Idris, 1899 snippet

cassandraclare:

For a moment James had the fantasy that Tatiana Blackthorn had brought him here to kill him. She would cut out his heart and leave him lying where his blood ran out across the ground.

Instead she shoved the knife into his hands. “There you go, boy,” she said. “Take your time.”

He thought for a moment that she smiled, but it might have been a trick of the light. She was gone in a rustle of dry grass, leaving James standing before the gates, rusty blade in hand, like Sleeping Beauty’s least successful suitor. With a sigh, he began to cut.

Or at least, he began to try. The dull blade sliced nothing, and the briars were as thick as the bars on the gates. More than once he was stuck sharply by the wicked points of the thorns.

His aching arms soon felt like lead, and his white shirt was spotted with blood. This was ridiculous, he told himself. Surely this went beyond the obligation to help a neighbor with her gardening. Surely his parents would understand if he tossed the knife aside and went home. Surely—

A pair of hands, white as lilies, suddenly fluttered between the vines. “Herondale boy,” whispered a voice. “Let me help you.”

There was a rattling sound, and a moment later a pair of briar cutters—perhaps not entirely new but certainly serviceable—were pushed beneath the gates. James bent to seize them up. 

“Thank you, Grace,” he said. “You are Grace, aren’t you? Grace Blackthorn?”