Clockwork Princess

22

T

HUNDER IN THE

T

RUMPET

For till the thunder in the trumpet be,

Soul may divide from body, but not we

One from another

—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Laus Veneris”

Clockwork creatures clawed at Tessa out of black mists. Fire ran through her veins, and when she looked down, her skin was cracked and blistering, golden ichor running in sheets down her arms. She saw the endless fields of Heaven, saw a sky constantly on fire with a blaze that would have blinded any human. She saw silver clouds with edges like razors, and felt the icy emptiness that hollowed the hearts of angels.

“Tessa.” It was Will; she would have known his speech anywhere. “Tessa, wake up, wake up. Tessa, please.”

She could hear the pain in his voice and wanted to reach out for him, but as she lifted her arms, the flames rose and charred her fingers. Her hands turned to ash and blew away on the hot wind.

Tessa tossed on her bed in a delirium of fever and nightmares. The sheets, twisted around her, were soaked with sweat, her hair plastered to her temples. Her skin, always pale, was near-translucent, showing the mapping of veins beneath her skin, the shape of her bones. Her clockwork angel was at her throat; every once in a while she would catch at it, and then cry out in a lost voice, as if the touch pained her.

“She’s in so much agony.” Charlotte dipped a cloth in cool water and pressed it to Tessa’s burning forehead. The girl made a soft protesting sound at the touch but didn’t move to bat Charlotte’s hand away. Charlotte would have liked to think it was because the cool cloths were helping, but she knew that it was more likely that Tessa was simply becoming too exhausted. “Isn’t there anything more we can do?”

The angel’s fire is leaving her body. Brother Enoch, standing at Charlotte’s side, spoke in his eerie omnidirectional whisper. It will take the time it takes. She will be free of pain when it is gone.

“But she will live?”

She has survived thus far. The Silent Brother sounded grim. The fire should have killed her. It would have killed any normal human. But she is part Shadowhunter and part demon, and she was protected by the angel whose fire she drew on. It shielded her even in those last moments as it blazed up and burned away its own corporeal form.

Charlotte could not help but remember the circular room under Cadair Idris, Tessa stepping forward and transforming from girl into flame, blazing up like a column of fire, her hair turning to tendrils of sparks, the light of it blinding and terrifying. Crouched on the floor by Henry’s body, Charlotte had wondered how even angels could burn like that and live.

When the angel had left Tessa, she had collapsed, her clothes hanging in tatters and her skin covered in marks as if she had been scorched. Several Shadowhunters had rushed to her side between the crumpling automatons, though it had been something of a blur to Charlotte—scenes viewed through the wavering lens of her terror over Henry: Will lifting Tessa in his arms; the Magister’s stronghold beginning to close itself up behind them, doors slamming closed as they raced through the corridors, Magnus’s blue fire lighting them a path to escape. The creation of a second Portal. More Silent Brothers waiting for them at the Institute, scarred hands and scarred faces, shutting out even Charlotte as they closed themselves in with Henry and Tessa. Will turning to Jem, his expression stricken. He had reached out for his parabatai.

“James,” he had said. “You can find out—what they’re doing to her—if she’ll live—”

But Brother Enoch had stepped between them. His name is not James Carstairs, he had said. It is Zachariah now.

Will’s look, the way he had lowered his hand. “Let him speak for himself.”

But Jem had only turned, turned and walked away from all of them, out of the Institute, Will watching him go in disbelief, and Charlotte had remembered the first time they had ever met: Are you really dying? I am sorry.

It was Will, still looking stunned and disbelieving, who had explained to them all, haltingly, Tessa’s story: the function of the clockwork angel, the tale of the ill-fated Starkweathers, and the unorthodox manner of Tessa’s conception. Aloysius had been right, Charlotte reflected. Tessa was his great-granddaughter. A descendant he would never know, for he had been slain in the Council massacre.

Charlotte couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it must have been like when the doors of the Council room had opened and the automatons had poured in. Councils were not required to be unarmed, but they were not prepared to fight. Nor had most Shadowhunters ever faced an automaton. Even to imagine the slaughter chilled her. She was overwhelmed by the enormity of the loss to the Shadowhunter world, though it would have been much greater had Tessa not made the sacrifice she did. All the automatons had fallen with Mortmain’s death, even the ones in the Council rooms, and the majority of the Shadowhunters had survived, though there had been heavy losses—including the Consul.

“Part demon and part Shadowhunter,” Charlotte murmured now, gazing down at Tessa. “What does that make her?”

Nephilim blood is dominant. A new kind of Shadowhunter. New is not always a bad thing, Charlotte.

It was because of that Nephilim blood that they had gone so far as to try healing runes upon Tessa, but the runes had simply sunk into her skin and vanished, like words written in water. Charlotte reached out now to touch Tessa’s collarbone, where the rune had been inked. Her skin was hot to the touch.

“Her clockwork angel,” Charlotte observed. “It has stopped its ticking.”

The angel’s presence has left it. Ithuriel is free, and Tessa unprotected, though with the Magister dead, and as a Nephilim herself, she will likely be safe. As long as she does not attempt to transform herself into an angel a second time. It would certainly kill her.

“There are other dangers.”

We all must face dangers, said Brother Enoch. It was the same cool, unruffled mental voice he had used when he had told her that though Henry would live, he would never walk again.

On the bed Tessa stirred, crying out in a dry voice. In her sleep, since the battle, she had called out names. She had called for Nate, and for her aunt, and for Charlotte. “Jem,” she whispered now, clutching fitfully at her coverlet.

Charlotte turned away from Enoch as she reached for the cool cloth again and laid it across Tessa’s forehead. She knew she should not ask, and yet—

“How is he? Our Jem? Is he—adjusting to the Brotherhood?”

She felt Enoch’s reproach. You know I cannot tell you that. He is no longer your Jem. He is Brother Zachariah now. You must forget him.

“Forget him? I cannot forget him,” Charlotte said. “He is not as your other Brothers, Enoch; you know that.”

The rituals that make a Silent Brother are our deepest secrets.

“I am not asking to know of your rituals,” Charlotte said. “Yet I know that most Silent Brothers sever their ties to their mortal lives before they enter the Brotherhood. But James could not do that. He still has that which tethers him to this world.” She looked down at Tessa, her eyelids fluttering as she breathed harshly. “It is a cord that ties each of them to the other, and unless it is dissolved properly, I fear it may harm them both.”

“‘She is coming, my own, my sweet;

Were it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would hear her and beat,

Were it earth in an earthy bed;

My dust would hear her and beat,

Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under her feet,

And blossom in purple and red.’”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Henry said irritably, pushing up the ink-stained sleeves of his dressing gown. “Can’t you read something less depressing? Something with a good battle in it.”

“It’s Tennyson,” said Will, sliding his feet off the ottoman near the fire. They were in the drawing room, Henry’s chair pulled up near the fire, a sketchbook open on his lap. He was still pale, as he had been since the battle at Cadair Idris, though he was beginning to get his color back. “It will improve your mind.”

Before Henry could reply, the door opened, and Charlotte came in, looking tired, the lace-edged sleeves of her sack dress stained with water. Will immediately set his book down, and Henry, too, looked up inquiringly from his sketchbook.

Charlotte glanced from one of them to the other, noting the book on the side table beside the silver tea service. “Have you been reading to Henry, Will?”

“Yes, some dreadful thing, all full of poetry.” Henry had a pen in one hand and papers scattered all over the lap rug drawn up around his knees.

Henry had met with his usual fortitude the news that even the Silent Brothers’ healing would not let him walk again. And a conviction that he must build himself a chair, like a sort of Bath chair but better, with self-propelling wheels and all manner of other accoutrements. He was determined that it be able to go up and down stairs, so that he could still get to his inventions in the crypt. He had been scribbling designs for the chair the whole hour that Will had been reading to him from “Maud,” but then poetry had never been Henry’s area of interest.

“Well, you are released from your duties, Will, and, Henry, you are released from further poetry,” said Charlotte. “If you like, darling, I can help you gather your notes—” She slipped around behind her husband’s chair and reached over his shoulders, helping scoop his scattered papers into a neat pile. He took her wrist as she moved, and looked up at her—a gaze of such trust and adoration that it made Will feel as if tiny knives were cutting at his skin.

It was not as if he begrudged Charlotte and Henry their happiness—far from it. But he could not help but think of Tessa. Of the hopes he had cherished once and repressed later. He wondered if she had ever looked at him like that. He did not think so. He had worked so hard to destroy her trust, and though all he wanted was a true chance to rebuild it for her, he could not help but fear—

He pushed the dark thoughts back and rose to his feet, about to explain that he intended to go see Tessa. Before he could speak, there was a knock at the door, and Sophie came in, looking unaccountably anxious. The anxiety was explained a moment later when the Inquisitor followed her into the room.

Will, used to seeing him in his ceremonial robes at Council meetings, almost didn’t recognize the stern-looking man in the gray morning coat and dark trousers. There was a livid scar on his cheek that had not been there before.

“Inquisitor Whitelaw.” Charlotte straightened up, her expression suddenly serious. “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

“Charlotte,” said the Inquisitor, and he held out his hand. There was a letter, sealed with the seal of the Council. “I have brought a message for you.”

Charlotte looked at him in bewilderment. “You could not simply have sent it through the post?”

“This letter is of grave importance. It is imperative that you read it now.”

Slowly Charlotte reached out and took it. She pulled at the flap, then frowned and crossed the room to take a letter opener from her bureau. Will took the opportunity to stare at the Inquisitor covertly. The man was frowning at Charlotte and ignoring Will entirely. He could not help but wonder if the scar on the Inquisitor’s cheek was a relic of the Council’s battle with Mortmain’s automatons.

Will had been sure that they were all going to die, together, there under the mountain, until Tessa had blazed up in all the glory of the angel and struck down Mortmain like lightning striking down a tree. It had been one of the most wondrous things he had ever seen, but his wonder had been consumed quickly by terror when Tessa had collapsed after the Change, bleeding and insensible, however hard they’d tried to wake her. Magnus, near exhaustion, had barely been able to open a Portal back to the Institute with Henry’s help, and Will remembered only a blur after that, a blur of exhaustion and blood and fear, more Silent Brothers summoned to tend the wounded, and the news coming from the Council of all who had been killed in battle before the automatons had disintegrated upon Mortmain’s death. And Tessa—Tessa not speaking, not waking, being carried off to her room by the Silent Brothers, and he had not been able to go with her. Being neither brother nor husband he could only stand and stare after her, closing and unclosing his bloodstained hands. Never had he felt more helpless.

And when he had turned to find Jem, to share his fear with the only other person in the world who loved Tessa as much as he did—Jem had been gone, back to the Silent City on the orders of the Brothers. Gone without even a word of good-bye.

Though Cecily had tried to soothe him, Will had been angry—angry with Jem, and with the Council and the Brotherhood themselves, for allowing Jem to become a Silent Brother, though Will knew that was unfair, that it had been Jem’s choice and the only way to keep him alive. And yet since their return to the Institute, Will had felt constantly seasick—it was like having been a ship at anchor for years and being cut free to float on the tides, with no idea which direction to steer in. And Tessa—

The sound of tearing paper interrupted his thoughts, as Charlotte opened the letter and read it, the color draining from her face. She lifted her eyes and stared at the Inquisitor. “Is this some sort of jest?”

The Inquisitor’s frown deepened. “There is no jest, I assure you. Do you have an answer?”

“Lottie,” said Henry, looking up at his wife, even his tufts of gingery hair radiating anxiety and love. “Lottie, what is it, what’s wrong?”

She looked at him, and then back at the Inquisitor. “No,” she said. “I don’t have an answer. Not yet.”

“The Council does not wish—,” he began, and then seemed to see Will for the first time. “If I could speak to you in private, Charlotte.”

Charlotte straightened her spine. “I will not send either Will or Henry away.”

The two of them glared at each other, eyes locked. Will knew that Henry was looking at him anxiously. In the aftermath of Charlotte’s disagreement with the Consul, and the Consul’s death, they had all waited breathlessly for the Council to hand down some sort of retributive judgment. Their hold on the Institute felt precarious. Will could see it in the minute trembling of Charlotte’s hands, and the set of her mouth.

He wished suddenly that Jem or Tessa were here, someone he could speak to, someone he could ask what he should do for Charlotte, to whom he owed so much.

“It’s all right,” he said, rising to his feet. He wanted to see Tessa, even if she would not open her eyes, not recognize him. “I had meant to go anyway.”

“Will—,” Charlotte protested.

“It’s all right, Charlotte,” Will said again, and he pushed past the Inquisitor to the door. Once out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall for a moment, recovering himself. He couldn’t help remembering his own words—God, it seemed a million years ago now, and no longer in the least bit funny: The Consul? Breaking up our breakfast time? Whatever next? The Inquisitor over for tea?

If the Institute was taken from Charlotte …

If they all lost their home …

If Tessa …

He could not finish the thought. Tessa would live; she must live. As he set off down the corridor, he thought of the blues and greens and grays of Wales. Perhaps he could return there, with Cecily, if the Institute was lost, make some kind of life for themselves in their home country. It would not be a Shadowhunting life, but without Charlotte, without Henry, without Jem or Tessa or Sophie or even the bloody Lightwoods, he did not want to be a Shadowhunter. They were his family, and precious to him—just another realization, he thought, that had come to him all at once and yet too late.

“Tessa. Wake up. Please, wake up.”

Sophie’s voice now, cutting through the darkness. Tessa struggled, forcing her eyes open for a split second. She saw her bedroom at the Institute, the familiar furniture, the drapes pulled back, weak sunlight casting squares of light on the floor. She fought to hold on to it. It was like this, brief periods of lucidity in between fever and nightmares—never enough, never enough time to reach out, to speak. Sophie, she fought to whisper, but her dry lips would not pass the words. Lightning shivered down through her vision, splitting the world apart. She cried out soundlessly as the Institute broke into pieces and rushed away from her into the dark.

It was Cyril who finally told Gabriel that Cecily was in the stables, after the younger Lightwood brother had spent much of the day searching fruitlessly—though, he hoped not obviously—through the Institute for her.

Twilight had come, and the stable was full of warm yellow lantern light and the smell of horses. Cecily was standing by Balios’s stall, her head against the neck of the great black horse. Her hair, nearly the same inky color, was loose over her shoulders. When she turned to look at him, Gabriel saw the wink of the red ruby around her throat.

A look of concern passed across her face. “Has something happened to Will?”

“Will?” Gabriel was startled.

“I just thought—the way you looked—” She sighed. “He has been so distraught these past few days. If it were not enough that Tessa is ill and injured, to know what he does about Jem—” She shook her head. “I have tried to speak to him about it, but he will say nothing.”

“I think he is speaking to Jem now,” Gabriel said. “I confess I do not know his state of mind. If you wish, I could—”

“No.” Cecily’s voice was quiet. Her blue eyes were fixed on something far away. “Let him be.”

Gabriel took a few steps forward. The soft yellow glow of the lantern at Cecily’s feet laid a faint golden sheen over her skin. Her hands were bare of gloves, very white against the horse’s black hide. “I …,” he began. “You seem to like that horse very much.”

Silently he cursed himself. He remembered his father once saying that women, the gentler sex, liked to be wooed with charming words and pithy phrases. He wasn’t sure exactly what a pithy phrase was, but he was sure that “You seem to like that horse very much” was not one.

Cecily seemed not to mind, though. She gave the horse’s hide an absent pat before turning to face him. “Balios saved my brother’s life.”

“Are you going to leave?” Gabriel said abruptly.

Her eyes widened. “What was that, Mr. Lightwood?”

“No.” He held his hand up. “Don’t call me Mr. Lightwood, please. We are Shadowhunters. I am Gabriel to you.”

Her cheeks pinked. “Gabriel, then. Why did you ask me if I am leaving?”

“You came here to bring your brother home,” said Gabriel. “But it is clear he is not going to go, isn’t it? He is in love with Tessa. He is going to stay wherever she is.”

“She might not stay here,” Cecily said, her eyes unreadable.

“I think she will. But even if she does not, he will go where she is. And Jem—Jem has become a Silent Brother. He is still Nephilim. If Will hopes to see him again, and I think we know he does, he will remain. The years have changed him, Cecily. His family is here now.”

“Do you think you are telling me anything I have not observed for myself? Will’s heart is here, not in Yorkshire, in a house he has never lived in, with parents he has not seen for years.”

“Then, if he cannot go home—I thought perhaps that you would.”

“So that my parents are not alone. Yes. I can see why you would think that.” She hesitated. “You know, of course, that in a few years I would be expected to be married, and to leave my parents regardless.”

“But not to never speak to them again. They are exiled, Cecily. If you remain here, you will be cut off from them.”

“You say it as if you wish to convince me to return home.”

“I say it because I am afraid you will.” The words were out of his mouth before he could recapture them; he could only look at her as a flush of embarrassment heated his face.

She took a step toward him. Her blue eyes, upturned to his, were wide. He wondered when they had stopped reminding him of Will’s eyes; they were just Cecily’s eyes, a shade of blue he associated with her alone. “When I came here,” she said, “I thought the Shadowhunters were monsters. I thought I had to rescue my brother. I thought that we would return home together, and my parents would be proud of us both. That we would be a family again. Then I realized—you helped me realize—”

“I helped you? How?”

“Your father did not give you choices,” she said. “He demanded that you be what he wanted. And that demand broke your family apart. But my father, he chose to leave the Nephilim and marry my mother. That was his choice, just as staying with the Shadowhunters is Will’s. Choosing love or war: both are brave choices, in their own ways. And I do not think my parents would grudge Will his choice. Above all, what matters to them is that he be happy.”

“But what of you?” Gabriel said, and they were very close now, almost touching. “It is your choice to make now, to stay or return.”

“I will stay,” Cecily said. “I choose the war.”

Gabriel let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “You will give up your home?”

“A drafty old house in Yorkshire?” Cecily said. “This is London.”

“And give up what is familiar?”

“Familiar is dull.”

“And give up seeing your parents? It is against the Law …”

She smiled, the glimmer of a smile. “Everyone breaks the Law.”

“Cecy,” he said, and closed the distance between them, though it was not much, and then he was kissing her—his hands awkward around her shoulders at first, slipping on the stiff taffeta of her gown before his fingers slid behind her head, tangling in her soft, warm hair. She stiffened in surprise before softening against him, the seam of her lips parting as he tasted the sweetness of her mouth. When she drew away at last, he felt light-headed. “Cecy?” he said again, his voice hoarse.

“Five,” she said. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, but her gaze was steady.

“Five?” he echoed blankly.

“My rating,” she said, and smiled at him. “Your skill and technique may, perhaps, require work, but the native talent is certainly there. What you require is practice.”

“And you are willing to be my tutor?”

“I should be very insulted if you chose another,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him again.

When Will came into Tessa’s room, Sophie was sitting by her bed, murmuring in a soft voice. She swung around as the door closed behind Will. The corners of her mouth looked pinched and worried.

“How is she?” Will asked, pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets. It hurt to see Tessa like this, hurt as if a sliver of ice had lodged itself under his ribs and was digging into his heart. Sophie had plaited Tessa’s long brown hair neatly so that it would not tangle when she tossed her head fitfully against the pillows. She breathed quickly, her chest rising and falling fast, her eyes visibly moving beneath her pale eyelids. He wondered what she was dreaming.

“The same,” Sophie said, rising gracefully to her feet and ceding him the chair beside the bed. “She has been calling out again.”

“For anyone particular?” Will asked, and then was immediately sorry he had asked. Surely his motives would be ridiculously transparent.

Sophie’s dark hazel eyes darted away from his. “For her brother,” she said. “If you wish a few moments alone with Miss Tessa …”

“Yes, please, Sophie.”

She paused at the door. “Master William,” she said.

Having just settled himself in the armchair beside the bed, Will glanced over at her.

“I am sorry I have thought and spoken so ill of you for all these years,” Sophie said. “I understand now that you were only doing what we all try to do. Our best.”

Will reached out and placed his hand over Tessa’s left one, where it plucked feverishly at the coverlet. “Thank you,” he said, unable to look at Sophie directly; a moment later he heard the door softly close behind her.

He looked at Tessa. She was momentarily quiet, her lashes fluttering as she breathed. The circles beneath her eyes were dark blue, her veins a delicate filigree at her temples and the insides of her wrists. When he remembered her blazing up in glory, it was impossible to believe her fragile, yet here she was. Her hand felt hot in his, and when he brushed his knuckles against her cheek, her skin was burning.

“Tess,” he whispered. “Hell is cold. Do you remember when you told me that? We were in the cellars of the Dark House. Anyone else would have been panicking, but you were as calm as a governess, telling me Hell was covered in ice. If it is the fire of Heaven that takes you from me, what a cruel irony that would be.”

She breathed in sharply, and for a moment his heart leaped—had she heard him? But her eyes remained firmly shut.

His hand tightened on hers.

“Come back,” he said. “Come back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart.”

Her head turned slowly toward him, her lips parting as if she were about to speak. He leaned forward, heart leaping.

“Jem?” she said.

He froze, unmoving, his hand still wrapped about hers. Her eyes fluttered open—as gray as the sky before rain, as gray as the slate hills of Wales. The color of tears. She looked at him, through him, not seeing him at all.

“Jem,” she said again. “Jem, I am so sorry. It is all my fault.”

Will leaned forward again. He could not help himself. She was speaking, and comprehensibly, for the first time in days. Even if not to him.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

She returned the pressure of his hand hotly; each of her individual fingers seemed to burn through his skin. “But it is,” she said. “It is because of me that Mortmain deprived you of your yin fen. It is because of me that all of you were in danger. I was meant to love you, and all I did was shorten your life.”

Will took a ragged breath. The splinter of ice was back in his heart, and he felt as if he were breathing around it. And yet it was not jealousy, but a sorrow more profound and deeper than any he thought he had known before. He thought of Sydney Carton. Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you. Yes, he would have done that for Tessa—died to keep the ones she needed beside her—and so would Jem have done that for him or for Tessa, and so would Tessa, he thought, do that for both of them. It was a near incomprehensible tangle, the three of them, but there was one certainty, and that was that there was no lack of love between them.

I am strong enough for this, he told himself, lifting her hand gently. “Life is not just surviving,” he said. “There is also happiness. You know your James, Tessa. You know he would choose love over the span of his years.”

But Tessa’s head only tossed fretfully on the pillow. “Where are you, James? I search for you in the darkness, but I cannot find you. You are my intended; we should be bound by ties that cannot sever. And yet when you were dying, I was not there. I have never said good-bye.”

“What darkness? Tessa, where are you?” Will gripped her hand. “Give me a way to find you.”

Tessa arched back on the bed suddenly, her hand clamping down on his. “I’m sorry!” she gasped. “Jem—I am so sorry—I have wronged you, wronged you horribly—”

“Tessa!” Will bolted to his feet, but Tessa had already collapsed bonelessly onto the mattress, breathing hard.

He could not help it. He cried out for Charlotte like a child who had woken from a nightmare, as he had never permitted himself to cry out when he truly was a child, waking in the then unfamiliar Institute and longing for comfort but knowing he must not take it.

Charlotte came running through the Institute, as he had always known she would come running for him if he called. She arrived, breathless and frightened; she took one look at Tessa on the bed, and Will clasping her hand, and he saw the terror leave her face, replaced by a look of wordless sorrow. “Will …”

Will gently detached his hand from Tessa’s, turning toward the door. “Charlotte,” he said. “I have never asked you to use your position as head of the Institute to help me before—”

“My position cannot heal Tessa.”

“It can. You must bring Jem here.”

“I cannot demand that,” Charlotte said. “Jem has only just begun his term of service in the Silent City. New Initiates are not meant to leave at all for the first year—”

“He came to the battle.”

Charlotte pushed a stray curl from her face. Sometimes she looked very young, as she did now, though earlier, facing the Inquisitor in the drawing room, she had not. “That was Brother Enoch’s choice.”

Certainty straightened Will’s spine. For so many years he had doubted the contents of his own heart. He did not doubt them now. “Tessa needs Jem,” he said. “I know the Law, I know he cannot come home, but—the Silent Brothers are meant to sever every bond that ties them to the mortal world before they join the Brotherhood. That is also the Law. The bond between Tessa and Jem was not severed. How is she to rejoin the mortal world, then, if she cannot even see Jem one last time?”

Charlotte was silent for a space of time. There was a shadow over her face, one he could not define. Surely she would want this, for Jem, for Tessa, for both of them? “Very well,” she said at last. “I shall see what I can do.”

“They lighted down to take a drink

Of the spring that ran so clear,

And there she spied his bonny heart’s blood,

A-running down the stream.

‘Hold up, hold up, Lord William,’ she said,

‘For I fear that you are slain;’

‘’Tis nought but the dye of my scarlet clothes,

That is sparkling down the stream.’”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Sophie muttered as she passed the kitchen. Did Bridget really have to be so morbid in all her songs, and did she have to use Will’s name? As if the poor boy hadn’t suffered enough—

A shadow materialized out of the darkness. “Sophie?”

Sophie screamed and nearly dropped her carpet brush. Witchlight flared up in the dim corridor, and she saw familiar gray-green eyes.

“Gideon!” she exclaimed. “Heavens above, you nearly frightened me to death.”

He looked penitent. “I apologize. I only wished to wish you good night—and you were smiling as you walked along. I thought …”

“I was thinking about Master Will,” she said, and then smiled again at his dismayed expression. “Only that a year ago, if you had told me that someone was tormenting him, I would have been delighted, but now I find myself in sympathy with him. That is all.”

He looked sober. “I am in sympathy with him as well. Every day that Tessa does not wake, you can see a bit of the life drain out of him.”

“If only Master Jem were here …” Sophie sighed. “But he is not.”

“There is much that we must learn to live without, these days.” Gideon touched her cheek lightly with his fingers. They were rough, the fingers callused. Not the smooth fingers of a gentleman. Sophie smiled at him.

“You didn’t look at me at dinner,” he said, dropping his voice. It was true—dinner had been a quick affair of cold roast chicken and potatoes. No one had seemed to have much appetite, save Gabriel and Cecily, who’d eaten as if they had spent the day training. Perhaps they had.

“I have been concerned about Mrs. Branwell,” Sophie confessed. “She has been so worried, about Mr. Branwell, and about Miss Tessa, she is wasting away, and the baby—” She bit her lip. “I am concerned,” she said again. She could not bring herself to say more. It was hard to lose the reticence of a lifetime of service, even if she was engaged to a Shadowhunter now.

“Yours is a gentle heart,” Gideon said, sliding his fingers down her cheek to touch her lips, like the lightest of kisses. Then he drew back. “I saw Charlotte go alone into the drawing room, only a few moments ago. Perhaps you could have a word with her about your concern?”

“I couldn’t—”

“Sophie,” Gideon said. “You are not just Charlotte’s maid; you are her friend. If she will talk to anyone, it will be to you.”

The drawing room was cold and dark. There was no fire in the grate, and none of the lamps were lit against the cloak of night, which cast the chamber into gloom and shadow. It took Sophie a moment to even realize that one of the shadows was Charlotte, a small silent figure in the chair behind the desk.

“Mrs. Branwell,” she said, feeling a great awkwardness come upon her, despite Gideon’s encouraging words. Two days ago she and Charlotte had fought side by side at Cadair Idris. Now she was a servant again, here to clean the grate and dust the room for the next day’s use. A bucket of coals in one hand, tinderbox in her apron pocket. “I am sorry—I did not mean to interrupt.”

“You are not interrupting, Sophie. Not anything important.” Charlotte’s voice—Sophie had never heard her sound like that before. So small, or so defeated.

Sophie set the coals down by the fire and approached her mistress hesitantly. Charlotte was seated with her elbows on the desk, her face resting in her hands. A letter was on the desk, with the seal of the Council broken open. Sophie’s heart sped suddenly, remembering how the Consul had ordered them all out of the Institute before the battle at Cadair Idris. But surely it had been proved that they were correct? Surely their defeat of Mortmain would have canceled out the Consul’s edict, especially now that he was dead? “Is—is everything all right, ma’am?”

Charlotte gestured toward the paper, a hopeless flutter of her hand. Her insides turning cold, Sophie hurried to Charlotte’s side and took the letter from the desk.

Mrs. Branwell,

Considering the nature of the correspondence you had entered into with my late colleague, Consul Wayland, you may well be surprised to receive this missive. The Clave, however, finds itself in the position of requiring a new Consul, and when put to a vote, the foremost choice among us was yourself.

I can well understand that you may be satisfied with the running of the Institute, and that you may not wish the responsibility of this position, especially considering the injuries sustained by your husband in your brave battle against the Magister. However, I felt it incumbent upon me to offer you this opportunity, not only because you are clearly the desired choice of the Council, but because, given what I have seen of you, I think you would make one of the finer Consuls it has been my privilege to serve beside.

Yours with the highest regard,

Inquisitor Whitelaw

“Consul!” Sophie gasped, and the paper fluttered from her fingers. “They want to make you Consul?”

“So it seems.” Charlotte’s voice was lifeless.

“I—” Sophie reached for what to say. The idea of a London Institute not run by Charlotte was dreadful. And yet the position of Consul was an honor, the highest the Clave had to give, and to see Charlotte covered in the honor she had so dearly earned … “There is no one more deserving of this than you,” she said at last.

“Oh, Sophie, no. I was the one who chose to send us all to Cadair Idris. It is my fault Henry will never walk again. I did that.”

“He cannot blame you. He does not blame you.”

“No, he does not, but I blame myself. How can I be the Consul and send Shadowhunters into battle to die? I do not want that responsibility.”

Sophie took Charlotte’s hand in hers and pressed it. “Charlotte,” she said. “It is not just sending Shadowhunters into battle; sometimes it is a matter of holding them back. You have a compassionate heart and a thoughtful mind. You have led the Enclave for years. Of course your heart is broken for Mr. Branwell, but to be the Consul it is not a matter only of taking lives but also of saving them. If it had not been for you, if there had been only Consul Wayland, how many Shadowhunters would have died at the hands of Mortmain’s creatures?”

Charlotte looked down at Sophie’s red, work-roughened hand clasping hers. “Sophie,” she said. “When did you become so wise?”

Sophie blushed. “I learned wisdom from you, ma’am.”

“Oh, no,” Charlotte said. “A moment ago you called me Charlotte. As a future Shadowhunter, Sophie, you shall be calling me Charlotte from now on. And we shall be bringing on another maid, to take your place, so that your time will be free to prepare for your Ascension.”

“Thank you,” Sophie whispered. “So will you accept the offer? Become the Consul?”

Charlotte gently freed her hand from Sophie’s and took up her pen. “I will,” she said. “On three conditions.”

“What will those be?”

“The first is that I am allowed to lead the Clave from the Institute, here, and not move myself and my family to Idris, at least for the first few years. For I do not want to leave you all, and besides, I wish to be here to train Will to take over the Institute for me when I do depart.”

“Will?” said Sophie in astonishment. “Take over the Institute?”

Charlotte smiled. “Of course,” she said. “That is the second condition.”

“And the third?”

Charlotte’s smile faded, replaced by a look of determination. “That, you shall see the result of as soon as tomorrow, if it is accepted,” she said, and bent her head to begin writing.