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“You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.”
“I gave him my magic, Baz. It’s all gone.” “Who needs magic,” Baz says. “I’m going to turn you into a vampire and make you live with me forever.”
“Think about it, Simon. Super strength. X-ray vision.” Simon lifts his head. “You don’t have X-ray vision.”
“I killed him,” Simon says. “It’s going to be okay.” Baz wraps both arms around him. “It’s all right, love.” Everything is starting to make sense.
“I know you’re not here … “You came back, and I missed you. And then I did the thing you wanted me to do, so you probably won’t ever come back again.” I close my eyes. “But—I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to carry on. As I am. “No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you’d want me—where you’d allow me—to go on like this. “But I think it’s what you would do in my circumstances. It seems like you never gave up. Ever.” I exhale roughly and stand up. Then I turn towards the door and bow my head. I speak softly, so that none of the other bones can
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“Don’t laugh at me,” he says. “When will I ever laugh, then?”
“You don’t have to be here,” I say. “No,” he says quickly. “I do.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave without me.”
“I was eleven years old, and I’d lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.” “It made us roommates,” he says. I shake my head. “We were always more.” “We were enemies.” “You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.”
Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.” “I’ll never be that again.” “No. And thank magic.” I sigh forcefully. “The way you were before … Simon Snow, there wasn’t a day when I believed we’d both live through it.” “Through what?” “Life. You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I’d wake up every morning and think, ‘This will end in flames.’”
“Look.” I bring our hands between us and knock up his chin. “Look at me. I don’t want to have to say this all the time. It’s the sort of thing that’s supposed to go poetically unsaid …” He meets my eyes. “You’re still Simon Snow.
You’re still the hero of this story—” “This isn’t a story!” “Everything is a story. And you are the hero. You sacrificed everything for me.”
“It was brave. It was brave and selfless and clever. That’s who you are, Simon. And I’m not going to get bored with you.”
“I’m not the Chosen One,” he says. I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. “I choose you,” I say. “Simon Snow, I choose you.”
“You can change your mind,” he says. “I won’t.” I shake my head against his forehead. “I’ll always be less than you,” he whispers. “I know; it’s a dream come true.”
I should have known that this is what it would be like to dance with Simon Snow. Fighting in place. Mutual surrender.
I never really thought that would happen. I never thought there was a path that would lead here, a fourth-floor flat with two bedrooms and a kettle and a grey-eyed vampire sitting on the couch, messing with his new phone. I never thought there was a path that would lead to both of us alive. When you look at it that way, it wasn’t that much to give up—my magic. For Baz’s life. For mine.
don’t feel like a trauma victim. I feel like a house after a fire. And sometimes like someone who died but stayed in his body. And sometimes I feel like someone else died, like someone else sacrificed everything, so that I can have a normal life. With wings. And a tail. And vampires. And magicians. And a boy in my arms, instead of a girl. And a happy ending—even if it isn’t the ending I ever would have dreamt for myself, or hoped for. A chance.
And one will bring his fall.’ Did I also bring my own fall?” “No,” Baz says. “That was me. Obviously.” “How did you bring my fall? I stopped the Humdrum myself.” Baz looks back at his phone, bored. “Fell in love, didn’t you?”
“Carry on, Simon.”
