Pale Kings and Princes by Cassandra Clare, Robin Wasserman Read Free Book Online Page A

here again.”
    “I’m sorry,” Simon said, thinking they had to be the lamest, most useless words in the English language. “I wish I could say something that would help.”
    She faced him; she whispered, “You did.”
    “What?”
    “After Max. You . . . said something. You helped.”
    “Izzy . . .”
    “Yes?”
    This was it, this was The Moment—the moment talking gave way to gazing, which would inevitably give way to kissing. All he had to do was lean slightly forward and give himself over to it.
    He leaned back. “Maybe we should start heading back to campus.”
    She made that angry cat noise again, then lobbed a chunk of peanut brittle at him. “What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. “Because I know there’s nothing wrong with me. You would be insane not to want to kiss me, and if this is some stupid playing-hard-to-get thing, you’re wasting your time, because trust me, I know when a guy wants to kiss me. And you, Simon Lewis, want to kiss me. So what is happening here?”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted, and ridiculous as this was, it was also wholly true.
    “Is it the stupid memory thing? Are you seriously still afraid that you can’t live up to some amazing forgotten version of yourself? Do you want me to tell you all the ways you weren’t amazing? For one, you snored.”
    “Did not.”
    “Like a Drevak demon.”
    “This is slander,” Simon said, outraged.
    She snorted. “My point, Simon, is that you’re supposed to be past all of this. I thought you figured out that no one is expecting you to be anyone other than who you are. That I just need you to be you. I only want you. This Simon. Isn’t that why we’re here? Because you finally got that through your thick head?”
    “I guess.”
    “So what are you afraid of? It’s obviously something.”
    “How do you know?” he asked, curious how she could be so certain, when he still had no clue himself.
    She smiled, and it was the kind of smile you give to someone who can make you want to throttle them and kiss them all at the same time. “Because I know you .”
    He thought about gathering her up in his arms, about how it would feel—and that’s when he realized what he was afraid of.
    It was that feeling, the hugeness of it, like staring into the sun. Like falling into the sun.
    “Losing myself,” he said.
    “What?”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of. Losing myself, in this. In you. I’ve spent this whole year trying to find myself, to figure out who I am, and now there’s you, there’s us, there’s this all-consuming, terrifying black hole of a feeling, and if I give into it . . . I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, you know? Like, here’s something bigger, deeper than the human mind is built to fathom. And I’m just supposed to . . . jump in?”
    He waited nervously for her reaction, suspecting that girls probably didn’t like it much when you admitted you were afraid of them. Girls like Izzy probably didn’t like it when you admitted you were afraid of anything. Nothing scared her; she deserved someone just as brave.
    “Is that all?” Her face lit up. “Simon, don’t you think I’m scared of that too? You’re not the only one on that ledge. If we jump, we jump together. We fall together .”
    Simon had spent so long trying to gather together the pieces of himself, to fit the puzzle back together. But the final piece, the most important piece, had been right in front of him the whole time. Losing himself to Izzy—could it be that this was the only way to really find himself?
    Could it be that this, here, was home?
    Enough bad metaphors , he told himself. Enough delaying.
    Enough being afraid .
    He stopped thinking about the person he used to be or the relationship they used to have; he stopped thinking about whether he was screwing things up or why he wanted to; he stopped thinking about demon amnesia and Shadowhunter Ascension and the Fair Folk and the Dark War and politics