NEW Snippet Jules and Emma “The Dark Artifices”

NEW TDA Snippet

Shared by Cassandra Clare

Via – Cassandra Clare Tumblr

“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.

The Dark Artifices

Emma swallowed. She was remembering Julian, two years ago, standing in the overlapping circles of fire where the parabatai ritual was performed. The look on his face as they each stepped into the central circle and the fire rose up around them, and he unbuttoned his shirt to let her touch the stele to his skin and carve the rune that would bind them together for their whole lives. She knew if she just reached out now, she could touch it, touch the rune cut into his shoulder, the rune she had put there . . .

Los Angeles. It’s been five years since the events of the Mortal Instruments when Nephilim stood poised on the brink of oblivion and Shadowhunter Emma Carstairs lost her parents. After the blood and violence she witnessed as a child, Emma has dedicated her life to to discovering exactly what it was that killed her parents and getting her revenge.

Raised in the Los Angeles Institute with the Blackthorn family, Emma is paired as a parabatai with her best friend, Julian Blackthorn. A series of murders in the city catch her attention — they seem to have the same characteristics as the deaths of her parents. Could the murderer be the same person? And her attention isn’t the only one caught: someone has been murdering Downworlders as well. The Fair Folk make a deal with the Institute: if the Blackthorns and Emma will investigate the killings, they’ll return Mark Blackthorn to his home. The catch: they have only two weeks to find the killers. Otherwise it’s open war between faeries and Nephilim.

The Shadowhunters of the Institute must race against time to catch the killers, even as they begin to suspect the involvement of those closest to them. At the same time, Emma is falling in love with the one person in the world she’s absolutely forbidden by Shadowhunter Law to love. Set against the glittering backdrop of present-day Los Angeles, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches from the warlock-run nightclubs of the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica.

The first book of the Dark Artifices, Lady Midnight will be published MARCH, 2016. There will be three books in total: Lady Midnight, The Prince of Shadows, and The Queen of Air and Darkness.

(Via – Cassandra Clare’s Website)