“Jem would forgive me,” Will said, but there was hopelessness in his face, his voice, already. He had given up, Tessa thought; Will, who never gave up on any fight before it had started. “He . . .”
“He would,” she said. “He could never stay angry at you, Will; he loves you too well for that. I do not even think he would hold anger toward me. But this morning he told me he thought he would die without ever loving anyone as his father loved his mother, without ever being loved like that in return. Do you want me to go down the hallway and knock on his door and take that away from him? And would you love me still, if I did?”
Will looked at her for a long moment. Then he seemed to crumple inside, like paper; he sat down in the armchair, and put his face into his hands. “You promise me,” he said. “That you love him. Enough to marry him and make him happy.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then, if you love him,” he said quietly, “please, Tessa, don’t tell him what I just told you. Don’t tell him that I love you.”
“And the curse? He doesn’t know—”
“Please don’t tell him about that either. Nor Henry, nor Charlotte—no one. I must tell them in my own time, in my own way. Pretend I said nothing to you. If you care about me at all, Tessa . . .”
“I will tell no one,” she said. “I swear it. I promise it, on my angel. My mother’s angel. And, Will . . .”
He had lowered his hands, but he still could not seem to look at her. He was gripping the sides of the armchair, his knuckles white. “I think you had better go, Tessa.”
But she could not bear to. Not when he was looking like that, like he was dying on the inside. More than anything else, she wanted to go and put her arms around him, to kiss his eyes closed, to make him smile again. “What you have endured,” she said, “since you were twelve years old—it would have killed most people. You have always believed that no one loved you, that no one could love you, as their continued survival was proof to you that they did not. But Charlotte loves you. And Henry. And Jem. And your family. They all have always loved you, Will Herondale, for you cannot hide what is good about yourself, however hard you try.”
He lifted his head and looked at her. She saw the flame of the fire reflected in his blue eyes. “And you? Do you love me?”
Her nails dug into her palms. “Will,” she said.
He looked at her, almost through her, blindly. “Do you love me?”
“I . . .” She took a deep breath. It hurt. “Jem has been right about you all this time. You were better than I gave you credit for being, and for that I am sorry. Because if this is you, what you are truly like, and I think that it is—then you will have no difficulty finding someone to love you, Will, someone for whom you come first in their heart. But I . . .”
He made a sound halfway between a choking laugh and a gasp. “‘First in your heart,’” he said. “Would you believe that is not the only time you have said that to me?”
She shook her head, bewildered. “Will, I have not—”
“You can never love me,” he said flatly, and when she did not respond, when she said nothing, he shuddered—a shudder that ran through his whole body—and pushed away from the armchair without looking at her. He stood up stiffly and crossed the room, groping for the bolt on the door; she watched with her hand across her mouth as, after what seemed like an age, he found it, fumbled it open, and went out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him.
Will, she thought. Will, is that you? The backs of her eyes ached. Somehow she found that she was sitting on the floor in front of the grate of the fire. She stared at the flames, waiting for the tears to come. Nothing happened. After such a long time of forcing them back, it seemed, she had lost the ability to cry.
She took the poker from the fireplace iron holder and drove the tip of it into the heart of the burning coals, feeling the heat on her face. The jade pendant around her throat warmed, almost burning her skin.
She drew the poker out of the fire. It glowed as red as a heart. She closed her hand around the tip.
For a moment she felt absolutely nothing. And then, as if from a very great distance, she heard herself cry out, and it was like a key turned inside her heart, freeing the tears at last. The poker clattered to the ground.
When Sophie came dashing in, having heard her scream, she found Tessa on her knees by the fire, her burned hand pressed to her chest, sobbing as if her heart would break.
It was Sophie who took Tessa to her room, and Sophie who put her in her nightgown and then in bed, and Sophie who washed her burned hand with a cool flannel and bound it up with a salve that smelled like herbs and spices, the same salve, she told Tessa, that Charlotte had used on Sophie’s cheek when she had first come to the Institute.
“Do you think I’ll have a scar?” Tessa asked, more out of curiosity than because she cared one way or the other. The burn, and the weeping that had followed it, seemed to have seared and flooded all the emotion out of her. She felt as light and hollow as a shell.
“Probably a bit of a one, not like I’ve got,” said Sophie frankly, securing the bandage around Tessa’s hand. “Burns hurt worse than they are, if you catch my meaning, and I got to you quickly with the salve. You’ll be all right.”
“No, I won’t be,” said Tessa, looking at her hand, and then over at Sophie. Sophie, lovely as always, calm and patient in her black dress and white cap, her curls clustering around her face. “I’m sorry again, Sophie,” she said. “You were right about Gideon, and I was wrong. I should have listened to you. You’re the last person on earth inclined to be foolish over men. The next time you say someone is worth trusting, I will believe you.”
Sophie’s smile flashed out, the smile that made even strangers forget her scar. “I understand why you said it.”
“I should have trusted you—”
“I shouldn’t have got so angry,” Sophie said. “The truth is, I wasn’t sure myself what he was going to do. I wasn’t sure till he came back in the carriage with you all that he would side with us in the end.”
“It must be nice, though,” Tessa said, playing with the bedclothes, “that he’s going to live here. He’ll be so close to you—”
“It will be the worst thing in the world,” Sophie said, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears. Tessa froze in horror, wondering what she could have said so wrong. The tears stood in Sophie’s eyes, without falling, making their green shimmer. “If he lives here, he’ll see me as I really am. A servant.” Her voice cracked. “I knew I should never have gone to see him when he asked me. Mrs. Branwell’s not the type to punish her servants for having followers and the like, but I knew it was wrong anyway, because he’s himself and I’m me, and we don’t belong together.” She reached up a hand and wiped at her eyes, and then the tears did fall, spilling down both her cheeks, the whole and the scarred one. “I could lose everything if I let myself—and what’s he stand to lose? Nothing.”
“Gideon’s not like that.”
“He’s his father’s son,” Sophie said. “Who says that doesn’t matter? It’s not as if he was going to marry a mundane as it was, but to see me building up his fire, doing the washing-up—”