Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

A knock came at the door. Sophie, Tessa thought hopefully, back for an apology. Well, she would get one. Tessa dropped the hairbrush and rushed to throw the door open.

Just as once before she had expected Jem and been disappointed to find Sophie on her threshold, now, in expecting Sophie, she was surprised to find Jem at her door. He wore a gray wool jacket and trousers, against which his silvery hair looked nearly white.

“Jem,” she said, startled. “Is everything all right?”

His gray eyes searched her face, her long, loose hair. “You look as if you were waiting for someone else.”

“Sophie.” Tessa sighed, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I fear I have offended her. My habit of speaking before I think has caught me out again.”

“Oh,” said Jem, with an uncharacteristic lack of interest. Usually he would have asked Tessa what she had said to Sophie, and either reassured her or helped her plot a course of action to win Sophie’s forgiveness. His customary vivid interest in everything seemed oddly missing, Tessa thought with alarm; he was quite pale as well, and seemed to be glancing behind her as if checking to see whether she was quite alone. “Is now—that is, I would like to speak to you in private, Tessa. Are you feeling well enough?”

“That depends on what you have to tell me,” she said with a laugh, but when her laugh brought no answering smile, apprehension rose inside her. “Jem—you promise everything’s all right? Will—”

“This is not about Will,” he said. “Will is out wandering and no doubt perfectly all right. This is about—Well, I suppose you might say it’s about me.” He glanced up and down the corridor. “Might I come in?”

Tessa briefly thought about what Aunt Harriet would say about a girl who allowed a boy she was not related to into her bedroom when there was no one else there. But then Aunt Harriet herself had been in love once, Tessa thought. Enough in love to let her fiancé do—well, whatever it was exactly that left one with child. Aunt Harriet, had she been alive, would have been in no position to talk. And besides, etiquette was different for Shadowhunters.

She opened the door wide. “Yes, come in.”

Jem came into the room, and shut the door firmly behind him. He walked over to the grate and leaned an arm against the mantel; then, seeming to decide that this position was unsatisfactory, he came over to where Tessa was, in the middle of the room, and stood in front of her.

“Tessa,” he said.

“Jem,” she replied, mimicking his serious tone, but again he did not smile. “Jem,” she said again, more quietly. “If this is about your health, your—illness, please tell me. I will do whatever I can to help you.”

“It is not,” he said, “about my illness.” He took a deep breath. “You know we have not found Mortmain,” he said. “In a few days, the Institute may be given to Benedict Lightwood. He would doubtless allow Will and me to remain here, but not you, and I have no desire to live in a house that he runs. And Will and Gabriel would kill each other inside a minute. It would be the end of our little group; Charlotte and Henry would find a house, I have no doubt, and Will and I perhaps would go to Idris until we were eighteen, and Jessie—I suppose it depends what sentence the Clave passes on her. But we could not bring you to Idris with us. You are not a Shadowhunter.”

Tessa’s heart had begun to beat very fast. She sat down, rather suddenly, on the edge of her bed. She felt faintly sick. She remembered Gabriel’s sneering jibe about the Lightwoods’ finding “employment” for her; having been to the ball at their house, she could imagine little worse. “I see,” she said. “But where should I go—No, do not answer that. You hold no responsibility toward me. Thank you for telling me, at least.”

“Tessa—”

“You all have already been as kind as propriety has allowed,” she said, “given that allowing me to live here has done none of you any good in the eyes of the Clave. I shall find a place—”

“Your place is with me,” Jem said. “It always will be.”

“What do you mean?”

He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. “I mean,” he said, “Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Tessa sat bolt upright. “Jem!”

They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, “That was not a no, I suppose, though neither was it a yes.”

“You can’t mean it.”

“I do mean it.”

“You can’t—I’m not a Shadowhunter. They’ll expel you from the Clave—”

He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. “You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably a Downworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law. They will have to take your—our—individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent our engagement.”

“You are serious.” Her mouth was dry. “Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrifice yourself in that way for me.”

“ Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you.”

“I . . . Jem, it is just that you are kind, so selfless. How can I trust that you are not doing this simply for my sake?”

He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out something smooth and circular. It was a pendant of whitish-green jade, with Chinese characters carved into it that she could not read. He held it out to her with a hand that trembled ever so slightly.

“I could give you my family ring,” he said. “But that is meant to be given back when the engagement is over, exchanged for runes. I want to give you something that will be yours forever.”

She shook her head. “I cannot possibly—”

He interrupted her. “This was given to my mother by my father, when they married. The writing is from the I Ching, the Book of Changes. It says, When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze. ”

“And you think we are?” Tessa asked, shock making her voice small. “At one, that is?”

Jem knelt down at her feet, so that he was gazing up into her face. She saw him as he had been on Blackfriars Bridge, a lovely silver shadow against the darkness. “I cannot explain love,” he said. “I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you. That you were the center of everything I did and felt and thought.”

Overwhelmed, Tessa shook her head slowly. “Jem, I never imagined—”

“There is a force and strength in love,” he said. “That is what that inscription means. It is in the Shadowhunter wedding ceremony, too. For love is as strong as death. Have you not seen how much better I have been these past weeks, Tessa? I have been ill less, coughing less. I feel stronger, I need less of the drug—because of you. Because my love for you sustains me.”

Tessa stared. Was such a thing even possible, outside of fairy tales? His thin face glowed with light; it was clear he believed it, absolutely. And he had been better.

“You speak of sacrifice, but it is not my sacrifice I offer. It is yours I ask of you,” he went on. “I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope that you will not care that I am being selfish in trying to make the rest of my life—whatever its length—happy, by spending it with you. I want to be married to you, Tessa. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life.” He looked up at her through the veil of silvery hair that fell over his eyes. “That is,” he said shyly, “if you love me, too.”