Wil took a surprised step backward. His voice, when he spoke, was throaty and low. “But last night? In the infirmary? I—you embraced me—”
I did? With an acute shock she realized that what she had taken for a dream had been no dream after al . Or was he lying? But no. There was no manner in which he could have known what she had dreamed.
“I . . .” Her words stumbled over themselves. “I thought I was dreaming . . .”
The hazy look of desire was fast vanishing from his eyes, replaced by hurt and confusion. He almost stammered: “But even today. I thought you— you said you were as eager to be alone with me as I was—”
“I imagined you wanted an apology! You saved my life at the tea warehouse, and I am grateful, Wil . I thought you wanted me to tel you that—”
Wil looked as if she had slapped him. “I didn’t save your life so you’d be grateful!”
“Then, what?” Her voice rose. “You did it because it’s your mandate? Because the Law says—”
“I did it because I love you!” he half-shouted, and then, as if registering the shocked look on her face, he said in a more subdued voice, “I love you, Tessa, and I have loved you, almost since the moment I met you.”
Tessa laced her hands together. They were icy cold. “I thought you couldn’t be crueler than you were on the roof that day. I was wrong. This is crueler.”
Wil stood motionless. Then he shook his head slowly, from side to side, like a patient denying the deadly diagnosis of a physician. “You . . . don’t believe me?”
“Of course I don’t believe you. After the things you said, the way you’ve treated me—”
“I had to,” he said. “I had no choice. Tessa, listen.” She began to move toward the door; he scrambled to block her way, his blue eyes burning.
“Please listen. Please.”
Tessa hesitated. The way he said “please” —the catch in his voice—this was not like it had been on the roof. Then he had barely been able to look at her. Now he was staring at her desperately, as if he could wil her to remain with desire alone. The voice that cried within her that he would hurt her, that he was not sincere, grew softer, buried under an ever loudening treacherous voice that told her to stay. To hear him out.
“Tessa.” Wil pushed his hands through his black hair, his slim fingers trembling with agitation. Tessa remembered what it was like to touch that hair, to have her fingers wound through it, like rough silk against her skin. “What I am going to tel you I have never told another living soul but Magnus, and that was only because I needed his help. I have not even told Jem.” Wil took a deep breath. “When I was twelve, living with my parents in Wales, I found a Pyxis in my father’s office.”
She was not sure what she had expected Wil to say, but this was not it. “A Pyxis? But why would your father keep a Pyxis?”
“A memento from his Shadowhunting days? Who can guess? But do you recal the Codex discussing curses and how they can be cast? Wel , when I opened the box, I released a demon—Marbas—who cursed me. He swore that anyone who loved me was doomed to die. I might not have believed it—I was not wel schooled in magic—but my elder sister died that night, horribly. I thought it was the beginning of the curse. I fled my family and came here. It seemed to me the only way to keep them safe, not to bring them death on death. I did not realize at first that I was walking into a second family. Henry, Charlotte, even bloody Jessamine—I had to make sure that no one here could ever love me. To do so, I thought, would be to put them into deadly danger. For years I have held everyone at arm’s length—everyone I could not push away entirely.”
Tessa stared at him. The words echoed in her head. Held everyone at arm’s length—pushed everyone away— She thought of his lies, his hiding, the unpleasantness to Charlotte and Henry, the cruelties that seemed forced, even the story of Tatiana, who had only loved him the way little girls did, and whose affections he had crushed. And then there was . . . “Jem,” she whispered.
He looked at her miserably. “Jem is different,” he whispered.
“Jem is dying. You let Jem in because he was already near death? You thought the curse wouldn’t affect him?”
“And with every year that passed, and he survived, that seemed more likely. I thought I could learn to live like this. I thought when Jem was gone, after I turned eighteen, I’d go live by myself, not inflict myself or my curse on anyone—and then everything changed. Because of you.”
“Me?” said Tessa in a quiet, stunned voice.
The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “When I first met you, I thought you were unlike anyone else I had ever known. You made me laugh. No one but Jem has made me laugh in, good God, five years. And you did it like it was nothing, like breathing.”