Aya

“His whole life had been built around exerting control over himself, over the mask he showed the world, and now it was cracking.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness

“You’ve always felt everything so intensely,” she said after a moment’s pause. “And that was something I did love about you. How much you loved your family, how you would do anything for them. But you kept your heart closed off. You didn’t trust anyone, and I don’t blame you—you took everything on yourself, and you kept so many secrets, because you thought you had to. But when you opened up the Institute for the war council, you made yourself trust other people to help you execute a plan. You didn’t hide;
you let yourself be open to being hurt or betrayed so you could lead them.
And when you came to me in the Silent City and you stopped me breaking the rune—” Her voice shook. “You told me to trust not just you but in the intrinsic goodness of the world. That was my worst point, my darkest point, and you were there, despite everything, with your heart open. You were there to bring me home.”
He laid his fingers against the bare skin of her arm, where her parabatai rune had once been. “You brought me back too,” he said with a sort of awe.
“I’ve loved you all my life, Emma. And when I felt nothing, I realized—
without that love, I was nothing. You’re the reason I wanted to break out of the cage. You made me understand that love creates far more joy than any pain it causes.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness

“the encouraging look he’d worn for Dru and Tavvy was gone, and he looked hollow and sad. He headed toward the Institute doors.

The false faces we wear for the ones we love, Diana thought. Julian would bleed out for these children and never ask for a bandage in fear that the question would upset them.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness

“Emma was the only person he had ever desired, and the force of that desire sometimes stunned him. Never more than tonight. He had lost himself in her, in them, for some totality of time; he had felt only his body and the part of his heart that loved and was uninjured. Emma was all the good in him, he thought, all that burned bright.”
― Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness