Tessa Gray Quotes

If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?

Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.

Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.

And to the devil with it if she is!" said the Consul. "One girl, who is not Nephilim, is not, cannot, be our priority." "She is my priority!" Will shouted.

It's too late," she said. "Don't say that." His voice was half a whisper. "I love you, Tessa. I love you.

Clary,” Jocelyn said. “I want you to meet Tessa Gray.

Jem is nothing but goodness. That he struck you last night only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness.

There are so many worse things than death. Not to be loved or not to be able to love: that is worse.

Trains are great dirty smoky things," said Will. "You won't like it." Tessa was unmoved. "I won't know if I like it until I try it, will I?" "I've never swum naked in the Thames before, but I know I wouldn't like it." "But think how entertaining for sightseers," said Tessa, and she saw Jem duck his head to hide the quick flash of his grin.

Tessa touched his wrist lightly with her hand. "Be brave," she said. "It's not a duck, is it?

Do not seek revenge and call it justice.

You haven't broken his heart yet, have you?" "No," Tessa said. Just torn my own in two. "I haven't broken his heart at all.

Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name," Will said. "You can have mine." Tessa stared at him, all black and white against the black-and-white snow and stone. "Your name?" Will took a step toward her, till they stood face-to-face. Then he reached to take her hand and slid off her glove, which he put into his pocket. He held her bare hand in his, his fingers curved around hers. His hand was warm and callused, and his touch made her shiver. His eyes were steady and blue; they were everything that Will was: true and tender, sharp and witty, loving and kind. "Marry me," he said. "Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be called Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.

We live and breathe words. It was books that kept me from taking my own life after I thought I could never love anyone, never be loved again. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.

If you do not help me," Tessa said to Jem, "I swear, I will change into you, and I will lift him myself. And then everyone here will see what you look like in a dress." She fixed him with a look. "Do you understand?

I am not the one of us who has no heart.

Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.

One does no question miracles, or complain that they are no constructed perfectly to one's liking.

His eyes went soft and silver as she spoke. “Zhe shi jie shang, wo shi zui ai ne de,” he whispered. She understood it. In all the world, you are what I love the most.

She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.

Jem told me what Ragnor Fell said about my father,” Will said. “That for my father, there was only ever one woman he loved, and it was her for him, or nothing. You are that for me. I love you, and I will only ever love you until I die —

Tess, Tess, Tessa. Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isn’t it – a heart ringing – but when you touch me that is what it is like: as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins and splinters my bones with joy. Why have I written these words in this book? Because of you. You taught me to love this book where I had scorned it. When I read it for the second time, with an open mind and heart, I felt the most complete despair and envy of Sydney Carton. Yes, Sydney, for even if he had no hope that the woman he loved would love him, at least he could tell her of his love. At least he could do something to prove his passion, even if that thing was to die. I would have chosen death for a chance to tell you the truth, Tessa, if I could have been assured that death would be my own. And that is why I envied Sydney, for he was free. And now at last I am free, and I can finally tell you, without fear of danger to you, all that I feel in my heart. You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth. With hope at least, Will Herondale

Tessa craned her head back to look at Will. “You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.” His blue eyes were dark with understanding — of course Will would understand — and she hurried on. “I feel now as if the same is happening, only not to characters on a page but to my own beloved friends and companions. I do not want to sit by while tragedy comes for us. I would turn it aside, only I struggle to discover how that might be done.” “You fear for Jem,” Will said. “Yes,” she said. “And I fear for you, too.” “No,” Will said, hoarsely. “Don’t waste that on me, Tess.

Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us.

You speak of sacrifice, but it is not my sacrifice I offer. It is yours I ask of you," he went on. "I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope that you wil not care that I am being selfish in trying to make the rest of my life - whatever length - happy, by spending it with you. I want to be married to you, Tessa. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life." He looked up at her through the veil of silvery hair that fell over his eyes. "That is," he said shyly, "if you love me, too.

They say you cannot love two people equally at once,” she said. “And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well. And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did.

I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that

Will looked up in apparent relief when Charlotte and Tessa came in. "Will," Charlotte said, "You remember Miss Gray?" "My recollection of her," said Will, "is most vivid indeed.

You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.

He was Will, in all his perfect imperfection; Will, whose heart was as easy to break as it was carefully guarded; Will, who loved not wisely but entirely and with everything he had.

I know how you are with your words, and, Will- I love all of them. Every word you say. The silly ones, the mad ones, the beautiful ones, and the ones that are only for me. I love them, and I love you." - Tessa Gray

She smiled at him. “How did you know just what I’d want to see?” “How could I not?” he said. “When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind’s eye always with a book in your hand.” He looked away from her as he said it, but not before she caught the slight flush on his cheekbones. He was so pale, he could never hide even the least blush, she thought — and was surprised how affectionate the thought was.

Marry me," he said. "Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.

No, i mean enterprising." said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say,`Now, that is something i would have done´

Wo wei ni xie de,” he said, as he raised the violin to his left shoulder, tucking it under his chin. He had told her many violinists used a shoulder rest, but he did not: there was a slight mark on the side of his throat, like a permanent bruise, where the violin rested. “You — made something for me?” Tessa asked. “I wrote something for you,” he corrected, with a smile, and began to play.

Do stop flirting with my husband," said Tessa. "I shall not," Magnus declared, "but I will pause briefly so that I may catch up on your news.

There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let other people decide who you are. Decide for yourself.

I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and I forget when you're close to me, I forget who you are. I forget that you're Jem's. I'd have to be the worst sort of person to think what I'm thinking right now. But I am thinking it.

I suspect he's sweet on Sophie and doesn't like to see her work too hard.' Tessa was glad to hear it. She'd felt awful about her reaction to Sophie's scar, and the thought that Sophie had a male admirer - and a handsome one like that- eased her conscience slightly. 'Perhaps he's in love with Agatha', she said. 'I hope not. I intend to marry Agatha myself. She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart. Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.

I'm trying to figure out how someone could live in a brothel for a month and not notice. You must be terribly dull-witted." Tessa glared. "If it helps at all, it seemed to be quite a high-class establishment. Nicely furnished, fairly clean..." "Sounds as if you've visited your fair share of brothels," Tessa said, sourly. "Making a study of them?" "More of a hobby," said Will, and smiled like a bad angel.

Say something in Mandarin,” said Tessa, with a smile. Jem said something that sounded like a lot of breathy vowels and consonants run together, his voice rising and falling melodically: “Ni hen piao liang.” “What did you say?” Tessa was curious. “I said your hair is coming undone — here,” he said, and reached out and tucked an escaping curl back behind her ear. Tessa felt the blood spill hot up into her face, and was glad for the dimness of the carriage. “You have to be careful with it,” he said, taking his hand back, slowly, his fingers lingering against her cheek.

I take your hand, brother, so that you may go in peace. Will had opened his blue eyes that never lost their colour over all the passing years, and looked at Jem and then Tessa, and smiled, and died, with Tessa's head on his shoulder and and his hand in Jem's.

Tessa put a hand against the wall as she made her way numbly down the stairs. What had she almost done? What had she nearly told Will?

He gazed amusedly down the table at Tessa. “You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” he said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say.” Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. “No. No mark.” He grinned around his fork. “I do suppose they’ve looked everywhere?” “I’m sure Will’s tried,” said Jessamine in a bored tone.

He seemed to realize she was staring at him, because the cursing stopped. "You cut me," he said. His voice was pleasant. British. Very ordinary. He looked at his hand with critcal interest. "It might be fatal." Tessa looked at him with wide eyes. "Are you the Magister?" He tilted his hand to the side. Blood ran down it, spattering the floor. "Dear me, massive blood loss. Death could be imminent.

Tess?” A soft voice at the door; she looked up and saw Will there, silhouetted in the light from the corridor.

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat’s. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec’s, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants. And then there was Camille.

The most interesting women are always the most whispered about.

The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.

Though Will was saying earlier,” Tessa added, “that heroes all come to bad ends, and he could not imagine why anyone would want to be one, anyway.” “Ah.” Jem’s hand squeezed hers briefly, and then let it go. “Well, Will is looking at it from the hero’s viewpoint, isn’t he? But as for the rest of us, it’s an easy answer.” “Is it?” “Of course.” His voice was almost a whisper now. “Heroes endure because we need them. Not for their own sakes. If Will …

In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace. Will look at her, slow and hard, then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa." She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing if for the first time-the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when he said, softly, "Will." "Yes?" Amusement glittered his eyes. With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question.

No more. The yin fen has taken so much from me: my family, the years of my life, the strength in my body, the breath in my lungs. It will not take from me this too: the most precious thing we are given by the Angel. The ability to love. I love Tessa Gray. And I will make sure that she knows it.

I am Tessa Gray,” she said in a low, clear voice. “And I believe in the importance of stories.

But you hate poetry! Yes, but you make me want to write it.

Zhe shi jie shang, wo shi zui ai ne de. In all the world, you are what I love the most.

Miss Cecily," she gasped, and then her eyes went to Will. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned, and bolted back into the house. "Oh, dear," said Tessa. "I have that effect on women," Will said. " I probably should have warned you before you agreed to marry me." "I can still change my mind," Tessa said sweetly. "Don't you dare-," he began with a breathless half laugh.

He touched her as he usually touched his beloved violin, with a soft and urgent grace that left her breathless.

He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears.

He flushed, the colour dark against his pale skin. 'I mean. Tessa Gray, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?' Jem...

Of course, the guests were also staring because they know of my relationship with Camille, and are wondering what we might be doing here in the library... alone." He wiggled his eyebrows at Tessa.

I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way. We are the same.

As the carriage whipped forward, they passed the alley she had spent so many days staring at—it was there, and then gone as they careened around a corner, nearly knocking over a costermonger pushing a donkey cart piled high with new potatoes. Tessa screamed. Will reached past her and yanked the curtain shut. "It's better if you don't look," he told her pleasantly. "He's going to kill someone. Or get us killed." "No, he won't. Thomas is an excellent driver." Tessa glared at him. "Clearly the word excellent means something else on this side of the Atlantic.

Oh, do you have A Tale of Two Cities?" "That silly thing? Men going around getting their heads chopped off for love? Ridiculus." Will unpeeled himself from the door and made his way toward Tessa where she stood by the bookshelves. He gestured expansively at the vast number of volumes all around him. "No, here you'll find all sorts of advice about how to chop off someone else's head if you need to; much more useful.

Come back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart.

Was this what it meant to love someone? That any burden was a burden shared, that they could give you comfort with a word or a touch?

I need to know you believe me when I say I love you. That is all." "I believe everything you say," Tessa said with a smile, her hands creeping doen from his waist to his weapons belt. Her fingers closed on the hilt of the dagger, and she yanked it from the belt, smiling as he looked down at her in surprise. "After all," she said, "you weren't lying about the tattoo of the dragon of Wales, were you?

Well, I don't want you to die," Tessa said. "I don't know why I feel it so strongly -- I've just met you -- but I don't want you to die." "And I trust you," he said. "I don't know why -- I've just met you -- but I do.

He wanted to run to her, wrap her in his arms. Protect her. But it was Jem’s place to do those things, not his. Not his.” -Will Herondale

Will's face turned grave. "Be careful with it, though. It's six hundred years old and the only copy of its kind. Losing or damaging it is punishable by death under the Law." Tessa thrust the book away from her as if it were on fire. "You can't be serious." "You're right. I'm not." Will leapt down from the ladder and landed lightly in front of her. "You do believe everything I say, though, don't you? Do I seem unusually trustworthy to you, or are you just a naive sort?

You may be right. I think it was round about Christmas when I got my Welsh dragon tattoo.” At that, Tessa had to try very hard not to blush. “How did that happen?” Will made an airy gesture with his hand. “I was drunk…” “Nonsense. You were never really drunk.” “On the contrary—in order to learn how to pretend to be inebriated, once must become inebriated at least once, as a reference point. Six-Fingered Nigel had been at the mulled cider—“ “You can’t mean there’s truly a Six-Fingered Nigel?

Julian: “Wikipedia knows about everything. It might be run by warlocks.” Emma: “You think that’s what they do all day in the Spiral Labyrinth? Run Wikipedia?” Julian: “I admit it seems like a letdown.

Will,” she whispered against his mouth. She wanted him closer to her so badly, it was like an ache, a painful hot ache that spread from her stomach to speed her heart and knot her hands in his hair and set her skin burning. “Will, you need not be so careful. I will not break.

Tessa was laying on her side, her brown hair spread over the pillow, watching Will, whose face was bent over the pages, with a look of tenderness in her eyes, a tenderness mirrored in the softness of Will's voice as he read.

It is better than going on loving someone who cannot love me back. Better wasting all that feelings" -Tessa gray

She did not belong to Will-she was too much herself to belong to anyone, even Jem-but she belonged with them, and silently he cursed the Consul for not seeing it.

Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside.

I don't remember ordering the bride of an evil maniac," said Magnus. "It was definitely beef and broccoli. What about you, Tessa? Did you order the bride of an evil maniac?

To his children, Will showed the same love he had always shown to her, fierce and unyielding. And the same protectiveness he had only ever showed to one other person: the person James had been named after. Will’s parabatai, Jem.

It is the mundanes who look at me and see something they do not understand—a boy who is not quite white and not quite foreign either." "Just as I am not human, and not demon either," Tessa said softly. His eyes softened. "You are human," he said. "Never think you are not. I have seen you with your brother; I know how you care for him. If you can feel hope, guilt, sorrow, love—then you are human.

wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness

Will’s eyes met Tessa’s as she came closer, almost tripping again over the torn hem of her gown. For a moment, they were in perfect understanding. Jem was what they could still look each other straight in the eye about. On the topic of Jem, they were both fierce and unyielding. Tessa saw Will’s hand tighten on Jem’s sleeve. “She’s here,” he said. Jem’s eyes opened slowly. Tessa fought to keep the look of shock from her face. His pupils were blown out, his irises a thin ring of silver around the black. “Ni shou shang le ma, quin ai de?” he whispered.

Will sat down beside his wife and pulled her into his lap. “I am going to kiss your mother now,” he announced. “Flee if you will, children. If not, we could play Ludo when the romance is over.” “The romance is never over,” said James glumly. Tessa laughed and put up her face to be kissed.

Mr. Rochester never courted Jane Eyre, Tessa pointed out. No, he dressed up as a woman and terrified the poor girl out of her wits. Is that what you want?

I've mastered many thing's in my life. Navigating the streets of London, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms..." Tessa stared. "Alas," he went on, "no one has ever actually referred to me as 'the master' or 'the magister', either. More's the pity..." "Are you highly intoxicated at the moment?

In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and put his arms around her, smelling of turpentine. "The first one is always the hardest," he said. "The first?" "The first one you love who dies," he said. "It gets easier, after.

Life was an uncertain thing.

Mizpah," he said. She blinked at him, a little dazed. "What?" "A sort of good-bye without saying good-bye," he said. "It is a reference to a passage in the Bible. 'And Mizpah, for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.

I think there is hope for you yet, Will Herondale. I will try to learn how to have it, without you to show me. Tessa, Jem said. She knows despair, and hope as well. you can teach each other. Find her, Will, and tell her that I loved her always. My blessings, for all that it is worth, is on you both.

Hell is cold. Do you remember when you told me that? We were in the cellars of the Dark House. Anyone else would have been panicking, but you were as calm as a governess, telling me Hell was covered in ice. If it is the fire of Heaven that takes you from me, what a cruel irony that would be.

No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it's cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.

I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that.

Will." Her hands pulled at his shirt, and it came away, the buttons tearing, his head shaking free of the fabric, all wild dark hair, Heathcliff on the moors. His hands were less sure on her dress, but it came away as well, off over her head, and was cast aside, leaving Tessa in her chemise and corset. She went motionless, shocked at being so undressed in front of anyone but Sophie, and Will took a wild look at her corset that was only part desire. “How—," he said. “Does it come off?" Tessa couldn't help herself; despite everything, she giggled. “It laces," she whispered. “In the back.

He bent down to her; their mouths met again, and the shock of sensation was so strong, so overpowering, that she shut her eyes against it as if she could hide in the darkness. He murmured and gathered her against him.

Kit straightened up. “Nope, I’m good. Come on Brother Hauntingly Attractive.” “There’s no need to mention this to Tessa.” “And Yet,” said Kit, “I’m gonna.

There's nothing you could have done that would cause me to cease loving either of you. Will is myself, my own soul, and if I am not to have the keeping of your heart, then there is not other I would rather have that honor.

He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on. He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec.

I want you to say dreadfully mad, funny things and make up songs and be--' The Will I fell in love with, she almost said. "And be Will," she finished instead. "Or I shall hit you with my umbrella." *** "You would make a very ugly woman." "I would not. I would be stunning." Tessa laughed. “There,” she said. “There is Will. Isn’t that better? Don’t you think so?” “I don’t know,” Will said, eyeing her. “I’m afraid to answer that. I’ve heard that when I speak, it makes American women wish to strike me with umbrellas.

Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?” he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver. “Of course I remember.” “It was the moment I first knew I loved you,” Jem said. “I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one.

Wo ai ni, Tessa,” he whispered. “Wo bu xiang shi qu ni.” She knew, without knowing how she knew, what the words meant. I love you. And I don’t want to lose you.

Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him. Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.

Not all that is mortal is useless.

Not forever, Tessa thought. They had a long, long time. A lifetime. His lifetime. And she would lose him one day, as she had lost Will, and her heart would break, as it had broken before. And she would put herself back together and go on, because the memory of having had Jem would be better than never having had him at all.

He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way she was looking at him - she could read what was in his eyes, he realised. It must have been written plainly there, like words on the page of a book. There had been no time, no chance, to hide it. “Will,” she whispered. “Say something, Will.” But there was nothing to say. There was only emptiness, as there had been before her. As there would always be. 'I have lost everything', Will thought. 'Everything.

Jem’s knees gave out, and he sank to the trunk at the foot of his bed, still playing. He played Will breathing the name Cecily, and he played himself watching the glint of his own ring on Tessa’s hand on the train from York, knowing it was all a charade, knowing, too, that he wished that it wasn’t. He played the sorrow in Tessa’s eyes when she had come into the music room after Will had told her she would never have children. Unforgivable, that, what a thing to do, and yet Jem had forgiven him. Love was forgiveness, he had always believed that, and the things that Will did, he did out of some bottomless well of pain. Jem did not know the source of that pain, but he knew it existed and was real, knew it as he knew of the inevitability of his own death, knew it as he knew that he had fallen in love with Tessa Gray and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

Will!” He turned at the familiar voice and saw Tessa. There was a small path cut along the side of the hill, lined with unfamiliar white flowers, and she was walking up it, toward him. Her long brown hair blew in the wind — she had taken off her straw bonnet, and held it in one hand, waving it at him and smiling as if she were glad to see him. His own heart leaped up at the sight of her. “Tess,” he called. But she was still such a distance away — she seemed both very near and very far suddenly and at the same time. He could see every detail of her pretty, upturned face, but could not touch her, and so he stood, waiting and desiring, and his heart beat like the wings of seagulls in his chest. At last she was there, close enough that he could see where the grass and flowers bent beneath the tread of her shoes. He reached out for her —

You are home for me now." --Jem to Tessa

I shall see you on Blackfriars Bridge, Tessa.

Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa

Will looked as if he were being asked to believe in something impossible—snow in summertime, a London winter without rain.

Mr. Rochester never courted Jane Eyre," Tessa pointed out. "No, he dressed up as a woman and terrified the poor girl out of her wits. Is that what you want?" "You would make a very ugly woman." "I would not. I would be stunning.

Your place is with me,” Jem said. “It always will be.” “What do you mean?” He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. “I mean,” he said, “Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” Tessa sat bolt upright. “Jem!” They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, “That was not a no, I suppose, though neither was it a yes.” “You can’t mean it.” “I do mean it.” “You can’t—I’m not a Shadowhunter. They’ll expel you from the Clave—” He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. “You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably a Downworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law. They will have to take your—our—individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent our engagement.” “You are serious.” Her mouth was dry. “Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrifice yourself in that way for me.” “Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you.

It was books that kept me from taking my own life after I thought I could never love anyone, never be loved by anyone again.

You would make a very ugly woman" "I would not. I would be stunning

I adore Wilkie Collins,” Tessa cried. “Oh—Armadale! And The Woman in White … Are you laughing at me?” “Not at you,” said Will, grinning, “more because of you. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited over books before. You’d think they were diamonds.” “Well, they are, aren’t they? Isn’t there anything you love like that? And don’t say ‘spats’ or ‘lawn tennis’ or something silly.” “Good Lord,” he said with mock horror, “it’s like she knows me already.

She had fallen asleep with her head on his arm, the clockwork angel, still around her throat, resting against his shoulder just to the left of his collarbone. As she moved away, the clockwork angel slipped free and she saw to her surprise that where it had lain against his skin it had left a mark behind, no bigger than a shilling, in the shape of a pale white star.

I don’t understand what makes them come out like that!”“Hunger,” said Jem. “Were you thinking about blood?”“No.”“Were you thinking about eating me?” Will inquired.“No!"“No one would blame you,” said Jem. “He’s very annoying.

What’s your name, then? ”Tessa looked at him in disbelief. “What’s my name?” “Don’t you know it?

Jem always said that Will rushed toward the end of a mission rather than proceeding in a measured manner, and that one must look at the next step on the path ahead, rather than the destination in the distance, or one would never reach one’s goal. Will closed his eyes for a moment. He knew that Jem was right, but it was hard to remember, when the goal that he sought was the girl that he loved.

It will help you sleep.' 'All I’ve been doing is sleeping!' [Tessa] 'And very amusing it is to watch, said Jem. 'Did you know you twitch your nose when you sleep, like a rabbit?' 'I do not,' she said, with a whispered laugh. 'You do,' he said. 'Fortunately, I like rabbits.

She knew she could not be Jem for Will. No one could. But slowly the hollow places in his heart were filling in.

I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on am empty stomach, your head falls off." "If your head fall off, " Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown

Because women never say what they think.

Your place is with me. It always will be. -Jem Carstairs

He loved her enough to know she was better off without him

Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.

It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique.

Tessa knows Will,” protested Charlotte. “She trusts Will.” “Iwouldn’t go that far,” muttered Tessa.

Will stopped glaring at Gabriel, and turned to Tessa. He looked at her and his face softened: the traces of the wild, broken boy he had been vanished, replaced with the expression often worn by the man he was now, who knew what it was to love and be loved. “Dear heart,” he said. He took her hand and kissed it. “Who knows your courage better than I?

The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong.

I love you. And I don't want to lose you.

Will began to straighten up, to turn away from the bed. And as he did, he felt something wrap tightly around his wrist. He glanced down and saw Jem’s hand braceleting his own. For a moment he was too shocked to do anything but stare. “I am not dead yet, Will,” Jem said in a soft voice, thin but as strong as wire. “What did Magnus mean by asking you if I knew you were in love with Tessa?

When I am in the darkness, I want to think of it in the light, with you," he said, and straightened, and turned to walk toward the door. The parchment robes of the Silent Brothers moved around him as he moved, and Tessa watched him, paralyzed, every pulse of her heart beating out the words she could not say: Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.

Hmph," she said. "I'd like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot's worth of train!" "So would I," said Gideon from across the room.

He speaks of you only with the greatest pride, Will

It’s that I think Will is angry with me,” Tessa explained. “So whatever he told you—” He laughed. “Will is angry with everyone,” he said. “I don’t let it color my judgment.

Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent.

I can't - I'll chop off my own foot!" "If you're going to chop off anyone's foot, chop off Benedict's," Will muttered.

I believe everything you say," Tessa said with a smile, her hands creeping down from his waist to his weapons belt. Her fingers closed on the hilt of a dagger, and she yanked it from the belt, smiling as he looked down at her in surprise. She kissed his cheek and stepped back. "After all," she said, "you weren't lying about that tattoo of the dragon of Wales, were you?

The moment the door closed behind him, Tessa was in Will's arms, her hands locked about his neck. "Oh, by the Angel," she said. "That was mortifying." Will slid his hands into her hair and was kissing her, kissing her eyelids and her cheeks and then her mouth, quickly but with fervor and concentration, as if nothing could be more important. "Listen to you," he said. "You said 'by the angel.' Like a Shadowhunter." He kissed the side of her mouth. "I love you. God, I love you. I waited so long to say it.

Jem said, “we want you to stay, and to know that the choice is entirely yours, and we wanted to show you something. We want you to know there is nothing in this house more precious to us than you.

The moment his hand closed about the stone, light blazed from it again, raying out through his fingers. For the first time Tessa saw that he had a design on the back of his hand, drawn there as if in black ink. It looked like an open eye. "As for the temperature of Hell, Miss Gray," he said, "let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate it never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.

Some are just born bad, and that's all there is to it.

Cuando estás leyendo un libro, y sabes que habrá una tragedia; puedes sentir el frió y la oscuridad llegando, ver la red tejiéndose cerca de los personajes que viven y respiran en las páginas. Pero estas tan atado a la historia como si fueras tirado detrás de un carruaje, y no puedes dejarlo pasar o cambiar el rumbo haciéndose a un lado.

Sona looked slightly horrified. “Cordelia has a tendency to throw herself into every situation headlong,” she said to Tessa and Will. “I’m sure you understand.” “Oh, we do,” said Will. “We’re always speaking very sternly to our children about that very thing. ‘If you don’t throw yourself into situations headlong, James and Lucie, you can expect bread and water for supper again.’  ” Alastair choked on a laugh. Sona stared at Will as if he were a lizard with feathers.

The Will I fell in love with, she almost said."And be Will," she finished instead. "Or I shall hit you with my umbrella.

His blue eyes were very dark...Will's were the colour of the sky just on the edge of the night...

He dropped his voice, so low that Tessa wasn’t sure if what he said next was real or part of the dream darkness rising to claim her, though she fought against it. “I’ve never minded it,” he went on. “Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not be truly lost if one knew one’s own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.” He closed his eyes as if he were bone-weary, and she saw how thin his eyelids were, like parchment paper, and how tired he looked. “Wo ai ni, Tessa,” he whispered. “Wo bu xiang shi qu ni.” She knew, without knowing how she knew, what the words meant. I love you. And I don’t want to lose you.

La vida es un libro, y hay miles de páginas que no hemos leído todavía.

—Jem es la mejor parte de mí. —Entonces, ¿qué soy yo? —Eres mi debilidad. —Y Tessa es tu corazón.

Sophie did this?" He said, not for the first time. They were standing at the foot of Jessamine's bed. She lay flung upon it, her chest rising and falling slowly like the famous Sleeping Beauty waxwork or Madame du Barry. Her fair hair was scattered on the pillow, and a large, bloody welt ran across her forehead. Each of her wrists was tied to a post of the bed. "Our Sophie?" Tessa glanced over at Sophie, who was sitting in a chair by the door. Her head was down, and she was staring at her hands. She studiously avoided looking at Tessa or Will. "Yes,"Tessa said, "and do stop repeating it." " I think i may be in love with you, Sophie," said Will. "Marriage could be on the cards." Sophie whimpered.

But you are not a lady, Jessamine—,” Charlotte began.“Dear me,” said Will. “Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.”“What I mean,” Charlotte said, correcting herself, “is that you are a Shadowhunter first, and a lady second.

A broad smile spread across Will’s face. “Then we have no choice but to give our blessing too. Cordelia Carstairs,” he said, “the Carstairs and the Herondales will be bonded even more closely now. If James could have chosen his wife from all the women in all the worlds that are or ever were, I would wish for no other.” Tessa laughed. “Will! You cannot compliment our new daughter only on the chance of her last name!” Will was grinning like a boy. “Wait until I tell Jem—

She warned me about Mr. Herondale, though, said he’d likely be rude to me, and familiar. She said I could be rude right back, that nobody would mind.” “Someone ought to be rude to him. He’s rude enough to everyone else.

He tasted like snowflakes and wine, like winter and Will and London.

Being a vampire is not a curse. It’s a disease,” Tessa filled in. “But they still can’t enter hallowed ground, then? Does that mean they’re damned?” “That depends on what you believe,” said Jem. “And whether you believe in damnation at all.” “But you hunt demons. You must believe in damnation!” “I believe in good and evil,” said Jem. “And I believe the soul is eternal. I don’t believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or the endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness.

What are you doing following me around the back streets of London, you little idiot?” Will demanded, giving her arm a light shake. Cecily’s eyes narrowed. “This morning it was cariad (note: Welsh endearment, like ‘darling’ or ‘love’), now it’s idiot.” “Oh, you’re using a Glamour rune. There’s one thing to declare, you are not afraid of anything when you live in the country. But this is London.” “I’m not afraid of London,” Cecily said defiantly. Will leaned closer, almost hissing in her ear *and said something very complicated in Welsh* She laughed. “No, it wouldn’t do you any good to tell me to go home. You are my brother, and I want to go with you.” Will blinked at her words. You are my brother, and I want to go with you. It was the sort of thing he was used to hearing Jem say. Although Cecily was unlike Jem in every other conceivable possible way, she did share one quality with him. Stubbornness. When Cecily said she wanted something, it did not express an idle desire, but an iron determination. “Do you even care where I’m going?” he said. “What if I were going to hell?” “I’ve always wanted to see hell,” Cecily said. “Doesn’t everyone?” “Most of us spend our time trying to stay out of it, Cecily. I’m going to an ifrit den, if you must know, to purchase drugs from vile, dissolute criminals. They may clap eyes on you, and decide to sell you.” “Wouldn’t you stop them?” “I suppose it would depend on whether they cut me a part of the profit.” She shook her head. “Jem is your parabatai,” she said. “He is your brother, given to you by the Clave, but I am your sister by blood. Why would you do anything for him, but you only want me to go home?” “How do you know the drugs are for Jem?” Will said. “I’m not an idiot, Will.” “No, more’s the pity. Jem- Jem is like the better part of me. I would not expect you to understand. I owe him. I owe him this.” “So what am I?” Cecily said. Will exhaled, too desperate to check himself. “You are my weakness.” “And Tessa is your heart,” she said, not angrily, but thoughtfully. “I am not fooled. As I told you, I’m not an idiot. And more’s the pity for you, although I suppose we all want things we can’t have.” “Oh,” said Will, “and what do you want?” “I want you to come home.” A strand of black hair was stuck to her cheek by the dampness, and Will fought the urge to pull her cloak closer about her, to make her safe as he had when she was a child. “The Institute is my home,” Will sighed, and leaned his head against the stone wall. “I can’t stand out her arguing with you all evening, Cecily. If you’re determined to follow me into hell, I can’t stop you.” “Finally,” she said provingly. “You’ve seen sense. I knew you would, you’re related to me.” Will fought the urge to shake her. “Are you ready?” She nodded, and he raised his hand to knock on the door.

It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique. But I begin to think I was never meant for an easy road.

I came to see that I could not bring someone home when they were already there.

Whatever you are physically, male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy – all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.

If she lived until the sun died, there would never be any other for her besides Will and Jem, those two twin souls, the only souls she had ever loved.

Would you like to meet him? I could summon him up in a trice of you like. Being a warlock, and all.

Siempre hay que tener cuidado con los libros, y con lo que contienen, porque las palabras tienen el poder de cambiarnos

You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” Ragnor said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say.”"No. No mark."He grinned around his fork. “I do suppose they’ve looked everywhere?”“I’m sure Will’s tried,” said Jessamine.

It was good to be here with Jem and Cecily an Charlotte, to be surrounded by their affection, but without her there would always be something missing, a Tessa-shaped part chiseled out of his heart that he could never get back.

I know,” he said, looking down at himself — skin like papier-mache, ribs like violin strings. “I am not — I mean, I look —” “Beautiful,” she said, and the word was a pronouncement. “You are beautiful, James Carstairs.

Míralo. El rostro de un ángel malicioso y los ojos como el cielo nocturno en el Infierno. Es muy hermoso, y a los vampiros les gusta eso. Y no puedo decir que a mí me moleste. -Magnus sonrió de medio lado-. Cabello negro y ojos azules son mi combinación favorita.

Anyone that looked like that wouldn't need to tie up girls and imprison them in order to get them to marry him

Alec, who was watching this back-and-forth as if sitting center court in a tennis match, raised a hand. “I’m sorry, but did you two used to date?” That stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Both Tessa and Magnus turned to him with identical looks of shock. “You seem more horrified than I do,” Magnus told Tessa, “and somehow I am deeply wounded.

The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Tessa, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Tessa with great sadness. "I tried," she said. "I tried to love you. But it isn't easy to love a child that isn't human in the least...." "Not human?" said an unfamiliar female voice. "Well, if she isn't human, Enoch, what is she?" The voice sharpened in impatience. "What do you mean, you don't know? Everyone's something. This girl can't be nothing at all....

They are Will and Tessa, and you were Ke Jian Ming. You were James Carstairs. You were Jem.

He touched her as he would touch his violin: it was how he knew to touch something that was precious and loved.

I'd like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot's worth of train!" "So would I," said Gideon from across the room.

If I might ask--," she began. Will sighed. "You know you'll ask whether I say it's all right or not.

Why are we bringing him along, again?" Will inquired, of the world in general as well as his sister. Cecily put her hands on her hips. "Why are you bringing Tessa?" "Because Tessa and I are going to be married," Will said, and Tessa smiled; the way that Will's little sister could ruffle his feathers like no one else was still amusing to her. "Well, Gabriel and I might well be married," Cecily said. "Someday." Gabriel made a choking noise, and turned an alarming shade of purple. Will threw up his hands. "You can't be married Cecily! You're only fifteen! When I get married, I'll be eighteen! An adult!" Cecily did not look impressed. "We may have a long engagement," she said. "But I cannot see why you are counseling me to marry a man my parents have never met." Will sputtered. "I am not counseling you to marry a man your parents have never met!" "Then we are in agreement. Gabriel must meet Mam and Dad.

You don’t sound very patriotic,” observed Tessa. “Weren’t you just reminiscing about the mountains?” “Patriotic?” Will looked smug. “I’ll tell you what’s patriotic,” he said. “In honor of my birthplace, I’ve the dragon of Wales tattooed on my—” “You’re in a charming temper, aren’t you, William?” interrupted Jem, though there was no edge to his voice.

Eres como yo. Dices las cosas que pienso pero nunca digo en voz alta. Lees los libros que leo. Amas la poesía que yo amo. Me haces reír con tus canciones ridículas y la forma en que lo ves todo. Siento como si pudieras mirar dentro de mí y ver todos los lugares en los que soy extraña o inusual y adaptas tu corazón alrededor de ellos porque eres extraño e inusual de la misma forma. Somos lo mismo.

She has seen so many tragedies, and they both knew the worst tragedies were born of love.

It would be unjust to blame the past for choices made in the present. Nor can we justify present choices by invoking the sins of the past.

Ghosts are memories and we carry them because those we love do not leave the world.

He looked surprised, as if he were not used to such praise, but surely he must be, Tessa thought in confusion. Surely everyone who knew him knew how lucky they were.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

Trains are great dirty smoky things," said Will. "You won't like it." Tessa was unmoved. "I won't know if I like it until I try it, will I?" "I've never swam naked in the Thames, but I know I wouldn't like it.

This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet...

I did not think you would be angry, Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. We were engaged, Tessa. A proposal-an offer of marriage-is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live wit you for years, but that wasn't possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up-all of it up-to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder-a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have.

There is a coldness to the Clave, it is true. We are dust and shadows. But you are like the heroes of ancient times, like Achilles and Jason.” “Achilles was murdered with a poisoned arrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes; the Angel knows why anyone would want to be one.

Tessa reached to brush the damp hair from his forehead. He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing. “Jem—have you ever—” She hesitated. “Have you ever thought of ways to prolong your life that are not a cure for the drug?”   At that his eyelids flew open. “What do you mean?”   She thought of Will, on the floor of the attic, choking on holy water. “Becoming a vampire. You would live forever—”   He scrambled upright against the pillows of the bed. “Tessa, no. Don’t—you can’t think that way.”    “Is the thought of becoming a Downworlder truly so horrible to you?”   “Tessa …” He exhaled slowly. “I am a Shadowhunter. Nephilim. Like my parents before me. It is the heritage I claim, just as I claim my mother’s heritage as part of myself. It does not mean I hate my father. But I honor the gift they gave me, the blood of the Angel, the trust placed in me, the vows I have taken. Nor, I think, would I make a very good vampire. [redacted for spoilers] I would no longer be Will’s parabatai, no longer be welcome in the Institute. No, Tessa. I would rather die and be reborn and see the sun again, than live to the end of the world without daylight.”   “A Silent Brother, then,” she said.    His eyes softened slightly. “The path of Silent Brotherhood is not open to me.

I thought you two might be up against it. Benedict Lightwood’s parties have a reputation for danger. When I heard you were here—” “We’re well equipped to handle danger,” Tessa said. Magnus eyed her bosom openly. “I can see that,” he said. "Armed to the teeth, as it were.

Mr. Branwell and Mr. Carstairs seem to have no problem cleaning their boots,” Sophie said, looking darkly from Will to Tessa. “Perhaps you could learn from their example.” “Perhaps,” said Will. “But I doubt it.” Sophie scowled, and started off along the corridor again, her shoulders tightly set with indignation. Tessa looked at Will in amazement. “What was that?” Will shrugged lazily. “Sophie enjoys pretending she doesn’t like me.” “Doesn’t like you? She hates you!

You're the shape-changer aren't you?" he said. "Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say." Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. "No. No mark." He grinned around his fork. "I do suppose they've looked everywhere?" "I'm sure Will's tryed," said Jessamine in a bored tone. Tessa's silverware clattered to the plate. Jessamine, who had been mashing her peas to the side of the plate with her knife, looked out when Charlotte let out an aghast, "Jessamine!

I only regret that it came too soon. I--I would have wanted to-- to court your first. To take you driving, with a chaperon." (Jem) "A chaperon?" (Tessa) "To tell you my feelings first, before I showed them. To write poetry for you --" (Jem) "You don't even like poetry," (Tessa) "No. But you make me want to write it. Does that not count for anything?" (Jem)

Finally," Magnus said, grabbing a ten-dollar bill from a table near the door, and he buzzed the delivery man in. "I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on an empty stomach, your head falls off." "If your head fell off," Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown.

As for the temperature of Hell, Miss Gray,” he said, “let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who’s trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.” He really is mad, Tessa thought, but didn’t say so; she was too alarmed by the fact that he had started toward the wide double doors of the Dark Sisters’ chambers. “No!” She caught at his arm, pulling him back. “Not that way. There’s no way out. It’s a dead end.” “Correcting me again, I see.” Will turned and strode the other way, toward the shadowy corridor Tessa had always feared. Swallowing hard, she followed him.

Tessa!” Magnus said again, marveling. “Aren’t you unexpected. And uninvited.” Tessa sat and sipped her tea, looking perfectly composed. Since she was one of Magnus’s dearest and oldest friends, he felt it would be nice if she looked even slightly apologetic. She did not. “You told me once that you would not forgive me if I didn’t drop by whenever I found myself in the same city as you.” “I would have forgiven you,” Magnus said with conviction. “I would have thanked you.” Tessa glanced Alec’s way. Alec was blushing. The ends of Tessa’s lips curled up, but she was kind and hid her smile behind her teacup. “Call it even,” said Tessa. “You once walked in on me in an embarrassing situation with a gentleman in a mountain fortress, after all.” Her half-concealed smile flickered. She looked again at Alec, who had inherited his coloring from Shadowhunters long gone. Shadowhunters Tessa had loved. “You should let that go,” Magnus advised. Tessa was a warlock like Magnus, and like Magnus, she was used to overcoming the memory of what had been loved and lost. They were in the longtime habit of comforting each other. She took another sip of tea, her smile restored as if it had never been gone. “I certainly have let it go,” she replied. “Now.

We should go back inside," she said, in a half whisper. She did not want to go back inside. She wanted to stay here, with Will achingly close, almost leaning into her. She could feel the heat that radiated from his body. His dark hair fell around the mask, into his eyes, tangling with his long eyelashes. "We have only a little time-" She took a step forward-and stumbled into Will, who caught her. She froze-and then her arms crept around him, her fingers lacing themselves behind his neck. Her face was pressed against his throat, his soft hair under her fingers. She closed her eyes, shutting out the dizzying world, the light beyond the French windows, the glow of the sky. She wanted to be here with Will, cocooned in this moment, inhaling the clean sharp scent of him., feeling the beat of his heart against hers, as steady and strong as the pulse of the ocean. She felt him inhale. "Tess," he said. "Tess, look at me." She raised her eyes to his, slow and unwilling, braced for anger or coldness-but his gaze was fixed on hers, his dark blue eyes somber beneath their thick black lashes, and they were stripped of all their usual cool, aloof distance. They were as clear as glass and full of desire. And more than desire-a tenderness she had never seen in them before, had never even associated with Will Herondale. That, more than anything else, stopped her protest as he raised his hands and methodically began to take the pins from her hair, one by one. This is madness, she thought, as the first pin rattled to the ground. They should be running, fleeing this place. Instead she stood, wordless, as Will cast Jessamine's pearl clasps aside as if they were so much paste jewelry. Her own long, curling dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Will slid his hands into it. She heard him exhale as he did so, as if he had been holding his breath for months and had only just let it out. She stood as if mesmerized as he gathered her hair in his hands, draping it over one of her shoulders, winding her curls between his fingers. "My Tessa," he said, and this time she did not tell him that she was not his. "Will," she whispered as he reached up and unlocked her hands from around his neck. He drew her gloves off, and they joined her mask and Jessie's pins on the stone floor of the balcony. He pulled off his own mask next and cast it aside, running his hands through his damp black hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The lower edge of the mask had left marks across his high cheekbones, like light scars, but when she reached to touch them, he gently caught at her hands and pressed them down. "No," he said. "Let me touch you first. I have wanted...

Well,” said a very amused voice. “This is unexpected.” Tessa sat bolt upright, pulling the heavy coverlet around her. Beside her, Will stirred, propping himself up on his elbows, eyelids fluttering open slowly. “What—” The room was filled with bright light. The torches had come on at full strength, and it was like the place was lit with daylight. Tessa could see the wreck of the room that they had made: their clothes scattered across the floor and the bed, the rug before the fireplace rucked up, the bedclothes wound about them. On the other side of the invisible wall was lounging a familiar figure in an elegant dark suit, one thumb hooked into the waistband of his trousers. His cat-pupilled eyes glimmered with mirth. Magnus Bane. “You might want to get up,” he said. “Everyone will be here quite soon to rescue you, and you may prefer to have clothes on when they arrive.” He shrugged. “I would, at any rate, but then, I am well known to be remarkably shy.

He looked at her curiously. He did something that surprised her then, and took her hand, turning it over. She looked down at it, at her bitten fingernails, the still-healing scratches along the backs of her fingers. He kissed the back of it, just a light touch of his mouth, and his hair-as soft and light as silk-brushed her wrist as he lowered his head. She felt a shock go through her, strong enough to startle her, and she stood speechless as he straightened, his mouth curving into a smile. "Mizpah," he said. She blinked at him, a little dazed. "What?" "A sort or goodbye without saying goodbye," he said.

Will glanced over at Cordelia and smiled. “We could ask for no lovelier girl to be his wife.” Alastair looked as if he wished to edge away. Cordelia didn’t blame him. “Thank you, Mr. Herondale,” she said. “I hope to live up to your expectations.” Tessa looked surprised. “Why would you ever worry about that?” “Cordelia worries,” Alastair said unexpectedly, “because of the idiots who mutter about our father, and our family. She should not let them bother her.” Tessa laid a gentle hand on Cordelia’s shoulder. “The cruel will always spread rumors,” she said. “And others who take pleasure in that cruelty will believe them and spread them. But I believe that in the end, truth wins out. Besides,” she added with a smile, “the most interesting women are always the most whispered about.

We are, as you can see, going out—Charles has invoked the Consul’s authority and called a meeting in Grosvenor Square to discuss last night’s attack. Only for high-level Enclave members, apparently.” Will explained. Matthew grimaced. “By the Angel, that sounds awful. I hope it’s all right for me to stay here tonight.” Tessa smiled. “We already made up one of the spare rooms for you.” “As I have known Charles since he was born, I have a difficult time taking him seriously as an authority figure,” said Will thoughtfully. “I suppose if he says anything I don’t like, I can request that he be spanked.” “Oh, yes, please,” said Matthew. “It would do him a world of good.

Charlotte said that if I chose, I could cease to be a Gray and take the name my mother should have had before she was married. I could be a Starkweather. I could have a true Shadowhunter name." She heard Will exhale a breath. It came out a puff of white in the cold. His eyes were blue and wide and clear, fixed on her face. He wore the expression of a man who had steeled himself to do a terrifying thing, and was carrying it through. "Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name," Will said. "You can have mine.

Stephen Herondale would have killed me if he’d ever met me. I would not have been safe living among people like you, or like him. I am the wife and mother of warriors who fought and died and never dishonored themselves as you have. I have worn gear, wielded blades, and slain demons, and all I wished was to overcome evil so that I could live and be happy with those I loved. I’d hoped I had made this a better, safer world for my children. Because of Valentine’s Circle, the Herondale line, the line that was my son’s children’s children, is finished. That happened through you and your Circle and your husband. Stephen Herondale died with hate in his heart and the blood of my people on his hands. I can imagine no more horrible way for mine and Will’s line to end. I will have to carry for the rest of my life the wound of what Valentine’s Circle has done to me, and I will live forever.