Chain of Gold (The Last Hours, #1)

by Cassandra Clare

Late one night the brightness of the moon woke Lucie. It was pouring into her room like milk, laying white bars of light over her bed and across the polished wood floor.

It was possible, she thought later, that she had not remembered the story of Snow White entirely correctly.

Lucie was brave, but she was only ten.

James was sworn to protect him, not that it mattered: he would have given his life for Matthew’s, vows or not.

In the midst of the chaos, James could not help feeling very far away from it all.

For Lucie, everything was always very,

very, very something, be it beautiful or exciting or horrid.

Risa spoke only Persian; Cordelia wondered whether the men in the van had tried to make conversation with her. Risa understood English perfectly, but she liked her silence.

“I will walk ten paces behind you like a train-bearer,” said James. “But I must keep you within sight, otherwise Mother will kill me, and then I will miss tomorrow’s ball and Matthew will kill me, and I will be dead twice.”

wasn’t that what power was, the ability to risk angering people? What was the point of being a female Consul if you still had to fret about keeping people happy?

But he was, and they didn’t.

and the three were united in adult grief, a sphere James could not yet touch. It was the first time it had ever occurred to James that his father might cry about anything.

They made a stunning picture, his dark hair and her fair icicle beauty. Like ashes and silver.

She could not bear to pause and listen to him thank her for going away.

Cordelia could smell the sharp, sweet perfume of the alcohol, familiar as childhood.

“There is no special protection in this world for kind people,”

This world, Lucie and James’s world, was a world of family and friends who loved each other, but did not know her at all.

“People are only invincible in books,”

“I think you will find most of the time, not even then,” said Tessa. “But at least we can always pick up a book and read it anew. Stories offer a thousand fresh starts.”

Her father had his faults, but he was never cruel, and when he did pay Cordelia some mind, his attention made her feel ten feet tall.

She wondered if not being able to help the people you loved was the worst feeling in the world.

“Men like the idea of a woman they can rescue.”

“We don’t always love people who deserve it,”

And yet he wondered if so much relocation would make a person lonely.

“How much is love meant to hurt?” he had asked his father once. “Oh, terribly,” his father had said with a smile. “But we suffer for love because love is worth it.”

“Ragnor Fell, my beloved son and daughter. Also a disgraceful

pack of home invaders.

I cannot help but wonder: What will you become?”

“But do not forget, Alastair, that whatever I do, it is with the thought of you ever in my mind.”

You love, and tremble, and burn. Do not let those who cannot see the truth tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

“As I have known Charles since he was born, I have a difficult time taking him seriously as an authority figure,” said Will thoughtfully. “I suppose if he says anything I don’t like, I can request that he be spanked.”

LOL???

The light of Cortana. He saw her there, the blade in her hand, her hair like fire. She cut at the creature on James’s back, and with a searing pain it tore away from him, Cortana sunk deep into its body. It fell away, tumbling down the steep incline of the roof.

She whispered his name: James, James, as if no one had ever spoken it before.

It was always James, Cordelia thought as they drew up chairs. Always James keeping the group together, noticing when they needed each other.

“Sometimes grief and worry must take the form of action,”

The girls will have cake and the boys nothing. There is no other fair way to do it.”

Instead of many who give you little pieces of themselves—one who gives you everything.”

“Orange is not the color of seduction, Christopher. Orange is the color of despair, and pumpkins.

It was beautiful—she was beautiful, but it was not a distant beauty. It was a beauty that lived and breathed and reached out with its hands to crush James’s chest and make him breathless.

but she did not love James because he was beautiful: he was beautiful to her because she loved him.

There is no better distraction in this world than losing oneself in books for a while.”

It does not matter. You are who you are, made by the sum of your choices and actions. Not a teaspoon of demon’s blood.”

“It isn’t just for boys to risk their lives for each other,”

“I always preferred the death of a thousand cats, in which one is buried under kittens,”