Clockwork Princess

bar, and passed to the front door of the inn. All he could think of was air, getting air into his lungs to breathe.
    He pushed the doors open and half-tumbled out into the night. For a moment the pain in his chest eased, and he fell back against the wall of the inn. Rain was sheeting down, soaking his hair and clothes. He gasped, his heart stuttering with a mixture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem had been at his worst, even when he’d been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain.
    The cord snapped.
    For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleaching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees, vomiting up his supper into the mud. When the spasms had passed, he staggered to his feet and blindly away from the inn, as if trying to outrace his own pain. He fetched up against the wall of the stables, beside the horse trough. He dropped to his knees to plunge his hands into the icy water—and saw his own reflection. There was his face, as white as death, and his shirt, and a spreading stain of red across the front.
    With wet hands he seized at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his
parabatai
rune, just over his heart, was bleeding.
    His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same rain that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will’s life into nonsense.
    Jem was dead.
    Tessa had been walking for hours, and her thin shoes were cut through from the jagged rocks by the riverbed. She had started out almost running, but exhaustion and cold had overtaken her, and now she was limping slowly, if determinedly, downstream. The soaked material of her skirts dragged her down, feeling like an anchor that would pull her to the bottom of some terrible sea.
    She had seen no sign of human habitation for miles, and was beginning to despair of her plan, when a clearing came into view. It had begun to rain lightly, but even through the drizzle she could see the outline of a low stone building. As she drew closer, she saw that it seemed to be a small house, with a thatched roof and overgrown path leading to the front door.
    She picked up her pace, hurrying now, thinking of a kindly farmer and his wife, the kind in books who would take in a young girl and help contact her family, as the Rivers had done for Jane in
Jane Eyre
. As she drew closer, though, she noticed the dirty and broken windows and the grass growing on the thatched roof. Her heart sank. The house was deserted.
    The door was already part open, the wood swelled with rain. There was something frightening about the house’s emptiness, but Tessa was desperate for shelter from both the rain and any pursuers that Mortmain might have sent after her. She clung to the hope that Mrs. Black would think she had died in the fall, but she doubted that Mortmain would be so easily put off her trail. After all, if anyone knew what her clockwork angel could do, it would be him.
    There was grass growing between the flagstones of the floor inside the house, and the hearth was dirty, with a blackened pot still hanging over the remains of the fire and the whitewashed walls dingy with soot and the passage of time. There was a tangle of what looked like farming implements near the door. One resembled a long metal stick with a curved forked end, the tines still sharp. Knowing she might need some means of defense, she caught it up, then moved from the entrance room into the only other room the house had: a small bedroom in which she was delighted to find a musty blanket on the bed.
    She looked down hopelessly at her wet dress. It would take ages to remove without Sophie’s help, and she was desperate for warmth. She wrapped the blanket around herself, wet clothes and all, and curled up on the prickly hay-stuffed mattress. It smelled of mold and probably had mice living in it, but at this moment it felt like the most luxurious bed Tessa had ever stretched herself upon.
    Tessa knew it was wiser to stay awake. But despite everything, she could no longer withstand the demands of her battered and exhausted body. Clutching the metal weapon to her chest, she slid away into sleep.
    “So this is him, then? The Nephilim?”
    Will did not know how long he had been sitting slumped against the wall of the