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For not telling you about Jesse. I was falling in love with him, and I knew I’d do anything at all to get him back, to make him alive again. I knew I might even do things you wouldn’t approve of.
“Let me finish. People fear power. That is why the Inquisitor is so afraid of your mother that he feels he must drive her from London. Belial counted on it, on the Enclave’s prejudices, their fears. But Luce, I will always defend you. I will always stand up for you, and if ghosts decide to attend our parabatai ceremony, I will invite them around for tea afterward.” “Oh, dear,” Lucie said. “I feel as if I might cry, but it’s so awfully dry, I don’t think I can.” She rubbed at a smudge on her cheek. “I just wish I knew—why didn’t you tell me how you felt about James? Earlier, I mean.”
for the first time in many long centuries, under the harsh glow of three moons, the sound of simple human laughter drifted across the plains of Edom.
“I love you. Let me love you,” he said, and when Alastair kissed him again, a hard, hot, openmouthed kiss, Thomas lost himself in it, in the way Alastair touched him.
“She will not touch me with her foul blade,” he said. “For I will be possessing you—and for her to harm me, she would have to end your life. Which she will not do. Women,” he added, “are notoriously sentimental.” “Wonderful,” Matthew muttered. “Advice about human women from a Prince of Hell.”
A goal of grief for which the wisest run.
this time Cordelia could read them: they were not in a demonic language, but in Aramaic. And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” “This must have been written here by the Shadowhunters,” said Lucie, following carefully after Cordelia.
Ey pesar, nik ze hadd mibebari kar-e jamal. Ba conin hosn ze to sabr konam?’ It is poetry. Or at least, a song. A Persian ghazal. Boy, your beauty is beyond all description. How can I wait, when you are so beautiful?”
“I always knew the words. I can’t remember when it fully struck me what they meant. It is men who sing ghazals, you know; it occurred to me only then that there were others who felt as I did. Men who wrote freely about how beautiful other men were, and that they loved them.”
“No,” said Alastair flatly. “You’re not trained enough.” Both Grace and Jesse looked offended; in fact, their expressions of annoyance were so similar that it reminded Thomas that whether or not they were blood related, they were siblings nonetheless.
Think like James, she told herself. She had come to know him so well over the past half year, come to know the intricate, winding way he considered and schemed. The kind of plans he made; what he was willing to risk, and what he was not.
Cordelia felt a quiet panic; she’d no idea what James intended. She’d told herself to think like him, but she felt as if she were missing the integral pieces of a puzzle, the key bits that would allow it to be solved. Yet she couldn’t bear to show her doubt in front of Lucie and Matthew, both of whom were looking at her with a desperate hope. She only nodded, as if what Matthew had said made sense to her.
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
That not only would Belial destroy everyone James loved, he would do it with James’s own hands, and James would see their fear, their pain, their pleading up close, through his own eyes. Control yourself, James thought. Do as Jem taught you. Control. Calm. Hold tight to who you are, inside.
To see the endless memorials and chapels dedicated to the heroes of what mundanes called Britain. No Shadowhunters were mentioned. No battles against demons were recorded. Nobody here knew what he knew: that the world had almost been destroyed as recently as 1878, that his parents had saved it before either had even turned twenty.
“I don’t want to,” Matthew said. “I know I might not survive it myself. But he asked me to be his voice when he no longer had one. And I cannot betray that promise.”
Let Belial watch her approach. Let him puzzle at her calm; let him wonder what she had planned. Let him be afraid. She hoped he was afraid. She was not afraid. Not now. She was breathless. Stunned.
All Shadowhunters believed that they would die in battle; indeed, they were raised from childhood to understand it as the preferred method of death.
The thought appeared in Ari’s mind: I could accept dying here, right now, as long as it meant that Anna would live.
“A human soul could not overpower my will,” Belial hissed. Blood ran down his chin. “My will is immutable. I am an instrument of God.” “No,” said Cordelia. “You were an instrument of God.”
“I cannot die,” he said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “I don’t know how to die.” “Nor does anyone living,” said Cordelia. “I suppose you will learn like the rest.”
Lucie had brought feeling back into his existence: she had touched him and brought him to life. I would give it all up, he thought, staring desperately into her face, just to make you all right.
Cordelia cupped his cold cheek in her hand, feeling the brush of his lashes against her palm. “I am a paladin,” she whispered. “This is my power. To wound, with justice. To heal, with love.”
They were two of the most important people in the world to him. The girl he loved, and his sister.
She thought of all the things she’d wanted to say, about how it was over and they were safe, and she had never thought it was possible to love someone so much as she loved him.
His voice was rough, his eyes shining. “Daisy,” he said. “You believed in me.” “Of course I did,” she replied, and she realized as she spoke the words that that was all she really needed to say. “I always will.”
But as Jem had good cause to know, even after unimaginable loss, one continued: life had to be lived, and one learned to bear one’s scars.
Life was resuming, however much they had all changed, and to mark the occasion Matthew had suggested this ceremony, in which each of them would bury a symbol of the past.
“Anna,” Matthew said, in a mock-serious tone, “is it not your turn now? What will you be contributing?” Anna sketched a wave on the air. “Nothing. I like everything I have and I approve of everything I’ve done.”
Cordelia grinned at him over her shoulder. In truth, she could hardly believe any of it. She still woke up in the morning and pinched herself when she realized she was in the same bed as James. That they were married—now with their full sets of wedding runes, though she could not think about that without blushing.
“You’re a cruel mistress, Daisy,” he said now, and kissed her. Cordelia shivered all over; Rosamund had once told her kissing Thoby was boring, but Cordelia could not imagine becoming bored with kissing James. She shifted closer to him on the blanket, as he brought up one hand to gently cup her face— “Oi!” Alastair yelled over good-naturedly. “Stop kissing my sister!” Cordelia drew back from James and laughed.
Ever since Bridget had recovered from her injury at Westminster, she had been wildly active in the kitchen: in fact, she’d seemed to have more energy than ever. The gray threads had disappeared from her head; Will had remarked that it was as if she were aging backward. Even her songs had become more frequent, and more gruesome.
Malcolm glanced at her and then away, so quickly that Lucie was only conscious of the flaring fury in his eyes, the twist of his mouth. He looked as if he would slap her if he could. “You understand nothing,” he hissed, “and like all Shadowhunters, when you make a promise to a Downworlder, you will inevitably break it.” Shaken, Lucie said, “Could I not help you some other way? I could try to get some kind of restitution from the Clave, an apology for what was done to Annabel—” “No.” He flung himself to his feet. “I will get my own restitution. The Nephilim have reached the end of their
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For a moment they stayed as they were, reveling in each other’s closeness. It was a wonder to be able to hold Jesse, to touch him without awful darkness surrounding her, Lucie thought. And, more practically, it was rather nice to be in Jesse’s arms without her parents watching them like hawks. Though they lived together in the Institute, they were strictly forbidden from visiting each other’s rooms unless the doors were left open; no amount of complaining on Lucie’s part would budge Will. “I’m sure you and Mother got up to all sorts of scandalous things when you lived together in the
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Jesse had suggested she shorten the title. Lucie had said she would think about it. She was beginning to see the value in critique.
“You told me once you don’t believe in endings, happy or otherwise,” he said, his calloused hand gently cradling the back of her head. “Is that still true?” “Of course,” she said. “We have so much yet ahead—good, bad, and everything else. I believe this is our happy middle. Don’t you?” And he kissed her, which Lucie took confidently to mean that he agreed.
“I am in love with Alastair Carstairs,” Thomas had said loudly and slowly, so there could be no mistake, “and I am going to spend the rest of my life with him.” There had been a momentary silence. “I didn’t think you even liked Alastair,” Gideon had said, looking puzzled. “Not much, at least.”
“If anyone here condemns Thomas for who he is or who he loves,” she had announced, “he and I will leave this house immediately. I will reside with him and renounce the rest of you as my family.” Thomas was wondering in alarm how he would explain this business of Eugenia residing with him to Alastair, when Sophie put down her reading glasses with a click. “Eugenia,” she had said, “do not be ridiculous. No one here is going to condemn Thomas.” Thomas had exhaled in relief. Eugenia had looked slightly deflated. “No?” “No,” Gideon had said firmly.
Sophie looked at Thomas, her eyes full of affection. “Thomas, my darling, we love you and we want you to be happy. If Alastair makes you happy, then we are delighted. Although it would be nice if you introduced us,” she added pointedly. “Perhaps you could bring him to dinner?”