Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(127)

“Tessa.” It was Will; she would have known his speech anywhere. “Tessa, wake up, wake up. Tessa, please.”

She could hear the pain in his voice and wanted to reach out for him, but as she lifted her arms, the flames rose and charred her fingers. Her hands turned to ash and blew away on the hot wind.

Tessa tossed on her bed in a delirium of fever and nightmares. The sheets, twisted around her, were soaked with sweat, her hair plastered to her temples. Her skin, always pale, was near-translucent, showing the mapping of veins beneath her skin, the shape of her bones. Her clockwork angel was at her throat; every once in a while she would catch at it, and then cry out in a lost voice, as if the touch pained her.

“She’s in so much agony.” Charlotte dipped a cloth in cool water and pressed it to Tessa’s burning forehead. The girl made a soft protesting sound at the touch but didn’t move to bat Charlotte’s hand away. Charlotte would have liked to think it was because the cool cloths were helping, but she knew that it was more likely that Tessa was simply becoming too exhausted. “Isn’t there anything more we can do?”

The angel’s fire is leaving her body. Brother Enoch, standing at Charlotte’s side, spoke in his eerie omnidirectional whisper. It will take the time it takes. She will be free of pain when it is gone.

“But she will live?”

She has survived thus far. The Silent Brother sounded grim. The fire should have killed her. It would have killed any normal human. But she is part Shadowhunter and part demon, and she was protected by the angel whose fire she drew on. It shielded her even in those last moments as it blazed up and burned away its own corporeal form.

Charlotte could not help but remember the circular room under Cadair Idris, Tessa stepping forward and transforming from girl into flame, blazing up like a column of fire, her hair turning to tendrils of sparks, the light of it blinding and terrifying. Crouched on the floor by Henry’s body, Charlotte had wondered how even angels could burn like that and live.

When the angel had left Tessa, she had collapsed, her clothes hanging in tatters and her skin covered in marks as if she had been scorched. Several Shadowhunters had rushed to her side between the crumpling automatons, though it had been something of a blur to Charlotte—scenes viewed through the wavering lens of her terror over Henry: Will lifting Tessa in his arms; the Magister’s stronghold beginning to close itself up behind them, doors slamming closed as they raced through the corridors, Magnus’s blue fire lighting them a path to escape. The creation of a second Portal. More Silent Brothers waiting for them at the Institute, scarred hands and scarred faces, shutting out even Charlotte as they closed themselves in with Henry and Tessa. Will turning to Jem, his expression stricken. He had reached out for his parabatai.

“James,” he had said. “You can find out—what they’re doing to her—if she’ll live—”

But Brother Enoch had stepped between them. His name is not James Carstairs, he had said. It is Zachariah now.

Will’s look, the way he had lowered his hand. “Let him speak for himself.”

But Jem had only turned, turned and walked away from all of them, out of the Institute, Will watching him go in disbelief, and Charlotte had remembered the first time they had ever met: Are you really dying? I am sorry.

It was Will, still looking stunned and disbelieving, who had explained to them all, haltingly, Tessa’s story: the function of the clockwork angel, the tale of the ill-fated Starkweathers, and the unorthodox manner of Tessa’s conception. Aloysius had been right, Charlotte reflected. Tessa was his great-granddaughter. A descendant he would never know, for he had been slain in the Council massacre.

Charlotte couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it must have been like when the doors of the Council room had opened and the automatons had poured in. Councils were not required to be unarmed, but they were not prepared to fight. Nor had most Shadowhunters ever faced an automaton. Even to imagine the slaughter chilled her. She was overwhelmed by the enormity of the loss to the Shadowhunter world, though it would have been much greater had Tessa not made the sacrifice she did. All the automatons had fallen with Mortmain’s death, even the ones in the Council rooms, and the majority of the Shadowhunters had survived, though there had been heavy losses—including the Consul.

“Part demon and part Shadowhunter,” Charlotte murmured now, gazing down at Tessa. “What does that make her?”

Nephilim blood is dominant. A new kind of Shadowhunter. New is not always a bad thing, Charlotte.

It was because of that Nephilim blood that they had gone so far as to try healing runes upon Tessa, but the runes had simply sunk into her skin and vanished, like words written in water. Charlotte reached out now to touch Tessa’s collarbone, where the rune had been inked. Her skin was hot to the touch.

“Her clockwork angel,” Charlotte observed. “It has stopped its ticking.”

The angel’s presence has left it. Ithuriel is free, and Tessa unprotected, though with the Magister dead, and as a Nephilim herself, she will likely be safe. As long as she does not attempt to transform herself into an angel a second time. It would certainly kill her.

“There are other dangers.”

We all must face dangers, said Brother Enoch. It was the same cool, unruffled mental voice he had used when he had told her that though Henry would live, he would never walk again.