‘The Last King of Faerie’ snippets & art
Good morning, afternoon or evening! 😀
We have exactly one week left until the release of Cassandra Clare’s The Last King of Faerie! I repeat, only one more week until the first book of the final Shadowhunters trilogy is published!
To prepare for this monumental release, I gathered all the snippets that Cassie has shared in the past and clearly labeled as The Last King of Faerie. Here they are:
“Are we lost?” Drusila Blackthorn said, peering across the darkened field toward the horizon. “Tell me we’re not lost.”
Her roommate Thais frowned at the hand-scrawled map she held in…
“I do have one question,” said Ash. “What’s a rodeo?”
Ty said nothing. In fact, since his outburst on the steps, when Kit had opened the door, he hadn’t spoken a single word. He was sitting hunched on one side of a blue sofa, his wet clothes clinging to him, his backpack clutched tightly to his chest like a shield. His hair was longer when it was wet, brushing the sharp lines of his cheekbones. His face looked thinner than Kit remembered, but he didn’t think it meant Ty had lost weight. His face had changed, grown less soft and more defined. You’ve changed, too, said the small voice in the back of Kit’s head. He’s probably thinking right now how different you look. He’s probably disappointed.
Kit, sunk into a squishy armchair, rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm them. Really, he just wanted to be doing something. The silence was starting to unnerve him; he could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock out in the hallway. Part of him wanted to stand up and shout at Ty, you came all the way here, you knew I didn’t want to see you, you said you needed help, and now you won’t talk.
But that was only part of him.
“Does that mean you’re going to pretend you haven’t been mad at me for the past three years?
Kit set down his can of soda so hard that he could hear it fizz. “Yes,” he said. “I’m going to pretend like I haven’t been mad at you for the past three years.”
“Then I guess,” said Ty softly, “that I haven’t been mad at you either.”
“Kit.” The voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. Not Ty’s voice, either. Kit felt as if ice had been injected into his veins, but he forced himself to roll over onto his back.
Ty was there, a silver knife in his hand. He ducked his head and started cutting away the rope around Kit’s waist. Hovering just behind him was Livvy, half-translucent, her hair floating around her as if she were underwater just as Kit had been.
“Kit, you have to get up,” she was saying. Kit had seen a lot of ghosts in his life, but never one as clearly panicked as Livvy was now. “They’re here, they followed you —“
The words echoed inside Kit’s head, all sound and no sense. Follow, follow, follow. He caught at Ty’s wrist just as the rope fell away.
He still resembled Jace. The same golden hair, tousled into curls, the same sarcastically curled mouth. But he wore a golden mask now that covered his eyes and nose, a half-mask, carved to look like the proud and deadly face of a hawk.
Dru heard Clary make a noise, a sort of strangled gasp. Maybe because this man, this stranger, looked so much like Jace. Maybe because a heavy crossbow, of clear faerie workmanship, was braced against his shoulder, its bolt trained squarely on Dru’s chest.
It was probably the crossbow.
Kit slid over to the window and watched the drizzle streak across the glass. It made the view of London seem grim and drab, almost Dickensian. Buildings slipped by in smudges of gray, bisected by wet black roads. Kit felt a pang—Tessa loved Dickens, and had bought him a copy of Great Expectations at Hatchards.
Across from him, Ty had huddled into his jacket, his sleeves pulled down over his hands.
Kit cleared his throat. “Didn’t you bring anything warmer than that?”
Ty shook his head. The damp curled the ends of his hair. “I packed in a hurry. And Irene kept trying to climb into my pack to keep me from leaving.”
“Who’s Irene?” Kit was unable to prevent himself from asking.
“And Prince Ash isn’t worried I’ll try to stab him once I’m in a room full of weapons?” Dru inquired. Now Elara glanced over her shoulder, black eyes worried.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said. “And besides, surely you know his story? The Unseelie King worked dark magic on him when he was young. It gave him the power of commanding loyalty. You will find that you wish to please him, not to hurt him. That you wish to do what he says.”
“He’s a mundane. Our love is doomed anyway,” said Dru.
“I never said anything about love,” Thais pointed out, just as Dru noticed Jace, Clary, Magnus, Alec, and Izzy weaving through the crowd toward them. Eyes followed them as they made their way across the room—Downworlders looking curious, though not worried as they might have been before Alec had become Consul, when things between Shadowhunters and Downworlders had been much more tense. And mundanes seeming to sense something unusual was happening, even if they couldn’t see it.
They reached Thais and Dru.
#10
Exclusive excerpt from People.com
Jem twisted around in his chair. “Kit, don’t—”
But Kit was already running. Running through the big dining room with its massive table, the one they never used; cutting through the music room and into the foyer. The door was rattling on its hinges, as whoever it was outside banged away at it, and suddenly Kit wasn’t so much worried as angry. Only Shadowhunters could get past the wards, and even then, only those with benign intentions, but they were still frightening Kit’s family. He unbolted, unbarred, and undid the locks, and threw the door open.
Rain gusted in, blinding him for a moment. It really was unusually bad. He wiped at his eyes, blinked—and froze.
Standing on the front steps of Cirenworth, soaking wet, was Ty.
“My family would never stop looking for me, either,” Dru said, even though she knew the words were unwise.
“Just your family?” Ash said softly. “Is there no one else who loves you?”
Dru blinked. “Are you asking if I have a boyfriend?”
“Clary pushed away the thought of Sebastian. Ash wasn’t her brother, nor was he fated to be like him.”
Meanwhile, back at the Scholomance:
“You told us your final project would be about solving crimes using magic. But this”—Catarina tapped the stack of paper in front of her—“seems to be about the alternate dimension Thule. It includes a section on how one might possibly get there—”
“That part is theoretical,” said Ty.
“All right,” Catarina said. “But …
the final project is supposed to cover the kind of work you want to do when you leave the Scholomance. You’re an adult Shadowhunter. Solving crimes using magic seems like something you could do. Attempting interdimensional travel to a hell world does not. I know your brother Julian visited that other world, but there were extenuating circumstances involved that will never be replicated.”
“I said it was theoretical—”
“If you opened a door to hell in your dorm room and a beast came through and ate you, that wouldn’t be theoretical.”
“No, I would call that empirical evidence. But I’m not doing that.”
Catarina templed her hands beneath her chin. “I believe you,” she said. “And I don’t think you actually want to go to Thule, even if a version of Livvy is alive there. I think you turned in a final project you knew couldn’t possibly pass on purpose.”
Ty froze.
Moving gingerly so as not to brush against any of the surfaces in the bathroom, Ty reached over his head and pulled up his sweater and shirt. Slowly he turned around until he could see his reflection in the scratched and dented mirror that hung over the sink. As he had feared, the scars were still there. They hadn’t gotten any worse, at least, but they hadn’t gotten any better.
Ash planted his hands against the wall on either side of her head, caging her between his arms. “Look at me.”
Dru looked up reluctantly. Partly because she was sure she had dust bunnies in her hair, and partly because his green eyes were like daggers; she would have sworn she could feel their cutting edges. There were shadows under them, though this close up, his skin was perfectly smooth, unmarked by even a freckle. Faerie beauty was so unfair.
“Dru,” he said, and there was urgency in his voice, a mix of impatience and desperation. It made her want to touch him—to put her hand on his shoulder, to tell him that it wasn’t just his father who had been a monster, that Janus was a monster, too, and Ash was being manipulated by him.
Maybe that was just what it felt like to have Ash’s magic work on you: Maybe it wasn’t only that you wanted to please him, but that you wanted to help him.
“It’s embarrassing,” she said, turning her face away from his. Even though she was lying—and getting ready to lie some more—she felt her cheeks flush.
#17 (“There’s a bit in TLKOF when Kit is remembering being really angry and depressed.”)
“He’d been sitting with … his face in his hands while he battled a wave of rage and resentment … and he remembered Jem’s voice: gentle, calming. As if Kit were not the first angry young man he’d ever cared about.”
“It would be very helpful,” he said, his cool, slightly drawling voice carrying in on the wind, “if you would hold on to me, my dear. Otherwise I’m just hauling you around like luggage.”
“Would you let me draw you?” Clary asked, abruptly. She had rarely seen Janus startled, but even with the mask, she could read his astonishment.
“Is Dru coming too?”
“What she does is up to Ash,” Janus said indifferently. “She belongs to him.”
There was nothing Clary could say to that. Nothing that wasn’t just screaming.
“You’re clutching at your ring, Clarissa,” he added. “Am I making you nervous?”
Clary looked down. Fiddling with her engagement ring was such a habit, she hadn’t noticed that she was clinging to it now, pinching the metal between her fingers. “I—”
“I understand that you think you will see your Jace again, once you return to the world.” His voice was more than cold, it was empty, as if whatever gave feeling to words had long ago died inside him. “But soon he will be dead. They will all be dead. Your life is with me now. You must accustom yourself to it.”
Clary barely felt her legs give out from under her. Suddenly she was sitting on the floor, shivering as if she were freezing in the Arctic. She looked up at Janus. “Please,” she whispered. “For me. You don’t have to kill Jace. You can be a better person.”
Ty rested his chin on his hand. “You seem different.”
Kit felt his heart skip a beat. “You mean, than you thought I’d be?”
Ty shook his head. The fairy lights shed colored patches of illumination over his pale skin. “I mean, than you used to be.”
“That makes sense.” Kit wondered if they were getting too close to all the things they’d promised not to talk about. “Most people would. The difference between fifteen and nineteen is a big one.”
“Have I changed?” Ty asked, and Kit knew he wasn’t angling for a compliment. He was honestly curious, and he’d expect an honest answer.
“Well, yes.” Kit looked down, away, anywhere but directly at Ty. “You’ve got more confidence, you . . .” God, this is hard.
His voice trailed off as Ty reached out to him across the table, resting the fingers of his right hand lightly on Kit’s wrist. Kit felt his pulse speed up, and wondered if Ty could feel it.
There are all the snippets that I have written down in my Word document; Cassie has shared more, but these were tagged with The Wicked Powers so we cannot be sure which book the snippets were actually from. Also, please bear in mind that these snippets might not be in the final version of The Last King of Faerie. 😉
Now for some very pretty visuals! Cassie has also shared beautiful art this past year so let’s have a look!
First there’s Dru and Ash art:
Then of course there are our favourite boys Kit and Ty:
This actually goes together with snippet #21. ♥
Then there is a beautiful tour poster:
And finally, we do have individual character art of Kit, Dru and Ty. Ash is still missing but I’ll update this post as soon as Cassie has shared him online.
That’s everything for today! I am super excited and cannot wait for this week to be over. The King is almost here!
What’s still to come before the publication? An information post about The Last King of Faerie and my spoiler-free review!
The Last King of Faerie is published on 3rd November! Don’t forget to pre-order your book. 😀
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