Wil took his hat off and laid it on the seat next to him. He looked at them both steadily for a moment, his gaze level. He was beautiful to look at as always, Tessa thought, but there seemed something gray about him, almost faded. For someone who so often seemed to burn very brightly, that light in him seemed exhausted now, as if he had been rol ing a rock up a hil like Sisyphus. “Too much to drink last night,” he said final y.
Really, why do you bother, Will? Don’t you realize we both know you’re lying? Tessa almost said, but one look at Jem stopped her. His gaze as he regarded Wil was worried—very worried indeed, though Tessa knew he did not believe Wil about the drinking, any more than she did. But, “Wel ,” was al he said, lightly, “if only there were a Rune of Sobriety.”
“Yes.” Wil looked back at him, and the strain in his expression relaxed slightly. “If we might return to discussing your plan, James. It’s a good one, save one thing.” He leaned forward. “If she is meant to be affianced to you, Tessa wil need a ring.”
“I had thought of that,” said Jem, startling Tessa, who had imagined he had come up with this Ascendant idea on the spot. He slipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a silver ring, which he held out to Tessa on his palm. It was not unlike the silver ring Wil often wore, though where Wil ’s had a design of birds in flight, this one had a careful etching of the crenel ations of a castle tower around it. “The Carstairs family ring,”
he said. “If you would . . .”
She took it from him and slipped it onto her left ring finger, where it seemed to magical y fit itself. She felt as if she ought to say something like It’s lovely, or Thank you, but of course this wasn’t a proposal, or even a gift. It was simply an acting prop. “Charlotte doesn’t wear a wedding ring,” she said. “I hadn’t realized Shadowhunters did.”
“We don’t,” said Wil . “It is customary to give a girl your family ring when you become engaged, but the actual wedding ceremony involves exchanging runes instead of rings. One on the arm, and one over the heart.”
“‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave,’” said Jem. “Song of Solomon.”
“‘Jealousy is cruel as the grave’?” Tessa raised her eyebrows. “That’s not . . . very romantic.”
“‘The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame,’” said Wil , quirking his eyebrows up. “I always thought females found the idea of jealousy romantic. Men, fighting over you . . .”
“Wel , there aren’t any graves in mundane wedding ceremonies,” said Tessa. “Though your ability to quote the Bible is impressive. Better than my aunt Harriet’s.”
“Did you hear that, James? She just compared us to her aunt Harriet.”
Jem, as always, was unruffled. “We must be on familiar terms with al religious texts,” he said. “To us they are instruction manuals.”
“So you memorize them al in school?” She realized she had seen neither Wil nor Jem at their studies since she had been at the Institute. “Or rather, when you are tutored?”
“Yes, though Charlotte’s rather fal en off in tutoring us lately, as you might imagine,” said Wil . “One either has a tutor or one is schooled in Idris— that is, until you attain your majority at eighteen. Which wil be soon, thankful y, for the both of us.”
“Which one of you is older?”
“Jem,” said Wil , and “I am,” said Jem, at the same time. They laughed in unison as wel , and Wil added, “Only by three months, though.”
“I knew you’d feel compel ed to point that out,” said Jem with a grin.
Tessa looked from one of them to the other. There could not be two boys who looked more different, or who had more different dispositions. And yet. “Is that what it means to be parabatai?” she said. “Finishing each other’s sentences and the like? Because there isn’t much on it in the Codex.”
Wil and Jem looked at each other. Wil shrugged first, casual y. “It is rather difficult to explain,” he said loftily. “If you haven’t experienced it—”
“I meant,” Tessa said, “you cannot—I don’t know—read each other’s minds, or the like?”
Jem made a spluttering noise. Wil ’s lambent blue eyes widened. “Read each other’s minds? Horrors, no.”
“Then, what’s the point? You swear to guard each other, I understand that, but aren’t al Shadowhunters meant to do that for each other?”
“It’s more than that,” said Jem, who had stopped spluttering and spoke somberly. “The idea of parabatai comes from an old tale, the story of Jonathan and David. ‘And it came to pass . . . that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. . . .
Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.’ They were two warriors, and their souls were knit together by Heaven, and out of that Jonathan Shadowhunter took the idea of parabatai, and encoded the ceremony into the Law.”