I love you.
A nd I don’t want to lose you.
I don’t want to lose you, either, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Lassitude rose up instead, in a dark wave, and covered her in silence.
Darkness.
It was dark in the cell, and Tessa was conscious first of a feeling of great loneliness and terror. Jessamine lay in the narrow bed, her fair hair hanging in lank ropes over her shoulders. Tessa both hovered over her and felt somehow as if she were touching her mind. She could feel a great aching sense of loss. Somehow Jessamine knew that Nate was dead. Before, when Tessa had tried to touch the other girl’s mind, she had met resistance, but now she felt only a growing sadness, like the stain of a drop of black ink spreading through water.
Jessie’s brown eyes were open, staring up into the darkness. I have nothing. The words were as clear as a bell in Tessa’s mind. I chose Nate over the Shadowhunters, and now he is dead, and Mortmain wil want me dead as wel , and Charlotte despises me. I have gambled and lost everything.
A s Tessa watched, Jessamine reached up and drew a small cord from her neck over her head. A t the end of the cord was a gold ring with a glittering white stone—a diamond. Clasping it between her fingers, she began to use the diamond to scratch letters into the stone wall.
JG.
Jessamine Gray.
There might have been more to the message, but Tessa would never find out; as Jessamine pressed down on the gemstone, it shattered, and her hand slammed against the wall, scraping her knuckles.
Tessa did not need to touch Jessamine’s mind to know what she was thinking. Even the diamond had not been real. With a low cry Jessamine rolled over and buried her face in the rough blankets of the bed.
When Tessa woke again, it was dark. Faint starlight streamed through the high infirmary windows, and there was a witchlight lamp lit on the table near her bed. Beside it was a cup of tisane, steam rising from it, and a smal plate of biscuits. She rose to a sitting position, about to reach for the cup—and froze.
Wil was seated on the bed beside hers, wearing a loose shirt and trousers and a black dressing gown. His skin was pale in the starlight, but even the light’s dimness couldn’t wash out the blue of his eyes. “Wil ,” she said, startled, “what are you doing awake?” Had he been watching her sleep, she wondered? But what an odd and un-Wil -like thing to do.
“I brought you a tisane,” he said, a little stiffly. “But you sounded as if you were having a nightmare.”
“Did I? I don’t even remember what I dreamed.” She drew the covers up over herself, though her modest nightgown more than covered her. “I thought I had been escaping into sleep—that real life was the nightmare and that sleep was where I could find peace.”
Wil picked up the mug and moved to sit beside her on the bed. “Here. Drink this.”
She took the cup from him obediently. The tisane had a bitter but appealing taste, like the zest of a lemon. “What wil it do?” she asked.
“Calm you,” said Wil .
She looked at him, the taste of lemon in her mouth. There seemed a haze across her vision; seen through it, Wil looked like something out of a dream. “How are your injuries? Are you in pain?”
He shook his head. “Once al the metal was out, they were able to use an iratze on me,” he said. “The wounds are not completely healed, but they are healing. By tomorrow they wil be scars.”
“I am jealous.” She took another sip of the tisane. It was beginning to make her feel light-headed. She touched the bandage across her forehead.
“I believe it wil be a good while before this comes off.”
“In the meantime you can enjoy looking like a pirate.”
She laughed, but it was shaky. Wil was close enough to her that she could feel the heat emanating from his body. He was furnace-hot. “Do you have a fever?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“The iratze raises our body temperatures. It’s part of the healing process.”
“Oh,” she said. Having him so close to her was sending little shivers through her nerves, but she felt too light-headed to draw away.
“I am sorry about your brother,” he said softly, his breath stirring her hair.
“You couldn’t be.” She spoke bitterly. “I know you think he deserved what he got. He probably did.”
“My sister died. She died, and there was nothing I could do about it,” he said, and there was raw grief in his voice. “I am sorry about your brother.”
She looked up at him. His eyes, wide and blue, that perfect face, the bow-shape of his mouth, turned down at the corners in concern. Concern for her. Her skin felt hot and tight, her head light and airy, as if she were floating. “Wil ,” she whispered. “Wil , I feel very odd.”