Clockwork Prince tid-2 Page 25

  He looked down at her for a moment, his mouth tight with bottled annoyance, but Tessa knew he could not refuse. No gentleman would. He straightened up, brushed off his cuffs, and smiled. “Of course,” he said with a bow. “Let me help you to a seat first.”

  She protested, but his hand was already on her elbow, guiding her toward one of the chairs lined up along the walls. He settled her into it and vanished into the crowd. She watched him go, trembling all over. Dark magic. She felt sick, and angry. She wanted to slap her brother, shake him till he told her the rest of the truth, but she knew she couldn’t.

  “You must be Tessa Gray,” said a soft voice at her elbow. “You look just like your mother.”

  Tessa nearly jumped out of her skin. At her side stood a tall slender woman with long, unbound hair the color of lavender petals. Her skin was a pale blue, her dress a long and floating confection of gossamer and tulle. Her feet were bare, and in between her toes were thin webs like a spider’s, a darker blue than her skin. Tessa’s hands went to her face in sudden horror—was she losing her disguise?—but the blue woman laughed.

  “I didn’t mean to make you fearful of your illusion, little one. It is still in place. It is just that my kind can see through it. All this”—she gestured vaguely at Tessa’s blond hair, her white dress and pearls—“is like the vapor of a cloud, and you the sky beyond it. Did you know your mother had eyes just like yours, gray sometimes and blue at others?”

  Tessa found her voice. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, my kind doesn’t like to give our names, but you can call me whatever you like. You can invent a lovely name for me. Your mother used to call me Hyacinth.”

  “The blue flower,” Tessa said faintly. “How did you know my mother? You don’t look any older than me—”

  “After our youth, my kind does not age or die. Nor will you. Lucky girl! I hope you appreciate the service done you.”

  Tessa shook her head in bewilderment. “Service? What service? Are you speaking of Mortmain? Do you know what I am?”

  “Do you know what I am?”

  Tessa thought of the Codex. “A faerie?” she guessed.

  “And do you know what a changeling is?”

  Tessa shook her head.

  “Sometimes,” Hyacinth confided, dropping her voice to a whisper, “when our faerie blood has grown weak and thin, we will find our way into a human home, and take the best, the prettiest, and the plumpest child—and, quick as a wink, replace the babe with a sickly one of our own. While the human child grows tall and strong in our lands, the human family will find itself burdened with a dying creature fearful of cold iron. Our bloodline is strengthened—”

  “Why bother?” Tessa demanded. “Why not just steal the human child and leave nothing in its place?”

  Hyacinth’s dark blue eyes widened. “Why, because that would not be fair,” she said. “And it would breed suspicion among the mundanes. They are stupid, but there are many of them. It does not do to rouse their ire. That is when they come with iron and torches.” She shuddered.

  “Just a moment,” Tessa said. “Are you telling me I’m a changeling?”

  Hyacinth bubbled over with giggles. “Of course not! What a ridiculous thought!” She held her hands to her heart as she laughed, and Tessa saw that her fingers, too, were bound together with blue webbing. Suddenly she smiled, showing glittering teeth. “There’s a very good-looking boy staring over here,” she said. “As handsome as a faerie lord! I should leave you to your business.” She winked, and before Tessa could protest, Hyacinth melted back into the crowd.

  Shaken, Tessa turned, expecting the “good-looking boy” to be Nate—but it was Will, leaning against the wall beside her. The moment her eyes found him, he turned and began studiously examining the dance floor. “What did that faerie woman want?”

  “I don’t know,” Tessa said, exasperated. “To tell me I’m not a changeling, apparently.”

  “Well, that’s good. Process of elimination.” Tessa had to admit, Will was doing a good job of somehow blending in with the dark curtains behind him, as if he were not there at all. It must have been a Shadowhunter talent. “And what news from your brother?”

  She gripped her hands together, looking at the floor while she spoke. “Jessamine’s been spying for Nate all this time. I don’t know how long exactly. She’s been telling him everything. She thinks he’s in love with her.”

  Will looked unsurprised. “Do you think he’s in love with her?”

  “I think Nate cares only about himself,” said Tessa. “There’s worse, too. Benedict Lightwood is working for Mortmain. That is why he is scheming to get the Institute. So the Magister can have it. And have me. Nate knows all about it, of course. He doesn’t care.” Tessa looked at her hands again. Jessamine’s hands. Small and delicate in their fine white kid gloves. Oh, Nate, she thought. Aunt Harriet used to call him her blue-eyed boy.

  “I expect that was before he killed her,” said Will. Only then did Tessa realize she had spoken aloud. “And there he is again,” he added, in a mutter, under his breath. Tessa glanced out at the crowd and saw Nate, his fair hair like a beacon, coming toward her. In his hand was a glass of sparkling golden liquid. She turned to tell Will to hurry away, but he had already vanished.

  “Fizzy lemonade,” said Nate, coming up to her and thrusting the glass into her hand. The ice-cold sides felt good against the heat of her skin. She took a sip; despite everything, it was delicious.

  Nate stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Now, you were saying,” he said. “You did hide the book in my sister’s room . . .”

  “Yes, just as you told me to do,” Tessa fibbed. “She suspects nothing, of course.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Nate . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know what the Magister intends to do with your sister?”

  “I’ve told you, she isn’t my sister.” Nate’s voice was clipped. “And I’ve no idea what he plans to do with her, nor any interest. My plans are all for my—our future together. I should hope that you are as dedicated?” Tessa thought of Jessamine, sitting sullenly in the room with the other Shadowhunters while they shuffled through papers about Mortmain; Jessamine falling asleep at the table rather than leave when they were discussing plans with Ragnor Fell. And Tessa pitied her even as she hated Nate, hated him so much it felt like fire in her throat. I’ve told you, she isn’t my sister.

  Tessa let her eyes widen, her lip tremble. “I’m doing the best I can, Nate,” she said. “Don’t you believe me?”

  She felt a faint sense of triumph as she watched him visibly beat back his annoyance. “Of course, darling. Of course.” He examined her face. “Are you feeling better? Shall we dance again?”

  She clutched the glass in her hand. “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “Of course,” Nate chuckled, “they do say a gentleman should dance only the first set or two with his wife.”

  Tessa froze. It was as if time had stopped: Everything in the room seemed to freeze along with her, even the smirk on Nate’s face.

  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’ll make sure you’re escorted back out to the carriage, Mrs. Gray.” He spoke the last two words in a whisper.
r />   Tessa nodded numbly.

  “Good girl,” Nate said. Then he turned and vanished into the crowd, followed 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 follow suit, before he realizes the note is a falsity and he returns. Though I did direct him to Vauxhall; it’ll 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, pulling 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 ballroom, 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 small stone balcony, one of many overlooking the gardens. She moved away from him, tearing the gold mask from her face, and nearly collapsed 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 chilly air was lessening her dizziness too. Glancing down at herself, she could see she had become fully Tessa again. The white dress was now a full few inches too short, and the lacing so tight that her décolletage 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 brilliant 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 kill 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 unwilling, 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 methodically 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 calluses—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 t
o the silk ribbon at her collar and pulling at one end of it; her eyelids fluttered half-closed as the bow came apart and his warm hand covered her bare collarbone. 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 breasts. Tessa gasped, even as his hands slid to grip her waist and draw her toward him, pulling their bodies together until there was not a millimeter 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 pull 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.