More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
December 12 - December 24, 2024
“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. . . . Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing. . . .” —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
“How could I not?” he said. “When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind’s eye always with a book in your hand.” He looked away from her as he said it, but not before she caught the slight flush on his cheekbones.
Mortality, behold and fear! What a change of flesh is here: Think how many royal bones Sleep within these heaps of stones.’”
Will looked at him in puzzlement. “Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine’s ‘genuphobia.’ It means an unreasonable fear of knees.” “What’s the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?” inquired Jessamine.
‘Very upset Shadowhunters refused to all die when I wanted them to. Demand recompense. Please mail cheque to A. Mortmain, 18 Kensington Road—’”
Tessa’s hands shook as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She hated that Will had this effect on her. Hated it. She knew better. She knew what he thought of her. That she was nothing, worth nothing. And still a look from him could make her tremble with mingled hatred and longing. It was like a poison in her blood, to which Jem was the only antidote. Only with him did she feel on steady ground.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain. . . . Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart’s best brother: They parted—ne’er to meet again!
Friendship is one mind in two bodies. —Meng-tzu
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave,’” said Jem. “Song of Solomon.”
The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame,’” said Will, quirking his eyebrows up. “I always thought females found the idea of jealousy romantic. Men, fighting over you . . .”
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Haunted Palace”
“Well, that settles it,” Will said.
When she didn’t smile, he added, fiercely, “I would never let anyone touch a hair on your head. You know that, don’t you, Tess?”
The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed —Charlotte Brontë, “Evening Solace”
An orphan’s curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man’s eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
“Lose her?” Magnus’s mind fastened on the word; he sat up straight, narrowing his eyes. “This is about Tessa. I knew it was.” Will flushed, a wash of color across the pallor of his face. “Not just her.” “But you love her.” Will stared at him. “Of course I do,” he said finally. “I had come to think I would never love anyone, but I love her.”
“I feel myself diminished, parts of me spiraling away into the darkness, that which is good and honest and true—If you hold it away from yourself long enough, do you lose it entirely? If no one cares for you at all, do you even really exist?”
“Must I go bound while you go free Must I love a man who doesn’t love me Must I be born with so little art As to love a man who’ll break my heart?”
REALLL
I feel myself dissolving, vanishing into nothingness, for if there is no one in the world who cares for you, do you really exist at all?
Propping himself over her, he gazed down, and said again, huskily, what he had said in the carriage before, when he had touched her hair. “Ni hen piao liang.” “What does it mean?” she whispered, and this time he smiled and said: “It means that you are beautiful. I did not want to tell you before. I did not want you to think I was taking liberties.”
“Beautiful,” she said, and she meant it. “You are beautiful, James Carstairs.”
The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man’s flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve.
When he saw her, he wanted to be with her; when he was with her, he ached to touch her; when he touched even her hand, he wanted to embrace her. He wanted to feel her against him the way he had in the attic. He wanted to know the taste of her skin and the smell of her hair. He wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to sit and listen to her talk about books until his ears fell off. But all these were things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.
Will sounded sharp. “You’re my blood brother. I’ve sworn an oath not to let any harm come to you—”
“I am not here at her request. James, you are all the family I have.” Will’s voice shook. “I would die for you. You know that. I would die without you. If it were not for you, I would be dead a hundred times over these past five years. I owe you everything, and if you cannot believe I have empathy, perhaps you might at least believe I know honor—honor, and debt—”
“God, I’m jealous of every other man who looks at you,” Nate said. “You should be looked at only by me.”
“That’s my good girl.” He was leaning closer. He was definitely going to kiss her.
“Of course,” Nate chuckled, “they do say a gentleman should dance only the first set or two with his wife.” Tessa froze. It was as if time had stopped: Everything in the room seemed to freeze along with her, even the smirk on Nate’s face. Wife? He and Jessamine were married?
This is madness, she thought, as the first pin rattled to the ground. They should be running, fleeing this place. Instead she stood, wordless, as Will cast Jessamine’s pearl clasps aside as if they were so much paste jewelry. Her own long, curling dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Will slid his hands into it. She heard him exhale as he did so, as if he had been holding his breath for months and had only just let it out. She stood as if mesmerized as he gathered her hair in his hands, draping it over one of her shoulders, winding her curls between his fingers. “My Tessa,” he said,
...more
BRO WHY IS THIS SO CUTEEE
“Do you—not like him?” Tessa asked; it was an odd question, perhaps, but there was something in the way Magnus looked at Will, spoke to Will, that she could not put her finger on. To her surprise, Magnus took the question seriously. “I do like him,” he said, “though rather despite myself. I thought him a pretty bit of poison to start with, but I have come around. There is a soul under all that bravado. And he is really alive, one of the most alive people I have ever met. When he feels something, it is as bright and sharp as lightning.” “We all feel,” Tessa said, thoroughly surprised. Will,
...more
“And you will find that feelings fade too, the longer you live.
I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.”
Could you really love two different people at once?
“Every time you say that word, ‘friendship,’ it goes into me like a knife,” he said. “To be friends is a beautiful thing, Tessa, and I do not scorn it, but I have hoped for a long time now that we might be more than friends. And then I had thought after the other night that perhaps my hopes were not in vain. But now—”
“Say something, Tessa.” Jem’s voice shook. “I fear that you think that I regret that night. I do not.” His thumb brushed over her wrist, the bare skin between the cuff of her dress and her glove. “I only regret that it came too soon. I—I would have wanted to—to court you first. To take you driving, with a chaperon.”
He went on determinedly. “To tell you of my feelings first, before I showed them. To write poetry for you—” “You don’t even like poetry,” Tessa said, her voice catching on a half laugh of relief. “No. But you make me want to write it. Does that not count for anything?”
“There is only one girl I care to make swoon,” he said. “The question is, does she?” She smiled at him. “She does.”
“I . . .” Jessamine looked from one of them to the other, like a frightened rabbit. “Would you forgive Tessa, if it were her?” “I would forgive Tessa anything,” Jem said gravely.
There is something horrible about a flower; This, broken in my hand, is one of those He threw it in just now; it will not live another hour; There are thousands more; you do not miss a rose. —Charlotte Mew, “In Nunhead Cemetery”
“I would not,” said Will. “Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.”
He pushed her hair back, ignoring her words. “I see,” he said, and his voice was deep and husky. “But first—” He tipped her head up with a finger under her chin. “Come and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty.”
Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again. For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. —Matthew Arnold, “Longing”
Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.”
Her aunt leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. “You have more family than you think.”
As the door closed behind the two women, Jem leaned forward, his arms crossed over the foot of Tessa’s brass bed. He was looking at her, smiling a little, though crookedly, his hands hanging loose—dried blood across the knuckles, and under the nails. “Tessa, my Tessa,” he said in his soft voice, as lulling as his violin.
“I’ve never minded it,” he went on. “Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not be truly lost if one knew one’s own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.” He closed his eyes as if he were bone-weary, and she saw how thin his eyelids were, like parchment paper, and how tired he looked. “Wo ai ni, Tessa, ” he whispered. “Wo bu xiang shi qu ni.” She knew, without knowing how she knew, what the words meant. I love you. And I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you, either, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.
Will was still leaning forward, his arm extended; she curled against him, her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. She felt him jerk with surprise. “Did I hurt you?” she whispered, belatedly remembering his back. “I don’t care,” he said fervently. “I don’t care.” His arms went around her, and he held her; she rested her cheek against the warm juncture of his neck and shoulder. She heard the echo of his pulse and smelled the scent of him, blood and sweat and soap and magic. It was not like it had been on the balcony, all fire and desire. He held her carefully, laying his cheek against her
...more
Strangely, what pierced his heart and mind most sharply was not the memory of her lips under his at the ball, but the way she had leaned into him tonight, her head on his shoulder, her breath soft against his neck, as if she trusted him utterly. He would have given everything he had in the world and everything he would ever have, just to lie beside her in the narrow infirmary bed and hold her while she slept. Pulling away from her had been like pulling his own skin off, but he’d had to do it. The way he always had to. The way he always had to deny himself what he wanted.
My whole life long I learn’d to love. This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion—heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? ’Tis well! —Robert Browning, “One Way of Love”
“You are not plain,” Henry said, his face still blazing. “You are beautiful. And I didn’t ask your father if I could marry you out of duty; I did it because I loved you. I’ve always loved you. I’m your husband.” “I didn’t think you wanted to be,” she whispered. Henry was shaking his head. “I know people call me eccentric. Peculiar. Even mad. All of those things. I’ve never minded. But for you to think I’d be so weak-willed—Do you even love me at all?” “Of course I love you!” Charlotte cried. “That was never in question.”
