Chain of Iron (The Last Hours, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

it was always a paradox, Lucie thought, the way Anna—generous, openhearted Anna—could be as opaque as clouded glass.

there remained the same aura about him of leashed menace.

“Oh,” she said, as if just recalling an item of shopping she’d forgotten. “Did you need your other wrist tied as well?”

“Honestly, Thomas, I’ve been waiting for you so long out here I was afraid my waistcoat would go out of style.”

the memory of it felt faded, like old parchment. Like the shadow-memory of a dream.

he had always been drawn to that dichotomy, he thought, of the cruelty of Alastair’s words, and the sadness with which he said them.

Sorrowful eyes and a vicious tongue.

Tell me, he had always wanted to say, what broke your heart, and let such...

Watching him, she thought of Majnun from Ganjavi’s poem, a boy so beautiful he illuminated the darkness.

the faint seashell glow of dawn.

It was Alastair Carstairs, striding into the room like he always did—as if he’d bought the place and sold it at a handsome profit.

pugnaciously.

Look at me and tell me there is someone you love more than that bottle in your hand.”

“If I must fade,” he said, “I would like to fade remembering this as my last waking dream.” “Don’t go,” she whispered. “Hold on, for me. We are so close.” He touched her cheek. “Only promise me one thing,” he said. “If I do go, give us a happy ending, will you? In your book?” “I don’t believe in endings,” she said, but he only smiled at her, and faded slowly from view.

The world is hard, and it will work to destroy you. That is the nature of things.”

Being overcharged for lumber was not the sort of thing that happened to heroines in books.

This close, Thomas could see the gray flecks in his dark eyes, like delicate veins of crystal in black marble.

And in the moment, Thomas could only think that if he had to be arrested for murder for this to happen, it had been worth it.

had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving. O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving. —John Keats, “I had a dove”

The sun glimmered like a coin at the bottom of a murky

“He might be considered quite handsome by other sea demons,” said Anna. “We can’t know.”

“No,” Cordelia agreed. “Though are you liking Charles any better now?” Matthew sucked a drop of brandy off his thumb and smiled crookedly. “Because he nearly died? No. I suppose it was a reminder, though—I don’t like Charles, but I love him. I can’t help it. Odd how that works, isn’t it?”

There was little point being stubborn when you lived forever. You learned to bend rather than break.

“They are human,” Magnus said. “It is not in their capability to understand that which by its nature is almost beyond understanding. They see demons as what they fight. They forget that there are unimaginable forces that can bend the laws of the universe. The gods are walking, Malcolm, and none of us are prepared.”

She wore a dark emerald dress that made her hair look like rose petals against green leaves.

She was like starlight, Ariadne thought: it seemed warm and radiant and near, but was in truth uncountable miles away.

“I don’t get paid enough to run about the snow in me nightie.”

“And you should know that decent men don’t embrace women other than their wives in their vestibules. They rent a nice house in St. John’s Wood and do it there.”

There’s a treacherous criminal in the drawing room.”

And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on: Even as a broken mirror, which the glass In every fragment multiplies; and makes A thousand images of one that was, The same, and still the more, the more it breaks; And thus the heart will do which not forsakes, Living in shatter’d guise, and still, and cold, And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches, Yet withers on till all without is old, Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. —Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

She stepped into a small square hall, an entryway of sorts, where one’s eye was drawn compulsively to the massive neoclassical vase standing in one corner. It was of the Greek sort, the kind a maiden would use to pour oil into a bath, though in this case that maiden would have to be twenty feet tall. It was painted all over with faux Greek figures engaged in either combat or passionate embrace, Cordelia could not tell. “I see you’ve noticed my vase,” Matthew said. “It would be difficult not to.”

the truth is that sorrow is fleet and loyal. It will always follow you.”

“You cannot save people who do not want to be saved,” said Magnus. “You can only stand by their side and hope that when they wake and realize they need saving, you will be there to help them.” He paused. “It’s something to keep in mind as we go to help your sister.”