“We were married for sixty-two years before he passed,” Bea said. “I still can’t take a deep breath without smelling his scent.” Her face filled with strength, rather than tears. “We had a good life. He always made me laugh. Loving him was a wonderful way to pass my time here. And someday we’ll be together again.”

“I love you, Levi.” “Thank God for it because I love you too.” Her laugh was back in his house again. Her scent on his sheets.Her crap on his bathroom counter and her stuff in the drawers in his armoire.She lived in him and he had no plans to ever let that change.It didn’t matter that she was younger than he was. All that mattered was that she loved him and he loved her. The rest they could work out as time passed. She’d keep him in line. Decorate their house and fill it with music and love. And one day with children.They had time, he realized. Time to be in love and be engaged. Time for her art and his job, time for weddings and honeymoons and nesting. She was his, forever. As deeply as he was hers.Made the groveling worth it.~~Sway”

“I hope you know how rare a girl like Livia is.”Blake nodded, but said nothing.“I’ve only met a few souls as crystal clear as hers,” Bea continued. “One of them was my Aaron; we were married for sixty-two years. Souls like that, my boy, are a gift. Cherish her.”“I will.” Blake stood and gave Bea a formal bow only he could get away with.”

“We walked into the arena together with him reaching out his arm and wrapping it around my waist. He pulled me into him, smelling the aroma around him. The scent was familiar like I was with him before. Although I was positive that I’d never seen this man, something still ached at me. Was it a longing of a piece of my past starting to take effect?”

“Oh God, how did he get to be sixty? How quickly the years had passed! His whole life had passed before he realized it, before he began. He hadn’t lived. What had he done in his life? What had he achieved? Could he measure his happy times? How much? How many? Several days, a few months at best? It was not fair to advance in years without realizing the value of time, not fair that no one drew our attention to the time that was slipping through our fingers by the moment. It was a clever trick: to realize the value of life only just before it ended.”

“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.”