Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(81)

“There must always be a first,” said Jem. “It is not easy to be first, and it is not always rewarding, but it is important.” He ducked his head. “You carry with you one of my few regrets.”

Charlotte looked at him, puzzled.

“I would have liked to see the baby.”

It was a very simple, wistful thing to say, but it lodged itself in Charlotte’s heart like a sliver of glass. She began to cry, the tears slipping silently down her face.

“Charlotte,” Jem said, as if comforting her. “You’ve always taken care of me. You’ll take amazing care of this baby. You’ll be a wonderful mother.”

“You cannot give up, Jem,” she said in a choked voice. “When they brought you to me, at first they said you would live only a year or two. You’ve lived nearly six. Please just live a few more days. A few more days for me.”

Jem gave her a softly measured look. “I lived for you,” he said. “And I lived for Will, and then I lived for Tessa—and for myself, because I wanted to be with her. But I cannot live for other people forever. No one can say that death found in me a willing comrade, or that I went easily. If you say you need me, I will stay as long as I can for you. I will live for you and yours, and go down fighting death until I am worn away to bone and splinters. But it would not be my choice.”

“Then …” Charlotte looked at him hesitantly. “What would be your choice?”

He swallowed, and his hand dropped to touch the violin by his side. “I made a decision,” he said. “I made it when I told Will to go.” He ducked his head, and then looked up at Charlotte, his pale, blue-shadowed eyes fixed on her face as if willing her to understand. “I want it to stop,” he said. “Sophie says everyone is still searching for a cure for me. I know I gave Will my permission, but I want everyone to cease looking now, Charlotte. It is over.”

It was growing dark by the time Cecily and Gabriel returned to the Institute. To be out and about in the city with someone besides Charlotte or her brother had been a unique experience for Cecily, and she was astonished at what good company Gabriel Lightwood had been. He had made her laugh, though she had done her best to hide it, and he had quite obligingly carried all the parcels, though she would have expected him to protest at being treated like a harried footman.

It was true that he probably should not have thrown that faerie through the shopwindow—or into the Limehouse canal afterward. But she could hardly blame him. She knew perfectly well that it was not the fact that the satyr had shown her improper images that had snapped his temper, but the reminder of his father.

It was odd, she thought as they mounted the Institute steps, how unlike his brother he was. She had liked Gideon perfectly well since she had arrived in London, but found him quiet and contained. He did not speak much, and though he sometimes helped Will with her training, he was distant and thoughtful with everyone but Sophie. With her it was possible to see flashes of humor in him. He could be quite dryly funny when he wished to be, and had a darkly observant nature alongside his calm soul.

In bits and pieces gleaned from Tessa, Will, and Charlotte, Cecily had pieced together the story of the Lightwoods and had begun to understand why Gideon was so quiet. In a way like Will and herself, he had turned his back on his family deliberately, and he carried the scars of that loss. Gabriel’s choice had been a different one. He had stayed by his father’s side and watched the slow deterioration of his body and mind. What had he thought, while it was happening? At what point had he realized the choice he had made had been the wrong one?

Gabriel opened the Institute door, and Cecily went through; they were greeted by Bridget’s voice floating down the steps.

“O see ye not yon narrow road,

So thick beset with thorns and briers?

That is the path of righteousness,

Tho after it but few enquires.

“And see not ye that broad, broad road

That lies across the lily leven?

That is the path of wickedness,

Tho some call it the road to Heaven.”

“She’s singing,” said Cecily, starting up the steps. “Again.”

Gabriel, balancing the parcels nimbly, made an equable noise. “I’m famished. I wonder if she’ll scare me up some cold chicken and bread in the kitchen if I tell her I don’t mind the songs?”

“Everyone minds the songs.” Cecily looked at him sideways; he had an awfully fine profile. Gideon was good-looking as well, but Gabriel was all sharp angles, chin, and cheekbones, which she thought altogether more elegant. “It isn’t your fault, you know,” she said abruptly.

“What is not my fault?” They turned from the steps onto the corridor of the second floor. It seemed dark to Cecily, the witchlights turned down low. She could hear Bridget, still singing:

“It was dark, dark night, there was no starlight,

And they waded through red blood to the knee;

For all the blood that’s shed on earth

Runs through the springs of that country.”

“Your father,” Cecily said.

Gabriel’s face tightened. For a moment Cecily thought he was going to make an angry retort, but instead he said only: “It may or may not be my fault, but I chose to be blind to his crimes. I believed in him when it was wrong to do so, and he has disgraced the name of Lightwood.”