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rock star. There were no more options to consider. There was only his oath, and a lifetime’s effort to fulfill it.
    Simon knew if he looked up he could meet Isabelle’s eyes, or Clary’s, and draw strength from them. He could silently ask them if this was the right path, and they would reassure him.
    But this choice couldn’t belong to them. It had to be his, and his alone.
    He closed his eyes.
    “I swear.” His voice did not shake.
    “Can you be a shield for the weak, a light in the dark, a truth among falsehoods, a tower in the flood, an eye to see when all others are blind?”
    Simon imagined all the history behind these words, all the Consuls before Jia Penhallow stretching back for decades and centuries, holding this same Cup before one mundane after another. So many mortals, volunteering to join the fight. They had always seemed so brave to Simon, risking their lives—sacrificing their futures to a greater cause—not because they’d been born into a great battle between good and evil, but because they had chosen not to live on the sidelines, letting others fight for them.
    It occurred to him, if they were brave for making the choice, maybe he was too.
    But it didn’t feel like bravery, not now.
    It simply felt like taking the next step forward. That simple.
    That inevitable.
    “I can,” Simon answered.
    “And when you are dead, will you give up your body to the Nephilim to be burned, that your ashes may be used to build the City of Bones?”
    Even the thought of this didn’t frighten him. It seemed suddenly like an honor, that his body would live on in usefulness after death, that from this time forward, the Shadowhunter world would have a claim on him, for eternity.
    “I will,” Simon said.
    “Then drink.”
    Simon took the Cup into his hands. It was even heavier than it looked and curiously warm to the touch. Whatever was inside it didn’t look much like blood, fortunately, but it didn’t look like anything else he recognized either. If he didn’t know better, Simon would have said the Cup was full of light. As he peered down at it, the strange liquid almost seemed to pulse with a soft glow, as if to say, Go ahead, drink me.
    He couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen the Mortal Cup—that was one of the memories still lost to him—but he knew the role it had played in his life, knew that if it weren’t for the Cup, he and Clary might never have discovered the existence of Shadowhunters in the first place. It had all begun with the Mortal Cup; it seemed fitting that it should all end here too.
    Not end , Simon thought quickly. Hopefully not end .
    It was said that the younger you were, the less likely drinking from the Cup was to kill you. Simon was, subjectively, nineteen, but he’d recently learned that by Shadowhunter rules, he was only eighteen. The months he’d spent as a vampire apparently didn’t count. He could only hope the Cup understood that.
    “Drink,” the Consul repeated quietly, a note of humanity creeping into her voice.
    Simon raised the Cup to his lips.
    He drank.
    *    *    *
    He is tangled in Isabelle’s arms, he is curtained by Isabelle’s hair, he is touching Isabelle’s body, he is lost in Isabelle, in her smell and her taste and the silk of her skin.
    He is onstage, the music pounding, the floor shaking, the audience cheering, his heart beating beating beating in time with the drumbeat.
    He is laughing with Clary, dancing with Clary, eating with Clary, running through the streets of Brooklyn with Clary, they are children together, they are one half of a whole, they hold hands and squeeze tight and pledge never to let go.
    He is going cold, stiff, the life draining out of him, he is below, in the dark, clawing his way to the light, fingernails scraping dirt, mouth filled with dirt, eyes clogged with dirt, he is straining, reaching, dragging himself up toward the sky, and when he reaches it, he opens his mouth wide but does not breathe, for he no