Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices #3)

...can Tessa choose between the two boys she loves — even if it means never seeing the other one again?

DON'T DIE, JEM!
DON'T DIE!
DON'T DIE!
DON'T DIE!!!!!
IF JEM DIES THERE WILL BE WORLD HUNGER!
THE SUN WILL GO OUT!
THE UNIVERSE WILL BLOW UP INTO BITS!!!!
DO NOT DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The moral of this story is...
DO NOT BE ANDREA CREMER!!

Will.


Jem.


Tessa.

An infernal army about to unleash hell upon earth.





Love blossoming under the shadow of peril.

“You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever.”

Will.


Jem.


Tessa.

An infernal army about to unleash hell upon earth.





Love blossoming under the shadow of peril.

“You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever.”

"They say you cannot love two people equally at once,” she said. “And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well. And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did."

“It was like I saw your soul in the notes of the music. And it was beautiful.” She leaned forward and touched his face lightly, the smooth skin over his hard cheekbone, his hair like feathers against the back of her hand. “I saw rivers, boats like flowers, all the colors of the night sky.”

For five years it had been his absolute truth. Jem and Will. Will and Jem. Will Herondale lives, therefore Jem Carstairs lives also. Quod erat demonstrandum. To lose an arm or a leg would be painful, he imagined, but to lose the central truth of your life felt—fatal.

You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth.
With hope at last,
Will Herondale

Will, you idiot.”
His romantic notions came to a screeching halt like a hackney cab in traffic on Fleet Street. “I-What?”
“Oh, Will,” she said. Her lips were trembling; she looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “Do you remember when you told me that the handsome young gentleman who came to rescue you was never wrong, not even if he said the sky was purple and made of hedgehogs?”
“The first time I ever saw you. Yes.”
“Oh, my Will.”

Will. She thought of the boy who had come into her room at the Dark House and distracted her from her terror by chattering about Tennyson and hedgehogs and dashing fellows who come to rescue one, and how they were never wrong. She had thought him handsome then, but now she thought him something else entirely. He was Will, in all his perfect imperfection; Will, whose heart was as easy to break as it was carefully guarded; Will, who loved not wisely but entirely and with everything he had.

I don't wanna lose you now
I'm lookin' right at the other half of me
The vacancy that sat in my heart
Is a space that now you hold
Show me how to fight for now
And I'll tell you, baby, it was easy
Comin' back here to you once I figured it out
You were right here all along
-Mirrors,Justin Timberlake.

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, “Thou half of my soul”; for I felt that my soul and his soul were “one soul in two bodies”: and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would
not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.
—Sai

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, “Thou half of my soul”; for I felt that my soul and his soul were “one soul in two bodies”: and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would
not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.
—Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IV

“Thank you, Will,” Jem murmured as Tessa drew the stumbling girl away as quickly as she could, and Will felt the words as three needle pricks inside his heart. Always when Will did something to protect Tessa, Jem thought it was for his sake, not for Will’s. Always Will wished Jem could be entirely right. Each needle prick had its own name. Guilt. Shame. Love. -Will





Will smiled back, and for just that moment they were Jem-and-Will again. Will could see Jem, but also through him, to the past. Will remembered the two of them, running through the dark streets of London, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, seraph blades gleaming in their hands; hours in the training room, shoving each other into mud puddles, throwing snowballs at Jessamine from behind an ice fort in the courtyard, asleep like puppies on the rug in front of the fire. -Will

He put his arms about himself as if he were cold. “I do not know who to be without him,” he said.
“Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside. She is gone, and they cannot track her, and I have no idea where to go or what to do next, and the only person I can imagine speaking my agony to is the one person who cannot know. Even if he were not dying.” -Will





“Faith,” said Jem. “That you were better than you thought you were. Forgiveness, that you need not always punish yourself. I always loved you, Will, whatever you did. And now I need you to do for me what I cannot do for myself. For you to be my eyes when I do not have them. For you to be my hands when I cannot use my own. For you to be my heart when mine is done with beating.” -Jem


Magnus took a deep breath and spoke gently. “Will. You asked me for my wisdom, as someone who has lived many lifetimes and buried many loves. I can tell you that the end of a life is the sum of the love that was lived in it, that whatever you think you have sworn, being here at the end of Jem’s life is not what is important. It was being here for every other moment. Since you met him, you have never left him and never not loved him. That is what matters.” -Magnus





“If there is a life after this one,” he said, “let me meet you in it, James Carstairs.”
“There will be other lives.” Jem held his hand out, and for a moment they clasped hands, as they
had done during their parabatai ritual, reaching across twin rings of fire to interlace their fingers
with each other. “The world is a wheel,” he said. “When we rise or fall, we do it together.” -Will and Jem


“Listen to me. I am leaving, but I am living. I will not be gone from you entirely, Will. When you fight now, I will be still by you. When you walk in the world, I will be the light at your side, the ground steady under your feet, the force that drives the sword in your hand. We are bound, beyond the oath. The Marks did not change that. The oath did not change that. It merely gave words to something that existed already.” -Jem







Will took a deep breath and let go of the knife. He drew his hand back. The cut on his palm was already healing—the result of the half dozen iratzes on his skin. “You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever.” -Will

“You remember what else I said to you that day in the drawing room,” he said. “I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.” -Will





“I am not going to live!” And Jem was on his feet, his cheeks flushed; it was the angriest, Will thought, that he had ever seen him. “I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. It is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me.” -Jem


You are not the last dream of my soul.
You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are
the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s
worth. -Will





Will gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “It’s true,” he said. “I am no hero.”
“No,” Tessa said. “You are a person, just like me.” His eyes searched her face, mystified; she held
his hand tighter, lacing her fingers with his. “Don’t you see, Will? You’re a person like me. You are
like me. You say the things I think but never say out loud. You read the books I read. You love the
poetry I love. You make me laugh with your ridiculous songs and the way you see the truth of
everything. I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your
heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way.” With the hand that was not
holding his, she touched his cheek, lightly. “We are the same.” -Tessa





“I recall what you said to me once,” Will went on. “That words have the power to change us. Your words have changed me, Tess; they have made me a better man than I would have been otherwise. Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read. I would read them together with you, as many as I can, before I die—” -Will

All day Tessa had sat on the bed with Will beside her, leaning on her shoulder. The sight might have been strange to others, a young woman lovingly cradling a man who looked old enough to be her grandfather, her hands looped through his, but to their family it was only familiar—it was only Tessa and Will.





At the end of the day, as the sky had darkened, the family had come around Will’s bed and kissed him each in turn and left one by one, until Will and Tessa were alone together. Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest, listening to the ever weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they’d whispered, reminding each other of the
stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of a clockwork angel. Of holy water and blood.





He brought his hand up and cupped her cheek. She could see the hope in his expression, slowly dawning. “And what is that?”
“Come with me,” she said. “Stay with me. Be with me. See everything with me. I have traveled the
world and seen so much, but there is so much more, and no one I would rather see it with than you. I would go everywhere and anywhere with you, Jem Carstairs.”

Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.