City of Heavenly Fire

his smile was a promise of terrible things.

Love is essentially selfish,

Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.”

We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

“Do you like the name Herondale?” he asked. “It’s your name, so I love it,” she said. “There are some pretty bad Shadowhunter names I could have ended up with,” he said. “Bloodstick. Ravenhaven.” “Bloodstick can’t possibly be a name.” “It may have fallen out of favor,” he acknowledged. “Herondale, on the other hand, is melodic. Dulcet, one might say. Think of the sound of ‘Clary Herondale.’ ” “Oh, my God, that sounds horrible.” “We all must sacrifice for love.”

“Every time,” he said quietly. “Every time I think I’m missing a piece of me, you give it back.”

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

“There are a hundred trillion cells in the human body,” she said. “And every single one of the cells of my body loves you. We shed cells, and grow new ones, and my new cells love you more than the old ones, which is why I love you more every day than I did the day before. It’s science. And when I die and they burn my body and I become ashes that mix with the air, and part of the ground and the trees and the stars, everyone who breathes that air or sees the flowers that grow out of the ground or looks up at the stars will remember you and love you, because I love you that much.”

sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.

The door swung open, and the brick flew from her hand. The figure in the doorway ducked; the brick hit the wall, and Luke straightened up and looked at her curiously. “I hope when we’re married, that’s not the way you greet me every day when I come home,”