Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)

by Cassandra Clare

Adele stared in wonderment as the symbol for Strength took shape on the pale skin of her inner arm, a delicate design of lines intersecting with each other, crossing her veins, wrapping her arm. Her body was tense, her small teeth sunk into her upper lip. Her eyes flashed upward at Aloysius, and he started at what he saw in them. Pain. It was normal to feel some pain at the bestowing of a Mark, but what he saw in Adele’s eyes—was agony. Aloysius jerked upright, sending the chair he had been sitting on skittering away behind him. “Stop!” he cried, but it was too late.

Her black hair had escaped from its braid, and she looked like the wild girl he remembered, fierce and unafraid of anything. “Are you hurt, cariad?” The word slipped out before he could stop it—a childhood endearment he had almost forgotten. “Cariad?” she echoed, her eyes flashing disbelief. “I am quite unhurt.” “Not quite,” Will said,

Jem, behind him, begin to cough—usually a sound that would have lit him to action like a spark thrown into dry tinder. “Cecily, what could you possibly have been—” “That was one of the bravest things I’ve seen a Shadowhunter do,” interrupted Gabriel. He was not looking at Will but at Cecily, with a mixture of surprise and something else in his expression. There was mud and blood in his hair, as there was on all of them, but his green eyes were very bright. Cecily flushed. “I was only—” She broke off, her eyes widening as she looked past Will. Jem coughed again, and this time Will heard it; he turned just in time to see his parabatai slump to his knees on the ground.

We Shadowhunters are not selfless.” She looked up at that. “I think you are very selfless.” At his noise of disagreement she said: “Surely you must know that what you do is exemplary. There is a coldness to the Clave, it is true. We are dust and shadows. But you are like the heroes of ancient times, like Achilles and Jason.” “Achilles was murdered with a poisoned arrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes; the Angel knows why anyone would want to be one.”

“I have been taking twice, perhaps three times, as much.” “But the rate at which you take the drug is tied to the deterioration of your health,” Will said, and when Jem said nothing back, his voice rose and cracked on a single word: “Why?” “I do not want to live half a life—” “At this rate you won’t even live a fifth of one!” shouted Will, and he sucked in his breath. Jem’s expression had changed, and Will had to slam the box he was holding back onto the nightstand to keep himself from punching the wall. Jem was sitting up straight, his eyes blazing. “There is more to living than not dying,” he said. “Look at the way you live, Will. You burn as bright as a star.

“When did you become reckless and I cautious? Since when have I had to guard you from yourself? It is always you who has guarded me.”

“I’ll go to Whitechapel,” said Will. “Tonight. I will get you all the yin fen there is, everything you could need.” Jem shook his head. “I cannot ask you to do something that goes against your conscience.” “My conscience,” Will whispered. “You are my conscience. You have ever been, James Carstairs.

you were quite heroic today. Though Will was saying earlier,” she added, “that heroes all come to bad ends, and he could not imagine why anyone would want to be one anyway.” “Ah.” Jem’s hand squeezed hers briefly, and then let it go. “Well, Will is looking at it from the hero’s viewpoint, isn’t he? But as for the rest of us, it’s an easy answer.” “Is it?” “Of course. Heroes endure because we need them. Not for their own sakes.”

“Did you think I did not know you had a secret?” he’d said. “Did you think I walked into my friendship with you with my eyes shut? I did not know the nature of the burden you carried. But I knew there was a burden.” He’d stood up. “I knew you thought yourself poison to all those around you,” he’d added. “I knew you thought there to be some corruptive force about you that would break me. I meant to show you that I would not break, that love was not so fragile. Did I do that?” Will had shrugged once, helplessly. He had almost wished Jem would be angry with him. It would have been easier. He’d never felt so small within himself as he did when he faced Jem’s expansive kindness. He thought of Milton’s Satan. Abashed the Devil stood, / And felt how awful goodness is. “You saved my life,” Will had said. A smile had spread across Jem’s face, as brilliant as the sunrise breaking over the Thames. “That is all I ever wanted.”

“I was thinking of his reaction when I told him of Marbas’s curse.” “He felt only sorrow for you,” she said immediately. “I know he did; he told me as much.” “Sorrow but not pity,” said Will. “Jem has always given me exactly what I needed in the way that I needed it, even when I did not know myself what I required.

“Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem’s sake.” “And yours,” he said before he could stop himself. She withdrew her hands from his, and he cursed himself silently and savagely: How could you have been so foolish? How could you, after two months? You’ve been so careful. Your love for her is only a burden she endures out of politeness. Remember that.

“You look like Church before he bites someone.” “Picking a fight with the head of the Praetor Lupus,” Magnus said bitterly. “You know what his pack would do to you if they had an excuse. You want to die, don’t you?” “I don’t,” Will said, surprising even himself a little. “I don’t know why I ever helped you.” “You like broken things.” Magnus took two strides across the room and seized Will’s face in his long fingers, forcing his chin up. “You are not Sydney Carton,” he said. “What good will it do you to die for James Carstairs, when he is dying anyway?” “Because if I save him, then it is worth it—” “God!” Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “What is worth it? What could possibly be worth it?” “Everything I have lost!” Will shouted. “Tessa!”

Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.”

Magnus seems convinced you are a warlock, but I am not so sure. I think there may be some of the blood of faeries about you, for what is the magic of shape-changing if it is not a magic of illusion? And who are the masters of magic and illusion if not the Fair Folk?” Tessa thought of the blue-haired faerie woman at Benedict’s party who had claimed to know her mother, and her breath hitched in her throat.

“Who am I?” he whispered. “For years I pretended I was other than I was, and then I gloried that I might return to the truth of myself, only to find there is no truth to return to. I was an ordinary child, and then I was a not very good man, and now I do not know how to be either of those things any longer. I do not know what I am, and when Jem is gone, there will be no one to show me.” “I know just who you are. You’re Will Herondale,” was all she said, and then suddenly his arms were around her, his head on her shoulder. She froze at first out of pure astonishment, and then carefully she returned the embrace, holding him as he shuddered.

I have heard it said that when you save a life, you are responsible for that life. I feel I am responsible for that boy. If he never finds happiness, I will feel I have failed him.

“Grief shared is grief lessened, they say.”

“I don’t want any more surprises like the one about your father,” said Consul. “She should never have kept his disease a secret from me.” “She had to,” Gideon said. “It was a condition of the agreement they made—” The Consul’s lips tightened. “Charlotte Branwell has no right to make agreements of such scope without consulting me. I am her superior. She should not and cannot go over my head in that manner. She and that group in the Institute behave as if they are their own country that exists under its own laws. Look what happened with Jessamine Lovelace. She betrayed us all, nearly to our destruction. James Carstairs is a dying drug addict. That Gray girl is a changeling or a warlock and has no place in an Institute, ridiculous engagement be damned. And Will Herondale—Will Herondale is a liar and a spoiled brat who will grow up to be a criminal, if he grows up at all.” The Consul paused, breathing hard. “Charlotte may run that place like a fiefdom, but it is not. It is an Institute and reports to the Consul. And so will you.” “Charlotte has done nothing to deserve such a betrayal from me,” Gideon said. The Consul jabbed a finger toward him. “That is exactly what I speak of. Your loyalty is not to her; it cannot be to her. It is to me. It must be to me. Do you understand that?” “And if I say no?” “Then you lose everything. House, lands, name, lineage, purpose.”

“All right, little brother. It’s going to be all right,” as he rocked them both back and forth in the rain.

“If it were you Mortmain wanted, Will, you would go,” said Tessa, looking at Cecily’s brother with a meaning in her eyes that brooked no contradiction. Will flinched at her words. “No,” said Jem. “I would forbid him as well.” Tessa turned to Jem with the first expression of anger toward him Cecily had ever seen on her face. “You cannot forbid me—any more than you could Will—” “I can,” Jem said. “For a very simple reason. The drug is not a cure, Tessa. It only extends my living. I will not allow you to throw away your own life for a remnant of mine. If you go to Mortmain, it will be for nothing. I still won’t take the drug.” Will lifted his head. “James—” But Tessa and Jem were staring at each other, eyes locked. “You would not,” Tessa breathed. “You would not insult me by hurling a sacrifice I made for you back in my face like that.” Jem strode across the room and seized the packet—and the letter—off Charlotte’s desk. “I would rather insult you than lose you,” he said, and before any of them could make a move to stop him, he cast both items into the fire.

Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us. And there is a beauty that brevity alone provides.” He dropped his gaze, then raised it to hers. “I would give you everything of myself,” he said. “I would give you more in two weeks than most men would give you in a lifetime.”

“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.

She had always wondered how you could be alone with someone else, really. If you were with them, weren’t you by definition not alone?

“It was, to be precise, the tenth of November of that year. And every year after, on the anniversary of that day, I would fall into a black mood of despair. That was the day—that and my birthday—when I was most strongly reminded of Mam and Dad, and of you. I knew you were alive, that you were out there, that you wanted me back, and I could not go, could not even send you a letter. I wrote dozens, of course, and burned them. You had to hate me and blame me for Ella’s death.” “We never blamed you—” “After the first year, even though I still dreaded the day’s approach, I began to find that there was something Jem simply had to do every November tenth, some training exercise or some search that would take us to the far end of the city in the cold, wet winter weather. And I would abuse him bitterly for it, of course. Sometimes the damp chill made him ill, or he would forget his drugs and become ill on the day, coughing blood and confined to bed, and that would be a distraction too. And only after it had happened three times—for I am very stupid, Cecy, and think only of myself—did I realize that of course he was doing it for me.

you can bring this issue of Wales up with the Council when we meet in a fortnight—” “A fortnight?” Will’s voice rose; he was pale, with splotches of red standing out on his cheekbones. “Tessa was taken today. She does not have a fortnight.” “The Magister wanted her unharmed. You know that, Will,” said Charlotte in a soft voice. “He also wants to marry her! Do you not think she would hate becoming his plaything more than she would hate death? She could be married by tomorrow—” “And to the devil with it if she is!” said the Consul. “One girl, who is not Nephilim, is not, cannot, be our priority!” “She is my priority!” Will shouted.

I think rather I thought you were the only one who might understand.” Magnus looked surprised. “The only one who might understand?” “You have lived so long,” Will said. “You must have seen so many die, so many that you loved. And yet you survive and you go on.” Magnus continued to look astonished. “You summoned me here—a warlock to the Institute, just after a battle in which you were nearly all killed—to talk?” “I find you easy to talk to,” Will said. “I cannot say why.”

Magnus looked at him silently for a long moment. “Does he know you are in love with Tessa?” “No.” Will lifted his face, shocked. “No. I have never said a word. It was not his burden to bear.”

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.”

“Take my hands, Will.” Numbly Will closed his hands around Jem’s. He imagined he could feel a flicker of pain in the parabatai rune on his chest, as if it knew what he did not and was warning him of coming pain, a pain so great he did not imagine he could bear it and live. Jem is my great sin, he had told Magnus, and this, now, was the punishment for it.

“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 tightened his grip on Jem’s hand. “Well, then,” he said, through a tight throat, “since you say there will be another life for me, let us both pray I do not make as colossal a mess of it as I have this one.” Jem smiled at him, that smile that had always, even on Will’s blackest days, eased his mind. “I think there is hope for you yet, Will Herondale.” “I will try to learn how to have it, without you to show me.” “Tessa,” Jem said. “She knows despair, and hope as well. You can teach each other. Find her, Will, and tell her that I loved her always. My blessing, for all that it is worth, is on you both.”

Sophie alone, she thought, knew that Tessa called out for Will sometimes when she slept; she alone knew that the scar on Tessa’s palm was not from an accidental encounter with a fireplace poker but a deliberate wound, inflicted on herself that she might, somehow, physically match the emotional pain she’d felt in denying Will. Sophie had held Tessa while she’d wept and torn the flowers out of her hair that were the color of Will’s eyes, and Sophie had covered up with powder the evidence of tears and sleepless nights.

“Do not regret too much the choices you have made in the past, Gabriel,” she said, aware that she was using his Christian name, but not able to help it. “Only make the right ones in future. We are ever capable of change and ever capable of being our better selves.”

a sharp, stabbing pain shot through his chest. It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and shattered. He lurched to his feet, leaning both hands on the table. He was vaguely aware of stares, and the landlord’s anxious voice in his ear, but the pain was too great to think through, almost too great to breathe through.

He gasped, his heart stuttering with a mixture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem had been at his worst, even when he’d been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain. The cord snapped. For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleaching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees,

With wet hands he seized at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his parabatai rune, just over his heart, was bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same rain that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will’s life into nonsense. Jem was dead.

“I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me,” Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. “And you are still with me. When I breathe, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I lie down to die, you will be with me. You say we are born and born again. I say there is a river that divides the dead and the living. What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, and if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so that we can cross together.” 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.” He rose to his feet and looked down at the knife. The knife was Jem’s, the blood was his. This spot of ground, whether he could ever find it again, whether he lived to try, would be theirs.

“I am sorry. It is a great sorrow to have a sickly child—” “She was not born sickly!” he barked. “She was a healthy infant. Beautiful, with my son’s eyes. Everyone doted on her, until one morning my daughter-in-law woke us with a scream. She insisted that the child in her cradle was not her daughter, though they looked exactly alike. She swore she knew her own child and this was not it.

In her infancy my granddaughter was replaced with a kidnapped human child, a sickly creature who died when the Marks were applied, because she was not Nephilim.” There was a hard crack in his voice now, a fissure in the flint. “My granddaughter was left with a mundane family to raise her, their sickly Elizabeth—chosen because of her superficial resemblance to Adele—replaced with our healthy girl. That was the Court’s revenge on me. They believed I had killed their own, so they would kill mine.” His eyes were cold as they rested on Charlotte. “Adele—Elizabeth—grew to womanhood in that mundane family, never knowing what she was. And then she married. A mundane man. His name was Richard. Richard Gray.”

“But the offspring of demons and Shadowhunters are stillborn,” Charlotte said automatically. “Even if the Shadowhunter does not know they are a Shadowhunter?” said Starkweather. “Even if they carry no runes?” “I …” Charlotte closed her mouth. She had no idea what the answer was;

“I know the girl is a shape-shifter,” said Starkweather. “But I do not believe that is why he wants her. There is something else he wants her to do. Something only she can do. She is the key.” “The key to what?” “It was the last words the faerie spoke to me this afternoon.”

He smiled a terrible smile. “It was I, with the help of one of my father’s inventions, who crept into the York Institute and switched the baby in the crib there for one of mundane descent. Starkweather’s granddaughter, Adele.”

“She died when the first runes were put on her,” said Mortmain with relish. “Died screaming, as so many Downworlders had before at the hands of Shadowhunters. Now they had killed one they had come to love. A fitting retribution.” Tessa stared at him in horror. How could anyone think that to die in agony was fitting retribution for an innocent child?

“You—did what—to my mother? A demon? I am half-demon?” “He was a Greater Demon, if that comforts you. Most of them were angels once. He was fair enough in his own aspect.” Mortmain smirked. “Before your mother became pregnant, I had worked for years to finish my father’s clockwork angel. I finished it, and after you were conceived, tuned it to your life. My greatest invention.”

“Why did you do all this? Why did you create me?” His lips twitched slightly; it was not a smile, not really. “For two purposes. The first is so that you could bear children.” “But warlocks cannot …” “No,” said Mortmain. “But you are no ordinary warlock. In you the blood of demons and the blood of angels has fought its own war in Heaven, and the angels have been victorious. You are not a Shadowhunter, but you are not a warlock, either. You are something new, something entirely other.

Tessa’s legs gave out. She slumped to the floor, her dressing gown pooling around her like black water. “You—you want to use me to breed your children?”

when she tightened her hold on him, he felt the iron in her grip, the strength of her holding him up, and wondered how he had ever thought this small woman was weak.

Charlotte pressed her lips together. “Then he never had faith in me,” she whispered. “Never.” Henry tightened his grip on her arm. “But he should have,” he said. “He underestimated you, and that is not a tragedy. That you have proven to be better, cleverer, and stronger than anyone could have expected, Charlotte—it is a triumph.” Charlotte swallowed, and Cecily wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like to have someone look at her as Henry looked at Charlotte—

The creature’s mouth opened; Tessa caught a flash of brass. It spoke. “I am Armaros,” it said. “For a billion years I rode the winds of the great abysses between the worlds. I fought Jonathan Shadowhunter on the plains of Brocelind. For a thousand more years I lay trapped within the Pyxis. Now my master has freed me and I serve him.”

“Do not seek revenge and call it justice.”

“They will turn on you, then.” “They will not. Their lives are linked to mine. If I die, so are they destroyed.