Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

“Charlotte runs this Institute,” she said. “And your father will not take it from her.” “She deserves to have it taken from her.” Will tossed his apple core into the air, at the same time drawing a knife from his belt and throwing it. The knife and the apple sailed across the room together, somehow managing to stick into the wall just beside Gabriel’s head, the knife driven cleanly through the core and into the wood. “Say that again,” said Will, “and I’ll darken your daylights for you.”

There was a crack, like the sound of a rifle shot, and Gabriel fell silent. Sophie had slapped him across the face. His pale skin was already beginning to redden. Sophie was staring at him, breathing hard, an incredulous look on her face, as if she could not believe what she had done.

He looked to his brother, but Gideon, expressionless, met his eyes and shook his head slowly; with a choked sound Gabriel spun on his heel and stalked from the room. “Sophie!” Tessa exclaimed, reaching for her. “Are you all right?” But Sophie was looking anxiously up at Gideon. “I’m so sorry, sir,” she said. “There’s no excuse—I lost my head, and I—” “It was a well-placed blow,” Gideon said calmly. “I see you’ve been paying attention to my training.” Will was sitting up on the bench, his blue eyes lively and curious. “Was it true?” he said. “That story Gabriel just told us.”

“Gabriel worships our father,” he said. “Anything Benedict says is like a pronouncement from on high. I knew my uncle had killed himself, but not the circumstances, until the day after we first came back from training you. Father asked us how the Institute seemed to be run, and I told him it seemed in fine condition, no different from the Institute in Madrid. In fact, I told him I could see no evidence that Charlotte was doing a lax job. That was when he told us this story.” “If you don’t mind my asking,” said Tessa, “what was it that your uncle had done?” “Silas? Fell in love with his parabatai. Not, actually, as Gabriel says, a minor infraction but a major one. Romantic relationships between parabatai are absolutely forbidden. Though even the best-trained Shadowhunter can fall prey to emotion. The Clave would have separated the two of them, though, and that Silas couldn’t face. That’s why he killed himself. My mother was consumed with rage and grief. I can well believe that her dying wish was that we would take the Institute from the Fairchilds. Gabriel was younger than I when our mother died—only five years old, clinging to her skirts still—and it seems to me his feelings are too overwhelming for him now to quite understand them. Whereas I—I feel that the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the sons.” “Or the daughters,” said Will. Gideon looked at him and gave him a crooked smile. There was no dislike in it; in fact, it was jarringly the look of someone who un...

“Tessa!” She was partway down the corridor when she heard Will calling after her. She spun and saw him striding down the hall in her direction, a half smile on his face. Her next words wiped his smile away. “Why are you following me? Will, you shouldn’t have left them alone! You must go back to the training room, right away.” Will planted his feet. “Why?” Tessa threw up her hands. “Don’t men notice anything? Gideon has designs on Sophie—” “On Sophie?” “She’s a very beautiful girl,” flared Tessa. “You’re an idiot if you haven’t noticed the way he looks at her, but I don’t want him taking advantage of her. She’s had enough such trouble in her life—and besides, if you’re with me, Gabriel won’t talk to me. You know he won’t.” Will muttered something under his breath and seized her wrist. “Here. Come with me.” The warmth of his skin against hers sent a jolt up her arm. He pulled her into the drawing room and across to the great windows that looked down over the courtyard. He released her wrist just in time for her to lean forward and see the Lightwoods’ carriage rattling furiously across the stone yard and under the iron gates.

Will rolled his head back against the leather of the chair and regarded her. He looked drowsy and tired and beautiful. He could have been some Pre-Raphaelite Apollo.

“Perhaps it’s better that he’s cross with me,” said Will. “So much saintlike patience cannot be good for anyone.” “Do not mock him.” Tessa’s tone was sharp. “Nothing is beyond mockery, Tess.” “Jem is. He has always been good to you. He is nothing but goodness. That he hit you last night, that only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness.” “Jem hit me?” Will, fingering his cheek, looked amazed. “I must confess, I remember very little of last night. Only that the two of you woke me, though I very much wanted to stay asleep. I remember Jem shouting at me, and you holding me. I knew it was you. You always smell of lavender.” Tessa ignored this. “Well, Jem hit you. And you deserved it.”

Tessa reached for the words, but they eluded her; she turned to the language she and Will shared—poetry. “You know, in that essay of Donne’s, what he says—” “‘License my roving hands, and let them go’?” quoted Will, eyeing her. “I meant the essay about how no man is an island. Everything you do touches others. Yet you never think about it. You behave as if you live on some sort of—of Will island, and none of your actions can have any consequences. Yet they do.” “How does my going to a warlock den affect Jem?” Will inquired. “I suppose he had to come and haul me out, but he’s done more dangerous things in the past for me. We protect each other—” “No, you don’t,” Tessa cried in frustration. “Do you think he cares about the danger? Do you? His whole life has been destroyed by this drug, this yin fen, and there you go off to a warlock den and drug yourself up as if it doesn’t even matter, as if it’s just a game to you. He has to take this foul stuff every day just so he can live, but in the meantime it’s killing him. He hates to be dependent on it. He can’t even bring himself to buy it; he has you do that.” Will made a sound of protest, but Tessa held up a hand. “And then you swan down to Whitechapel and throw your money at the people who make these drugs and addict other people to them, as if it were some sort of holiday on the Continent for you. What were you thinking?” “But it had nothing to do with Jem at all—” “You didn’t think about him,” said Tessa. “But perhaps you sho...

There was something raw in his face, his voice. “Tess,” he said. “That is all I think about. I never look at you without thinking about what you feel about me and fearing—”

Will turned away quickly, his face working. Tessa stared at him. What had he been going to say?

“Mr. Woolsey Scott,

The biggest bisexual on earth lmao

“I don’t think my heart would be in it, Mr. Lightwood,” she said. “I appreciate the offer all the same, but . . .” He lowered his arm slowly. “You think that I don’t take training you seriously?” “I think you’re being very generous. But I ought to face facts, oughtn’t I? This training was never about me or Tessa. It was about your father and the Institute. And now that I’ve slapped your brother—” She felt her throat tighten. “Mrs. Branwell would be so disappointed in me if she knew.” “Nonsense. He deserved it. And the little matter of the blood feud between our families does come to mind.” Gideon spun the silver knife carelessly about his finger and thrust it through his belt. “Charlotte would probably give you a rise in salary if she knew.” Sophie shook her head. They were only a few steps from a bench; she sank down onto it, feeling exhausted. “You don’t know Charlotte. She’d feel honor-bound to discipline me.”

Gideon settled himself on the bench—not beside her, but against the far side of it, as distant from her as he could get. Sophie couldn’t decide whether she was pleased about that or not. “Miss Collins,” he said. “There is something you ought to know.” She laced her fingers together. “What is that?” He leaned forward a little, his broad shoulders hunched. She could see the flecks of gray in his green eyes. “When my father called me back from Madrid,” he said, “I did not want to come. I had never been happy in London. Our house has been a miserable place since my mother died.” Sophie just stared at him. She could think of no words. He was a Shadowhunter and a gentleman, and yet he seemed to be unburdening his soul to her. Even Jem, for all his gentle kindness, had never done that.

I pictured two very silly girls uninterested in any sort of instruction. But that describes neither Miss Gray nor yourself. I should tell you, I used to train younger Shadowhunters in Madrid. And there were quite a few of them who didn’t have the same native ability that you do. You’re a talented student, and it’s a pleasure to teach you.” Sophie felt herself flush scarlet. “You can’t be serious.” “I am. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I came here, and again so the next time and the next. I found that I was looking forward to it. In fact, it would be fair to say that since my return home, I have hated everything in London except these hours here, with you.”

He grinned. It lit up his face, changed it. Sophie stared at him. He was not beautiful like Jem was, but he was very handsome, especially when he smiled. The smile seemed to reach out and touch her heart, speeding its pace. He is a Shadowhunter, she thought. And a gentleman. This is not the way to think about him. Stop it. But she could not stop, any more than she had been able to put Jem out of her mind. Though, where with Jem she had felt safe, with Gideon she felt an excitement like lightning that coursed up and down her veins, shocking her. And yet she did not want to let it go. “I speak Spanish when I’m in a good mood,” he said. “You might as well know that about me.” “So it wasn’t that you were so weary of my ineptitude that you were wishing to hurl yourself off the roof?” “Just the opposite.” He leaned closer to her. His eyes were the green-gray of a stormy sea. “Sophie? Might I ask you something?” She knew she should correct him, ask him to call her Miss Collins, but she didn’t. “I—yes?” “Whatever happens with the lessons—might I see you again?”

Ahhhh Gideon is so adorable. 🥹🥹🥹 like a big fluffy teddy bear 🧸 🧸

Woolsey Scott was still examining Tessa, his hand under his chin, studying her as if she were something under glass in a natural history exhibit. He was not at all what she would have thought the leader of a pack of werewolves would look like. He was probably in his early twenties, tall but slender to the point of slightness, with blond hair nearly to his shoulders, dressed in a velvet jacket, knee breeches, and a trailing scarf with a paisley print. A tinted monocle obscured one pale green eye. He looked like drawings she’d seen in Punch of those who called themselves “aesthetes.”

Aka a bisexual