Clockwork Princess

10

L

IKE

W

ATER UPON

S

AND

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, “Thou half of my soul”; for I felt that my soul and his soul were “one soul in two bodies”: and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.

—Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IV

Cecily pushed open the door of Jem’s bedroom with the tips of her fingers, and stared inside.

The room was quiet but aflutter with movement. Two Silent Brothers stood by the side of Jem’s bed, with Charlotte between them. Her face was grave and tearstained. Will knelt by the side of the bed, still in his bloodstained clothes from the courtyard fight. His head was down on his crossed arms, and he looked as if he was praying. He seemed young and vulnerable and despairing, and despite her conflicted feelings, some part of Cecily longed to go into the room and comfort him.

The rest of her saw the still, white figure lying in the bed, and quailed. She had been here such a short time; she could feel nothing but that she was intruding on the inhabitants of the Institute—their grief, their sorrow.

But she must talk to Will. She had to. She moved forward—

And felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away. Her back hit the wall of the corridor, and Gabriel Lightwood immediately released her.

She looked up at him in surprise. He looked exhausted, his green eyes shadowed, flecks of blood in his hair and on the cuffs of his shirt. His collar was damp. He had clearly come from his brother’s room. Gideon had been wounded badly in the leg by an automaton’s blade, and though the iratzes had helped, it seemed there was a limit to what they could cure. Both Sophie and Gabriel had assisted him to his room, though he had protested the whole way that all available attention should go to Jem.

“Do not go in there,” Gabriel said in a low voice. “They are trying to save Jem. Your brother needs to be there for him.”

“Be there for him? What can he do? Will is not a doctor.”

“Even unconscious, James will draw strength from his parabatai.”

“I need to talk to Will for only a moment.”

Gabriel ran his hands through his mop of tousled hair. “You have not been with the Shadowhunters very long,” he said. “You may not understand. To lose your parabatai—it is no small thing. We take it as seriously as losing a husband or wife, or a brother or sister. It is as if it were you lying in that bed.”

“Will would not care so much if I were lying in that bed.”

Gabriel snorted. “Your brother would not have taken so much trouble to warn me off you if he did not care about you, Miss Herondale.”

“No, he does not like you much. Why is that? And why are you giving me advice about him now? You do not like him, either.”

“No,” Gabriel said. “It is not quite like that. I do not like Will Herondale. We have disliked each other for years. In fact, he broke my arm once.”

“Did he?” Cecily’s eyebrows shot up despite herself.

“And yet I am beginning to come to see that many things that I had always thought were certain, are not certain. And Will is one of those things. I was certain he was a scoundrel, but Gideon has told me more about him, and I begin to understand he has a very peculiar sense of honor.”

“And you respect that.”

“I wish to respect it. I wish to understand it. And James Carstairs is one of the best of us; even if I hated Will, I would want him spared now, for Jem’s sake.”

“The thing I must tell my brother,” Cecily said. “Jem would want me to tell him. It is important enough. And it will take but a moment.”

Gabriel rubbed the skin at his temples. He was so very tall—he seemed to tower above Cecily, for all that he was very slender. He had a sharply planed face, not quite pretty, but elegant, his lower lip shaped nearly exactly like a bow. “All right,” he said. “I will go in and send him out.”

“Why you? And not me?”

“If he is angry, if he is grief-stricken, it is better I see it, and that he be furious with me than with you,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “I am trusting you, Miss Herondale, that this is important. I hope you won’t disappoint me.”

Cecily said nothing, just watched as Gabriel pushed the door of the sickroom open and went in. She leaned against a wall, her heart pounding, as a murmur of voices came from within. She could hear Charlotte say something about blood replacement runes, which were apparently dangerous—and then the door opened and Gabriel came out.

She stood up straight. “Is Will—”

Gabriel’s eyes flashed at her, and a moment later Will appeared, on Gabriel’s heels, reaching around to shut the door firmly behind him. Gabriel nodded at Cecily and set off down the hall, leaving her alone with her brother.

She had always wondered how you could be alone with someone else, really. If you were with them, weren’t you by definition not alone? But she felt entirely alone now, for Will seemed to be somewhere else completely. He did not even seem to be angry. He leaned against the wall by the door, beside her, and yet he seemed as insubstantial as a ghost.

“Will,” she said.

He did not seem to hear her. He was trembling, his hands shaking with strain and tension.

“Gwilym Owain,” she said again, more softly.

He turned his head to look at her at least, though his eyes were as blue and cold as the water of Llyn Mwyngil in the lee of the mountains. “I first came here when I was twelve,” he said.

“I know,” Cecily said, bewildered. Did he think she could have forgotten? Losing Ella, and then her Will, her beloved older brother, in only a matter of days? But Will did not even seem to hear her.

“It was, to be precise, the tenth of November of that year. And every year after, on the anniversary of that day, I would fall into a black mood of despair. That was the day—that and my birthday—when I was most strongly reminded of Mam and Dad, and of you. I knew you were alive, that you were out there, that you wanted me back, and I could not go, could not even send you a letter. I wrote dozens, of course, and burned them. You had to hate me and blame me for Ella’s death.”

“We never blamed you—”

“After the first year, even though I still dreaded the day’s approach, I began to find that there was something Jem simply had to do every November tenth, some training exercise or some search that would take us to the far end of the city in the cold, wet winter weather. And I would abuse him bitterly for it, of course. Sometimes the damp chill made him ill, or he would forget his drugs and become ill on the day, coughing blood and confined to bed, and that would be a distraction too. And only after it had happened three times—for I am very stupid, Cecy, and think only of myself—did I realize that of course he was doing it for me. He had noticed the date and was doing all he could to draw me from my melancholy.”

Cecily stood stock-still, staring at him. Despite the words that pounded in her head to be spoken, she could say nothing, for it was as if the veil of years had fallen away and she was seeing her brother at last, as he had been as a child, petting her clumsily when she was hurt, falling asleep on the rug in front of the fire with a book open on his chest, climbing out of the pond laughing and shaking water out of his black hair. Will, with no wall between himself and the world outside.

He put his arms about himself as if he were cold. “I do not know who to be without him,” he said. “Tessa is gone, and every moment she is gone is a knife ripping me apart from the inside. She is gone, and they cannot track her, and I have no idea where to go or what to do next, and the only person I can imagine speaking my agony to is the one person who cannot know. Even if he were not dying.”

“Will. Will.” She put her hand on his arm. “Please listen to me. This is about finding Tessa. I believe I know where Mortmain is.”

His eyes snapped wide at that. “How could you know?”

“I was close enough to you to hear what Jessamine said when she was dying,” Cecily said, feeling the blood pounding in him under his skin. His heart was hammering. “She said you were a terrible Welshman.”

“Jessamine?” He sounded bewildered, but she saw the slight narrowing of his eyes. Perhaps, unconsciously, he was beginning to follow the same line of thought that she had.

“She kept saying Mortmain was in Idris. But the Clave knows he is not,” said Cecily rapidly. “You did not know Mortmain when he lived in Wales, but I did. He knows it well. And once you did too. We grew up in the shadow of the mountain, Will. Think.”

He stared at her. “You don’t imagine—Cadair Idris?”

“He knows those mountains, Will,” she said. “And he would find it all funny, a great joke on you and all the Nephilim. He has taken her exactly where you fled from. He has taken her to our home.”

“A posset?” said Gideon, taking the steaming mug from Sophie. “I feel like a child again.”

“It has spice and wine in it. It will do you good. Build up your blood.” Sophie fussed about, not looking at Gideon directly as she set the tray she had been carrying down on the nightstand beside his bed. He was sitting up, one of the legs of his trousers cut away below the knee and the leg itself wrapped in bandages. His hair was still disarrayed from the fight, and though he had been given clean clothes to wear, he still smelled slightly of blood and sweat.

“These build up my blood,” he said, holding out an arm on which two blood-replacement runes, sangliers, had been inked.

“Is that supposed to mean that you don’t like possets, either?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. She could still recall how annoyed she’d been with him about the scones, but she had forgiven him completely the night before, while reading his letter to the Consul (which she had not had a chance to post yet—it was still in the pocket of her bloodstained apron). And today, when the automaton had sliced at his leg on the Institute steps and he’d fallen, blood pouring from the open wound, her heart had seized up with a terror that had surprised her.

“No one likes possets,” he said with a faint but charming smile.

“Do I have to stay and make sure you drink it, or are you going to throw it under the bed? Because then we’ll have mice.”

He had the grace to look sheepish; Sophie rather wished she had been there when Bridget had swept into his room and announced that she was there to clean the scones out from under the bed. “Sophie,” he said, and when she gave him a stern look, he took a hasty swig of the posset. “Miss Collins. I have not yet had a chance to properly apologize to you, so let me take it now. Please forgive me for the trick I played on you with the scones. I did not mean to show you disrespect. I hope you do not imagine I think any less of you for your position in the household, for you are one of the finest and bravest ladies I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

Sophie took her hands off her hips. “Well,” she said. It was not many gentlemen who would apologize to a servant. “That is a very pretty apology.”

“And I am sure the scones are very good,” he added hastily. “I just don’t like scones. I never have liked scones. It’s not your scones.”

“Do please stop saying the word ‘scone,’ Mr. Lightwood.”

“All right.”

“And they are not my scones; Bridget made them.”

“All right.”

“And you are not drinking your posset.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it hastily and lifted the mug. When he was looking at her over the rim, she relented, and smiled. His eyes lit up.

“Very well,” she said. “You do not like scones. How do you feel about sponge cake?”

It was midafternoon and the sun was high and weak in the sky. A dozen or so of the Enclave Shadowhunters, and several Silent Brothers, were spread out across the property of the Institute. They had taken away Jessamine earlier, and the body of the dead Silent Brother, whose name Cecily had not known. She could hear voices from the courtyard, and the clank of metal, as the Enclave sifted through remnants of the automaton attack.

In the drawing room, however, the loudest noise was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. The curtains were drawn back, and in the pale sunlight the Consul stood scowling, his thick arms crossed over his chest. “This is madness, Charlotte,” he said. “Utter madness, and based on the fancy of a child.”

“I am not a child,” Cecily snapped. She was seated in a chair by the fireplace, the same one Will had fallen asleep in the night before—had it been such a short time ago? Will stood beside her, glowering. He had not changed his clothes. Henry was in Jem’s room with the Silent Brothers; Jem had still not regained consciousness, and only the arrival of the Consul had dragged Charlotte and Will from his side. “And my parents knew Mortmain, as you well know. He befriended my family, my father. He gave us Ravenscar Manor when my father had—when we lost our house near Dolgellau.”

“It is true,” said Charlotte, who stood behind her desk, papers spread out before her on the surface. “I spoke to you of it this summer, of what Ragnor Fell had reported to me about the Herondales.”

Will pulled his fists from his trouser pockets and faced the Consul angrily. “It was a joke to Mortmain, giving my family that house! He toyed with us. Why would he not extend the joke in this manner?”

“Here, Josiah,” said Charlotte, indicating one of the papers on the desk in front of her. A map of Wales. “There is a Lake Lyn in Idris—and here, Tal-y-Llyn lake, at the foot of Cadair Idris—”

“‘Llyn’ means ‘lake,’” said Cecily in an exasperated tone. “And we call it Llyn Mwyngil, though some call it Tal-y-Llyn—”

“And there are probably other locations in the world with the name of Idris,” snapped the Consul, before he seemed to realize that he was arguing with a fifteen-year-old girl, and subsided.

“But this one means something,” Will said. “They say the lakes around the mountain are bottomless—that the mountain itself is hollow, and inside it sleep the Cwn Annwn, the Hounds of the Underworld.”

“The Wild Hunt,” said Charlotte.

“Yes.” Will raked his dark hair back. “We are Nephilim. We believe in legends, in myths. All the stories are true. Where better than a hollow mountain already associated with dark magic and portents of death to hide himself and his contraptions? No one would find it odd if strange noises came from the mountain, and no locals would investigate. Why else would he even be in the area? I always wondered why he took a particular interest in my family. Maybe it was simple proximity—the opportunity to devil a Nephilim family. He would have been unable to resist it.”

The Consul was leaning against the desk, his eyes on the map beneath Charlotte’s hands. “It is not enough.”

“Not enough? Not enough for what?” Cecily cried.

“To convince the Clave.” The Consul stood. “Charlotte, you will understand. To launch a force against Mortmain on the assumption that he is in Wales, we will have to convene a Council meeting. We cannot take a small force and risk being outnumbered, especially by those creatures—how many of them were here this morning when you were attacked?”

“Six or seven, not counting the creature that seized Tessa,” said Charlotte. “We believe they can fold in upon themselves and were therefore able to fit within the small confines of a brougham.”

“And I believe that Mortmain did not realize that Gabriel and Gideon Lightwood would be with you, and thus underestimated the numbers he would need. Otherwise I suspect you might all be dead.”

“Hang the Lightwoods,” muttered Will. “I believe he underestimated Bridget. She carved those creatures up like a Christmas turkey.”

The Consul threw his hands up. “We have read Benedict Lightwood’s papers. In them he states that Mortmain’s stronghold is just outside London, and that Mortmain intends to send a force against the London Enclave—”

“Benedict Lightwood was going rapidly insane when he wrote that,” Charlotte interrupted. “Does it seem likely Mortmain would have shared with him his true plans?”

“What next and next?” The Consul’s voice was snappish, but also deadly cold. “Benedict had no reason to lie in his own journals, Charlotte, which you should not have read. If you were not so convinced that you should know more than the Council, you would have given them over immediately. Such displays of disobedience do not incline me to trust you. If you must, you can bring this issue of Wales up with the Council when we meet in a fortnight—”

“A fortnight?” Will’s voice rose; he was pale, with splotches of red standing out on his cheekbones. “Tessa was taken today. She does not have a fortnight.”

“The Magister wanted her unharmed. You know that, Will,” said Charlotte in a soft voice.

“He also wants to marry her! Do you not think she would hate becoming his plaything more than she would hate death? She could be married by tomorrow—”

“And to the devil with it if she is!” said the Consul. “One girl, who is not Nephilim, is not, cannot, be our priority!”

“She is my priority!” Will shouted.

There was a silence. Cecily could hear the sound of the damp wood popping in the grate. The fog that smeared the windows was dark yellow, and the Consul’s face was cast in shadow. Finally: “I thought she was your parabatai’s fiancée,” he said tightly. “Not yours.”

Will raised his chin. “If she is Jem’s fiancée, then I am duty bound to guard her as if she were my own. That is what it means to be parabatai.”

“Oh, yes.” The Consul’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Such loyalty is commendable.” He shook his head. “Herondales. As stubborn as rocks. I remember when your father wanted to marry your mother. Nothing would dissuade him, though she was no candidate for Ascension. I had hoped for more amenability in his children.”

“You’ll forgive my sister and myself if we do not agree,” said Will, “considering that if my father had been more amenable, as you say, we would not exist.”

The Consul shook his head. “This is a war,” he said. “Not a rescue.”

“And she is not just a girl,” said Charlotte. “She is a weapon in the hands of the enemy. I am telling you, Mortmain intends to use her against us.”

“Enough.” The Consul lifted his overcoat from the back of a chair and shrugged himself into it. “This is a profitless conversation. Charlotte, see to your Shadowhunters.” His gaze swept over Will and Cecily. “They seem … overexcited.”

“I see that we cannot force your cooperation, Consul.” Charlotte’s face was like thunder. “But remember that I will put it on record that we warned you of this situation. If in the end we were correct and disaster comes from this delay, all that results will be on your head.”

Cecily expected the Consul to look angry, but he only flipped up his hood, hiding his features. “That is what it means to be Consul, Charlotte.”

Blood. Blood on the flagstones of the courtyard. Blood staining the stairs of the house. Blood on the leaves of the garden, the remains of what had once been Gabriel’s brother-in-law lying in thick pools of drying blood, hot jets of blood splattering Gabriel’s gear as the arrow he had released drove into his father’s eye—

“Regretting your decision to remain at the Institute, Gabriel?” The cool, familiar voice cut through Gabriel’s feverish thoughts, and he looked up with a gasp.

The Consul stood over him, outlined by weak sunlight. He wore a heavy overcoat, gloves, and an expression as if Gabriel had done something to amuse him.

“I—” Gabriel caught his breath, forced the words to come out evenly. “No. Of course not.”

The Consul quirked an eyebrow. “That must be why you are crouching here around the side of the church, in bloodstained clothes, looking as if you’re terrified someone might find you.”

Gabriel scrambled to his feet, grateful for the hard stone wall behind him, bearing him up. He glared at the Consul. “Are you suggesting that I did not fight? That I ran away?”

“I am not suggesting any such thing,” said the Consul mildly. “I know that you stayed. I know that your brother was injured—”

Gabriel took a sharp rattling breath, and the Consul’s eyes narrowed.

“Ah,” he said. “So that is it, isn’t it? You saw your father die, and you thought you were going to see your brother die as well?”

Gabriel wanted to scrabble at the wall behind him. He wanted to hit the Consul in his unctuous, falsely sympathetic face. He wanted to run upstairs and throw himself down by his brother’s bed, refuse to leave, as Will had refused to leave Jem until Gabriel had forced him away. Will was a better brother to Jem than he himself was to Gideon, he had thought bitterly, and there was no blood shared between them. It was that in part that had driven him back out of the Institute, to this hiding space behind the stables. Surely no one would look for him here, he had told himself.

He had been wrong. But he was wrong so often, what was one more time?

“You saw your brother bleed,” said the Consul, still in the same mild voice. “And you remembered—”

“I killed my father,” Gabriel said. “I put an arrow through his eye—I spilled his blood. Do you think I don’t know what that means? His blood will cry to me from the ground, as Abel’s blood called to Cain. Everyone says he wasn’t my father anymore, but he was still all that remained of him. He was a Lightwood once. And Gideon could have been killed today. To lose him as well—”

“You see what I meant,” said the Consul. “When I spoke of Charlotte and her refusal to obey the Law. The cost of life it engenders. It could have been your brother’s life sacrificed to her overweening pride.”

“She does not seem proud.”

“Is that why you wrote this?” The Consul drew from his coat pocket the first letter Gabriel and Gideon had sent him. He looked at it in contempt and let it flutter to the ground. “This ridiculous missive, calculated to annoy me?”

“Did it work?”

For a moment Gabriel thought the Consul was going to hit him. But the look of anger passed quickly from the older man’s eyes; when he spoke again, it was calmly. “I suppose I should not have expected a Lightwood to react well to being blackmailed. Your father would not have. I confess I thought you of weaker stuff.”

“If you intend to try another avenue to persuade me, do not bother,” Gabriel said. “There is no point in it.”

“Really? You’re that loyal to Charlotte Branwell, after all her family did to yours? Gideon I might have expected this from—he takes after your mother. Too trusting in nature. But not you, Gabriel. From you I expected more pride in your blood.”

Gabriel let his head fall back against the wall. “There was nothing,” he said. “You understand? There was nothing in Charlotte’s correspondence to interest you, to interest anyone. You told us you would destroy us utterly if we did not report on her activities, but there was nothing to report on. You gave us no choice.”

“You could have told me the truth.”

“You did not want to hear it,” said Gabriel. “I am not stupid, and neither is my brother. You want Charlotte removed as head of the Institute, but you do not want it to be too clear that it was your hand that removed her. You wished to discover her engaged in some sort of illegal dealing. But the truth is that there is nothing to be discovered.”

“Truth is malleable. Truth can be uncovered, certainly, but it can also be created.”

Gabriel’s gaze snapped to the Consul’s face. “You would rather I lied to you?”

“Oh, no,” said the Consul. “Not to me.” He put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “The Lightwoods have always had honor. Your father made mistakes. You should not pay for them. Let me give you back what you have lost. Let me return to you Lightwood House, the good name of your family. You could live in the house with your brother and sister. You need no longer be dependent on the charity of the Enclave.”

Charity. The word was bitter. Gabriel thought of his brother’s blood on the flagstones of the Institute. Had Charlotte not been so foolish, so determined to take the shape-changer girl into the bosom of the Institute against the objections of Clave and Consul, the Magister would not have sent his forces against the Institute. Gideon’s blood would not have been spilled.

In fact, whispered a small voice at the back of his mind, had it not been for Charlotte, my father’s secret would have remained a secret. Benedict would not have been forced to betray the Magister. He would not have lost the source of the drug that held off the astriola. He might never have transformed. His sons might never have learned of his sins. The Lightwoods could have continued in blissful ignorance.

“Gabriel,” said the Consul. “This offer is for you only. It must be kept a secret from your brother. He is like your mother, too loyal. Loyal to Charlotte. His mistaken loyalty may do him credit, but it will not help us here. Tell him that I grew tired of your antics; tell him that I no longer desire any action from you. You are a good liar”—here he smiled sourly—“and I feel sure you can convince him. What do you say?”

Gabriel set his jaw. “What do you wish me to do?”

Will shifted in the armchair by the side of Jem’s bed. He had been here for hours now, and his back was growing stiff, but he refused to move. There was always the chance that Jem might wake, and expect him there.

At least it was not cold. Bridget had built up the fire in the grate; the damp wood popped and crackled, sending up the occasional blaze of sparks. The night outside the windows was dark without a hint of blue or clouds, only a flat black as if it had been painted on the glass.

Jem’s violin leaned against the foot of his bed, and his cane, still slicked with blood from the fight in the courtyard, lay beside it. Jem himself lay still, propped up on pillows, no color at all in his pale face. Will felt as if he were seeing him for the first time after a long absence, for that brief moment when you were apt to notice changes in familiar faces before they became part of the scenery of one’s life once again. Jem looked so thin—how had Will not noticed?—all extra flesh stripped away from the bones of cheek and jaw and forehead, so he was all hollows and angles. There was a faint bluish sheen to his closed eyelids, and to his mouth. His collarbones curved like the prow of a ship.

Will upbraided himself. How had he not realized all these months that Jem was dying—so quickly, so soon? How had he not seen the scythe and the shadow?

“Will.” It was a whisper at the door. He looked up dully and saw Charlotte there, her head around the doorway. “There is … someone here to see you.”

Will blinked as Charlotte moved out of the way and Magnus Bane stepped around her and into the room. For a moment Will could think of nothing to say.

“He says you summoned him,” Charlotte said, sounding a little dubious. Magnus stood, looking indifferent, in a charcoal-gray suit. He was slowly rolling his gloves, dark gray kid, off his thin brown hands.

“I did summon him,” Will said, feeling as if he were waking up. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte gave him a look that mixed sympathy with the unspoken message Be it on your head, Will Herondale, and went out of the room, closing the door conspicuously behind her.

“You came,” Will said, aware that he sounded stupid. He never liked it when people observed the obvious aloud, and here he was doing just that. He could not shake his feeling of discombobulation. Seeing Magnus here, in the middle of Jem’s bedroom, was like seeing a faerie knight seated among the white-wigged barristers of the Old Bailey.

Magnus dropped his gloves on top of a table and moved toward the bed. He put out a hand to brace himself against one of the posts as he looked down at Jem, so still and white that he could have been carved on top of a tomb. “James Carstairs,” he said, murmuring the words under his voice as if they had some incantatory power.

“He’s dying,” Will said.

“That much is evident.” It could have sounded cold, but there were worlds of sadness in Magnus’s voice, a sadness that Will felt with a jolt of familiarity. “I thought you believed he had a few days, a week perhaps.”

“It is not just the lack of the drug.” Will’s voice sounded rusty; he cleared his throat. “In fact, we have a little of that, and have administered it. But there was a fight this afternoon, and he lost blood and was weakened. He is not strong enough, we fear, to recover himself.”

Magnus reached out and with great gentleness lifted Jem’s hand. There were bruises on his pale fingers, and the blue veins ran like a map of rivers under the skin of his wrist. “Is he suffering?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps it would be better to let him die.” Magnus looked at Will, his eyes dark gold-green. “Every life is finite, Will. And you knew, when you chose him, that he would die before you did.”

Will stared ahead of him. He felt as if he were hurtling down a dark tunnel, one that had no end, no sides to grip to slow his fall. “If you think that would be the best thing for him.”

“Will.” Magnus’s voice was gentle but urgent. “Did you bring me here because you hoped I could help him?”

Will looked up blindly. “I don’t know why I summoned you,” he said. “I don’t think it was because I believed there was anything you could do. I think rather I thought you were the only one who might understand.”

Magnus looked surprised. “The only one who might understand?”

“You have lived so long,” Will said. “You must have seen so many die, so many that you loved. And yet you survive and you go on.”

Magnus continued to look astonished. “You summoned me here—a warlock to the Institute, just after a battle in which you were nearly all killed—to talk?”

“I find you easy to talk to,” Will said. “I cannot say why.”

Magnus shook his head slowly, and leaned against the post of the bed. “You are so young,” he murmured. “But then again, I do not think a Shadowhunter has ever called upon me before simply to pass the watches of the night with him.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Will said. “Mortmain has taken Tessa, and I believe now I know where she might be. There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to go after her. But I cannot leave Jem. I swore an oath. And what if he wakes in the night and finds I am not here?” He looked as lost as a child. “He will think I left him willingly, not caring that he was dying. He will not know. And yet if he could speak, would he not tell me to go after Tessa? Is that not what he would want?” Will dropped his face into his hands. “I cannot say, and it is tearing me in half.”

Magnus looked at him silently for a long moment. “Does he know you are in love with Tessa?”

“No.” Will lifted his face, shocked. “No. I have never said a word. It was not his burden to bear.”

Magnus took a deep breath and spoke gently. “Will. You asked me for my wisdom, as someone who has lived many lifetimes and buried many loves. I can tell you that the end of a life is the sum of the love that was lived in it, that whatever you think you have sworn, being here at the end of Jem’s life is not what is important. It was being here for every other moment. Since you met him, you have never left him and never not loved him. That is what matters.”

“You really mean that,” Will said wonderingly, and then, “Why are you being so kind to me? I owe you a favor still, don’t I? I remember that, you know, though you have never called it in.”

“Haven’t I?” Magnus said, and then smiled at him. “Will, you treat me as a human being, a person like yourself; rare is the Shadowhunter who treats a warlock like that. I am not so heartless that I would call in a favor from a brokenhearted boy. One who I think, by the way, will be a very good man someday. So I will tell you this. I will stay here when you go, and I will watch over your Jem for you, and if he wakes, I will tell him where you went, and that it was for him. And I will do what I can to preserve his life: I do not have yin fen, but I do have magic, and perhaps there is something in an old spell book I might find that can help him.”

“I would count it a great favor,” Will said.

Magnus stood looking down at Jem. There was sadness etched on his face, that face that was usually so merry or sardonic or uncaring, a sadness that surprised Will. “‘For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die?’” Magnus said.

Will looked up at him. “What was that?”

“Confessions of Saint Augustine,” said Magnus. “You asked me how I, being immortal, survive so many deaths. There is no great secret. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.” He drew away from the bed. “I will give you a moment alone with him, to say good-bye as you need. You can find me in the library.”

Will nodded, speechless, as Magnus went to retrieve his gloves, then turned and left the room. Will’s mind was spinning.

He looked again at Jem, motionless in the bed. I must accept that this is the end, he thought, and even his thoughts felt hollow and distant. I must accept that Jem will never look at me, never speak to me again. You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.

And yet it still did not seem real to him, as if it were a dream. He stood up and leaned over Jem’s still form. He touched his parabatai’s cheek lightly. It was cold.

“Atque in pepetuum, frater, ave atque vale,” he whispered. The words of the poem had never seemed so fitting: Forever and ever, my brother, hail and farewell.

Will began to straighten up, to turn away from the bed. And as he did, he felt something wrap tightly around his wrist. He glanced down and saw Jem’s hand braceleting his own. For a moment he was too shocked to do anything but stare.

“I am not dead yet, Will,” Jem said in a soft voice, thin but as strong as wire. “What did Magnus mean by asking you if I knew you were in love with Tessa?”