“Will looked at his sister. “And you don’t care about being a Shadowhunter. How is this: I shall write a letter and give it to you if you promise to deliver it home yourself — and not to return.”Cecily recoiled; she had many memories of shouting matches with Will, of the china dolls she had owned that he had broken by dropping them out an attic window; but there was also kindness in her memories: the brother who had bandaged up a cut knee, or retied her hair ribbons when they came loose. That kindness was absent from the Will who stood before her now. Her mother had used to cry for the first year or two after Will went; she had said, in Welsh, holding Cecily to her, that they — the Shadowhunters — would “take all the love out of him.” A cold, unloving people, she had told Cecily, who had forbidden her marriage to her husband. What could he want with them, her Will, her little one?“I will not go,” Cecily said, staring her brother down. “And if you insist that I must, I will — I will —”The door of the attic slid open and Jem stood silhouetted in the doorway…”

“With tears running down her face, Cecily had reminded him of the moment at her wedding to Gabriel when he had delivered a beautiful speech praising the groom, at the end of which he had announced, “Dear God, I thought she was marrying Gideon. I take it all back.”

“What are you doing following me around the back streets of London, you little idiot?” Will demanded, giving her arm a light shake.Cecily’s eyes narrowed. “This morning it was cariad (note: Welsh endearment, like ‘darling’ or ‘love’), now it’s idiot.”“Oh, you’re using a Glamour rune. There’s one thing to declare, you are not afraid of anything when you live in the country. But this is London.”“I’m not afraid of London,” Cecily said defiantly.Will leaned closer, almost hissing in her ear *and said something very complicated in Welsh*She laughed. “No, it wouldn’t do you any good to tell me to go home. You are my brother, and I want to go with you.”Will blinked at her words.You are my brother, and I want to go with you.It was the sort of thing he was used to hearing Jem say.Although Cecily was unlike Jem in every other conceivable possible way, she did share one quality with him. Stubbornness. When Cecily said she wanted something, it did not express an idle desire, but an iron determination.“Do you even care where I’m going?” he said. “What if I were going to hell?”“I’ve always wanted to see hell,” Cecily said. “Doesn’t everyone?”“Most of us spend our time trying to stay out of it, Cecily. I’m going to an ifrit den, if you must know, to purchase drugs from vile, dissolute criminals. They may clap eyes on you, and decide to sell you.”“Wouldn’t you stop them?”“I suppose it would depend on whether they cut me a part of the profit.”She shook her head. “Jem is your parabatai,” she said. “He is your brother, given to you by the Clave, but I am your sister by blood. Why would you do anything for him, but you only want me to go home?”“How do you know the drugs are for Jem?” Will said.“I’m not an idiot, Will.”“No, more’s the pity. Jem- Jem is like the better part of me. I would not expect you to understand. I owe him. I owe him this.”“So what am I?” Cecily said.Will exhaled, too desperate to check himself. “You are my weakness.”“And Tessa is your heart,” she said, not angrily, but thoughtfully. “I am not fooled. As I told you, I’m not an idiot. And more’s the pity for you, although I suppose we all want things we can’t have.”“Oh,” said Will, “and what do you want?”“I want you to come home.” A strand of black hair was stuck to her cheek by the dampness, and Will fought the urge to pull her cloak closer about her, to make her safe as he had when she was a child.“The Institute is my home,” Will sighed, and leaned his head against the stone wall. “I can’t stand out her arguing with you all evening, Cecily. If you’re determined to follow me into hell, I can’t stop you.”“Finally,” she said provingly. “You’ve seen sense. I knew you would, you’re related to me.”Will fought the urge to shake her.“Are you ready?”She nodded, and he raised his hand to knock on the door.”

“Jem, Cecily thought, with a pang in her heart. Her brother had always looked to him as a kind of North Star, a compass that would ever point him toward the right decision. She had never quite thought of her brother as lucky before, and certainly would not have expected to do so today, and yet-and yet in a way he had been. To always have someone to turn to like that, and not to worry constantly that one was looking to the wrong stars.”

“You had every right to be. He raised his eyes to look at her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn't stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind and water.”

“Beside the watch was a pearl bracelet she always wore. She never took it off. Will had given it to her when they had been married thirty years, smiling as fastened it on. He had had gray in his hair them, she knew, though she had never really seen it. As if her love had given him his own shape-shifting ability, no matter how much time had passed, when she looked at him, she always saw the wild, black-haired boy she had fallen in love with.It still seemed incredible to her sometimes that they had managed to grow old together, herself and Will Herondale, whom Gabriel Lightwood had once said would not live to be older than nineteen. They had been good friends with the Lightwoods too, through all those years. Of course Will could hardly not be friends with the man who was married to his sister. Both Cecily and Gabriel had seen Will on the day he dies, as had Sophie, though Gideon had himself passed away several years before.”

“You are a Lightwood," Cecily said. "You stayed because you were loyal to your family name. It is not cowardice.""Wasn't it? Is loyalty still a commendable quality when it is misdirected?"Cecily opened her mouth, then closed it again. Gabriel was looking for her, his eyes shining in the moonlight. He seemed genuinely desperate to hear her answer. She wondered if he had anyone else to talk to. She could see how it might be terrifying to take one's moral qualms to Gideon; he seemed so staunch, as if he never questioned himself in his life and would not understand those who did."I think," she said, choosing her words with care, "that any good impulse can be twisted into something evil. Look at the Magister. He does what he does because he hates the Shadowhunters, out of loyalty to his parents, who cared for him, and who were killed. It is not beyond the realm of understanding. And yet nothing excuses the result. I think when we make choices-for each choice is individual of the choices we have made before-we must examine not only our reasons for making them but what result they will have, and whether good people will be hurt by our decisions.”