"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 whe
n 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.