chapter 23 Than Any Evil
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail....
I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And "Ave, Ave, Ave," said,
"Adieu, adieu," for evermore.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Tessa shivered; the cold water rushed around her in the darkness. She thought she might be lying at the bottom of the universe, where the river of forgetfulness split the world in two, or perhaps she was still in the stream where she had collapsed after falling from the Dark Sister's carriage, and everything that had happened since had been a dream. Cadair Idris, Mortmain, the clockwork army, Will's arms about her-
Guilt and sorrow drove through her like a spear, and she arched backward, her hands scrabbling for purchase in the darkness. Fire ran through her veins, a thousand branching streams of agony. She gasped for breath, and suddenly there was something cold against her teeth, parting her lips, and her mouth was full of a freezing sourness. She swallowed hard, choking-
And felt the fire in her veins subside. Ice shuddered through her. Her eyes flew open as the world spun and righted itself. The first thing she saw was pale, slim hands withdrawing a vial-the coldness in her mouth, the bitter taste on her tongue-and then the contours of her bedroom at the Institute.
"Tessa," said a familiar voice. "This will keep you lucid for a time, but you must not let yourself fall back into darkness and dreams."
She froze, not daring to look.
"Jem?" she whispered.
The sound of the vial being set down on the bedside table. A sigh. "Yes," he said. "Tessa. Will you look at me?"
She turned, and looked. And drew in her breath.
It was Jem, and not Jem.
He wore the parchment robes of a Silent Brother, open at the throat to show the collar of an ordinary shirt. His hood was thrown back, revealing his face. She could see the changes in him, where she had only barely seen them in the noise and confusion of the battle at Cadair Idris. His delicate cheekbones were scarred with the runes she had noticed before, one on each, long slashes of scars that did not look like ordinary Shadowhunter runes. His hair was no longer pure silver-streaks of it had darkened to black-brown, no doubt the color he had been born with. His eyelashes, too, had darkened to black. They looked like fine strands of silk against his pale skin-though he was no longer as pale as he had been.
"How is it possible?" she whispered. "That you are here?"
"I was called from the Silent City by the Council." His voice was not the same either. There was an undertone of something cool to it, something that had not been there before. "Charlotte's influence, I was given to understand. I am allowed an hour with you, no more."
"An hour," Tessa echoed, stunned. She put a hand up to push her hair from her face. What a fright she must look, in her crumpled nightgown, her hair hanging in tangled plaits, her lips dry and cracked. She reached for the clockwork angel at her neck-a familiar, habitual gesture, meant to comfort, but the angel was no longer there. "Jem. I thought you were dead."
"Yes," he said, and there was that remoteness in his voice still, a distance that reminded her of the icebergs she had seen off the side of the Main, floes drifting far out in icy water. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't somehow-that I couldn't tell you."
"I thought you were dead," Tessa said again. "I can't believe you're real, now. I dreamed of you, over and over. There was a dark corridor and you were walking away from me, and however I called out, you could not, would not, turn to see me. Perhaps this is only another dream."
"This is no dream." He rose to his feet and stood in front of her, his pale hands interlaced in front of him, and she could not forget that this was how he had proposed to her-standing, as she sat upon the bed, looking up at him, incredulous, as she was now.
He opened his hands slowly, and on the palms, as on his cheeks, she saw great black runes scored. She was not familiar enough with the Codex to recognize them, but she knew instinctively that they were not the runes of an ordinary Shadowhunter. They spoke of a power beyond that.
"You told me it was impossible," she whispered. "That you could not become a Silent Brother."
He turned away from her. There was something to his motions now that was different, something of the gliding softness of the Silent Brothers. It was both lovely and chilling. What was he doing? Could he not bear to look at her?
"I told you what I believed," he said, his face turned toward the window. In profile, she could see that some of the painful thinness of his face had faded. His cheekbones were no longer so pronounced, the hollows at his temples no longer so dark. "And what was true. That the yin fen in my blood prevented the runes of the Brotherhood from being placed upon me." She saw his chest rise and fall beneath the parchment robes, and it almost startled her: It seemed so human, the need to draw breath. "Every effort that had ever been made to wean me slowly from the yin fen had nearly killed me. When I ceased to take it because there was no more, I felt my body begin to break, from the inside out. And I thought that I had nothing more to lose." The intensity in Jem's voice warmed it-was that a tone of humanity there, a crack in the armor of the Brotherhood? "I begged Charlotte to call the Silent Brothers and asked them to place the runes of the Brotherhood on me at the very last possible moment, the moment when the life was leaving my body. I knew that the runes might mean I died in agony. But it was the only chance."
"You said that you did not wish to become a Silent Brother. Did not wish to live forever ..."
He had taken a few steps across the room and was beside her vanity table. He reached down and lifted something metallic and glittering from a shallow jewelry dish. She realized with a shock of surprise that it was her clockwork angel.
"It no longer ticks," he said. She could not read his voice; it was distant, as smooth and cool as stone.
"Its heart is gone. When I changed into the angel, I freed it from its clockwork prison. It no longer lives within. It no longer protects me."
His hand closed around the angel, the wings digging hard into the flesh of his palm. "I must tell you," he said. "When I received Charlotte's demand that I come here, it was against my wishes."
"You did not wish to see me?"
"No. I did not want you to look at me as you are looking at me now."
"Jem-" She swallowed, tasting on her tongue the bitterness of the tisane he had given her. A whirl of memories, the darkness under Cadair Idris, the town on fire, Will's arms around her-Will. But she had thought Jem was dead. "Jem," she said again. "When I saw you alive, there below Cadair Idris, I thought it was a dream or a lie. I had thought you dead. It was the darkest moment of my life. Believe me, please believe me, that my soul rejoices to see you again when I thought that I never would. It's just that ..."
He released his grip on the metal angel, and she saw the lines of blood on his hand, where the tips of the wings had cut him, scored across the runes on his palm. "I am strange to you. Not human."
"You will always be human to me," she whispered. "But I cannot quite see my Jem in you now."
He closed his eyes. She was used to dark shadows on his lids, but they were gone now. "I had no choice. You were gone, and in my stead Will had gone after you. I did not fear death, but I feared deserting you both. This, then, was my only recourse. To live, to stand and fight."
A little color had come into his voice: There was passion there, under the cold detachment of the Silent Brothers.
"But I knew what I would lose," he said. "Once you understood my music. Now you look at me as though you do not know me at all. As though you never loved me."
Tessa slid out from beneath the coverlet and stood. It was a mistake. Her head swam suddenly, her knees buckling. She threw out a hand to catch at one of the posts of the bed, and found herself with a handful of Jem's parchment robes instead. He had darted toward her with the graceful quiet tread of the Brothers that was like smoke unfurling, and his arms were around her now, holding her up.
She went still in his arms. He was close, close enough that she should have been able to feel warmth coming off his body, but she did not. His usual scent of smoke and burned sugar was gone. There was only the faint scent of something dry and as cold as old stone, or paper. She could feel the muffled beat of his heart, see the pulse in his throat. She stared up at him in wonder, memorizing the lines and angles of his face, the scars on his cheekbones, the rough silk of his eyelashes, the bow of his mouth.
"Tessa." The word came out on a groan, as if she had hit him. There was the faintest trace of color in his cheeks, blood under snow. "Oh, God," he said, and buried his face in the crook of her neck, where the curve of her shoulder began, his cheek against her hair. His palms were flat against her back, pressing her harder against him. She could feel him trembling.
For a moment she was unmoored by the heady relief of it, the feeling of Jem under her hands. Perhaps you did not really believe in a thing until you could touch it. And here was Jem, who she had thought was dead, holding her, and breathing, and alive.
"You feel the same," she said. "And yet you look so different. You are different."
He broke away from her at that, with an effort that made him bite his lip and corded the muscles in his throat. Holding her gently by the shoulders, he guided her to sit down again upon the edge of the bed. When he released her, his hands curled into fists. He took a step back. She could see him breathing, see the pulse going in his throat.
"I am different," he said in a low voice. "I am changed. And not in a way that can be undone."
"But you are not entirely one of them yet," she said. "You can speak-and see-"
He exhaled slowly. He was still staring at the post of the bed as if it held the universe's secrets. "There is a process. A series of rituals and procedures. No, I am not quite a Silent Brother yet. But I will be soon."
"So the yin fen did not prevent it."
"Almost. There was-pain when I made the transition. Great pain, that nearly killed me. They did what they could. But I shall never be like other Silent Brothers." He looked down, his lashes veiling his eyes. "I shall not be-quite as they are. I will be less powerful, for there are some runes, still, that I cannot withstand."
"Surely they can just wait now for the yin fen to leave your body completely?"
"It will not. My body has been arrested in the state it was in when they put these first runes on me here." He indicated the scars on his face. "Because of it, there will be skills I cannot achieve. It will take me much longer to master their vision and speech of the mind."
"Does that mean they will not take your eyes-sew your lips shut?"
"I don't know." His voice was soft now, almost entirely the voice of the Jem she knew. There was a flush across his cheekbones, and she thought of a pale column of hollow marble slowly filling with human blood. "They will have me for a long time. Perhaps forever. I cannot say what will happen. I have given myself over to them. My fate is in their hands now."
"If we could free you from them-"
"Then the yin fen that remains in me would burn again, and I would be as I was. An addict, dying. This is my choice, Tessa, because it is death otherwise. You know that it is. I do not want to leave you. Even knowing that becoming a Silent Brother could ensure my survival, I fought it as if it were a prison sentence. Silent Brothers cannot marry. They cannot have parabatai. They can live only in the Silent City. They do not laugh. They cannot play music."
"Oh, Jem," Tessa said. "Perhaps the Silent Brothers cannot play music, but neither can the dead. If this is the only way you can live, then I rejoice in my soul for you, even as my heart sorrows."
"I know you too well to think that you would feel another way."
"And I know you well enough to know that you feel bowed by guilt. But why? You have done nothing wrong."
He bent his head so that his forehead rested on the bedpost. He closed his eyes. "This is why I did not want to come."
"But I am not angry-"
"I did not think you would be angry," Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. "We were engaged, Tessa. A proposal-an offer of marriage-is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live with you for years, but that wasn't possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up-all of it up-to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder-a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have."
"To give up your life for one day of marriage-it would not have been worth it," Tessa said. Her heart was pounding out a message that spoke to her of Will's arms around her, his lips on hers in the cave under Cadair Idris. She didn't deserve Jem's gentle confessions, his penitence, or his longing. "Jem, I must tell you something."
He looked at her. She could see the black in his eyes, threads of black alongside the silver, beautiful and strange.
"It's about Will. About Will, and me."
"He loves you," Jem said. "I know he loves you. We spoke of it before he left here." Though the coldness had not returned to his voice, he sounded suddenly almost unnaturally calm.
Tessa was shocked. "I didn't know you had ever talked of it with each other. Will did not say."
"Nor did you ever tell me of his feelings, though you knew for months. We all have our secrets that we keep because we do not want to hurt the people who love us." There was a sort of warning in his voice, or was she imagining it?
"I do not want to keep secrets from you any longer," Tessa said. "I thought you were dead. Will and I both did. In Cadair Idris-"
"Did you love me?" he interrupted. It seemed an odd question, and yet he asked it without implication or hostility, and waited quietly for her answer.
She looked at him, and Woolsey's words came back to her, like the whisper of a prayer. Most people never find one great love in their life. You are lucky enough to have found two. For a moment she put aside her confession. "Yes. I loved you. I love you still. I love Will, too. I cannot explain it. I didn't know it when I agreed to marry you. I loved you, I still love you, I never loved you less for all that I love him. It sounds mad, but if anyone might ever understand-"
"I do," Jem said. "There is no need to tell me more about yourself and Will. There's nothing you could have done that would cause me to cease loving either of you. Will is myself, my own soul, and if I am not to have the keeping of your heart, then there is no other I would rather have that honor. And when I am gone, you must help Will. This will be-it will be hard for him."
Tessa searched his face with her gaze. The blood had left his cheeks; he was pale, but composed. His jaw was set. It said all she needed to understand: Do not tell me more. I do not want to know.
Some secrets, she thought, were better told; some were better left the burden of the carrier, that they might not cause pain to others. It was why she had not told Will she loved him, when there was nothing either of them could do about it.
She closed her mouth on what she had been intending to say, and said instead: "I do not know how I will manage without you."
"I ask myself the same thing. I do not want to leave you. I cannot leave you. But if I stay, I die here."
"No. You must not stay. You will not stay. Jem. Promise you will go. Go and be a Silent Brother, and live. I would tell you I hated you if I thought you would believe me, if it would make you go. I want you to live. Even if it means I shall never see you again."
"You will see me," he said quietly, raising his head. "In fact, there is a chance-only a chance, but-"
"But what?"
He paused-hesitated, and seemed to make his mind up about something. "Nothing. Foolishness."
"Jem."
"You will see me again, but not often. I have only just begun my journey, and there are many Laws that govern the Brotherhood. I will be moving away from my previous life. I cannot say what abilities or what scars I will have. I cannot say how I will be different. I fear I will lose my self and my music. I fear I will become something other than wholly human. I know I will not be your Jem."
Tessa could only shake her head. "But the Silent Brothers-they visit-they mingle with other Shadowhunters.... Can you not ..."
"Not during their time of training. And even when they are done, rarely. You see us when someone is ill or dying, when a child is born, for the rituals of the first runes or of parabatai ... but we do not grace the homes of Shadowhunters without a summoning."
"Then Charlotte will summon you."
"She called me here this once, but she cannot do it over and over again, Tessa. A Shadowhunter cannot summon a Silent Brother for no reason."
"But I am not a Shadowhunter," Tessa said. "Not truly."
There was a long silence as they looked at each other. Both stubborn. Both unmoving. At last Jem spoke:
"Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?" he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver.
"Of course I remember."
"It was the moment I first knew I loved you," Jem said. "I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one."
"An hour every year," Tessa whispered. "It is not much." She recollected herself then, and took a deep breath. "But you will live. You will live. That is what is important. I will not be visiting your grave."
"No. Not for a long, long time," he said, and the distance was back in his voice.
"Then that is a miracle," Tessa said. "And one does not question miracles, or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one's liking." She reached up and touched the jade pendant about her throat. "Shall I return this to you?"
"No," he said "I will marry no one else, now. And I shall not take my mother's bridal gift to the Silent City." He reached out and touched her face lightly, a brush of skin on skin. "When I am in the darkness, I want to think of it in the light, with you," he said, and straightened, and turned to walk toward the door. The parchment robes of the Silent Brothers moved around him as he moved, and Tessa watched him, paralyzed, every pulse of her heart beating out the words she could not say: Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.
He paused at the door. "I shall see you on Blackfriars Bridge, Tessa."
And he was gone.
If Will closed his eyes, he could hear the sounds of the Institute coming to life early in the morning around him, or at least he could imagine them: Sophie setting the breakfast table, Charlotte and Cyril helping Henry to his chair, the Lightwood brothers sparring sleepily in the corridors, Cecily no doubt looking for him in his room, as she had several mornings in a row now, trying-and failing-to conceal her obvious worry.
And in Tessa's room, Jem and Tessa, talking.
He knew Jem was here, because the carriage of the Silent Brothers was drawn up in the courtyard. He could see it from the training room windows. But that was not something he could think about. It was what he had wanted, what he had asked Charlotte for, but now that it was transpiring, he found he could not bear to think on it too closely. So he had taken himself to the room where he always went when his mind was troubled; he had been throwing knives at the wall since the sun had come up, and his shirt was soaked with sweat and sticking to his back.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The knives hit the wall, each one in the center of the target. He remembered when he had been twelve, and getting the knife anywhere near its goal had seemed an impossible dream. Jem had helped him, showed him how to hold a blade, how to line up the point and throw. Of all the places in the Institute, the training room was the one he most associated with Jem-save Jem's own room, and that had been stripped of Jem's belongings. It was just another empty Institute room now, waiting for another Shadowhunter to fill it. Even Church did not seem to want to go into it; he would stand by the door sometimes, and wait as cats did, but he no longer slept on the bed as he had when Jem had lived there.
Will shivered-the training room was cold in the early morning grayness; the fire in the grate was burning down, a fanged shadow of red and gold spitting colorful embers. Will could see two boys in his mind, sitting on the floor in front of the fire in this same room, one with black, black hair, and one whose hair was as fair as snow. He had been teaching Jem how to play ecarte with a deck of cards he had stolen from the drawing room.
At one point, disgruntled upon losing, Will had thrown the cards into the fire and watched in fascination as they'd burned one by one, the fire punching holes in the glossy white paper. Jem had laughed. "You can't win like that."
"Sometimes it's the only way to win," Will had said. "Burn it all down."
He went to retrieve the knives from the wall, scowling. Burn it all down. His whole body still hurt. As he plucked the blades free, he saw that there were greenish-blue bruises on his arms despite the iratzes, and scars from the Cadair Idris battle that he would have forever. He thought of fighting beside Jem in the battle. Maybe he had not appreciated it at the time. The last, last time.
Like an echo of his thoughts, a shadow fell across the doorway. Will looked up-and nearly dropped the knife he was holding.
"Jem?" he said. "Is it you, James?"
"Who else?" Jem's voice. As he stepped forward into the light of the room, Will could see that the hood of his parchment robes was down, his gaze level with Will's. His face, eyes, all familiar. But Will had always been able to sense Jem before, sense his approach and his presence. The fact that Jem had startled him this time was a sharp reminder of the change in his parabatai.
Not your parabatai any longer, said a small voice in the back of his mind.
Jem came into the room with the soundless tread of the Silent Brothers, closing the door behind him. Will did not move from where he stood. He did not feel that he could. The sight of Jem in Cadair Idris had been a shock that had gone through his system like a terrible and wonderful incandescence-Jem was alive, but he was changed; he lived, but was lost.
"But," he said. "You are here to see Tessa."
Jem looked at him levelly. His eyes were gray-black, like slate shot through with streaks of obsidian. "And you did not think I would take the chance, whatever chance I could, to see you, too?"
"I did not know. You left, after the battle, without a farewell."
Jem took a few steps forward, into the room. Will felt his spine tighten. There was something strange, something bone-deep and different about the way Jem moved now; this was not the Shadowhunter's grace Will had trained himself over so many years to mimic, but something strange and alien and new.
Jem must have seen something in Will's expression, for he paused. "How could I say farewell," he said, "to you?"
Will let the knife fall from his hand. It stuck, point-down, in the wood of the floor. "As Shadowhunters do? Ave atque vale. And forever, brother, hail and farewell."
"But those are the words of death. Catullus spoke them over his brother's grave, did he not? Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias-"
Will knew the words. Through many waters borne, brother, I am come to thy sad grave, that I may give these last gifts to the dead. Forever and ever, brother, hail. Forever and ever, farewell. He stared. "You-memorized the poem in Latin? But you were always the one who would memorize music, not words-" He broke off with a short laugh. "Never mind. The rituals of the Brotherhood would have changed that." He turned and paced a few steps away, then spun abruptly to face Jem. "Your violin is in the music room. I thought you might have taken it with you-you cared for it so."
"We can take nothing with us to the Silent City but our own bodies and minds," said Jem. "I left the violin here for some future Shadowhunter who might wish to play it."
"Not for me, then."
"I would be honored if you would take it and care for it. But I left something else for you. In your room is my yin fen box. I thought that you might want it."
"That seems a cruel sort of gift," Will said. "That I might be reminded ..." What took you away from me. What made you suffer. What I searched for and could not find. How I failed you.
"Will, no," said Jem, who, as always, understood without Will having to explain. "It was not always a box that held my drugs. It was my mother's. Kwan Yin is the goddess depicted on the front. It is said that when she died and reached the gates of paradise, she paused and heard the cries of anguish from the human world below and could not leave it. She remained to give aid to mortals, when they cannot aid themselves. She is the comfort of all suffering hearts."
"A box will not comfort me."
"Change is not loss, Will. Not always."
Will pushed his hands through his damp hair. "Oh, yes," he said bitterly. "Perhaps in some other life, beyond this one, when we have passed beyond the river, or turned upon the Wheel, or whatever kind words you want to use to describe leaving this world, I shall find my friend again, my parabatai. But I have lost you now-now, when I need you more than I ever did!"
Jem had moved across the room-like a flicker of shadow, the Silent Brother's grace light upon him-and now stood beside the fire. The firelight illuminated his face, and Will could see that something seemed to shine through him: a sort of light that had not been there before. Jem had always shone, with fierce life and fiercer goodness, but this was something different. The light in Jem seemed to burn now; it was a distant light and a lonely one, like the light of a star. "You don't need me, Will."
Will looked down at himself, at the knife at his feet, and remembered the knife he had buried at the base of the tree on the Shrewsbury-Welshpool road, stained with his blood and Jem's. "All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who will see me like that?"
There was a silence then. Jem stood as still as a statue. With his gaze Will searched for, and found, the parabatai rune on Jem's shoulder; like his own, it had faded to a pale white.
At last Jem spoke. The cool remoteness had left his voice. Will breathed in hard, remembering how much that voice had shaped the years of his growing up, its steady kindness a lighthouse beacon in the dark. "Have faith in yourself. You can be your own mirror."
"What if I can't?" Will whispered. "I don't even know how to be a Shadowhunter without you. I have only ever fought with you by my side."
Jem stepped forward, and this time Will did not move to discourage him. He came close enough to touch-Will thought distractedly that he had never stood so close to a Silent Brother before, that the fabric of the parchment robes was woven of a strange, tough, pale fabric like the bark of a tree, and that cold seemed to emanate from Jem's skin the way stone held a chill even on a hot day.
Jem put his fingers under Will's chin, forcing Will to look directly at him. His touch was cold.
Will bit at his lip. This was the last time Jem, as Jem, might ever touch him. The sharp memory went through him like a knife-of years of Jem's light tap on his shoulder, his hand reaching to help Will up when he fell, Jem holding him back when he was furious, Will's own hands on Jem's thin shoulders as Jem coughed blood into his shirt. "Listen to me. I am leaving, but I am living. I will not be gone from you entirely, Will. When you fight now, I will be still by you. When you walk in the world, I will be the light at your side, the ground steady under your feet, the force that drives the sword in your hand. We are bound, beyond the oath. The Marks did not change that. The oath did not change that. It merely gave words to something that existed already."
"But what of you?" said Will. "Tell me what I can do, for you are my parabatai, and I do not wish you to go into the shadows of the Silent City alone."
"I have no choice. But if there is one thing I could ask of you, it is that you be happy. I want you to have a family and grow old with those who love you. And if you wish to marry Tessa, then do not let the memory of me keep you apart."
"She may not want me, you know," Will said.
Jem smiled, fleetingly. "Well, that part is up to you, I think."
Will smiled back, and for just that moment they were Jem-and-Will again. Will could see Jem, but also through him, to the past. Will remembered the two of them, running through the dark streets of London, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, seraph blades gleaming in their hands; hours in the training room, shoving each other into mud puddles, throwing snowballs at Jessamine from behind an ice fort in the courtyard, asleep like puppies on the rug in front of the fire.
Ave atque vale, Will thought. Hail and farewell. He had not given much thought to the words before, had never thought about why they were not just a farewell but also a greeting. Every meeting led to a parting, and so it would, as long as life was mortal. In every meeting there was some of the sorrow of parting, but in every parting there was some of the joy of meeting as well.
He would not forget the joy.
"We spoke of how to say good-bye," Jem said. "When Jonathan bid farewell to David, he said, 'Go in peace, for as much as we have sworn, both of us, saying the Lord be between me and thee, forever.' They did not see each other again, but they did not forget. So it will be with us. When I am Brother Zachariah, when I no longer see the world with my human eyes, I will still be in some part the Jem you knew, and I will see you with the eyes of my heart."
"Wo men shi sheng si ji jiao," said Will, and he saw Jem's eyes widen, fractionally, and the spark of amusement inside them. "Go in peace, James Carstairs."
They stayed looking at each other for a long moment, and then Jem drew up his hood, hiding his face in shadow, and turned away.
Will closed his eyes. He could not hear Jem go, not anymore; he did not want to know the moment when he left and Will was alone, did not want to know when his first day as a Shadowhunter without a parabatai truly began. And if the place over his heart, where his parabatai rune had been, flared up with a sudden burning pain as the door closed behind Jem, Will told himself it was only a stray ember from the fire.
He leaned back against the wall, then slowly slid down it until he was sitting on the floor, beside his throwing knife. He did not know how long he sat there, but he could hear the noise of horses in the courtyard, the rattle of the Silent Brothers' carriage pulling out of the drive. The clang of the gate as it shut. We are dust and shadows.
"Will?" He looked up; he had not noticed the slight figure in the doorway of the training room until she spoke. Charlotte took a step forward and smiled at him. There was kindness in her smile, as there always was, and he fought to not close his eyes against the memories-Charlotte in the doorway of this very room. Didn't you recall what I told you yesterday, that we were welcoming a new arrival to the Institute today? ... James Carstairs ...
"Will," she said, again, now. "You were correct."
He lifted his head, his hands dangling between his knees. "Correct about what?"
"About Jem and Tessa," she said. "Their engagement is ended. And Tessa is awake. She is awake, and well, and asking for you."
When I am in the darkness, I will think of it in the light, with you.
Tessa sat upright against the pillows Sophie had carefully arranged for her (the two girls had embraced, and Sophie had brushed the tangles from Tessa's hair and said "bless, bless" so many times that Tessa had had to ask her to stop before she made them both cry) and looked down at the jade pendant in her hands.
She felt as if she were split into two different people. One was counting her blessings over and over that Jem was alive, that he would survive to see the sun rise again, that the poisonous drug he had suffered from so long would not burn the life out of his veins. The other-
"Tess?" A soft voice at the door; she looked up and saw Will there, silhouetted in the light from the corridor.
Will. She thought of the boy who had come into her room at the Dark House and distracted her from her terror by chattering about Tennyson and hedgehogs and dashing fellows who come to rescue one, and how they were never wrong. She had thought him handsome then, but now she thought him something else entirely. He was Will, in all his perfect imperfection; Will, whose heart was as easy to break as it was carefully guarded; Will, who loved not wisely but entirely and with everything he had.
"Tess," he said again, hesitating at her silence, and came in, half-closing the door behind him. "I-Charlotte said you wished to speak with me-"
"Will," she said, and she knew she was too pale, and her skin was blotchy with tears, her eyes still red, but it didn't matter, because it was Will, and she put her hands out, and he came immediately and took them, closing them in his own warm, scarred fingers.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, his eyes searching her face. "I must speak with you, but I do not wish to burden you until you are in full health again."
"I am well," she said, returning the pressure of his fingers with her own. "Seeing Jem has eased my mind. Did it ease yours?"
His eyes darted away from hers, though his grip on her hands did not slacken. "It did," he said, "and it did not."
"Your mind was eased," she said, "but not your heart."
"Yes," he said. "Yes. That is exactly it. You know me so well, Tess." He gave a rueful smile. "He is alive, and for that I am grateful. But he has chosen a path of great loneliness. The Brotherhood-they eat alone, and walk alone, rise alone and face the night alone. I would spare him that if I could."
"You have spared him everything you could spare him," Tessa said quietly. "As he spared you, and we all tried so hard to spare one another. In the end we must all make our own choices."
"Are you saying I should not grieve?"
"No. Grieve. We both shall. Grieve, but do not blame yourself, for in this you bear no responsibility."
He glanced down at their joined hands. Very gently he stroked the tops of her knuckles with his thumbs. "Perhaps not," he said. "But there are other things I do bear responsibility for."
Tessa took a quick, shallow breath. His voice had lowered, and there was a roughness to it she had not heard since-
his breath soft and hot against her skin until she was breathing just as hard, her hands smoothing up and over his shoulders, his arms, his sides ...
She blinked hastily and withdrew her hands from his. She was not looking at him now but seeing the firelight against the walls of the cave, and hearing his voice in her ear, and it had all seemed like a dream at the time, moments drawn out of real life, as if they were taking place in some other world. Even now she could barely believe that it had happened at all.
"Tessa?" His voice was hesitant, his hands still outstretched. A part of her wanted to take them, to draw him down beside her and kiss him, to forget herself in Will as she had before. For he was as effective as any drug.
And then she remembered Will's own clouded eyes in the opium den, the dreams of happiness that crashed into ruins the moment the effects of the smoke wore away. No. Some things could be managed only by facing them. She took a breath, and looked up at Will.
"I know what you would say," she said. "You are thinking of what happened between us in Cadair Idris, because we thought Jem was dead, and that we, too, would die. You are an honorable man, Will, and you know what you must do now. You must offer me marriage."
Will, who had been very still, proved that he could still surprise her, and laughed. It was a soft laugh, and rueful. "I did not expect you to be so forthright, but I suppose I should have. I know my Tessa."
"I am your Tessa," she said. "But, Will. I do not want you to speak now. Not of marriage, of lifelong promises-"
He sat down on the edge of the bed. He was in training gear, the loose shirt pushed up around his elbows, the throat open, and she could see the healing scars of the battle on his skin, the white remembrance of healing runes. She could see the beginning of hurt, too, in his eyes. "You regret what happened between us?"
"Can one regret a thing that, however unwise, was beautiful?" she said, and the hurt in his eyes softened into confusion.
"Tessa. If you are afraid that I feel reluctant, obligated-"
"No." She put up her hands. "It is only that I feel your heart must be a tangle of grief and despair and relief and happiness and confusion, and I do not wish you to make pronouncements when you are so overwhelmed. And do not tell me you are not overwhelmed, for I can see it upon you, and I feel it myself. We are both overwhelmed, Will, and neither of us is in any fit state to make decisions."
For a moment he hesitated. His fingers hovered over his heart, where the parabatai rune had been, touching it lightly-she wondered if he was even aware he was doing it-and then he said, "Sometimes I fear you may be too wise, Tessa."
"Well," she said. "One of us has to be."
"Is there nothing I can do?" he said. "I would rather not leave your side. Unless you wish me to."
Tessa let her gaze fall to the bedside table, where the books she had been reading before the automaton attack on the Institute-it felt like a thousand years ago-lay stacked. "You could read to me," she said. "If you would not mind."
Will looked up at that and smiled. It was a raw, strange smile, but it was real, and it was Will. Tessa smiled back. "I do not mind," he said. "Not at all."
Which was how, some quarter of an hour later, Will came to be sitting in an armchair, reading from David Copperfield, when Charlotte pushed the door of Tessa's room gently open with her fingers and peered inside. She could not help but be anxious-Will had looked so desperate slumped on the floor of the training room, so very much alone, and she remembered the fear she had always harbored, that if Jem ever left them, he would take all the best of Will with him when he went. And Tessa, too, was still so fragile....
Will's soft voice filled the room, along with the muted glow of the light from the fire in the grate. Tessa was lying on her side, her brown hair spread over the pillow, watching Will, whose face was bent over the pages, with a look of tenderness in her eyes, a tenderness mirrored in the softness of Will's voice as he read. It was a tenderness so intimate and so profound that Charlotte stepped away immediately, letting the door fall noiselessly shut behind her.
Still, Will's voice followed her down the corridor as she walked away, her heart a great deal lighter than it had been moments ago.
"... and cannot watch over him, if that is not too bold a thing to say, as closely as I would. But if any fraud or treachery is practicing against him, I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world...."