Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2)

by Cassandra Clare

Old Mol screeched with laughter. “Love potions? For Will ’erondale? ’Tain’t my way to turn down payment, but any man who looks like you ’as got no need of love potions, and that’s a fact.” “No,” Will said, a little desperation in his voice. “I was looking for the opposite, really—something that might put an end to being in love.” “An ’atred potion?” Mol still sounded amused. “I was hoping for something more akin to indifference? Tolerance?” She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. “I ’ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to ’ate you, there’s easy enough ways of making it ’appen. You don’t need my help with the poor thing.” And with that she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. “Not for her,” he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, “for me…”

“I assume,” Magnus said quietly, “that you have told me all you remember. You opened a Pyxis and released a demon. It cursed you. You want me to find that demon and see if it will remove the curse. And that is all you can tell me?” “It is all I can tell you,” said Will.

“This has something to do with Tessa, doesn’t it?” Over the past five years Will had trained himself not to show emotion—surprise, affection, hopefulness, joy. He was fairly sure his expression didn’t change, but he heard the strain in his voice when he said, “Tessa?” “It’s been five years,” said Magnus. “Yet somehow you have managed all this time, telling no one. What desperation drove you to me, in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm? What has changed at the Institute? I can think of only one thing—and quite a pretty one, with big gray eyes—” Will got to his feet so abruptly, he nearly tipped the divan over. “There are other things,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even.

It was Jem and Tessa, coming toward her down the hall. They appeared entirely engaged with each other. Jem was carrying something—folded gear, it looked like—and Tessa was laughing at something he had said. She was looking a little down and away from him, and he was gazing at her, the way one did when one felt one was unobserved. He had that look on his face, that look he usually got only when he was playing the violin, as if he were completely caught up and entranced.

“It’s a request for recompense,” said Will, ignoring the fact that she had addressed her question to Jem. “Sent to the York Institute in 1825 in the name of Axel Hollingworth Mortmain, seeking reparations for the unjustified death of his parents, John Thaddeus and Anne Evelyn Shade, almost a decade before.” “John Thaddeus Shade,” said Tessa. “JTS, the initials on Mortmain’s watch. But if he was their son, why doesn’t he have the same surname?” “The Shades were warlocks,” said Jem,

Mortmain filed for recompense through the York Institute, under the aegis of Aloysius Starkweather. He was asking not for money but for the guilty parties—Shadowhunters—to be tried and punished. But the trial was refused here in London on the grounds that the Shades were ‘beyond a doubt’ guilty.

“Mr. Herondale?” he demanded. “Tessa, I thought…?” “You thought what?” Her tone was glacial. “That we could at least talk about books.” “We did,” she said. “You insulted my taste.

“It is late. I must retire—I am exhausted.” She stepped past him, and moved toward the door. She wondered if he looked hurt, then pushed the thought from her mind. This was Will; however mercurial and passing his moods, however charming he was when he was in a good one, he was poison for her, for anyone.

“What was that?” “Vathek,” he said again. “By William Beckford. If you found Otranto to your liking”—though, she thought, she had not admitted she did—“I think you will enjoy it.” “Oh,” she said. “Well. Thank you. I will remember that.” He did not answer; he was still standing where she had left him, near the table. He was looking at the ground, his dark hair hiding his face. A little bit of her heart softened, and before she could stop herself, she said, “And good night, Will.” He looked up. “Good night, Tessa.” He sounded wistful again, but not as bleak as he had before.

“Perhaps we could say she’s a mad maiden aunt who insists on chaperoning us everywhere.” “My aunt or yours?” Jem inquired. “Yes, she doesn’t really look like either of us, does she? Perhaps she’s a girl who’s fallen madly in love with me and persists in following me wherever I go.” “My talent is shape-shifting, Will, not acting,” said Tessa, and at that, Jem laughed out loud. Will glared at him. “She had the better of you there, Will,”

His flashing eyes came to rest on Tessa then, and he stopped abruptly, his mouth open, as if he had been slapped in the face mid sentence. Tessa glanced at Jem; he looked as startled as she did at Starkweather’s sudden silence. But there, in the breach, was Will. “This is Tessa Gray, sir,” he said. “She is a mundane girl, but she is the betrothed of Carstairs here, and an Ascendant.”

“A mundane,” the old man repeated, and broke into a fit of coughing. “Well, times have—Yes, I suppose then—” His eyes skipped across Tessa’s face again,

It seems suspicion fell on them when it was discovered that the male warlock, John Shade, was in possession of the Book of the White. Quite a powerful spell book, you understand; disappeared from the London Institute’s library under suspicious circumstances back in 1752. The book specializes in binding and unbinding spells—tying the soul to the body, or untying it, as the case may be.

“That must have been quite a nightmare, to have taken the spirit out of you so. Usually you are not afraid of much.” “It was awful. Even Henry was in my dream. He was taking apart my heart as if it were made of clockwork.” “Well, that settles it,” Will said. “Pure fantasy. As if Henry is a danger to anyone except himself.” When she didn’t smile, he added, fiercely, “I would never let anyone touch a hair on your head. You know that, don’t you, Tess?”

She turned her face quickly, and his lips brushed her cheek instead of her mouth. He drew back, and she saw his blue eyes open, startled—and hurt. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t know that, Will.” She dropped her voice. “You have made it very clear,” she said, “what kind of use you have for me. You think I am a toy for your amusements. You should not have come in here; it is not proper.” He dropped his hands. “You called out—” “Not for you.”

The distance was too great for Tessa to make out her features, really—just the pale oval of her face below the dark hair. She was about to ask Jem if he had a telescope with him, when Will made a noise—a noise she had never heard anyone make before, a sick, terrible gasp, as if the air had been punched out of him by a tremendous blow. But it was not just a gasp, she realized. It was a word; and not just a word, a name; and not just a name, but one she had heard him say before. “Cecily.”

“My sister,” he said. “Cecily. She was—Christ, she was nine years old when I left.” “Your sister,” said Jem, and Tessa felt a loosening of something tight around her heart, and cursed herself inwardly for it. What did it matter whether Cecily was Will’s sister or someone he was in love with? It had nothing to do with her. Will started down the hill, not looking for a path, just tramping blindly among the heather and furze. After a moment Jem went after him, catching at his sleeve. “Will, don’t—” Will tried to pull his arm away. “If Cecily’s there, then the rest of them—my family—they must be there as well.”

my family’s in this somehow. They’ve been dragged into this bloody business and I—I have to warn them.” He started down the hill again. “Will!” Jem shouted, and went after him, catching at the back of his coat; Will swung around and shoved Jem, not very hard; Tessa heard Jem say something about Will having held back all these years and not wasting it now, and then it all blurred together—Will swearing, and Jem yanking him backward, and Will slipping on the wet ground, and the both of them going over together, a rolling tangle of arms and legs, until they fetched up against a large rock, Jem pinning Will to the ground, his elbow against the other boy’s throat.

“Get off me.” Will shoved at him. “You don’t understand. Your family’s dead—” “Will.” Jem took his friend by the shirtfront and shook him. “I do understand. And unless you want your family dead too, you’ll listen to me.” Will went very still. In a choked voice he said, “James, you can’t possibly—I’ve never—” “Look.” Jem raised the hand that wasn’t gripping Will’s shirt, and pointed. “There. Look.” Tessa looked where he was pointing—and felt her insides freeze. They were nearly halfway down the hill above the manor house, and there, above them, standing like a sort of sentry on the ridge at the hill’s top, was an automaton.

“A warning … to you, Will Herondale … and to all Nephilim…” The creature’s broken voice ground out, “The Magister says … you must cease your investigation. The past … is the past. Leave Mortmain’s buried, or your family will pay the price. Do not dare approach or warn them. If you do, they will be destroyed.”

“Will, you know you cannot go near them,” Jem said desperately. “If nothing else, it is the Law. If we bring danger to them, the Clave will not move to help them in any way. They are not Shadowhunters anymore. Will.” Slowly Will lowered his arm to his side. He stood, with one of Jem’s arms still around his shoulders, staring down at the pile of scrap metal at his feet.

Tessa exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until that moment. Will must have heard her, for he raised his head and his gaze met hers across the clearing. Something in it made her look away. Agony stripped so raw was not meant for her eyes.

Jem spoke, his voice clear and direct. “Will,” he said. “I thought … I thought that your sister was dead.” Will drew his gaze from the window and looked at them both. When he smiled, it was ghastly. “My sister is dead,” he said.

“Will,” she said softly, sleepily. “Last night—” You were kind to me, she was going to say. Thank you. The glare from his blue eyes stabbed through her. “There was no last night,” he said through his teeth. At that, she sat up straight, almost awake. “Oh, truly? We just went right from one afternoon on through till the next morning?

“Your ring!” She started up suddenly as she remembered that she was still wearing it. She put the button back into her pocket, then reached to draw the Carstairs ring off her hand. “I had meant to give it back to you earlier,” she said, placing the silver circlet in his palm. “I forgot…” He curled his fingers around hers. Despite her thoughts of snow and gray skies, his hand was surprisingly warm. “That’s all right,” he said in a low voice. “I like the way it looks on you.”

“I am deadly earnest,” he said. “This is not some sort of test. I cannot go on like this, summoning up demons at random, never having them be the correct one, endless hope, endless disappointment. Every day dawns blacker and blacker, and I will lose her forever if you—” “Lose her?” Magnus’s mind fastened on the word; he sat up straight, narrowing his eyes. “This is about Tessa. I knew it was.” Will flushed, a wash of color across the pallor of his face. “Not just her.”

“I saw my family today,” he said, and then amended that quickly. “My sister. I saw my younger sister. Cecily. I knew they lived, but I never thought I would see them again. They cannot be near me.” “Why?” Magnus made his voice soft; he felt he was on the verge of something, some sort of breakthrough with this odd, infuriating, damaged, shattered boy. “What did they do that was so terrible?” “What did they do?” Will’s voice rose. “What did they do? Nothing. It is me. I am poison. Poison to them. Poison to anyone who loves me.” “Will—” “I lied to you,” Will said, turning suddenly away from the fire. “Shocking,” Magnus murmured,

‘It is your father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you will have to do.’ I was so shocked, all I could do was stare. Ella was crawling over the carpet, grabbing for the fallen seraph blade. ‘I curse you,’ it said. ‘All who love you will die. Their love will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin it with her.’ It snarled in Ella’s direction, and vanished.”

“You were a child,” Magnus noted. “I was old enough,” said Will. “Old enough to know what it meant when I was woken up the next morning by my mother howling with grief. She was in Ella’s room, and Ella was dead in her bed. They did their best to keep me out, but I saw what I needed to see. She was swelled up, greenish-black like something had rotted her from inside. She didn’t look like my sister anymore. She didn’t look human anymore.

Can you imagine it? Can you?” He raked his hands through his black hair, letting the tangled strands fall back into his eyes. “Never letting anyone near you. Making everyone who might otherwise love you, hate you. I left my family to distance myself from them, and that they might forget me. Each day I must show cruelty to those I have chosen to make my home with, lest they let themselves feel too much affection for me.”

“No one can live with nothing,” he whispered. “Jem is all I have.”

Magnus raised his eyebrows. “Are you not concerned about me?” “That you might love me?” Will sounded genuinely startled. “No, for you hate Nephilim, do you not? And besides, I imagine you warlocks have ways to guard against unwanted emotions.

“After Will’s parents came here to see him, when he was twelve, and he sent them away … I begged him to speak to them, just for a moment, but he wouldn’t. I tried to make him understand that if they left, then he could never see them again, and I could never tell him news of them. He took my hand, and he said, ‘Please just promise me you’ll tell me if they die, Charlotte. Promise me.’” She looked down, her fingers knotting in the material of her dress. “It was such an odd request for a little boy to make. I—I had to say yes.” “So you’ve been looking into the welfare of Will’s family?” Jem asked. “I hired Ragnor Fell to do it,” Charlotte said. “For the first three years. The fourth year he came back to me and told me that the Herondales had moved. Edmund Herondale—that’s Will’s father—had lost their house gambling. That was all Ragnor was able to glean. The Herondales had been forced to move. He could find no further trace of them.”

“When Will truly wants something,” said Jem quietly, “when he feels something, he can break your heart.”

“Look well on this, my son,” said the green-skinned man, “for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince.”

she saw, again and again, the face of the girl from the portrait on the stairwell—the child with the fair hair and stubborn expression—saw her riding a small pony, her face set determinedly, saw her hair blowing in the wind off the moors—saw her screaming and writhing in pain as a stele was set to her skin and black Marks stained its whiteness. And last, Tessa saw her own face, appearing out of the shadowy gloom of the York Institute’s nave, and she felt the wave of his shock ripple through her, so strong that it threw her out of his body and back into her own.

Fell turned back to his plate with a faint smile on his face. “I remember Will’s father. Quite the ladies’ man, he was. They couldn’t resist him. Until he met Will’s mother, of course. Then he threw it all in and went to live in Wales just to be with her. What a case he was.” “He fell in love,” said Jem. “It isn’t that peculiar.” “‘Fell’ into it,” said the warlock, still with the same faint smile. “Hurtled into it is more like. Headlong-crashed into it. Still, there are always some men like that—just one woman for them, and only she will do, or nothing.”

“Well,” she said. “By all accounts they were very happy together—” “Until they lost two of their three children and Edmund Herondale gambled away everything they had,” said Fell. “But I imagine you never told young Will about that.”

He half-closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he was smiling crookedly. “James,” he said. “Ordinarily only Will calls me that.” “I’m sorry—” “No. Don’t be. I like the sound of it on your lips.” Lips. There was something strangely, delicately indelicate about the word, like a kiss itself.

“Say something in Mandarin,” said Tessa with a smile. 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.”

“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 taken, Tessa thought. Will was still staring after him, the blood reddening his mouth. “James?” he said.

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.

She had taken him for granted, she thought with surprise and shame, watching the flickering candlelight. 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,

“I will die, and you know it, Tess. Probably within the next year. I am dying, and I have no family in the world, and the one person I trusted more than any other made sport of what is killing me.” “But, Jem, I don’t think that’s what Will meant to do at all.” Tessa leaned the bow against the footboard and moved closer to him, tentatively, as if he were an animal she was fearful of startling. “He was just trying to escape. He is running from something, something dark and awful. You know he is, Jem. You saw how he was after—after Cecily.”

she put the back of her hand to his forehead and nearly gasped. “You’re burning up. You should be resting—” 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.

“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.

“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. His breath stirred her hair. She felt the fever rising off him like mist off the Thames; sensed the pounding of the blood through his skin; saw with a strange clarity the pulse at his throat, the light on the pale curls of his hair where they lay against his paler neck. Prickles of heat ran up and down her skin, bewildering her.

“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.

her arms rise as if of their own accord, curving around his neck, drawing him closer. He gasped against her mouth. He must have been so sure she would push him away that for a moment he went still. Her hands glided over his shoulders, urging him with gentle touches, with a murmur against his lips, not to pause. Hesitantly he returned her caress, and then with greater force—kissing her again and again, each time with increasing urgency, cupping her face between his burning hands, his thin violinist’s fingers stroking her skin, making her shiver. His hands moved to the small of her back, pressing her against him; her bare feet slipped on the carpet, and they half-stumbled backward onto the bed.

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.