Will’s perspective on his kiss with Tessa in Clockwork Angel, page
285-292.
Will
Herondale was burning.
This
was not the first time he had consumed vampire blood, and he knew the pattern
of the sickness. First there was a feeling of giddiness and euphoria, as if one
had drunk too much gin—the brief period of pleasant drunkenness before the
morbs set in. Then pain, starting at the toes and fingertips, working its way
up as if lines of gunpowder had been laid across his body and were burning their
way toward his heart.
He
had heard the pain was not so great for humans: that their blood, thinner and
weaker than Shadowhunter blood, did not fight the demon disease as Nephilim
blood did. He was vaguely aware when Sophie came in with the holy water, splashing
him with the cool stuff as she set the buckets down and went out again.
Sophie’s hatred of him was as reliable as fog in London; he could feel it
coming off her whenever she got near him. The force of it lifted him up onto
his elbows now. He pulled a bucket close to him and upended it over his head,
opening his mouth to swallow what he could.
For
a moment, it doused the fire burning through his veins entirely. The pain
receded, except for the throbbing in his head. He lay back down carefully, crooking
an arm over his face to block the dim illumination coming from the low windows.
His fingers seemed to trail light as they moved. He heard Jem’s voice in his
head, scolding him for risking himself. But the face he saw against his eyelids
wasn’t Jem.
She was looking at him. The very darkest voice of his
conscience, the reminder that he could protect no one, and last of all himself.
Looking the way he had the last time he had seen her; she never changed, which
was how he knew she was a figment of his imagination.
“Cecily,”
he whispered. “Cecy, for the love of God, let me be.”
“Will?” That startled him; she appeared to him often, but rarely
spoke. She reached her hand out, and he would have reached for her, too, had
not the clang and clatter of metal brought him out of his reverie. He cleared
his throat.
“Back,
are you, Sophie?” Will said. “I told you if you brought me another one of those
infernal pails, I’d—”
“It’s
not Sophie,” came the reply. “It’s me. Tessa.”
The
hammering of his own pulse filled his ears. Cecily’s image faded and vanished
against his eyelids. Tessa. Why had they sent her? Did Charlotte hate him as
much as all that? Was this meant to be a sort of object lesson to her in the
indignities and dangers of Downworld? When he opened his eyes he saw her
standing in front of him, still in her velvet dress and gloves. Her dark curls
were startling against her pale skin and her cheekbone was freckled, lightly,
with blood, probably Nathaniel’s.
Your
brother, he knew he should say. How is he?
It must have been a shock to see him. There is nothing worse than seeing
someone you love in danger.
But
it had been years, and he had learned to swallow the words he wanted to say,
transform them. Somehow they were talking about vampires, about the virus and
how it was transmitted. She gave him the pail with a grimace—good, she should
be disgusted by him—and he used it again to quench the fire, to still the
burning in his veins and throat and chest.
“Does
that help?” she asked, watching him with her clear gray eyes. “Pouring it over
your head like that?”
Will
imagined how he must look to her, sitting on the floor with a bucket over his
head, and made a strangled noise, almost a laugh. Oh, the glamour of
Shadowhunting! The warrior life he had dreamed of as a child!
“The
questions you ask . . .” he began. Someone else, someone not Tessa, might have
perhaps apologized for asking but she only stood still, watching him like a
curious bird. He did not think he had ever seen someone with eyes the color of
hers before: it was the color of gray mist blowing in from the sea in Wales.
You
could not lie to someone with eyes that reminded you of your childhood.
“The
blood makes me feverish, makes my skin burn,” he admitted. “I can’t get cool.
But, yes, the water helps.”
“Will,”
Tessa said. When he looked up again, she seemed to be haloed by light like an
angel, though he knew it was the vampire blood blurring his vision. Suddenly
she was moving toward him, gathering her skirts out of the way to sit by him on
the floor. He wondered why she was doing that, and realized to his own horror
that he had asked her to. He imagined the vampire disease in his body, breaking
down his blood, weakening his will. He knew, intellectually, that he had drunk
enough holy water to kill the disease before it could burrow into his bones,
and that he could not put his lack of control down to the sickness. And yet—she
was so close to him, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from
her body.
“You
never laugh,” she was saying. “You behave as if everything is funny to you, but
you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying
attention.”
He
wanted to close his eyes. Her words went through him like the clean slice of a
seraph blade, lighting his nerves on fire. He’d had no idea she had observed
him so closely, or so accurately. “You,” he replied. “You make me laugh. From
the moment you hit me with that bottle. Not to mention the way that you always
correct me. With that funny look on your face when you do it. And the way you
shouted at Gabriel Lightwood. And even the way you talked back to de Quincey.
You make me . . .”
His
voice trailed off. He could feel the cold water trickling down his back, over
his chest, against his heated skin. Tessa sat only inches from him, smelling of
powder and perfume and perspiration. Her damp curls curled against her cheeks,
and her eyes were wide on him, her pale pink lips slightly parted. She reached
up to push back a lock of her hair, and, feeling like he was drowning, he
reached out for her hand. “There’s still blood,” he said, inarticulately. “On
your gloves.”
She
began to draw away, but Will would not let her go; he was drowning, still,
drowning, and he could not release her. He turned her small right hand over. He
had the strongest desire to reach for her entirely, to pull her against him and
fold her in his arms, to encompass her slim, strong body with his. He bent his
head, glad she could not see his face as the blood rushed up into it. Her
gloves were ragged, torn where she had clawed at her brother’s manacles. With a
flick of his fingers, he opened the pearl buttons that kept her glove closed,
baring her wrist.
He
could hear himself breathing. Heat spread through his body—not the unnatural
heat of vampire sickness, but the more ordinary flush of desire. The skin of
her wrist was translucently pale, the blue veins visible beneath. He could see
the flutter of her pulse, feel the warmth of her breath against his cheek. He
stroked the softness of her wrist with the tips of his fingers and half-closed
his eyes, imagining his hands on her body, the smooth skin of her upper arms,
the silkiness of the legs hidden beneath her voluminous skirts. “Tessa,” he
said, as if she had the slightest idea the effect she was having on him. There
were women who might have, but Tessa was not one of them. “What do you want
from me?”
“I—I
want to understand you,” she whispered.
The
thought was quite horrifying. “Is that really necessary?”
“I’m
not sure anyone does understand you,” she breathed, “except possibly Jem.”
Jem.
Jem had given up on understanding him long ago, Will thought. Jem was a study
in how you could love someone entirely without understanding them at all. But
most people were not Jem.
“But
perhaps he only wants to know that there is a reason,” she was saying. Her gaze
was fierce. Nothing stopped her arguing, he thought, or caring: in that way,
she was like Jem: loss did not make her bitter, and betrayal did not beat down
her faith. Unconsciously, she moved to draw her hand back, to gesture
passionately, and he caught at it, slipping the glove off her hand. She gasped
as if he had put his hands on her body, blood rising to stain her cheeks. Her
bare, small hand, which curled like a dove inside his, went still. He lifted it
to his mouth, his cheek, kissing her skin: brushing his lips across her
knuckles, down to her wrist. He heard her cry out in a low voice, and lifted
his head to see her sitting perfectly still, her hand held out, her eyes closed
and her lips half-open.
He
had kissed girls, other girls, when basic physical desire overcame common
sense, in dark corners at parties or under the mistletoe. Quick, hurried
kisses, most of them, although some surprisingly expert—where had Elspeth
Mayburn learned how to do what she did with her teeth, and why had no one ever
told her it wasn’t a good idea?—but this was different.
Before
there had been controlled tension, a deliberate decision to give into what his
body asked for, divorced from any other feeling. Cut free of any emotion at all.
But this—this was heat flowering through his chest, shortening his breath,
sending a tide of goosebumps over his skin. This was a feeling of pain when he
let her hand go, a sickness of loss cured only when he pulled her toward him
across the splintery wooden floor, his hands cupping the back of her neck as
his lips descended on hers with equal parts tenderness and fierceness.
Her
mouth opened under his, hesitant, and some corner of his mind cried out to him
to slow his pace, that by any reasonable guess this was her first kiss. He
forced his hands to slow down, to gently unclasp the fastenings in her hair and
smooth the curls down over her shoulders and back, his fingertips tracing light
patterns on her soft cheekbones, her bare shoulders. Her hair felt like warm
silk running through his fingers and her body, pressed against his, was all
softness. Her hands were light as feathers on the back of his neck, in his
hair; when he drew her closer, she made a low sound against his mouth that
nearly drove every last thought from his head. He began to bend her back toward
the floor, moving his body over hers—
And
froze. Panic rushed through his blood in a boiling flood as he saw the whole
fragile structure he had built up around himself shatter, all because of this,
this girl, who broke his control like nothing else ever had. He tore his mouth
from her, pushing her away, the force of his terror nearly knocking her over.
She stared at him through the tangled curtain of her hair, her face pale with
shock.
“God
in Heaven,” he whispered. “What was that?”
Her
bewilderment was plain on her face. His heart contracted, pumping self-loathing
through his veins. The one time, he thought. The only time—
“Tessa,”
he said. “I think you had better go.”
“Go?”
Her lips parted; they were swollen from his kisses. It was like looking at a
wound he had inflicted, and at the same time, he wanted nothing more than to
kiss her again. “I should not have been so forward. I’m sorry—”
“God.”
The word surprised him; he had stopped believing in God a long time ago, and
now he had invoked him twice. The pain on her face was almost more than he
could bear, and not least because he had not intended to hurt her. So often, he
intended to hurt and to wound, and this time he had not—not in the least—and he
had caused more hurt than he could imagine. He wanted nothing more than to
reach out and take her in his arms, not even to satisfy his desire but to
impart tenderness. But doing so would only worsen the situation beyond
imagining. “ Just leave me alone now,” he heard himself say. “Tessa. I’m
begging you. Do you understand? I’m begging you. Please, please leave.”
Her
reply came, finally, stiff with hurt and anger. “Very well,” she said, though
it was clearly not. He chanced a look at her out of the corner of his eye: she
was proud, she would not cry. She did not bother to gather up the hair clips he
had scattered; she only rose to her feet and turned her back on him.
He
deserved no better, he knew. He had thrown himself at her with no regard for her
reputation or the indecorousness of his passion. Jem would have thought of it.
Jem would have been more careful of her feelings. And once upon a time, he
thought, as her footsteps receded, so would he. But he no longer knew how to be
that person. He had covered up that Will for so long with pretense that it was
the pretense he reached for first, and not the reality. He dug his nails into
the floorboards, welcoming the pain, for it was little compared to the pain of
knowing that he had lost more than Tessa’s good opinion this evening. He had
lost Will Herondale. And he did not know if he could ever get him back.
