“I know.” Will drew his hands back. He had not cleaned them since the fight in the courtyard, and Jessamine’s dried blood mixed with Jem’s fresh blood on his fingers.
Jem took a deep breath. Both he and Will waited to see if it would produce another spasm of coughing, and when it did not, Jem spoke. “Magnus said you were in love with Tessa. Is it true?”
“Yes,” Will said, with the feeling that he was falling off a cliff. “Yes, it’s true.”
Jem’s eyes were wide and luminous in the darkness. “Does she love you?”
“No.” Will’s voice cracked. “I told her I loved her, and she never wavered from you. It is you she loves.”
Jem’s death grip on the cloth in his hands relaxed slightly. “You told her,” he said. “That you were in love with her.”
“Jem—”
“When was this, and what excess of desperation could have driven you?”
“It was before I knew you were engaged. It was the day I discovered there was no curse on me.” Will spoke haltingly. “I went to Tessa and told her that I loved her. She was as kind as she could be in telling me that she loved you and not me, and that you two were engaged.” Will dropped his gaze. “I do not know if this will make any difference to you, James. But I truly had no idea that you cared for her. I was entirely obsessed with my own emotions.”
Jem bit his lower lip, bringing color to the white skin. “And—forgive me for asking this—it is not a passing fancy, a transient regard …?” He broke off, looking at Will’s face. “No,” he murmured. “I can see that it is not.”
“I love her enough that when she assured me that she would be happy with you, I swore to myself I would never speak of my desires again, never indicate my regard by word or by gesture, never by action or speech violate her happiness. My feelings have not changed, and yet I care enough for her and for you that I would not say a word to threaten what you have found.” The words spilled from Will’s lips; there seemed no reason to keep them back. If Jem was going to hate him, he would hate him for the truth and not a lie.
Jem looked stricken. “I am so sorry, Will. So very, very sorry. I wish that I had known—”
Will slumped down in the chair. “What could you have done?”
“I could have called off the engagement—”
“And broken both your hearts? How would that have benefited me? You are as dear to me as another half of my soul, Jem. I could not be happy while you were unhappy. And Tessa—she loves you. What sort of awful monster would I be, delighting in causing the two people I love the most in the world agony simply that I might have the satisfaction of knowing that if Tessa could not be mine, she could not be anybody’s?”
“But you are my parabatai. If you are in pain, I wish to lessen it—”
“This,” Will said, “is the one thing you cannot give me comfort for.”
Jem shook his head. “But how could I not have noticed? I told you, I saw that the walls about your heart were coming down. I thought—I thought I knew why; I told you I always knew you carried a burden, and I knew you had gone to see Magnus. I had thought that perhaps you had made some use of his magic, to free yourself from some imaginary guilt. If I had ever known it was because of Tessa, you must know, Will, I would never have made my feelings known to her.”
“How could you have guessed?” Miserable though Will was, he felt free, as if a heavy burden had been displaced from him. “I did all I could to hide and deny it. You—you never hid your feelings. Looking back, it was clear and plain, and yet I never saw it. I was astonished when Tessa told me that you were engaged. You’ve always been the source in my life of such good things, James. I never thought you would be the source of pain, and so, wrongly, I never thought of your feelings at all. And that is why I was so blind.”
Jem closed his eyes. The lids were blue-shadowed, parchmentlike. “I am grieved for your pain,” he said. “But I am glad that you love her.”
“You are glad?”
“It makes it easier,” Jem said. “To ask you to do what I wish you to do: leave me, and go after Tessa.”
“Now? Like this?”
Jem, incredibly, smiled. “Is that not what you were doing when I caught at your hand?”
“But—I did not believe you would regain consciousness. This is different. I cannot leave you like this, not to face alone whatever you must face—”
Jem’s hand came up, and for a moment Will thought he was going to reach for Will’s hand, but he knotted his fingers in the material of his friend’s sleeve instead. “You are my parabatai,” he said. “You have said I could ask anything of you.”
“But I swore to stay with you. ‘If aught but death part thee and me—’”
“Death will part us.”
“You know the words of the oath come from a longer passage,” Will said. “‘Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go.’”
Jem cried out with all his remaining strength. “You cannot go where I am going! Nor would I want that for you!”
“Neither can I walk away and leave you to die!”
There. Will had said it, said the word, admitted the possibility. Die.
“No one else can be trusted with this.” Jem’s eyes were bright, feverish, almost wild. “Do you think I don’t know that if you do not go after her, no one will? Do you think it doesn’t kill me that I cannot go, or at least go with you?” He leaned toward Will. His skin was as pale as the frosted glass of a lamp shade, and like such a lamp, light seemed to shine through him from some inner source. He slid his hands across the coverlet. “Take my hands, Will.”
Numbly Will closed his hands around Jem’s. He imagined he could feel a flicker of pain in the parabatai rune on his chest, as if it knew what he did not and was warning him of coming pain, a pain so great he did not imagine he could bear it and live. Jem is my great sin, he had told Magnus, and this, now, was the punishment for it. He had thought losing Tessa was his penance; he had not thought of how it would be when he had lost both of them.
“Will,” Jem said. “For all these years I have tried to give you what you could not give yourself.”
Will’s hands tightened on Jem’s, which were as thin as a bundle of twigs. “And what is that?”
“Faith,” said Jem. “That you were better than you thought you were. Forgiveness, that you need not always punish yourself. I always loved you, Will, whatever you did. And now I need you to do for me what I cannot do for myself. For you to be my eyes when I do not have them. For you to be my hands when I cannot use my own. For you to be my heart when mine is done with beating.”
“No,” said Will wildly. “No, no, no. I will not be those things. Your eyes will see, your hands will feel, your heart will continue to beat.”
“But if not, Will—”
“If I could tear myself in half, I would—that half of me might remain with you and half follow Tessa—”
“Half of you would be no good to either of us,” said Jem. “There is no other I could trust to go after her, no other who would give of his own life, as I would, to save hers. I would have asked you to undertake this mission even if I had not known your feelings, but being certain that you love her as I do— Will, I trust you above all, and believe in you above all, knowing that as always your heart is twinned with mine in this matter. Wo men shi jie bai xiong di—we are more than brothers, Will. Undertake this journey, and you undertake it not for yourself alone but for both of us.”