Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)

by Cassandra Clare

The Silent Brother was Jem.

“Anyone can sharpen a stick.” “It’s a staff,”

As metal rang on metal, some inner part of Jem, some part that had been lost without his even knowing it was lost, felt the pleasure of fighting together with Will one last time.

“I do not know how I will manage without you.” “I ask myself the same thing. I do not want to leave you. I cannot leave you. But if I stay, I die here.”

“Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?” he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver. “Of course I remember.” “It was the moment I first knew I loved you,”

“And you did not think I would take the chance, whatever chance I could, to see you, too?”

“Perhaps in some other life, beyond this one, when we have passed beyond the river, or turned upon the Wheel, or whatever kind words you want to use to describe leaving this world, I shall find my friend again, my parabatai.

“I don’t even know how to be a Shadowhunter without you. I have only ever fought with you by my side.”

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 measure of love is to love without measure. —attributed to Saint Augustine

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.

“One day I shall be able to go inside.” “And when you do, you shall find that your room is as it ever was, and your dolls as well,”

“Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.”

“Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.”

I love you, and I will only ever love you until I die—”

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—”

Through the windows of the Institute, she could hear the faint sound of the music playing in the ballroom: the pianoforte, the cello, and rising above it all, like sparks leaping toward the sky, the sweet, celebratory strains of the violin.

Will’s grin widened. “Oh, him,” he said. “This is Cecily’s—friend, Mr. Gabriel Lightworm.”

As if her love had given him his own shape-shifting ability, no matter how much time had passed, when she looked at him, she saw always the wild, black-haired boy she had fallen in love with.

Will had opened the blue eyes that had never lost their color over all the passing years, and looked at Jem and then Tessa, and smiled, and died,

It had been one thing to survive the death of her husband. To survive the death of her children—she could not sit by and watch it. It would happen, must happen, but she would not be there.

“The first one is always the hardest,” he said. “The first?” “The first one you love who dies,” he said. “It gets easier, after.”

“I don’t know how to live in the world as a Shadowhunter without Will. I don’t think I even want to. I am still a parabatai,

The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh;