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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