Let’s be honest- you’re obsessed with the characters from Cassandra Clare’s Last Hours series in Chain of Gold and Chain of Iron and you can’t wait to read Chain of Thorns. You love the Merry Thieves and Cordelia and Lucie and of course, seeing faves Will, Jem, and Tessa from the Infernal Devices again! But which of these characters would be your parabatai? Take the quiz to find out!
Some of the best moments in Chain of Gold are of course the biggest surprises. But if you’re like us and have already read Chain of Gold multiple times, let us remind you of some of the most surprising, dramatic, and romantic moments. Cassandra Clare loves to tug at our heartstrings (and occasionally destroy us) and we know Chain of Thorns, coming in January 2023, will be no different!
[to James]
“Last time I saw you, you were facedownin the Serpentine,” Magnus said cheerfully. “Now you’re fiddling with a Pyxis. I see you have decided to follow in the long Herondale tradition of poor decision-making.”
Thomas told Alastair that he planned to get a tattoo of a compass rose on the inside of his arm.He hadn’t told anyone else that, and Alastair seemed curious.
“Where on your arm?” he asked, and when Thomas showed him, Alastair ran his fingers over the spot, unselfconsciously, his fingertips tracing a path from the sensitive skin of Thomas’s inner wrist to the crook of his elbow.
Thomas sat stunned and shivering…
“Bring her out, please!” Lucie screamed. “Help me!”
Ghosts rose up on either side…a veritable army of the drowned and dead. In the center of them all, the ghost prisoner held Cordelia, her body limp, her bright hair soaked and streaming down over her shoulders.
This is a blade that can cut through anything…
She whipped Cortana forward, angled toward the archway as if it were so much paper she could slice through.
There was the sound of something shattering as Cortana drove through the barrier between this world and the next.
Thomas cleared his throat. “Someone once told me that we need to stand back and let people do what they’re good at, and Christopher is good at this. I have faith in him. This antidote will work.”
Charles merely looked puzzled, but Thomas hadn’t said it for Charles. He looked at Alastair…
Everyone in the room was looking at her as her body bent backward and her hair swept from side to side, an arc of fire. Her brown skin glowed; perspiration glimmered on her collarbones. James’s blood was pounding through his body like a river through a broken dam.
Lucie reached out her hand. It closed around the locket, and she felt it tumble into her palm, cool and solid. For a moment she hesitated—just for a moment, her eyes fixed on Jesse, kneeling in the grass.
“James cannot have been in Idris. He was with me. In my bedroom. All night.”
“I can ask one last thing of you,” [James] said. “One last sacrifice for me.”
Since it might be the last time she ever saw him, Cordelia let her eyes linger on James’s face. The curve of his mouth, the arch of his high cheekbones, the long lashes that shadowed his pale gold eyes…“
What?” Cordelia said. “If it is in my power, I will do it…”
“Daisy,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
[James] deepened the kiss, suddenly, as if he couldn’t help himself. He leaned into it, into her, his tongue tracing the shape of her mouth, making her shudder.
Cassandra Clare knows how to keep us on the edge of our seats page after page (and book after book!), and these top cliffhanger moments from her Shadowhunters series prove it! Did your fave cliffhanger from the Shadowhunters books make this list? Beware: spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the books!
And then there were arms under her, and someone was lifting her off the floor. Carrying her. Jesse, she thought, clinging to consciousness as they crossed the Sanctuary floor.
Will smirked; she wanted to slap the expression off his face. “What did you really expect, Tessa?”
“I did not expect you to insult me.”
“The truth is that James Herondale did not burn down Blackthorn Manor last night,” she said, in a voice so loud she thought they could probably hear her on Fleet Street.
“James cannot have been in Idris. He was with me. In my bedroom. All night.”
“Are you a Shadowhunter?”
“I am not,” Tessa Gray said with a surprising firmness. “But you are.”
“No kissing, no touching, no being in love, no dating. Is that clear enough for you?”
Julian did not look as if she had hit him. He was a warrior: He could take any blow, and be ready to strike back twice as hard.
It was much worse than that.
Angel’s wings—angel’s wings that had been sliced from the body of a living angel.
Atop the wings was a folded piece of paper, addressed to the New York Institute.
Erchomai, it said.
I am coming.
“You can never love me,” he said flatly, and when she did not respond, when she said nothing, he shuddered.
Someone was shouting for Julian. It was Livvy, clambering up the side of the dais.
“Livvy!” Julian yelled. “Livvy, get out of here—”
We are one now, little brother, you and I, Sebastian said. We are one.
There was one last second during which he thought, I could still run, I could catch up to her, call to her through the window—
Ready to jump into Cassandra Clare’s magical Shadowhunters world? Whether this is your first time picking up a Shadowhunters book, or you’re ready for a reread and you don’t know which series to pick up again first, this quiz is for you!
Our favorite characters from the Shadowhunters series are almost always getting themselves into some kind of trouble. Even though they make us a little stressed, the rescues we get out of their shenanigans keep us on the edge of our seats! Did your fave rescue moment from Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters books make this list? Beware: spoilers ahead!
Blinking away the fiery afterimage, [Clary] saw Simon standing in the open doorway. Simon. She had forgotten he was outside, had almost forgotten he existed.
He saw her, crouched on the stairs, and his gaze moved past her and over Abbadon and Jace. He reached back over his shoulder. He was holding Alec’s bow, she realized, and the quiver was strapped across his back. He drew an arrow from it, fitted it to the string, and lifted the bow expertly, as if he’d done the same thing a hundred times before.
The arrow sprang free. It made a hot buzzing sound, like a huge bumblebee, as it shot over Abbadon’s head, plunged toward the roof—
And shattered the skylight. Dirty black glass fell like rain, and through the broken pane streamed sunlight, quantities of sunlight, great golden bars of it stabbing downward and flooding the foyer with light.
Abbadon screamed and staggered back…
Jace reached out to close Simon’s staring eyes. If Clary had to see him dead, better she not see him like this.
Simon moved. His eyelids twitched and opened, his eyes rolled back to the whites.
Nausea rose in the back of Jace’s throat, his hand tightening on Simon’s collar. He wasn’t dead. But God, the pain, it must be incredible. He couldn’t heal, couldn’t regenerate, not without—
Not without blood. Jace let go of Simon’s shirt and dragged his right sleeve up with his teeth. Using the jagged tip of the broken strut, he slashed a deep cut lengthwise down his wrist.
He looked down at Simon, who hadn’t moved. The blood was running down Jace’s hand now, his wrist stinging. He held it out over Simon’s face, letting the blood drip down his fingers, spill onto Simon’s mouth.
He leaned down, pressed his bleeding wrist against Simon’s mouth.
“Drink my blood, idiot,” he whispered. “Drink it.”
“There’s a cat,” [Jem] said in a low whisper, pointing. “In one of those cages over there.”
Will glanced where his friend pointed. Indeed, a bristling gray cat was huddled in one of the locked animal cages along the wall. “And?”
“It’s still alive.”
“It’s a cat, James. We have bigger things to worry about—”
But Jem was already walking away. He reached the animal’s cage and scooped it up, holding the cage at eye level. The cat looked to be a gray Persian, with a squashed-in face and yellow eyes that regarded Jem malevolently.
[Julian] had lived by ironclad rules for so long. Protect Tavvy, protect Livvy and Ty, protect Dru. Protect Emma. Recently that had widened out slightly—he would protect Mark, because Mark had come back, and he would protect Cristina, because Emma loved her.
It was a sort of love few other people could understand. It was total and it was overwhelming and it could be cruel. He would destroy a whole city if he thought that city posed some threat to his family.
Ghosts rose up on either side of him, a veritable army of the drowned and dead. In the center of them all, the ghost prisoner held Cordelia, her body limp, her bright hair soaked and streaming down over her shoulders. Her gear was dark with river water, all of it sluicing off her as the ghosts carried her inexorably forward to the riverbank and laid her down.
“Thank you,” Lucie whispered.
The ghost prisoner straightened up. For a long moment, all the ghosts simply stared at Lucie, their eyes empty hollows of darkness. Then they vanished.
“Will,” Tessa said again, interrupting his thoughts. She sounded almost breathless. “Will,
you idiot.”
His romantic notions came to a screeching halt like a hackney cab in traffic on Fleet Street. “I— What?”
“Oh, Will,” she said. Her lips were trembling; she looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “Do you remember when you told me that the handsome young gentleman who came to rescue you was never wrong, not even if he said the sky was purple and made of hedgehogs?”
“The first time I ever saw you. Yes.”
“Oh, my Will.” She drew gently away from his embrace, smoothing a tangled lock of hair behind her ear. Her eyes remained fixed on his. “I cannot imagine how you came to find me, how difficult it must have been. It is incredible. But—do you really think Mortmain would leave me unguarded in a room with an open door?” She turned away and moved a few feet forward, then stopped abruptly. “Here,” she said, and raised her hand, spreading her fingers wide. “The air is as solid as a wall here. This is a prison, Will, and now you are in it alongside me.”
“Give me the sword.” His hand was out, his chin raised, his tone imperious. “Give it to me, Clary.”
“You want it?”
She raised Glorious, the way he had taught her to, balancing the weight of it, though it felt heavy in her hand. The flame in it grew brighter, until it seemed to reach upward and touch the stars. Jace was only the sword’s length away from her, his golden eyes incredulous. Even now he couldn’t believe she might hurt him, really hurt him. Even now.
She took a deep breath. “Take it.”
She saw his eyes blaze up the way they had that day by the lake, and then she drove the sword into him, just as Valentine had done. She understood now that this was the way it had to be. He had died like this, and she had ripped him back from death. And now it had come again.
You cannot cheat death. In the end it will have its own.
As Armaros raised her with his hands, [Tessa] closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind, reaching into the clockwork angel. She tumbled for a moment through dark space, and then a gray limbo, seeking that light, that spark of spirit, that life—
And there it was, a sudden blaze, a bonfire, brighter than any spark she had ever seen before. She reached for it, wrapping it about herself, coils of white fire that burned and scorched her skin. She screamed aloud—
And Changed.
Magnus reached for Alec, but instead of rising to his feet, he pulled Alec against him, his hand sliding up Alec’s back to knot in his hair. Magnus pulled Alec down and against him, and kissed him, hard and awkward and determined, and Alec froze for a moment and then abandoned himself to it, to kissing Magnus, something he’d thought he’d never get to do again. Alec ran his hands up Magnus’s shoulders to the sides of his neck and cupped his hands there, holding Magnus in place while he kissed him thoroughly breathless.
Finally Magnus drew back; his eyes were shining. He let his head fall onto Alec’s shoulder, arms encircling him, keeping them tightly together. “Alec . . . ,” he began softly.
“Yes?” Alec said, desperate to know what Magnus wanted to ask him.
“Are you being chased?”
“I—ah—some of the Endarkened are looking for us,” Alec said carefully.
“Pity,” Magnus said, closing his eyes again. “It would be nice if you could just lie down with me here. Just . . . for a little while.”
[Tessa] lunged forward, swinging the jug with all her strength— The shadowy figure moved, as quick as a whip, but not quite quick enough; the jug slammed into the figure’s outstretched arm before flying from Tessa’s grasp to crash into the far wall.
Tessa spun, blinking away the tears in her eyes—and stared.
There was a boy standing in front of her. He had the most beautiful face she had ever seen.
“You cut me,” he said. “It might be fatal.”
It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since Lady Midnight was released! The Dark Artifices series continues to collect more and more fans and, of course, more incredible fan art. We had to do an updated list of our favorites! Here are some of the top picks from Twitter. Be sure to follow us at @shadowhunterbks.
Julian and Emma
#jemma
By @nairafeather
Emma & Jules & a starry night
By @alexandracurte
“Innocent childhood” Julian and Emma drawing each other
By @Hellredsky
Ty Blackthorn and Kit Herondale
By @alexandracurte
Carstairs-Gray-Herondale Family Picnic
Kit Herondale, Jem Carstairs, Tessa Gray, Mina Carstairs
By @battii_art
Livvy and Ty Blackthorn
By @LemoncielArt
Dru Blackthorn and Ash Morgenstern
By @ekbelsher
Christina Rosales
By @maddyisasart
Julian Blackthorn and Emma Carstairs’ wedding 😍🥰 (with Cortana, of course, as special guest)
By @blackthornsnaps