Clockwork Princess

“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!”
    “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