Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Princess

Should she tell him? Sophie wondered. Would it really be a kindness to say, Yes, Tessa loves him too; she has tried not to, but she does ? Could any man honestly want to hear that about the girl he was going to marry? “Miss Gray has great regard for Mr. Herondale, and she would not break any heart lightly, I think,” Sophie said. “But I wish you would not speak as if your death were inevitable, Mr. Carstairs. Even now Mrs. Branwell and the others are hopeful of finding a cure. I think you will live to old age with Miss Gray, and the both of you very happy.”

He smiled as if he knew something she did not. “That is kind of you to say, Sophie. I know I am a Shadowhunter, and we do not pass easily from this life. We fight to the last. We come from the realm of angels, and yet we fear it. I think, though, that one can face the end and not be afraid without having bowed under to death. Death shall never rule me.”

Sophie looked at him, a little worried; he sounded part delirious to her. “Mr. Carstairs? Shall I fetch Charlotte?”

“In a moment, but, Sophie—in your expression, just there, when I spoke—” He leaned forward. “Is it true, then?”

“Is what true?” she asked him in a small voice, but she knew what the question would be, and she could not lie to Jem.

Will was in a foul mood. The day had dawned foggy, wet, and dreadful. He had woken feeling sick to his stomach, and had only barely been able to choke down the rubbery eggs and cold bacon the landlord’s wife had served him in the stuffy parlor; every part of his body had hummed to get back to the road and continue on his journey.

Bouts of rain had left him shivering in his clothes despite a liberal use of warming runes, and Balios disliked the mud that sucked at his hooves as they tried to make speed along the road, Will grumpily contemplating how it was possible that fog might actually condense upon the inside of one’s clothes. He had at least made it to Northamptonshire, which was something, but he had covered barely twenty miles and flatly refused to stop, though Balios looked at him entreatingly as they passed through Towcester, as if begging for a warm room in a stable and some oats, and Will was almost inclined to give it to him. A sense of hopelessness had invaded his bones, as chill and inescapable as the rain. What did he think he was doing? Did he really think he would find Tessa this way? Was he a fool?

They were passing through disagreeable country now too, where the mud made the rocky pathway treacherous. A great cliff wall rose on one side of the road, blocking out the sky. On the other side of the path, the road fell away dramatically into a ravine full of sharp rocks. The distant water of a muddy stream glinted faintly at the ravine’s bottom. Will kept Balios’s head well pulled in, far from the drop-off, but the horse still seemed skittish and shy of the fall. Will’s own head was down, tucked into his collar to avoid the cold rain; it was only by chance that, glancing for a moment to the side, he caught a glimpse of bright green and gold amid the rocks at the edge of the road.

He had pulled up Balios in an instant and was down and off the horse so quickly that he almost slipped in the mud. The rain was coming down more heavily now as he approached and knelt to examine the golden chain that had become caught around the sharp outcrop of a rock. He picked it up carefully. It was a jade pendant, circular, with characters stamped upon the back. He knew well enough what they meant.

When two people are as one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze.

Jem’s bridal gift to Tessa. Will’s hand tightened about it as he stood. He remembered facing her in the stairwell—the chain of the jade pendant at her throat winking at him like a cruel reminder of Jem as she’d said, They say you cannot divide your heart, and yet—

“Tessa!” he cried out suddenly, his voice echoing off the rocks. “Tessa!”

He stood for a moment, shuddering, at the side of the road. He did not know what he had expected—an answer? It was hardly as if she could be here, hiding among the sparse rocks. There was only silence and the sound of the wind and rain. Still, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was Tessa’s necklace. Perhaps she had torn it from her throat and dropped it out the carriage window to mark the path for him, like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs. It was what a storybook heroine would do, and therefore what his Tessa would do. Maybe there would be other markers too, if he kept on his way. For the first time hope flowed back into his veins.

With new resolve he strode toward Balios and swung himself up into the saddle. There would be no slowing down; they would make Staffordshire by evening. As he turned the horse’s head back toward the road, he slipped the pendant into his pocket, where its engraved words of love and commitment seemed to burn like a brand.

Charlotte had never felt so tired. The coming child had exhausted her more than she had thought it would at first, and she had been awake all night and racing about all day. There were stains on her dress from Henry’s crypt, and her ankles ached from going up and down the stairs and the ladders in the library. Nevertheless, when she opened the door of Jem’s bedroom and saw him not only awake but sitting up and talking to Sophie, she forgot her tiredness and felt her face break into a helpless smile of relief. “James!” she exclaimed. “I had wondered—that is, I am glad you are awake.”

Sophie, who was looking oddly flushed, rose to her feet. “Should I go, Mrs. Branwell?”

“Oh, yes, please, Sophie. Bridget’s in one of her moods; she says she can’t find the Bang Mary, and I haven’t even the slightest what she’s talking about.”

Sophie almost smiled—she would have, if her heart hadn’t been pounding with the knowledge that she might just have done something very dreadful. “The bain-marie ,” she said. “I will locate it for her.” She moved toward the door, paused, and threw a peculiar look over her shoulder at Jem, who was resting back against his pillows, looking very pale but composed. Before Charlotte could say anything, Sophie was gone, and Jem was beckoning Charlotte forward with a tired smile.

“Charlotte, if you would not mind very much—could you bring me my violin?”

“Of course.” Charlotte went over to the table by the window where the violin was stored in its square rosewood case, with its bow and small round box of rosin. She lifted the violin and brought it over to the bed, where Jem took it carefully from her arms, and she sank down gratefully in the chair beside him. “Oh—,” she said a moment later. “I’m sorry. I forgot the bow. Did you want to play?”

“That’s all right.” He plucked gently at the strings with his fingertips, which produced a soft, vibrant noise. “This is pizzicato—the first thing my father taught me how to do when he showed me the violin. It reminds me of being a child.”

You are still a child, Charlotte wanted to say, but she did not. He was only a few weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, after all, when Shadowhunters became adults, and if when she looked at him she still saw the dark-haired little boy who had arrived from Shanghai clutching his violin, his eyes huge in his pale face, that did not mean he had not grown up.

She reached for the box of yin fen on his bedside table. There was only a pale scatter left at the bottom, barely a teaspoonful. She swallowed against her tight throat, and tapped the powder into the bottom of a glass, then poured water from the carafe into it, letting the yin fen dissolve like sugar. When she handed it to Jem, he put the violin aside and took the glass from her. He stared down into it, his pale eyes thoughtful.