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"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 t
o 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."
"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 righ
t, 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."
