Julian moved as if to thrust Emma behind him, but she wouldn’t budge.
Desire is not always lessend by disust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it.
If it had been anyone else, anyone else in the world-but she did not love anyone else in the world. These were the boys she loved. For better. And for worse.
Your brother was wrong about you... He said you were gentle. The most gentle person he knew... You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart... Remember it.
Ty leaned over and touched his head lightly to Julian’s shoulder- a friendly head butt, as if he were Church, seeking affection. Julian reached out to ruffle up his younger brother’s hair and nearly smiled.
Queen of Air and Drkness”, he said in a low voice. “I will never be like Malcom.
He’d never in his entire life had so little idea what to do, in fact.
But she did not say it. It would hurt him, and if there was anything she knew to be true, it was that a fierce unreasoning desire lived in her to protect him from hurt, to stand between him and disappointment, between him and pain, between him and death, and fight them all back as Boadicea had fought back the advancing Romans.
The legend of the origin of Shadowhunters is that they were created more than a thousand years ago, when men were being overrun by demon invasions from other worlds. A warlock summoned the Angel Raziel, who mixed some of his blood with the blood of men in a cup, and gave it to those men to drink. Those who drank the Angel’s blood became Shadowhunters, as did their children and their children’s children.
The world seemed leached of color. The river was the color of steel, the sky gray as a dove, the horizon a thick black painted line in the distance.
But then there were other times, like this, when he looked at Jem and saw no mark of illness on him, and wondered what it would be like in a world where Jem was not dying. And that did not bear thinking about either. It was a terrible black place in himself that the fear came from, a dark voice he could only silence with anger, risk, and pain.
Just the way he said her name undid her, loosened something tight and knotted underneath her rib cage, making her breathless.
We are all betrayed sooner or later- all betrayed, or traitors.
I was thinking about painting you. Painting your hair. That I’d have to use titanium white to get the color right, the way it catches light and almost glows. But that wouldn’t work, would it? It’s not all one color, you hair, it’s not just gold: It’s amber and tawny and caramel and wheat and honey.
He loved them all too much to say no.
He had sworn long ago that no one would ever change him – not the mundanes who hated him for one thing, or the Shadowhunters currently hunting him for another.
You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough.
It was dangerous to dream, he reminded himself. As dangerous as it was for Sleeping Beauty in her castle, where she’d fallen into dreams that had devoured her for a century.
Words are weapons.
He knew what his plans were. He knew they balanced, like a million angels, on the head of a pin. Chance, circumstance, and determination held them together.