Folk will do anything to vent their spite against Shadowhunters, those evil, treacherous snakes. They could have done anything to you."

"And it would have been my fault," George said, pale-faced. "You were trying to stop me."

"It would have been the faeries' fault," said Julie. "But you were careless. You have to remember what they are, less human than sharks."

George was nodding humbly. Beatriz looked as if she was in full agreement.

"You know what?" said Simon. "I've had enough."

They all stared at him in blank incredulity. But Isabelle glanced at him and smiled. He thought he finally understood the fire that burned in Magnus, what made him keep talking when the Clave would not listen.

"I know you all think I'm always criticizing the Nephilim," Simon went on. "I know you believe I don't think enough of--the sacred traditions of the Angel, and the fact that you are ready to lay down your lives, any day, to protect humans. I know you think it doesn't matter to me, but it does matter. It means a lot. But I don't have the luxury of only seeing things from one perspective. You all notice when I put down Shadowhunters, but none of you check yourselves when you talk about Downworlders. I was a Downworlder. Today I was saved by someone the Clave decided to condemn as a Downworlder, even though he was brave as any Shadowhunter, even though he was loyal. It seems like you want me to just accept that the Nephilim are great and nothing needs to change, but I won't accept anything."

He took a deep breath. He felt as if all the comfort of the morning had been stripped away. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe he'd been getting too comfortable.

"I wouldn't want to be a Shadowhunter if I thought I was going to be a Shadowhunter like your father or your father's father before him. And I wouldn't like any of you as much as I do if I thought you were going to be Shadowhunters like all the Shadowhunters before you. I want all of us to be better. I haven't figured out how to change everything yet, but I want everything to change. And I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I'm going to keep complaining."

"Later," said Isabelle. "He's going to keep complaining later, because we're going to a wedding right now."

Everyone looked mildly stunned that their emotional reunion had turned into a speech on Downworlder rights. Simon thought Julie might beat him about the head and face, but instead she patted him on the back.

"All right," she said. "We'll listen to your tedious whining later. Please try to keep it brief."

She walked off with Beatriz. Simon squinted after her, and noticed that Isabelle was squinting after as well, a look of faint suspicion on her face.

Simon had a moment of doubt. George had meant Beatriz when he was talking about a girl liking Simon, right?

Surely not Julie. It couldn't be Julie.

No, surely not. Simon was pretty certain he was just getting a pass on account of the narrow escape in Faerie.

George hung back. "I really am so sorry, Si," he told Simon. "I lost my head. I--I maybe wasn't quite ready to lead a team. But I'm going to be ready one day. I'm going to do what you said. I'm going to become a better Shadowhunter than any Shadowhunters before us. You won't have to pay for my mistakes again."

"George," Simon said. "It's fine."

None of them was perfect. None of them could be.

George's sunny face still looked under a cloud, unhappy as he almost never did. "I'm not going to fail again."

"I believe in you," said Simon, and grinned at him, until finally George grinned back. "Because that's what bros do."

*

Once he arrived in Idris, Simon found himself plunged into a state of wedding chaos. Wedding chaos seemed to be very different from normal kinds of chaos. There were, in fact, many flowers. Simon had a sheaf of lilies shoved upon him and he stood holding it, afraid to move in case the flowers spilled and he was responsible for ruining the whole wedding.

Many wedding guests were running about, but there was only one group that was all kids and no adults. Simon clutched his lilies and focused his attention on the Blackthorns.

If he had not met Mark Blackthorn, he was pretty sure he would've thought of them as a riot of anonymous kids.

Now, though, he knew they were someone's family: someone's heart's desire.

Helen, Julian, Livia, Tiberius, Drusilla, Octavian. And Emma.

Willow-slim, silver-fair Helen, Simon already knew. She was in one of the many rooms he was forbidden to go into, having mysterious bridal things done to her.

Julian was the next oldest, and he was the calm center of a bustling Blackthorn crowd. He had a kid in his arms, who was a little big for Julian to carry but was clinging tenaciously to Julian's neck like an octopus in unfamiliar surroundings. The kid must be Tavvy.

All the Blackthorns were dressed up for the wedding, but already a little grubby around the edges, in that mysterious way kids got. Simon wasn't sure how. They were all, aside from Tavvy, a little too old to be playing in the dirt.

"I'll get Dru all cleaned up," volunteered Emma, who was tall for almost fourteen, with a crown of blond hair that made her stand out among the dark-haired Blackthorns like a daffodil in a bed of pansies.

"No, don't bother," said Julian. "I know you want to spend some quality time with Clary. You've only been talking about it for, oh, fifteen thousand years, give or take."

Emma shoved him playfully. She was taller than he was: Simon remembered being thirteen and shorter than all the girls too.

All the girls except one, he recalled slowly, the real picture of his thirteenth year sliding over the false one, where the most important person in his life had been clumsily photoshopped out. Clary had always been tiny. No matter how short or awkward Simon had felt, he had always towered over her and felt it was his right to protect her.

He wondered if Julian wished Emma were shorter than he was. From the look on Julian's face as he regarded Emma, there was not one thing about her he would change. His art and his Emma, Mark had said, as if they were the two essential facts about Julian. His love of beauty and his wish to create it, and his best friend in all the world. They were going to be parabatai, Simon was pretty sure. That was nice.

Emma sped away on a quest to find Clary, with one last grin for J

ulian.

Only, Mark had been wrong. Art and Emma were clearly not all that occupied Julian's thoughts. Simon watched as he held on to Tavvy and stooped over a small girl with a round beseeching face and a cloud of brown hair.

"I lost my flower crown and I can't find it," whispered the girl.

Julian smiled down at her. "That's what happens when you lose things, Dru."

"But if I'm not wearing a flower crown like Livvy, Helen will think I'm careless and I don't mind my things and I don't like her as much as Livvy does. Livvy still has her flower crown."