Clockwork Princess

you.”
    “Will—”
    “I love you so much, so incredibly much,” he went on, “and when you’re this close to me, I forget who you are. I forget you’re Jem’s. I’d have to be the worst sort of person to think what I’m thinking right now. But I am thinking it.”
    “I loved Jem,” she said. “I love him still, and he loved me, but I am not anybody’s, Will. My heart is my own. It is beyond you to control it. It has been beyond
me
to control it.”
    Will’s eyes were still closed. His chest was rising and falling swiftly, and she could hear the hard thump of his heart, rapid beneath the solidity of his rib cage. His body was warm against hers, and alive, and she thought of the automatons’ cold hands on her, and Mortmain’s colder eyes. She thought of what would happen if she lived and Mortmain succeeded in what he wanted and she was shackled to him all her life—a man she did not love and in fact despised.
    She thought of the feel of his cold hands on her, and if those would be the only hands that would ever touch her again.
    “What do you think will happen tomorrow, Will?” she whispered. “When Mortmain finds us. Tell me honestly.”
    His hand moved carefully, almost unwillingly, to slide down her hair and come to rest at the juncture of her neck. She wondered if he could feel the pounding of her pulse, answering his. “I think Mortmain will kill me. Or to be precise, he will have those creatures kill me. I am a decent Shadowhunter, Tess, but those automatons—they cannot be stopped. Runed blades serve as no better than ordinary weapons upon them, and seraph blades not at all.”
    “But you are not afraid.”
    “There are so many worse things than death,” he said. “Not to be loved or not to be able to love: that is worse. And to go down fighting as a Shadowhunter should, there is no dishonor in that. An honorable death—I have always wanted that.”
    A shiver passed through Tessa. “There are two things I want,” she said, and was surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. “If you think Mortmain will try to kill you tomorrow, then I wish to be given a weapon. I shall divest myself of my clockwork angel, and I shall fight by your side, and if we go down, we go down together. For, I too, wish an honorable death, like Boadicea.”
    “Tess—”
    “I would rather die than be the Magister’s tool. Give me a weapon, Will.”
    She felt his body shudder against hers. “I can do that for you,” he said at last, subdued. “What was the second thing? That you wanted?”
    She swallowed. “I want to kiss you one more time before I die.”
    His eyes flew wide. They were blue, blue like the sea and sky in her dream where he had fallen away from her, blue as the flowers Sophie had put in her hair. “Don’t—”
    “Say anything I don’t mean,” she finished for him. “I know. I am not. I mean it, Will. And I know it is entirely beyond the bounds of propriety to ask it. I know I must seem a bit mad.” She glanced down, and then up again, gathering her courage. “And if you can tell me that you can die tomorrow without our lips ever touching again, and you will not regret it at all, then tell me, and I will desist in asking, for I know I have no right—”
    Her words were cut off, for he had caught hold of her and pulled her against him, and crushed his lips down against hers. For a split second it was almost painful, sharp with desperation and thinly controlled hunger, and she tasted salt and heat in her mouth and the gasp of his breath. And then he gentled, with a force of restraint she could
feel
all through her body, and the slide of lips against lips, the interplay of tongue and teeth, altered from pain to pleasure in the sliver of a moment.
    On the balcony at the Lightwoods’, he had been so careful, but he was not being careful now. His hands slid roughly down her back, tangling in her hair, fisting in the loose fabric at the back of her dress. Half-lifting her so their bodies collided; he was against her, the long slim length of his body, hard and fragile at the same time. Her head slanted to the side as he parted her lips with his and they were not so much kissing as devouring each other. Her fingers gripped his hair tightly, hard enough that it must have hurt, and her teeth grazed his bottom lip. He groaned and pulled her tighter, making her gasp for air.
    “Will—,” she whispered, and he stood up, lifting her in his arms, still kissing her. She held tight to his