Chain of Iron (The Last Hours, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

For Rick Riordan. Thanks for letting me use the noble name di Angelo.

“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?”

goodness can be a blade sharp enough to cut, you know, just as much as evil intent.”

“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.”

when you have hurt people, you must allow them their anger. Otherwise it will only become another thing you have tried to take away.”

All one had to do was pretend, she realized, marveling a bit, and everyone else would fall into line pretending along with you.

Contrary to what your beloved poets say, unrequited love doesn’t last forever. And being treated badly by someone doesn’t make you love them more.”

“Ugh,” she muttered to herself, lacing up her low boots. “It’s a sword, not a pet hedgehog. Have sense.”

only those we truly love can truly disappoint us.”

grief makes us mad,”

She had never understood before: how bitter it was to have power, and not be able to turn it to any kind of good.

“I think he is possessed,” said Thomas. “He’s defacing a book.”

Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.

“I suppose I’m asking if you’re like me.”

A demonic demotic, if you will.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “All right, no one got that joke.

“Sometimes,” she said, “it is not enough for others to love you. I do not think Matthew loves himself very well.”

“I do not believe that Belial has read and understood Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman. He is interested in James because James is a boy, and not interested in me because I am a girl. I suspect that Belial would rather possess a tortoise than a woman.”

there was nothing for it now but to go and bury his terrible humiliation at the other side of the room. Perhaps he could hide behind a candelabra.

I believe all the stories are true, even the ones that contradict each other. Perhaps especially those.”

“That’s right,” he whispered against her mouth. “Touch me—do what you want—anything—”

He mouthed something at Thomas that could have been encouragement, or could have been a recipe for lemon biscuits. Thomas had never learned lipreading.

“Calling a dead body ‘not quite the ideal vessel’ is rather like calling the sewers of London ‘not that bad a holiday destination,’ ”

“You, girl, do not matter. Your little talent with ghosts does not matter. When I heard you were born, I wept tears of fire, for you were female, and you could not see the shadow realms. You are useless, do you understand? Useless to me, to the world.”

The gods are walking, Malcolm, and none of us are prepared.”

Cordelia would rather be set on fire than pitied.

James had never imagined that the hardest thing he would ever do in his life was nothing at all.

Will generally loved all horses. All animals, really, with the exception of ducks.

I have no right to be angry that they have gone.” Magnus shrugged. “Rights,” he said. “We all have the right to feel pain, James, and unhappiness.

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