Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Princess

“So the yin fen did not prevent it.”

“Almost. There was—pain when I made the transition. Great pain, that nearly killed me. They did what they could. But I shall never be like other Silent Brothers.” He looked down, his lashes veiling his eyes. “I shall not be—quite as they are. I will be less powerful, for there are some runes, still, that I cannot withstand.”

“Surely they can just wait now for the yin fen to leave your body completely?”

“It will not. My body has been arrested in the state it was in when they put these first runes on me here.” He indicated the scars on his face. “Because of it, there will be skills I cannot achieve. It will take me much longer to master their vision and speech of the mind.”

“Does that mean they will not take your eyes—sew your lips shut?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was soft now, almost entirely the voice of the Jem she knew. There was a flush across his cheekbones, and she thought of a pale column of hollow marble slowly filling with human blood. “They will have me for a long time. Perhaps forever. I cannot say what will happen. I have given myself over to them. My fate is in their hands now.”

“If we could free you from them—”

“Then the yin fen that remains in me would burn again, and I would be as I was. An addict, dying. This is my choice, Tessa, because it is death otherwise. You know that it is. I do not want to leave you. Even knowing that becoming a Silent Brother could ensure my survival, I fought it as if it were a prison sentence. Silent Brothers cannot marry. They cannot have parabatai . They can live only in the Silent City. They do not laugh. They cannot play music.”

“Oh, Jem,” Tessa said. “Perhaps the Silent Brothers cannot play music, but neither can the dead. If this is the only way you can live, then I rejoice in my soul for you, even as my heart sorrows.”

“I know you too well to think that you would feel another way.”

“And I know you well enough to know that you feel bowed by guilt. But why? You have done nothing wrong.”

He bent his head so that his forehead rested on the bedpost. He closed his eyes. “This is why I did not want to come.”

“But I am not angry—”

“I did not think you would be angry ,” Jem burst out, and it was like ice cracking across a frozen waterfall, freeing a torrent. “We were engaged , Tessa. A proposal—an offer of marriage—is a promise. A promise to love and care for someone always. I did not mean to break mine to you. But it was that or die. I wanted to wait, to be married to you and live with you for years, but that wasn’t possible. I was dying too fast. I would have given it up—all of it up—to be married to you for a day. A day that would never have come. You are a reminder—a reminder of everything I am losing. The life I will not have.”

“To give up your life for one day of marriage—it would not have been worth it,” Tessa said. Her heart was pounding out a message that spoke to her of Will’s arms around her, his lips on hers in the cave under Cadair Idris. She didn’t deserve Jem’s gentle confessions, his penitence, or his longing. “Jem, I must tell you something.”

He looked at her. She could see the black in his eyes, threads of black alongside the silver, beautiful and strange.

“It’s about Will. About Will, and me.”

“He loves you,” Jem said. “I know he loves you. We spoke of it before he left here.” Though the coldness had not returned to his voice, he sounded suddenly almost unnaturally calm.

Tessa was shocked. “I didn’t know you had ever talked of it with each other. Will did not say.”

“Nor did you ever tell me of his feelings, though you knew for months. We all have our secrets that we keep because we do not want to hurt the people who love us.” There was a sort of warning in his voice, or was she imagining it?

“I do not want to keep secrets from you any longer,” Tessa said. “I thought you were dead. Will and I both did. In Cadair Idris—”

“Did you love me?” he interrupted. It seemed an odd question, and yet he asked it without implication or hostility, and waited quietly for her answer.

She looked at him, and Woolsey’s words came back to her, like the whisper of a prayer. Most people never find one great love in their life. You are lucky enough to have found two. For a moment she put aside her confession. “Yes. I loved you. I love you still. I love Will, too. I cannot explain it. I didn’t know it when I agreed to marry you. I loved you, I still love you, I never loved you less for all that I love him. It sounds mad, but if anyone might ever understand—”

“I do,” Jem said. “There is no need to tell me more about yourself and Will. There’s nothing you could have done that would cause me to cease loving either of you. Will is myself, my own soul, and if I am not to have the keeping of your heart, then there is no other I would rather have that honor. And when I am gone, you must help Will. This will be—it will be hard for him.”

Tessa searched his face with her gaze. The blood had left his cheeks; he was pale, but composed. His jaw was set. It said all she needed to understand: Do not tell me more. I do not want to know.

Some secrets, she thought, were better told; some were better left the burden of the carrier, that they might not cause pain to others. It was why she had not told Will she loved him, when there was nothing either of them could do about it.

She closed her mouth on what she had been intending to say, and said instead: “I do not know how I will manage without you.”

“I ask myself the same thing. I do not want to leave you. I cannot leave you. But if I stay, I die here.”

“No. You must not stay. You will not stay. Jem. Promise you will go. Go and be a Silent Brother, and live. I would tell you I hated you if I thought you would believe me, if it would make you go. I want you to live. Even if it means I shall never see you again.”

“You will see me,” he said quietly, raising his head. “In fact, there is a chance—only a chance, but—”

“But what?”

He paused—hesitated, and seemed to make his mind up about something. “Nothing. Foolishness.”

“Jem.”

“You will see me again, but not often. I have only just begun my journey, and there are many Laws that govern the Brotherhood. I will be moving away from my previous life. I cannot say what abilities or what scars I will have. I cannot say how I will be different. I fear I will lose my self and my music. I fear I will become something other than wholly human. I know I will not be your Jem.”

Tessa could only shake her head. “But the Silent Brothers—they visit—they mingle with other Shadowhunters. . . . Can you not . . .”

“Not during their time of training. And even when they are done, rarely. You see us when someone is ill or dying, when a child is born, for the rituals of the first runes or of parabatai . . . but we do not grace the homes of Shadowhunters without a summoning.”

“Then Charlotte will summon you.”

“She called me here this once, but she cannot do it over and over again, Tessa. A Shadowhunter cannot summon a Silent Brother for no reason.”

“But I am not a Shadowhunter,” Tessa said. “Not truly.”

There was a long silence as they looked at each other. Both stubborn. Both unmoving. At last Jem spoke:

“Do you remember when we stood together on Blackfriars Bridge?” he asked softly, and his eyes were like that night had been, all black and silver.

“Of course I remember.”

“It was the moment I first knew I loved you,” Jem said. “I will make you a promise. Every year, Tessa, on one day, I will meet you on that bridge. I will come from the Silent City and I will meet you, and we will be together, if only for an hour. But you must tell no one.”