Her breath caught in her lungs and froze there, making it impossible to breath as she tried to suck any air down into her body, all to no avail. Her ribs felt as if they were being flattened into sheets thinner than paper, and she doubted that there was a chance of coming out of here without bruises of some sort. She had always hated the corsets, and wondered how the average women of England managed to look so normal and comfortable wearing them, that it was a wonder that they were wearing them at all.
Head swimming, Tessa gritted her teeth together to keep herself from released some kind of sound that would make her sound like an abused animal. Surely, a fate of choking to death would be more pleasant than this morbid torture, of this she was certain.
"How does that feel, miss?" The seamstress asked, ruffling the skirts of the wedding gown to give it some shape. "Not too tight, is it?"
Tessa turned around and offered her what she hoped resembled a smile more than a grimace. "Perfect."
Tessa's mother, Elizabeth Gray, clapped her hands together in delight. "Excellent! And, my dear, you do look so lovely. What a radiant bride you are!" Today, her mother's hair was pulled back with elaborate pins, her bun dressed high on the back of her head, eyes that resembled Tessa's glowing with excitement. She was wearing one of her favorite dresses; a gift that Tessa's father had gotten from Paris the last time he'd gone there for business.
Forcing herself to stare up into her own reflection that looked back at her in the mirror, Tessa suppressed a gasp of horror. Her mother had insisted on deciding what she wanted the dress to look like, down to the very last ruffle. It wasn't that the dress was blatantly hideous, per say. The problem was more of how ugly it looked on Tessa.
White had never been a good color to begin with on her, but that very well wasn't something that she could argue with, no matter how pale she seemed whenever she wore the dreaded color. The dress had a large skirt that belled out around her legs and swished all in one movement whenever she moved. The waist was ridiculously small, pinching her so that her bosom looked abnormally large and most likely would have been spilling out over the top of the dress had it not been for the high, lace collar that itched at Tessa's throat. The arms of the dress were tight down to the elbows until they flared out into laced cuffs that hung loosely off of her wrists. Her gray eyes looked wide in the reflection, her face growing more wane with each passing second. She was still failing to see how she looked like a bride, much less radiant.
"I've been waiting for this day for years! Wait until your father sees how pretty you look in your new dress!"
Elizabeth Gray was so busy discussing wedding plans and making Tessa wonder if she herself thought she was getting married, that she failed to hear the slight knock on the door.
"Mother," Tessa said wearily. "Someone's here."
With a wide smile still very much present on her features, her mother bustled to the door to see who it was as Tessa grabbed onto the bedpost for some kind of support.
Whoever it was stepped out into the hallway with Elizabeth, keeping the door open only a crack so that Tessa had to strain to hear what was being said.
Her ribs still ached where the corset was so tightly bound, and Tessa wondered vaguely who'd designed the blasted things to begin with. The seamstress was bustling around the room and gathering up her sewing supplies as the conversation outside in the hallway continued.
Tessa gripped the bedpost tighter, her knuckles whitening. Her parents had been planning this wedding for nearly a year now, ever since the day Tessa had turned sixteen. It was a widely known fact that Axel Mortmain was the richest man in all of England, and every family desired to marry the youngest and the most beautiful daughter off to him. For some reason, Mortmain had taken a liking to Tessa and agreed to marry her within the next year or so. She had never known why.
She would never call herself beautiful, since the word usually brought to mind a girl with rich blonde waves and beautiful blue eyes that crinkled when she laughed, her tiny, perfect waist only twenty four inches around. Tessa would never use any of those adjectives to describe herself. Her hair was dark brown and waving, but heat made it frizz. Her eyes were gray at some points, but looked tinged blue in others. She was taller than most boys her age, and her waist was certainly not twenty four inches around.
Biting her lip, Tessa pushed the thoughts from her head.
After what seemed like an eternity, Elizabeth came back into the room and shut the door behind her. By the look in her eyes, Tessa knew that there was something absolutely dreadful coming her way.
"We've been invited to attend a ball tomorrow night!" She said, clapping her hands together in sheer delight. "At Axel Mortmain's!"
This, it seemed, was the very last straw that Tessa, already feeling light-headed and drawn, could handle. Her grip on the bedpost slackened, and she fell backwards, the world going black before she could hit the floor.
The moon hung high in the sky, the glow it gave off being one of the only things to lighten the path of the two boys as they slunk down the alleyway.
It was a cool night for May, the air crisp and sharper during the nighttime than it had been hours earlier. There was a time when Will wouldn't have dared to venture too far out into the darkness of the streets of London, but that was a different time, a different person.
Jem followed close behind his companion, their footsteps silent breaths of air as they lurked the streets, seraph blades drawn and ready to face the long-awaited demon.
To a normal onlooker, the sight would have made them stop short and stare at the odd couple the two of them made. Jem's silvery hair and eyes shone brightly in the moonlit darkness, seemingly giving off a unquenchable light of their own. Although he was thin, he was strong, ready to face off at what they were looking to meet tonight. Will was about the same height, but his hair was darker, causing the pallor of his skin to look lighter than it had been when he'd left Wales.
Will could barely hear the sound of his breath in his own ears as they continued on. Shadowhunting was something that he was made to do, even if it hadn't seemed like it at first. He'd been so clumsy as a child, and it had seemed for awhile that he would never learn the strange ways in which Nephilim fought, but he had. And much faster than he could have anticipated.
Tonight they tracked a creature that they'd been looking for for months. It had been terrorizing the streets of London, and even some mundanes were becoming alarmingly suspicious of the activity.
"Will," Jem said, his voice shattering the silence of the night. He turned, and Jem raised a hand to point. "Look."
He did. A trail of dark liquid ran along the path, and when Will bent to touch it, his fingers came away stained with red. Beckoning to Jem, they set off again, their pace quicker this time.
Will had always loved this part of the hunt, even if it was something like a Ravener demon that they'd been chasing, the thrill of the hunt never left him. Not even after doing it a hundred times over.
He had been moving much faster than he'd thought, because Jem grabbed his arm and pinned him against the wall, pressing a finger to his lips.
A dark, ominous figure leaned over a lump on the gravel. As the two of them watched, it reached inside its belt and pulled out what looked like a longsword. Swiftly, it swooped the blade down and made a clean cut.
Will's eyes narrowed as he watched what was happening, and by the time they had figured out that the thing had been a mundane, it had been too late.
"This doesn't make any sense," Jem muttered, leaning down and peering into the eyes of the mundane man. "It looked human, whatever it was. It looked like one of them that killed him."
Will shook his head, although he wasn't sure if he believed his next words himself. "Who can guess, James? Maybe it was nothing more than a silly feud between two normal people and things got out of hand. It's happened before, you know."
Jem stood, the look in his eyes still doubtful. "Maybe."
"Whatever it is," Will said, poking the man with the toe of his boot, causing the man's head to loll to the side "perhaps we should keep a lookout for more of them."
Hello and welcome to a NEW STORY!
I'm really excited to be writing this one, because I absolutely LOVE the Infernal Devices, and I'm going to keep this fanfiction true to the spirit of the original book, Victorian London, the thing with Mortmain, etc. etc. I hope you guys all enjoyed this first chapter, and Happy Summer!