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No, James was nothing like Will Herondale.
Miss Carstairs. Cordelia had not been Mrs. Cordelia Herondale very long. She knew she should not be attached to the name. It hurt to lose it, but that was self-pity, she told herself firmly. She was a Carstairs, a Jahanshah. The blood of Rostam ran in her veins. She would dress in fire if she liked.
the words of the story as familiar as a lullaby. James could not help but think of Cordelia, reading to him from Ganjavi. Her favorite poem, about the doomed lovers Layla and Majnun. Her voice, soft as velvet. And when her cheek the moon revealed, a thousand hearts were won: no pride, no shield, could check her power. Layla, she was called.
“Kheili khoshgeli,” he said. He found the words easily: they were the first thing he’d taught himself to say in Persian, though he had never said them to his wife before. You are so beautiful.
It is because of me that you have become what you are. Hard and bright as a diamond. Untouchable.
been 2 years and i’m still thinking about this :(
But with Ariadne, things were different; Anna knew she could not have held back a moment longer from asking her what had happened. It mattered too much. That was the problem. With Ariadne, things had always mattered too much.
Jem said, and even though his speech was silent, there was a gentleness in the way he thought about Will that was for Will alone.
heronstairs is REAL
Due to the winter and the vanishing English sun, Alastair’s skin was a few shades lighter than usual, which made his eyelashes look even darker. They framed his black eyes like the petals of a flower. Petals of a flower? SHUT UP, THOMAS.
“Daisy—” he started. “Don’t,” she said, softly, looking at the Institute gates with their Latin script, PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS. “Don’t call me that.”
Layla. The sound of that name hurt, brought back the poem, the story whose thread had bound James and Cordelia, invisibly, over the years. That heart’s delight, one single glance the nerves to frenzy wrought, one single glance bewildered every thought.… Layla, she was called.
You are parabatai, and that is so much more than I can ever understand. If you lose each other, you will be losing something you can never replace.” “ ‘Entreat me not to leave thee,’ ” Matthew said, his voice weary.
“the first boy I ever—the one I still—” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with Alastair. Alastair Carstairs.”
“How much love people have denied themselves through the ages because they believed they did not deserve it. As if the waste of love is not the greater tragedy.”
‘The wound is the place where the light enters you,’ ”
“We are all flawed creatures. As diamonds are flawed, each distinct imperfection makes us unique.”
We all carry a light inside ourselves. It burns with the flame of our souls. But there are other people in our lives who add their own flames to ours, creating a brighter conflagration.” She glanced quickly at Ariadne,
“James is special. He has always burned bright. But when he looks at you, his light blazes up like a bonfire.”
There yet are two things in my destiny— A world to roam through, and a home with thee. The first were nothing—had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness.
Thus many a melody passed to and fro between the two nightingales, drunk with their passion. Those who heard them listened in delight, and so similar were the two voices that they sounded like a single chant. Born of pain and longing, their song had the power to break the unhappiness of the world. —Nizami Ganjavi, Layla and Majnun
James loves you, she had told Cordelia. He loves you with a force that cannot be turned aside, or broken, or made small or insignificant. For these past years Belial struggled against that force, and in the end he lost. And Belial is a power that can move the stars.
