In some ways, we've been through something no one else can ever understand but the two of us... And it made me realize. We are always and absolutely better together.

But I will never have a bride.

I'm not a man. I have no male pride for you to trick me with, and I am not interested in single combat. That is entirely a weakness of your sex, not mine. I am a woman. I will use any weapon and all weapons to get what I want.

Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him." "Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply — I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.

It was hidden inside another book. One Valentine was unlikely to ever open." Magnus smiled crookedly. "Simple Recipes for Housewives. No one can say your mother didn't have a sense of humor.

Comforting someone when they were stricken with loss was something else. It meant commitment. It meant caring. It meant you wanted to ease their pain, and at the same time you were thanking God that whatever the bad thing was that had happened, it hadn't happened to them.

He remembered Simon warning him, with wryness, that Clary had the nuclear bomb of boyfriends.