Angels Twice Descending Read Online Free PDF Page A

and pulled her close for a kiss, which she indulged for about thirty seconds before extricating herself.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “You tell me,” she said. “I, your incredibly sexy girlfriend that you never get to see, am prostrating myself before you half-naked, and you seem like you’d rather be watching a baseball game.”
    “I hate baseball.”
    “Exactly.” Isabelle sat up—though, mercifully, she didn’t put any clothes back on. Not yet. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”
    Simon nodded.
    “So if, hypothetically, you were feeling a little nervous about this whole Ascension thing tomorrow, and wondering whether you still wanted to go through with it, you could talk to me about that.”
    “Hypothetically,” Simon said.
    “Just picking a topic at random,” Isabelle said. “We could also talk about Avatar: The Last Airplane , if you want.”
    “It’s the Air bender ,” Simon said, suppressing a grin, “and I love you even if you are nerd-clueless.”
    “And I love you, even if you are a mundane,” she said. “Even if you stay a mundane. You know that, right?”
    “I . . .” It was easy for her to say, and he thought she probably even meant it. But that didn’t make it true. “You think you would? Really? ”
    Isabelle let out her breath in an irritated puff. “Simon Lewis, are you forgetting that you were a mundane when I started dating you? A rather scrawny mundane with terrible fashion sense, I should point out. And then you were a vampire , and I still dated you. Then you were a mundane again, but this time with freaking amnesia. And still, inexplicably, I fell in love with you all over again. What could possibly make you think I have any standards left when it comes to you?”
    “Uh, thank you, I think?”
    “ʻThank you’ is the correct response. And also ‘I love you, too, Isabelle, and I would love you even if you lost your memory or grew a mustache or something.’”
    “Well, obviously.” Simon tugged at her chin. “Though I’d draw the line at a beard.”
    “Goes without saying.” Then she looked serious again. “You do believe me, right? You can’t be doing this for me.”
    “I’m not doing it for you,” Simon said, and that was true. He may have gone to the Academy, in part, because of Isabelle—but he’d stayed for himself. When he Ascended, it wouldn’t be because he needed to prove something to her. “But . . . if I did back out, which I would never do, but if I did, wouldn’t that make me a coward? You’d date a mundane, maybe. But I know you, Izzy. You couldn’t date a coward.”
    “And you, Simon Lewis, couldn’t be a coward. Not if you tried. It’s not cowardly to make a choice about what you want your life to be. Choosing what’s right for you, maybe that’s the bravest thing you can do. If you choose to be a Shadowhunter, I will love you for it. But if you choose to stay a mundane, I’ll love you for that, too.”
    “What if I just choose not to drink from the Mortal Cup because I’m afraid it will kill me?” Simon asked. It was a relief to finally say it out loud. “What if it had nothing to do with how I want to spend the rest of my life? What if it’s just being scared?”
    “Well, then, you’re an idiot. Because the Mortal Cup could never hurt you. It will know what I do, which is that you’d make an amazing Shadowhunter. The blood of the Angel could never hurt you,” she said, intensity blazing in her eyes. “It’s not possible.”
    “You really believe that?”
    “I really do.”
    “So the fact that we’re here, and you’re, you know—”
    “Partially disrobed and wondering why we’re still making small talk?”
    “—has nothing to do with the fact that you think this might be our last night together?”
    This earned him another exasperated sigh. “Simon, do you know how many times I’ve been almost certain one of us wouldn’t survive the next twenty-four hours?”
    “Um,