A gaze met his, level and dark. The rest of her was not so much transparent as edged by silver: the blond hair, the doll-pretty face, the white gown she had died in. Blood, red like a flower, on her chest.
“Jessamine,” he said.
“Merry Christmas, Will.”
His heart, which had stopped for a moment, began to beat again, the blood running fast in his veins. “Jessamine, why—what are you doing here?”
She pouted a little. “I am here because I died here,” she said, her voice growing in strength. It was not unusual for a ghost to achieve a greater solidity and auditory power when they were close to a human, especially one who could hear them. She indicated the courtyard at their feet, where Will had held her in her dying moments, her blood running onto the flagstones. “Are you not pleased to see me, Will?”
“Should I be?” he said. “Jessie, usually when I see ghosts, it is because there is some unfinished business or some sorrow that holds them to this world.”
She raised her head, looking up at the snow. Though it fell all around her, she was as untouched by it as if she stood under glass. “And if I had a sorrow, would you help me cure it? You never cared for me much in life.”
“I did,” Will said. “And I am truly sorry if I gave the impression that I cared nothing for you, or hated you, Jessamine. I think you reminded me more of myself than I wished to admit, and therefore I judged you with the same harshness I would have judged myself.”
At that, she did look at him. “Why, was that straightforward honesty, Will? How you have changed.” She took a step back, and he saw that her feet made no impression in the dusting of snow on the steps. “I am here because in life I did not wish to be a Shadowhunter, to guard the Nephilim. I am charged now with the guard of the Institute, for as long as it needs guarding.”
“And you do not mind?” he asked. “Being here, with us, when you could have passed over . . .”
She wrinkled her nose. “I did not care to pass over. So much was demanded of me in life, the Angel knows what it might be like afterward. No, I am happy here, watching you all, quiet and drifting and unseen.” Her silvery hair shone in the moonlight as she inclined her head toward him. “Though you are near to driving me mad.”
“I?”
“Indeed. I always said you would be a dreadful suitor, Will, and you are nigh on proving it.”
“Truly?” Will said. “You have come back from death like the ghost of Old Marley, but to nag me about my romantic prospects?”
“What prospects? You’ve taken Tessa on so many carriage rides, I’d wager she could draw a map of London from memory, but have you proposed to her? You have not. A lady cannot propose to herself, William, and she cannot tell you she loves you if you do not state your intentions!”
Will shook his head. “Jessamine, you are incorrigible.”
“I am also right,” she pointed out. “What is it you are afraid of?”
“That if I do state my intentions, she will say she does not love me back, not the way she loved Jem.”
“She will not love you as she loved Jem. She will love you as she loves you, Will, an entirely different person. Do you wish she had not loved Jem?”
“No, but neither do I wish to marry someone who does not love me.”
“You must ask her to find that out,” said Jessamine. “Life is full of risks. Death is much simpler.”
“Why have I not seen you before tonight, when you have been here all this time?” he asked.
“I cannot enter the Institute yet, and when you are out in the courtyard, you are always with someone else. I have tried to go through the doors, but a sort of force prevents me. It is better than it was. At first I could go only a few steps. Now I am as you see me.” She indicated her position on the stairs. “One day I shall be able to go inside.”
“And when you do, you shall find that your room is as it ever was, and your dolls as well,” said Will.
Jessamine smiled a smile that made Will wonder if she had always been so sad, or if death had changed her more than he had thought ghosts could be changed. Before he could speak again, though, a look of alarm crossed her face, and she vanished within a swirl of snow.
Will turned to see what had frightened her off. The doors of the Institute had opened, and Magnus had emerged. He wore an astrakhan wool greatcoat, and his tall silk hat was already being spotted by the falling snowflakes.
“I should have known I’d find you out here, doing your best to turn yourself into an icicle,” Magnus said, descending the steps until he stood beside Will, looking out at the courtyard.
Will did not feel like mentioning Jessamine. Somehow he thought she would not have wanted him to. “Were you leaving the party? Or just looking for me?”
“Both,” Magnus said, pulling on a pair of white gloves. “In fact, I am leaving London.”
“Leaving London?” Will said in dismay. “You can’t mean that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Magnus flicked a finger at an errant snowflake. It sparked blue and vanished. “I am not a Londoner, Will. I have been stopping with Woolsey for some time, but his home is not my home, and Woolsey and I wear out each other’s company after not much duration.”
“Where will you go?”
“New York. The New World! A new life, a new continent.” Magnus threw his hands up. “I may even take your cat with me. Charlotte says he has been mourning since Jem left.”
“Well, he bites everyone. You’re welcome to him. Do you think he’ll like New York?”
“Who knows? We will find out together. The unexpected is what keeps me from stagnating.”
“Those of us who do not live forever do not like change perhaps as much as those of you who do. I am tired of losing people,” Will said.
“So am I,” Magnus said. “But it is as I said, isn’t it? You learn to bear it.”
“I have heard sometimes that men who lose an arm or a leg still feel the pain in those limbs, though they are gone,” said Will. “It is like that sometimes. I can feel Jem with me, though he is gone, and it is like I am missing a part of myself.”
“But you are not,” Magnus said. “He is not dead, Will. He lives because you let him go. He would have stayed with you and died, if you had asked it, but you loved him enough to prefer that he live, even if that life is separate from yours. And that above all things proves that you are not Sydney Carton, Will, that yours is not the kind of love that can be redeemed only through destruction. It is what I saw in you, what I have always seen in you, what made me want to help you. That you are not despairing. That you have in you an infinite capacity for joy.” He put one gloved hand under Will’s chin and lifted Will’s face. There were not many people Will had to raise his head to look in the eye, but Magnus was one. “Bright star,” Magnus said, and his eyes were thoughtful, as if he were remembering something, or someone. “Those of you who are mortal, you burn so fiercely. And you fiercer than most, Will. I will not ever forget you.”
“Nor I you,” said Will. “I owe you a great deal. You broke my curse.”
“You were not cursed.”
“Yes, I was,” Will said. “I was. Thank you, Magnus, for all you did for me. If I did not say it before, I am saying it now. Thank you.”
Magnus dropped his hand. “I don’t think a Shadowhunter has ever thanked me before.”
Will smiled crookedly. “I would try not to become too accustomed to it. We are not a thankful sort.”
“No.” Magnus laughed. “No, I won’t.” His bright cat’s eyes narrowed. “I leave you in good hands, I think, Will Herondale.”
“You mean Tessa.”
“I do mean Tessa. Or do you deny that she holds your heart?” Magnus had begun to descend the stairs; he paused, and looked back at Will.
“I do not,” Will said. “But she will be sorry that you have left without saying good-bye to her.”
“Oh,” Magnus said, turning at the bottom of the steps, with a curious smile. “I don’t think that will be
necessary. Tell her I will see her again.”
Will nodded. Magnus turned away, hands in the pockets of his coat, and began to walk toward the gates of the Institute. Will watched until his retreating figure faded into the whiteness of the falling snow.
Tessa had slipped out of the ballroom without anyone noticing. Even the usually keen-eyed Charlotte was distracted, sitting beside Henry in his wheeled chair, her hand in his, smiling at the antics of the musicians.
It did not take Tessa long to find Will. She had guessed where he would be, and she was correct—standing on the front steps of the Institute, without a coat or hat, letting the snow fall on his head and shoulders. There was a white dusting of it all over the courtyard, like icing sugar, frosting the line of carriages waiting there, the black iron gates, the flagstones upon which Jessamine had died. Will was staring intently ahead of him, as if trying to discern something through the descending flakes.
“Will,” Tessa said, and he turned to look up at her. She had caught up a silk wrap, but nothing heavier, and she felt the cool sting of snowflakes against the bare skin of her neck and shoulders.
“I should have been more polite to Elias Carstairs,” Will said by way of reply. He was looking up at the sky, where a pale crescent of moon darted in between thick sweeps of cloud and fog. Flakes of white snow had fallen and mixed with his black hair. His cheeks and lips were flushed with the cold. He looked more handsome than she had ever remembered him. “Instead I behaved as I would have—before.”
Tessa knew what he meant. For Will there was only one before and after.
“You are allowed to have a temper,” she said. “I have told you before, I do not want you to be perfect. Only to be Will.”
“Who will never be perfect.”
“Perfect is dull,” Tessa said, descending the last step to stand beside him. “They are playing ‘complete the poetic quotation’ inside now. You could have made quite a showing. I do not think there is anyone there who could challenge your knowledge of literature.”
“Other than you.”
“I would be difficult competition indeed. Perhaps we could make ourselves a team of sorts, and divide the winnings.”
“That seems bad form.” Will spoke absently, tilting back his head. The snow circled whitely about them, as if they stood at the bottom of a whirlpool. “Today, when Sophie Ascended . . .”
“Yes?”
“Is that something that you would have wanted?” He turned to look at her, white snowflakes caught in his dark lashes. “For yourself?”
“You know that isn’t possible for me, Will. I am a warlock. Or at least, that is the closest approximation of what I am. I cannot ever be fully Nephilim.”
“I know.” He looked down at his hands, opening his fingers to let snowflakes settle, melting, on his palms. “But in Cadair Idris you said that you had hoped to be a Shadowhunter—that Mortmain had dashed those hopes—”
“I did feel that way at the time,” she allowed. “But when I became Ithuriel—when I Changed and destroyed Mortmain—how could I hate something that allowed me to protect the ones I care about? It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique. But I begin to think I was never meant for an easy road.”
Will laughed. “The easy road? No, not for you, my Tessa.”
“Am I your Tessa?” She drew her wrap closer around herself, pretending her shiver was just the cold. “Are you bothered by what I am, Will? That I am not like you?”
The words hung between them, unspoken: There is no future for a Shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks.
Will paled. “Those things I said on the roof, so long ago—you know I did not mean them.”
“I know—”
“I do not wish you other than you are, Tessa. You are what you are, and I love you. I do not love just the parts of you that meet with the Clave’s approval—”
She raised her eyebrows. “You are willing to endure the rest?”
He raked a hand through his dark, snow-dampened hair. “No. I am misspeaking. There is nothing about you that I can imagine not loving. Do you really think it is so important to me that you be Nephilim? My mother isn’t a Shadowhunter. And when I saw you Change into the angel—when I saw you blaze forth with the fire of Heaven—it was glorious, Tess.” He took a step toward her. “What you are, what you can do, it is like some great miracle of the earth, like fire or wildflowers or the breadth of the sea. You are unique in the world, just as you are unique in my heart, and there will never be a time when I do not love you. I would love you if you were not in any part a Shadowhunter at all—”
She gave him a shaky smile. “But I am glad that I am, if only by half,” she said, “since it means that I may stay with you, here, in the Institute. That the family I have found here can remain my family. Charlotte said that if I chose, I could cease to be a Gray and take the name my mother should have had before she was married. I could be a Starkweather. I could have a true Shadowhunter name.”
She heard Will exhale a breath. It came out a puff of white in the cold. His eyes were blue and wide and clear, fixed on her face. He wore the expression of a man who had steeled himself to do a terrifying thing, and was carrying it through. “Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name,” Will said. “You can have mine.”
Tessa stared at him, all black and white against the black-and-white snow and stone. “Your name?”
Will took a step toward her, till they stood face-to-face. Then he reached to take her hand and slid off her glove, which he put into his pocket. He held her bare hand in his, his fingers curved around hers. His hand was warm and callused, and his touch made her shiver. His eyes were steady and blue; they were everything Will was: true and tender, sharp and witty, loving and kind. “Marry me,” he said. “Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it.”
The snow was swirling down around them, white and cold and perfect. The clouds above had parted, and through the gaps she could see the stars.
“Jem told me what Ragnor Fell said about my father,” Will went on. “That for my father there was only ever one woman he loved, and it was her for him, or nothing. You are that for me. I love you, and I will only ever love you until I die—”
“Will!”
He bit his lip. His hair was thick with snow, his lashes starred with flakes. “Was that too grand a statement? Did I frighten you? You know how I am with words—”
“Oh, I do.”
“I recall what you said to me once,” Will went on. “That words have the power to change us. Your words have changed me, Tess; they have made me a better man than I would have been otherwise. Life is a book, and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read. I would read them together with you, as many as I can, before I die—”
She put her hand against his chest, just over his heart, and felt its beat against her palm, a unique time signature that was all its own. “I only wish you would not speak of dying,” she said. “But even for that, yes, I know how you are with your words, and, Will—I love all of them. Every word you say. The silly ones, the mad ones, the beautiful ones, and the ones that are only for me. I love them, and I love you.”
Will began to speak, but Tessa covered his mouth with her hand.
“I love your words, my Will, but hold them for a moment,” she said, and smiled into his eyes. “Think of all the words I have held inside all this time, while I did not know your intentions. When you came to me in the drawing room and told me that you loved me, it was the hardest thing I have ever done to send you away. You said you loved the words of my heart, the shape of my soul. I remember. I remember every word you said from that day to this. I will never forget them. There are so many words I wish to say to you, and so many I wish to hear you say to me. I hope we have all our lives to say them to each other.”
“Then you will
marry me?” Will said, looking dazed, as if he did not quite believe in his good fortune.
“Yes,” she said—the last, the simplest, and most important word of all.
And Will, who had words for every occasion, opened his mouth and closed it on silence, and instead reached for her to pull her against him. Her wrap fell onto the stairs, but his arms were warm around her, and his mouth hot against hers as he slanted his head down to kiss her. He tasted like snowflakes and wine, like winter and Will and London. His mouth was soft against hers, his hands in her hair, scattering white berries across the stone steps. Tessa held fast to Will as the snow swirled around them. Through the windows of the Institute, she could hear the faint sound of the music playing in the ballroom: the pianoforte, the cello, and rising above it all, like sparks leaping toward the sky, the sweet, celebratory strains of the violin.
“I can’t believe we’re really going home,” Cecily said. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and she was bouncing up and down in her white kid boots. She was bundled into a red winter coat, the brightest thing in the dark crypt except the Portal itself, great and silver and shining against the far wall.
Through it Tessa could catch a glimpse, like a glimpse in a dream, of blue sky (the sky outside the Institute was a spitting London gray) and snow-dusted hills. Will stood beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. He looked pale and nervous, and she longed to take his hand. “We’re not going home, Cecy,” he said. “Not to stay. We’re visiting. I wish to introduce our parents to my fiancée”—and at that his pallor faded slightly, his lips curving into a smile—“that they might know the girl I am going to marry.”
“Oh, pish tosh,” said Cecily. “We can use the Portal to see them whenever we want! Charlotte is the Consul, so we cannot possibly get in trouble.”
Charlotte groaned. “Cecily, this is a singular expedition. It is not a toy. You cannot simply use the Portal whenever you like, and this excursion must be kept a secret. None but we here can know you visited your parents, that I allowed you to break the Law!”
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