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The boy has blood smeared down the side of his face and is making a faint whimpering noise. Jem really would rather not deal with this tonight, but rules are rules, after all, and if he doesn’t enforce them then goodness knows he’ll have the whole village up here.
“You know the penalty,” he intones. “I have made sure that the village is aware. Anyone who trespasses onto my land will become my prisoner.” The boy snivels, and Jem sighs.
“Like hell he will!” shouts a new voice, and Jem turns around to find a girl standing in the doorway to the formal dining room. The girl strides towards him, and Jem is for a moment glad he is standing in the shadows, that she cannot see him. “You bully,” the girl continues. “You leave my brother alone, you brute!” Jem laughs dryly. If only she knew.
“I assure you, miss,” he says, stepping forward into the light, and some dark part of him relishes her indrawn breath, the frightened step back, the wariness that has crossed her grave face. “I am no brute. But the fact remains, your brother has trespassed onto the grounds of the Institute. He must stay, as my prisoner.”
“He can’t,” says the girl. “We have a farm – I cannot do all the work alone. You must let Nate go.” Jem sighs. This is the part he has dreaded the most, the day that family might come to appeal for their loved ones. It has never happened before during his… tenure in the Institute, as its unearthly master. Usually the villagers are clever enough not to come to the Institute, although young Nate appears to be rather less bright than his sister. There has only been one other who trespassed onto the Institute in the years Jem has been cursed, and the results of that had not been… pleasant.
“I cannot let him go,” Jem says, not without regret. Jem is a poor guardian for this shambling old place, with its storied history. He is neither cold enough nor cruel enough, merely a boy cursed by a demon. “Not unless you wish to stay in your brother’s place, Miss…?”
“Tessie,” the boy says, “please. You can’t leave me here with this… demon.” Jem hates him a little, then, for not bearing the brunt of his own mistakes, for expecting his sister to swoop in and save him. Part of his dislike, Jem knows, stems from his own frustration that there was nobody there to save him. At least, no one who succeeded.
The girl is chewing on her lower lip, her forehead furrowed in thought. “If I stay,” she says at last, “you’ll let Nate go free?” Jem sweeps her a courtly bow. Once, he remembers dimly, he had manners.
“You have my word.” The girl nods sharply, decisively.
“Go home, Nate,” she says, and as the boy stumbles to his feet and flees out of the Institute, she strides over to Jem and shakes his hand firmly, as men do. Jem can’t help but smile at her forthrightness; he knows the expression makes his eerie face even more ghastly, but he can’t help it. “Tessa Gray,” she says. “You must be the monster we hear about in the village.” Christ, but she’s blunt.
“That would be me,” Jem says stiffly. “James Carstairs, at your service.” Tessa regards him through grey eyes that might sometimes appear blue, if Jem ever sees her in something other than that dreadful dress she’s wearing.
“Apparently monsters have surnames,” she says tartly. “And never dust their dining rooms. And don’t look like monsters at all.”
To that, Jem can think of nothing to say at all. He’s spent so long thinking of himself as damned, as a fiend, that any contradiction of this established world view is enough to bewilder him completely. Fortunately, the girl doesn’t appear to expect him to reply. She has her hands on her hips and is looking about her with a distinctly unimpressed air.
“If I’m going to stay, I best get on with things,” she remarks. “Where do you keep your mop?”
Jem doesn’t often look in the mirror. The last time he did, he was as thin as a rake, more skeleton than flesh, his hair and eyes as silver as newly minted coins. He can only assume he’s gotten worse since then, a creature more monster than man, for all he has not yet reached his majority.
The girl – Tessa – is down in the kitchen, making loud clattering noises and cursing occasionally. Jem can hear her, all the way from the West Wing, where he is in the habit of staring at Kwan Yin on the box of yin fen and brooding. He remembers when the box was full, back in the beginning, when he was a boy and the curse had been laid upon him. When Yanluo had killed his parents and cursed the Institute, and damned Jem to spent the years alone, praying for someone who might see past the silver hair and eyes and love him. Ever does the supply of silver powder dwindle, and Jem knows that if he turns eighteen without finding his true love, he will die.
Of all curses, he knows only one as cruel as his own.
Jem puts down the mirror, and wonders what Will is doing.
(Slightly into the past…)
Will is turned out onto the street by the innkeeper, and looks up into grey eyes when his hat is dropped down into his lap. “Leave me alone, Herondale!” Tessa Gray shouts. Her hair is escaping from its pins, and her face is flushed with outrage. He doesn’t blame her. Given he’d just made an exceedingly unsavoury joke about her virtue, prior to his ejection from the inn, he rather expects her to kick him in the shins or jab him with her parasol. Although, Tessa is a farm girl. She would never waste money on something as useless as a parasol, when a waterproof cloak would do well enough. “When will you get it through your head, I’m not interested!”
Will knows that is a lie. He’d seen the faintly admiring look she’d given him once, although in hindsight it had perhaps been the fellow behind him that she’d been admiring. Whatever the case, Will is not prepared to take the risk. Not after Ella, when he’d seen exactly what the curse can take from him. So nobody loves William Herondale, and he likes it that way. Well, not exactly, but it’s what’s best.
Tessa Gray stomps off, and Will looks after her fondly. That is one hell of a woman. His jaw is still stinging from where she’d punched him. If he was free to be loved… but he is not. He is cursed, demon cursed, and there is only one man he knows as badly off as he is. Although, at least Jem can love. It is only time that he lacks.
Jem cannot believe that Tessa has only been with him for a week. In that time the Institute has been transformed. The floors are swept, the mirrors clean and gleaming, and Jem may have even put on a smidgen of weight from the cakes and shortbread that keep appearing with endless pots of tea. Even the gargoyles flanking the entrance to the Institute look a little brighter. The only place not touched by her presence is Henry’s old laboratory and the West Wing, of course. Jem has forbidden the West Wing to her on pain of death, for fear that she might somehow get the yin fen on her skin or in her lungs. Not that Jem would ever kill her, of course, or lay a hand on her in anger, but Tessa doesn’t need to know that.
“Of course, Master,” she’d said dryly when Jem had finished stumbling through the awkward business of forbidding her the West Wing. “I am your servant.”
“No, Miss Grey!” he’d said in shock. “You are my guest. Please – please don’t call me master. I do not like it.” Tessa had inclined her head.
“Sir,” she’d sighed, with the air of someone making an enormous concession. “I won’t go near the West Wing. Satisfied?” Jem had nodded, and Tessa had gone about her business. Jem had had to sit down with a ginger snap and try not to think about the odd sensation in the pit of his stomach when Tessa had called him sir.
Currently Tessa is dusting the weapons room and singing. She appears to have an endless stock of mournful ballads – learned, she told him, from a friend called Bridget who cooked for the lord in the county over. “And as you walk through death's dark veil, the cannon's thunder can't prevail, and those who hunt thee down will fail, and you will be my ain true love.” Jem sighs.
“Tessa!” he calls, and obligingly she comes within seconds. Jem peers owlishly at her. “I have asked you not to sing in the Institute.” Tessa crosses her arms mulishly.
“Yes, but you’ve never said why,” she says. “Is it because you’re a grumpy old miser who doesn’t want light or music in the world?” Jem’s mouth tightens, and abruptly he remembers his violin, untouched for years. The haunting beauty of his music had been too much to bear, in the empty halls of the Institute, knowing he would die here, alone and unloved. As unloved as Will, and as senselessly and cruelly, to boot.
Will had turned up on the steps of the Institute one morning shortly after Yanluo, his blue eyes haunted. “I’ve heard this is a place that helps people,” he’d said, and Jem had laughed in his face.
“You must be joking,” Jem had snapped. It is not a memory that brings him anything like pride, when he recalls the twisted pleasure he’d taken in watching the faint hope go out of the other boy’s face. “Do I look like I can help anyone? Does this place look like the Institute is still in business? I’m cursed, for God’s sake. You bloody idiot.” Something like relief had come into Will then, and Jem had hated it.
“Thank God,” Will had replied fervently. “I thought I was the only one.”
And so the two boys had become as close as brothers, over the years. Will did not visit often, but when he did, he brought news of the outside world. Jem had learned to treasure his friend’s visits, to ruminate that as their natures were polar opposites, so is the nature of their curses. Jem is doomed to die in one place, unable to leave, while Will is forced to wander, to allow no one to ever love him. Jem does not know if Will’s curse has a time frame to it, as Jem’s does; he does not think Will knows, either. But it cannot be denied that Will comes to visit more often as Jem gets older, as his eighteenth birthday approaches as inexorable as the tide.
Jem wonders what Will would think of Tessa.
He does not have to wonder for long. Some three weeks after Tessa’s arrival, Will comes strolling through the front door of the Institute as though he owns it. Jem embraces him, too pleased to speak for a moment. Tessa is off poking through the attic, and with relish Jem notices Will looking around him as though he cannot believe his eyes.
“Did you get a maid, Jem?” he finally asks, and Jem smiles. He rings a small silver bell that Tessa had pressed upon him at some point in the first week, and presently Tessa arrives down the stairs, her apron dusty and a splotch of something on her cheek. It’s endearing, really.
“Apologies, sir, did you know you have pieces of a ship up there –?” She breaks off when she sees Will. “Mr. Herondale,” she says coolly. “What a… surprise.” Jem has the distinct impression the word she truly wanted to use is far less polite than ‘surprise’.
Tessa’s attitude is not the only shock. Aghast, Jem watches Will change in front of him, as though suddenly Jem is looking at another man. Will leers at Tessa, his lips pulled back in a grin more like a grimace. “James,” he drawls. “No wonder you’ve not been seen haunting the grounds, with such a pretty little piece to keep you company.”
“Herondale,” Tessa says reprovingly. Jem notices she’s dropped the Mr. “Good to see your manners haven’t improved.” Will smirks.
“Darling, I’ve got something for you hidden in my trouser pocket. Care to come looking for it?” Jem is horrified. Will’s eyebrows are waggling, his eyes glinting with cruel mirth, and Jem has never recognised him less.
“William!” he snaps, and Will looks at him as though he’d forgotten Jem was there. A flush rises on his cheeks, and there is a glint to his eyes that Jem could almost believe is shame.
“What on earth was that?” Jem demands, when Tessa has stalked off to the kitchen, growling something about killing a chicken. Will hangs his head.
“You’ve never had to see me in action, brother,” he says miserably. “I must make myself rather loathsome indeed, to avoid any amorous inclinations that I might find myself the recipient of.” Jem huffs.
“I doubt, after that display, that she is in any danger of Miss Gray falling in love with you,” he says crisply. Will looks up at him, and there is a momentary flicker of abject despair in his eyes that Jem can almost believe he’d imagined.
“Do you really think so,” he says, but his voice is hollow, the words lack inflection. All his ire gone, Jem grips Will’s shoulder in mute solidarity.
That night, when Will is gone, Jem goes to the music room and takes out his violin for the first time in years. Just the touch of the Guarneri sets his hands to itching, the blood in his veins to song. He rosins up his bow, tends to the strings with all the thwarted tenderness of a heart that has no one to love, and sets his violin under his chin. And oh, the sound of it, the blessed sweetness of the music he had not known how ferociously he missed, until Tessa Gray had sang of true love while polishing his maces. Jem had not noticed, that he has been dying by degrees well ahead of schedule, until Tessa had brought life into the Institute once more.
Jem plays until he feels his fingers might bleed, until muscles out of practise protest at their sudden usage. Until something inside him has slotted back into place as though it had never left, as though he hadn’t shut himself away from the world and interred himself alive within the Institute, devoid of all the things that bring him joy. When he sets his violin and bow down, finally, there are tears in his eyes, for all he will not let them fall. At least there is no one here to see his shame –
“I heard music,” says Tessa from the doorway. Jem spins around so fast he almost overbalances. His captive – maid – guest is wearing a nightgown and holding a candle; her hair is tousled from sleep. There is a wrinkle from the pillow in her cheek.
“Forgive me, Miss Gray,” Jem says, trying very hard not to look at her, although his gaze seems drawn to her as a moth to the merciless flame. “It was inconsiderate of me, to play when you were sleeping.” Tessa’s eyes are wide, lashes dark as ink against the white of her cheek, and Jem is struck with a thrill he has never considered before. He feels himself flushing, and looks away from the hint of curves exposed by the modest nightgown.
“That was the loveliest thing I have ever heard,” Tessa says while Jem is still trying to get himself under control. His heart is beating like it might break through his ribs. “You have a gift, sir.”
“Thank you,” Jem says, and wants to say more, but he does not know what. “Good night, Tessa,” he finally says curtly, and only realises he’s heard her by her Christian name some hours later, when he has returned to the West Wing and he can’t sleep for the music in his head and the hope in his heart. What she must think of him.
Jem punishes himself brutally by calling Tessa nothing but Miss Gray for days even in the privacy of his own mind. He denies himself the chocolate mudcake she presents to him for morning tea, at least until she shoves a fork in his hand and sternly orders him to eat. But none of it is enough. Jem has opened his eyes, and they will not close. And the yin fen in the box is ever dwindling.
Will waltzes in at breakfast time a few days later. Jem is stabbing a piece of bacon moodily and avoiding looking as Miss Gray. “Excellent!” Will declares. “Tessa, I’ll have bacon and scrambled eggs, toast, and do you have any of those little kippers? Thank you, darling. Remind me to send you the head of the next beast I hunt.” Miss Gray scowls, but goes off to the kitchen to bang pots together loudly.
“You hate hunting,” Jem says in an undertone. Will shrugs.
“So do most of the girls in the village. Undoes some of the damage done by this face of mine.” Jem does not deign to respond to this and instead resumes glaring at his teacup as though it has mortally offended him.
When Miss Gray returns, it is only to slam a plate down in front of Will and disappear hastily. Jem glances at the plate and wishes he hadn’t; the bacon is crispy, the eggs fluffy and perfect. She has even put the kippers on, although where she got kippers from in Jem’s kitchen is another question entirely. Will digs in with the enthusiasm of a man who does much of his own cooking.
“Absolutely fantastic, Tessa!” he calls. “If this captive malarkey doesn’t work out for you, I will employ you as my personal chef/love slave any day.” There is a particularly vicious crash from the kitchen, and Jem cringes. Will’s smile slides away from his face.
“James,” he says quietly, “are you quite well, my friend?” Jem is not. He is burning up, he can’t think, his joints are throbbing like he has run a mile and the world is starting to spin.
The last thing he sees before he falls face first into his bacon is Will.
“You’re getting worse,” says a familiar voice. Jem groans and swims up towards consciousness. When he cracks open an experimental eyelid, Will is by his side. He is on his bed in the West Wing, his collar loosened but his shoes still on. He does not remember how he came to be here.
“What happened?” Jem asks, still drowsy. Will crosses his arms over his chest.
“What happened, indeed. You fainted. Like a maiden swooning into the arms of a suitor.” Jem flinches.
“Will,” he says very quietly, “you don’t need to make me hate you. Sheathe your claws.” Will looks down.
“You’re quite correct, James. You have my apologies.”
“Forgiven,” Jem says, brushing it aside. “Did Miss Gray -?”
“Your prisoner did not see your fainting fit,” Will says dryly. “I carried you up here to the West Wing before she glimpsed you attempt to head-butt your bacon.” Will is quiet for a moment. “I’m not wrong, am I?” he asks. “You’re getting worse.” Jem sighs.
“You are not incorrect,” he replies softly.
“How much longer?” Jem shrugs, as though it is not of much consequence.
“Two months and a week,” he says. Will shudders as if he has been struck a blow.
“So soon,” he says. “Jem – I will not know what to do with myself, when you are –” It is as if Will cannot say the words.
“Dead,” Jem finishes for him, because that is the nature of their relationship, to be strong in all the places the other is weak. “I know.”
Will bows his head.
When Jem is feeling stronger, and has taken a pinch of the powder in a glass of water, he accompanies Will back downstairs. The sun is almost at its zenith, the plates have been cleared, and the scent of something cooking wafts through the house. Miss Gray is in the dining room, patiently polishing the silver. When she looks up to see Jem and Will on the stairs, something crosses her face almost too quickly to be seen, and certainly too fast to be decoded.
“Lunch will be ready in an hour, sir,” she says, polishing with a certain vigour that Jem feels is rather unnecessary. “Will Mr. Herondale be staying for lunch, sir?” Ah. So that is the issue. Jem doesn’t need to look at Will to see that ghastly fake smirk on his face. Will must know that he has no chance with Miss Gray now, too much damage has been done. Yet perhaps making people loathe you is a difficult habit to break.
“Indeed I will, Tess my girl,” Will says heartily – too heartily, Jem hears the falseness in his voice. Miss Gray shoots Jem a betrayed expression that suggests she is decidedly not Will’s girl, in any shape or form. Jem sits down at the table, grateful to be off his feet, exhausted already so early in the day. “I took the liberty of stopping past your farm on the way here. Did you know your brother has gone to London?”
There is a loud clanging sound. Tessa – Jem can’t call her Miss Gray anymore, it’s too difficult – has dropped four spoons and three forks. The colour has drained out of her face.
“Nate? London? When?” she asks. Will shrugs, like he does not care.
“Just after you disappeared,” he says lightly. “He and Jessamine Lovelace eloped and left for London together.” Jem sneaks a look at Tessa and wishes he hadn’t. There is a dreadful sorrow in her eyes.
“Then who is managing the farm?” she asks, utterly aghast. Will examines a thumbnail with an air of deep boredom.
“No one, I imagine,” he says cruelly. Jem aims a reproving glance in his direction; Tessa is nearly on the verge of tears.
“The farm was Aunt Harriet’s pride and joy,” she says, and her stricken face hurts Jem down somewhere deep that has been untouched for a very long time. “How could Nate be so selfish?”
“Rather easily, I believe,” Will says, and Tessa makes a noise somewhere between a sob and a shriek and rushes out to the kitchen. Jem jumps up to follow her and immediately wishes he hadn’t; his head spins and only Will’s guiding palm gets him back into the chair.
“Damn,” Jem says softly, both for himself and for Tessa, and maybe even for Will, too.
After Will has departed, Jem finds Tessa in the library. She is hunched over, a book cradled in her hands, but he does not think she is reading. He thinks she is rather too preoccupied with the tears falling down her face.
“Miss Gray,” Jem says softly, after a fervent debate with himself as to whether he should interrupt her in her hour of torment. Yet what he has to say is important; it may alleviate her suffering. “Might I have a moment of your time?” Tessa’s head flies up; she drops the book and swipes a hand hastily over her eyes.
“Sir. Of course. Is there something you need?” Jem, abandoning his (certainly antiquated) ideas of propriety for a moment, comes to sit beside her on the sofa.
“No, Miss Gray, I do not need anything,” he says, passing her a handkerchief. “It’s about your brother.”
“I don’t really want to talk about my brother at the moment,” she replies, and Jem lays a hand on her arm. It silences her, and it burns him.
“Of course. But what I’m trying to say – very poorly – is that you may leave. If you want to.” Jem smiles bitterly, suddenly self-conscious. “What am I saying, of course you’d want to. Who would want to be trapped here with me?”
Tessa is quiet, and Jem takes his hand away from her arm. The silence chokes him, or perhaps he just needs to avail himself of his box. With Tessa, the lines are becoming ever more blurred. “That is very kind of you,” she says finally. “But correct me if I am wrong. If Nate was ever to return, then he’d be your prisoner again. Yes?” Jem’s throat feels thick.
“Yes,” he agrees. “Those are the rules. I have to obey them.” Tessa makes a low noise in her throat, rather like a scoff.
“You have to obey them,” she repeats, her voice heavy with scorn. “Why? No one’s forcing you. No one else lives here. No one would know and no one would care if you had let Nate go that night. Let both of us go.” Jem clenches his hands into fists. He had not ever wanted her to know.
“There’s a curse, Miss Gray,” he says finally. “A demon bound me to this place, to my fate. The only other who has ever been here, the one I let go… she died screaming just beyond the gates. I believe your brother will be exempt from the effects of the curse being so far away, as will you if I let you go now. The original sin is not your own.”
Jem is not prepared for Tessa’s laugh of raw derision. “That has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of!” she says. “You can’t expect me to believe that. What about Will? Will comes and goes as he pleases.” Jem sighs.
“Will has his own demons,” he says. “The conditions of his own curse appear to nullify the restrictions of mine.” There is a noise beside him, almost like an indrawn breath.
“… Will is cursed too?” Tessa asks eventually in a small and hopeful voice, and something like jealousy lances through Jem’s heart.
“We both are, Miss Gray,” he says, standing, as rigid as if iron had replaced his spine. “Forget my earlier offer. You will stay, and may your brother be knifed in a London tavern like the coward he is.” Tessa’s eyes look as if they are aflame with the force of her anger; Jem does not know where this unexpected venom has come from, only that the words fall from his lips like knives to his own heart. This is not who he is. This is not the kind of man he has strived to be.
“You and Will are more similar than I thought,” Tessa snaps, and strides out of the library, book long forgotten. Jem leans back on the sofa, a headache thumping in his temples, and thinks, You have no idea.
Tessa refuses to speak to Jem for three days. She cleans the East Wing top to bottom and doesn’t cook so much as a piece of toast. Jem has forgotten how he got on before Tessa arrived, when it comes to meals. He mopes and plays his violin at odd hours and pretends not to notice how she comes and sits outside his music room door to listen.
On the fourth day, she cooks him breakfast and makes him tea. It is not an apology, but Jem takes the olive branch in the spirit it is offered. He compliments her on the strawberry jam and receives a flinty smile for his pains, but it is a smile nonetheless.
The weather is fine, and Jem goes for a stroll outside in the weak sunshine. Will is right. It has been far too long since he wandered about the grounds and looked threatening. Being distracted by Tessa is no excuse to neglect his duties, after all, and the last thing he wants is more people in the Institute. Although, Jem considers moodily, in two months there will be one less person in the Institute, and then Tessa will be free to leave.
Perhaps she and Will might get to know one another better. Perhaps together they might find a way to break Will’s curse. And Will can take her in his arms and kiss her and won’t that be just fantastic –
Jem stomps back inside. Rather glad that there is no sign of Tessa along the way, he goes up the stairs to the West Wing, intent on a session of brooding over his fate before lunch. Jem knows from the moment he opens the door to the Wing that there is something the matter. The air is disturbed, his box is three inches to the left of where he’d left it. The faint scent of rosewater and woman lingers (Jem had not known what a woman smelled like, until Tessa), and when Jem opens his mouth to speak, it comes out a roar.
“MISS GRAY!”
Jem takes the stairs three at a time, meeting Tessa in the dining room where she has evidently been setting the table for lunch. “Sir?” she asks. “Is something the matter?” Jem is shaking, so angry he can barely speak.
“You were in the West Wing,” he says flatly. “Don’t try to deny it. I know you were there.” Tessa shrugs.
“Is that what you’re cross about?” she asks. “I didn’t intend to deny it. Yes. I was in the West Wing.” Jem’s chest is heaving, he can’t think straight.
“Why, for the love of the Angel?” he bellows. “I told you – I forbade you –”
“Well, yes,” Tessa says indifferently. “You rather did. But I don’t believe for a moment you could ever hurt me, sir. I expect the sun to fall out of the sky before you lay a hand on me in anger.”
“It’s not safe,” Jem bites out. “The yin fen – it could harm you –”
“Oh, is that what’s killing you, then?” Tessa asks, and it is not deluding himself, for Jem to hear the strain beneath the offhanded words. As though the thought of him dead is one that gnaws away at her.
“Yes,” he says, and the relief of it, to admit it out loud. “I’ll be dead in two months. When I reach my eighteenth birthday, without meeting my –” Jem breaks off.
“Your what?” Tessa asks. Jem closes his eyes. He does not want to see the look on her face when he says it aloud.
“My true love,” he says through clenched teeth. Tessa makes a noise rather like a sigh.
“And of course you can’t meet your true love, because you can’t leave the Institute,” she concludes. Jem nods. “That is… absolutely brutal.”
“Quite,” Jem agrees, and opens his eyes. His captive has her hands on her hips and her pretty face is a mask of sorrow. Jem had not known, that she could care for him even a little. “I told you,” he says sharply, his fury rising up again. “Not to go into the West Wing. God knows what the yin fen could do to you.” Tessa sighs.
“Who are you truly angry at, James?” she asks, and Jem is too overwrought to notice the use of his given name, although he will, later. “Me, or yourself?”
“Yanluo,” Jem snaps. Tessa tilts her head, a silent question. “The one who cursed me,” Jem elaborates. “To die young without ever having lived. To go to my grave without ever having been loved.”
“Oh, sir,” she says rather sadly, and to Jem’s eternal astonishment, fits her small hand to the curve of his cheek. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?” Jem asks, but there is no answer. Although, he considers, he was rather too angry with Tessa for his regard for her to be simply that of captor to captive. Almost as if as she means something to him, something more.
The realisation strikes him like a bolt of lightning.
Will comes to visit the next day. Jem hears him before he sees him: “My dear Tessa, don’t you know it's not right for a woman to read? Soon you might start getting ideas, and thinking, and then where will we be?” Jem rolls his eyes.
“She’ll punch you one of these days,” Jem comments as Will comes into the Institute. Will shrugs.
“She already has,” he says, and although Jem raises a questioning eyebrow, Will does not elaborate. Jem doesn’t truly mind. Something is weighing on him, and he needs Will’s advice.
“I think I’m in love,” Jem says. Will’s eyes light up, but a moment later the sudden warmth in his face dies.
“Tessa,” Will says hollowly. “Of course it’s Tessa. Who else could it be? You don’t know any other girls.” Jem doesn’t take offence. It’s the truth.
“Why does that bring you sorrow – oh, Will,” Jem says sadly. “You too, my brother?” Will nods. They sit in silence. Jem’s heart feels like it is being slowly crushed under the weight of what he desires and what cannot be.
“It must be you, Jem,” Will says tiredly. “You are the one who will die if your curse is not removed. Whereas I –”
“You will be alone,” Jem finishes. “You are mad if you think I will take happiness at the expense of yours. You are dearer to me than that.”
“But you will die!”
“And you will live,” Jem says. “The whole conversation is pointless. I am Tessa’s jailor, and you have been beyond vile to her. I doubt she returns our feelings, and as you’re well aware, the true love loophole requires reciprocation.”
“But we are agreed,” Wil says. “That she is it for us. That we both love Tessa –”
“You love me? Both of you?” Tessa asks from the doorway, and Jem wants to die.
Tessa is heading out the door of the Institute. Jem follows her, wanting the earth to open up and swallow him whole.
“Miss Gray,” he begins imploringly, and Tessa whirls around.
“Jem, if you call me ‘Miss Gray’ again, I will punch you,” she hisses. Will makes an undignified noise rather like a croak. “Let me see if I understand,” she says. “Will loves me. Jem, you love me. You’re both cursed and were having a severely misogynistic conversation about whose curse I should end?”
“That, ah, appears to be the gist of it,” Jem says after a moment. Tessa grins. Jem has the distinct impression she finds the whole affair rather amusing.
“Well, go on,” she says. “Prove it to me. Convince me which of you I should choose.”
“Will, of course,” Jem says immediately. “He’s faster, stronger –”
“As you will be once the yin fen is gone from your body,” Will points out.
“Will likes poetry,” Jem says triumphantly, certain this is an incontrovertible argument.
“Jem can play the violin,” Will counters.
“Poorly,” Jem says, and earns twin glares from both his companions. “Perhaps, ah. A little better than poorly,” he amends hastily.
“Jem speaks Mandarin,” Will snaps.
“Will speaks Welsh!”
“Is that meant to be a good thing?” Jem hears Tessa murmur, and has to tamp down a smile.
“I use antlers in all of my decorating,” Will says seriously.
“I can’t read,” Jem deadpans. Will turns to him with a horrified expression.
“James Carstairs, you lying ingrate! You very well can read!”
“Indeed, I cannot,” Jem replies, turning to Tessa. “I implore you, Tessa. Do not throw your life away on a man who cannot read.”
“But what about the antlers?” Will appeals. “I kill deer to get them! I killed Bambi’s mother!”
“Female deer don’t have antlers,” Jem says coolly. Will scowls.
“Did you read that in a book, James dearest?”
A noise interrupts them. Tessa is laughing, as though they are the most amusing things in the world. “You beautiful fools,” she says. “Whatever in the world made you think that only one of your curses could be broken?”
“It’s true love’s kiss,” Will says stiffly. “You are it, for the both of us, I’m afraid. And you can only have one true love, Tessa.”
She smiles, bright as the dawn, and shifts until she has them one on either side of her. “Who told you that nonsense?” she asks, and leans up to kiss Jem quickly, and a moment later Will.
Jem’s vision goes dark for a moment, but not before he sees Will engulfed in a cloud of blue light. The world around Jem is silver and black, flashing and iridescent, and in a great rush he feels energy and heat fill his body, a vitality that over the years has been drained from him so slowly he had not noticed it go. But it is back, now, everything the yin fen had stolen from him and more, because Tessa has kissed him and he is alive, oh, he is going to live.
When the smoke clears, Tessa is smiling, and Will looks lighter than he has in all the time Jem has known him. He is staring down at Tessa as if he cannot quite believe she exists. “All that time,” he says gruffly, “that I was wretched to you in the village, you loved me?”
Tessa shrugs. “Maybe not all of it,” she teases, and Jem takes her hand in his. “I knew there was someone good underneath all your foolishness.”
“And James?” Tessa smiles.
“Since I first heard him play,” she says, and Jem tightens his hand on hers. The world is beautiful. Will is here, and Tessa loves them, as sure as the sun in the sky and the earth beneath Jem’s feet. Up by the Institute, he can see Charlotte and Henry appear, the great ugly gargoyles gone as if they never existed. He smiles. The Institute will have its true caretakers once more.
“And now?” Will asks, and Tessa links her other hand in his.
“Now,” she says, “whatever you like.”