7
" It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and shattered. He lurched to his feet, leaning both hands on the table. He was vaguely aware of stares, and the landlords anxious voice in his ear, but the pain was too great to think through, almost too great to breathe through. The tightness in his chest, the one he had thought of as one end of a cord tying him to Jem, had pulled so taut that it was strangling his heart. He stumbled away from his table, pushing through a knot of customers near the bar, and passed to the front door of the inn. All he could think of was air, getting air into his lungs to breathe. He pushed the doors open and half-tumbled out into the night. For a moment the pain in his chest eased, and he fell back against the wall of the inn. Rain was sheeting down, soaking his hair and clothes. He gasped, his heart stuttering with a misture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem was at his worst, even when he'd been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain.
The cord snapped.
For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleeching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees, vomiting up his supper into the mud. When the spasms had passed , he staggard to his feet and blindly away from the inn, as if trying to outpace his own pain. He fetched up against the wall of the stables, beside the horse trough. He dropped to his knees to plunge his hands into the icy water-and saw his own reflection. There was his face, as white as death, and his shirt, and a spreading stain of red across the front. With wet hands he siezed at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his parabati rune, just over his heart, was bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same ran that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will's life into nonsense.
Jem was dead. "
― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)
11
" Throughout the history of the Kensington Rune Stone in the twentieth
century, memories of an ancient battle were repeatedly evoked to
address the concerns about more recent battles. The skræling endured
as a convenient symbol of the threats posed by secularization, urbanization,
and diversification. As sociologist Richard K. Fenn observes,
“Any society is a reservoir of old longings and ancient hatreds. These
need to be understood, addressed, resolved and transcended if a society
is to have a future that is different from its past.” Furthermore, when
a society does not adequately confront its past, it perpetually finds “a
new target that resembles but also differs from the source of original
conflict.” If Fenn is correct, old enemies will continue to emerge in
the face of new enemies unless Minnesotans can understand, address,
resolve, and transcend the state’s original sin: the unjust treatment of
the region’s first inhabitants. "
― David M. Krueger , Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America
12
" Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?” Clary nodded.
“I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realized then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.” Clary licked her dry lips. “Well, you did,” she said. “Kiss me, I mean.”
He reached up and took a curl of her hair between his fingers. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his soap and skin and hair.
“Not enough,” he said, letting her hair slip through his fingers. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough. "
― Cassandra Clare , City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5)
14
" All my life, since I came to the institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace, When you are gone from me, who will see me like that? There was a silence then, Jem stood as still as a statue. With his gaze WIll searched for, and found, the parabatai rune on Jem's shoulder; like is own, it had faded to a pale white. At last Jem spoke. The cool remoteness had left his voice. Will breathed in hard, remembering how much that voice had shaped the years of his growing up, its steady kindness a lighthouse beacon in the dark. " Have faith in yourself. You can be your own mirror" . "