Lady Midnight
Coming out March 8, 2016Don't forget to check out Cassandra Clare's blog for he latest information and giveaways.
http://shadowhunters.com/
And TMI sources because they're amazing.
http://tmisource.com
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Tiberius and Julian Blackthorn:
Ty lifted his face. He’d always had delicate features, more elfin than Helen or Mark’s. His father had said he was a throwback to earlier generations of Blackthorns, and he looked not unlike some of the family portraits in the dining room they rarely used, slender Victorian men in tailored clothes with porcelain faces and black, curling hair and names like Jesse and Rupert. “Then what is it?”
Julian hesitated. The whole house was still. He could hear the faint crackle of the computer on the other side of the door.
He had thought about asking Ty to look into the poison. But that would require him to say, I should be dead. The words wouldn’t come. They were like a dam, and behind them were so many other words: I’m not sure about anything. I hate being in charge. I hate making the decisions. I’m terrified you’ll all learn to hate me. I’m terrified of losing you. I’m terrified of losing Mark. I’m terrified of losing Emma. I want someone to take over. I’m not as strong as you think. The things I want are wrong and broken things to want.
He knew he could say none of this. The façade he showed them, his children, had to be perfect: a crack in him would be like a crack in the world to them.
“You know I love you,” he said, instead, and Ty looked up at him, startled, meeting his gaze for a flicker of a moment.
*****
New sneak peak:
In a secret world where half-angel warriors are sworn to fight demons, parabatai is a sacred word.
A parabatai is your partner in battle. A parabatai is your best friend. Parabatai can be everything to each other — but they can never fall in love.
Emma Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, one in a long line of Shadowhunters tasked with protecting the world from demons. With her parabatai Julian Blackthorn, she patrols the streets of an secret Los Angeles where vampires party on the Sunset Strip, and faeries teeter on the edge of open war with Shadowhunters. When the bodies of humans and faeries start turning up murdered in the same way Emma’s parents were murdered years ago, an uneasy alliance is formed. This is Emma’s chance for revenge — and Julian’s chance to get back his half-faerie brother, Mark, who was kidnapped five years ago. All Emma, Mark and Julian have to do is solve the murders within two weeks . . . before the murderer targets them.
Their search takes Emma from sea caves full of sorcery to a dark lottery where death is dispensed. As she uncovers the past, she begins to peel away the secrets of the present: What has Julian been hiding from her all these years? Why does Shadowhunter law forbid parabatai to fall in love? Who really killed her parents — and can she bear to know the truth?
The magic and adventure of the Shadowhunter Chronicles have captured the imaginations of millions of readers across the globe. Fall in love with Emma and her friends in this pulse-pounding, heart-rending new volume sure to delight new readers and longtime fans.
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Special content for the first addition of Lady midnight:
Every first page will be hand-stamped with a rune. (I wish I could sign them all, but it is beyond my ability to sign that many books.)
Even more specially, each first edition will contain a full short story, about the size of a Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy story. […]
There is mention in Lady Midnight, when one of the TMI characters drops by, that the characters have come from a party. I decided to write the short story of that party, so we could check in more thoroughly, emotionally with the TMI characters,to see what’s going on with them and how it ties into the events of TDA. It’s a chance to check in on couples, life, politics, and just see how things are going for everyone: we’ll obviously see Jace, Clary, Magnus, Alec, Bat and Maia, Simon and Isabelle, baby Max, Jocelyn and Luke and Lily and some of the characters from Tales from Shadowhunter Academy — and, it’s not just any party; the night contains a marriage proposal for one of our couples. The story will exist only in the first edition of Lady Midnight; All hardback first editions in English of Lady Midnight will have, printed at the end, this short story.
*****
Snippet shows Livia, Mark and Tiberius Blackthorn and a mundane:Livvy made an exasperated noise, stomped forward, and seized Mark by the back of the shirt. “You don’t want him,” she said to the pink-haired girl. “He has syphilis.”
The girl goggled. “Syphilis?”
“Five percent of people in America have it,” said Ty, helpfully.
“I do not have syphilis,” Mark said in a fury. “There are no sexually transmitted diseases in Faerieland!”
The mundane girls fell instantly silent.
*****
From Cassandra Clare's Twitter account we find a cut scene from the new Lady Midnight.
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Emma felt the anger uncurl in her stomach again, but this time it was directed at Mark.
“Jules?” Tavvy asked, sounding nervous, and Julian passed a hand over his face. It was a nervous habit, as if he were wiping an easel free of paint; when he dropped his hand, the fear and emotion had gone from his eyes.
“I’m here,” he said, and went over to pick up Tavvy. Tavvy put his head down on Jules’ shoulder, looking sleepy, and getting paint all over Jules’ t-shirt. But Jules didn’t seem to care. He put his chin down in his younger brother’s curls and smiled at Emma.
“Forget it,” he said. “I’m going to take this one off to bed. You should probably get some sleep, too.”
But Emma’s veins were buzzing with a sharp elixir of anger and protectiveness. She could almost taste it in her mouth, like a bitter copper penny. No one hurt Julian. No one. Not even his much-missed, much-loved brother.
“I will,” she said. “I’ve got something to do, first.”
Julian’s verdigris eyes narrowed. “Emma, don’t try to —”
But she was already gone.
******
“Why did you pull the arrow out?” Emma demanded, unzipping her own jacket and pulling her sweater over her head. She had a tank top on under it. She patted his chest and side with the sweater, absorbing as much of the blood as she could.
Jules’ breath was coming in harsh pants. “Because when someone shoots you with an arrow, you immediate response is not “Thanks for the arrow, I think I’ll keep it for a while.’”
“Good to know your sense of humor is intact.”
“It was burning,” Julian said. “Not like a normal wound. Like there was something on the arrowhead, acid or something.”
“Raziel,” Emma muttered. She’d mopped away as much of the blood as she could. It was still welling from the puncture wound, running in thin streams down his stomach, gathering in the lines between his abdominal muscles.
She took a deep breath. “You’re too skinny,” she said, as brightly as she could. “Too much coffee, not enough pancakes.”
“I hope they put that on my tombstone.” He gasped as she shifted forward, and she realized abruptly that she was squarely in Julian’s lap, her knees around his hips. It was a bizarrely intimate position.
*****
In this new snippet Cristina thinks about Diego Rosales and their relationship when they were younger:
Not since she’d left home had Cristina so clearly and painfully remembered what they had been to each other when they were younger. How much she had loved Diego. Her heart had felt torn to pieces when he cried out for his brother, pleading with him. Jaime, Jaime, ayúdame. Help me. And then he had cried out for her, and that was worse. Cristina, no me dejes. Regresa.
Cristina, don’t leave me. Come back. I love you.
I’m here, she’d told him. Not gone. She remembered him asking if there was someone else …
Its bad that I have no clue who these people are.
******
snippet.
Julian and Emma snippet
“Emma.” Raw pain. “I said what I said because —sometimes I think I asked you to be my parabatai because I wanted you to be tied to me."
“It isn’t easy, having the Sight, if you’re a mundane,” Julian said in a low voice. “You see things nobody else sees. You can’t talk about it because no one will understand. You have to keep secrets, and secrets — they break you apart. Cut you open. Make you vulnerable.”*****
The low timbre of his voice shuddered down through Emma’s bones. There was something in it that frightened her. Something that reminded her of Mark’s eyes, distant and lonely.
“Jules,” she said, surprised. He was hardly a mundane with the Sight, and as far as she knew, he didn’t know anyone who was.
Muttering something like “never mind,” he spun her away, then pulled her back toward him. Years of practicing fighting together made them an almost perfect dancing team, she realized with surprise. They could predict each other’s movements, glide with each other’s bodies. She could tell which way Julian would step by the cadence of his breath and the faint tightening of his fingers around hers.
Julian’s dark curls were wildly tousled; when he drew her near him, she could smell the clove spice of his cologne, the faint scent of paint underneath.
The song ended. Emma looked up and over at the band; the clarinetist with the red hair was watching her and Julian. Unexpectedly, he winked. The band struck up again, this time a slower, softer number. Couples moved together as if magnetized, arms wrapping around necks, hands resting on hips, heads leaning together.
“Emma.” Raw pain. “I said what I said because —sometimes I think I asked you to be my parabatai because I wanted you to be tied to me."
