Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

I feel myself dissolving, vanishing into nothingness, for if there is no one in the world who cares for you, do you really exist at all?

“By the Angel, this place is such a tip, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it.”

That’s how my room looks like lmao

“I found something else,” he said. “Will has always been the one to buy my—my medicine for me. He knew I despised the whole transaction, finding Downworlders willing to sell it, paying for the stuff . . .” His chest rose and fell quickly, as if merely talking about it sickened him. “I would give him money, and off he would go. I found a bill, though, for the last transaction. It appears the drugs—the medicine—does not cost what I thought it did.” “You mean Will’s been cheating you out of money?” Tessa was surprised. Will could be awful and cruel, she thought, but somehow she had thought his cruelty of a more refined order than that. Less petty. And to do that to Jem, of all people . . . “Quite the opposite. The drugs cost much more than he said they did. He must have been making up the difference somehow.” Still frowning, he slid the dagger into his belt. “I know him better than anyone else in the world,” he said matter-of-factly. “And yet still I find that Will has secrets that surprise me.” Tessa thought of the letters stuffed into the Dickens book, and what she intended to say to Will about it when she saw him again. “Indeed,” she said. “Though it is not so much a mystery, is it? Will would do anything for you—” “I’m not sure I would take it quite that far.” Jem’s tone was wry. “Of course he would,” said Tessa. “Anyone would. You’re so kind and so good—” She broke off, but Jem’s eyes had already widened. He looked surprised, as if he were not used to such praise, but su...

there was a slight, rough undercurrent to his voice.

Balios

🥹🥹🥹🥹wills baby 🥹

Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul. —Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Dolores”

“We’re Nephilim. Every one of our life’s passages has some mystical component—our births, our deaths, our marriages, everything has a ceremony. There is one as well if you wish to become someone’s parabatai. First you must ask them, of course. It’s no small commitment—” “You asked Will,” Tessa guessed. Jem shook his head, still smiling. “He asked me,” he said. “Or rather he told me. We were training, up in the training room, with longswords. He asked me and I said no, he deserved someone who was going to live, who could look out for him all his life. He bet me he could get the sword away from me, and if he succeeded, I’d have to agree to be his blood brother.” “And he got it away from you?” “In nine seconds flat.” Jem laughed. “Pinned me to the wall. He must have been training without my knowing about it, because I’d never have agreed if I’d thought he was that good with a longsword. Throwing daggers have always been his weapons.” He shrugged. “We were thirteen. They did the ceremony when we were fourteen. Now it’s been three years and I can’t imagine not having a parabatai.”

Jem said something then, in a language she didn’t understand. It sounded like “khalepa ta kala.” She frowned at him. “That isn’t Latin?” “Greek,” he said. “It has two meanings. It means that that which is worth having—the good, fine, honorable, and noble things—are difficult to attain.” He leaned forward, closer to her. She could smell the sweet scent of the drug on him, and the tang of his skin underneath. “It means something else as well.” Tessa swallowed. “What’s that?” “It means ‘beauty is harsh.’”

Jem said something rapidly, that sounded like a lot of breathy vowels and consonants run together, his voice rising and falling melodically: “Ni hen piao liang.” “What did you say?” “I said your hair is coming undone. Here,” he said, and reached out and tucked an escaping curl back behind her ear. Tessa felt the blood spill hot up into her cheeks, and was glad for the dimness of the carriage. “You have to be careful with it,” he said, taking his hand back slowly, his fingers lingering against her cheek. “You don’t want to give the enemy anything to grab hold of.” “Oh—yes—of course.” Tessa looked quickly toward the window—and stared.

“I can’t glamour you against the glances of mundanes,” he said. “So keep your head down and keep close to me.” Tessa smiled crookedly but didn’t take her hand out of his. “You said that already.” He leaned close and whispered into her ear. His breath sent a shiver racing through her whole body. “It’s very important.”

why was it that warlocks always seemed so—sinister? With the exception of Magnus perhaps, but she had the feeling Magnus was an exception to many rules.

“Tell me this is not a dream,” Will whispered, nuzzling his face into the side of her neck. Tessa jumped. He felt feverishly hot against her skin. His lips grazed her cheekbone; they were as soft as she remembered. “Jem,” Tessa said desperately, and Jem looked over at them; he had been buckling Will’s belt over his own, and it seemed clear he hadn’t heard a word Will had said. He knelt down to stuff Will’s feet into his boots, then rose to take his parabatai’s arm. Will seemed delighted by this.

“Oh, good,” he said. “Now we’re all three together.”

“Shut up,” said Jem. Will giggled. “Listen, Carstairs, you haven’t any of the needful on you, have you? I’d stump up, but I’m flat out.” “What did he say?” Tessa was baffled. “He wants me to pay for his drugs.” Jem’s voice was stiff. “Come. We’ll get him to the carriage, and I’ll come back with the money.” As they struggled toward the door, Tessa heard the voice of the cloven-footed man, following them, thin and as high as music piped through reeds, ending...

Will had draped over Tessa’s shoulders and draping it over his own. Tessa slipped aside gratefully; her back had begun to ache.

He raised his head, the cold wind lifting the sweaty hair from his neck and forehead, blowing it across his eyes. Tessa thought of him up on the roof of the Institute: And I behold London, a human awful wonder of God.

He looked at Jem. His eyes were bluer than blue, his cheeks flushed, his features angelic. He said, “You did not have to come and fetch me like some child. I was having quite a pleasant time.”

Jem looked back at him. “God damn you,” he said, and hit Will across the face, sending him spinning. Will didn’t lose his footing, but fetched up against the side of the carriage, his hand to his cheek. His mouth was bleeding. He looked at Jem with total astonishment. “Get him into the carriage,” Jem said to Cyril, and turned and went back through the red door—to pay for whatever Will had t...

Will was slumped in the corner of the carriage, his arms around himself, his eyes half-open. Blood had trickled down his chin. She leaned over and pressed the handkerchief to his mouth; he reached up and put his hand over hers, holding it there. “I’ve made a mess of things,” he said. “Haven’t I?” “Dreadfully, I’m afraid,” said Tessa, trying not to notice the warmth of his hand over hers. Even in the darkness of the carriage, his eyes were luminously blue. What was it Jem had said, though, about beauty? Beauty is harsh. Would people forgive Will the things he did if he were ugly? And did it help him, in the end, to be forgiven? Though, she could not help but feel he did the things he did not because he loved himself too much but because he hated himself. And she did not know why. He closed his eyes. “I’m so tired, Tess,” he said. “I only wanted pleasant dreams for once.” “That is not the way to get them, Will,” she said softly. “You cannot buy or drug or dream your way out of pain.” His hand tightened over hers.

In the dimness Tessa slipped the handkerchief into her sleeve. It was still damp with Will’s blood.

She even picked up Will’s copy of Vathek from her floor, but for the first time the poem in the front failed to make her smile, and she could not concentrate on the story. She was startled at her own distress. Jem was angry at Will, not at her.

She had assumed his kindness was so natural and so innate, she had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each of them from the other. Any effort to accept the loss of his family with equanimity. Any effort to remain cheerful and calm in the face of his own dying.

He was sawing at it viciously with the bow, wringing awful sounds out of it, making it scream. As Tessa watched, one of the violin strings snapped with a shriek. “Jem!” she cried again, and when he did not look up, she strode across the room and wrenched the bow out of his hand. “Jem, stop! Your violin—your lovely violin—you’ll ruin it.” He looked up at her. His pupils were enormous, the silver of his eyes only a thin ring around the black. He was breathing hard, his shirt open at the neck, sweat standing out on his collarbones. His cheeks were flushed. “What does it matter?” he said in a voice so low it was almost a hiss. “What does any of it matter? I’m dying. I won’t outlast the decade. What does it matter if the violin goes before I do?” Tessa was appalled. He never spoke like this about his illness, never.

She stood just behind him now, close enough to reach out and touch him tentatively on the arm, but she did not. His white shirt was stuck to his shoulder blades with sweat. She could see the Marks on his back through the fabric. He dropped the violin almost carelessly onto the trunk and turned to face her. “He knows what it means to me,” he said. “To see him even toy with what has destroyed my life—” “But he wasn’t thinking of you—” “I know that.” His eyes were almost all black now. “I tell myself he’s better than he makes himself out to be, but, Tessa, what if he isn’t? I have always thought, if I had nothing else, I had Will. If I have done nothing else that made my life matter, I have always stood by him. But perhaps I shouldn’t.”

He flinched away from her, and she dropped her hand, hurt. “Jem, what is it? You don’t want me to touch you?” “Not like that,” he flared, and then flushed even darker than before. “Like what?” She was honestly bewildered; this was behavior she might have expected from Will, but not from Jem—this mysteriousness, this anger. “As if you were a nurse and I were your patient.” His voice was firm but uneven. “You think because I am ill that I am not like—” He drew a ragged breath. “Do you think I do not know,” he said, “that when you take my hand, it is only so that you can feel my pulse? Do you think I do not know that when you look into my eyes, it is only to see how much of the drug I have taken? If I were another man, a normal man, I might have hopes, presumptions even; I might—” His words seemed to catch, either because he realized he had said too much or because he had run out of breath; he was gasping, his cheeks flushed. She shook her head, feeling her plaits tickle her neck. “This is the fever speaking, not you.” His eyes darkened, and he began to turn away from her. “You can’t even believe I could want you,” he said in a half whisper. “That I am alive enough, healthy enough—” “No—” Without thinking, she caught at his arm. He stiffened. “James, that isn’t at all what I meant—” He curled his fingers around her hand where it lay on his arm. His own scorched her skin, as hot as fire. And then he turned her and drew her toward him. They stood face-to-face, chest to chest. H...

“Tessa,” he said. She looked up at him. There was nothing steady or reliable about his expression. His eyes were dark, his cheeks flushed. As she raised her face, he brought his down, his mouth slanting across hers, and even as she froze in surprise, they were kissing. Jem. She was kissing Jem. Where Will’s kisses were all fire, Jem’s were like pure air after a long time of being closed up in the airless dark. His mouth was soft and firm; one of his hands circled the back of her neck gently, guiding her mouth to his.

His touch, his lips, were tentative, and she knew why. Unlike Will, he would mind that this was the height of impropriety, that he should not be touching her, kissing her, that she should be pulling away.

Jem was light, hollow-boned like a bird and with the same racing heart; she ran her hands through his hair, and it was as soft as she had always in her most buried dreams thought it would be, like pinfeathers between her fingers. He could not seem to stop running his hands over her in wonder. They traced their way down her body, his breath ragged in her ear as he found the tie of her dressing gown and paused there, with shaking fingers. His uncertainty made Tessa’s heart feel as if it were expanding inside her chest, its tenderness big enough to hold them both inside it. She wanted Jem to see her, just as she was, herself, Tessa Gray, with none of the Change on her. She reached down and undid the tie, sliding the dressing gown off her shoulders so that she was revealed before him in only her white batiste nightgown.

“Ni hen piao liang.” “What does it mean?” she whispered, and this time he smiled and said: “It means that you are beautiful. I did not want to tell you before. I did not want you to think I was taking liberties.” She reached up and touched his cheek, so close to hers, and then the fragile skin of his throat, where the blood beat hard beneath the surface. His eyelashes fluttered down as he followed the movement of her finger with his eyes, like silvery rain. “Take them,” she whispered.

their mouths met again, and the shock of sensation was so strong, so overpowering, that she shut her eyes against it as if she could hide in the darkness. He murmured and gathered her against him.

He was so thin, without Will’s cording of muscle, but there was something about his fragility that was lovely, like the spare lines of a poem. Gold to airy thinness beat. Though a layer of muscle still covered his chest, she could see the shadows between his ribs. The pendant of jade Will had given him lay below his angular collarbones.

“I know,” he said, looking down at himself self-consciously. “I am not—I mean, I look—” “Beautiful,” she said, and she meant it. “You are beautiful, James Carstairs.”

Her mother had owned a very old copy of a book once, she remembered, its pages so fragile they were liable to turn to dust when you touched them, and she felt that same responsibility of enormous care now as she brushed her fingers over the Marks on his chest, across the hollows between his ribs and the slope of his stomach, which shuddered under her touch; here was something that was as breakable as it was lovely.

She wanted more of this feeling, she knew, more of this fire, but none of the novels she had read told her what happened now. Did he know? Will would know, she thought, but Jem, like her, she sensed, must have been following an instinct that ran as deep as her bones.

She thought of Will, ordering her out of the attic. Was this how it was always going to be—some boy would kiss her, and then order her away as if she were an unwanted servant?

That is not how any man wants the girl he—”

The girl he loves, Tessa

She felt tired down in the marrow of her bones, the sort of tired she had felt the night her aunt died, as if she had exhausted her body’s capacity to feel emotion. When she closed her eyes, she saw Jem’s face, and then Will’s, his hand to his bloody mouth.

The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man’s flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve. —Hasidic saying

“Oh, dear, not one of those places that’s run by ifrits,” sighed Charlotte. “Really, Will—” “Exactly one of those places,” said Jem, coming into the breakfast room and sliding into a chair beside Charlotte—quite as far away from Tessa as it was possible to sit, she noticed, with a pinching feeling in her chest. He didn’t look at her either.

“You worry too much,” said Jessamine. “It’s silly.” “You’re quite right. I won’t make that mistake again,” said Jem, reaching for the dish of kedgeree. “As it turned out, Will wasn’t in need of my assistance at all.” Will looked at Jem thoughtfully. “I seem to have woken up with what they call a Monday mouse,” he said, pointing at the bruised skin under his eye. “Any idea where I got it?” “None.” Jem helped himself to some tea.

“Eggs,” said Henry dreamily, looking at his plate. “I do love eggs. I could eat them all day.”

💀

“Tessa is not made of delicate china,” said Jem. “She will not break.”

“You might be surprised to know,” said Will, “that I saw something rather interesting in the opium den.” “I’m sure you did,” said Charlotte with asperity. “Was it an egg?” Henry inquired.

Will smirked, clearly pleased at the effect he was having. “I’ve no idea. I lost consciousness about then. I was having a lovely dream about a young woman who had mislaid nearly all her clothes . . .”

the woman was probably Tessa

He looked sideways at Tessa. “Shouldn’t you be off putting on your gear? Haven’t you training with the lunatic Lightwoods today?”

“How fortunate that I am a crack hand at knife throwing.” Will got to his feet and held out his arm to her. “Come along; it’ll drive Gideon and Gabriel mad if I watch the training, and I could do with a little madness this morning.”

Will was correct. His presence during the training session seemed to madden Gabriel at least, though Gideon, as he seemed to do with everything, took this intrusion in a stolid manner.

“Must he be here?” Gabriel growled to Tessa the second time he had nearly dropped a knife while handing it to her. He put a hand on her shoulder, showing her the sight line for the target she was aiming at—a black circle drawn on the wall. She knew how much he would rather she were aiming at Will. “Can’t you tell him to go away?” “Now, why would I do that?” Tessa asked reasonably. “Will is my friend, and you are someone whom I do not even like.”

“Well,” Tessa said, sighting along the line of the knife, “you behave as if you dislike me. In fact, you behave as if you dislike us all.” “I don’t,” Gabriel said. “I just dislike him.” He pointed at Will. “Dear me,” said Will, and he took another bite of his apple. “Is it because I’m better-looking than you?”

“When we run the Institute,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough for Will to hear, “this training room will be far better kept up and supplied.” Tessa looked at him angrily. “Amazing that I don’t like you, isn’t it?” Gabriel’s handsome face crumpled into an ugly look of contempt. “I don’t see what this has to do with you, little warlock; this Institute isn’t your home. You don’t belong in this place. Believe me, you’d be better off with my family running things here; we could find uses for your . . . talent. Employment that would make you rich. You could live where you liked. And Charlotte can go run the Institute in York, where she’ll do considerably less harm.” Will was sitting upright now, apple forgotten. Gideon and Sophie had ceased their practicing and were watching the conversation—Gideon wary, Sophie wide-eyed. “If you hadn’t noticed,” Will said, “someone already runs the York Institute.”