James and Matthew share a manly embrace in new ‘The Last Hours’ snippet

A new week brings us a new snippet from Cassandra Clare’s upcoming The Last Hours trilogy. It features James Herondale and Matthew Fairchild and shows how comforting it can be to have a parabatai:

The whole way to the Fairchilds’ James had felt as if he were choking, and now he could breathe, the pressure on his chest easing. He couldn’t find words now, couldn’t do anything but clutch on to the front of Matthew’s shirt and put his head down on his shoulder.

Aw! I hope James is okay.
Cassie once again answered a lot of questions regarding the characters from The Last Hours and two of her Ghosts of the Shadow Market short stories, Cast Long Shadows and Every Exquisite Thing:

I re-read the other TLH stories to prepare for CLS and confused myself about the timeline. I thought The Midnight Heir was after Nothing But Shadows, but in TMH James says he thought Ragnor only looked green to him because he’d been drinking absinthe. It’s not that he’s too drunk to remember his old teacher, since he knows who Magnus is instantly. Was he just being sarcastic, as Herondales often are, or have I got the timeline all wrong?

C: The Midnight Heir is indeed set after Nothing But Shadows! I know it’s a little confusing, as the stories weren’t released in chronological order, but the timeline goes like this. Nothing But Shadows is set in 1899 (James is 13), Cast Long Shadows is set in 1901 (James is 15), and The Midnight Heir is set in 1903, during the first TLH book (James is 17).

James is being sarcastic because he’s a sarcastic person, yes. 😉 He is indeed a Herondale, and uses his rapier wit to hide his inner pain, but also I hope his own person, and complex as people are. He’s grown up in a bubble of love, but also cut off from other people because of the Shadowhunters’ suspicion of his demonic heritage, and that, a big secret he has, plus his nature means he’s very private. His friends agree in Nothing But Shadows, when he’s 13, that he doesn’t come off as shy at all: he comes off as cold and aloof, and kind of terrifying–this is far more the case when he’s 17, an adult among the Shadowhunters, and the first warrior among them with demonic blood and powers that frighten everybody. James tries to be a good person and a good Shadowhunter. But he’s also a reserved person, a keen reader, secretive about his feelings and when he’s upset, his instinct is to isolate himself, and throw up protective walls of ice.

In The Midnight Heir James is much, much drunker than Magnus thinks, and Magnus thinks he’s pretty drunk! And James is absolutely distraught, not because of his general situation or his love life (though neither can be described as going well), but because of something absolutely horrible and very specific that happened to him that day. Something that neither Will nor Tessa know about, and something that threatens James’s entire future and his sense of self, and puts him apart from everything he loves and holds sacred. As James says in the Midnight Heir, “My father was cursed… I’m damned.”

Since Tatiana seems to still have resentment against her brothers, what does she feels about Gideon’s and Gabriel’s children, her nephews and nieces? What she thinks of them marrying Sophie and Cecily?

C: Tatiana is disgusted that Gabriel married Cecily, Will’s sister. She wouldn’t have cared particularly about Gideon marrying an Ascended Shadowhunter, Sophie, though the Lightwood family as a whole would’ve regarded it as a mesalliance. (The Lightwood family used to be super well-regarded, rich and respected, and all the Lightwoods would have been expected to make alliances with other important families. Tatiana did!)

What Tatiana hates is really the whole circle–the entire London Enclave, and their interconnected lives and loves. Anna and her marked resemblance to Will, Christopher and Thomas and their ferocious bond with James, the fact Gideon and Sophie’s sickly child (Thomas) got better when her child Jesse did not, the fact all of them get to be happy. They’re a pack of people she hates, and she thinks of Will and the others as having co-opted What She Was Owed. It’s her own bitterness cutting her off, but she still feels cut off and deeply resentful.

Where were Lucie, Cordelia and Matthew during the events of Midnight Heir?

C: They’re around! They’re in their homes. None of them know James has gone on a wild tear until the next morning, when James is in enormous trouble. James usually does go to his parabatai in times of trouble, that–to use Matthew’s words–they might share a manly embrace. James, in fact, usually has a healthier response than Matthew does to being in trouble–despite being more naturally reserved than Matthew, he does go to him, while Matthew doesn’t go to James because he doesn’t feel worthy of comfort. This is the first time James feels that way, too: and James wouldn’t go to Lucie–he thinks of her as his little sister, to be loved and protected, and any trouble arising from his demonic heritage he worries will reflect on her, who he thinks of as the ‘normal’ one. He wouldn’t go to Cordelia–she was a kid he used to play with and who he cares about, but who he’s still getting to know as an adult.

But the Midnight Heir is the first time he doesn’t go to Matthew. Things are therefore very serious, and very bad.

Is what happened to Alastair and Cordelias father really so bad that they’re all judged by it? And does it somehow connect to or affect the plot of TLH?

C: Yes, what has happened with Alastair and Cordelia’s father is truly awful, and it is a small but significant part of the plot–it will influence Cordelia and Alastair’s future, their fears, their personalities, and their actions. Remember the story of The Lost Herondale: because Tobias Herondale fled in what was seen as cowardice, his wife and unborn child were sentenced to death. What Elias Carstairs is accused of is much worse. And much worse things could be happening to the Carstairs family, except that Will, Jem and Charles have interceded for Elias and the others. Cordelia’s terrified for her father, and hoping Brother Zachariah will help her. Alastair and Sona are terrified that their whole family is going to go down with Elias, and they’re looking to get Cordelia married off as soon as possible… to someone suitable, of course.

Wow, Elias is accused of something worse than Tobias Herondale was accused of? This is very serious and I’m dying to find out what Elias did.

I was wondering what Thomas got a tattoo of?

C: Thomas’s tattoo is one of the great mysteries of TLH!
Okay, maybe not, but it is something that has emotional significance to Thomas, which tells us a good bit about him, and which he is (as someone who is diffident about showing his feelings) reluctant to show about the place. When we see it, we’ll feel like we know more about Thomas. One of the S4 happened to see it, and Matthew, James and Christopher are super entertained that shy Thomas went off and clearly had a WILD TIME in Spain, and they are always pesting him about it, while Thomas laughs but fends them off. Lucie is super curious to see the tattoo.
You will find out the answer to the mystery — you’ll see it, when Thomas chooses to show it.

i was wondering, after reading you answers about Alastair, will he and Thomas become parabatai? I know that they kind of get along, but i wanted to know if they’re close enough to make the parabatai ritual.

C: Alastair’s 19: he’d be considered past parabatai cutoff age! I mention it as something Thomas might have thought about in the Academy.
Being parabatai isn’t just about closeness, it’s about a particular type of mutual closeness and compatibility as warrior partners. Julian and Emma, Jace and Alec, Will and Jem, have all been training together since they were young. Clary and Simon get a late start, but are plunged into the war in similar ways, and learn working off mundane things they know, plus they have the tight bond of people who have known each other since they were tiny tots. Alastair and Thomas have a much more uneven dynamic.
Many Shadowhunters, when Thomas was 14 at the Academy, and still when he’s 16 in Cast Long Shadows, are a little nervy about Thomas as a Shadowhunter because he’s small and he was sickly. The death of another sickly boy, Gideon’s nephew Jesse Blackthorn, is a dark shadow over not only Gideon and Sophie, but the whole London Enclave. They were worried Thomas would die when they put Marks on him, but Thomas–like Jesse before him–insisted he wanted Marks. Thomas IS a really good fighter, but people don’t think of him that way. Alastair doesn’t think of Thomas as sickly (Thomas had grown out of that by the time they met) but Alastair is older: he thinks of Thomas as someone he’d push behind him during a fight… whereas he thinks of James or Matthew as someone he’d push in front of him during a fight, to their possible doom. And Thomas would in no way be down for being pushed behind anyone. (Or for James’ or Matthew’s doom, though I was mostly joking about that. ;))
Alastair’s going to see Thomas fight in TLH, though whether on the same side as himself or on an opposing side, you will have to wait and find out! Almost everyone Thomas knows is going to be surprised by Thomas.

I love Anna’s character she seems so strong and self confident! But I have one question about Charlotte; is it her who decides to marry Charles with Ariadne?

C: Nope. That was Charles’ idea entirely. Ariadne’s quite a catch! (x)

I was just curious as to why the kids at the Academy were mean to Alastair. Shouldn’t Shadowhunters be less racist? They travel and see people of all different backgrounds, and if Idris is a center for Shadowhunters then shouldn’t there be people of color there too? They have to work together so why wouldn’t they accept each other?

Alastair was treated poorly in the Shadowhunter Academy due to his Persian heritage. So how was that Jem, with his Chinese heritage, wasn’t being discriminated against in TID?

I was wondering, why was Alistair made fun of for being of Persian descent? I was under the impression that he was a Shadowhunter first, although as we’ve seen many Shadowhunters adopt their local customs from whence they came. It could be a product of the times, or maybe related to his parents, but I have been wondering this for quite a while.

C: I see this question is on people’s minds! Yes, Jem’s experience was different than Alastair’s — because there is no one monolithic experience for people of color in any situation, and we’re talking about an entire spectrum of behavior. Shadowhunters are generally less racist than mundanes, because their prejudice against mundanes and Downworlders trumps their prejudice against other Shadowhunters. They’re already banded into a subgroup — Shadowhunters — by which they identify themselves. That doesn’t mean there’s never any prejudice within the subgroup: that’s sadly not usually how these things work.

As we’ve seen, Idris is indeed full of people from all over the world, but so is New York, and that hasn’t erased racism from existing there. And while being a Shadowhunter is the most important thing to them–the first, essential thing–it isn’t the only thing. Since we’re looking at 1903 — Shadowhunter society would have involved somewhat less of the systemic and structural racism of the time, because racism wasn’t encoded into their Laws the way it was into the laws of the US and England: what we see is more of a pattern of microaggressions and offensive assumptions and beliefs.

To look at another issue: Shadowhunters in 1903 were also generally less sexist than mundanes — women had a vote in the Council in 1878 when they didn’t have a vote in mundane government. But that doesn’t mean they’re not sexist at all.

“I never meant to hurt Charlotte.”

“Charlotte is very sensitive about the way the Institute is run. As a woman, she must fight to be heard, and even then her decisions are second-guessed. You heard Benedict Lightwood at the Enclave meeting. She feels she has no freedom to make a mistake.” — Clockwork Angel

Shadowhunter society is folded into ours, never entirely independent of ours–though invisible to us, they walk among us, and are necessarily influenced by our world. Portals are a new invention in TID, and still recent in TLH, and so before that it was easier for Shadowhunters–as it was for everybody in the past–to think of the world as just the people immediately around them, who often looked and acted like them, because travel and seeing different places and people was immeasurably more difficult. (In part, the whole idea of the “travel year” was meant to ameliorate that, and we can see that in some cases it did help, but it wasn’t enough on its own!)

Moreover, Shadowhunter Academy, as we saw in 1899, was populated overwhelmingly by white boys–who were also presumed to be straight–being brought up in what was thought of as Shadowhunter Tradition, capital letters. The Victorian Era was a time of travel and an expanded world, but also a time when the British Empire —which stretched over vast portions of the globe — uplifted white men as the default, the natural ones to have power, and the Clave is influenced by that as they are always influenced by the bleed of mundane culture into theirs. Boys at the Academy make connections that turn into them being comrades with political influence later in life, in the same way old boys’ networks of politicians exist now. Josiah Wayland, Consul during TID, was a white guy. and Victor Whitelaw, Inquisitor during TID, was a white guy–and that wasn’t an accident. Inquisitor Bridgestock in TLH is a white guy, and very powerful because conservative Shadowhunters are edging away from their female Consul, and that isn’t an accident either. There are people of color, there are women of color, who would’ve been amazing Consuls and Inquisitors in the 1870s, but they didn’t get the chance. Women were rarely sent to the Academy; we know this from Nothing But Shadows. Charlotte was the first female Consul, and she didn’t have an easy time of it: women in the next generation were still less likely to be warriors or politicians. Most, though not all, of the Consuls have been white. Also, PoC Shadowhunters just weren’t sent to the Academy as often, because the Shadowhunters are aware of how the world works and the parents of those children didn’t want to do that to their kids. James with his Downworlder heritage went because he wanted to go, because he wanted to find friends his own age (which he did) and look how that turned out.

Racism is varied in different times and places and situations, and all circumstances and experiences or racism are not monolithic. I think it’s fairly clear that Alastair attended the Academy at a time when there was a pretty rotten bunch of kids in his class. That sucks. It happens, in real life and in fiction: in the Narnia series, one brother (Edmund) has a horrible character-altering time of it at school, and his older brother Peter is just fine. Alastair was sent by his father Elias, who is white, and thus being white was able to tell himself that racism doesn’t exist among Shadowhunters, that there are no microaggressions (I mean, none of them would know that word, but microaggressions still exist in TLH: we see Mrs Bridgestock call Alastair “that Persian boy” and Mrs Bridgestock, who loves her PoC daughter, thinks of herself as just describing Alastair, but Alastair and Cordelia both know what’s up, and react accordingly.). Elias had the privilege of not really thinking about it. Alastair paid the price.

Jem didn’t go to Shadowhunter Academy–neither he nor Will ever went, and neither of them knew what the Academy was like: Jem lived in London with the very accepting Charlotte and Henry. And Jem was the son of two well-respected Shadowhunters who died hero’s deaths, and so he got some slack. Alastair, the son of a suspected murderess and a disgraced and despised Shadowhunter (we’ll see what’s up with Elias in TLH!), does not. These things are never simple! But Jem did have to deal with racism. Benedict Lightwood and Tatiana and–I’m sorry to say–Gideon and Gabriel’s attitude to Jem is definitely informed by racism. Will has behaved badly to the Lightwoods (for understandable curse reasons) but Jem has done nothing to them, and Gabriel definitely prefers Jem to Will, but Gabriel isn’t exactly a peach to Jem either. In Clockwork Angel Gabriel references Jem’s “disability”—which Will understandably takes extreme issue with!–and equates Jem being tortured by yin fen with an opium addiction–the fact Jem is half Chinese, and that Gabriel’s mind jumped to opium addiction, is no mistake, and Will understands and is insulted on Jem’s behalf. Even though Gabriel, like Mrs Bridgestock, doesn’t intend to be racist, microaggressions are often unintentional.

(From Wikipedia: “There was much prejudice against the East End Chinese community, with much of it initiated by the writings of Thomas Burke and Sax Rohmer. Both of these men wrote about the Chinese community. Burke and Rohmer exaggerated the Chinese community’s true size and made much mention of gambling, opium dens, and “unholy things” in the shadows.”)

I don’t say this to be down on Gabriel. Benedict raised his kids horribly, in bad harmful beliefs! They needed space to learn, and grow away from him — and they did! Gideon and Gabriel changed for the better. I don’t want to portray a perfect society, or perfect characters, but complicated ones, with complicated attitudes that can hopefully change. Jem didn’t have the same experience as Alastair; he had his own experience and both are valid. So has Magnus, and Lily, and Jia, and Aline, and Raphael, and Diego, and Cristina, and Jaime, all in their different ways. Shadowhunters are urban fantasy books, not high fantasy books: they do take place in part in our real world, and though prejudice in the Shadowhunter culture is complicated by prejudices we don’t have (Downworlder prejudice, prejudice against folks with demon blood!) they also experience the prejudices we do have.

“They have to work together, so why wouldn’t they accept each other” is really true, but also applies to the real world. We all have to work together, so why don’t we accept each other? I wish we would. The world would be better, and work better, if we did. But we don’t. I hope someday we will. (x)

I couldn’t agree more with Cassie’s last paragraph!

Spoilers for Cast Long Shadows:

How come the faerie woman lied and said that the vial was full of truth serum,when faeries can’t lie?

C: Remember that faeries, though they do not lie, absolutely do love to deceive and you always have to watch their words very carefully. Jem’s very aware of this, such as when the faerie says that another potion will blind your enemies, and Jem’s like ‘Sure it will, it’s charcoal-colored sand.’ Which, yes, will blind your enemies — briefly. In the same way the faerie doesn’t say Matthew IS shallow, but makes Matthew thinks he is, the faerie doesn’t say “this is a truth potion” she asks “What need would you have of a potion that would make the one who took it tell you all the truth?” Matthew thinks of it as a truth potion, but it’s not one, and she didn’t say it was.

This faerie definitely intended mischief–she doesn’t like Shadowhunters, and Matthew very incautiously identified himself to her as the Consul’s son. She knows all about him and those he loves.

After the unfortunate incident in CLH, it seems that much of Matthew’s partying/drinking is a way of escaping from his pain. But I would imagine that these activities would not necessarily bring him true relief or comfort. Does Matthew have any hobbies or interests that he can turn to in order to find some form of happiness or pleasant forgetfulness?

C: Many, many people have not understood that drinking and partying will not be happiness or relief. It has be the downfall of the genius and the artist, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Why would Matthew be different?

That said, certainly Matthew does have hobbies and interests. Matthew the Oscar Wilde buff likes theatre a lot, and the opera. He wants to go live in Paris, if James would come with him! Matthew does genuinely enjoy partying with Downworlders. He and Anna do it all the time: he has fun with Anna. He gets on great with Catarina Loss. Every day he doesn’t get to meet Magnus Bane is a day of disappointment, but hope springs eternal! He loves his family a lot, and they do bring him comfort as well as pain. He loves James, and he clings to James: James is the person he loves most who he hasn’t hurt. He’s at his happiest with James and Thomas and Christopher: they’re what brings him the most comfort and forgetfulness. Matthew does genuinely have a great life in many ways. But there’s always that cold shadow behind the light now.

Matthew’s wild partying behavior is going to be a problem for Charlotte because she’s the consul? Will the other characters notice his behavior change after Cast Long Shadows?

C: Matthew’s behavior is going to be a problem, but it doesn’t immediately manifest as one. The boys were all already mischievous and ran about the place causing chaos, and that continues: it’s just that now Matthew is pushing it further and further. 1903 society isn’t equipped to deal with what’s going on differentiate someone who’s partying because they like a good time from someone who to a certain extent is self-medicating. People say “boys will be boys” and “he’ll settle down” and “what he needs is to meet a nice Shadowhunter girl.” Some Shadowhunters consider Matthew consorting with Downworlders to be far, far worse than him drinking a lot. Charlotte has to deal with rumors, but she doesn’t want that to impinge on Matthew’s life, so she gives him a lot of latitude. Charlotte and Henry both try to believe the very best of both their sons at all times. Charles Buford is horrified by Matthew’s behavior, but “JUST BEHAVE, FOR THE LOVE OF THE ANGEL” from Charles’s lips is basically white noise to Matthew.

Matthew’s not being mean or cruel to anybody: all of his anger and hatred is directed at himself. His friends and family all want Matthew to be happy, and Matthew keeps telling them he’s fine. Sometimes they believe him. Sometimes they’re not sure… but even then, even if he’s not fine, they can’t help Matthew when they don’t know what’s going on.

i’m shipping lucie with wAY too many people and i’m choking over all my dreams for all these ships even though only one may end up being real (or none, even)… which brings me to jesse. doesnt jesse die around tlh sometime? bc i’m trying to figure out how LH + JB fits into this and i really can’t think of anything

C: Having lots of ships is a sure sign of a warm heart and a good imagination. 😉
Everyone in The Last Hours, like Magnus in The Midnight Heir, thinks of Jesse as dead when The Last Hours starts. Are they right? Are they wrong? Are they kind of right, an also disturbing possibility? We don’t know!
At the same time, we know there’s something going on. We know Lucie sees and speaks to Jesse Blackthorn. We know Jesse is a mystery, and I want the reader to solve him along with Lucie. It’s fun to write Lucie as a very different character than I’ve written before, and very different from the people around her–a chipper, intrepid mystery solver. She has one of the most curious minds in TSC, along with Ty Blackthorn.

I feel like Matthew parallels Will a lot especially with the whole “i cant be close to people bc of the bad thing i did” mentality. Was this intentional and is the parallel going to run deeper?

C: A bit, though fiction is full of people who feel they can’t get close to others because of sins of their past. (Lymond, of Dorothy Dunnett’s the Lymond Chronicles, blames himself bitterly for a relative’s death, though she died because of a collapsing building when he was in a different country.

What Matthew did wasn’t killing a brother or a sister he knew as a person. It’s very different from him villainously shoving Charles down the stairs. (“Ha ha ha, Charles Buford!” Matthew exclaimed with a wild laugh. “Now my puppy will sit in your chair at breakfast time every day!” – not a real snippet.) Will felt he couldn’t be close to people because as far as he knew he was under a terrible curse, and it would kill anyone who loved him. Not that Will didn’t feel guilty about his sister’s death, and many other things, but the curse was the problem!
Matthew’s not under a curse, and he’s not going to be pushing people violently away: he wants to stay close to the people he loves. The whole point of Will’s behavior was to make people dislike him. Matthew is desperate not to be disliked: to keep people’s love.

It’s just that the secret he’s not telling anyone, and the secret guilt he feels, is going to create a distance between him and those he loves. They don’t know what it is, but they can tell something is subtly off. It’s far more insidious than what was going on with Will. But of course, it might end up being just as tragic. (x)

Spoilers over.

Are we going to see Jesse in any of the stories from Ghosts of the Shadow Market?

C: Alas, no! You’ll realize why in TLH.

will we know what color Alastair’s hair really is in TLH?

C: It’s black. 🙂 Does he undye it? We’ll have to wait and see.

Will we see a lot of Henry in TLH? It doesn’t seem like he goes out much.

C: Henry does indeed go out, though being an inventor, he likes to be at home in his laboratory. Like all the adult characters in TLH, you won’t see a lot of them specifically, because the main characters are the younger generation. You will see them, though!

I have a question sort of about James. In The Midnight Heir, Magnus kept noticing a silver bracelet on James’ wrist. In Cast Long Shadows, Matthew notes several times that James was fiddling with something under his shirt cuff. Is it the same bracelet? And is it related to Grace?

C: It is the same bracelet, and it was a love-gift to James from Grace. Well spotted!

So, my question is I though that Tessa lived with Magnus after will died. How is she with Catarina gotsm then?

C: Tessa did live with Magnus after Will died! Magnus, our sweetie, has a habit of taking in people who are in need. He took in Raphael when he was in trouble, and Jace when he was in trouble too. But Tessa, like Raphael and Jace, didn’t come to live with Magnus forever! Magnus and Alec would be running a commune at this point. Tessa stayed with Magnus in the time of her deepest grief and direst need, and the fact she could stay with Magnus–learn to be a Downworlder, and be with someone who loved Will too, and who knew the lonely pain of immortality–is an experience that bonded Tessa and Magnus forever and which they will never forget.
But Tessa had to re-enter the world, and learn how to live in it. Tessa has lived in the mundane world before, for the first part of her life, and she wants to integrate more into Downworlder and mundane society, and a time of dire need for the whole world is upon them, with the Blitz. Even though Tessa is wrecked by Will’s death, as London itself was devastated by war, she has to find a way to go on. How better than by helping people in a meaningful way by working with (though she is not living with) Catarina, a Downworlder, Magnus’s great friend, and someone who is dedicated to helping mundanes herself? (x)

I am really excited about QoaaD. But my mind is kind of intrigued by Jesse Blackthorn, can you tell us something about him? Who is he going to be friends with? Or maybe a love interest? How is his attitude? Is he nice or mysterious?

C. Ah, the enigma that is Jesse Blackthorn! Jesse is, I hope, an intriguing character. He was an invalid before he died, living a strange life frequently feverish in a tumbling-down house with his mother, who was still grieving and enraged, and who kept him from his other family. He never got much of a chance to live–and then he died. He’s furious that he missed out on life, but he’s also innocent, in a way: Tatiana and Grace have their own plans which they don’t let Jesse in on. He’s existed in a strange half-way twilit world for a long time before and after he died, reading stories instead of experiencing life. Sometimes people might hear a snatch of the piano music he used to play, until he got too ill. Sometimes they might catch a glimpse of pale, hungry green eyes, but then nothing else. He loves and is sorry for Tatiana. He loves and wants to protect Grace. He’s not able to talk to or even be seen by anybody except for his mother, and his sister… and Lucie Herondale. (x)

And last but not least, something about the adults in The Last Hours:

So it looks like Christopher and Anna and James and Lucie are all pretty close and good friends. Does that mean Will and Gabriel and Gideon are also good friends?

C: Will and Gabriel are two people who love and treasure their family above all things. Even their mistakes are based on familial love–Will was so crushed by his role in his sister’s death and so desperate to protect his family that he believed in the curse and fled to protect them; Gabriel loved his father and wanted to be loyal to him, despite Benedict’s awfulness, and Gabriel also tried to be loyal to Tatiana though she didn’t return the favor. (Gabriel still hopes Tatiana will come around, and is happy when she comes to London in TLH, hoping she’s willing to bury the hatchet. Tatiana’s been blaming Gabriel—among others—for their father’s and her husband’s death for over twenty years, so  — we shall see how that goes!) Gabriel and Will both tease each other a lot, as we see in The Whitechapel Fiend, Nothing But Shadows and Cast Long Shadows: Gabriel says that James is well-behaved so how can he be Will’s, Will steals Gabriel’s carriage for a joy ride (he returns it!).

Gideon and Will have been friendly pretty much since Gideon came back from Spain all that time ago. In Clockwork Princess, we saw Gabriel and Will come to understand and like each other (Gabriel realizing he was wrong to look down on Jem and others as well as Will, and realizing Will behaved the way he did because of the curse, Will realizing how bad Gabriel had it with Benedict), moving from enemies to frenemies to friends. In the intervening years they’ve moved from friends to family, albeit the two members of the family who are constantly teasing each other. Gabriel and Will both love Cecily, and she was the first huge bond between them, but their families all love each other, too. Will’s James and Lucie, who were more separated from the others, got a chance to know Gabriel’s kids Christopher and Anna better than the others due to visits to their shared Welsh grandparents (all four of them, plus Thomas the languages buff, speak Welsh fairly fluently). Anna loves James and Lucie though she thinks of them as littlies to be protected. Christopher adores James and when James tells him to focus during demon-hunting, Christopher obligingly becomes an unstoppable knife-throwing machine. (Gabriel loves it when Christopher becomes an unstoppable knife-throwing machine.) The interconnectedness and enduring love between these two closely knit families has bound every member together. Cecily and Sophie and Tessa are dear friends too. Everybody loves baby Alexander. Gabriel considers Will his family, and Will considers Gabriel his family: both has been there for the other all through the intervening years of TLH, and either would die for the other.

So indeed Will and Gabriel and Gideon are friends — but more importantly, they are family. (x)

Who is your current favourite character in The Last Hours and what did you think of the snippet? Sound off in the comments below!