Son of the Dawn (Ghosts of the Shadow Market, #1)

by Cassandra Clare

The leader of my clan made a disastrous experiment with drugs here, against my advice, and made the city her slaughter ground.

The only woman Zachariah had ever loved was a warlock. He had seen her weep over the Circle and its effects. Brother Zachariah had no reason to support the Lightwoods, but everyone deserved a second chance if they wanted that chance enough. And one of Robert Lightwood’s ancestors had been a woman called Cecily Herondale.

Remember, the Circle attacked Magnus Bane.”

Brother Zachariah stared into the box full of silver powder. It had meant the difference between quick and slow death to him once. He set the fire using a rune known only to the Silent Brothers, a rune meant to burn away harmful magic. Life and death were nothing but ashes in the air.

This rune will be used in either Queen of Air and Darkness or The Wicked Powers, mark my words.

For your information, I do not have any interest in romance of any kind and never will.

CANON AROMANTIC REP I AM HERE FOR THIS.

Somebody tried to save me once, and I will pay him back one day. I don’t choose to owe another debt, or for anyone to owe me.

There are more kinds of love than stars, said Brother Zachariah. If you do not feel one, there are many others. You know what it is to care for family and friends. What we keep sacred, keeps us safe. Consider that by trying to cut yourself off from the possibility of being hurt, you shut the door on love and live in darkness.

No, said Jem, because he was always James Carstairs when he spoke of what was dearest to him. Not mine. My parabatai’s. W and H. William Herondale. Will.

He remembered how precious that new link could be, especially when you had no other. It could be the last bridge that connected you to a lost life.

His parabatai had tried to feel nothing, for a time. Except what he felt for Jem. It had almost destroyed him. And every day, Jem pretended to feel something, to be kind, to fix what was broken, to remember names and voices almost forgotten, and hoped that would become truth.

We battle hardest when that which is dearer to us than our own lives at stake, said Jem. A parabatai is both blade and shield. You belong together and to each other not because you are the same but because your different shapes fit together to be a greater whole, a greater warrior for a higher purpose. I always believed we were not merely at our best together, but beyond the best either of us could be apart.

He had taken the name Zachariah, which meant remember. Remember him, Jem willed himself. Remember them. Remember why. Remember the only answer to the only question. Do not forget.

I don’t like the idea of giving up my independence. Before I am my parents’ daughter or my brothers’ sister, I am my own. I’m already a lot of people’s something. I don’t need to be anyone else’s anything, not for a long time.

Jonathan Wayland shrugged. “I applied to the Iron Sisters, but they sent me a hurtful and sexist refusal.”

“My father used to tell a joke about having another Jonathan, if I wasn’t good enough.”

*screeches*

This was not the first time this had happened to him, seeing a trace of what had been in what was. The coloring was entirely different. The boy did not really have anything to do with Will. Jem knew that. Jem—for in the moments he remembered Will, he was always Jem—was used to seeing his lost and dearest Shadowhunter in a thousand Shadowhunter faces and gestures, the turn of a head or the note of a voice. Never the beloved head, never the long-silent voice, but sometimes, more and more rarely, something close.