Chain of Iron

“I’m not—” Thomas bit off the words before he could stop himself. He was kind; he knew that. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.” The words hung between them, neither daring to move a muscle. After a moment Alastair added in a gentler voice, “How did you know about Charles?”

“You wouldn’t tell me what you were doing in Paris,” said Thomas. “But you mentioned Charles, over and over again, like you got pleasure out of just saying his name. And when you came to London this summer, I saw the way you looked at him. I know what it is to have to hide the—the signs of affection.”

“Then I imagine you may have noticed I don’t look at Charles that way anymore.”

“I suppose I did,” Thomas said, “though for the past four months, I’ve been trying not to look at you. I told myself I hated you. But I could never really make myself. When Elias died, all I could think about was you. What you must be feeling.”

Alastair winced. “I insulted your father and blackened his name. You were under no obligation to care about mine.”

“I know, but sometimes I think that it is much harder to lose someone who we are on bad terms with than it is to lose someone with whom all is well.”

“Bloody hell, Thomas. You should hate me, not be thinking about what I must be feeling—” Alastair swiped at his eyes; Thomas realized with a stunned shock that they were bright with tears. “And the worst of it is, you’re right, of course. You always understood other people so well. I think I partly hated you for it, for being so kind. I thought, ‘He must have so much, to be able to be so generous.’ And I thought that I had nothing. It never occurred to me that you had secrets too.”

“You were always my secret,” said Thomas softly, and Alastair turned a startled gaze on him.

“Does no one know?” said Alastair. “That you—like men? How long have you known?”

“Since after I came to school, I think,” Thomas said in a low voice. “I knew what caught my eye, quickened my pulse, and it was never a girl.”

“And you never told anyone?”

Thomas hesitated. “I could have told my friends that I liked men. They would have understood. But I couldn’t have told them how I felt about you.”

“So you did feel something for me. I thought—” Alastair looked away, shaking his head. “I didn’t see you—you were this boy, following me around at school, and then I met you in Paris and you’d grown up and turned into Michelangelo’s David. I thought you were beautiful. But I was still caught up with Charles—” He broke off. “Just another thing I’ve wasted. Your regard for me. I wasted my time and my affection on Charles. I wasted my chance with you.”

Thomas felt light-headed. Had Alastair just said, I thought you were beautiful? Alastair, who was literally the most beautiful person Thomas had ever known? “Maybe not,” he said. “About me, I mean.”

Alastair blinked. “Speak sense, Lightwood,” he said testily. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this,” said Thomas, and leaned in to kiss Alastair on the mouth.

It was a quick kiss—Thomas had never kissed anyone before, really, just a few furtive moments in a shadowy corner of the Devil Tavern—and nearly chaste. Alastair’s pupils flared; even as Thomas drew back hesitantly, Alastair caught hold of Thomas’s shirtfront in a firm grip. He slid onto his knees so that they faced each other; with Thomas sitting back on his heels, their heads were at the same level.

“Thomas—” Alastair began. His voice was rough, unsteady; Thomas hoped he had something to do with that. Abruptly, Alastair let go of Thomas’s shirt, started to turn his face away.

“Just imagine,” Thomas said. “What if we’d never gone to the Academy together? What if none of those things had happened, and Paris was the first time we’d met? And this was the second?”

Alastair said nothing. This close, Thomas could see the gray flecks in his dark eyes, like delicate veins of crystal in black marble.

Then Alastair smiled. It was the ghost of his old arrogant smile, just touched with the lofty wickedness Thomas remembered from school. It had made his heart skip a beat then; it raced now. “Damn you, Thomas,” he said, and there was resignation in his voice, but something else, too, something dark and sweet and intense.

A moment later he was pulling Thomas toward him. Their bodies collided, awkward and thrilling. Thomas closed his eyes, unable to bear so much feeling, as Alastair’s lips touched his—gently, at first, but with growing confidence, he explored Thomas’s mouth, and it was like flying, like nothing Thomas had ever imagined. The heat and pressure of Alastair’s mouth, the softness of his lips and skin, the sheer intensity of breathing and moving together with Alastair Carstairs.

He had never imagined anything like this. Nothing like the soft growling noise Alastair made as his hands roamed Thomas’s chest, his shoulders, as if they were places he’d been longing to touch for some time. Nothing like the feel of Alastair’s pulse against his lips as Thomas kissed the arch of his throat. And in the moment, Thomas could only think that if he had to be arrested for murder for this to happen, it had been worth it.

 

Christopher carefully fitted a rubber stopper to the last of the test tubes. Since Grace left, he had busied himself recording the results of his experiments on the pithos so far, but it had been hard to stay focused. He’d been thinking about secrets, about how other people seemed to somehow know what was good to share with others and what should be kept to oneself, what words could encourage and which caused hurt, how some people surprised him by not grasping the simplest concepts, no matter how carefully he explained them, while others …

While others seemed to understand Christopher even without a considerable effort on his part. Not very many others: Henry, certainly; and Thomas, usually; and frequently—though not always—the rest of his friends.

But Grace, confoundingly, seemed to see Christopher clearly. Talking to her had been so easy that he’d forgotten to filter everything he said, going over it to make sure it would come out right before speaking.

He wouldn’t tell anyone about her sneaking into the lab, not until he’d had more time to think about it. Was this why James had been drawn to Grace? But James wasn’t interested in experiments and science—not the way Grace seemed to be. She’d been so eager to look through the microscope at the gunpowder compounds he’d been studying; so curious to see the contents of his journals.

But it was silly to dwell on it. Grace would likely never visit the lab again. It was too bad—many great discoveries had been made by teams working in tandem. Look at the Curies, who had just won the Nobel Prize for their experiments with radiation. Perhaps if he told her about the Curies …

Christopher’s thoughts were interrupted by a banging at the front entrance. He hurried upstairs to answer it; the rest of the household must have gone to bed hours ago. He opened the door to find Matthew waiting on the stoop. He was bundled in a red wool coat, hatless and blowing on his hands for warmth.

Christopher blinked in surprise. “Why are you knocking on the door to your own house?”