The Ragpicker King (The Chronicles of Castellane, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

All That Is Good Comes from the Gods. All That Is Evil Comes from Men.

She and Kel were similar in that way, Lin thought: They lived within walls both real and

imagined, bound by the expectations and plans of others. And as for whose faces they saw when they closed their eyes at night, they kept that to themselves.

I want to be like him. I want to walk through the world as if it will reshape itself around my dreams and desires. I want to seem as if I could touch the stars with light fingers and pull them down to be my playthings.

He knew better now. The world did not reshape itself around anyone. No matter how powerful you were, there were forces more powerful than you would ever be.

People dying of thirst, when they were given water, sometimes drank until they died, unable to assuage the need that had become part of them. She could understand it now, how you could have something and still not have enough of it, ever.

He jerked away from her. It felt like a wound, and not a clean cut: bone and muscle torn apart.

“Hope is a danger, you know. Hope may raise you up for a time, but when it is disappointed, the fall is all the more acute.”

“I asked you because when I am not with you, Lin Caster, I feel as if some part of me has been torn away. I feel as if I am bleeding, insensible with the pain of a wound no one can see save myself. When you are with me…It is the only time I feel whole.”

To kiss him seemed as natural as the rain, and as unruly.

Kel knew that Conor feared the fall, the tumble into the vast empty abyss of despair. Anger was better than despair—even anger against someone you loved. Anger was fire, and despair was darkness. And Conor had for years been afraid of the dark.