Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(111)
Author: Cassandra Clare

He did not move. The sun had begun to set in a torrent of fire. Across the Thames, factory smokestacks belched smoke that trailed dark fingers across the red sky. Will was leaning on the railing as if he were exhausted, as if he intended to fall forward across the javelin-sharp finials and end it all. He gave no sign of hearing Tessa as she approached and moved to stand beside him. From here the steeply pitched roof fell away to a dizzying view of the cobblestones below.

“Will,” she said again. “What are you doing?”

He did not look at her. He was staring out at the city, a black outline against the reddened sky. The dome of St. Paul’s shone through the mucky air, and the Thames ran like dark strong tea below it, bracketed here and there with the black lines of bridges. Dark shapes moved by the river’s edge—mudlarks, searching through the filth thrown up by the water, hoping to find something valuable to sell.

“I remember now,” Will said without looking at her, “what it was I was trying to remember the other day. It was Blake. ‘And I behold London, a Human awful wonder of God.’” He stared out over the landscape. “Milton thought Hell was a city, you know. I think maybe he had it half-right. Perhaps London is just Hell’s entrance, and we are the damned souls refusing to pass through, fearing that what we will find on the other side will be worse than the horror we already know.”

“Will.” Tessa was bewildered. “Will, what is it, what’s wrong?”

He gripped the railing with both hands, his fingers whitening. His hands were covered with cuts and scratches, his knuckles scraped red and black. There were bruises on his face, too, darkening the line of his jaw, purpling the skin under his eye. His lower lip was split and swollen, and he had done nothing to heal any of it. She could not imagine why.

“I should have known,” he said. “That it was a trick. That Mortmain was lying when he came here. Charlotte so often vaunts my skill at tactics, but a good tactician is not blindly trusting. I was a fool.”

“Charlotte believes it’s her fault. Henry believes it’s his fault. I believe it’s my fault,” Tessa said impatiently. “We can’t all have the luxury of blaming ourselves, now, can we?”

“Your fault?” Will sounded puzzled. “Because Mortmain is obsessed with you? That hardly seems—”

“For bringing Nathaniel here,” Tessa said. Just saying it out loud made her feel as if her chest were being squeezed. “For urging you to trust him.”

“You loved him,” said Will. “He was your brother.”

“He still is,” Tessa said. “And I still love him. But I know what he is. I always did know what he was. I just didn’t want to believe it. I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes.”

“Yes.” Will sounded tight and distant. “I suppose we do.”

Quickly Tessa said, “I came up here because I have good news, Will. Won’t you let me tell you what it is?”

“Tell me.” His voice was dead.

“Charlotte says I can stay here,” Tessa said. “At the Institute.”

Will said nothing.

“She said there’s no Law against it,” Tessa went on, a little bewildered now. “So I won’t need to leave.”

“Charlotte would never have made you leave, Tessa. She cannot bear to abandon even a fly caught in a spider’s web. She would not have abandoned you.” There was no life in Will’s voice and no feeling. He was simply stating a fact.

“I thought …” Tessa’s elation was fading quickly. “That you would be at least a little pleased. I thought we were becoming friends.” She saw the line of his throat move as he swallowed, hard, his hands tensing again on the rail. “As a friend,” she went on, her voice dropping, “I have come to admire you, Will. To care for you.” She reached out, meaning to touch his hand, but she drew back, startled by the tension in his posture, the whiteness of the knuckles that gripped the metal railing. The red mourning Marks stood out, scarlet against the whitened skin, as if they had been cut there with knives. “I thought perhaps …”

At last Will turned to look directly at her. Tessa was shocked at the expression on his face. The shadows under his eyes were so dark, they looked hollow.

She stood and stared at him, willing him to say what the hero in a book would say now, at this moment. Tessa, my feelings for you have grown beyond mere feelings of friendship. They are so much more rare and precious than that… .

“Come here,” he said instead. There was nothing welcoming in his voice, or in the way he stood. Tessa fought back her instinct to shy away, and moved toward him, close enough for him to touch her. He reached out his hands and touched her hair lightly, brushing back the stray curls around her face. “Tess.”

She looked up at him. His eyes were the same color as the smoke-stained sky; even bruised, his face was beautiful. She wanted to be touching him, wanted it in some inchoate, instinctive way she could neither explain nor control. When he bent to kiss her, it was all she could do to hold herself back until his lips met hers. His mouth brushed hers and she tasted salt on him, the tang of bruised and tender skin where his lip was cut. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to him, his fingers knotting in the fabric of her dress. Even more than in the attic, she felt caught in the eddy of a powerful wave that threatened to pull her over and under, to crush and break her, to wear her down to softness as the sea might wear down a piece of glass.

She reached to lay her hands on his shoulders, and he drew back, looking down at her, breathing very hard. His eyes were bright, his lips red and swollen now from kissing as well as injuries.

“Perhaps,” he said, “we should discuss our arrangements, then.”

Tessa, still feeling as if she were drowning, whispered, “Arrangements?”

“If you are going to be staying,” he said, “it would be to our advantage to be discreet. It might perhaps be better to use your room. Jem tends to come in and out of mine as if he lives in the place, and he might be puzzled to find the door locked. Your quarters, on the other hand—”

“Use my room?” she echoed. “Use it for what?”

Will’s mouth quirked up at the corner; Tessa, who had been thinking about how beautifully shaped his lips were, took a moment to realize with a sense of distant surprise that the smile was a very cold one. “You cannot pretend you don’t know… . You are not entirely ignorant of the world, I think, Tessa. Not with that brother of yours.”