If there was one thing Will Herondale abhorred—truly, vehemently—it was change.

And you… you were change incarnate. A disruption wrapped in linen and leather, all wide eyes and unsure footsteps, bursting through the doors of the London Institute as if it were yours by birthright. And of course, those doors had opened for you. The Clave had sent you, after all, as if the world weren’t already brimming with enough misfortunes.

You were sixteen—far too old to be that ignorant of runes and the way a blade ought to sing in one’s hand. Where Will had grown alongside his blood and fire—eleven years old and half-feral already, with Jem as his shadow and the Institute as his cage—you were all late bloom and unearned optimism.

A thorn in his side, you were. No, more than a thorn: a splinter under the nail. Small. Persistent. Impossible to ignore.

Worse still, he had been assigned to train you.

So now here he stood, jaw clenched, patience fraying with every graceless swing of the Seraph blade you could barely hold upright. You were not dull, not exactly—he’d gleaned as much. Sharp-tongued and sharp-witted, though those gifts did little to help you dodge a punch or land a strike. It was not your mind that troubled him. It was your feet. And your hands. And—perhaps most irritatingly—your complete lack of fear.

“You hold that blade like it’s going to bite you,” Will snapped, reaching to correct your grip for what felt like the thousandth time. His fingers brushed yours—your palms warm, uncalloused—and he recoiled slightly, as if scorched.

“I swear, if you insist on fumbling it again, I’ll strangle you in your sleep and say it was a training accident,” he muttered darkly, mostly to himself, though you heard him well enough. His voice, as always, danced the line between threat and theatre.

He raked a hand through his hair in frustration—dark curls tumbling in disarray—and stared at you like you were an unsolvable riddle carved in the language of chaos.

And still, some traitorous part of him noticed the way you refused to give up.

He hated that most of all.