Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)

by Cassandra Clare

“Joyeuse was Charlemagne’s sword,” said Will, his voice still stiff in that way that Tessa knew now meant that he was forcing down emotion. “Durendal was Roland’s. This sword is—it is of legend born.” “Forged by the first Shadowhunter weapons maker, Wayland the Smith. It has a feather from the wing of the Angel in its hilt,” said Elias. “It has been in the Carstairs family for hundreds of years. I was instructed by Jem’s father to give it to him when he reached eighteen. But the Silent Brothers cannot accept gifts.” He looked at Will. “You were his parabatai. You should have it.”

Charlotte said that if I chose, I could cease to be a Gray and take the name my mother should have had before she was married. I could be a Starkweather. I could have a true Shadowhunter name.” She heard Will exhale a breath. It came out a puff of white in the cold. His eyes were blue and wide and clear, fixed on her face. He wore the expression of a man who had steeled himself to do a terrifying thing, and was carrying it through. “Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.” Tessa stared at him, all black and white against the black-and-white snow and stone. “Your name?” Will took a step toward her, till they stood face-to-face. Then he reached to take her hand and slid off her glove, which he put into his pocket. He held her bare hand in his, his fingers curved around hers. His hand was warm and callused, and his touch made her shiver. His eyes were steady and blue; they were everything Will was: true and tender, sharp and witty, loving and kind. “Marry me,” he said. “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.”

“Tessa?” Her heart stopped. A great wave of lurching dizziness passed over her, and for a moment she wondered if she were going mad, if after so many years the past and present had blended within her memories until she could no longer tell the difference. For the voice she heard was not the soft, silent voice-within-her-mind of Brother Zachariah. The voice that had echoed in her head once a year for the past one hundred and thirty years. This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet … Her heart was pounding so hard, she felt as if it might break through her rib cage. Slowly she turned, away from the balustrade. And stared. He stood on the pavement in front of her, smiling shyly, hands in the pockets of a pair of very modern jeans.

“You are”—her voice rose with wild hope—“this is permanent? You are not bound to the Silent Brothers anymore?” “No,” he said. There was a rapid hitch in his breath; he was looking at her as if he had no idea how she would react to his sudden appearance. “I am not.” “The cure—you found it?” “I did not find it myself,” he said slowly. “But—it was found.”

I have loved you all this time—a century and a half. And I know that you loved Will. I saw you together over the years. And I know that that love was so great that it must have made other loves, even the one we had when we were both so young, seem small and unimportant. You had a whole lifetime of love with him, Tessa. So many years. Children. Memories I cannot hope to—” He broke off with a violent start. “No,” he said, and let her wrist fall. “I can’t do it. I was a fool to think— Tessa, forgive me,” he said, and drew away from her, plunging into the throng of people surging across the bridge. Tessa stood for a moment in shock; it was just a moment, but it was enough time for him to vanish into the crowd.

Jem was mortal now. He would grow old like Will, and like Will he would die, and she did not know if she could bear it again. And yet. Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two. Suddenly her feet were moving, almost without her volition. She was darting into the crowd, pushing past strangers, gasping out apologies as she nearly tripped over the feet of passersby or knocked into them with her elbows. She didn’t care.

He was staring ahead almost blindly, and with such fixed intent that he didn’t seem to hear her as she came up behind him. She caught at his sleeve, swinging him around to face her. “What,” she said breathlessly. “What were you trying to ask me, Jem?” His eyes widened. His cheeks were flushed, whether from running or the cold air, she wasn’t sure. He looked at her as if she were some bizarre plant that had sprung up on the spot, astonishing him. “Tessa—you followed me?” “Of course I followed you. You ran off in the middle of a sentence!” “It wasn’t a very good sentence.” He looked down at the ground, and then up at her again, a smile, as familiar as her own memories, tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Tessa reached out and took him gently by the wrists. “Well, I am good with words,” she said. “So let me ask you, then.” He drew his hands from his pockets and let her wrap her fingers around his wrists. They stood, Jem looking at her from under his dark hair—it had blown across his face in the wind off the river. There was still a single streak of silver in it, startling against the black. “You asked me if I have loved anyone but Will,” she said. “And the answer is yes. I have loved you. I always have, and I always will.” She heard his sharp intake of breath. There was a pulse pounding in his throat, visible under the pale skin still laced with the fading white lines of the Brotherhood’s runes.

She forced herself to release her hold on him, though, and reached her hand into the collar of her shirt. Carefully she took hold of the chain around her throat and lifted it so that he could see, dangling from it, the jade pendant he had given her so long ago.

“To be a Silent Brother,” he said, “it is to see everything and nothing all at once. I could see the great map of life, spread out before me. I could see the currents of the world. And human life began to seem a sort of passion play, acted at a distance. When they took the runes from me, when the mantle of the Brotherhood was removed, it was as if I had awoken from a long dream, or as if a shield of glass around me had shattered. I felt everything, all at once, rushing in upon me. All the humanity the Brotherhood’s spells had taken from me. That I had so much humanity to return to me … That is because of you. If I had not had you, Tessa, if I had not had these yearly meetings as my anchor and my guide, I do not know if I could have come back.”

“But you have,” she whispered. “And it is a miracle. And you remember what I once told you about miracles.” He smiled again at that. “‘One does not question miracles, or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one’s liking.’ I suppose that is true.

“Stay with me. Be with me. See everything with me. I have traveled the world and seen so much, but there is so much more, and no one I would rather see it with than you. I would go everywhere and anywhere with you, Jem Carstairs.”

She was not sure who reached for who first, only that a moment later she was in his arms and he was whispering “Yes, of course, yes,” against her hair. He sought her mouth tentatively—she could feel his gentle tension, the weight of so many years between their last kiss and this.