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September 12 - September 25, 2025
‘Very upset Shadowhunters refused to all die when I wanted them to. Demand recompense. Please mail cheque to A. Mortmain, 18 Kensington Road—’”
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.”
“Jem is my great sin,” said Will. “Don’t talk to me about Jem.”
He reminded Magnus of someone; the memory tickled at the back of his mind, refusing to come clear.
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?”
me anyway.” “Easy enough to say at seventeen,” said Magnus, with no small amount of coldness. “You are in love and you think that is all there is in the world. But the world is bigger than you, Will, and may have need of you.
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?
“It has two meanings. It means that that which is worth having—the good, fine, honorable, and noble things—are difficult to attain.”
“Ni hen piao liang.”
She had taken him for granted, she thought with surprise and shame, watching the flickering candlelight. She had assumed his kindness was so natural and so innate, she had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each of them from the other. Any effort to accept the loss of his family with equanimity. Any effort to remain cheerful and calm in the face of his own dying.
“You think because I am ill that I am not like—” He drew a ragged breath. “Do you think I do not know,” he said, “that when you take my hand, it is only so that you can feel my pulse? Do you think I do not know that when you look into my eyes, it is only to see how much of the drug I have taken? If I were another man, a normal man, I might have hopes, presumptions even; I might—” His words seemed to catch, either because he realized he had said too much or because he had run out of breath; he was gasping, his cheeks flushed. She shook her head, feeling her plaits tickle her neck. “This is the
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“Ni hen piao liang.”
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.
who had stepped in to offer them this home when they had
Sometimes he wondered if he did these things just to test himself. To see if the feelings had gone. But they had not. 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.
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.
“My Tessa,” he said, and this time she did not tell him that she was not his.
“I have wanted to do this,” he said, “every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. But you know that. You must know. Don’t you?” She looked up at him, lips parted in bewilderment. “Know what?” she said, and Will, with a sigh of something like defeat, kissed her.
When he feels something, it is as bright and sharp as lightning.”
Could you really love two different people at once? Could you split your heart in half?
“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.” “A chaperon?” Tessa laughed despite herself. 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?”
Master Will has always been the brighter burning star, the one to catch attention—but Jem is a steady flame, unwavering and honest. He could make you happy.”
“Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.”
Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.”
“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.”
“Wo bu xiang shi qu ni.”
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. But maybe—after tonight— He cut the thought off before it bloomed in his mind. Better not to think about it; better not to hope and be disappointed.
He was horrified to see how raw he looked—as if there were no longer any wall between the world and his own heart’s desires.
All who love you will find only death. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it. And I shall begin it with her.’”
Finally Magnus said, softly, “Do you really wish to disobey me, Marbas? Do you wish to anger my father?”
“Will is right,” said Magnus. “Marbas, you are a blue-skinned bastard. Burn and die!”
“Everything I’ve done,” Will said. His lungs felt as if he couldn’t get enough air. “All the lying, the pushing people away, the abandonment of my family, the unforgivable things I said to Tessa—a waste. A bloody waste, and all because of a lie I was stupid enough to believe.”
“You’re seventeen,” Magnus said. “You can’t have wrecked a life you’ve barely lived. And don’t you understand what this means, Will? You’ve spent the last five years convinced that no one could possibly love you, because if they did, they would be dead. The mere fact of their continued survival proved their indifference to you.
But you have as much a chance to win her love as any man does, Will, and isn’t that what you wanted?”
and now he was not seeing anything that was there, not the river, not Will, only a wash of memories—eyes, faces, lips, receding into memory, love that he could no longer put a name
“It is always better to live the truth than to live a lie.
What he needs now is to love and have that love returned.
“You cannot save every fallen bird,” said Woolsey, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. “Even the handsome ones.” “One will do,” said Magnus, and, as Will was no longer within his sight, he let the front door fall shut.
When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze.”
“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you. That you were the center of everything I did and felt and thought.”
“There is a force and strength in love,”
Was this what it meant to love someone? That any burden was a burden shared, that they could give you comfort with a word or a touch?
love you, Tessa, and I have loved you, almost since the moment I met you.”
“When I first met you, I thought you were unlike anyone else I had ever known. You made me laugh. No one but Jem has made me laugh in, good God, five years. And you did it like it was nothing, like breathing.”
I had thought I could bear it if you hated me, but I could not.
was books that kept me from taking my own life after I thought I could never love anyone, never be loved by anyone again. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt—I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamed. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted—and then I realized that truly I
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And here he was standing in front of her, telling her he loved the words of her heart, the shape of her soul.
“Jem. My Jem?”
Whatever he might think now, she knew that if she broke things off with Jem, even then, he would not touch her, would not be with her, no matter how much he loved her. How could he parade his love for her in front of Jem, knowing his happiness came at the cost of his best friend’s pain?
You have always believed that no one loved you, that no one could love you, as their continued survival was proof to you that they did not. But Charlotte loves you. And Henry. And Jem. And your family. They all have always loved you, Will Herondale, for you cannot hide what is good about yourself, however hard you try.”
