Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

Whatever you are physically, male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy—all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.

Sometimes it seemed like her face was all the heart he had left. He could not do much for her, but he had once promised to spend his life guarding her from the very wind from heaven.

The first time she had worn her brother’s clothes it had been a performance, but with each time she did it again, it became more her reality. She was not a man and did not want to be—but why should men get to keep all the good pieces of masculinity for themselves because of an accident of birth? Why should she, Anna, not wear their clothes, and their power and confidence too? You have stolen fire from the gods.

There was a lightness in Jem’s chest that he realized, finally, was joy. He saw that joy mirrored in his parabatai’s face. The face of the one you love is the best mirror of all. It shows you your own happiness and your own pain and it helps you to bear both, because to bear either alone is to be overwhelmed by the flood.

My Tessa, There will be no separation between us. Where you are, I am. Where we are, Will is. Whatever else I may be, I remain always, Your Jem

When he was gone, when he was dust and ashes, Magnus would still be walking through this world. If the world was changed for the better, then that unknowable future would be better for Magnus. Alec could imagine that on some scorching-hot day like this, on a strange street in a strange land, Magnus might see something good that reminded him of Alec, some way that the world was changed because Alec had lived. Alec couldn’t imagine what the world would be like then. But he could imagine, in some faraway future, the face he loved best.

Kit’s jaw was still set. Jem knew that look. Herondales were always flames, he thought. They loved and suffered as if they would burn away with the sheer force of their own fire.

His blue eyes fell on Tessa’s first editions, on Jem’s Stradivarius violin, as though they were signposts and he was trying to find his way in a terribly strange land. Jem said, “We want you to stay, and to know that the choice is entirely yours, and we wanted to show you something. We want you to know there is nothing in this house more precious to us than you.” Kit had stayed.

Memories were like love: wound and cure, both at once.