We battle hardest when that which is dearer to us than our own lives is at stake, said Jem. A parabatai is both blade and shield. You belong together and to each other not because you are the same but because your different shapes fit together to be a greater whole, a greater warrior for a higher purpose. I always believed we were not merely at our best together but beyond the best either of us could be apart.

A slow smile broke across the boy’s face, like sunrise bursting as a bright surprise upon the water.

“I’d like that,” said Jonathan Wayland, adding quickly, “To be a great warrior.”

He flung his head back in a sudden, hasty assumption of arrogance, as if he and Jem might both have imagined he meant that he would like to belong to someone.

This boy, hell-bent on fighting rather than finding a family. The Lightwoods guarding against a vampire, when they could have extended some trust. The vampire, holding every friend at bay. All of them had their wounds, but Jem could not help resenting them, for even the privilege of feeling hurt.

All these people were struggling not to feel, trying to freeze their hearts inside their chests until the cold fractured and broke them. While Jem would have given every cold tomorrow he had for one more day with a warm heart, to love them as he once had.

Except Jonathan was a child, still trying to make a distant father proud even when death had made the distance between them impossible. Jem should be kind.

He thought of the boy’s speed, his fearless strike with an unfamiliar weapon on a strange and bloody night.

I’m sure you will be a great warrior, said Jem.

Jonathan Wayland ducked his shaggy golden head to hide the faint color in his cheeks.

The boy’s forlornness made Jem recall too vividly the night he had carved those initials into his staff, a long, cold night with all the icy strangeness of the Silent Brothers new in his head. He had not wanted to die, but he would have chosen death rather than the awful severing from love and warmth. If only he could have had a death in Tessa’s arms, holding Will’s hand. He had been robbed of his death.

It seemed impossible to stay anything like human, in among the bones and endless dark.