Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Prince

“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 to 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.