"The same," Sophie said, rising gracefully to her feet and ceding him the chair beside the bed. "She has been calling out again."
"For anyone particular?" Will asked, and then was immediately sorry he had asked. Surely his motives would be ridiculously transparent.
Sophie's dark hazel eyes darted away from his. "For her brother," she said. "If you wish a few moments alone with Miss Tessa ..."
"Yes, please, Sophie."
She paused at the door. "Master William," she said.
Having just settled himself in the armchair beside the bed, Will glanced over at her.
"I am sorry I have thought and spoken so ill of you for all these years," Sophie said. "I understand now that you were only doing what we all try to do. Our best."
Will reached out and placed his hand over Tessa's left one, where it plucked feverishly at the coverlet. "Thank you," he said, unable to look at Sophie directly; a moment later he heard the door softly close behind her.
He looked at Tessa. She was momentarily quiet, her lashes fluttering as she breathed. The circles beneath her eyes were dark blue, her veins a delicate filigree at her temples and the insides of her wrists. When he remembered her blazing up in glory, it was impossible to believe her fragile, yet here she was. Her hand felt hot in his, and when he brushed his knuckles against her cheek, her skin was burning.
"Tess," he whispered. "Hell is cold. Do you remember when you told me that? We were in the cellars of the Dark House. Anyone else would have been panicking, but you were as calm as a governess, telling me Hell was covered in ice. If it is the fire of Heaven that takes you from me, what a cruel irony that would be."
She breathed in sharply, and for a moment his heart leaped--had she heard him? But her eyes remained firmly shut.
His hand tightened on hers.
"Come back," he said. "Come back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart."
Her head turned slowly toward him, her lips parting as if she were about to speak. He leaned forward, heart leaping.
"Jem?" she said.
He froze, unmoving, his hand still wrapped about hers. Her eyes fluttered open--as gray as the sky before rain, as gray as the slate hills of Wales. The color of tears. She looked at him, through him, not seeing him at all.
"Jem," she said again. "Jem, I am so sorry. It is all my fault."
Will leaned forward again. He could not help himself. She was speaking, and comprehensibly, for the first time in days. Even if not to him.
"It's not your fault," he said.
She returned the pressure of his hand hotly; each of her individual fingers seemed to burn through his skin. "But it is," she said. "It is because of me that Mortmain deprived you of your yin fen. It is because of me that all of you were in danger. I was meant to love you, and all I did was shorten your life."
Will took a ragged breath. The splinter of ice was back in his heart, and he felt as if he were breathing around it. And yet it was not jealousy, but a sorrow more profound and deeper than any he thought he had known before. He thought of Sydney Carton. Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you. Yes, he would have done that for Tessa--died to keep the ones she needed beside her--and so would Jem have done that for him or for Tessa, and so would Tessa, he thought, do that for both of them. It was a near incomprehensible tangle, the three of them, but there was one certainty, and that was that there was no lack of love between them.
I am strong enough for this, he told himself, lifting her hand gently. "Life is not just surviving," he said. "There is also happiness. You know your James, Tessa. You know he would choose love over the span of his years."
But Tessa's head only tossed fretfully on the pillow. "Where are you, James? I search for you in the darkness, but I cannot find you. You are my intended; we should be bound by ties that cannot sever. And yet when you were dying, I was not there. I have never said good-bye."
"What darkness? Tessa, where are you?" Will gripped her hand. "Give me a way to find you."
Tessa arched back on the bed suddenly, her hand clamping down on his. "I'm sorry!" she gasped. "Jem--I am so sorry--I have wronged you, wronged you horribly--"
"Tessa!" Will bolted to his feet, but Tessa had already collapsed bonelessly onto the mattress, breathing hard.
He could not help it. He cried out for Charlotte like a child who had woken from a nightmare, as he had never permitted himself to cry out when he truly was a child, waking in the then unfamiliar Institute and longing for comfort but knowing he must not take it.
Charlotte came running through the Institute, as he had always known she would come running for him if he called. She arrived, breathless and frightened; she took one look at Tessa on the bed, and Will clasping her hand, and he saw the terror leave her face, replaced by a look of wordless sorrow. "Will ..."
Will gently detached his hand from Tessa's, turning toward the door. "Charlotte," he said. "I have never asked you to use your position as head of the Institute to help me before--"
"My position cannot heal Tessa."
"It can. You must bring Jem here."
"I cannot demand that," Charlotte said. "Jem has only just begun his term of service in the Silent City. New Initiates are not meant to leave at all for the first year--"
"He came to the battle."
Charlotte pushed a stray curl from her face. Sometimes she looked very young, as she did now, though earlier, facing the Inquisitor in the drawing room, she had not. "That was Brother Enoch's choice."
Certainty straightened Will's spine. For so many years he had doubted the contents of his own heart. He did not doubt them now. "Tessa needs Jem," he said. "I know the Law, I know he cannot come home, but--the Silent Brothers are meant to sever every bond that ties them to the mortal world before they join the Brotherhood. That is also the Law. The bond between Tessa and Jem was not severed. How is she to rejoin the mortal world, then, if she cannot even see Jem one last time?"
Charlotte was silent for a space of time. There was a shadow over her face, one he could not define. Surely she would want this, for Jem, for Tessa, for both of them? "Very well," she said at last. "I shall see what I can do."
"They lighted down to take a drink
Of the spring that ran so clear,
And there she spied his bonny heart's blood,
A-running down the stream.
'Hold up, hold up, Lord William,' she said,
'For I fear that you are slain;'
''Tis nought but the dye of my scarlet clothes,
That is sparkling down the stream.'"
"Oh, for goodness' sake," Sophie muttered as she passed the kitchen. Did Bridget really have to be so morbid in all her songs, and did she have to use Will's name? As if the poor boy hadn't suffered enough--
A shadow materialized out of the darkness. "Sophie?"
Sophie screamed and nearly dropped her carpet brush. Witchlight flared up in the dim corridor, and she saw familiar gray-green eyes.
"Gideon!" she exclaimed. "Heavens above, you nearly frightened me to death."
He looked penitent. "I apologize. I only wished to wish you good night--and you were smiling as you walked along. I thought ..."
"I was thinking about Master Will," she said, and then smiled again at his dismayed expression. "Only that a year ago, if you had told me that someone was tormenting him, I would have been delighted, but now I find myself in sympathy with him. That is all."
He looked sober. "I am in sympathy with him as well. Every day that Tessa does not wake, you can see a bit of the life drain out of him."
"If only Master Jem were here ..." Sophie sighed. "But he is not."
"There is much that we must learn to live without, these days." Gideon touched her cheek lightly w
ith his fingers. They were rough, the fingers callused. Not the smooth fingers of a gentleman. Sophie smiled at him.
"You didn't look at me at dinner," he said, dropping his voice. It was true--dinner had been a quick affair of cold roast chicken and potatoes. No one had seemed to have much appetite, save Gabriel and Cecily, who'd eaten as if they had spent the day training. Perhaps they had.
"I have been concerned about Mrs. Branwell," Sophie confessed. "She has been so worried, about Mr. Branwell, and about Miss Tessa, she is wasting away, and the baby--" She bit her lip. "I am concerned," she said again. She could not bring herself to say more. It was hard to lose the reticence of a lifetime of service, even if she was engaged to a Shadowhunter now.
"Yours is a gentle heart," Gideon said, sliding his fingers down her cheek to touch her lips, like the lightest of kisses. Then he drew back. "I saw Charlotte go alone into the drawing room, only a few moments ago. Perhaps you could have a word with her about your concern?"
"I couldn't--"
"Sophie," Gideon said. "You are not just Charlotte's maid; you are her friend. If she will talk to anyone, it will be to you."