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could get him through the Ascension with sheer force of will.
    This, Simon realized, was what Ascending meant. This was what being a Shadowhunter meant. Not just risking his life, not just carving runes and fighting demons and occasionally saving the world. Not just joining the Clave and agreeing to follow its draconian rules. It meant joining his friends . It meant being a part of something bigger than himself, something as wonderful as it was terrifying. Yes, his life was much less safe than it had been two years ago—but it was also much more full. Like the Council Hall, it was crowded with all the people he loved, people who loved him.
    You might almost call them a family.
    *    *    *
    And then it began.
    One by one the mundanes were summoned to the dais, where their professors stood in a somber line, waiting to shake their hands and wish them luck.
    One by one the mundanes approached the double circles traced on the dais and knelt in their center, surrounded by runes. Two Silent Brothers stood by just in case something went wrong. Each time a mundane took position, they bent over the runes and scratched in a new one to symbolize that student’s name. Then they returned to the edges of the dais again, statue-still in parchment robes, watching. Waiting.
    Simon waited too as one by one his friends brought their lips to the Mortal Cup. As a blinding flare of blue light encompassed them, then faded away.
    One by one.
    Gen Almodovar. Thomas Daltrey. Marisol Garza.
    Each student drank.
    Each student survived.
    The wait was interminable.
    Except that when the Consul called his name, it felt much too soon.
    Simon’s feet were cement blocks. He forced himself toward the dais, one step at a time, his heartbeat pulsing like a subwoofer, making his whole body tremble. The professors shook his hand, even Delaney Scarsbury, who murmured, “Always knew you had it in you, Lewis.” A blatant lie. Catarina Loss gripped his hand tightly and pulled him close, her brilliant white hair sweeping his shoulder as her lips brushed his ear. “Finish what you started, Daylighter. You have the power to change these people for the better. Don’t waste it.”
    Like most things Catarina said to him, it didn’t quite make sense, but some part of him still understood it completely.
    Simon knelt at the center of the circles and reminded himself to breathe.
    The Consul stood over him, her traditional red robe brushing the floor. He kept his eyes on the runes, but he could sense Clary out there rooting for him; he could hear the echo of George’s laughter; he could feel the ghost of Izzy’s warm touch on his skin. At the center of these circles, surrounded by runes, waiting for the blood of the divine to run through his veins and change him in some unfathomable way, Simon felt profoundly alone—and yet, at the same time, less alone than he’d ever been in his life.
    His family was here, holding him up.
    They would not let him fall.
    “Do you swear, Simon Lewis, to forsake the mundane world and follow the path of the Shadowhunter?” Consul Penhallow asked. Simon had met the Consul before, when she’d delivered a lecture at the Academy, and again at her daughter’s wedding to Helen Blackthorn. On both occasions she had seemed like your basic mom: brisk, efficient, nice enough, and none too surprising. But now she seemed fearsome and powerful, less an individual than the walking repository of millennia of Shadowhunter tradition. “Will you take into yourself the blood of the Angel Raziel and honor that blood? Do you swear to serve the Clave, to follow the Law as set forth by the Covenant, and to obey the word of the Council? Will you defend that which is human and mortal, knowing that for your service, there will be no recompense and no thanks but honor?”
    For Shadowhunters, swearing was a matter of life and death. If he made this promise, there was no turning back to the life he’d once had, to Simon Lewis, mundane nerd, aspiring