Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(119)

“Interesting,” he said.

Will made an incoherent noise of protest. “Interesting? By the Angel, Magnus—”

Magnus gave him a wry look. There was something in it—something that made Tessa feel as if Magnus knew something they didn’t. “If I were a different person, I would have a lot to say to you right now,” he said.

“I appreciate your restraint.”

“You won’t soon,” said Magnus shortly. Then he reached up as if he were knocking on a door, and tapped the invisible wall between them. It was like watching someone plunge their hand into water—ripples spread out from the place where his fingers touched, and suddenly the wall slid away and was gone, in a shower of blue sparks. “Here,” the warlock said, and tossed a tied leather sack onto the foot of the bed. “I brought gear. I thought you might be in need of clothing, but I didn’t realize quite how in need.”

Tessa glared at him around Will’s shoulder. “How did you find us here? How did you know—which of the others are with you? Are they all right?”

“Yes. Quite a few of them are, hurrying through this place, looking for you. Now get dressed,” he said, and turned his back, giving them privacy. Tessa, mortified, reached for the sack on the bed, scrabbled through it until she found her gear, and then stood up with the sheet wrapped around her body and dashed behind the tall Chinese screen in the corner of the room.

She did not look at Will as she went; she couldn’t bring herself to. How could she look at him without thinking of what they’d done? Wondering if he was horrified, if he couldn’t believe either of them would do such a thing after Jem—

Viciously she yanked on the gear. Thank goodness that gear, unlike dresses, could be assembled on the body without recourse to help from anyone else. Through the screen she heard Magnus explaining to Will that he and Henry had managed, through a combination of magic and invention, to create a Portal that would transport them from London to Cadair Idris. She could see them only in silhouette, but she saw Will nodding in relief as Magnus listed those who had come with him—Henry, Charlotte, the Lightwood brothers, Cyril, Sophie, Cecily, Bridget, and a group of the Silent Brothers.

At the mention of his sister’s name, Will began to pull on his clothes with even greater haste, and by the time Tessa stepped out from behind the screen, he was entirely dressed in gear, his boots laced up, his hands buckling on his weapons belt. As he saw her, his face broke into a tentative smile.

“The others have all spread out through the tunnels to find you,” Magnus said. “We were meant to take a half hour to search and then meet up in a central chamber. I will give you two a moment to—collect yourselves.” He smirked, and pointed to the door. “I shall be outside in the corridor.”

The moment the door closed behind him, Tessa was in Will’s arms, her hands locked about his neck. “Oh, by the Angel,” she said. “That was mortifying.”

Will slid his hands into her hair and was kissing her, kissing her eyelids and her cheeks and then her mouth, quickly but with fervor and concentration, as if nothing could be more important. “Listen to you,” he said. “You said ‘by the Angel.’ Like a Shadowhunter.” He kissed the side of her mouth. “I love you. God, I love you. I waited so long to say it.”

She curved her hands about the sides of his waist, holding him there, the material of his gear rough beneath her fingertips. “Will,” she said hesitantly. “You’re not—sorry?”

“Sorry?” He looked at her in disbelief. “Nage ddim—you’re mad if you think I’m sorry, Tess.” His knuckle brushed her cheek. “There is more, so much more I want to say to you—”

“No,” she teased. “Will Herondale, with more to say?”

He ignored this. “But now is not the time—not with Mortmain breathing down our necks, most likely, and Magnus outside the door. Now is the time to finish this. But when it is over, Tess, I will say everything to you I have always wanted to say. As for now—” He kissed her temple, and released her, his eyes searching her face. “I need to know you believe me when I say I love you. That is all.”

“I believe everything you say,” Tessa said with a smile, her hands creeping down from his waist to his weapons belt. Her fingers closed on the hilt of a dagger, and she yanked it from the belt, smiling as he looked down at her in surprise. She kissed his cheek and stepped back. “After all,” she said, “you weren’t lying about that tattoo of the dragon of Wales, were you?”

The room reminded Cecily of the inside of Saint Paul’s dome, which Will had taken her to see on one of his less disagreeable days, after she had first come to London. It was the grandest building she had ever been inside. They had tested the echo of their voices in the interior Whispering Gallery and read the inscription left by Christopher Wren: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. “If you seek his monument, look about you.”

Will had explained to her what it meant, that Wren preferred to be remembered by the works he had built rather than any tombstone. The whole of the cathedral was a monument to his craft—as, in a way, the whole of this labyrinth beneath the mountain, and this room especially, was a monument to Mortmain’s.

There was a domed ceiling here, too, though there were no windows, only an upward-reaching hollow in the stone. A circular gallery ran around the upper part of the dome, and there was a platform on it, from which, presumably, one could stand and look down at the floor, which was smooth stone.