more rare and precious than that. . . .
“Come here,” he said instead. There was nothing welcoming in his voice, or in the way he stood. Tessa fought back her instinct to shy away, and moved toward him, close enough for him to touch her. He reached out his hands and touched her hair lightly, brushing back the stray curls around her face. “Tess.”
She looked up at him. His eyes were the same color as the smoke-stained sky; even bruised, his face was beautiful. She wanted to be touching him, wanted it in some inchoate, instinctive way she could neither explain nor control. When he bent to kiss her, it was all she could do to hold herself back until his lips met hers. His mouth brushed hers and she tasted salt on him, the tang of bruised and tender skin where his lip was cut. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to him, his fingers knotting in the fabric of her dress. Even more than in the attic, she felt caught in the eddy of a powerful wave that threatened to pull her over and under, to crush and break her, to wear her down to softness as the sea might wear down a piece of glass.
She reached to lay her hands on his shoulders, and he drew back, looking down at her, breathing very hard. His eyes were bright, his lips red and swollen now from kissing as well as injuries.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we should discuss our arrangements, then.”
Tessa, still feeling as if she were drowning, whispered, “Arrangements?”
“If you are going to be staying,” he said, “it would be to our advantage to be discreet. It might perhaps be better to use your room. Jem tends to come in and out of mine as if he lives in the place, and he might be puzzled to find the door locked. Your quarters, on the other hand—”
“Use my room?” she echoed. “Use it for what?”
Will’s mouth quirked up at the corner; Tessa, who had been thinking about how beautifully shaped his lips were, took a moment to realize with a sense of distant surprise that the smile was a very cold one. “You cannot pretend you don’t know. . . . You are not entirely ignorant of the world, I think, Tessa. Not with that brother of yours.”
“Will.” The warmth was going out of Tessa like the sea drawing back from the land; she felt cold, despite the summer air. “I am not like my brother.”
“You care for me,” Will said. His voice was cool and sure. “And you know that I admire you, the way that all women know when a man admires them. Now you have come to tell me you will be here, available to me, for as long as I might wish it. I am offering you what I thought you wanted.”
“You cannot mean that.”
“And you cannot have imagined I meant anything more,” Will said. “There is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks. One might befriend them, employ them, but not . . .”
“Marry them?” Tessa said. There was a clear picture in her head of the sea. It had drawn back entirely from the shore, and she could see the small creatures it had left gasping in its wake, flapping and dying on the bare sand.
“How forward.” Will smirked; she wanted to slap the expression off his face. “What did you really expect, Tessa?”
“I did not expect you to insult me.” Tessa’s voice threatened to shake; somehow, she kept it firm.
“It cannot be the unwanted consequences of a dalliance that concern you,” Will mused. “Since warlocks are unable to have children—”
“What?” Tessa stepped back as if he had pushed her. The ground felt unsteady under her feet.
Will looked at her. The sun was nearly completely gone from the sky. In the near darkness the bones of his face looked prominent and the lines at the corners of his mouth were as harsh as if he were racked by physical pain. But his voice when he spoke was even. “You didn’t know that? I thought someone would have told you.”
“No,” Tessa said softly. “No one told me.”
His gaze was steady. “If you are not interested in my offer . . .”
“Stop,” she said. This moment, she thought, was like the edge of a broken bit of glass, clear and sharp and painful. “Jem says you lie to make yourself look bad,” she said. “And perhaps that is true,