She had thought once that there were good people and bad people, that there was a side of light and a side of darkness, but she no longer thought that. She had seen evil, in her brother and her father, the evil of good intentions gone wrong and the e...
Whatever it is, don’t do it!” said Catarina. “It’s a bad idea.” “And why do you say that?” “Because they’re the only kind you have,” she said. “I have known you a long time, and I am absolutely certain on this subject. If you ar...
I just want you to know,” Alec said as he held his wrist out, “that I realize that to you vampires this feeding business sometimes equals sexy times.” Simon’s eyes widened. “My sister may have told me more than I wanted to know,” Alec adm...
A parabatai. Like he was. And Jace knew, too, what that faded rune meant: a parabatai whose other half was dead. He felt his sympathy leap toward Brother Zachariah, as he imagined himself without Alec, with only that faded rune to remind him where on...
I cannot explain love. I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seeme...
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 a...
People were intrinsically selfish, and many hated the idea of a woman in charge of the Institute. They would not put themselves at risk for her. Only a few weeks ago he would have said the same thing about himself. Now, knowing Charlotte, he realized...
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. He had wondered once why love was always phra...
Well,” Tessa said, sighting along the line of the knife, “you behave as if you dislike me. In fact, you behave as if you dislike us all.” “I don’t,” Gabriel said. “I just dislike him.” He pointed at Will. “Dear me,” said Will, and...
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 ...
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 hou...
... it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I...
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'...
They’re not hideous,” said Tessa. Will blinked at her. “What?” “Gideon and Gabriel,” said Tessa. “They’re really quite good-looking, not hideous at all.” “I spoke,” said Will, in sepulchral tones, “of the pitch-black inner dep...
James, you are all the family I have. I would die for you. You know that. I would die without you. If it were not for you, I would be dead a hundred times over these past five years. I owe you everything, and if you cannot believe I have empathy, per...
By the Angel, Bridget’s depressing,” said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. “It’s all heartbreak, death...
I promise to charm the dickens out of him,' said Will, sitting up and readjusting his crushed hat. 'I shall charm him with such force that when I am done, he will be left lying limply on the ground, trying to remember his own name.' 'The man's eighty...
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. W...
Do you miss Wales?” Tessa inquired. Will shrugged lightly. “What’s to miss? Sheep and singing,” he said. “And the ridiculous language. Fe hoffwn i fod mor feddw, fyddai ddim yn cofio fy enw.” “What does that mean?” “It means ‘I wi...
[...] "I recall what you said to me once," Will went on. "That words have the power to change us. Your words have changed me, Tess; they have made me a better man than I would have been otherwise. Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have...
Will-" "I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and when you're this close to me, I forget who you are. I forget 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.