Clockwork Princess

At one point, disgruntled upon losing, Will had thrown the cards into the fire and watched in fascination as they’d burned one by one, the fire punching holes in the glossy white paper. Jem had laughed. “You can’t win like that.” “Sometimes it’s the only way to win,” Will had said. “Burn it all down.”

“Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.”

Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.”

“Truly?” Will said. “You have come back from death like the ghost of Old Marley, but to nag me about my romantic prospects?”

“What prospects? You’ve taken Tessa on so many carriage rides, I’d wager she could draw a map of London from memory, but have you proposed to her? You have not. A lady cannot propose to herself, William, and she cannot tell you she loves you if you do not state your intentions!”

She had fallen asleep with her head on his arm, the clockwork angel, still around her throat, resting against his shoulder, just to the left of his collarbone. As she moved away, the clockwork angel slipped free and she saw to her surprise that where it had lain against his skin it had left a mark behind, no bigger than a shilling, in the shape of a pale white star.

“I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me,” Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. “And you are still with me. When I breathe, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I lie down to die, you will be with me. You say we are born and born again. I say there is a river that divides the dead and the living. What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, and if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so that we can cross together.”

“A very magnanimous statement, Gideon,” said Magnus.

“I’m Gabriel.”

Magnus waved a hand. “All Lightwoods look the same to me—”

“I am not alone,” he said. “Wherever we are, we are as one.”

You asked me how I, being immortal, survive so many deaths. There is no great secret. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.

And he played the birth of their first son, and the protection ceremony that had been carried out on the child in the Silent City. Will would have no other Silent Brother but Jem perform it. And Jem played the way he had covered his scarred face with his hands and turned away when he’d found out the child’s name was James.