Tessa reached up to her jade pendant, hidden beneath her collar. She sat and waited and listened to the roar and the wail outside as she held his hand.
I am here, James, she said in her mind. I am here, and I will always be here.
Tessa let go of Jem’s hand only to occasionally go to the window to make sure the fires did not come too close. There was a halo of orange all around. The fires were only a few streets away. It was strangely beautiful, this terrible blaze. The city was burning; hundreds of years of history, ancient beams and books were alight.
“They mean to burn us out this time,” Catarina said, coming up behind her friend. Tessa had not heard her enter. “This ring of fire, it goes around St. Paul’s. They want the cathedral to burn. They want to break our spirits.”
“Well,” Tessa said, pulling the curtain closed, “they won’t succeed.”
“Why don’t we go and make a cup of tea?” Catarina said. “He’ll be sleeping for some time.”
“No. I need to be here when he wakes.”
Catarina looked at her friend’s face.
“He means a great deal to you,” she said.
“Jem—Brother Zachariah—and I have always been close.”
“You love him,” Catarina said. It was not a question.
Tessa squeezed a handful of curtain in her fist. They stood in silence for a moment. Catarina rubbed her friend’s arm consolingly.
“I’ll make the tea,” she said. “I’ll even let you have the last biscuits in the tin.”
Biscuits?
Tessa whirled around. Jem was sitting up. She and Catarina hurried to him. Catarina began checking his pulse, his skin. Tessa looked at his face, his dear and familiar face. Jem was back; he was here.
Her Jem.
“It is healing,” Catarina said. “You’ll need to rest, but you will live. It was a narrow escape, though.”
Which is why I came to the best nurses in London, Jem said.
“Perhaps you can explain that wound you have?” Catarina said. “I know where it comes from. Why were you attacked with a faerie weapon?”
I was looking for information, Jem said, shifting himself painfully to sit up a bit higher. My inquiries were not appreciated.
“Clearly, if you were attacked with a cataplasm. That is intended to kill. It does not wound. It is usually not survivable. Your Silent Brother markings gave you some protection, but . . .”
Catarina felt his pulse again.
But? Jem said curiously.
“I did not believe you would make it through the night,” she said simply.
Tessa blinked. She’d known it was serious, but the way Catarina said it hit her physically.
“You should perhaps avoid making those inquiries again,” Catarina said, putting the blankets back over Jem. “I’ll go and make the tea.”
She left the room quietly, closing the door behind her, leaving Tessa and Jem together in the darkness.
The raid seems worse than any before tonight, Jem finally said. Sometimes I think the mundanes will do more harm to each other than any demon could ever do to them.
Tessa felt a wave of emotion go through her—everything from the night burst to the surface, and she sank her head into the side of Jem’s bed and wept. Jem sat up and pulled her close, and she rested her head on his chest, now warm, his heart beating strong.
“You might have died,” Tessa said. “I might have lost you, too.”
Tessa, he said. Tessa, it’s me. I am here. I am not gone.
“Jem,” she finally said. “Where have you been? It’s been so long since . . .”
She pulled herself up and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. She still couldn’t say the words “since Will died.” Since that day she sat next to him on the bed and he drifted gently to sleep and never woke again. Jem had been there then, of course, but over the last three years she saw him less and less. They still met at Blackfriars Bridge, but otherwise he stayed away.
I thought it best to keep away from you. I am a Silent Brother, he said, and his voice in her head was quiet. I am no use to you.
“What do you mean?” Tessa asked helplessly. “It is always better for me to be with you.”
Being what I am, how can I comfort you? asked Jem.
“If you cannot,” said Tessa, “there is nobody in this world who can.”
She had known that always. Magnus and Catarina had both tried to speak to her tactfully of immortal lives and other loves, but if she lived until the sun died, there would never be any other for her besides Will and Jem, those two twin souls, the only souls she had ever loved.
I do not know what comfort a creature like me could bring, said Jem. If I could die to bring him back, I would, but he is gone, and with his loss the world seems even more lost to me. I fight for every drop of emotion I have, but at the same time, Tessa, I cannot see you lonely and not wish to be with you. I am not what I was. I did not want to cause you more pain.
“The whole world seems to have gone mad,” she said, tears burning in her eyes. “Will is gone from me, and you are gone from me, or so I have long thought. And yet tonight, I realized—I could still lose you, Jem. I could lose the hope, the slim hope of the possibility that someday . . .”
The words hung in the air. They were words they never spoke to each other aloud, not before Will died and not after. She had taken the part of her heart that loved Jem wildly, violently, and locked it up in a box: she had loved Will, and Jem had been her best friend, and they had never, ever spoken of what might happen if he were no longer a Silent Brother. If somehow the curse of that cold fate could be lifted. If his silence were gone, and he became human again, able to live and breathe and feel. Then what? What would they do?
I know what you are thinking. His voice in her mind was soft. His skin under her hands was so warm. She knew it was fever, but she told herself it was not. She lifted her face and looked into his, the cruel runes shutting his beloved eyes forever, the unchanged planes of his countenance. I think of it too. What if it ended? What if it were possible for us? A future? What would we do?
“I would seize that future,” she said. “I would go with you anywhere. Even if the world was burning, if the Silent Brothers hunted us to the ends of the earth, I would be happy, if I was with you.”
She could not quite hear him in her head, but she could feel him: the edge of a jumble of emotions, his longing now as desperate as it had been when they had fallen together onto the carpet of the music room, the night she had begged him to marry her as soon as possible.
He caught her in his arms. He was a Silent Brother, a Gregori, a Watcher, barely human. And yet he felt human enough—his lean chest hot against her skin as she tilted her face up. His lips met hers, soft and so sweet it made her ache. It had been so many, many years, but this was still the same.
Almost the same. I am not what I was.
Almost the fire of lost nights, the sound of his passionate music in her ears. She put her arms around his slim shoulders and clung to him fiercely. She could love enough for both of them. Any part of Jem was better than all of any other man alive.
His musician’s hands drew over her face, over her hair, over her shoulders, as though he was seizing a last chance to memorize what he could never touch again. Even as she kissed him and insisted desperately to herself that it was possible, she knew it was not.
Tessa, he said. Even when I cannot see, you are so beautiful.
Then he grasped her shoulders in his beautiful hands and gently put her away from him.
I am sorry, my darling, he told her. That was not fair of me, or well done. When I am with you, I want to forget what I am, but I cannot change it. A Silent Brother can have no wife, no love.
Tessa’s heart was pounding, her skin blazing like the fires all over London. She had not felt desire like this since Will. She knew she would never feel it for anyone else; only Will or Jem. “Don’t go away from me,” she whispered. “Don’t stop talking to me. Don’t retreat into silence. Will you tell me how you were injured?” she asked, grasping his hand. He drew it against his heart. She could feel it hammering through his rib cage. “Please. Jem, what were you doing?”
Jem sighed.
I was looking for lost Herondales, he said.
“Lost Herondales?”
This was from Catarina, who stood in the bedroom doorway, holding a tray with two cups of tea. The tray rattled in her hands, as shaken as Tessa felt. She had not even thought of Catarina’s presence.
Catarina steadied her grip and quickly set the tray down on the dresser. Jem’s eyebrow quirked up.
Yes, Jem said. Do you know something about them?
Catarina was still visibly shaken. She didn’t answer.
“Catarina?” Tessa asked.
“You have heard of Tobias Herondale,” she said.
Of course, Jem replied. His story is infamous. He ran from a battle and his fellow Shadowhunters were killed.
“That is the story,” Catarina said. “The reality was that Tobias was under a spell, made to believe that his wife and unborn child were in danger. He ran to help them. His fear was for their safety, but nevertheless, he broke the Law. When he could not be found, the Clave punished Tobias’s wife in his stead. They killed her, but not before I helped her birth the child. I enchanted her so that it appeared she was still with child when she was executed. In reality, she had a son. His name was Ephraim.”
She sighed and leaned against the wall, knotting her hands together.
“I took Ephraim to America and raised him there. He never knew what he was or who he was. He was a happy boy, a good boy. He was my boy.”
“You had a son?’ Tessa asked.
“I never told you,” Catarina replied, looking down. “I should have. It’s just . . . it was so long ago now. But it was a wonderful period in my life. For a time, there was no chaos. There was no fighting. We were a family. I did only one thing to connect him to his secret heritage—I gave him a necklace in the shape of a heron. I couldn’t allow his Shadowhunter lineage to be blotted out completely. But, of course, he grew up. He had a family of his own. And his family had their own families. I stayed the same and gradually faded out of their lives. It is what we immortals must do. One of his descendants was a boy named Roland. He became a magician, and he was famous in Downworld. I tried to warn him away from using magic, but he wouldn’t listen. We had a terrible fight and parted badly. I tried to find him, but he was gone. I’ve never been able to find any trace of him. I drove him away when I tried to save him.”