Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(147)

Will nodded. Magnus turned away, hands in the pockets of his coat, and began to walk toward the gates of the Institute. Will watched until his retreating figure faded into the whiteness of the falling snow.

Tessa had slipped out of the ballroom without anyone noticing. Even the usually keen-eyed Charlotte was distracted, sitting beside Henry in his wheeled chair, her hand in his, smiling at the antics of the musicians.

It did not take Tessa long to find Will. She had guessed where he would be, and she was correct—standing on the front steps of the Institute, without a coat or hat, letting the snow fall on his head and shoulders. There was a white dusting of it all over the courtyard, like icing sugar, frosting the line of carriages waiting there, the black iron gates, the flagstones upon which Jessamine had died. Will was staring intently ahead of him, as if trying to discern something through the descending flakes.

“Will,” Tessa said, and he turned to look up at her. She had caught up a silk wrap, but nothing heavier, and she felt the cool sting of snowflakes against the bare skin of her neck and shoulders.

“I should have been more polite to Elias Carstairs,” Will said by way of reply. He was looking up at the sky, where a pale crescent of moon darted in between thick sweeps of cloud and fog. Flakes of white snow had fallen and mixed with his black hair. His cheeks and lips were flushed with the cold. He looked more handsome than she had ever remembered him. “Instead I behaved as I would have—before.”

Tessa knew what he meant. For Will there was only one before and after.

“You are allowed to have a temper,” she said. “I have told you before, I do not want you to be perfect. Only to be Will.”

“Who will never be perfect.”

“Perfect is dull,” Tessa said, descending the last step to stand beside him. “They are playing ‘complete the poetic quotation’ inside now. You could have made quite a showing. I do not think there is anyone there who could challenge your knowledge of literature.”

“Other than you.”

“I would be difficult competition indeed. Perhaps we could make ourselves a team of sorts, and divide the winnings.”

“That seems bad form.” Will spoke absently, tilting back his head. The snow circled whitely about them, as if they stood at the bottom of a whirlpool. “Today, when Sophie Ascended …”

“Yes?”

“Is that something that you would have wanted?” He turned to look at her, white snowflakes caught in his dark lashes. “For yourself?”

“You know that isn’t possible for me, Will. I am a warlock. Or at least, that is the closest approximation of what I am. I cannot ever be fully Nephilim.”

“I know.” He looked down at his hands, opening his fingers to let snowflakes settle, melting, on his palms. “But in Cadair Idris you said that you had hoped to be a Shadowhunter—that Mortmain had dashed those hopes—”

“I did feel that way at the time,” she allowed. “But when I became Ithuriel—when I Changed and destroyed Mortmain—how could I hate something that allowed me to protect the ones I care about? It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique. But I begin to think I was never meant for an easy road.”

Will laughed. “The easy road? No, not for you, my Tessa.”

“Am I your Tessa?” She drew her wrap closer around herself, pretending her shiver was just the cold. “Are you bothered by what I am, Will? That I am not like you?”

The words hung between them, unspoken: There is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks.

Will paled. “Those things I said on the roof, so long ago—you know I did not mean them.”

“I know—”

“I do not wish you other than you are, Tessa. You are what you are, and I love you. I do not love just the parts of you that meet with the Clave’s approval—”

She raised her eyebrows. “You are willing to endure the rest?”

He raked a hand through his dark, snow-dampened hair. “No. I am misspeaking. There is nothing about you that I can imagine not loving. Do you really think it is so important to me that you be Nephilim? My mother isn’t a Shadowhunter. And when I saw you Change into the angel—when I saw you blaze forth with the fire of Heaven—it was glorious, Tess.” He took a step toward her. “What you are, what you can do, it is like some great miracle of the earth, like fire or wildflowers or the breadth of the sea. You are unique in the world, just as you are unique in my heart, and there will never be a time when I do not love you. I would love you if you were not in any part a Shadowhunter at all—”

She gave him a shaky smile. “But I am glad that I am, if only by half,” she said, “since it means that I may stay with you, here, in the Institute. That the family I have found here can remain my family. Charlotte said that if I chose, I could cease to be a Gray and take the name my mother should have had before she was married. I could be a Starkweather. I could have a true Shadowhunter name.”

She heard Will exhale a breath. It came out a puff of white in the cold. His eyes were blue and wide and clear, fixed on her face. He wore the expression of a man who had steeled himself to do a terrifying thing, and was carrying it through. “Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.”

Tessa stared at him, all black and white against the black-and-white snow and stone. “Your name?”