Will threw his arms up. “Oh, all right,” he said. “How’s this?
“Forsooth, I no longer toil in vain,
To prove that demon pox warps the brain.
So though ’tis pity, it’s not in vain
That the pox-ridden worm was slain:
For to believe in me, you all must deign.”
Jem burst out laughing. “Well, that was awful.”
“It was impromptu!”
“Will, there is such a thing as scansion—” Between one moment and the next Jem’s laughter turned into a fit of coughing. Will darted forward as Jem doubled up, his thin shoulders heaving. Blood splattered the bed’s white coverlet.
“Jem —”
With a hand, Jem gestured toward the box on his nightstand. Will reached for it; the delicately drawn woman on the lid, pouring water from a jug, was intimately familiar to him. He hated the sight of her.
He snapped the box open—and froze. What looked like a light dusting of silvery powdered sugar barely covered the wooden bottom. Perhaps there had been a greater quantity before the Silent Brothers had treated Jem; Will did not know. What he did know was that there should have remained much, much more. “Jem,” he said in a strangled voice, “how is this all there is?”
Jem had stopped coughing. There was blood on his lips, and as Will watched, too shocked to move, Jem raised his arm and scrubbed the blood from his face with his sleeve. The linen was instantly scarlet. He looked feverish, his pale skin glowing, though he showed no other outward sign of agitation.
“Will,” he said softly.
“Two months ago,” Will began, realized his voice was rising, and forced it down again with an effort. “Two months ago I purchased enough yin fen that it should have lasted a year.”
There was a mixture of challenge and sadness in Jem’s glance. “I have accelerated the process of taking it.”
“Accelerated it? By how much?”
Now Jem did not meet his gaze. “I have been taking twice, perhaps three times, as much.”
“But the rate at which you take the drug is tied to the deterioration of your health,” Will said, and when Jem said nothing back, his voice rose and cracked on a single word: “Why?”
“I do not want to live half a life—”
“At this rate you won’t even live a fifth of one!” shouted Will, and he sucked in his breath. Jem’s expression had changed, and Will had to slam the box he was holding back onto the nightstand to keep himself from punching the wall.
Jem was sitting up straight, his eyes blazing. “There is more to living than not dying,” he said. “Look at the way you live, Will. You burn as bright as a star. I had been taking only enough of the drug to keep me alive but not enough to keep me well. A little extra of the drug before battles, perhaps, to give me energy, but otherwise, a half life, a gray twilight of a life—”
“But you have changed your dosage now? Has this been since the engagement?” Will demanded. “Is this because of Tessa?”
“You cannot blame her for this. This was my decision. She has no knowledge of it.”
“She would want you to live, James—”
“I am not going to live!” And Jem was on his feet, his cheeks flushed; it was the angriest, Will thought, that he had ever seen him. “I am not going to live, and I can choose to be as much for her as I can be, to burn as brightly for her as I wish, and for a shorter time, than to burden her with someone only half-alive for a longer time. It is my choice, William, and you cannot make it for me.”
“Maybe I can. I have always been the one to buy your yin fen for you—”
The color went in Jem’s face. “If you refuse to do it, I will buy it on my own. I have always been willing. You said you wished to be the one who bought it. And as to that—” He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. “Take it.”
Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem’s face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. “You wish to marry me now?” he said, at last.
“Sell the ring,” Jem said. “For the money. I told you, you should not have to pay for my drugs; I paid for yours, once, you know, and I recall the feeling. It was unpleasant.”
Will winced, then looked down at the Carstairs family symbol glittering in Jem’s pale, scarred palm. He reached out and took his friend’s hand gently, closing his fingers over the ring. “When did you become reckless and I cautious? Since when have I had to guard you from yourself? It is always you who has guarded me.” His eyes searched Jem’s face. “Help me to understand you.”
Jem stood very still. Then he said, “In the beginning, when I first realized I loved Tessa, I did think that perhaps love was making me well. I had not had an attack in so long. And when I asked her to marry me, I told her that. That love was healing me. So the first time I was—the first time it happened again, after that, I could not bear to tell her, lest she think it meant a lessening of my love for her. I took more of the drug, to fend off another illness. Soon it was taking more of the drug to simply keep me on my feet than it used to take to keep me going for a week. I don’t have years, Will. I might not even have months. And I don’t want Tessa to know. Please don’t tell her. Not just for her sake but for mine.”
Against his own will, almost, Will felt himself understanding; he would have done anything, he thought, told any lie, taken any risk, to make Tessa love him. He would have done—
Almost anything. He would not betray Jem for it. That was the one thing he would not do. And here Jem stood, his hand in Will’s, his eyes asking for Will’s sympathy, his understanding. And how could Will not understand? He recalled himself in Magnus’s drawing room, begging to be sent to the demon realms rather than live another hour, another moment, of a life he could no longer bear.
“So you are dying for love, then,” Will said finally, his voice sounding constricted to his own ears.
“Dying a little faster for love. And there are worse things to die for.”
Will released Jem’s hand; Jem looked from the ring to him, his eyes questioning. “Will—”
“I’ll go to Whitechapel,” said Will. “Tonight. I will get you all the yin fen there is, everything you could need.”
Jem shook his head. “I cannot ask you to do something that goes against your conscience.”
“My conscience,” Will whispered. “You are my conscience. You have ever been, James Carstairs. I will do this for you, but I will extract one promise first.”
“What sort of promise?”
“You asked me years ago to cease looking for a cure for you,” Will said. “I want you to release me from that promise. Free me to look, at least. Free me to search.”
Jem looked at him with some wonder. “Just when I think I know you perfectly, you surprise me again. Yes, I will free you. Search. Do what you must. I cannot fetter your best intentions; it would only be cruel, and I would do the same for you, were I in your place. You know that, don’t you?”