Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices 3)

"Jem--"

"But even if he dies," she said, and he flinched, "you will not come home to Mam and Dad, will you? You are a Shadowhunter, through and through. As Father never was. It is why you have been so stubborn about writing to them. You do not know how to both ask forgiveness and also say that you are not coming home."

"I can't come home, Cecily, or at least, it is not my home any longer. I am a Shadowhunter. It is in my blood."

"You know I am your sister, do you not?" she said. "It is also in my blood."

"You said you were pretending." He searched her face for a moment and said slowly, "But you are not, are you? I have seen you, training, fighting. You feel it as I did. As if the floor of the Institute is the first really solid ground under your feet. As if you have found the place you belong. You are a Shadowhunter."

Cecily said nothing.

Will felt his mouth twist into a sideways smile. "I am glad," he said. "Glad there will be a Herondale in the Institute, even if I--"

"Even if you do not come back? Will, let me come with you, let me help you--"

"No, Cecily. Is it not enough that I accept that you will choose this life, a life of fighting and danger, though I have always wanted greater safety for you? No, I cannot let you come with me, even if you hate me for it."

Cecily sighed. "Don't be so dramatic, Will. Must you always insist that people hate you when they obviously don't?"

"I am dramatic," said Will. "If I had not been a Shadowhunter, I would have had a future on the stage. I have no doubt I would have been greeted with acclaim."

Cecily did not appear to find this amusing. Will supposed he could not blame her. "I am not interested in your rendition of Hamlet," she said. "If you will not let me go with you, then promise me that if you go now--promise that you will come back?"

"I cannot promise that," Will said. "But if I can come back to you, I will. And if I do come back, I will write to Mother and Father. I can promise that much."

"No," said Cecily. "No letters. Promise me that if you do come back, you will return to Mother and Father with me, and tell them why you left, and that you do not blame them, and that you love them still. I do not ask that you go home to stay. Neither you nor I can ever go home to stay, but to comfort them is little enough to ask. Do not tell me that it is against the rules, Will, because I know all too well that you enjoy breaking those."

"See?" Will asked. "You do know your brother a little after all. I give you my word, that if all those conditions are met, I will do as you ask."

Her shoulders and face relaxed. She looked small and defenseless with her anger gone, though he knew she was not. "And Cecy," he said softly, "before I go, I wish to give you one more thing."

He reached into his shirt and lifted over his head the necklace Magnus had given him. It swung, gleaming rich ruby red, in the dim lights of the stables.

"Your lady's necklace?" Cecily said. "Well, I confess it does not suit you."

He stepped toward Cecily and drew the glittering chain over her dark head. The ruby fell against her throat as if it were made for her. She looked at him over it, her eyes serious. "Wear it always. It will warn you when demons are coming," Will said. "It will help keep you safe, which is how I want you, and help you be a warrior, which is what you want."

She put her hand against his cheek. "Da bo ti, Gwilym. Byddaf yn dy golli di."

"And I you," he said. Without looking at her again, he turned to Balios and swung himself up into the saddle. She stepped back as he urged the horse toward the stable doors and, bending his head against the wind, galloped out into the night.

Out of dreams of blood and metal monsters, Tessa woke with a start and a gasp.

She lay crouched like a child on the bench seat of a large carriage, whose windows were entirely covered with thick velvet curtains. The seat was hard and uncomfortable, with springs reaching to poke her sides through the material of her dress, which itself was torn and stained. Her hair had come down and hung in lank handfuls around her face. Across from her, huddled in the opposite corner of the carriage, sat a still figure, entirely covered in a thick black fur traveling cloak, its hood pulled down low. There was no one else in the carriage.

Tessa struggled upright, fighting a bout of dizziness and nausea. She put her hands on her stomach and tried to breathe deeply, though the fetid air inside the carriage did little to calm her stomach. She put her hands against her chest, feeling the sweat trickle down the bodice of her dress.

"Not going to be sick, are you?" said a rusty voice. "Chloroform does have that side effect, sometimes."

The hooded face creaked toward her, and Tessa saw the face of Mrs. Black. She had been too shocked on the steps of the Institute to make a real study of the visage of her erstwhile captor, but now that she could see it up close, she shuddered. The skin had a greenish tint, the eyes were veined in black, and the lips sagged, showing a view of gray tongue.

"Where are you taking me?" Tessa demanded. It was always the first thing heroines in Gothic novels asked when they were kidnapped, and it had always annoyed her, but she realized now that it actually made good sense. In this sort of situation the first thing you wanted to know was where you were going.

"To Mortmain," said Mrs. Black. "And that's all the information you'll get out of me, girl. I have been given strict instructions."

It was nothing Tessa hadn't expected, but it tightened her chest and shortened her breath anyway. On impulse she leaned away from Mrs. Black and pulled back the curtain across her window.

Outside it was dark, with a half-hidden moon. The countryside was hilly and angular, without spots of light to be seen that might have meant habitation. Black heaps of rock dotted the land. Tessa reached as subtly as she could for the handle of the door and tried it; it was locked.

"Do not bother," said the Dark Sister. "You cannot unlock the door, and if you were to flee, I would catch you. I am much faster now than you recall."

"Is that how you disappeared on the steps?" Tessa demanded. "Back at the Institute?"

Mrs. Black gave a superior smile. "Disappeared to your eyes. I only moved swiftly away, and then back again. Mortmain has given me that gift."

"Is that why you're doing this?" Tessa spat. "Gratitude for Mortmain? He didn't think much of you. He sent Jem and Will to kill you when he thought you were going to get in his way."

The moment she said Jem's and Will's names, she blanched with memory. She had been carried off while the

Shadowhunters had been fighting desperately for their lives on the Institute steps. Had they held out against the automatons? Had any of them been injured, or, God forbid it, killed? But surely she would know, be able to feel it, if anything like that had happened to Jem or to Will? She was so conscious of them both as pieces of her heart.

"No," said Mrs. Black. "To answer the question in your eyes, you wouldn't know if either of them were dead, those pretty Shadowhunter boys you like so much. So people always imagine, but unless there exists a magical tie like the parabatai bond, it is but a fanciful imagining. When I left, they were fighting for their lives." She grinned, and her teeth sparked, metallic in the dimness. "If I did not have orders from Mortmain to bring you to him unharmed, I would have left you there to be cut into strips."

"Why does he want you to bring me to him unharmed?"

"You and your questions. I had nearly forgotten how annoying it was. There is some information he wants that only you can provide him. And he still wants to marry you. The more fool him. Let you devil him all his life for all I mind; I want what I want from him, and then I will be gone."

"There's nothing I could possibly know that would interest Mortmain!"

Mrs. Black snorted. "You are so young and stupid. You are not human, Miss Gray, and there is very little you understand about what you can do. We might have taught you more, but you were recalcitrant. You will find Mortmain a less lenient instructor."

"Lenient?" Tessa snapped. "You beat me bloody."

"There are worse things than physical pain, Miss Gray. Mortmain has little mercy."

"Exactly." Tessa leaned forward, her clockwork angel beating double time under the bodice of her dress. "Why do what he asks you? You know you can't trust him, you know he would happily destroy you--"

"I need what he can give me," Mrs. Black said. "And I will do what I must do to obtain it."

"And what is that?" Tessa demanded.

She heard Mrs. Black laugh, and then the Dark Sister slipped back her hood and unfastened the collar of her cloak.

Tessa had read in history books about heads on spikes over London Bridge, but she had never imagined how horrific it would actually look. Obviously whatever decay Mrs. Black had suffered after her head had been severed had not been reversed, so ragged gray skin hung down around the spike of metal that impaled her skull. She had no body, only a smooth column of metal from which two sticklike jointed arms protruded. The gray kid gloves that covered whatever sort of hands jutted from the ends of the arms added the last macabre touch.