By the time she saw the shadow coming down the corridor toward her cell, she was resigned: it would likely be an unpleasant encounter, but it would be a break in the numbing tedium. She sat up on her narrow bed, patting down her hair. Steeling herself for…
“Christopher?”
“Hullo, Grace,” Christopher Lightwood said. He wore his habitual ink-and acid-stained clothes, and his light brown hair was windblown. “I heard you were here. I thought I ought to see how you’ve been.”
Grace swallowed. Didn’t he know? Hadn’t James told him what she’d done? But he was looking at her with his customary mild curiosity. There was no anger on his face.
“How long,” Grace said, in almost a whisper, “have I been here?”
Christopher, to her surprise, flushed. “A week, or thereabouts,” he said. “I would have come earlier, only Jem said I ought to give you some time to adjust.”
He was standing just in front of the barred door. Grace realized with a shock that he thought she was accusing him of some sort of neglect, for not having come earlier. “Oh,” she said, “no, I didn’t mean—I’m glad you’re here, Christopher.”
He smiled, that kind smile that lit up his unusually colored eyes. Christopher was not handsome in an ordinary way, and Grace knew perfectly well that there were plenty of people, her mother included, who would have thought him not attractive at all. But Grace had known handsome men in abundance, and she knew outward beauty did not ensure kindness, or cleverness, or any kind of a good heart.
“I am too,” he said. “I’d been wanting to see how you were. I thought it was awfully brave of you to give yourself up to the Silent Brothers and let them study you. To see if your mother—had done anything awful to you.”
He really doesn’t know. And Grace knew, in that moment, that she was not going to tell him. Not now. She knew it was dishonesty, that it ran counter to her promise to herself to be more truthful. But hadn’t Zachariah said they were planning to keep the information about her power a secret? Wasn’t she doing what the Silent Brothers would have wanted?
Christopher shifted his feet. “All right,” he said. “I did come because I wanted to see if you were well. But not only because of that.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” said Christopher. Abruptly he dug his hand into his trouser pocket and withdrew a sheaf of pages, carefully folded into quarters. “You see, I’ve been working on this new project—a kind of amalgam of science and Shadowhunter magic. It’s meant for sending messages at a distance, you see, and I’ve made progress, but now there have been some snags, and I’m rather at an impasse, and—oh dear, my metaphors are getting all muddled now.”
Grace’s anxiety had quickly faded as soon as she saw the pages, covered in Christopher’s unreadable scrawl. Now she found she was smiling a bit, even.
“And you’ve got a scientific mind,” Christopher went on, “and so few Shadowhunters do, you know, and Henry’s been too busy to help, and I think my other friends are weary of their things catching on fire. So I was wondering if you would read these over? And give me the honor of your opinion on where I might be going wrong?”
Grace felt a smile spread over her face. Probably the first time she’d really smiled since—well, since the last time she’d seen Christopher. “Christopher Lightwood,” she said, “there is absolutely nothing I would like to do more.”
* * *
As they touched, everything fell away for Cordelia—worries, fears, frustrations, despair. Matthew’s mouth was hot against hers; he staggered back against a lamppost. He kissed her feverishly, over and over, lacing his fingers into her hair. Each kiss hotter, harder than the last. He tasted sugar-sweet, like candy.
She let her hands run over him, over his lean body, the arms she had admired before, the planes of his chest through his shirt, his skin burning feverishly at her touch. She sank her fingers into his thick hair, rougher than James’s, cupped his face in her palms.
He had discarded his gloves and was touching her, too, hands against the thick velvet of her dress, a finger tracing her collarbone, the neckline of her dress. She moaned softly and felt his whole body shudder. He buried his face in the side of her neck. His pulse was racing like wildfire.
“We have to get back to the hotel, Daisy,” he whispering, kissing her throat. “We have to get back, my God, before I disgrace myself and you in front of all Paris.”
Cordelia barely remembered the trip. They retrieved their coats, left Matthew’s weapon, and made their way back in a sort of dream state. They paused several times to kiss in shadowed doorways. Matthew held her so hard it hurt, his hands in her hair, winding the strands around his fingers.
It was like a dream, she thought, as they passed the clerk at the hotel’s front desk. He seemed to be trying to flag them down, but they ducked into one of the gilt-and-crystal lifts and let it carry them upward. Cordelia could not stop an almost hysterical giggle as Matthew pressed her back against the mirrored wall, kissing her neck. Fingers in his hair, she looked at herself in the glass opposite. She looked flushed, almost drunk, the sleeve of her red gown torn. In the fight, perhaps, or by Matthew; she wasn’t sure.
The room, when they came into it, was dark. Matthew kicked the door shut, tearing off his coat with shaking hands. He, too, was flushed, his spun-gold hair disarrayed by her fingers. She drew him toward her—they were still in the entryway, but the door was locked; they were alone. Matthew’s eyes were their darkest green, nearly black, as he pushed the cloak from her shoulders. It fell in a soft, whispering heap at her feet.
Matthew’s hands were skilled. Long fingers curled around the back of her neck; she raised her face to be kissed. Let him not think James has never kissed me, she thought, and kissed him back, willing thoughts of James out of her head. She looped her arms around Matthew’s neck; his body was slim and hard against hers, his mouth soft. She flicked her tongue across his lower lip, felt him shiver. His free hand drew down the sleeve of her dress, baring her shoulder. He kissed the uncovered skin, and Cordelia heard herself gasp.
Who was this, she thought, this bold girl kissing a boy in a Parisian hotel? It couldn’t be her, Cordelia. It had to be someone else, someone carefree, someone brave, someone whose passions were not directed at a husband who did not love her back. Someone who was wanted, truly wanted; she could feel it in the way Matthew held her, the way he said her name, the way he trembled when he gathered her closer, as if he could not believe his good fortune.
“Matthew,” she whispered. Her hands were under his jacket; she could feel the heat of him through the thin cotton of his shirt, feel the flutter in his stomach when she brushed it with her palm. “We can’t—not here—your room—”
“It’s a mess. We’ll go to yours,” he said, and kissed her hard, swinging her up in his arms. He carried her through the French doors into the living room, the only light a spill of illumination through the window. A mix of moon and streetlight, turning the shadows a dark gray. Matthew stumbled against a low table, swore, and laughed, setting Cordelia momentarily down.