Clockwork Princess

that, with an effort that made him bite his lip and corded the muscles in his throat. Holding her gently by the shoulders, he guided her to sit down again upon the edge of the bed. When he released her, his hands curled into fists. He took a step back. She could see him breathing, see the pulse going in his throat.
    “I am different,” he said in a low voice. “I am changed. And not in a way that can be undone.”
    “But you are not entirely one of
them
yet,” she said. “You can speak—and see—”
    He exhaled slowly. He was still staring at the post of the bed as if it held the universe’s secrets. “There is a process. A series of rituals and procedures. No, I am not quite a Silent Brother yet. But I will be soon.”
    “So the
yin fen
did not prevent it.”
    “Almost. There was—pain when I made the transition. Great pain, that nearly killed me. They did what they could. But I shall never be like other Silent Brothers.” He looked down, his lashes veiling his eyes. “I shall not be—quite as they are. I will be less powerful, for there are some runes, still, that I cannot withstand.”
    “Surely they can just wait now for the
yin fen
to leave your body completely?”
    “It will not. My body has been arrested in the state it was in when they put these first runes on me here.” He indicated the scars on his face. “Because of it, there will be skills I cannot achieve. It will take me much longer to master their vision and speech of the mind.”
    “Does that mean they will not take your eyes—sew your lips shut?”
    “I don’t know.” His voice was soft now, almost entirely the voice of the Jem she knew. There was a flush across his cheekbones, and she thought of a pale column of hollow marble slowly filling with human blood. “They will have me for a long time. Perhaps forever. I cannot say what will happen. I have given myself over to them. My fate is in their hands now.”
    “If we could free you from them—”
    “Then the
yin fen
that remains in me would burn again, and I would be as I was. An addict, dying. This is my choice, Tessa, because it is death otherwise. You know that it is. I do not want to leave you. Even knowing that becoming a Silent Brother could ensure my survival, I fought it as if it were a prison sentence. Silent Brothers cannot marry. They cannot have
parabatai
. They can live only in the Silent City. They do not laugh. They cannot play music.”
    “Oh, Jem,” Tessa said. “Perhaps the Silent Brothers cannot play music, but neither can the dead. If this is the only way you can live, then I rejoice in my soul for you, even as my heart sorrows.”
    “I know you too well to think that you would feel another way.”
    “And I know you well enough to know that you feel bowed by guilt. But why? You have done nothing wrong.”
    He bent his head so that his forehead rested on the bedpost. He closed his eyes. “This is why I did not want to come.”
    “But I am not angry—”
    “I did not think you would be
angry
,” Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. “We were
engaged
, Tessa. A proposal—an offer of marriage—is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live with you for years, but that wasn’t possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up—all of it up—to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder—a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have.”
    “To give up your life for one day of marriage—it would not have been worth it,” Tessa said. Her heart was pounding out a message that spoke to her of Will’s arms around her, his lips on hers in the cave under Cadair Idris. She didn’t deserve Jem’s gentle confessions, his penitence, or his longing. “Jem, I must tell you something.”
    He looked at her. She could see the black in his eyes, threads of black alongside the silver, beautiful and strange.
    “It’s about Will. About Will, and me.”
    “He loves you,” Jem said. “I know he loves you. We spoke of it before he left here.” Though the coldness had not returned to his voice, he sounded suddenly almost unnaturally calm.
    Tessa was shocked. “I didn’t know you had ever talked of it with each other. Will did not say.”
    “Nor did you ever tell me of his feelings, though you knew for months. We