Ooh, more extra stuff. I love it. Three things from three books by two separate authors.
1. Snippet: Sentinel by Jennifer L. Armentrout
“Poor Persephone.” He stared down his nose at the god. “That must be hard on her if that’s what gets you off.”
I wrinkled my nose.
“If her name drips from your forked tongue one more time, I will rip it out,” Hades promised, voice deadly low.
Was his tongue really forked?
His lips curled up on one side. “What? You don’t like me talking about your wife?” He looked over at the three of us. “Is abduction as a means of marriage still all the rage these days?”
Seth arched a brow.
“Uh… no,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s really frowned upon.”
Hades cheeks deepened in color. “You’re really pushing me.”
“I haven’t even begun to push," the Titan replied.
Aiden sighed and said under his breath, “Well, this conversation has really digressed.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, crossing my arms as I watched the two try to out snark each other.
This is going smoothly. Seth’s voice filtered through my thoughts.
I kept my eyes on the Titan. He’s not that… bad. I mean, all things considered, right?
His answering chuckle tugged at my lips. I sort of like him.
Of course.
***
This is awkward. But funny. Aww, I kinda like Hades, even though he's sadistic. And the Titan! A real badass. Ahh, where's Sentinel>
***
2. Spoilers: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare
More steamy scenes. More Simon and Isabelle. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. “You don’t knock now?”
“It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered.
***
Aww, the classic freaked-out face on Alec! Simon and Isabelle KISSING! Looks like relationship confirmed :D
***
Cut Scene: Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare (P. 468)
(Avoid this if you haven't read Clockwork Princess yet)
“Tessa is awake!” Charlotte announced happily, darting through the door of her and Henry’s bedroom like an excited hummingbird.
Will, who had been sitting in the chair by Henry’s
bedside, leaped immediately to his feet, the book he had been reading
sliding from his lap. “Tess — Tessa’s awake?” he stammered. “And is she
—”
“Yes, talking, and Brother Enoch has pronounced her quite well, if exhausted.”
“I want to see her,” Will said, and began to move toward the door, but Charlotte held up a hand.
“Give her a moment, Will; Sophie is in with her, helping her dress.”
Will knew what “helping her dress” meant: if he burst in
on them now, Tessa would be in the bath. A wave of desire, mixed wit the
heaviness of guilt, hit him like a train. He sat down hastily, fumbling
for the book on the floor.
Charlotte looked at him, her smile curling at the corner.
Clearly he was providing her some small amusement. “Have you been
reading to Henry?” she asked.
“Yes, some dreadful thing, all full of poetry,” Henry said
peevishly. He was fully dressed, propped on the pillows of the bed with
a pen in one hand and papers scattered all over the comforter around
him. Will did not blame him for his peevishness. Tessa had been asleep,
and Henry abed, for three days, when the Brothers gathered the members
of the Institute around Henry’s bedside to tell them that though Henry
would live, he would not walk again. Even with all the magic the
Brothers had at their disposal, there was no more that they could do.
Henry had met the news with his usual fortitude, and a
decision to build himself a chair, like a sort of invalid’s chair but
better, with self-propelling wheels and all manner of other
accoutrements: he was determined that it be able to go up and down
stairs, so that he could still get to his inventions in the crypt. He
had been scribbling designs for the chair the whole hour that Will had
been reading to him from Idylls of the King, but then poetry had never been Henry’s area of interest.
“Well, you are released from your duties, Will, and Henry,
you are released from further poetry,” said Charlotte. “If you like,
darling, I can help you gather your notes —”
There was a knock at the door, and Charlotte, frowning,
went to see who it was. A moment later she had returned, a somber look
on her face. She darted a glance at Will, and a moment later he saw why:
two Silent Brothers were trailing in her wake, and one of them was Jem.
Will’s chest tightened. Since the battle at Cader Idris, he and Jem had not spoken.
Will had been sure that they were all going to die,
together, there under the mountain, until Tessa had blazed up in all the
glory of the Angel and struck down Mortmain like lightning striking
down a tree. It had been one of the most wondrous things he had ever
seen, but his wonder had been consumed quickly by terror when Tessa had
collapsed after the Change, bleeding and insensible, however hard they
tried to wake her. Magnus, near exhaustion, had barely been able to open
a Portal back to the Institute with Henry’s help, and Will remembered
only a blur after that, a blur of exhaustion and blood and fear, more
Silent Brothers summoned to tend the wounded, and the news coming from
the Council of all who had been killed that day before the automatons
who had attacked them had collapsed upon Mortmain’s death. And Tessa —
Tessa not speaking, not waking, barely breathing. Tessa being carried
off to her room by the Silent Brothers and he had not been able to go
with her. Being neither brother nor husband he could only stand and
stare after her, closing and unclosing his blood-stained hands. Never
had he felt more helpless.
And when he had turned to find Jem, to share his fear with
the only other person in the world who loved Tessa as much as he did —
Jem had been gone, back to the Silent City on the orders of the
Brothers. Gone without even a word of goodbye.
Though Cecily had tried to soothe him, Will had been angry
— angry with Jem, and even, over the ensuing days, with Charlotte, for
allowing Jem to become a Silent Brother, though he knew that was unfair:
that it had been Jem’s choice and the only way to keep him alive. His
anger had not been helped by his panicked worry over Tessa: though her
physical injuries were minor, the shock to her system of what she had
done had been great, and so was her pain. He had sat with her, on and
off for days, taking her hand, begging her to wake up and see him, until
Charlotte had had to rouse him from where he had fallen asleep
half-sprawled across her bed.
Will stared at Jem now, hard enough to bore a hole through
his head, but though Jem’s hood was down, exposing his face, he was
looking away from Will determinedly. His hair had begun to return to its
original dark color: the dark was mixed with the silver, strand beside
strand, and his eyelashes were black again, too, and brushed against the
runes on his cheeks when he lowered his eyes.
They were runes only the Silent Brothers bore: they looked
to Will like injuries, like gashes across Jem’s face. He felt sick
inside.
Charlotte, said Brother Enoch, and held out his hand: there was a letter, sealed with the seal of the Council. I have brought a message for you.
Charlotte looked at him in bewilderment. “The Silent Brothers do not deliver letters.”
This letter is of grave importance. It is imperative that you read it now.
Slowly, Charlotte reached out and took it. She pulled at
the flap, then frowned and crossed the room to take a letter-opener from
her bureau. Will took the opportunity to stare harder at Jem. It did no
good. Jem did not return Will’s gaze; his face was blank; there was nothing thereto
hold on to. Will felt almost seasick — it was like having been a ship
at anchor for years and being cut free to float on the tides, with no
idea which direction to steer in. And there was Jem, his anchor, not
looking at him or meeting his gaze.
The sound of tearing paper came, and they all watched as
Charlotte opened the letter and read it, the color draining from her
face. She lifted her eyes and stared at Brother Enoch. “Is this some
sort of jest?”
There is no jest, I assure you. Do you have an answer?
“Lottie,” said Henry, looking up at his wife, even his
tufts of gingery hair radiating anxiety and love. “Lottie, what is it,
what’s wrong?”
She looked at him, and then back at Brother Enoch. “No,” she said. “I don’t have an answer. Not yet.”
The Council does not wish to wait.
“Well,” Charlotte said, and her voice was firm. “They will have to. Tell them I shall send an answer by day’s end.”
After a moment, Brother Enoch nodded, and turned to leave the room. Jem turned to follow.
And Will broke. He darted forward, and caught at Jem’s
sleeve. The thick material of the parchment robes was slippery under his
fingers. “That’s all?” he said, in a low, urgent voice. “You come back
here, and you do not speak to me — or visit Tessa? Have you even
formally broken your engagement, James Carstairs?”
Jem froze stock-still. Brother Enoch turned. He looked displeased, as much as any of the Brothers ever had expressions. A Silent Brother cannot marry or enter into engagements, he said, and Will could tell from the faces of those around them that he and Jem could hear the words, but no one else could. He has neither fiancée nor parabatai now.
Will’s hand was still on Jem’s sleeve. “You want me to
tell her, then?” Will asked. Charlotte was
looking at him, shaking her
head, Will, no. He knew his anger was unfair, unwarranted — Jem and Tessa’s engagement was over, shouldn’t he be glad? — but he was not
glad. Grief and rage spilled like water through the cracks in his
broken heart. Jem, who never hurt anyone, hurting him, hurting Tessa —
and what if everything that had happened between her and Will had
happened only because she thought Jem was dead, only out of the
desperation of grief and the passionate human need for comfort? What if
she loved Jem and longed for him forever, knowing he lived but was gone
from her, with never a word from him that might provide any sort of
closing of that chapter of her life? How could she bear it — how could Will bear it? What kind of future could they have? And yet there was no future for him without Tessa. “James Carstairs, do you want me to tell Tessa you are done with her, if you will not do it yourself?”
“Done with her?” Jem wrenched his sleeve from Will’s
grasp, and his eyes were wide and dark and hurt, the eyes of
Jem-the-child, the dark eyes Will had known growing up. “I came here
because Enoch told me she had awakened,” he said, and there was an anger
in his voice Will had rarely heard before. “I asked leave to speak with
her one last time. You know what I feel. I will not ever be done.
Not in a hundred years. Not in a thousand.” He looked from Will to
Brother Enoch, and then back again. “And yet I must be. I have no
choice. It’s not like you, William, not to have compassion for that.”
Will swallowed. Everything in the room seemed to have
dwindled down to this, there was only him and Jem. “I thought, perhaps —
being a Silent Brother — might have taken from you your capacity to
feel,” he said, and then burst out, “I could not bear it, a James
Carstairs who does not feel. Not just for Tessa, but for myself. If she
loves only you, if she wishes to spend her life mourning your departure,
I can survive that, but not the death of your heart, or of hers.”
Jem looked at him, and in the depths of his dark eyes Will saw , for a flash, the Jem he knew. “Wo men shi jie bai xiong di,”
Jem said. “You would know if my heart had died, and I would know the
same of you. My departure, you say, though I shall still be in the
world, and yet it is as if I take sail for some unknown island, some
wild place where you cannot follow. But know,” he added, in a voice that only Will could hear, “I
shall do what I can to make some provision that I might see you again,
and Tessa again. For you are half my heart, and she is the other. As
long as I have one of you to be my north star, my heart shall not die,
and I shall remain your James Carstairs.”
“Will,” Charlotte said. She sounded
worried. ”Will and J — Brother Zachariah, this is most irregular.
Brother Enoch, I apologize —”
“I asked leave to speak to Will, too,
before I came,” Jem said. “I was told I could have it as long as I did
not speak to him or answer him while Brother Enoch was attending here to
the matter of the Council.”
Will stared at him, and then at Brother Enoch, realizing
with a sick drop in his stomach that he might have lost his only chance
of speaking in private to Jem again — ever. Enoch’s face was blank, his
expression giving nothing away.
”That is not fair!” Will said. “I addressed you first —”
Peace, little Shadowhunter, said Brother Enoch. The
bonds of parabatai are understood by the Brotherhood. After all, we
bound you with them ourselves. You have our leave to speak to him, one
last time, before he goes.
***
As much as I love this little cut scene, I'm also glad that Cassie cut it out from the final version. I don't think I could handle it after all the heartbreak and excitement when I first read this book. (I'm getting much better now so I can handle it... without breaking down visually. Although I'm still having Clockwork Princess withdrawal problems after more than a month, guys.)
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