Jem & Tessa fans swooned over one of their favorite Shadowhunter couples while reading Part 1 & Part II of After The Bridge by Cassandra Clare. I have a feeling you may become weak in the knees with reading Part III. At least I know Sophie is....
A story for those who might have wondered what Tessa and Jem did after they met on Blackfriars Bridge in the epilogue of Clockwork Princess.
Those who do not like Tessa&Jem together or Jessa sexytimes probably should skip this. (You will not miss anything that will affect your understanding of later books.) Those who like that sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
After the Bridge alternates POV between Jem and Tessa. It will be posted in installments. This is Part Two. It is not the whole story. There are more parts. As this is one short story and not chaptered, each post will contain the whole story from the beginning up to the point where that part ends so that new readers or readers who don’t remember what happened won’t have to hunt down the previous post(s.)
AFTER THE BRIDGE 3/4
Now is the time of our comfort and plenty
These are the days we’ve been working for
Nothing can touch us and nothing can harm us
And nothing goes wrong anymore
.........
She was wearing a dress of orchid silk faille, the sort of dress she might have worn to dinner when they had been engaged. It was trimmed in white velvet cords, the skirt belling out over — was she wearing crinolines?
His mouth opened. He couldn’t help himself. He had found her beautiful through all the changing ages of the century: beautiful in the carefully cut clothes of the war years, when fabric was rationed. Beautiful in the elegant dresses of the fifties and sixties. Beautiful in short skirts and boots as the century drew to a close.
But this was what girls looked like when he had first noticed them, first found them fascinating and not annoying, first noticed the graceful line of a neck or the pale inside of a feminine wrist. This was the Tessa who had first cut him through and through with love and lust commingled: a carnal angel with a corset shaping her body to an hourglass, lifting her breasts, shaping the flare of her hips.
He forced his eyes away from her body. She had bound up her hair, small curls escaping over her ears, and his jade pendant glimmered around her throat.
“Do you like it?” she said. “I had to do my own hair, without Sophie, and lace my own laces …” Her expression was shy and more than a little nervous — it had always been a contradiction at the heart of her, that she was one of the bravest and yet the shyest people he knew. “I bought it from Sotheby’s — a real antique, now, it was far too much money but I remembered when I was a girl you had said orchids were your favorite flower and I had set myself to find a dress the color of an orchid but I never found one before you were — gone. But this one is. Aniline dye, I expect, nothing natural, but I thought — I thought it would remind you.” She raised her chin. “Of us. Of what I wanted to be for you, when I thought we would be together.”
“Tess,” he said, hoarsely. He was on his feet, without knowing how he had gotten there. He took a step toward her, and then another. “Forty-nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-five.”
She knew immediately what he meant. He knew she would. She knew him as no one else living did. “Are you counting days?”
“Forty-nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-five days since I last kissed you,” he said. “And I thought of you every single one of them. You do not have to remind me of the Tessa I loved. You were my first love and you will be my last one. I have never forgotten you. I have never not thought of you.” He was close enough now to see the pulse pounding in her throat. To reach out and lift up a curl of her hair. “Never.”
Her eyes were half-shut. She reached out and took his hand, where it caressed her hair.
* The reason for the note, is we know we have young YA fans, who love Cassie's work, and though this scene is sensual, beautiful and long time in the making (over 130 years), it may not be a suitable scene for younger readers. We'd give it a PG-13 rating.