Better in Black

Better in Black
Information
Author(s):	Cassandra Clare
Cover artist:	Jenny Zemanek
Release date:	Est. May 2025 (Kickstarter) Est. December 2025 (paperback)
Series:	Seasons of Shadowhunters
Series
Release order
Released after	A Sea Change
Released before	The Last King of Faerie

Better in Black is an upcoming compilation of ten short stories by Cassandra Clare set to release in the spring of 2025. This book is a limited edition that is part of the Seasons of Shadowhunters.

Stories

• The Good Storm
• The Beautiful Ajatara
• A Surfeit of Annas
• City of Broken Hearts
• The Time of Two
• Zachary's Day Out
• Who the Wolf Loves
• The Judgement of King Kieran
• Bred in the Bone
• Too Wise to Love

Information

For more information, go to the individual story articles.

• The theme is love and romance and each story focuses on one or more couples (or thruples) from The Shadowhunter Chronicles.
• One story will take place in 1905 and another in 2015.
• Loweana will be doing the illustrated endpapers.
• Cassandra Clare is working on having at least this book published regularly a minimum of 6 months after the Kickstarter finishes.

Snippets

For more, check the individual story pages, and for possibly more, see the unidentified snippets page. This section only includes teasers whose story has not yet been identified.

Teaser #1

"The one in the hawk mask summoned me," she said. "The doorway god. He didn't want me. It was someone else he was looking for. But he brought me through, and loosed me on the world."

Teaser #2

"I've never met a mortal with a soul so much like my own," she said. "His heart is ice, his mind a blade of fire. Can you imagine it, after all these centuries? Something new."

Gallery

Art

Endpaper illustration by Nicole Deal

Trivia

• Like the other books printed with Seasons of Shadowhunters, the cover is representative of autumn to fit the theme of the project and the originally planned release schedule before printing delays. Each corner features a pairing and objects from one of the stories in the book: Thomas and Alastair's story; Will and Tessa's story; James and Cordelia's story; and Mark, Kieran, and Cristina's story.
• The title seemingly comes from a quote in City of Bones by Jace Herondale: "Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234."
• The title was originally announced as "Better in Black: Tales of Romance" before being shortened.
• A potential title for this book was "Shadowhunters After Dark".
• After announcing the relationships that would be focused on in this book, Cassandra Clare began receiving a lot of negative comments from fans about certain couples and characters not being included. As a rebuttal to the continuous messages, Clare released an April fools newsletter joking about creating "Better-er in Black"—12 story blogs of strange ships—to appease commenters.