Page 24 of Better in Black
“I was more thinking about what we’ve learned about how you look in ruffled blouses,” Cordelia said.
Lucie could tell, from the way their laughter wove together—and the way they couldn’t seem to stop reaching for each other, one innocent touch after another betraying the longing for something more—that the couple was eager to get home as quickly as possible. Since James was her brother, she preferred not to think about it too much, but merely told them to go on without her, as she had a hansom cab waiting to take her home to the Institute.
Once Lucie was alone in the office, she hesitated before leaving. Then she returned to her manuscript, which still sat on the lectern.
It seemed like a hundred years had passed since the day she had learned she was to be published. Everyone thought this was Lucie’s wildest dream. And once, Lucie had believed it herself. But as she got older, she started to understand something about her story. She wasn’t writingThe Beautiful Cordeliabecause she longed for it to be bound in leather and sold to strangers, or because she dreamed of being lauded the world over for being a brilliant writer. Of course these things would be nice. But they were not her essentialwhy.She wroteThe Beautiful Cordeliabecause she wanted to. Because the story burned inside her—the characters, the emotions, the dreamscape of fantasy and adventure, the land where heroes could do the impossible, where lovers could be parted and reunite, where all her worst fears and greatest desires could be put down in blackand white, transformed into a private world whose fate rested entirely in her hands. Writing was not a profession—Shadowhunters didn’t have professions, they had a sacred obligation that shaped their souls. But perhaps one could have more than one sacred obligation? Lucie thought. Writing was, like breathing, like dreaming, simply an essential element of who she was and how she moved through her life. One that would continue whether she was ever published or not.
So why had her heart leapt with such wild joy when she thought the book was to be published? Why had she felt that now—now, finally!—life could begin?
And then she knew. Her other essentialwhy.
Jesse.
She had told Jesse they would not be married until her book was published, and this had seemed reasonable at the time. But she wondered, now, whether that had been an excuse. Whether a part of her had feared the same thing Cordelia did, that marriage meant the end of the story, that when the adventure of their love came to its conclusion, they would run out of plot. One look at James and Cordelia was evidence enough that this was absurd: that the story went on, even if it was unseen by anyone save the characters themselves. After all, though Lucie usually preferred to ignore the looks of romance exchanged between her parents, she had to admit that Will and Tessa grew ever more disgustingly enraptured with each other as the years passed. Marriage, happiness—it wasn’t the end of a story. It was simply the end of the story of the beginning.
Lucie had been writing the same story for almost as long as she could remember.The Beautiful Cordeliawas part of her, or at least who she had been. But it was time to finish this story once and for all, she thought, and turn to a new one. After all, she had alifetime of stories to tell. She simply had to give herself permission to begin.
She opened the book one final time, took up a new pen, and bent over the manuscript, carefully writing out the very last lines.
And Cordelia and James and Lucie and Jesse lived happily ever after.
The End.
Who the Wolf Loves
“Besides, don’t you hate it? Not ever saying how you really feel?”
This time the silence lasted until they were off the bridge and rumbling down Orchard Street, lined with shops and restaurants whose signs were in beautiful Chinese characters of curling gold and red.
“Yes, I hated it,” Luke said. “At the time, I thought what I had with you and your mother was better than nothing. But if you can’t tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.”
—City of Ashes
Pray you, who does the wolf love?
—Coriolanus
Dear Jocelyn,
I told you once that I hated lying to Clary.
All right, more than once. Far more than you would have liked, I’m sure, in those early days when we were still working out how I could step into your life without bringing all those old demons (metaphorical and otherwise) along with me. I loved her before I knew her, because she was a part of you; I loved her even more once I met her, because she was also so wholly herself. I didn’t want to lie to her, ever.
“Nothing you’ve told her is untrue,” you said. And back then, you were right—technically. It was easier, when she was young, to say only true things, to keep the secret truths unspoken. Children ask more questions, but they’re also more accepting of answers. They don’t see the absences in the world you paint for them. The negative space in between. You’re the one who taught me about negative space—the way a shape is defined not just by the lines drawn around it, but by the emptiness beyond them. The form, but also the void.
When it came to Clary, you insisted we pretend there was nothing beyond the lines we drew for her. You pushed the things we had been—Shadowhunter, werewolf—into the void.
“After all,” you said, “youdoown a bookstore.
“You do love the first blanket of snow in Prospect Park,” you said. “You do love Sunday morning cider donuts from that truck by the Gowanus, and movie nights on the couch with Clary asleep between us, and greasy pad Thai from that basement joint that might or might not be a front for the mob. You do love us.
“All of that is true,” you said. “If it’s not the whole truth, does that make it a lie?”
The question sounded foreign on your tongue. Like it belonged to someone else. I couldn’t help wondering if it was a lesson you learned fromhim.If they were words he’d once used to soothe you, when you first peeked into the negative space and dared question what he was hiding there.
I didn’t ask, of course. To suggest you’d kept anything of his, other than his daughter—I could never hurt you like that.
You would want me to remember that Valentine lied for power, while we lied for Clary.
