Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(80)

Jem’s bridal gift to Tessa. Will’s hand tightened about it as he stood. He remembered facing her in the stairwell—the chain of the jade pendant at her throat winking at him like a cruel reminder of Jem as she’d said, They say you cannot divide your heart, and yet—

“Tessa!” he cried out suddenly, his voice echoing off the rocks. “Tessa!”

He stood for a moment, shuddering, at the side of the road. He did not know what he had expected—an answer? It was hardly as if she could be here, hiding among the sparse rocks. There was only silence and the sound of the wind and rain. Still, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was Tessa’s necklace. Perhaps she had torn it from her throat and dropped it out the carriage window to mark the path for him, like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs. It was what a storybook heroine would do, and therefore what his Tessa would do. Maybe there would be other markers too, if he kept on his way. For the first time hope flowed back into his veins.

With new resolve he strode toward Balios and swung himself up into the saddle. There would be no slowing down; they would make Staffordshire by evening. As he turned the horse’s head back toward the road, he slipped the pendant into his pocket, where its engraved words of love and commitment seemed to burn like a brand.

Charlotte had never felt so tired. The coming child had exhausted her more than she had thought it would at first, and she had been awake all night and racing about all day. There were stains on her dress from Henry’s crypt, and her ankles ached from going up and down the stairs and the ladders in the library. Nevertheless, when she opened the door of Jem’s bedroom and saw him not only awake but sitting up and talking to Sophie, she forgot her tiredness and felt her face break into a helpless smile of relief. “James!” she exclaimed. “I had wondered—that is, I am glad you are awake.”

Sophie, who was looking oddly flushed, rose to her feet. “Should I go, Mrs. Branwell?”

“Oh, yes, please, Sophie. Bridget’s in one of her moods; she says she can’t find the Bang Mary, and I haven’t even the slightest what she’s talking about.”

Sophie almost smiled—she would have, if her heart hadn’t been pounding with the knowledge that she might just have done something very dreadful. “The bain-marie,” she said. “I will locate it for her.” She moved toward the door, paused, and threw a peculiar look over her shoulder at Jem, who was resting back against his pillows, looking very pale but composed. Before Charlotte could say anything, Sophie was gone, and Jem was beckoning Charlotte forward with a tired smile.

“Charlotte, if you would not mind very much—could you bring me my violin?”

“Of course.” Charlotte went over to the table by the window where the violin was stored in its square rosewood case, with its bow and small round box of rosin. She lifted the violin and brought it over to the bed, where Jem took it carefully from her arms, and she sank down gratefully in the chair beside him. “Oh—,” she said a moment later. “I’m sorry. I forgot the bow. Did you want to play?”

“That’s all right.” He plucked gently at the strings with his fingertips, which produced a soft, vibrant noise. “This is pizzicato—the first thing my father taught me how to do when he showed me the violin. It reminds me of being a child.”

You are still a child, Charlotte wanted to say, but she did not. He was only a few weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, after all, when Shadowhunters became adults, and if when she looked at him she still saw the dark-haired little boy who had arrived from Shanghai clutching his violin, his eyes huge in his pale face, that did not mean he had not grown up.

She reached for the box of yin fen on his bedside table. There was only a pale scatter left at the bottom, barely a teaspoonful. She swallowed against her tight throat, and tapped the powder into the bottom of a glass, then poured water from the carafe into it, letting the yin fen dissolve like sugar. When she handed it to Jem, he put the violin aside and took the glass from her. He stared down into it, his pale eyes thoughtful.

“Is this the last of it?” he asked.

“Magnus is working on a cure,” Charlotte said. “We all are. Gabriel and Cecily are out purchasing ingredients for medicine to keep you strong, and Sophie and Gideon and I have been researching. Everything is being done. Everything.”

Jem looked a little surprised. “I did not realize.”

“But of course it is,” Charlotte said. “We are your family; we would do anything for you. Please do not lose hope, Jem. I need you to keep your strength.”

“What strength I have is yours,” he said cryptically. He downed the yin fen solution, handing her back the empty glass. “Charlotte?”

“Yes?”

“Have you won the fight about what to call the child yet?”

Charlotte gave a startled laugh. It seemed odd to think about her child now, but then why not? In death, we are in life. It was something to think about that was not illness, or Tessa’s disappearance, or Will’s dangerous mission. “Not yet,” she said. “Henry is still insisting on Buford.”

“You’ll win,” Jem said. “You always do. You would make an excellent Consul, Charlotte.”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “A woman Consul? After all the trouble I’ve had simply for running the Institute!”