Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,30

summer air seeped in under the sill.

She recognized Will’s step in the hallway before he came into the bedroom. More than twenty years of marriage did that.

He shut the door behind him and came to lean against one of the bedposts, watching her at the vanity table. He had shrugged off his jacket and undone his tie. His dark hair was mussed, and in the slightly blurred mirror, he looked no different to Tessa than he had when he was seventeen.

She quirked a smile at him.

“What is it?” he said.

“You’re posing,” she said. “It makes me want to paint a portrait of you. I’d call it Gentleman, Dissipated.”

“You can’t paint a line, Tess,” he said, and came over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. Now that he was close up, she could see the silver in his dark hair. “Much less capture my glorious handsomeness, which, I hardly need to point out, has only grown with age.”

She didn’t disagree—he was as handsome as ever, his eyes still the same startling blue—but there was no need to encourage Will. Instead she reached up and tugged on one of the more silvered locks of his hair. “I’m well aware of that. I saw Penelope Mayhew flirting with you tonight. Shamelessly!”

He bent his head to kiss her neck. “I hadn’t noticed.”

She smiled at him in the mirror. “I take it from your insouciant manner that all went well in Seven Dials. Did you hear from Gideon? Or”—she made a face—“Bridgestock?”

“Charles, actually. It was a nest of Shax demons. Quite a few more than they’ve been used to dealing with lately, but nothing they couldn’t manage. Charles was very insistent that there was nothing to worry about.” Will rolled his eyes. “I have a feeling he was fretting in case I suggested the picnic at Regent’s Park lake tomorrow be canceled. All the young ones are going.”

There was a very faint lilt at the end of Will’s speech, which sometimes came when he was tired. The faintest remnants of an accent, sanded away by time and distance. Still, when he was exhausted or grieved, it came back, and his voice would roll softly like the green hills of Wales.

“Do you worry?” he said, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “I do, sometimes. About Lucie and James.”

She set down her hairbrush and turned around, concerned. “Worry about the children? Why?”

“All this—” He waved his hand vaguely. “The boating parties, the regattas and cricket matches and fairs and dances, it’s so… mundane.”

“You’re worried they’re turning into mundanes? Really, Will, that’s a bit prejudiced of you.”

“No, I’m not worried about that. It’s just that—it’s been years since there’s been anything but minimal demonic activity in London. The children have grown up training, but barely needing to patrol.”

Tessa rose from her chair, her hair tumbling down her back. It was one of the oddities of being a warlock: her hair had stopped growing when she stopped aging, rather unexpectedly, at nineteen. It remained the same length, halfway to her waist.

“Isn’t that good?” she said. “We don’t want our children in danger from demons, do we?”

Will sat down on the bed, kicking off his shoes. “We don’t want them unprepared, either,” he said. “I remember what we had to do when we were their age. I don’t know if they could face the same thing. Picnics don’t ready you for war.”

“Will.” Tessa sank down beside him on the bed. “There is no war.”

She knew why he worried. For them, there had been war, and loss. Tessa’s brother, Nate. Thomas Tanner. Agatha Grant. Jessamine Lovelace, their friend, who now guarded the London Institute in ghostly form. And Jem, who they had both lost and kept.

“I know.” Will reached out to stroke her hair. “Tess, Tess. Do you think when you stopped growing older, you stopped aging in your heart? You never became cynical and fearful? Is it old age catching up with me, that I am so fretful and disquieted over nothing?”

She seized him by the chin, turning his face to hers. “You are not old,” she said fiercely. “Even when you are eighty, you will be my beautiful Will.”

She kissed him. He made a pleased, startled noise, and his arms came up about her. “My Tess,” he said. “My lovely wife.”

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” she said, drawing her lips across his cheek. His hands tightened in her hair. “We have been through so much. We deserve this happiness.”

“There are others who deserve happiness who