See the start of LORD OF SHADOWS in a huge new excerpt!

Cassandra Clare‘s Lord of Shadows, the second book in The Dark Artifices series, comes out in just under a week, and we’ve gotta admit: The wait is agony.

Thankfully, Bustle is easing our pain just a bit by letting us read a 50-page excerpt from the book right now!

It starts at the very beginning (a very good place to start…) with Kit Herondale, who’s having a bit of trouble adjusting to his newly-discovered Shadowhunter lifestyle. But distant family member Jace Herondale is here to help!

1

Still Waters

Kit had only recently found out what a flail was, and now there was a rack of them hanging over his head, shiny and sharp and deadly.

He had never seen anything like the weapons room at the Los Angeles Institute before. The walls and floors were white-silver granite, and granite islands rose at intervals throughout the room, making the whole place look like the arms and armor exhibit at a museum. There were staves and maces, cleverly designed walking sticks, necklaces, boots and padded jackets that concealed slim, flat blades for stabbing and throwing. Morning stars covered in terrible spikes, and crossbows of all sizes and types.

The granite islands themselves were covered with stacks of gleaming instruments carved out of adamas, the quartz-like substance that Shadowhunters mined from the earth and that they alone knew how to turn into swords and blades and steles. Of more interest to Kit was the shelf that held daggers.

It wasn’t that he had any particular desire to learn how to use a dagger—nothing beyond the general interest he figured most teenagers had in deadly weapons, but even then, he’d rather be issued a machine gun or a flamethrower. But the daggers were works of art, their hilts inlaid with gold and silver and precious gems—blue sapphires, cabochon rubies, glimmering patterns of thorns etched in platinum and black diamonds.

He could think of at least three people at the Shadow Market who’d buy them off him for good money, no questions asked.

Maybe four.

READ THE REST VIA BUSTLE!

Cassandra Clare also announced that A Long Conversation, the Clace short story that was previously published only in special editions of Lady Midnight, is now available for pre-order on Amazon as an individual eBook. It costs $1.99 and will be available this Friday, May 19, 2017.

Lord of Shadows hits shelves on May 23, 2017. You can pre-order it now via Amazon.