Chain of Iron (The Last Hours, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

“I have decided that my invitation was sadly lost in the post,”

“Why,” he said, “are you not even wearing a hat?” “And cover up this hair?” Matthew indicated his golden locks with a flourish. “Would you blot out the sun?”

“I believe that decadence is a valuable perspective that should always be considered.”

“Matthew has a habit of getting his heart broken. He seems to prefer a hopeless love.”

“You may fear what will happen if you speak your heart. You may wish to hide things because you fear hurting others. But secrets have a way of eating at relationships, Jamie. At love, at friendship—they undermine and destroy them until in the end you find you are bitterly alone with the secrets you kept.”

“Well, you know what they say,” said James. “All the best men are either married or Silent Brothers.”

“We have talked so much of travel,” James said. “I wanted to give you the world.”

“When I am with you, I imagine that my heart is beating, though it has not beaten for seven years.

“May I have your permission to shout, keeping in mind I am not shouting at you?” he said to Cordelia. “Oh, quite,” she said. “I like a good shouting in general.” “Yes,” agreed Lucie. “Shout at Matthew if you like.”

“First a man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.”

You are better than any imagined heroine. You are my heroine.”

“It’s almost a joke,” he said, and the bitterness in his voice surprised her. “A ghost falling in love with a living girl and pining away in a dusty attic while she lives her life.

“Nothing you do troubles me,” said James. “Well, that is not precisely true. You are quite troublesome, as you well know.” He grinned. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what’s happening in your life.

“Because,” Ariadne said, “when you want something very much, you are willing to accept the shadow of that thing. Even if it is just a shadow.”

“That love is complicated,” said Cordelia. “That it lies beside anger and hatred, because only those we truly love can truly disappoint us.”

“I, on the other hand, am the most likely to be a secret killer,” said Matthew, throwing himself into one of the chairs. “I wear peculiar clothes. I come and go as I please and do mysterious, illicit things in the night.

“I didn’t see you—you were this boy, following me around at school, and then I met you in Paris and you’d grown up and turned into Michelangelo’s David. I thought you were beautiful.

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.

“Daisy, my love,

“Tom, you patrolled alone at night because you like things that are dangerous and unhealthy for you. I won’t be one of those things.”

Nausea rose in the pit of Grace’s stomach. Her pulse was racing and her chest was tight. “Jesse is my brother.”

Glad that deters her more than it did Jace and Clary

“What are you looking at?” “You,” he said. “Did you know, you grow more beautiful every day?” “Well, that’s odd,” said Tessa, resting her chin thoughtfully on the spine of her book, “because as a warlock I do not age, and so I should look the same day to day, neither improving nor worsening.” “And yet,” said Will, “you continue to accrue radiance.”

“That’s my wife.”