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

by Cassandra Clare

The only woman Zachariah had ever loved was a warlock.

And one of Robert Lightwood’s ancestors had been a woman called Cecily Herondale.

and once his parabatai had stolen one and they had rowed it down the Thames.

Why had he ever fought? Only he remembered. He would not allow himself to forget. Tessa, he thought. Will.

They are Will and Tessa, and you were Ke Jian Ming.

Brother Zachariah was familiar

with what it looked like when someone blamed and hated themselves for what had happened to those they loved.

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 traveling across the sea, having lost his family, not knowing that he was going to his best friend. I suppose they can be a weakness, he answered. It depends on who your parabatai is. I carved his initials here because I always fought best with him.

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.

When the alien cacophony of the Silent Brothers threatened to engulf all that he had been, Jem held fast to his lifelines. There had been none stronger than that one, and only one other so strong. His parabatai’s name had been a shout into the abyss, a cry that always received an answer. Even in the Silent City, even with the silent howl insisting that Jem’s life was no longer his own but a shared life. No longer my thoughts, but our thoughts. No longer my will, but our will. He would not accept that parting. My Will. Those words meant something different to Jem than to anyone else, meant: my defiance against encroaching dark. My rebellion. Mine, forever.

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. Jem’s hand was firmly clasped around his staff. He had not paid attention to the carving beneath his palm like this for many a long, cold day. This is a reminder of my faith. If there is any part of him that can be with me, and I believe there is, then he is at hand. Nothing can part us. He allowed himself a smile.

could still speak to Will, though he could no longer hear any answer. Life is not a boat, bearing us far away on a cruel, relentless tide from all we love. You are not lost to me on some forever distant shore. Life is a wheel.

If life is a wheel, it will bring you back to me. All I must do is keep faith. Even when having a heart seemed hard past bearing, it was better than the alternative. Even when Brother Zachariah felt he was losing the struggle, losing everything he had been, there was hope. Sometimes you seem very far away from me, my parabatai.

He was a child going to a new home, as Will and the boy Zachariah had been had

once traveled in lonely sorrow to the place where they would find each other. Jem hoped he would find happiness. Jem smiled back at a boy long gone. Sometimes, Will, he said. You seem very close.