Ghosts of the Shadow Market

by Cassandra Clare

I sometimes think there is nothing more painful than love denied. To love someone you cannot have, to stand beside your heart’s desire and be unable to take them in your arms. A love that cannot be requited. I can think of nothing more painful than that.

This is a wish you should dispense with. Feeling is what makes us human. Even the most difficult feelings. Perhaps especially those. Love, loss, longing—this is what it means to be truly alive.

He’d been hunting for decades—because of Will, because of Tessa, because a part of him was still Jem, the Shadowhunter boy who had loved them both. Still loves them both, Brother Zachariah reminded himself. Present tense.

STILL!!LOVES!!!THEM!!!!!BOTH!!!!!!

This search was the one thing that still bound him to Tessa, to Will, to his former self. What if today he lost his only remaining tie to Jem Carstairs? What if this, today, was his last truly human act?

IM SOBBING

He thought about that other bridge, in another city, where once a year he returned to remember the man he’d once been and the dreams that man had once had.

How many nights had she searched the river for her ageless reflection, imagining the seconds, days, years, centuries she might live, and every one of them in a world without Will. No, not imagining. Because it had been unimaginable. Unimaginable, but here she was, more than fifty years later, still living. Still without him. Heart forever broken yet still beating, still strong. Still capable of love.

The bridge reminded her that there was still someone in the world that she loved. That even if half of her heart was gone forever, the other half was still here. Unreachable, maybe, but here.

Only he remembered. He would not allow himself to forget. Tessa, he thought. Will. Despair was never stronger than the thought of them. He could not betray them by giving up. They are Will and Tessa, and you were Ke Jian Ming. You were James Carstairs. You were Jem.

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.

So, in a way, they would always be fighting together. The letters were W and H.

Not mine. My parabatai’s. W and H. William Herondale. Will.

i screamed tbh

We battle hardest when that which is dearer to us than our own lives is 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.

gay

While Jem would have given every cold tomorrow he had for one more day with a warm heart, to love them as he once had.

My Will. Those words meant something different to Jem than to anyone else, meant: my defiance against encroaching dark. My rebellion. Mine, forever.

mine, forever