The Clave thinks the wards will stand forever because they’ve stood for a thousand years. But so did Rome, till the barbarians came. Everything falls someday

Forever and ever, brother, hail. Forever and ever, farewell.

I tell so many lies, sweetheart," he said. "which one specifically?

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.

Well, hello there, Mother,” Sebastian said in a voice like silk. “Surprised to see me?

Look well on this, my son," said the green-skinned man, "for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince.

Yes, he would have done that for Tessa - died to keep the ones she needed beside her - and so would Jem have done that for him or for Tessa, and so would Tessa, he thought, do that for both of them. It was a near incomprehensible tangle, the three of them, but there was one certainty, and that was that there was no lack of love between them.