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

Charlotte stared. For half a year she had watched Will push away everyone who’d tried to get near him—tutors; her father; her fiancé, Henry; both the Lightwood brothers—with a combination of hatefulness and precisely accurate cruelty. If it were not that she herself was the only person who had ever seen him cry, she imagined she would have given up hope as well, long ago, that he would ever be any good to anybody. And yet here he was, looking at Jem Carstairs, a boy so fragile-looking that he appeared to be made out of glass, with the hardness of his expression slowly dissolving into a tentative uncertainty. “You are not really dying,” he said, the oddest tone to his voice, “are you?”

Jem nodded. “So they tell me.”

“I am sorry,” Will said.

“No,” Jem said softly. He drew his jacket aside and took a knife from the belt at his waist. “Don’t be ordinary like that. Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’ll train with me.”

He held out the knife to Will, hilt first. Charlotte held her breath, afraid to move. She felt as if she were watching something very important happen, though she could not have said what.

Will reached out and took the knife, his eyes never leaving Jem’s face. His fingers brushed the other boy’s as he took the weapon from him. It was the first time, Charlotte thought, that she had ever seen him touch any other person willingly.

“I’ll train with you,” he said.





1

A DREADFUL ROW


Marry on Monday for health,

Tuesday for wealth,

Wednesday the best day of all,

Thursday for crosses,

Friday for losses, and

Saturday for no luck at all.

—Folk rhyme



“December is a fortuitous time for a marriage,” said the seamstress, speaking around her mouthful of pins with the ease of years of practice. “As they say, ‘When December snows fall fast, marry, and true love will last.’” She placed a final pin in the gown and took a step back. “There. What do you think? It is modeled after one of Worth’s own designs.”

Tessa looked at her reflection in the pier glass in her bedroom. The dress was a deep gold silk, as was the custom for Shadowhunters, who believed white to be the color of mourning, and would not marry in it, despite Queen Victoria herself having set the fashion for doing just that. Duchesse lace edged the tightly fitted bodice and dripped from the sleeves.

“It’s lovely!” Charlotte clapped her hands together and leaned forward. Her brown eyes shone with delight. “Tessa, the color looks so fine on you.”

Tessa turned and twisted in front of the mirror. The gold put some much-needed color into her cheeks. The hourglass corset shaped and curved her everywhere it was supposed to, and the clockwork angel around her throat comforted her with its ticking. Below it dangled the jade pendant that Jem had given her. She had lengthened the chain so she could wear them both at once, not being willing to part with either. “You don’t think, perhaps, that the lace is a trifle too much adornment?”

“Not at all!” Charlotte sat back, one hand resting protectively, unconsciously, over her belly. She had always been too slim—skinny, in truth—to really need a corset, and now that she was going to have a child, she had taken to wearing tea gowns, in which she looked like a little bird. “It is your wedding day, Tessa. If there is ever an excuse for excessive adornment, it is that. Just imagine it.”

Tessa had spent many nights doing just that. She was not yet sure where she and Jem would be married, for the Council was still deliberating their situation. But when she imagined the wedding, it was always in a church, with her being marched down the aisle, perhaps on Henry’s arm, looking neither to the left or right but straight ahead at her betrothed, as a proper bride should. Jem would be wearing gear—not the sort one fought in, but specially designed, in the manner of a military uniform, for the occasion: black with bands of gold at the wrists, and gold runes picked out along the collar and placket.

He would look so young. They were both so young. Tessa knew it was unusual to marry at seventeen and eighteen, but they were racing a clock.

The clock of Jem’s life, before it wound down.

She put her hand to her throat, and felt the familiar vibration of her clockwork angel, its wings scratching her palm. The seamstress looked up at her anxiously. She was mundane, not Nephilim, but had the Sight, as all who served the Shadowhunters did. “Would you like the lace removed, miss?”

Before Tessa could answer, there was a knock at the door, and a familiar voice. “It’s Jem. Tessa, are you there?”

Charlotte sat bolt upright. “Oh! He mustn’t see you in your dress!”

Tessa stood dumbfounded. “Whyever not?”

“It’s a Shadowhunter custom—bad luck!” Charlotte rose to her feet. “Quickly! Hide behind the wardrobe!”

“The wardrobe? But—” Tessa broke off with a yelp as Charlotte seized her about the waist and frog-marched her behind the wardrobe like a policeman with a particularly resistant criminal. Released, Tessa dusted off her dress and made a face at Charlotte, and they both peeked around the side of the furniture as the seamstress, after a bewildered look, opened the door.

Jem’s silvery head appeared in the gap. He looked a bit disheveled, his jacket askew. He glanced around in puzzlement before his gaze lighted on Charlotte and Tessa, half-concealed behind the wardrobe. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I’d no idea where any of you had gone. Gabriel Lightwood’s downstairs, and he’s making the most dreadful row.”