Clockwork Princess
Page 42

Tessa made a small sound in her throat.
"It was his choice, Tessa. Not something you forced upon him. He was never as happy as when he was with you." Will was not looking at her, but at the fire. "Whatever else I have ever said to you, no matter what, I am glad he had that time with you. You should be as well."
"You do not sound glad."
Will was still looking into the fire. His black hair had been damp when he had come into the room, and it had dried in loose curls against his temples and forehead. "I disappointed him," he said. "He entrusted this to me, this one task, to follow you and to find you, to bring you home safely. And now I fail at the final hurdle." He finally turned to look at her, his blue eyes unseeing. "I would not have left him. I would have stayed with him if he had asked, until he died. I would have stood by my oath. But he asked me to go after you ..."
"Then you only did what he asked. You did not disappoint him."
"But it was also what was in my heart," Will said. "I cannot separate selfishness from selflessness now. When I dreamed of saving you, the way you would look at me-" His voice dropped off abruptly. "I am well punished for that hubris, at any rate."
"But I am rewarded." Tessa slipped her hand into his. His calluses were rough against her palm. She saw his chest hitch with surprised breath. "For I am not alone; I have you with me. And we should not give up all hope. There might still be a chance for us. To overpower Mortmain, or slip past him. If anyone can conjure a way to do it, you can."
He turned his gaze on her. His lashes shadowed his eyes as he said, "You are a wonder, Tessa Gray. To have such faith in me, though I have done nothing to earn it."
"Nothing?" Her voice rose. "Nothing to earn it? Will, you saved me from the Dark Sisters, you pushed me away to save me, you've saved me over and over again. You are a good man, one of the best I've ever known."
Will looked as stunned as if she had pushed him. He licked his dry lips. "I wish you wouldn't say that," he whispered.
She leaned toward him. His face was shadows, angles and planes; she wanted to touch him, touch the curve of his mouth, the arc of his lashes against his cheek. Fire reflected in his eyes, pinpricks of light. "Will," she said. "The first time I saw you, I thought you looked like a hero from a storybook. You joked that you were Sir Galahad. Remember that? And for so long I tried to understand you that way-as if you were Mr. Darcy, or Lancelot, or poor miserable Sydney Carton-and that was just a disaster. It took me so long to understand, but I did, and I do now-you are not a hero out of a book."
Will gave a short, disbelieving laugh. "It's true," he said. "I am no hero."
"No," Tessa said. "You are a person, just like me." His eyes searched her face, mystified; she held his hand tighter, lacing her fingers with his. "Don't you see, Will? You're a person like me. You are like me. You say the things I think but never say out loud. You read the books I read. You love the poetry I love. You make me laugh with your ridiculous songs and the way you see the truth of everything. I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way." With the hand that was not holding his, she touched his cheek, lightly. "We are the same."
Will's eyes fluttered closed; she felt his lashes against her fingertips. When he spoke again, his voice was ragged but controlled. "Don't say those things, Tessa. Don't say them."
"Why not?"
"You said I am a good man," he said. "But I am not that good a man. And I am-I am catastrophically in love with you."
"Will-"
"I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and when you're this close to me, I forget who you are. I forget you're Jem's. I'd have to be the worst sort of person to think what I'm thinking right now. But I am thinking it."
"I loved Jem," she said. "I love him still, and he loved me, but I am not anybody's, Will. My heart is my own. It is beyond you to control it. It has been beyond me to control it."
Will's eyes were still closed. His chest was rising and falling swiftly, and she could hear the hard thump of his heart, rapid beneath the solidity of his rib cage. His body was warm against hers, and alive, and she thought of the automatons' cold hands on her, and Mortmain's colder eyes. She thought of what would happen if she lived and Mortmain succeeded in what he wanted and she was shackled to him all her life-a man she did not love and in fact despised.
She thought of the feel of his cold hands on her, and if those would be the only hands that would ever touch her again.
"What do you think will happen tomorrow, Will?" she whispered. "When Mortmain finds us. Tell me honestly."
His hand moved carefully, almost unwillingly, to slide down her hair and come to rest at the juncture of her neck. She wondered if he could feel the pounding of her pulse, answering his. "I think Mortmain will kill me. Or to be precise, he will have those creatures kill me. I am a decent Shadowhunter, Tess, but those automatons-they cannot be stopped. Runed blades serve as no better than ordinary weapons upon them, and seraph blades not at all."
"But you are not afraid."
"There are so many worse things than death," he said. "Not to be loved or not to be able to love: that is worse. And to go down fighting as a Shadowhunter should, there is no dishonor in that. An honorable death-I have always wanted that."
A shiver passed through Tessa. "There are two things I want," she said, and was surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. "If you think Mortmain will try to kill you tomorrow, then I wish to be given a weapon. I shall divest myself of my clockwork angel, and I shall fight by your side, and if we go down, we go down together. For, I too, wish an honorable death, like Boadicea."
"Tess-"
"I would rather die than be the Magister's tool. Give me a weapon, Will."
She felt his body shudder against hers. "I can do that for you," he said at last, subdued. "What was the second thing? That you wanted?"
She swallowed. "I want to kiss you one more time before I die."
His eyes flew wide. They were blue, blue like the sea and sky in her dream where he had fallen away from her, blue as the flowers Sophie had put in her hair. "Don't-"
"Say anything I don't mean," she finished for him. "I know. I am not. I mean it, Will. And I know it is entirely beyond the bounds of propriety to ask it. I know I must seem a bit mad." She glanced down, and then up again, gathering her courage. "And if you can tell me that you can die tomorrow without our lips ever touching again, and you will not regret it at all, then tell me, and I will desist in asking, for I know I have no right-"
Her words were cut off, for he had caught hold of her and pulled her against him, and crushed his lips down against hers. For a split second it was almost painful, sharp with desperation and thinly controlled hunger, and she tasted salt and heat in her mouth and the gasp of his breath. And then he gentled, with a force of restraint she could feel all through her body, and the slide of lips against lips, the interplay of tongue and teeth, altered from pain to pleasure in the sliver of a moment.
On the balcony at the Lightwoods', he had been so careful, but he was not being careful now. His hands slid roughly down her back, tangling in her hair, fisting in the loose fabric at the back of her dress. Half-lifting her so their bodies collided; he was against her, the long slim length of his body, hard and fragile at the same time. Her head slanted to the side as he parted her lips with his and they were not so much kissing as devouring each other. Her fingers gripped his hair tightly, hard enough that it must have hurt, and her teeth grazed his bottom lip. He groaned and pulled her tighter, making her gasp for air.
"Will-," she whispered, and he stood up, lifting her in his arms, still kissing her. She held tight to his back and shoulders as he carried her over to the bed and laid her down on it. She was already barefoot; he kicked off his boots and climbed up beside her. Part of her training had been in how to remove gear, and her hands were light and quick on his gear, undoing the clasps and pulling it aside like a shell. He batted it aside impatiently, and knelt upright to undo his weapons belt.
She watched him, swallowing hard. If she was going to tell him to stop, now was the moment. His scarred hands were nimble, undoing the fastenings, and as he turned to drop the belt over the side of the bed, his shirt-damp with sweat, and sticking to him-slid up and showed her the hollow curve of his stomach, the arched bone of his hip. She had always thought Will was beautiful, his eyes and lips and face, but she had never particularly thought of his body that way. But the shape of him was lovely, like the planes and angles of Michelangelo's David. She reached out to touch him, to run her fingers, as soft as spider silk, across the flat hard skin of his stomach.
His response was immediate and startling. He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes, his body going very still. She ran her fingers along the waistband of his trousers, her heart pounding, hardly knowing what she was doing-there was an instinct here, driving her, that she couldn't identify or explain. Her hand curved about his waist, thumb flicking against his hipbone, drawing him down.
He slid down over her, slowly, elbows resting on either side of her shoulders. Their eyes met, held; they were touching all along their bodies, but neither of them spoke. Her throat ached: adoration, heartbreak, in equal measure. "Kiss me," she said.
He lowered himself slowly, slowly, until their lips just brushed. She arched upward, wanting to meet his mouth with hers, but he drew back, nuzzling at her cheek, now his lips pressing the corner of her mouth-and then along her jaw and down her throat, sending little shocks of astonished pleasure through her body. She had always thought of her arms, her hands, her neck, her face, as separate-not that her skin was all the same delicate envelope, and that a kiss placed on her throat might be felt all the way down to the bottom of her feet.
"Will." Her hands pulled at his shirt, and it came away, the buttons tearing, his head shaking free of the fabric, all wild dark hair, Heathcliff on the moors. His hands were less sure on her dress, but it came away as well, off over her head, and was cast aside, leaving Tessa in her chemise and corset. She went motionless, shocked at being so undressed in front of anyone but Sophie, and Will took a wild look at her corset that was only part desire.
"How-," he said. "Does it come off?"
Tessa couldn't help herself; despite everything, she giggled. "It laces," she whispered. "In the back." And she guided his hands around her until his fingers were on the strings of the corset. She shivered then, and not from cold but from the intimacy of the gesture. Will pulled her against him, gentle now, and kissed the line of her throat again, and her shoulder where the chemise bared it, his breath soft and hot against her skin until she was breathing just as hard, her hands smoothing up and over his shoulders, his arms, his sides. She kissed the white scars the Marks had left on his skin, winding herself around him until they were a heated tangle of limbs and she was swallowing down the gasps he made against her mouth.
"Tess," he whispered. "Tess-if you want to stop-"
She shook her head silently. The fire in the grate had nearly burned down again; Will was all angles and shadows and soft and hard skin against her. No.
"You want this?" His voice was hoarse.
"Yes," she said. "Do you?"
His finger traced the outline of her mouth. "For this I would have been damned forever. For this I would have given up everything."
She felt the burn behind her eyes, the pressure of tears, and blinked wet eyelashes. "Will ..."
"Dw i'n dy garu di am byth," he said. "I love you. Always." And he moved to cover her body with his own.
Late in the night or early in the morning, Tessa woke. The fire had burned down entirely, but the room was lit by the peculiar torchlight that seemed to go on and off without rhyme or reason.
She drew back, propping herself on her elbow. Will was asleep beside her, immured in the unmoving slumber of the utterly exhausted. He looked at peace, though-more so than she had ever seen him before. His breath was regular, his eyelashes fluttering slightly in dreams.
She had fallen asleep with her head on his arm, the clockwork angel, still around her throat, resting against his shoulder, just to the left of his collarbone. As she moved away, the clockwork angel slipped free and she saw to her surprise that where it had lain against his skin it had left a mark behind, no bigger than a shilling, in the shape of a pale white star.
Chapter 20 The Infernal Devices
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille,
Then took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
-Oscar Wilde, "The Harlot's House"
"It's beautiful," Henry breathed.
The Shadowhunters of the London Institute-along with Magnus Bane-stood in a loose half circle in the crypt, staring at one of the bare stone walls-or, more precisely, at something that had appeared on one of the bare stone walls.
It was a glowing archway, about ten feet in height, and perhaps five across in width. It was not carved into the stone but rather was made of glowing runes that twined into one another like the vines of a trellis. The runes were not from the Gray Book-Gabriel would have recognized them if they had been-but were runes he had never seen before. They had the foreign look of another language, yet each was distinct and beautiful and spoke a murmuring song of travel and distance, of whirling dark space and the distance between worlds.
They glowed green in the darkness, pale and acidic. Within the space created by the runes the wall was not visible-only darkness, impenetrable, as if of a great dark pit.
"It truly is amazing," Magnus said.
All but the warlock were dressed in their gear and were bristling with weapons-Gabriel's favorite double-edged longsword was slung over his back, and he was itching to get his gloved hands on the hilt. Though he liked the bow and arrow, he had been trained in the longsword by a master who could trace his own masters back to Lichtenauer, and Gabriel fancied the longsword his specialty. Besides, a bow and arrow would be much less use against automatons than a weapon that could chop them into component parts.
"All down to you, Magnus," Henry said. He was glowing-or, Gabriel thought, it could have been the reflection of the lighted runes against his face.