Clockwork Princess

life—”
    “Oh, no. It’s true I cannot kill you, but I can hurt you. And I can hurt you most exquisitely. I have no flesh with which to feel pleasure, so the only pleasures left to me are causing pain. While the angel at your throat protects you—as do the orders of the Magister—I must stay my hand, but were the angel’s power to fail—should it ever fail—I would rip you apart in my metal jaws.”
    They were outside the circle of the fighting now, and the demon was carrying her into an alcove, part hidden by a pillar of stone.
    “Do it. I’d rather die by your hands than be married to Mortmain.”
    “Don’t worry,” he said, and while he spoke without breath, his words still felt like a whisper against her skin, making her shudder in horror. Cold metal fingers circled her arms like manacles as he drew her into the shadows. “I will make sure of both.”
    Cecily saw her brother slice out at the automaton attacking Brother Zachariah. The roar of metal as it collapsed forward tore her eardrums. She started toward Will, seizing a dagger from her belt—and then toppled forward as something closed about her ankle, jerking her off her feet.
    She hit the ground on knees and elbows and twisted about to see that what had caught at her was the disembodied hand of an automaton. Sliced off at the wrist, black fluid pumping from the wires that still protruded from the jagged metal, its fingers were digging into her gear. She twisted and pivoted, hacking at the thing until its fingers loosened and separated and it clattered to the ground like a dead crab, twitching faintly.
    She groaned in disgust and staggered to her feet, only to find that she could no longer see Will or Brother Zachariah. The room was a chaotic blur of motion. She saw Gabriel, back-to-back with his brother, a pile of dead automatons at their feet. Gabriel’s gear was torn at the shoulder and he was bleeding. Cyril lay crumpled on the ground. Sophie had moved to be near him, slashing out in a circle with her sword, her scar livid in her pale face. Cecily could not see Magnus, but she could see the trail of blue sparks in the air that indicated his presence. And then there was Bridget, visible in flashes between the moving bodies of clockwork creatures, her weapon a blur, her red hair like a burning banner. And at her feet …
    Cecily began to fight her way through the crowd toward them. Halfway there she dropped her dagger, picking up a long-handled axe that one of the automatons had dropped. It was surprisingly light in her grasp, and made a very satisfying
crunch
when she drove the blade into the chest of a mechanical demon that had reached to seize her, sending the automaton spinning backward.
    And then she was leaping over a crumpled pile of fallen automatons, most of which had been hacked apart, their limbs scattered—no doubt the source of the hand that had seized her ankle. At the far end of the pile was Bridget, whirling this way and that as she beat back the tide of clockwork monsters threatening to advance on Charlotte and Henry. Bridget spared Cecily only a glance as the younger girl darted by her and dropped to her knees beside the head of the Institute.
    “Charlotte,” Cecily whispered.
    Charlotte looked up. Her face was white with shock, her pupils so wide, they seemed to have swallowed the light brown of her eyes. Her arms were wrapped around Henry, his head lolling back against her fragile shoulder, her hands locked about his chest. He seemed entirely limp.
    “Charlotte,” Cecily said again. “We cannot win this fight. We must retreat.”
    “I cannot move Henry!”
    “Charlotte—he is past our help now.”
    “No, he’s not,” Charlotte said wildly. “I can still feel his pulse.”
    Cecily reached out a hand. “Charlotte—”
    “I am not mad! He is alive! He is alive, and I will not leave him!”
    “Charlotte, the baby,” Cecily said. “Henry would want you to save yourselves.”
    Something flickered in Charlotte’s eyes—she tightened her grip on Henry. “Without Henry we cannot leave,” she said. “We cannot make a Portal. We are trapped in this mountain.”
    Cecily’s breath went out of her in a little gasp. She had not thought of that. Her heart pounded a sharp message through her veins:
We’re going to die. We are all going to die
. Why had she chosen this? My God, what had she done? She raised her head, saw a familiar flash of blue and black at the corner of her vision—Will? The blue reminded