Clockwork Princess

tone.
    “With passion. There are those who fight because it is their duty and those who fight because they love it. You love it.”
    “I don’t—,” Cecily began, but she was interrupted as the training room door flew open with a loud bang.
    It was Will, filling the doorway with his lanky, broad-shouldered frame. His blue eyes were thunderous. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
    So much for the brief peace they had achieved the night before. “I am practicing,” Cecily said. “You told me I would get no better without practice.”
    “Not you. Gabriel Lightworm over here.” Will jerked his chin toward the other boy. “Sorry. Light
wood
.”
    Gabriel slowly unhitched his arms from around Cecily. “Whoever has been tutoring your sister in swordplay has imparted many bad habits. I was merely endeavoring to help.”
    “I told him it was all right,” Cecily said, having no idea why she was defending Gabriel, except that she suspected it would annoy Will.
    It did. His eyes narrowed. “And did
he
tell
you
he has been looking for years for a way to get back at me for what he perceives as an insult to
his
sister? And what better way to do it than through you?”
    Cecily whipped her head around to stare at Gabriel, who wore an expression of mixed annoyance and defiance. “Is that true?”
    He did not reply to her but to Will. “If we are going to live in the same house, Herondale, then we shall have to learn to treat each other cordially. Don’t you agree?”
    “As long as I can still break your arm as easily as look at you, I agree to no such thing.” Will reached up and plucked a rapier off the wall. “Now get out of here, Gabriel. And leave my sister alone.”
    With a single scornful look, Gabriel pushed his way past Will and out of the room. “Was that absolutely necessary, Will?” Cecily demanded as soon as the door had shut behind him.
    “I know Gabriel Lightwood and you do not. I suggest you leave it to me to be the best judge of his character. He wishes to use you to hurt me—”
    “Really, you cannot imagine a motivation he might have that is not yourself?”
    “I know him,” Will said again. “He has shown himself to be a liar and a traitor—”
    “People change.”
    “Not that much.”
    “You have,” Cecily said, striding across the room and dropping her sword onto a bench with a clatter.
    “So have you,” Will said, surprising her. She turned on him.
    “I have changed? How have
I
changed?”
    “When you came here,” he said, “you spoke over and over of getting me to come home with you. You disliked your training. You pretended otherwise, but I could tell. Then it ceased to be ‘Will, you must go home,’ and became ‘Write a letter, Will.’ And you began to enjoy your training. Gabriel Lightwood is a bounder, but he was right about one thing: You did enjoy fighting the great worm at Lightwood House. Shadowhunter blood is like gunpowder in your veins, Cecy. Once it is lit, it is not so easily extinguished. Remain much longer here, and there is every likelihood you will be like me—too entwined to leave.”
    Cecily squinted at her brother. His shirt was open at the collar, showing something scarlet winking in the hollow of his throat. “Are you wearing a woman’s necklace, Will?”
    Will put a hand to his neck with a startled look, but before he could respond, the door to the training room opened once more and Sophie stood there, an anxious expression upon her scarred face.
    “Master Will, Miss Herondale,” she said. “I have been looking for you. Charlotte has requested that everyone come to the drawing room right away; it is a matter of some urgency.”
    Cecily had always been something of a lonely child. It was difficult not to be when your elder siblings were dead or missing and there were no young people your age nearby whom your parents considered suitable companions. She had learned early to amuse herself with her own observations of people, unshared with others but kept close that she might take them out later and examine them when she was in solitude.
    The habits of a lifetime were not broken quickly, and though Cecily was no longer lonely, since she had come to the Institute eight weeks ago, she had made its inhabitants the subject of her close study. They were Shadowhunters, after all—the enemy at first, and then, as that had become less and less her view, simply the subject of fascination.
    She examined them now as she walked into the drawing