Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

Brother Enoch laid the blade of the Mortal Sword flat across Jessamine’s palms. He did it without either force or gentleness, as if he were hardly aware of her as a person at all. He let the blade go and stepped back; even Jessamine’s eyes rounded in surprise; the blade seemed to balance perfectly across her hands, utterly immobile.

“It is not a torture device, Jessamine,” said Charlotte, her hands folded in front of her. “We must employ it only because you cannot be trusted to tell the truth otherwise.” She held up the invitation. “This is yours, is it not?”

Jessamine did not answer. She was looking at Brother Enoch, her eyes wide and black with terror, her chest rising and falling fast. “I cannot think, not with that monster in the room—” Her voice trembled.

Charlotte’s mouth thinned, but she turned to Enoch and spoke a few words. He nodded, then glided silently from the room. As the door shut behind him, Charlotte said, “There. He is waiting in the corridor. Do not think he will not catch you should you try to run, Jessamine.”

Jessamine nodded. She seemed to droop, broken like a toy doll.

Charlotte fluttered the invitation in her hand. “This is yours, yes? And it was sent to you by Nathaniel Gray. This writing is his.”

“Y-yes.” The word seemed pulled from Jessamine against her will.

“How long have you been meeting him in secret?”

Jessamine set her mouth, but her lips were trembling. A moment later a torrent of words burst from her mouth. Her eyes darted round in shock as if she could not believe she was speaking. “He sent me a message only a few days after Mortmain invaded the Institute. He apologized for his behavior toward me. He said he was grateful for my nursing of him and that he had not been able to forget my graciousness or my beauty. I—I wanted to ignore him. But a second letter came, and a third. . . . I agreed to meet him. I left the Institute in the middle of the night and we met in Hyde Park. He kissed me—”

“Enough of that,” said Charlotte. “How long did it take him to convince you to spy on us?”

“He said that he was only working for Mortmain until he could put together enough of a fortune to live comfortably. I said we could live together on my fortune, but he wouldn’t have it. It had to be his money. He said he would not live off his wife. Is that not noble?”

“So by this point he had already proposed?”

“He proposed the second time we met.” Jessamine sounded breathy. “He said he knew there would never be another woman for him. And he promised that once he had enough money, I would have just the life I had always wanted, that we would never worry about money, and that there would be ch-children.” She sniffled.

“Oh, Jessamine.” Charlotte sounded almost sad.

Jessamine flushed. “It was true! He loved me! He has more than proved it. We are married! It was done most properly in a church with a minister—”

“Probably a deconsecrated church and some flunky dressed to look like a minister,” said Charlotte. “What do you know of mundane weddings, Jessie? How would you know what a proper wedding was ? I give you my word that Nathaniel Gray does not consider you his wife.”

“He does, he does, he does !” Jessamine shrieked, and tried to pull away from the Sword. It stuck to her hands as if it had been nailed there. Her wails went up an octave. “I am Jessamine Gray!”

“You are a traitor to the Clave. What else did you tell Nathaniel?”

“Everything,” Jessamine gasped. “Where you were looking for Mortmain, which Downworlders you had contacted in your attempt to find him. That was why he was never anywhere you searched. I warned him about the trip to York. That is why he sent the automatons to Will’s family’s home. Mortmain wanted to terrify you into ceasing the search. He considers you all pestilential annoyances. But he is not afraid of you.” Her chest was heaving up and down. “He will win out over you all. He knows it. So do I.”

Charlotte leaned forward, her hands on her hips. “But he did not succeed in terrifying us into ceasing the search,” she said. “The automatons he sent tried to snatch Tessa but failed—”

“They weren’t sent to try to snatch Tessa. Oh, he still plans to take her, but not like that, not yet. His plan is close to realization, and that is when he will move to take the Institute, to take Tessa—”

“How close is he? Has he managed to open the Pyxis?” Charlotte snapped.

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“So you told Nate everything and he told you nothing. What of Benedict? Why has he agreed to work hand in glove with Mortmain? I always knew he was an unpleasant man, but it seems unlike him to betray the Clave.”

Jessamine shook her head. She was sweating, her fair hair stuck to her temples. “Mortmain is holding something over him, something he wants. I don’t know what it is. But he will do anything to get it.”

“Including handing me over to Mortmain,” said Tessa. Charlotte looked at her in surprise when she spoke, and seemed about to interrupt her, but Tessa hurtled on. “What is this about having me falsely accused of possessing articles of dark magic? How was that to be accomplished?”

“The Book of the White,” Jessamine gasped. “I—took it from the locked case in the library. Hid it in your room while you were out.”

“Where in my room?”

“Loose floorboard—near the fireplace.” Jessamine’s pupils were enormous. “Charlotte . . . please . . .”

But Charlotte was relentless. “Where is Mortmain? Has he spoken to Nate of his plans for the Pyxis, for his automatons?”

“I—” Jessamine took a shuddering gasp. Her face was dark red. “I can’t—”

“Nate wouldn’t have told her,” said Tessa. “He would have known she might have been caught, and he would have thought she’d crack under torture and spill everything. He would.”

Jessamine gave her a venomous look. “He hates you, you know,” she said. “He says that all his life you looked down on him, you and your aunt with your silly provincial morality, judging him for everything he did. Always telling him what to do, never wanting him to get ahead. Do you know what he calls you? He—”

“I don’t care,” Tessa lied; her voice shook slightly. Despite everything, hearing that her brother hated her hurt more than she had thought it could. “Did he say what I am? Why I have the power I do?”

“He said that your father was a demon.” Jessamine’s lips twitched. “And that your mother was a Shadowhunter.”

The door opened softly, so softly that had Magnus not already been drifting in and out of sleep, the noise would not have woken him.

He looked up. He was sitting in an armchair near the fire, as his favorite place on the sofa was taken up by Will. Will, in bloody shirtsleeves, was sleeping the heavy sleep of the drugged and healing. His forearm was bandaged to the elbow, his cheeks flushed, his head pillowed on his unhurt arm. The tooth Will had pulled from his arm sat on the side table beside him, gleaming like ivory.

The door to the drawing room stood open behind him. And there, framed in the archway, was Camille.

She wore a black velvet traveling cloak open over a brilliant green dress that matched her eyes. Her hair was dressed high on her head with emerald combs, and as he watched, she drew off her white kid gloves, deliberately slowly, one by one, and laid them on the table by the door.

“Magnus,” she said, and her voice, as always, sounded like silvery bells. “Did you miss me?”

Magnus sat up straight. The firelight played over Camille’s shining hair, her poreless white skin. She was extraordinarily beautiful. “I did not realize you would be favoring me with your presence tonight.”