“It was as if she saw him in a whole new way, as if he had magically been transformed into a new person. Perhaps what she could really see, or wanted so very much to see, was how much he cared for her. Not that he wanted something from her, but that he wanted to see to it that she was happy, that she was taken care of, that that was what he truly wanted. And in that instant, it made her love him.”

“She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways.Ways that made him believe that he could do anything.Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.”

“Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought - until he wakes. But she began to see what her father had trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust-Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him - no matter what.”

“There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.”

“God, she wanted this. Wanted him. He made her feel wanted, needed. He lit fires inside her she hadn’t known could burn so fierce, in places she didn’t even know existed. Nothing in life could ever make her feel this complete, this whole. He was as much a part of her as her own soul.”

“He wants her in his bedroom. And not in that way — no girl has ever been in his bedroom that way. It is his private space, his sanctuary. But he wants Clary there. He wants her to see him, the reality of him, not the image he shows the world. He wants to lie down on the bed with her and have her curl into him. He wants to hold her as she breathes softly through the night; to see her as no one else sees her: vulnerable and asleep. To see her and to be seen.”