2A/N:
Apologies again that it's taken me SO LONG to get back to this story! Anyway, here you go: Chapter Two. Happy Valentine's(!) Day. I hope it was worth the wait.
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To a worldly, wayward and exceptionally pretty young woman at the peak of her sexual powers, the attractions of self-denial are naturally somewhat less compelling.
Indeed, she would cheerfully admit that it's driving her more than a little crazy — the whole situation is maddening, tantalising, a masochistic exercise in frustration beyond anything she's ever known.
Clearly, the boy is inexperienced. In fact — she reflects with a reminiscent smile as she straightens the books he's left piled in stacks all around the library — she would wager a week's pay she's the first girl he has ever kissed. He's a quick study though, no doubt about that. She's taught any number of boys their business; but this one scarcely needs instruction, seems to know what he's about as if by instinct — a natural, you might say.
For a moment she stands by the polished library table, her eyes fixed unseeing on the dusty volume in her hand, and thinks about the promise implicit in that trained and supple body, the clever hands, and the long, implacable mouth...
He's going to be good this one, very good.
And there is something else about him too, something she struggles to put her finger on, but it puts her in mind of the glint of fire on steel, bright as the colour of blood. As though there were a dark flame burning inside him that gleams in his coal-black eyes and sets his restless face ablaze. It fascinates her, that fire, but it frightens her too: the terrible brightness of it that seems to cast everything around it in brilliant light and shadow until the softer hues of the world are burnt away to nothing.
Giving her head an impatient shake, sets the book back down with brisk exactitude on the top of its stack. She is not a girl prone to flights of fancy. Nor is she generally gifted with profound perception. Nonetheless she is aware that the boy who has chanced across her path this summer is something out of the ordinary; and the thought of taking him sets her pulse racing with a breathless anticipation she hasn't felt in years.
But she is prepared to wait. She knows what she wants — and knows he wants it too. One day soon, she decides, the next time his father is away...
|o|
As things turn out, it is several weeks before Reinhardt Morgenstern is called away on an errand that even that grim task-master can't find a reason to drag his son along on. She gives the old man an hour's start, and then sets out purposefully in search of his son, a little flame of anticipation flickering dark and sweet through her veins.
It takes her longer than she expects to track him down. In the end she runs him to ground at the archery butts that lie beyond the orchard, nearly at the forest edge. The morning is already swelteringly hot — the past few days, the fierce late-summer heat has gathered itself to a kind of blazing apogee — but he has been out here since breakfast-time, the heaviest longbow he can draw in his hands. He is uncomfortably aware he has wasted more time than he ought this summer; only a fortnight more and he'll be back at school.
She watches him for a few moments from the shade of one of the apple trees, admiring the display of effortless athleticism as he plucks an arrow from the quiver at his feet, nocks it and straightens in a single, smooth, economical motion, bowstring already drawing back, before launching it unerringly across the empty meadow towards the impossibly distant target at the far end.
He's nearly as tall as his father now, though it's hard to see much of that dour ascetic in the vivid young man before her, unless perhaps it's in the high-bred lines of his patrician face, and the look of steely purpose in his black eyes as he pulls back the great arc of yew and drives arrow after arrow into the target with a dull, savage thud she can hear clear across the meadow. His shirt is off — his only concession to the blistering August heat — and she can see the sun gleam on the sculpted muscles of his chest and arms, his whole body sheened in sweat, bright as a bronze statue in the fierce sunlight.
The centre of the target bristles terrifyingly with the feathered shafts, packed together tight as a stook of corn; it's a wonder, she thinks, that he can find a place to sink another arrow. And indeed, as she watches, the latest arrow splits one of the standing shafts neatly in half. Lowering the bow with an impatient sound, he strides down the long, waving expanse of grass and begins yanking the arrows out of the straw with savage efficiency.
She doesn't think she has moved, but something must have given her presence away, because his head snaps around abruptly, his sharp gaze picking her out instantly from the pool of shadow in which she is standing. Displeasure is plain on his handsome face.
"Caught," she says with a little laugh, lifting her hands in mock surrender as she steps forward into the sunlight, eyes on the tight lines of his face. He may be unaware of it, but the bow in his hands, as he swings around to face her, is nocked and drawn and pointing straight at her heart.
On second thought, she's sure he knows it very well.
"That's a tom-fool place to be hanging about," he says, and his voice is as cutting as glass. "In the name of the Angel, what were you thinking? You could get yourself killed, skulking in the shadows at the butt-end of an archery range — as you very well ought to know."
His eyes are black with anger, his mouth a hard line. The resemblance to his father is suddenly much easier to see.
Arranging her expression in what she hopes is a look of amusement, she allows her gaze to travel pointedly from his scowling face to the jam-packed bull's-eye and back again, to the bow still unnervingly aimed at her breast.
"A terrible risk," she agrees dryly, ignoring the faint prickling that has started at the back of her neck. "Sure it's a miracle I'm still breathing."
He doesn't smile. But she has her own methods for managing sulky boys. She hopes they work on murderously angry ones too.
Lowering her hands with a small graceful shrug, she fixes luminous blue eyes on his furious black ones and says coaxingly, "Valentine...?".
He is still glaring at her, but she returns his gaze tranquilly, and after a moment he lowers the bow. She is annoyed to find her heart is beating rather fast in her chest.
Taking another step towards him, she peeps up at him from under impossibly thick lashes and murmurs "I'll not deny that voice of yours is a lovely thing, Master Valentine — even when you are in a right strop.
"But it wasn't a scolding I came all this way this morning to have from you." Her words are low, their meaning impossible to mistake. Holding his eyes, she slides a hand slowly, coaxingly up his bare arm, its sinews rigid as whipcord beneath her fingers.
"Well whatever you've been sent here to do, I'd advise you to get on with it promptly." His tone is curt. "My father is in an unpleasant temper this morning. I wouldn't test his patience."
It's one of the reasons he's down here, working off his own seething fury where it won't rebound onto him with redoubled violence. He should have known better than to raise the topic of the Mortal Cup with that obtuse, pig-headed, antediluvian, hidebound monomaniac —
"Oh, but I have all the time in the world." The glimmer of mischief that flits across her face is one he has become very familiar with in the past few weeks. "My orders from Cook were to have a thorough search through the orchard for any early apples ready for the picking. Seems your father fancies a pie when he returns tonight."
The news that his father has ridden out comes as a surprise to him. The old man had certainly not minced his words over the breakfast table: indeed it had been made abundantly clear to him that he could expect a full afternoon of unpleasant chores under his father's implacable eye. The idea that Reinhardt Morgenstern might also have decided, on reflection, that a judicious cooling-off period might be in order before re-engaging with his strong-willed and increasingly formidable son does not occur to him.
For a moment, relief and annoyance war with one another inside his chest: had he known, he might have spared himself the last two hours broiling beneath the August sun. Then again, he reflects, eyeing the bristling target with a certain grim satisfaction, no time expended in training is ever misspent. He has a lot to do. He means to be the best Shadowhunter in the world, the best there has ever been.
And even that may not be enough. He's only one sword-arm, in a world besieged on all sides by hideous threats. Even if he can rekindle the Angel's spirit in his generation as he means to do, and dedicate them anew to their sacred trust, the Nephilim are so precariously few, the demons hordes seemingly infinite in number—
The plump hand on his arm closes softly on his bare flesh, fingers warm and gently insistent. "Master Valentine, do you hear me? I've been sent down here to hunt up ripe apples for a pie." She is standing very near to him; he can feel the heat of her body inches away from his own.
"And it's no small time it will take to pick over every tree in this overgrown orchard of yours." Her voice holds a note of triumph. "Do you know that there are twenty-seven apple-bearing trees in your orchard, Master Valentine? And that's not counting the apples for cider and eating. A long job that — if one were stupid enough to attempt it." The blue of her eyes gleams.
"Cook's a dolt. I could have told her it's a fool's errand: she'll be lucky to find one blessed apple ready to eat before the harvest moon — not from those old apple trees."
An edge of malice creeps into her smile. "But those as think they know everything need no advice from me. I shall return to the kitchen in two hour's time and tell her what the Angel knows is true: in the whole of this orchard there's but a single fruit ripe for taking—"
Her smile deepens, as her eyes travel over his half-naked body, "—and that one is no one's business but mine."
His first impulse is to send her off with a few curt words. But the warmth of her hand on his arm is sending tiny electric shocks through his nerves, and there's a look in her eyes that makes it hard to drag his gaze away. Like an arrow to its mark, his hand comes up to close over her small one, the low drumbeat of his heart insistent in his ears. He's aware that he's gripping her harder than he should, hard enough to hurt, but it doesn't occur to him to loosen his hold.
"You've let that old tyrant get under your skin, haven't you?" she says with a trace of exasperation. But the face she tilts up to his is wide open and her eyes are dark as a moonless night — as black rage — as the Marks etched into his flesh...
"You're an idiot, Master Valentine," she adds softly, when he doesn't answer. "Whatever you're thinking to prove out here, it's not going to mend your father's opinion of your judgement if you keel over with sunstroke."
Her words are tart, but there's an unevenness in her voice now that betrays her, the breath coming fast in her chest; and perhaps, he thinks sardonically, she means it to. Her fingers are on the bare skin of his shoulder, trailing slowly along his collarbones and down his chest, cool as the fitful breeze of evening against his sunburnt skin. Her enchanting, shapely, deft little fingers... He's running with sweat, he realises, and his right arm is bloody from elbow to wrist where the bowstring has chafed his unprotected forearm, but she doesn't seem to care. Setting aside the bow, he reaches out to decisively close the space between them, before pausing as a thought strikes him.
"Have a care — you'll raise more than a few eyebrows if you saunter into the kitchen with that neat uniform of yours covered in blood."
A wicked light illuminates her face. "Better have it off then, hadn't I?
"Unless—" She lets her gaze slide thoughtfully across his bare skin. "Unless you'd rather put your shirt back on." It's clear from her tone that it's not a serious suggestion. He's not even sure where his shirt is: the far end of the meadow, presumably — unless he took it off before setting out from the manor? It's hard to dredge up the recollection; his brain has too many other things to log and sort through: the faint flush that has begun to steal over her cheeks; the rise and fall of her breast beneath the severe black cloth of her dress; the harsh sound of his own breathing, no less disordered than hers now; the unmistakable stirrings of desire in his own body, dark as banked fire.
Anyway, she doesn't give him the chance. "What you need, Master Valentine, is to get yourself out of this terrible sun before you're burnt to a crisp." Her voice is honey tinged with vinegar, and the slow smile curving her lips makes him think of pippins rosy and glowing on the tree, ready to fall
"And I know just the place, cool and dark — and nicely private..."
Winding her fingers smoothly into his, she sets off before he can open his mouth to reply, making purposefully for the weatherbeaten shed, half-buried in ivy, that stands at the forest edge. In winter, it serves for storing the targets. The rest of the year, no one gives it a thought from one season's end to the next. He wonders idly how many young lovers among the servants have taken their pleasure there over the years.
The tall grass whispers around them waist-high as they pass. Beneath the blazing circle of sky, the hot, empty meadow seems to hum with invisible life. Undeniably she is a minx; and undeniably he doesn't care.
He has promised himself he will spend the morning training. But marksmanship isn't the only skill a hunter needs to perfect. He plans to put his time to good use.
|o|
I know: what a place to break off!... But I need to think a little about how to go from here. If we propose to peer through the dusty windows of that tumbledown shed, we'll need to creep up on it very circumspectly indeed. It's Valentine in there, remember? Whose hearing is exceptionally acute — who has a kind of sixth sense, in fact, for when he is being followed or watched. I don't fancy getting caught spying on him in these circumstances, not one bit. Still, his attention is likely to be singularly occupied just at the moment. So we'll see...
Update Feb 2020: that said, Valentine's Day is coming round again. Stay tuned—
Hope you're enjoying this story so far. If you have, please do think about dropping me a comment! It's a great inducement to finishing... —MM