Clockwork Princess

face, as brilliant as the sunrise breaking over the Thames. “That is all I ever wanted.”
    “Will?” A soft voice broke him from his reverie. Tessa, sitting across from him inside the carriage, her gray eyes the color of rain in the dim light. “What are you thinking of?”
    With an effort he pulled himself out of memory, his eyes fixing on her face. Tessa’s face. She wore no hat, and the hood of her brocade cloak had fallen back. Her face was pale—wider across the cheekbones, slightly pointed at the chin. He thought he had never seen a face that had such a power of expression: Her every smile divided his heart as lightning might split a blackened tree, as did her every look of sorrow. At the moment she was gazing at him with a wistful concern that caught his heart. “Jem,” he said, with perfect honesty. “I was thinking of his reaction when I told him of Marbas’s curse.”
    “He felt only sorrow for you,” she said immediately. “I know he did; he told me as much.”
    “Sorrow but not pity,” said Will. “Jem has always given me exactly what I needed in the way that I needed it, even when I did not know myself what I required. All
parabatai
are devoted. We must be, to give so much of ourselves to each other, even if we gain in strength by doing so. But with Jem it is different. For so many years I needed him to live, and he kept me alive. I thought he did not know that he was doing it, but maybe he did.”
    “Perhaps,” Tessa said. “He would never have counted a moment of such effort as wasted.”
    “He has never said anything to you of it?”
    She shook her head. Her small hands, in their white gloves, were in fists in her lap. “He speaks of you only with the greatest pride, Will,” she said. “He admires you more than you could ever know. When he learned of the curse, he was heartbroken for you, but there was also, almost, a sort of …”
    “Vindication?”
    She nodded. “He had always believed you were good,” she said. “And then it was proven.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “To be good and to be cursed, it is not the same thing.”
    She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin, only the cloth of the gloves, and yet it did not matter.
You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire
. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer. “You
are
good, Will,” she said. “There is no one better placed than I am to be able to say with perfect confidence how good you really are.”
    He said slowly, not wanting her to move her hands away, “You know, when we were fifteen years old, Yanluo, the demon who murdered Jem’s parents, was finally slain. Jem’s uncle determined to relocate himself from China to Idris and invited Jem to come and live with him there. Jem refused—for me. He said you do not leave your
parabatai
. That it was part of the words of the oath. ‘Thy people shall be my people.’ I wonder, if I had had the chance to return to my family, would I have done the same for him?”
    “You are doing it,” Tessa said. “Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem’s sake.”
    “And yours,” he said before he could stop himself. She withdrew her hands from his, and he cursed himself silently and savagely:
How could you have been so foolish? How could you, after two months? You’ve been so careful. Your love for her is only a burden she endures out of politeness. Remember that
.
    But Tessa was only pulling aside the curtain as the carriage came to a stop. They were rolling into a mews, from whose entry hung a sign: all drivers of vehicles are directed to walk their horses while passing under this archway . “We are here,” she said, as if he had not said a word. Perhaps he had not, Will thought. Perhaps he had not spoken aloud. Perhaps he was only losing his mind. Certainly it was not unimaginable, under the circumstances.
    When the carriage door opened, it brought with it a blast of cool Chelsea air. He saw Tessa raise her head as Cyril helped her down. He joined Tessa on the cobblestones. The place smelled of the Thames. Before the Embankment had been built, the river had come much closer to these rows of houses, their edges softened by gaslight in the darkness. Now the river