This is not an epilogue, as I am sure you can tell, and I'm so sorry to be posting this, but after talking this over with a few friends, I've decided this is really the best (and only) thing I can do at this point. Lately I've been getting so many PMs and reviews asking where the epilogue is, telling me how excited you are, begging for me to update and I just . . . can't. This is why:

Ever since I started this story, I knew where it would end. There was never a doubt in my mind. It ended with Jace and Clary in her hospital room after the baby was born. There was no more. BUT I began receiving so many PMs and reviews begging to see Jace and Clary as parents that I made a big, huge, colossal error: I thought maybe I could write it, just because you wanted it.

I shouldn't have thought that. And the reason I shouldn't have was because my brain knew the story was over after this last chapter. My brain knew that those characters were done telling me their story, and it knew this probably almost 2 years ago.

I shouldn't have promised more.

Since the last chapter I have been forcing myself to write a "future" that doesn't want to reveal itself to me. These characters have stopped talking in my ear. They are content with where I left them and they do not want to show me more. I have tried cajoling them, but it is falling on deaf ears.

So, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to mark this story as complete. Because it is. It is complete.

If these characters decide to reveal more to me, I will most definitely share it with you. Keep this story on alert and maybe someday there will be a future-take. But I can't, as a writer who is proud of her work, force this out. It's not good. What I've written so far is not good, and you-and these characters-deserve better than that. You, they, deserve better than "not good".

I'll leave this message up for a little while so everyone who's waiting will see it, then I'll add it to the end of Ch.33.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry if you feel I've broken a promise. I just can't give you uninspired writing.

I hope you'll forgive me.

XOXO

~ddpjclaf