Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(18)

She was in the middle of beginning chapter five yet again when the creak of a floorboard alerted her, and she looked up to find Will standing before her, damp-haired, his gloves in his hands.

“Will.” Tessa set the book down on the windowsill beside her. “You startled me.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said in a low voice. “If you are reading …” He began to turn away.

“I am not,” she said, and he stopped, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I cannot lose myself in words now. I cannot calm the distraction of my mind.”

“Nor I,” he said, turning fully now. He was no longer spattered in blood. His clothes were clean, and his skin mostly unmarked, though she could see the pinkish-white lines of grazes on his neck, disappearing down into the collar of his shirt, healing as the iratzes did their work.

“Is there news of my—is there news of Jem?”

“There is no change,” he said, though she had guessed as much. If there had been a change, Will would not have been here. “The Brothers will still not let anyone into the room, not even Charlotte.

“And why are you here?” he went on. “Sitting in the dark?”

“Benedict wrote on the wall of his study,” she said in a low voice. “Before he turned into that creature, I imagine, or while it was happening. I don’t know. ‘The Infernal Devices are without pity. The Infernal Devices are without regret. The Infernal Devices are without number. The Infernal Devices will never stop coming.’”

“The infernal devices? I assume he means Mortmain’s clockwork creatures. Not that we have seen any of them for months.”

“That does not mean they will not come back,” Tessa said. She looked down at the library table, its scratched veneer. How often Will and Jem must have sat here together, studying, carving their initials, as bored schoolboys did, into the table’s surface. “I am a danger to you here.”

“Tessa, we have talked about this before. You are not the danger. You are the thing Mortmain wants, yes, but if you were not here and protected, he could get you easily, and to what destruction would he turn your powers? We don’t know—only that he wants you for something, and that it is to our advantage to keep you from him. It is not selflessness. We Shadowhunters are not selfless.”

She looked up at that. “I think you are very selfless.” At his noise of disagreement she said: “Surely you must know that what you do is exemplary. There is a coldness to the Clave, it is true. We are dust and shadows. But you are like the heroes of ancient times, like Achilles and Jason.”

“Achilles was murdered with a poisoned arrow, and Jason died alone, killed by his own rotting ship. Such is the fate of heroes; the Angel knows why anyone would want to be one.”

Tessa looked at him. There were shadows under his blue eyes, she saw, and his fingers were worrying at the material of his cuffs, thoughtlessly, as if he were not aware he was doing it. Months, she thought. Months since they had been alone together for more than a moment. They’d had only accidental encounters in hallways, in the courtyard, awkwardly exchanged pleasantries. She had missed his jokes, the books he had lent her, the flashes of laughter in his gaze. Caught in the memory of the easier Will of an earlier time, she spoke without thinking:

“I cannot stop recollecting something you told me once,” she said.

He looked at her in surprise. “Yes? And what is that?”

“That sometimes when you cannot decide what to do, you pretend you are a character in a book, because it is easier to decide what they would do.”

“I am,” Will said, “perhaps, not someone to take advice from if you are seeking happiness.”

“Not happiness. Not exactly. I want to help—to do good—” She broke off and sighed. “And I have turned to many books, but if there is guidance in them, I have not found it. You said you were Sydney Carton—”

Will made a sound, and sank down onto a chair on the opposite side of the table from her. His lashes were lowered, veiling his eyes.

“And I suppose I know what that makes the rest of us,” she said. “But I do not want to be Lucie Manette, for she did nothing to save Charles; she let Sydney do it all. And she was cruel to him.”

“To Charles?” Will said.

“To Sydney,” Tessa said. “He wanted to be a better man, but she would not help him.”

“She could not. She was engaged to Charles Darney.”

“Still, it was not kind,” Tessa said.

Will threw himself out of his chair as quickly as he had thrown himself into it. He leaned forward, his hands on the table. His eyes were very blue in the blue light of the lamp. “Sometimes one must choose whether to be kind or honorable,” he said. “Sometimes one cannot be both.”

“Which is better?” Tessa whispered.

Will’s mouth twisted with bitter humor. “I suppose it depends on the book.”

Tessa craned her head back to look at him. “You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing close around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage, and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.” His blue eyes were dark with understanding—of course Will would understand—and she hurried on. “I feel now as if the same is happening, only not to characters on a page but to my own beloved friends and companions. I do not want to sit by while tragedy comes for us. I would turn it aside, only I struggle to discover how that might be done.”