Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(113)

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—”