Clockwork Princess

that was gone too and Will was on his knees beside him where he lay on the ground. Will’s face was as white as ashes.
    “Jem,” he said.
    There was a stillness around them both, a gap in the battle, an eerie timeless silence. The weight of a thousand things was in Will’s voice: disbelief and amazement, relief and betrayal. Jem began to struggle up onto his elbows just as Will’s sword, smeared with black oil, riven with dents, clattered to the ground.
    “You’re dead,” Will said. “I
felt
you die.” And he put his hand over his heart, on his bloodstained shirt, where his
parabatai
rune was. “Here.”
    Jem scrabbled for Will’s hand, caught it in his, and pressed the fingers of his blood brother’s hand to the inside of his own wrist. He willed his
parabatai
to understand.
Feel my pulse, the beat of blood under the skin; Silent Brothers have hearts, and they beat
. Will’s blue eyes widened. “I did not die. I changed. If I could have told you—if there was a way—”
    Will stared at him, his chest rising and falling quickly. The automaton had clawed one side of Will’s face. He was bleeding from several deep scratches, but he didn’t appear to notice. He drew his hand back from Jem’s grasp and exhaled softly.
“Roeddwn i’n meddwl dy fod wedi mynd am byth,”
he said. He spoke, without thinking, in Welsh, but Jem understood the words regardless. The runes of the Silent Brothers meant that no language was unknown to him.
    I thought you were gone forever
.
    “I am still here,” Jem said, and then there was a flicker at the corner of his eye, and he moved swiftly, spinning aside. A metal axe whistled down through the space where he had just been, and clanged against the stone floor. Automatons had surrounded them, a ring of whirring metal.
    And Will was on his feet, sword in hand, and they were back-to-back, and Will was saying: “There is no rune effective against them; they must be hacked apart by main force—”
    “I gathered that.” Jem gripped his staff and swung it hard, knocking one automaton back into a nearby wall. Sparks flew from its metal carapace.
    Will struck with his blade, slicing through the jointed knees of two creatures. “I like that stick of yours,” he said.
    “It’s a staff.” Jem swung out to knock another automaton sideways. “Made by the Iron Sisters, only for Silent Brothers.”
    Will lunged forward, slicing his blade cleanly through the neck of another automaton. Its head rolled to the ground, and a mixture of oil and vapor poured from its ragged throat. “Anyone can sharpen a stick.”
    “It’s a
staff
,” Jem repeated, and saw Will’s quicksilver smile out of the corner of his eye. Jem wanted to grin back—there was a time he would have grinned back naturally, but something in the change that had been wrought in him put what felt like the distance of years between him and such simple mortal gestures.
    The room was a mass of moving bodies and swinging weapons; Jem could see none of the other Shadowhunters clearly. He was aware of Will next to him, matching his stride to Jem’s, matching him blow for blow. As metal rang on metal, some inner part of Jem, some part that had been lost without his even knowing it was lost, felt the pleasure of fighting together with Will one last time.
    “Whatever you say, James,” said Will. “Whatever you say.”
    Tessa swung around, bringing her dagger up, and plunged it into the creature’s metal carapace. The blade punched through with an ugly ripping sound, followed by—her heart sank—a gravelly laugh. “Miss Gray,” said a deep voice, and she looked up to see the smooth face of Armaros. “Surely you know better than that. No weapon that small can cut me apart, nor do you have the strength.”
    Tessa opened her mouth to scream, but his clawed hands seized her, and he swung her up in his arms, clamping his hand over her mouth to stifle her cry. Through the haze of movement in the room, the flash of swords and metal, she saw Will cutting apart the automaton that had fallen on Jem. He reached to move it, just as Armaros snarled into her ear: “I may be made of metal, but I have the heart of a demon, and my demon’s heart yearns to feast on your flesh.”
    Armaros began to carry Tessa backward, through the fighting, even as she kicked at him with her boots. He tore her head to the side, his sharp fingers ripping the skin of her cheek. “You can’t kill me,” she gasped. “The angel I wear protects my