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Will looked at her, his blue eyes quizzical, his mouth just beginning to quirk up in a grin. "I must be more amusing than I thought. Which would make me very amusing indeed. "
"Im not laughing at you," she told him in between giggles. "Just-Oh! The look on Gabriels face when Sophie slapped him. My goodness. " She pushed her hair out of her face and said, "I really shouldnt be laughing. Half the reason he was so awful was your goading him. I should be angry with you. "
"Oh, should," said Will, spinning away to drop into a chair near the fire, and stretching out his long legs toward the flames. Like every room in England, Tessa thought, it was chil y in here except just in front of the fire. One roasted in the front and froze in the back, like a badly cooked turkey. "No good sentences ever include the word should. I should have paid the tavern bil ; now theyre coming to break my legs. I should never have run off with my best friends wife; now she devils me constantly. I should-"
"You should," Tessa said softly, "think about the way the things you do affect Jem. "
Will rol ed his head back against the leather of the chair and regarded her.
He looked drowsy and tired and beautiful. He could have been some Pre- Raphaelite Apol o. "Is this a serious conversation now, Tess?" His voice stil held humor but was edged, like a gold blade edged in razored steel.
Tessa came and sat down in the armchair across from his. "Arent you worried that hes cross with you? Hes your parabatai. And hes Jem. Hes never cross. "
"Perhaps its better that hes cross with me," said Will. "So much saintlike patience cannot be good for anyone. "
"Do not mock him. " Tessas tone was sharp.
"Nothing is beyond mockery, Tess. "
"Jem is. He has always been good to you. He is nothing but goodness.
That he hit you last night, that only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness. "
"Jem hit me?" Will, fingering his cheek, looked amazed. "I must confess, I remember very little of last night. Only that the two of you woke me, though I very much wanted to stay asleep. I remember Jem shouting at me, and you holding me. I knew it was you. You always smel of lavender. "
Tessa ignored this. "Well, Jem hit you. And you deserved it. "
"You do look scornful-rather like Raziel in all those paintings, as if he were looking down on us. So tell me, scornful angel, what did I do to deserve being hit in the face by James?"
Tessa reached for the words, but they eluded her; she turned to the language she and Will shared-poetry. "You know, in that essay of Donnes, what he says-"
"License my roving hands, and let them go?" quoted Will, eyeing her.
"I meant the essay about how no man is an island. Everything you do touches others. Yet you never think about it. You behave as if you live on some sort of-of Will island, and none of your actions can have any consequences. Yet they do. "
"How does my going to a warlock den affect Jem?" Will inquired. "I suppose he had to come and haul me out, but hes done more dangerous things in the past for me. We protect each other-"
"No, you dont," Tessa cried in frustration. "Do you think he cares about the danger? Do you? His whole life has been destroyed by this drug, this yin fen, and there you go off to a warlock den and drug yourself up as if it doesnt even matter, as if its just a game to you. He has to take this foul stuff every day just so he can live, but in the meantime its kil ing him. He hates to be dependent on it. He cant even bring himself to buy it; he has you do that. "
Will made a sound of protest, but Tessa held up a hand. "And then you swan down to Whitechapel and throw your money at the people who make these drugs and addict other people to them, as if it were some sort of holiday on the Continent for you. What were you thinking?"
"But it had nothing to do with Jem at all -"
"You didnt think about him," said Tessa. "But perhaps you should have.
Dont you understand he thinks you made a mockery out of whats kil ing him? And youre supposed to be his brother. "
Will had whitened. "He cant think that. "
"He does," she said. "He understands you dont care what other people think about you. But I believe he always expected youd care what he thought.
What he felt. "
Will leaned forward. The firelight made odd patterns against his skin, darkening the bruise on his cheek to black. "I do care what other people think," he said with a surprising intensity, staring into the flames. "Its all I think about-what others think, what they feel about me, and I about them; it drives me mad. I wanted escape-"
"You cant mean that. Will Herondale, minding what others think of him?"
Tessa tried to make her voice as light as possible. The look on his face startled her. It was not closed but open, as if he were caught half-entangled in a thought he desperately wanted to share, but could not bear to. This is the boy who took my private letters and hid them in his room, she thought, but she could work up no anger about it. She had thought she would be furious when she saw him again, but she was not, only puzzled and wondering.
Surely it showed a curiosity about other people that was quite un-Wil -like, to want to read them in the first place?
There was something raw in his face, his voice. "Tess," he said. "That is all I think about. I never look at you without thinking about what you feel about me and fearing-"
He broke off as the drawing room door opened and Charlotte came in, fol owed by a tal man whose bright blond hair shone like a sunflower in the dim light. Will turned away quickly, his face working. Tessa stared at him.
What had he been going to say?
"Oh!" Charlotte was clearly startled to see them both. "Tessa, Will -I didnt realize you were in here. "
Will s hands were in fists at his sides, his face in shadow, but his voice was level when he replied: "We saw the fire going. Its as chil as ice in the rest of the house. "
Tessa stood up. "Wel just be on our way-"
"Wil Herondale, excel ent to see you looking well. And Tessa Gray!" The blond man broke away from Charlotte and came toward Tessa, beaming as if he knew her. "The shape-changer, correct? Enchanted to meet you. What a curiosity. "
