Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(51)

Her heart raced to keep pace with the music; Jem’s eyes were shut, the corners of his mouth downturned as if in pain. Part of her wanted to rush to her feet, to put her arms about him; the other part of her wanted to do nothing to stop the music, the lovely sound of it. It was as if he had taken his bow and used it as a paintbrush, creating a canvas upon which his soul was clearly displayed. As the last soaring notes reached higher and higher, climbing toward Heaven, Tessa was aware that her face was wet, but only when the last of the music had faded away and he had lowered the violin did she realize she had been crying.

Slowly Jem put the violin back into its case and laid the bow beside it. He straightened and turned to her. His expression was shy, though his white shirt was soaked through with sweat and the pulse in his neck was pounding.

Tessa was speechless.

“Did you like it?” he said. “I could have given you … jewelry, but I wanted it to be something that was wholly yours. That no one else would hear or own. And I am not good with words, so I wrote how I felt about you in music.” He paused. “Did you like it?” he said again, and the soft dropping-off of his voice at the end of the question indicated that he expected to receive an answer in the negative.

Tessa raised her face so that he could see the tears on it. “Jem.”

He dropped to his knees before her, his face all contrition. “Ni jue de tong man, qin ai de?”

“No—no,” she said, half-crying, half-laughing. “I am not hurt. Not unhappy. Not at all.”

A smile broke across his face, lighting his eyes with delight. “Then you did like it.”

“It was like I saw your soul in the notes of the music. And it was beautiful.” She leaned forward and touched his face lightly, the smooth skin over his hard cheekbone, his hair like feathers against the back of her hand. “I saw rivers, boats like flowers, all the colors of the night sky.”

Jem exhaled, sinking down onto the floor by her chair as if the strength had gone out of him. “That is a rare magic,” he said. He leaned his head against her, his temple against her knee, and she kept up the stroking of his hair, carding her fingers through its softness. “Both my parents loved music,” he said abruptly. “My father played the violin, my mother the qin. I chose the violin, though I could have learned either. I regretted it sometimes, for there are melodies of China I cannot play on the violin, that my mother would have liked me to know. She used to tell me the story of Yu Boya, who was a great player of the qin. He had a best friend, a woodcutter named Zhong Ziqi, and he would play for him. They say that when Yu Boya played a song of water, his friend would know immediately that he was describing rushing rivers, and when he played of mountains, Ziqi would see their peaks. And Yu Boya would say, ‘It is because you understand my music.’” Jem looked down at his own hand, curled loosely on his knee. “People still use the expression ‘zhi yin’ to mean ‘close friends’ or ‘soul mates,’ but what it really means is ‘understanding music.’” He reached up and took her hand. “When I played, you saw what I saw. You understand my music.”

“I don’t know anything about music, Jem. I cannot tell a sonata from a partita—”

“No.” He turned, rising up onto his knees, bracing himself on the arms of her chair. They were close enough now that she could see where his hair was damp with sweat at his temples and nape, smell his scent of rosin and burned sugar. “That is not the kind of music I mean. I mean—” He made a sound of frustration, caught at her hand, brought it to his chest, and pressed it flat over his heart. The steady beat hammered against her palm. “Every heart has its own melody,” he said. “You know mine.”

“What happened to them?” Tessa whispered. “The woodcutter and the musician?”

Jem’s smile was sad. “Zhong Ziqi died, and Yu Boya played his last song over his friend’s grave. Then he broke his qin and never played again.”

Tessa felt the hot press of tears under her lashes, trying to force its way through. “What a terrible story.”

“Is it?” Jem’s heart skipped and stuttered under her fingers. “While he lived and they were friends, Yu Boya wrote some of the greatest music that we know. Would he have been able to do that alone? Our hearts, they need a mirror, Tessa. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who love us. And there is a beauty that brevity alone provides.” He dropped his gaze, then raised it to hers. “I would give you everything of myself,” he said. “I would give you more in two weeks than most men would give you in a lifetime.”

“There is nothing you haven’t given me, nothing I am dissatisfied with… .”

“I am,” he said. “I want to be married to you. I would wait for you forever, but …”

But we do not have forever. “I have no family,” Tessa said slowly, her eyes on his. “No guardian. No one who might be … offended … by a more immediate marriage.”

Jem’s eyes widened slightly. “I— Do you mean that? I would not want you to not have all the time you require to prepare.”

“What kind of preparation do you imagine I might require?” Tessa said, and for just that moment her thoughts ghosted back to Will, to the way he had put his hands in the fire to save Jem’s drugs, and watching him, she could not help but remember that day in the drawing room when he had told her he loved her, and when he had left, she had closed her hand around a poker, that the burning pain of it against her skin might shut out, even for a moment, the pain in her heart.