Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

The old man broke off as he reached a heavy door at the end of the corridor and put his shoulder to it, grinning down at them from beneath beetling brows. “Ever been to the Crystal Palace? Well, this is even better.”

He shouldered the door open, and light blazed up around them as they passed through into the room beyond. Clearly it was the only well-lit room in the place.

The room was full of glass-fronted cabinets, and over each cabinet was mounted a lamp of witchlight, illuminating the contents within. Tessa saw Will’s back stiffen, and Jem reached for her, his hand tightening on her arm with an almost bruising grip. “Don’t—,” he began, but she had pushed forward, and was staring at the contents of the cabinets.

Spoils. A gold locket, open to a daguerreotype of a laughing child. The locket was splattered with dried blood. Behind her Starkweather was talking about digging the silver bullets out of the bodies of freshly killed werewolves and melting them down to recast. There was a dish of such bullets, in fact, in one of the cabinets, filling a bloodstained bowl. Sets of vampire fangs, row on row of them. What looked like sheets of gossamer or delicate fabric, pressed under glass. Only on closer inspection did Tessa realize they were the wings of faeries. A goblin, like the one she had seen with Jessamine in Hyde Park, floating open-eyed in a large jar of preservative fluid.

And the remains of warlocks. Mummified taloned hands, like Mrs. Black’s. A stripped skull, utterly de-fleshed, human-looking save that it had tusks instead of teeth. Vials of sludgy-looking blood. Starkweather was now talking about how much warlock parts, especially a warlock’s “mark,” could be sold for on the Downworld market. Tessa felt dizzy and hot, her eyes burning.

Tessa turned around, her hands shaking. Jem and Will stood, looking at Starkweather with mute expressions of horror; the old man was holding up another hunting trophy—a human-looking head mounted to a backing. The skin had shriveled and gone gray, drawn back against the bones. Fleshless spiral horns protruded from the top of its skull. “Got this off a warlock I killed down by Leeds way,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the fight he put up—”

Starkweather’s voice hollowed out, and Tessa felt herself suddenly cut free and floating. Darkness rushed up, and then there were arms around her, and Jem’s voice. Words floated by her in ragged scraps. “My fiancée—never seen spoils before—can’t stand blood—very delicate—”

Tessa wanted to fight free of Jem, wanted to rush at Stark-weather and strike the old man, but she knew it would ruin everything if she did. She clenched her eyes shut and pressed her face against Jem’s chest, breathing him in. He smelled of soap and sandalwood. Then there were other hands on her, drawing her away from Jem. Starkweather’s maidservants. She heard Starkweather telling them to take her upstairs and help her to bed. She opened her eyes to see Jem’s troubled face as he looked after her, until the door of the spoils room closed between them.

It took Tessa a long time to fall asleep that night, and when she did, she had a nightmare. In the dream she lay manacled to the brass bed in the house of the Dark Sisters . . .

Light like thin gray soup seeped through the windows. The door opened and Mrs. Dark came in, followed by her sister, who had no head, only the white bone of her spine protruding from her raggedly severed neck.

“Here she is, the pretty, pretty princess,” said Mrs. Dark, clapping her hands together. “Just think of what we will get for all the parts of her. A hundred each for her little white hands, and a thousand for the pair of her eyes. We’d get more if they were blue, of course, but one can’t have everything.”

She chuckled, and the bed began to spin as Tessa screamed and thrashed in the darkness. Faces appeared above her: Mortmain, his narrow features screwed up in amusement. “And they say the worth of a good woman is far above rubies,” he said. “What of the worth of a warlock?”

“Put her in a cage, I say, and let the groundlings stare at her for pennies,” said Nate, and suddenly the bars of a cage sprang up around her and he was laughing at her from the other side, his pretty face twisted up in scorn. Henry was there too, shaking his head. “I’ve taken her all apart,” he said, “and I can’t see what makes that heart of hers beat. Still, it’s quite a curiosity, isn’t it?” He opened his hand, and there was something red and fleshy on his palm, pulsing and contracting like a fish flipped out of water, gasping for air. “See how it’s divided into two quite equal parts—”

“Tess,” a voice came, urgently, in her ear. “Tess, you’re dreaming. Wake up. Wake up.” Hands were on her shoulders, shaking her; her eyes flew open, and she was gasping in her ugly gray dimly lit bedroom at the York Institute. The covers were tangled around her, and her nightgown stuck to her back with sweat. Her skin felt as if it were burning. She still saw the Dark Sisters, saw Nate laughing at her, Henry dissecting her heart.

“It was a dream?” she said. “It felt so real, so utterly real—”

She broke off.

“Will,” she whispered. He still wore his dinner clothes, though they were rumpled, his black hair tangled, as if he had fallen asleep without changing for bed. His hands remained on her shoulders, warming her cold skin through the material of her nightgown.

“What did you dream?” he said. His tone was calm and ordinary, as if there were nothing unusual about her waking up and finding him sitting on the edge of her bed.

She shuddered at the memory. “I dreamed I was being taken apart—that bits of me were being put on display for Shadowhunters to laugh at—”

“Tess.” He touched her hair gently, pushing the tangled locks behind her ears. She felt pulled to him, like iron filings to a magnet. Her arms ached to go around him, her head to rest in the crook of his shoulder. “God damn that devil Starkweather for showing you what he did, but you must know it’s not like that anymore. The Accords have forbidden spoils. It was just a dream.”

But no, she thought. This is the dream. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark; the gray light in the room made his eyes glow an almost unearthly blue, like a cat’s. When she drew a shuddering breath, her lungs felt filled with the scent of him, Will and salt and trains and smoke and rain, and she wondered if he had been out, walking the streets of York as he did in London. “Where have you been?” she whispered. “You smell like nighttime.”

“Out kicking over the traces. As usual.” He touched her cheek with warm, callused fingers. “Can you sleep now? We’re meant to rise early tomorrow. Starkweather is lending us his carriage so that we might investigate Ravenscar Manor. You, of course, are welcome to remain here. You need not accompany us.”

She shuddered. “Stay here without you? In this big, gloomy place? I would prefer not to.”

“Tess.” His voice was ever so gentle. “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?”

Their gazes caught and locked. She thought of the wave that seemed to catch at her whenever she was near Will, how she had felt herself drawn over and under, pulled to him by forces that seemed beyond her control—in the attic, on the roof of the Institute. As if he felt the same pull, he bent toward her now. It felt natural, as right as breathing, to lift her head, to meet his lips with hers. She felt his soft exhalation against her mouth; relief, as if a great weight had been taken from him. His hands rose to cup her face. Even as her eyes fluttered shut, she heard his voice in her head, again, unbidden: