He nodded thoughtfully, as though he were weighing her words. “I will spare them—I will keep them here, as our prisoners. Their captivity will keep you pleasant, and it will keep you obedient”—his voice hardened—“because you love them, and if you ever even try to escape, I will kill them all.” He paused. “What do you say, Miss Gray? I have been generous, and now I am owed thanks.”
The only sound in the room was the creak of the automatons and Tessa’s own blood pounding in her ears. She realized now what Mrs. Black had meant by her words in the carriage. And the more knowledge of them you have, the more your sympathies lie with them, the more effective a weapon you will be to raze them to the ground. Tessa had become one of the Shadowhunters, if not entirely like them. She cared for them and loved them, and Mortmain would use that caring and that love to force her hand. In saving the few she loved, she would doom them all. And yet to condemn Will and Jem, Charlotte and Henry, Cecily and the others to death was unthinkable.
“Yes.” She heard Jem—or was it Will—make a muffled sound. “Yes, I will take that bargain.” She looked up. “Tell the demon to let me go, and I will come up to you.”
She saw Mortmain’s eyes narrow. “No,” he said. “Armaros, bring her to me.”
The demon’s hands tightened on her arms; Tessa bit her lip with the pain. As if in sympathy, the clockwork angel at her throat twitched.
Few can claim a single angel who guards them. But you can.
Her hand went to her throat. The angel seemed to thrum under her fingers, as if it were breathing, as if it were trying to communicate something to her. Her hand tightened on it, the points of the wings cutting into her palm. She thought of her dream.
Is this what you look like?
You see here only a fraction of what I am. In my true form I am deadly glory.
Armaros’s hands closed on Tessa’s arms.
Your clockwork angel contains within it a bit of the spirit of an angel, Mortmain had said. She thought of the white star mark the clockwork angel had left on Will’s shoulder. She thought of the smooth, beautiful, unmoving face of the angel, the cool hands that had held her as she had fallen from Mrs. Black’s carriage toward the churning water below.
The demon began to lift her.
Tessa thought of her dream.
She took a deep breath. She did not know if what she was about to do was even possible, or simply madness. As Armaros raised her with his hands, she closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind, reaching into the clockwork angel. She tumbled for a moment through dark space, and then a gray limbo, seeking that light, that spark of spirit, that life—
And there it was, a sudden blaze, a bonfire, brighter than any spark she had ever seen before. She reached for it, wrapping it about herself, coils of white fire that burned and scorched her skin. She screamed aloud—
And Changed.
White fire blasted through her veins. She shot upward, her gear ripping and tearing and falling away, light blazing all around her. She was fire. She was a falling star. Armaros’s arms were torn from her body—soundlessly he melted and dissolved, scorched by the heavenly fire that blazed through Tessa.
She was flying—flying upward. No, she was rising, growing. Her bones stretched and elongated, a lattice being pulled outward and upward as she grew impossibly. Her skin had turned gold, and it stretched and tore as she hurtled upward like the bean stalk from the old fairy tale, and where her skin tore, golden ichor leaked from the wounds. Curls like shavings of hot white metal sprang from her head, surrounding her face. And from her back burst wings—massive wings, greater than any bird’s.
She supposed that she should be terrified. Glancing down, she saw the Shadowhunters staring up at her, their mouths open. The whole room was filled with blinding light, light that poured from her. She had become Ithuriel. The divine fire of angels was blazing through her, scorching her bones, searing her eyes. But she felt only a steely calm.
She stood twenty feet high now. She was eye to eye with Mortmain, who was frozen with terror, his hands gripping the railing of the balcony. The clockwork angel, after all, had been his gift to her mother. He must never have imagined that it would ever be put to this use.
“It’s not possible,” he said hoarsely. “Not possible—”
You have entrapped an angel of Heaven, Tessa said, though it was not her voice speaking but Ithuriel’s speaking through her. His voice echoed through her body like the ringing of a gong. Distantly she wondered if her heart was beating—did angels have hearts? Would this kill her? If it did, it was worth it. You have tried to create life. Life is the province of Heaven. And Heaven does not take kindly to usurpers.
Mortmain turned to run. But he was slow, as all humans were slow. Tessa reached out her hand, Ithuriel’s hand, and closed it about him as he ran, lifting him off his feet. He screamed as the angel’s grip scorched him. He was writhing, already burning, as Tessa tightened her grip, crushing his body to a jelly of scarlet blood and white bones.
She opened her fingers. Mortmain’s crushed body fell, crashing to the ground among his own automatons. There was a shuddering, a great creaking scream of metal as of a building collapsing, and the automatons began to fall, one by one, crumpling to the ground, lifeless without their Magister to animate them. A garden of metal flowers, withering and dying one by one, and the Shadowhunters stood in the center of them, looking about themselves in wonder.
And then Tessa realized that she did still have a heart, for it leaped in joy to see them alive and safe. Yet even as she reached for them with her golden hands—one stained with scarlet now, Mortmain’s blood mixing with Ithuriel’s golden ichor—they shrank back from the blaze of light around her. No, no, she wanted to say, I would never hurt you, but the words would not come. She could not speak; the burning was too great. She struggled to find her way back to herself, to Change into Tessa again, but she was lost in the blaze of the fire, as if she had fallen into the heart of the sun. An agony of flames exploded through her, and she felt herself begin to fall, the clockwork angel a red-hot lariat about her throat. Please, she thought, but everything was fire and burning, and she fell, senseless, into the light.
22
THUNDER IN THE TRUMPET
For till the thunder in the trumpet be,
Soul may divide from body, but not we
One from another
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Laus Veneris”
Clockwork creatures clawed at Tessa out of black mists. Fire ran through her veins, and when she looked down, her skin was cracked and blistering, golden ichor running in sheets down her arms. She saw the endless fields of Heaven, saw a sky constantly on fire with a blaze that would have blinded any human. She saw silver clouds with edges like razors, and felt the icy emptiness that hollowed the hearts of angels.
“Tessa.” It was Will; she would have known his speech anywhere. “Tessa, wake up, wake up. Tessa, please.”
She could hear the pain in his voice and wanted to reach out for him, but as she lifted her arms, the flames rose and charred her fingers. Her hands turned to ash and blew away on the hot wind.
Tessa tossed on her bed in a delirium of fever and nightmares. The sheets, twisted around her, were soaked with sweat, her hair plastered to her temples. Her skin, always pale, was near-translucent, showing the mapping of veins beneath her skin, the shape of her bones. Her clockwork angel was at her throat; every once in a while she would catch at it, and then cry out in a lost voice, as if the touch pained her.