After the Bridge, a tale for those who
might have wondered what Tessa and Jem did after they met on Blackfriars Bridge
in the epilogue of Clockwork Princess.
After the Bridge alternates POV between Jem
and Tessa.
Art by Cassandra Jean.
Now is the time of our comfort and plenty
These are the days we’ve been working for
Nothing can touch us and nothing can harm us
And nothing goes wrong anymore
—Keane - Love Is The End
As it turned out, Tessa had a flat she owned in London.
It was the second floor of a pale white townhouse in Kensington, and as she let
them both inside—her hand only shaking very slightly as she turned the keys—she
explained to Jem that Magnus had taught her how warlocks could finagle their
way into owning homes over many centuries by willing the properties to
themselves.
“After a while I just started picking silly names for
myself,” she said, shutting the door behind them. “I think I own this place
under the pseudonym Bedelia Codfish.”
Jem laughed, though his mind was only partly on her
words. He was gazing around the flat—the walls were painted in bright colors: a
lilac living room, scattered with white couches, an avocado-green kitchen. When
had Tessa bought the flat, he wondered, and why? She had traveled so much, why
make a home base in London?
The question dried up in his throat when he turned and
realized that through a partly open door, he could glimpse the blue walls of
what was likely a bedroom.
He swallowed at that, his mouth gone suddenly dry.
Tessa’s bed. That she slept in.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you all right?” She
took him by the wrist; he felt his pulse jump under her touch. Until he had
become a Silent Brother, it always had. He’d wondered during his time in Idris,
after the heavenly fire had cured him, if it would still be like that with
them: if his human feelings would return to him. He had been able to touch her
and be near her as a Silent Brother without wanting her as he had when he was a
mortal. He had still loved her, but it had been a love of the spirit, not the
body. He had wondered—feared, even, that the physical feelings and responses
would not come back the way they had. He had told himself that even if Silent
Brotherhood had killed the ability of his feelings to manifest themselves
physically, he would not be disappointed. He had told himself to expect it.
He shouldn’t have worried.
The moment he had seen her on the bridge, coming toward
him through the crowd in her modern jeans and Liberty scarf, her hair flying
out behind her, he had felt his breath catch in his throat.
And when she had drawn the jade pendant he had given her
out from around her neck and shyly proffered it to him, his blood had roared to
life in his veins like a river undammed.
And when she had said, I love you. I always have, and
I always will, it had taken everything he had not to kiss her in that
moment. To do more than kiss her.
But if the Brotherhood had taught him anything, it was
control. He looked at her now and fought his voice to steadiness. “A little
tired,” he said. “And thirsty—I forget sometimes I need to eat and drink now.”
She dropped her keys on a small rosewood side table and
turned to smile at him. “Tea,” she said, moving toward the avocado-green
kitchen. “I haven’t got much food here, I don’t usually stay long, but I have
got tea. And biscuits. Go into the drawing room; I’ll be right there.”
He had to smile at that; even he knew no one said drawing
room any more. Perhaps she was as nervous as he was, then? He could only
hope.
Tessa cursed silently for the fourth time as she bent to
retrieve the box of sugar cubes from the floor. She had already put the kettle
on without water in it, mixed up the tea bags, knocked over the milk, and now
this. She dropped a cube of sugar into both teacups and told herself to count
to ten, watching the cubes dissolve.
She knew her hands were shaking. Her heart raced. James
Carstairs was in her flat. In her living room. Waiting for tea. Part of her mind
screamed that it was just Jem, while the other part cried just as loudly that just
Jem was someone she hadn’t seen in a hundred and thirty five years.
He had been Brother Zachariah for so long. And of course
he had always been Jem at the heart of it all, with Jem’s wit and unfailing
kindness. He had never failed in his love for her or his love for Will. But
Silent Brothers—they did not feel things the way ordinary people did.
It was something she had thought of, sometimes, in later
years, many decades after Will’s death. She had never wanted anyone else, never
anyone but Will and Jem, and they were both gone from her, even though Jem
still lived. She had wondered sometimes what they would have done if it had
merely been forbidden for Silent Brothers to marry or love; but it was more
than that: he could not desire her. He didn’t have those feelings. She’d felt
like Pygmalion, yearning for the touch of a marble statue. Silent Brothers
didn’t have physical desires for touch, any more than they had a need for food
or water.
But now . . .
I forget sometimes I need to eat and
drink now.
She picked up the tea mugs with still-shaking hands and
walked into the living room. She had furnished it herself over the years, from
the sofa cushions to the unfolded Japanese screen painted with a design of
branches. The curtains framing the portrait window at the far end of the room
were half-drawn, just enough light spilling into the room to touch the bits of
gold in Jem’s dark hair and she nearly dropped the teacups.
They had hardly touched on the taxi ride back to Queen’s
Gate, only holding hands tightly in the back of the cab. He had run his fingers
over the backs of her fingers over and over as he began to tell her the story
of all that had happened since she had last visited Idris, when the Mortal War,
which she had fought in, had ended. When Magnus had pointed out Jace Herondale
to her, and she had looked at a boy who had Will’s beautiful face and eyes like
her son James.
But his hair had been his father’s, that tangle of rich
gold curls, and remembering what she had known of Stephen Herondale, she had
turned away without speaking.
Herondales, someone had told her once. They were
everything that Shadowhunters had to offer, all in one family: both the best,
and the worst.
She set the teacups down on the coffee table—an old
steamer trunk, covered in travel stamps from her many voyages—with an audible
thump. Jem turned to face her and she saw what he held in his hands.
One of the bookcases held a display of weapons: things
she had picked up around the world. A thin misericorde, a curved kris,
a trench knife, a shortsword, and dozens of others. But the one Jem had picked
up and was staring at wasa slim silver knife, its handle darkened by many years
of burial in the dirt. She had never had it cleaned, for the stain on the blade
was Will’s blood. Jem’s blade, Will’s blood, buried together at the roots of an
oak tree, a sort of sympathetic magic Will had performed when he thought he had
lost Jem forever. Tessa had retrieved it after Will’s death and offered it to
Jem; he had refused to take it.
That had been in 1937.
“Keep it,” he said now, his voice ragged. “There may yet
come a day.”
“That’s what you told me.” She moved toward him, her
shoes tapping on the hardwood floor. “When I tried to give it to you.”
He swallowed, running his fingers up and down the blade.
“He had only just died,” he said. She didn’t need to ask who he was. There was
really only one He when it was the two of them speaking. “I was
afraid. I saw what happened to the other Silent Brothers. I saw how they
hardened over time, lost the people they had been. How as the people who loved
them and who they loved died, they became less human. I was afraid that I would
lose my ability to care. To know what this knife meant to Will and what Will
meant to me.”
She placed her hand on his arm. “But you didn’t forget.”
“I didn’t lose everyone I loved.” He looked up at her,
and she saw that his eyes had gold in them too, precious bright flakes among
the brown. “I had you.”
She exhaled; her heart was beating so hard that her chest
hurt. Then she saw that he was clutching the blade of the knife, not just the
hilt. Quickly she plucked it out of his hands. “Please don’t,” she said. “I
can’t draw an iratze.”
“And I haven’t got a stele,” he said, watching as she set
the knife back on its shelf. “I am not a Shadowhunter now.” He looked down at
his hands; there were thin red lines across his palms, but he had not cut the
skin.
Impulsively, Tessa bent and kissed his palms, then folded
his fingers closed, her own hands over his. When she looked up, his pupils had
widened. She could hear his breathing.
“Tessa,” he said. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She drew away from him, though, instinctively.
Perhaps he did not want to be touched, though on the bridge, it had not seemed
that way . . .
“The Brothers taught me control,” he said, his voice
tight. “I have every kind of control, and I have learned them over decades and
decades, and I am using them all not to push you up against the bookcase and
kiss you until neither of us can breathe.”
She lifted her chin. “And what would be wrong with that?”
“When I was a Silent Brother, I did not feel as an
ordinary man does,” he said. “Not the wind on my face or the sun on my skin or
the touch of another’s hand. But now I feel it all. I feel—too much. The wind
is like thunder, the sun scorches, and your touch makes me forget my own name.”
A pang of heat speared through her, a heat that started
low in her stomach and spread through every part of her body. A sort of heat
she hadn’t felt in so many decades. Almost a century. Her skin prickled all
over. “The wind and the sun you will get used to,” she said. “But your touch
makes me forget my name as well, and I have no excuses. Only that I love you,
and I always have and always will. I will not touch you if you do not want it,
Jem. But if we are waiting until the idea of being together does not frighten
us, we may be waiting a long time.”
Breath escaped him in a hiss. “Say that again.”
Puzzled, she began: “If we are waiting until—“
“No,” he said. “The earlier part.”
She tipped her face up to him. “I love you,” she said. “I
always have and I always will.”
She did not know who moved toward who first, but he
caught her around the waist and was kissing her before she could take another
breath. This was not like the kiss on the bridge. That had been a silent
communication of lips on lips, the exchange of a promise and a reassurance. It
had been sweet and shattering, a sort of gentle thunder.
This was a storm. Jem was kissing her, hard and bruising,
and when she opened his lips with hers and tasted the inside of his mouth, he
gasped and pulled her harder against him, his hands digging into her hips,
pressing her closer to him as he explored her lips and tongue, caressing,
biting, then kissing to soothe the sting. In the old days, when she had kissed
him, he had tasted of bitter sugar: now he tasted like tea and—toothpaste?
But why not toothpaste. Even century-old Shadowhunters
had to brush their teeth. A small nervous giggle escaped her and Jem pulled
back, looking dazed and deliciously rumpled. His hair was every which way from
her running her hands through it.
“Please don’t tell me you’re laughing because I kiss so badly
it’s funny,” he said, with a lopsided smile. She could sense his actual worry.
“I may be somewhat out of practice.”
“Silent Brothers don’t do a lot of kissing?” she teased,
smoothing down the front of his sweater.
“Not unless there were secret orgies I wasn’t invited
to,” Jem said. “I did always worry I might not have been popular.”
She clasped her hand around his wrist. “Come here,” she
said. “Sit down—have some tea. There’s something I want to show you.”
He went, as she had asked, and sat down on her velvet
sofa, leaning back against the cushions she had stitched herself out of fabric
she’d bought in India and Thailand. She couldn’t hide a smile—he looked only a
little older than he had when he’d become a Silent Brother, like an ordinary
young man in jeans and a sweater, but he sat the way a Victorian man would have—back
straight, feet flat on the floor. He caught her look and his own mouth tipped
up at the corners. “All right,” he said. “What do you have to show me?”
In answer, she went to the Japanese screen that stretched
across one corner of the room, and stepped behind it. “It’s a surprise.”
The dressmaker’s dummy was there, concealed from the rest
of the room. She couldn’t see him through the screen, only a blurred outline of
shapes. “Talk to me,” she said, pulling her sweater off over her head. “You
said it was a story of Lightwoods and Fairchilds and Morgensterns. I know a
little of what transpired—I received your messages while I was in the Labyrinth—but
I do not know how the Dark War effected your cure.” She tossed the sweater over
the top of the screen. “Can you tell me?”
“Now?” he said. She heard him set his teacup down.
Tessa kicked her shoes off and unzipped her jeans, the
sound loud in the quiet room. “Do you want me to come out from behind this
screen, James Carstairs?”
“Definitely.” His voice sounded strangled.
“Then start talking.”
* * *
Jem talked. He spoke of the dark days in Idris, of
Sebastian Morgenstern’s army of Endarkened, of Jace Herondale and Clary
Fairchild and the Lightwood children and their dangerous journey to Edom.
“I have heard of Edom,” she said, her voice muffled. “It
is spoken of in the Spiral Labyrinth, where they track the histories of all
worlds. A place where the Nephilim were destroyed. A wasteland.”
“Yes,” Jem said, a little absently. He couldn’t see her
through the screen, but he could see the outline of her body, and that was
somewhat worse. “Burning wasteland. Very . . . hot.”
He had been afraid that the Silent Brothers had taken desire
from him: that he would look at Tessa and feel platonic love but not be able to
want, but the opposite was true. He could not stop wanting. He wanted,
he thought, more than he ever had before in his life.
She was clearly changing her clothes. He had looked down
hastily when she’d begun to shimmy out of her jeans, but it wasn’t as if he
could forget the image, the silhouette of her, long hair and long, lovely legs—he’d
always loved her legs.
Surely he’d felt this before, when he’d been a boy? He
remembered the night in his room when she had stopped him destroying his
violin, and he’d wanted then, wanted so badly he hadn’t thought at all when
they’d collapsed onto his bed: he would have taken her innocence then, and
given up his own, without pausing, without a moment’s thought of the future. If
they hadn’t knocked over his box of yin fen. If. That had brought him
back, and when she’d gone, he’d torn his sheets to strips with his fingers out
of sheer frustration.
Perhaps it was just that remembered desire paled in
comparison to the feeling itself. Or perhaps he had been sicker then, weaker.
He had been dying, after all, and surely his body could not have sustained this.
“A Fairchild and a Herondale,” she said. “Now, I like
that. The Fairchilds have always been practical and the Herondales—well, you
know.” She sounded fond, amused. “Perhaps she’ll settle him down. And don’t
tell me he doesn’t need settling.”
Jem thought of Jace Herondale. How he was like Will if
someone had struck a match to Will and gilded him in living fire. “I’m not sure
you can settle a Herondale, and certainly not this one.”
“Does he love her? The Fairchild girl?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so in love, except for . . .” His
voice trailed off, for she had come out from behind the screen, and now he
understood what had taken her so much time.
She was wearing a dress of orchid silk faille, the sort
of dress she might have worn to dinner when they had been engaged. It was
trimmed in white velvet cords, the skirt belling out over—was she wearing crinolines?
His mouth opened. He couldn’t help himself. He had found
her beautiful through all the changing ages of the century: beautiful in the
carefully cut clothes of the war years, when fabric was rationed. Beautiful in
the elegant dresses of the fifties and sixties. Beautiful in short skirts and
boots as the century drew to a close.
But this was what girls looked like when he had first
noticed them, first found them fascinating and not annoying, first noticed the
graceful line of a neck or the pale inside of a feminine wrist. This was the
Tessa who had first cut him through and through with love and lust commingled:
a carnal angel with a corset shaping her body to an hourglass, lifting her
breasts, shaping the flare of her hips.
He forced his eyes away from her body. She had bound up
her hair, small curls escaping over her ears, and his jade pendant glimmered
around her throat.
“Do you like it?” she said. “I had to do my own hair,
without Sophie, and lace my own laces . . .” Her expression was shy and more
than a little nervous—it had always been a contradiction at the heart of her,
that she was one of the bravest and yet the shyest people he knew. “I bought it
from Sotheby’s—a real antique, now, it was far too much money but I remembered
when I was a girl you had said orchids were your favorite flower and I had set
myself to find a dress the color of an orchid but I never found one before you
were—gone. But this one is. Anilyne dye, I expect, nothing natural, but I
thought—I thought it would remind you.” She raised her chin. “Of us. Of what I
wanted to be for you, when I thought we would be together.”
“Tess,” he said, hoarsely. He was on his feet, without
knowing how he had gotten there. He took a step toward her, and then another. “Forty-nine
thousand, two hundred and seventy-five.”
She knew immediately what he meant. He knew she would.
She knew him as no one else living did. “Are you counting days?”
“Forty-nine thousand, two hundred and seventy-five days
since I last kissed you,” he said. “And I thought of you every single one of
them. You do not have to remind me of the Tessa I loved. You were my first love
and you will be my last one. I have never forgotten you. I have never not
thought of you.” He was close enough now to see the pulse pounding in her
throat. To reach out and lift up a curl of her hair. “Never.”
Her eyes were half-shut. She reached out and took his
hand, where it caressed her hair. His blood was thundering through his body, so
hard that it hurt. She lowered his hand, lowered it to the bodice of her dress.
“The advertisement for the dress said it did not have buttons,” she whispered.
“Only hooks down the front. Easier for one person to do up.” She lowered her
right hand, took his other wrist, raised it. Now both his hands were at her
bodice. “Or to unfasten.” Her fingers curved about his as, very deliberately,
she undid the first hook on her dress.
And then the next. She moved his hands down, her fingers
intertwined with his, unfastening as she went until the dress hung open over her
corset. She was breathing hard; he could not keep his eyes from where his
pendant rose and fell with her gasps. He could not bring himself to move an
inch more toward her: he wanted, wanted too much. He wanted to unplait her hair
and wrap it around his wrists like silken ropes. He wanted her breasts under
his hands and her legs around his waist. He wanted things he had no name for
and no experience of. He only knew that that if he moved one inch closer to her
the glass barrier of control he had built up around himself would shatter and
he did not know what would happen next.
“Tessa,” he said. “Are you sure—?”
Her eyelashes fluttered. Her eyes were still half-closed,
her teeth making small half-moons in her lower lip. “I was sure then,” she
said, “and I am sure now.”
And she clasped his hands firmly to her sides, where her
waist curved in, on either side of the flare of her hips.
His control broke, a silent explosion. He pulled her
toward him, bent to kiss her savagely hard. He heard her cry out in surprise
and then his lips silenced hers, and her mouth opened eagerly under his. Her
hands were in his hair, gripping hard; she was reaching up on her toes to kiss
him. She bit at his lower lip, nipped at his jaw, and he groaned, sliding his
hands inside her dress, his fingers tracing the back of her corset, her skin
burning through the bits of her chemise he could feel between the laces. He was
kicking off his shoes, toeing off his socks, the floor cold against his bare
feet.
She gave a little gasp and wriggled closer, into his
arms. He slipped his hands out of her dress and took hold of her skirts. She
made a noise of surprise and then he was drawing the dress up over her head.
She exclaimed, giggling, as the dress came off most of the way but remained
fastened at the wrists, where tiny buttons clasped the cuffs tightly.
“Careful,” she teased, as his frantic fingers flicked the buttons open. He
heaved the dress up and tossed it into the corner. “It’s an antique.”
“So am I, technically,” he said, and she giggled again,
looking up at him, her face warm and open.
He had thought about making love to her before; of course
he had. He had thought about sex when he was a teenaged boy because that was
what teenaged boys thought about, and when he had fallen in love with Tessa, he
had thought about it with her. Vague inchoate thoughts of doing things, though
he wasn’t sure what—images of pale arms and legs, the imaginary feel of soft
skin under his hands.
But he had not imagined this: that there might be
laughter, that it might be affectionate and warm as well as passionate. The
reality of it, of her, stunned him breathless.
She drew away from him and for a moment he panicked. What
had he done wrong? Had he hurt her, displeased her? But no, her fingers had
gone to the cage of crinoline at her waist, twisting and flicking. Then she
raised her arms and twined them about his neck. “Lift me up,” she said. “Lift
me up, Jem.”
Her voice was a warm purr. He took hold of her waist and
lifted her up and out of her petticoats, as if he were lifting an expensive
orchid free of its pot. When he put her back down, she was wearing only her
corset, drawers and stockings. Her legs were just as long and lovely as he had
remembered and dreamed about.
He reached for her, but she caught at his hands. She was
still smiling, but now there was an impish quality to it. “Oh, no,” she said,
gesturing to him, his jeans and sweater. “Your turn.”
* * *
He froze, and for a moment, panicked, Tessa wondered if she
had asked him for too much. He had been so long disconnected from his body—a
mind in a shell of flesh that went largely ignored unless it needed to be runed
for some new power. Maybe this was too much for him.
But he took a deep breath, and his hands went to the hem
of his sweater. He pulled it off over his head and emerged with his hair
adorably ruffled. He wore no shirt under the jumper. He looked at her and bit
his lip.
She moved toward him, wondering eyes and fingers. She
glanced at him before she put her hands on him and saw him nod, Yes.
She swallowed hard. She had been carried this far forward
like a leaf on the tide of her memories. Memories of James Carstairs, the boy
she’d been engaged to, had planned to marry. Had nearly made love to on the
floor of the music room in the London Institute. She had seen his body then,
stripped to the waist, his skin pale as paper and stretched thin over prominent
ribs. The body of a dying boy, though he had always been beautiful to her.
Now his skin was laid over his ribs and chest in a layer
of smooth muscle; his chest was broad, tapering down to a slim waist. She put
her hands on him tentatively; he was warm and hard under her touch. She could
feel the faint scars of ancient runes, pale against his golden skin.
His breath hissed out between his teeth as she ran her
hands up his chest and down his arms, the curve of his biceps shaping
themselves under her fingers. She remembered him fighting with the other
Brothers at Cader Idris—and of course he’d fought at the Citadel Battle, the
Silent Brothers kept themselves ready to do battle, though they rarely did.
Somehow she had never quite thought about what that might mean for Jem once he
was no longer dying.
Her teeth chattered a little; she bit her lip to keep them
silent. Desire was washing through her, and a little fear as well: How could
this be happening? Actually happening?
“Jem,” she whispered. “You’re so . . .”
“Scarred?” He put his hand to his cheek, where the black
mark of the Brotherhood still remained at the arch of his cheekbone. “Hideous?”
She shook her head. “How many times do I have to tell you
that you’re beautiful?” She ran her hand up the bare curve of his shoulder to
his neck; he trembled. You are beautiful, James Carstairs. “Didn’t you
see everyone staring at you on the bridge? You’re so much more beautiful than
me,” she murmured, sliding her hands around him to touch the muscles of his
back; they tightened under the glancing pressure of her fingers. “But if you’re
foolish enough to want me then I will not question my good fortune.”
He turned his head to the side and she saw him swallow.
“For all my life,” he said, “when someone has said the word ‘beautiful’, it is
your face I have seen. You are my own very definition of beautiful, Tessa
Gray.”
Her heart turned over. She raised herself up on her toes—she
had always been a tall girl but Jem was yet taller—and put her mouth to the
side of his throat, kissing gently. His arms came up around her, pressing her
against him, is body hard and hot, and she felt another pang of desire. This
time she nipped at him, biting at the skin where his shoulder curved into his
neck.
Everything went topsy-turvy. Jem made a sound low in his
throat and suddenly they were on the floor and she was on top of him, his body cushioning
her fall. She stared down at him in astonishment. “What happened?”
He looked bewildered as well. “I couldn’t stand up any
more.”
Her chest filled with warmth. It had been so long that
she had nearly forgotten the feeling of kissing someone so hard that your knees
went weak herself. He pushed himself up on his elbows. “Tessa—“
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said firmly, cupping his face in
her hands. “Nothing. Understand?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you trip me?”
She laughed; her heart was still pounding away, giddy
with joy and relief and terror all at the same time. But she had looked at him
before, had seen the way he glanced at her hair when it was down, had felt his
fingers in it, tentatively stroking, when he had kissed her on the bridge. She
reached up and pulled the pins out of it, throwing them across the room.
Her hair fountained down, spilling over her shoulders,
down to her waist. She leaned forward so that it brushed across his face, his
bare chest.
“Do you care?” she whispered.
“As it develops,” he said, against her mouth, “I don’t
care. I find I prefer to be reclining.”
She laughed and ran her hand down and down his body. He
twisted, arching up into her touch. “For an antique,” she murmured, “you would
fetch quite a price at Sotheby’s. All your parts are quite in working order.”
His pupils dilated and then he laughed, his warm breath
gusting across her cheek. “I have forgotten what it is like to be teased, I
think,” he said. “No one teases Silent Brothers.”
She had taken advantage of his distraction to rid him of
his jeans. There was distractingly little clothing between them now. “You’re
not in the Brotherhood any longer,” she said, stroking her fingers across his
stomach, the fine hair there just below his navel, his smooth bare chest. “And
I would be very disappointed if you remained silent.”
He reached for her blindly and drew her down. His hands
buried themselves in her hair. And they were kissing again, her knees on either
side of his hips, her palms braced against his chest. His hands ran through her
hair again and again, and each time she could feel his body strain up toward
hers, his lips pressing against her own harder. They weren’t savage kisses, not
now: they were decadent, growing in intensity and fervor each time they drew apart
and came together again.
He put his hands to the laces of her corset and tugged at
them. She moved to show him that it also fastened down her chest, but he had
already reached around to grip the material. “My apologies,” he said, “to
antiquity,” and then, in a most un-Jem-like fashion, ripped the corset open
down the front and cast it aside. Underneath was her chemise, which she pulled
up and over her head and dropped to the side.
Then she took a deep breath. She was naked in front of
him now, as she never had been before.
* * *
Jem had the feeling that later his hands would sting, but
at the moment, he could feel nothing but Tessa. She was sitting astride his
hips, her eyes wide, her hair pouring down over her bare shoulders and breasts.
She looked like Venus rising out of the waves, with only the jade pendant to
cover her, shining against her skin.
“I think,” she said, her voice gone high and breathy,
“that I need you to kiss me now.”
He reached up to draw her down, catching hold of her
slender shoulders. He rolled them over so that he was on top of her, balanced
on his elbows, careful of his weight. But she didn’t seem to mind. She adjusted
herself under him, curving her body to fit his own. The softness of her breasts
pressed against his chest and the hollow of her hips was a cup to hold him and
her bare toes ran down his jean-clad calves.
He made a dark, needy sound low in his throat, a sound he
barely recognized as coming from himself. A sound that made Tessa’s pupils expand,
her breath come quickly. “Jem,” she said, “please, Jem,” and she turned her
head to the side, pillowing her cheek on her unbound hair.
He bent over her. This much they had done together,
before. This much he remembered. That she liked to be kissed in a line down her
throat, and that if he followed the shape of her collarbone with his mouth she
would cry out and dig her hands into his back. And if he had been terrified of
what came next—not knowing what to do, or how to please her—it was washed away in
the rush of her responsiveness: her soft cries as he ran his hands down her
legs and kissed her chest and stomach.
“My Jem,” she whispered as he kissed her. “James
Carstairs. Ke Jian Ming.”
No one had called him by his birth name in over half a
century. It was as intimate as a touch.
He wasn’t entirely sure how the rest of their clothes
were discarded, only that somehow they were lying on the wrecked remnants of
her silk dress and petticoats. Tessa was not soft and pliant under him as he
had long ago imagined but responsive and demanding, lifting her face to be
kissed over and over, running her hands over him, each brush of her fingers
igniting sparks in nerve endings he had feared long dead.
It was so much better than he had imagined. He
was surrounded by her, her smell of rosewater soap and her soft skin and her
implicit trust. It was not only that she trusted him not to hurt her; it was
more than that. She trusted that his inexperience would not matter, that
nothing mattered except that it was the two of them and they had always sought
to make the other one happy. When he faltered and said, “Tessa, I don’t know
how to—“ she whispered against his mouth and placed his hands where they should
go.
A sort of lessoning, but the gentlest he had ever received,
and the best. He had not quite ever imagined this, that their responses would
be mirrored, that her pleasure would magnify his own. That when he slid his
hands up her legs she would wrap them around his waist of her own accord. That
every thought would flee from his head except for the feel of her under him and
then around him as she guided him to where he needed to be.
He heard himself cry out as if from a distance as he
buried himself in her. “Tessa.” He clutched at her shoulders as if he could
grasp the last shreds of his control. “Tessa, oh God, Tessa, Tessa.”
Coherency had left him completely. He said something else as well, not in
English any more, he didn’t know what, and he felt her tighten her arms around
him.
He was breathing in gasps. His eyes were closed; light
blazing behind his lids. So much light. He struggled for the shreds of his
control, not wanting it to be over, not yet. He heard Tessa’s voice, whispering
his name; they were so close, closer than he had ever believed possible. Her hands
slid down his body to grasp at his waist. There was a thin line of
concentration between her eyebrows; her cheeks were bright scarlet, and when
she tried to say his name again, a ragged gasp swallowed it up. One of her
hands flew to her mouth and she bit down hard on her fingers as her body
tightened around him.
It was like a match to tinder. The last shred of his
control evaporated. He buried his face against her neck as the light behind his
eyes fractured into kaleidoscopic colors. He had carried the darkness of the
Silent City with him even when he had left the Brotherhood. And now she had
opened his soul and let in the light, and it was brilliant.
He had never imagined this. He had never even imagined
imagining this.
When he came back to himself, he found he was still
gripping her tightly, his head bowed down on her shoulder. She was breathing
softly and regularly, her hand in his hair, stroking, murmuring his name.
He drew away from her reluctantly, rolling to arrange
them so that they were lying face to face. Most of the daylight was gone; they
looked at each other in a dim twilight that softened all harsh edges. His heart
was beating hard as he reached out to swipe his thumb across her lower lip.
“Are you all right?” he said, hoarsely. “Was that—“ He
broke off, realizing to his horror that the brilliance in her eyes was tears.
One rolled down her cheek, unchecked.
“Tessa?” He could hear the panic in his own voice. She
gave him a quick, trembling smile, but then that was Tessa. She would never
show disappointment. What if it had been awful for her? He had thought it was
amazing, perfect; he had thought his body would break in pieces from feeling so
much bliss at once. And he had thought she had responded, but what did he know?
He cursed his own inexperience, his hubris, and his pride. What had made him
think he could—
She sat up, leaning over the coffee table, her hands
doing something he couldn’t see. Her unclothed body was outlined in the
twilight, unbearably beautiful. He watched her with his heart stuttering. Any
moment now she would stand up and pull on her clothes, would tell him that she
loved him, loved him always but not that way. That theirs was not a
passion, but a friendship.
And he had told himself that he could bear that, before
he had come to the bridge to confess himself. He had told himself that he could
take her friendship and nothing else, that it was better than not being near
her at all.
But now that he knew, now that they had shared
their breath and bodies and souls, he could no longer step back. To be only her
friend, never to touch her again, would tear him into a million pieces. It
would be more agony than the heavenly fire had ever been.
“Jem?” she said. “Jem, you are a thousand miles away!”
She had wrapped a folded gray throw from the couch around herself; she sat down
beside him; the tears were gone and she was warm and smiling. “Honestly, if
what we just did didn’t get your attention, I don’t know what would.”
He stared at her. “But you were crying,” he said,
finally.
She looked at him quizzically. “Because I am happy.
Because that was wonderful.”
He expelled his breath in a rush of relief. “So it was—that
was all right? I could get better, we could practice—“
He realized what he’d just said, and clamped his mouth
shut.
A wicked grin spread over her face. “Oh, we will
practice,” she said. “As soon as you’re ready.”
“I have no other appointments this evening,” he said
gravely.
She blushed. “Your body may need time to—to recover.”
“No,” he said, and this time he allowed himself a small
tinge of smugness. “No, I don’t think so.”
She blushed even harder. He loved making her blush; he
always had. “Well, I need five minutes, at least!” she said. “And I
need you to see this. Please?”
She held out a piece of paper to him. Her expression was
surprisingly grave; it wiped his smugness away, and his desire to tease her,
too. Not daring to speak, he took the paper from her and unfolded it.
She cleared her throat. “I may have been joking, earlier,”
she said, “when I said I owned this flat under the name of Bedelia Codfish.”
He stared down at the deed to the flat on Queen’s Gate.
It was made out in Tessa’s name, or something like it. Not Tessa Gray, however,
or even Tessa Herondale. It was made out in the name of Tessa Herondale
Carstairs.
“When I spoke to Magnus in Idris, after the Mortal War,”
she said, “he told me that he’d dreamed that you were cured. You know how
Magnus is. Sometimes his dreams are true. So I allowed myself to hope for the
first time in a long time. I knew it was unlikely, if not impossible. I knew it
might be many years. But you asked me to marry you, once, a long time ago. And
in a way, this is our wedding night. A long-delayed consummation.” She smiled
at him, biting her lip, clearly nervous. He fingers worked at the blanket she
held around herself. “I shouldn’t have borrowed your name, perhaps, but I have
always felt in my blood that we were family.”
“Tessa Herondale Carstairs,” he whispered. “You should
never worry about borrowing my name when you know that you can have it to
keep.”
He let the paper slip out of his hand and reached for
her. She tipped into his lap and he held her hard, against the choking
sensation in his own throat.
She had never given up on him. He remembered saying to
Will once that he had given him faith, when Will had none in himself. He had
always hoped for better for Will, even when Will did not hope for himself. And
Tessa had done that for him. He had long ago despaired of a cure, but she—she
had always hoped.
“Mizpah, Tessa,” he whispered. “In truth, for
surely God was looking out for us while we were parted from one another. And he
has looked out for us while we both have been parted from Will and brought us
back to each other.”
* * *
They slept, curled together, on the ruin of Tessa’s
dress, and later moved to the couch. It was quite dark, and they drank cold tea
and made love again, this time more gently and slowly until Tessa was clutching
at Jem’s shoulders and begging him to go faster. “Dolcissimo, not appasionato,”
he said with a smile of pure tormenting amusement.
“Oh?” She reached down and did something with her hand
that he was clearly not prepared for. His whole body tensed. She giggled as his
hands clawed suddenly at her waist, fingers digging in. His dark hair hung in
his eyes; his skin shone with sweat. Earlier, she had closed her own eyes: this
time she watched him, the change in his expression as his control broke, the
shape of his mouth as he gasped her name.
“Tessa—”
And this time, she forgot to bite on her hand to muffle
the sounds she made. Oh, well. Damn the neighbors. She had been quiet
for nearly a century.
“Maybe that was more presto than I had
intended,” he said with a laugh, when they were lying together afterward,
wedged among the cushions. “But then, you cheated. You are more
experienced than I am.”
“I like it.” Tessa kissed his fingers. “I am going to
have a great deal of fun introducing you to everything. I can’t wait for you to
hear rock and roll music, Jem Carstairs. And I want to see you use an iPhone.
And a computer. And ride the Tube. Have you been in an airplane? I want to be
in an airplane with you.”
Jem was still laughing. His hair was a terrific mess, and
his eyes were dark and shining in the lamplight. He looked like the boy he had
been, so many years ago, but different, too: this was a Jem Tessa had only just
begun to know. A young, healthy Jem, not a dying boy or a Silent Brother. A Jem
who could love her with all his strength as she would love him back.
“We’ll take an airplane,” he said. “Maybe to Los
Angeles.”
She smiled. She knew why they had to be there.
“We have time to do everything,” he said, tracing one of
his fingers down the side of her face. “We have forever.”
Not forever, Tessa thought. They had a long, long time. A
lifetime. His lifetime. And she would lose him one day, as she had lost Will,
and her heart would break, as it had broken before. And she would put herself
back together and go on, because the memory of having had Jem would be better
than never having had him at all.
She was wise enough to know that, now.
“What you said before,” she asked. “That Jace Herondale
loves Clarissa Fairchild more than anyone you’ve ever known except someone—you
never finished the sentence. Who was it?”
“I was going to say you and me and Will,” he said. “But—that’s
rather a strange thing to say, isn’t it?”
“Not strange at all.” She cuddled in close against his
side. “Exactly right. Ever and always, exactly right.”
* * *
The end and the beginning.
