Clockwork Princess

of the clockwork demon as it spoke to him:
    All these years you have driven us from this world with your runed blades. Now we have bodies that your weapons will not work on, and this world
will be ours.
    Rage poured through Will like fire in his veins. He tore himself away from the wall and plunged headlong down a narrow tunnel, away from the cavern room. As he went, he thought he heard a sound behind him—a whirring, as if the mechanism of a great watch were starting up—but when he turned, he saw nothing, only the smooth walls of the cave, and the unmoving shadows.
    The tunnel he was following narrowed as he walked, until eventually he was squeezing sideways past an outcropping of quartz-laden rock. If it narrowed further, he knew, he would have to turn around and go back to the cavern; the thought made him push himself forward with renewed vigor, and he slid forward, almost falling, as the passage suddenly opened into a wider corridor.
    It was almost like a hallway at the Institute, only made all of smoothed stone, with torches at intervals set into metal brackets. Beside each torch was an arched door, also of stone. The first two stood open on empty dark rooms.
    Beyond the third door was Tessa.
    Will did not see her immediately when he walked into the room. The stone door swung partly shut behind him, but he found that he was not in darkness. There was a flickering light—the dimming flames of a blaze in a stone fireplace at the far end of the room. To his astonishment it was furnished like a room in an inn, with a bed and washstand, rugs on the ground, even curtains on the walls, though they hung over bare stone, not windows.
    In front of the fire was a slim shadow, crouched on the ground. Will’s hand went automatically to the hilt of the dagger at his waist—and then the shadow turned, hair slipping over her shoulder, and he saw her face.
    Tessa.
    His hand fell away from the dagger as his heart lurched inside his chest with an impossible, painful force. He saw her expression change: curiosity, astonishment, disbelief. She rose to her feet, her skirts tumbling around her as she straightened, and he saw her hold her hand out.
    “Will?” she said.
    It was like a key turning the lock of a door, releasing him; he started forward. There had never been a greater distance than the distance that separated him from Tessa at that moment. It was a large room; at the moment, the distance between London and Cadair Idris seemed nothing to the distance across it. He felt a shudder, as of some sort of resistance, as he crossed the room. He saw Tessa hold out her hand, her mouth shaping words—and then she was in his arms, the breath half-knocked out of both of them as they collided with each other.
    She was up on her toes, her arms around his shoulders, whispering his name: “Will, Will,
Will
—” He buried his face against her neck, where her thick hair curled; she smelled of smoke and violet water. He clutched her even more tightly as her fingers curled against the back of his collar, and they clung together. For just that moment the grief that had clenched him like an iron fist since Jem’s death seemed to relax and he could breathe.
    He thought of the hell he had been in since he’d left London—the days of riding without stopping, the sleepless nights. Blood and loss and pain and fighting. All to bring him here. To Tessa.
    “Will,” she said again, and he looked down into her tearstained face. There was a bruise across her cheekbone. Someone had hit her there, and his heart swelled with rage. He would find out who it was, and he would kill them. If it was Mortmain, he would kill him only after he had burned his monstrous laboratory to the ground, that the madman might see the ruin of all his creation—“Will,” Tessa said again, interrupting his thoughts. She sounded almost breathless. “Will, you
idiot
.”
    His romantic notions came to a screeching halt like a hackney cab in traffic on Fleet Street. “I— What?”
    “Oh, Will,” she said. Her lips were trembling; she looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. “Do you remember when you told me that the handsome young gentleman who came to rescue you was never wrong, not even if he said the sky was purple and made of hedgehogs?”
    “The first time I ever saw you. Yes.”
    “Oh, my Will.” She drew gently away from his embrace, smoothing a tangled lock of hair behind her ear. Her eyes remained fixed on his. “I cannot imagine