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

and homework and the unregulated traffic of deadly sharp objects.
    He stopped thinking about what could happen, and what could go wrong.
    He took her in his arms and kissed her—kissed her the way he’d been longing to kiss her since he first laid eyes on her, kissed her not like a romance novel hero or a Shadowhunter warrior or some imaginary character from the past, but like Simon Lewis kissing the girl he loved more than anything in the world. It was like falling into the sun, falling together, hearts blazing with pale fire, and Simon knew he would never stop falling, knew that now that he’d grabbed hold of her again, he would never let go.
    *   *   *
    The marriage of true minds admits no impediments—but the make-out sessions of teenagers all too often do. Especially when one of the teenagers was a student at Shadowhunter Academy, with both homework and a curfew. And when the other was a demon-fighting warrior with a stakeout in the morning.
    If Simon had had his way, he would have spent the next week, or possibly the next eternity, entangled with Izzy on the grass, listening to the lake lap against the shore, losing himself in the touch of her fingers and the taste of her lips. Instead, he spent a memorable two hours doing so, then galloped at breakneck speed back to Shadowhunter Academy and spent another hour kissing her good-bye, before letting her leap into the Portal with a promise to return as soon as she could.
    He had to wait until the next day to thank Helen Blackthorn for her help. He caught her just as she was packing up to leave.
    “I see the date went well,” she said as soon as she opened the door.
    “How could you tell?”
    Helen smiled. “You’re practically radioactive.”
    Simon thanked her for relaying Izzy’s message and handed her a small bag of cookies he’d cadged from the dining hall. They were the only thing at the Academy that actually tasted good. “Consider this a small down payment on what I owe you,” he said.
    “You don’t owe me anything. But if you really want to pay me back, come to the wedding—you can be Izzy’s plus one.”
    “I wouldn’t miss it,” Simon promised. “So when’s the big day?”
    “First of December,” she said, but there was a quavering note in her voice. “Probably.”
    “Maybe sooner?”
    “Maybe not at all,” she admitted.
    “What? You and Aline aren’t breaking up!” Simon caught himself, remembering that he was talking to someone he barely knew. He couldn’t exactly command her to have a happy ending just because he’d suddenly fallen in love with love. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business, but . . . why would you come all this way and take all their crap if you didn’t want to marry her?”
    “Oh, I want to marry her. More than anything. It’s just, being back here has made me wonder if I’m being selfish.”
    “How could marrying Aline be selfish?” Simon asked.
    “Look at my life!” Helen exploded, the day’s—or maybe the year’s—worth of pent-up fury blasting out of her. “They look at me like I’m some kind of freak show—and those are the kind ones, the ones who don’t look at me like I’m the enemy. Aline is already stuck on that godforsaken island because of me. Is she supposed to suffer like that for the rest of her life? Just because she made the mistake of falling in love with me? What kind of person does that make me?”
    “You can’t possibly think any of this is your fault.” He didn’t know her very well, but none of this sounded right to him. Not like something she would say or believe.
    “Professor Mayhew told me that if I really loved her, I would leave her,” Helen admitted. “Instead of dragging her into this nightmare with me. That holding on to her is just proof I’m more faerie than I think.”
    “Professor Mayhew is a troll,” Simon said, and wondered what it would take to get Catarina Loss to turn him into one for real. Or maybe a toad or a lizard. Something that