Brother Zachariah walked through the Silent City, down corridors lined with bones. The ground was marked with the relentless passage of the Silent Brothers’ feet, of his own feet, moving in their accustomed path day after silent day, year after dark endless year. He could not get out. Soon he would forget how it had ever been to live and love in the light. Every skull grinning at him from the wall was a thing more human than he.
Until the darkness he’d thought inescapable was obliterated by consuming fire. The silver fire of yin fen had burned in him once, the worst burning the world had to offer, but this golden fire was remorseless as heaven. He felt as if he were being torn apart, every burning atom of him weighed in the balance by a cruel god, and every piece found wanting.
Even in the midst of agony, there was some small measure of relief. This is the end, he told himself desperately, and was desperately thankful. At last this is the end, after all that misery and darkness. He would die before his humanity was entirely crushed out. Finally, there might be rest. He might see his parabatai again.
Except with the thought of Will came the thought of another. He thought of soft cool air drifting from the river, and her sweet serious face, unchanging as his own heart. With the thought of Will, he knew what Will would say. He could hear him, as if even the veil of death were burning between them and Will was shouting in his ear. Jem, Jem. James Carstairs. You can’t leave Tessa on her own. I know you better than you know yourself. I always did. I know you would never give up. Jem, hold on.
He would not dishonor love by letting go. In the end, he chose to endure any pain rather than do that. Through the fire, as through the darkness, he held on.
And impossibly, through fire and darkness and time, he survived.
Jem woke gasping. He was in a warm bed, with his wife in his arms.
Tessa was still sleeping, on white sheets in the small whitewashed room they were renting in the small lodging house. She murmured as Jem watched her, a soft string of incomprehensible words. She talked in her sleep, and every sound was a comfort. More than a century ago, he’d wondered how it would be to wake up with Tessa. He’d dreamed of it.
Now he knew.
Jem listened to her sweet sleepy murmurs, and watched the rise and fall of the white sheet with her breathing, and his body eased.
Tessa’s curling lashes stirred on her cheeks.
“Jem?” she asked, and her hand found his arm, palm sliding down his skin.
“I’m sorry,” Jem said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Tessa smiled sleepily.
Jem leaned over to the pillow beside his, and kissed his wife’s eyes closed, then watched them open again, clear and cool as river water. He kissed her cheek, the eloquent curve of her mouth, her chin, and trailed his open mouth hungrily down the line of her throat.
“Tessa, Tessa,” he murmured. “Wŏ yào nĭ.”
I want you.
Tessa said: “Yes.”
Jem lifted the sheet and kissed the line of her collarbone, loving the taste of her soft sleep-warm skin, loving every atom of her. He laid a trail of kisses for himself to follow all the way down her body. When he drew his mouth down the tender skin of her stomach, her hands slipped into his hair and fastened tightly there, anchoring him, encouraging him on. Her voice, no longer soft, made the walls ring with his name.
She was all around him. All horror and pain was washed away.
As night fell, Jem and Tessa lay facing one another on the bed, their hands entwined, their voices hushed. They could whisper and laugh all night together, and often had: it was one of Jem’s great joys, just to lie with Tessa and talk for hours.
But that required quiet and peace, which was not to be had tonight. Light exploded through their dim room, and Jem bolted upright, shielding Tessa from any possible threat.
Words of shimmering blue and silver had appeared on the wall. Tessa sat up, tucking the sheet around her. “Message from Magnus,” she said, twisting her hair up into a knot at the back of her head.
The message said that Alec and Lily Chen were on their way to help. Once they had stowed their belongings at the Buenos Aires Institute, they would meet Tessa and Jem outside the walls of the Shadow Market.
Jem met Tessa’s gaze, and read his own alarm in her eyes.
“Oh no,” said Tessa. Jem was already scrambling off the bed, searching for their clothes. “We have to find them. We have to stop them. They can’t go to the Institute.”