Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

by Cassandra Clare

“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.”

You love, and tremble, and burn. Do not let any of them tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction. I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that. I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever. This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.

I never want anything but this. I never want a less strange love.”

I love you. I love you without the memories. I love you right now.”

He is, again, with Isabelle, always with Isabelle, the holy flame of their love encompassing them both, and there is pain, and there is exquisite joy, and his veins burn with angel fire and he is the Simon he once was and the Simon he then became and the Simon he now will be, he endures and he is reborn, he is blood and flesh and a spark of the divine. He is Nephilim.