alibi

No one is ever the villain of their own story.

No, the last thing she cared about was whether people were staring at the boy and girl kissing by the river, as London, it’s cities and towers and churches and bridges and streets, circled all about them like the memory of a dream. And if the Thames that ran beside them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.

They’d been children in the dark together once but now they were something else, something intimate and powerful. ♡

“Five,” she said. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, but her gaze was steady.      “Five?” he echoed blankly. “My rating,” she said, and smiled at him.      “Your skill and technique may, perhaps, require work, but the native talent is certainly there. What you require is practice.”      “And you are willing to be my tutor?” “I should be very insulted if you chose another,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him again.”

↳ The Gang

“A ghost,” Magnus said. A smile hovered around his mouth. “A spirit, sworn to protect the place. She’s been there for a hundred and thirty years.” “She?” Jocelyn said, leaning back against a dusty wall. “A ghost? Really? What was her name?” “You would recognize her last name, if I told it to you, but she wouldn’t like that.” Magnus’s gaze was faraway. “I hope this means she’s found peace.”

The London Institute is located on Fleet Street in London, England. It sits on the former site of the Church of All-Hallows-The-Less, which was destroyed in the Great Fire Of London in 1666. Through its glamour, the Institute appears to be a regular, abandoned church on the outside.

- lucie herondale & cordelia carstairs, cast long shadows (ghosts of the shadow market #2)

She’s a very  p r a c t i c a l  girl.

as long as i could imagine you thriving and happy and well, the pain of missing you and mother and father was worth it.

[ for @ariadnebridgestock​, happy belated birthday! ] 

matthew turned his face away from the light. he crawled, as his father had crawled across another floor at the beginning of this endless day, until he was in the darkest and farthest corner of the room. he had not believed. he laid his cheek against the cold floor and refused to let himself weep again. he knew he could not be forgiven.

and it came to pass… that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul… then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.

Detail of Jem and Tessa from A DEEPER LOVE, book five in the GHOSTS OF THE SHADOOW MARKET SERIES. Wait till you see the whole cover! Art by @dibadavood

every one of the children of the institute was peculiar, he thought: jessamine with her bitterness and her dollhouse, will with his lies and secrets, and jem —  his dying was only another sort of peculiarity.

for @jesslovelace ♥

Emma burst out laughing. “What about Carstairs?” she asked, tapping Cortana. “ ‘We have a sword’? ‘Blunt instruments are for losers’?