Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare Page B

this Ascendant idea on the spot. He slipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a silver ring, which he held out to Tessa on his palm. It was not unlike the silver ring Will often wore, though where Will’s had a design of birds in flight, this one had a careful etching of the crenellations of a castle tower around it. “The Carstairs family ring,” he said. “If you would . . .”
    She took it from him and slipped it onto her left ring finger, where it seemed to magically fit itself. She felt as if she ought to say something like It’s lovely , or Thank you , but of course this wasn’t a proposal, or even a gift. It was simply an acting prop. “Charlotte doesn’t wear a wedding ring,” she said. “I hadn’t realized Shadowhunters did.”
    “We don’t,” said Will. “It is customary to give a girl your family ring when you become engaged, but the actual wedding ceremony involves exchanging runes instead of rings. One on the arm, and one over the heart.”
    “‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave,’” said Jem. “Song of Solomon.”
    “‘Jealousy is cruel as the grave’?” Tessa raised her eyebrows. “That’s not . . . very romantic.”
    “‘The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame,’” said Will, quirking his eyebrows up. “I always thought females found the idea of jealousy romantic. Men, fighting over you . . .”
    “Well, there aren’t any graves in mundane wedding ceremonies,” said Tessa. “Though your ability to quote the Bible is impressive. Better than my aunt Harriet’s.”
    “Did you hear that, James? She just compared us to her aunt Harriet.”
    Jem, as always, was unruffled. “We must be on familiar terms with all religious texts,” he said. “To us they are instruction manuals.”
    “So you memorize them all in school?” She realized she had seen neither Will nor Jem at their studies since she had been at the Institute. “Or rather, when you are tutored?”
    “Yes, though Charlotte’s rather fallen off in tutoring us lately, as you might imagine,” said Will. “One either has a tutor or one is schooled in Idris—that is, until you attain your majority at eighteen. Which will be soon, thankfully, for the both of us.”
    “Which one of you is older?”
    “Jem,” said Will, and “I am,” said Jem, at the same time. They laughed in unison as well, and Will added, “Only by three months, though.”
    “I knew you’d feel compelled to point that out,” said Jem with a grin.
    Tessa looked from one of them to the other. There could not be two boys who looked more different, or who had more different dispositions. And yet. “Is that what it means to be parabatai ?” she said. “Finishing each other’s sentences and the like? Because there isn’t much on it in the Codex. ”
    Will and Jem looked at each other. Will shrugged first, casually. “It is rather difficult to explain,” he said loftily. “If you haven’t experienced it—”
    “I meant,” Tessa said, “you cannot—I don’t know—read each other’s minds, or the like?”
    Jem made a spluttering noise. Will’s lambent blue eyes widened. “Read each other’s minds? Horrors, no.”
    “Then, what’s the point? You swear to guard each other, I understand that, but aren’t all Shadowhunters meant to do that for each other?”
    “It’s more than that,” said Jem, who had stopped spluttering and spoke somberly. “The idea of parabatai comes from an old tale, the story of Jonathan and David. ‘And it came to pass . . . that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. . . . Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.’ They were two warriors, and their souls were knit together by Heaven, and out of that Jonathan Shadowhunter took the idea of parabatai , and encoded the ceremony into the