Clockwork Princess

Page Six

Will, abandoning all morals, burst into Tessa's room without hesitation. Jem, momentarily startled either by the noise or the total contrast of Will's behaviour to his, stood blankly in the corridor for half a second until finally he gathered his thoughts and sprung into action next to Will.

But they were too late.

Tessa's room was a mess, completely turned upside down by whatever or whoever had just entered the room. The lace curtains were half-torn down from their pole, ripped and swaying gently in the breeze coming through the smashed window pane. The sheets on the vacant bed were askew, as if she had been taken by force. Tessa, who had been so ill, weak and feeble. Taken.

"Tess," Will whispered, and Jem heard anguish in his parabatai's voice he had never heard before. Shouldn't it be he himself that was wallowing in despair, sinking to his knees with desperation and hopelessness at the fact that the most malevolent and cruel man in all of London now had his financeé? 

But no - Jem was rock solid, unmoved, stone-faced as he looked on to the scene of chaos, though he could feel pain welling deep in his gut, dormant until now when his heart threathened to break. Will rummaged desperately through the bedsheets as if he believed that perhaps Tessa was still there, hiding somehow, as if this was all just a bad dream.

Jem gently and calmy picked up the note Will had been holding moments before. He had not been scarce on the details - a foreign, dead language, and scrawled writing. A capital M was the only character Jem could make out in the entire note, and he assumed that it stood for the Magister. But how had he gotten in so quickly, so deftly, without dectection? It had all happened so fast...

"I should have come sooner," WIll said, almost to himself, staring out the window with a pained, pale expression, his knuckles shaking at his sides. The words were a statement rather than a regret. Jem thought that perhaps Will was feeling this because he felt he owed it to his parabatai to protect his future wife. With this thought in mind, Jem lay a gentle, compassionate hand on his friend's shoulder, standing side by side at the shattered window.

"We'll get her back," he said, determination in his voice.

"Yes," Will breathed, again, almost to himself. "You will."