Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“Will,” Tessa whispered. She felt peculiarly dizzy, as if she were floating.

Charlotte looked up. “Tessa,” she said. “Your brother . . .”

“He’s dead,” Tessa said through her daze. “But Will—?”

“He knocked you down and covered you to protect you from the explosion,” Jem said. There was no blame in his voice. “But there was nothing to protect him. You two were the closest to the blast. The metal fragments shredded his back. He’s losing blood quickly.”

“But isn’t there anything you can do?” Tessa’s voice rose, even as dizziness threatened to envelop her. “What about your healing runes? The iratzes ?”

“We used an amissio , a rune that slows blood loss, but if we attempt a healing rune, his skin will heal over the metal, driving it farther into the soft tissue,” said Henry flatly. “We need to get him back home to the infirmary. The metal must be removed before he can be healed.”

“Then, we must go.” Tessa’s voice was shaking. “We must—”

“Tessa,” said Jem. He still had his hand on Will’s shoulder, but he was looking at her, his eyes wide. “Did you know you’re hurt?”

She gestured impatiently at her shirt. “This isn’t my blood. This is Nate’s. Now we must—Can he be carried? Is there anything—”

“No,” Jem interrupted, sharply enough to surprise her. “Not the blood on your clothes. You’ve a gash on your head. Here.” He touched his temple.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tessa said. “I’m perfectly all right.” She put her hand up to touch her temple—and felt her hair, thick and stiff with blood, and the side of her face sticky with it, before her fingertips touched the ragged flap of torn skin that ran from the corner of her cheek to her temple. A searing bolt of pain shot through her head.

It was the last straw. Already weak from blood loss and dizzy from repeated shocks, she felt herself begin to crumple. She barely felt Jem’s arms go around her as she fell into the darkness.

Consciousness came and went in a hypnotic rhythm, like the sea appearing and disappearing on the deck of a boat in a storm. Tessa knew she lay in a bed with crisp white sheets in the center of a long room; that there were other beds, all the same, in the room; and that there were windows high above her letting in shadows and then the bloody light of dawn. She closed her eyes against it, and the darkness came again.

She woke to whispering voices, and faces hovering over her, anxious. Charlotte, her hair knotted back neatly, still in her gear, and beside her Brother Enoch. His scarred face was no longer a terror. She could hear his voice in her mind. The wound to her head is superficial.

“But she fainted,” said Charlotte. To Tessa’s surprise there was real fear in her voice, real anxiety. “With a blow to the head—”

She fainted from repeated shocks. Her brother died in her arms, you said? And she may have thought Will was dead as well. You said he covered her with his body when the explosion occurred. If he had died, he would have given his life for her. That is quite a burden to bear.

“But you do think she’ll be well again?”

When her body and spirit have rested, she will wake. I cannot say when that will be.

“My poor Tessa.” Charlotte touched Tessa’s face lightly. Her hands smelled of lemon soap. “She has no one in the world at all now. . . .”

The darkness returned, and Tessa fell into it, grateful for the respite from light and thought. She wrapped herself in it like a blanket and let herself float, like the icebergs off the coast of Labrador, cradled in the moonlight by icy black water.

A guttural cry of pain cut through her dream of darkness. She was curled on her side in a tangle of sheets, and a few beds away from her lay Will, on his stomach. She realized, though in her state of numbness it was only a faint shock, that he was probably naked; the sheets had been drawn up to his waist, but his back and chest were bare. His arms were folded on the pillows in front of him, his head resting on them, his body tensed like a bowstring. Blood spotted the white sheets beneath him.

Brother Enoch stood at one side of his bed, and beside him Jem, at Will’s head, wearing an anxious expression. “Will,” Jem said urgently. “Will, are you sure you won’t have another pain-killing rune?”

“No—more,” Will ground out, between his teeth. “Just—get it over with.”

Brother Enoch raised what looked like a wickedly sharp pair of silver tweezers. Will gulped and buried his head in his arms, his dark hair startling against the white of the sheets. Jem shuddered as if the pain were his own as the tweezers dug deep into Will’s back and his body tautened on the bed, muscles tensing under the skin, his cry of agony short and muffled. Brother Enoch drew back the tool, a blood-smeared shard of metal gripped in its teeth.

Jem slid his hand into Will’s. “Grip my fingers. It will help the pain. There are only a few more.”

“Easy—for you to say,” Will gasped, but the touch of his parabatai ’s hand seemed to relax him slightly. He was arched up off the bed, his elbows digging into the mattress, his breath coming in short pants. Tessa knew she ought to look away, but she couldn’t. She realized she had never seen so much of a boy’s body before, not even Jem’s. She found herself fascinated by the way the lean muscle slid under Will’s smooth skin, the flex and swell of his arms, the hard, flat stomach convulsing as he breathed.

The tweezers flashed again, and Will’s hand bore down on Jem’s, both their fingers whitening. Blood welled and spilled down his bare side. He made no sound, though Jem looked sick and pale. He moved his hand as if to touch Will’s shoulder, then drew it back, biting down on his lip.

All this because Will covered my body with his to protect me, Tessa thought. As Brother Enoch had said, it was a burden to bear indeed.

She lay on her narrow bed in her old room in the New York flat. Through the window she could see gray sky, the rooftops of Manhattan. One of her aunt’s colorful patchwork quilts was on the bed, and she clutched it to her as the door opened and her aunt herself came in.

Knowing what she knew now, Tessa could see the resemblance. Aunt Harriet had blue eyes, faded fair hair; even the shape of her face was like Nate’s. With a smile she came and bent over Tessa, putting a hand on her forehead, cool against Tessa’s hot skin.

“I’m so sorry,” Tessa whispered. “About Nate. It’s my fault he’s dead.”

“Hush,” her aunt said. “It isn’t your fault. It is his and mine. I always felt such guilt, you see, Tessa. Knowing I was his mother but not being able to bear telling him. I let him get away with anything he wanted, until he was spoiled beyond saving. If I had told him that I was really his mother, he would not have felt so betrayed when he discovered the truth, and would not have turned against us. Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.”

“I miss you so much,” Tessa said. “I have no family now. . . .”

Her aunt leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. “You have more family than you think.”

“We will almost certainly forfeit the Institute now,” said Charlotte. She did not sound brokenhearted, but distant and detached. Tessa was hovering like a ghost over the infirmary, looking down at where Charlotte stood with Jem at the foot of Tessa’s own bed. Tessa could see herself, asleep, her dark hair spread like a fan across her pillows. Will lay asleep a few beds over, his back striped with bandages, an iratze black against the back of his neck. Sophie, in her white cap and dark dress, was dusting the windowsills. “We have lost Nathaniel Gray as a source, one of our own has turned out to be a spy, and we are no closer to finding Mortmain than we were a fortnight ago.”