Clockwork Prince(32)
Author: Cassandra Clare

Wife?

He and Jessamine were married?

"Angel?" said Nate, his voice sounding as if it were coming from far away.

"Are you all right? You’ve gone white as a sheet."

"Mr. Gray." A dull, mechanical voice spoke from behind Nate’s shoulder. It was one of the blank-faced automatons, holding out a silver tray on which was a folded piece of paper. "A message for you."

Nate turned in surprise and plucked the paper from the tray; Tessa watched as he unfolded it, read it, cursed, and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

"My, my," he said. "A note from himself." He must mean the Magister, Tessa thought. "I’m needed apparently. A dreadful bore, but what can you do?" He took her hand and raised her to her feet, then leaned in for a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Speak to Benedict; he’l make sure you’re escorted back out to the carriage, Mrs. Gray." He spoke the last two words in a whisper.

Tessa nodded numbly.

"Good girl," Nate said. Then he turned and vanished into the crowd, fol owed by the automaton. Tessa stared after them both dizzily. It must be the shock, she thought, but everything in the room had begun to look a little- peculiar. It was as if she could see each individual ray of light sparking off the crystals of the chandelier. The effect was beautiful, if strange and a little dizzying.

"Tessa." It was Will, evolving effortlessly into the space beside her. She turned to look at him. He looked flushed, as if he had been running-another beautiful, strange effect, she thought, the black hair and mask, the blue eyes and fair skin, and the flush across his high cheekbones. It was like looking at a painting. "I see your brother got the note."

"Ah." Everything clicked into place. "You sent it."

"I did." Looking pleased with himself, Will plucked the glass of lemonade out of her hand, drained the remainder, and set it on a windowsill. "I had to get him out of here. And we should probably fol ow suit, before he realizes the note is a falsity and he returns. Though I did direct him to Vauxhal ; it’l take him ages to get there and back, so we’re likely safe-" He broke off, and she could hear sudden alarm in his voice. "Tess-Tessa? Are you all right?"

"Why do you ask?" Her voice echoed in her own ears.

"Look." He reached out and caught a swinging tendril of her hair, pul ing it forward so she could see it. She stared. Dark brown, not fair. Her own hair.

Not Jessamine’s.

"Oh, God." She put a hand to her face, recognizing the familiar tingles of the Change as they began to wash over her. "How long-"

"Not long. You were Jessamine when I sat down." He caught hold of her hand. "Come along. Quickly." He began to stride toward the exit, but it was a long way across the bal room, and Tessa’s whole body was twitching and shivering with the Change. She gasped as it bit into her like teeth. She saw Will whip his head around, alarmed; felt him catch her as she stumbled, and half-carry her forward. The room swung around her. I can’t faint. Don’t let me faint.

A wash of cool air struck her face. She realized distantly that Will had swung them through a pair of French doors and they were out on a smal stone balcony, one of many overlooking the gardens. She moved away from him, tearing the gold mask from her face, and nearly col apsed against the stone balustrade. After slamming the doors behind them, Will turned and hurried over to her, laying a hand lightly on her back. "Tessa?"

"I’m all right." She was glad for the stone railing beneath her hands, its solidity and hardness inexpressibly reassuring. The chil y air was lessening her dizziness too. Glancing down at herself, she could see she had become ful y Tessa again. The white dress was now a full few inches too short, and the lacing so tight that her decol etage spilled up and over the low neckline.

She knew some women laced themselves tight just to get this effect, but it was rather shocking seeing so much of her own skin on display.

She looked sideways at Will, glad for the cold air keeping her cheeks from flaming. "I just-I don’t know what happened. That’s never happened to me before, losing the Change without noticing like that. It must have been the surprise of it all. They’re married, did you know that? Nate and Jessamine.

Married. Nate was never the marrying sort. And he doesn’t love her. I can tell.

He doesn’t love anyone but himself. He never has."

"Tess," Will said again, gently this time. He was leaning against the railing too, facing her. They were only a very little distance apart. Above them the moon swam through the clouds, a white boat on a still, black sea.

She closed her mouth, aware that she had been babbling. "I’m sorry," she said softly, looking away.

Almost hesitantly he laid his hand against her cheek, turning her to face him. He had stripped off his glove, and his skin was bare against hers.

"There’s nothing to be sorry about," he said. "You were bril iant in there, Tessa. Not a step out of place." She felt her face warm beneath his cool fingers, and was amazed. Was this Will speaking? Will, who had spoken to her on the roof of the Institute as if she were so much rubbish? "You did love your brother once, didn’t you? I could see your face as he was speaking to you, and I wanted to kil him for breaking your heart."

You broke my heart, she wanted to say. Instead she said, "Some part of me misses him as-as you miss your sister. Even though I know what he is, I miss the brother I thought I had. He was my only family."

"The Institute is your family now." His voice was incredibly gentle. Tessa looked at him in amazement. Gentleness was not something she would ever have associated with Will. But it was there, in the touch of his hand on her cheek, in the softness of his voice, in his eyes when he looked at her. It was the way she had always dreamed a boy would look at her. But she had never dreamed up someone as beautiful as Will, not in all her imaginings. In the moonlight the curve of his mouth looked pure and perfect, his eyes behind the mask nearly black.

"We should go back inside," she said, in a half whisper. She did not want to go back inside. She wanted to stay here, with Will achingly close, almost leaning into her. She could feel the heat that radiated from his body. His dark hair fell around the mask, into his eyes, tangling with his long eyelashes. "We have only a little time-"

She took a step forward-and stumbled into Will, who caught her. She froze-and then her arms crept around him, her fingers lacing themselves behind his neck. Her face was pressed against his throat, his soft hair under her fingers. She closed her eyes, shutting out the dizzying world, the light beyond the French windows, the glow of the sky. She wanted to be here with Will, cocooned in this moment, inhaling the clean sharp scent of him, feeling the beat of his heart against hers, as steady and strong as the pulse of the ocean.

She felt him inhale. "Tess," he said. "Tess, look at me."

She raised her eyes to his, slow and unwil ing, braced for anger or coldness-but his gaze was fixed on hers, his dark blue eyes somber beneath their thick black lashes, and they were stripped of all their usual cool, aloof distance. They were as clear as glass and full of desire. And more than desire-a tenderness she had never seen in them before, had never even associated with Will Herondale. That, more than anything else, stopped her protest as he raised his hands and methodical y began to take the pins from her hair, one by one.

This is madness, she thought, as the first pin rattled to the ground. They should be running, fleeing this place. Instead she stood, wordless, as Will cast Jessamine’s pearl clasps aside as if they were so much paste jewelry.

Her own long, curling dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Will slid his hands into it. She heard him exhale as he did so, as if he had been holding his breath for months and had only just let it out. She stood as if mesmerized as he gathered her hair in his hands, draping it over one of her shoulders, winding her curls between his fingers. "My Tessa," he said, and this time she did not tell him that she was not his.

"Will," she whispered as he reached up and unlocked her hands from around his neck. He drew her gloves off, and they joined her mask and Jessie’s pins on the stone floor of the balcony. He pulled off his own mask next and cast it aside, running his hands through his damp black hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The lower edge of the mask had left marks across his high cheekbones, like light scars, but when she reached to touch them, he gently caught at her hands and pressed them down.

"No," he said. "Let me touch you first. I have wanted . . ."

She did not say no. Instead she stood, wide-eyed, gazing up at him as his fingertips traced her temples, then her cheekbones, then-softly despite their rough call uses-outlined the shape of her mouth as if he meant to commit it to memory. The gesture made her heart spin like a top inside her chest. His eyes remained fixed on her, as dark as the bottom of the ocean, wondering, dazed with discovery.

She stood still as his fingertips left her mouth and trailed a path down her throat, stopping at her pulse, slipping to the silk ribbon at her col ar and pul ing at one end of it; her eyelids fluttered half-closed as the bow came apart and his warm hand covered her bare col arbone. She remembered once, on the Main, how the ship had passed through a patch of strangely shining ocean, and how the Main had carved a path of fire through the water, trailing sparks in its wake. It was as if Will ‘s hands did the same to her skin.

She burned where he touched her, and could feel where his fingers had been even when they had moved on. His hands moved lightly but lower, over the bodice of her dress, following the curves of her br**sts. Tessa gasped, even as his hands slid to grip her waist and draw her toward him, pul ing their bodies together until there was not a mil imeter of space between them.

He bent to put his cheek against hers. His breath against her ear made her shudder with each deliberately spoken word. "I have wanted to do this,"

he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. But you know that. You must know. Don’t you?"

She looked up at him, lips parted in bewilderment. "Know what?" she said, and Will, with a sigh of something like defeat, kissed her.

His lips were soft, so soft. He had kissed her before, wildly and desperately and tasting of blood, but this was different. This was deliberate and unhurried, as if he were speaking to her silently, saying with the brush of his lips on hers what he could not say in words. He traced slow, glancing butterfly kisses across her mouth, each as measured as the beat of a heart, each saying she was precious, irreplaceable, wanted. Tessa could no longer keep her hands at her sides. She reached to cup the back of his neck, to tangle her fingers in the dark silky waves of his hair, to feel his pulse hammering against her palms.

His grip on her was firm as he explored her mouth thoroughly with his. He tasted of the sparkling lemonade, sweet and tingling. The movement of his tongue as he flicked it lightly across her lips sent delicious shudders through her whole body; her bones melted and her nerves seared. She yearned to pul him against her-but he was being so gentle with her, so unbelievably gentle, though she could feel how much he wanted her in the trembling of his hands, the hammering of his heart against hers. Surely someone who did not care even a little could not behave with such gentleness. all the pieces inside her that had felt broken and jagged when she had looked at Will these past few weeks began to knit together and heal. She felt light, as if she could float.

"Will," she whispered against his mouth. She wanted him closer to her so badly, it was like an ache, a painful hot ache that spread out from her stomach to speed her heart and knot her hands in his hair and set her skin to burning. "Will, you need not be so careful. I Will not break."

"Tessa," he groaned against her mouth, but she could hear the hesitation in his voice. She nipped gently at his lips, teasing him, and his breath caught.

His hands flattened against the smal of her back, pressing her to him, as his self-control slipped and his gentleness began to blossom into a more demanding urgency. Their kisses grew deeper and deeper still, as if they could breathe each other, consume each other, devour each other whole.

Tessa knew she was making whimpering sounds in the back of her throat; that Will was pushing her back, back against the railing in a way that should have hurt but oddly did not; that his hands were at the bodice of Jessamine’s dress, crushing the delicate fabric roses. Distantly Tessa heard the knob of the French doors rattle; they opened, and still she and Will clung together, as if nothing else mattered.

There was a murmur of voices, and someone said, "I told you, Edith. That’s what happens when you drink the pink drinks," in a disapproving tone. The doors shut again, and Tessa heard footsteps going away. She broke away from Will.

"Oh, my heavens," she said, breathless. "How humiliating-"

"I don’t care." He pulled her back to him, nuzzled the side of her neck, his face hot against her cold skin. His mouth glanced across hers. "Tess-"

"You keep saying my name," she murmured. She had one hand on his chest, holding him a little bit away, but had no idea how long she could keep it there. Her body ached for him. Time had snapped and lost its meaning.

There was only this moment, only Will. She had never felt anything like it, and she wondered if this was what it was like for Nate when he was drunk.

"I love your name. I love the sound of it." He sounded drunk too, his mouth on hers as he spoke so she could feel the delicious movement of his lips.

She breathed his breath, inhaling him. Their bodies fit together perfectly, she couldn’t help noticing; in Jessie’s white satin heeled shoes, she was but a little shorter than he was, and had only to tilt her head back slightly to kiss him. "I have to ask you something. I have to know-"

"S o there you two are," came a voice from the doorway. "And quite a spectacular display you’re making, if I do say so."

They sprang apart. There, standing in the doorway-though Tessa could not remember the sound of the doors having opened-a long cigar held between his thin brown fingers, was Magnus Bane.