“I take it you did not give the matter up there.”
“No indeed,” said Edmund. “I simply lay in wait, and after a mere few days had the opportunity to follow Li—Miss Owens, and caught up with her riding in Rotten Row. I have seen her every day since then.”
“‘Follow’ her? I wonder that the lady did not alert a constable.”
The glow returned to Edmund’s face, rendering him in gold and blue and pearl again. “Linette says I am fortunate she did not.” He added, a little shyly, “We are engaged to be married.”
That was news indeed. The Nephilim generally married among themselves, an aristocracy based on their belief in their own sanctity. Any prospective mundane bride or bridegroom would be expected to drink from the Mortal Cup and be transformed through dangerous alchemy into one of the Angel’s own. It was not a transformation that all survived.
“Congratulations,” said Magnus, and he kept his concerns locked in his own bosom. “I presume Miss Owens will soon Ascend?”
Edmund took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “She will not.”
“Oh,” said Magnus, understanding at last.
Edmund looked down at the box he held in his hands. It was a simple wooden affair, with the symbol for infinity drawn upon the side in what looked like burned match. “This is a Pyxis,” he said. “It holds within it the spirit of the first demon I ever slew. I was fourteen years old, and it was the day when I knew what I was born to do, what I was born to be—a Shadowhunter.”
Magnus looked at Edmund’s bowed head, his scarred warrior’s hands clenched on the small box, and could not help the sympathy kindling within him.
Edmund spoke, in a confessional stream to his own soul and to the only person he knew who might listen and not think Edmund’s love was blasphemy. “Linette thinks it her duty and her calling to care for the people on her estate. She does not wish to be a Shadowhunter. And I—I would not wish it, or ask it of her. Men and women perish in attempts to Ascend. She is brave and beautiful and unwavering, and if the Law says she is not worthy exactly as she is, then the Law is a lie. I cannot believe the unfairness of it, that I have found the one woman in all the world whom I could love, and what does the Law say to this feeling that I know is sacred? In order to be with her, either I am meant to ask my dearest love to risk her life, a life that is worth more to me than my own. Or I am meant to cut away the other part of my soul—burn away my life’s purpose and all the gifts the Angel gave me.”
Magnus remembered how Edmund had looked in that gorgeous leap to attack the demon, how his whole body had changed from restless energy to absolute purpose when he saw a demon: when he threw himself into the fray with the simple, natural joy of one who was doing what he was made for.
“Did you ever want to be anything else?”
“No,” said Edmund. He stood and put a hand against the wall and raked the other hand through his hair, an angel brought to his knees, wild and bewildered by pain.
“But what of your dim view of marriage?” Magnus demanded. “What of having only one bonbon when you could have the box?”
“I was very stupid,” Edmund said, almost violently. “I thought of love as a game. It is not a game. It is more serious than death. Without Linette, I might as well be dead.”
“You speak of giving up your Shadowhunter nature,” said Magnus softly. “One can give up many things for love, but one should not give up oneself.”
“Is that so, Bane?” Edmund whirled on him. “I was born to be a warrior, and I was born to be with her. Tell me how to reconcile the two, because I cannot!”
Magnus made no answer. He was looking at Edmund and remembering when he had drunkenly thought of the Shadowhunter as a lovely ship, that might sail straight out to sea or wreck itself upon the rocks. He could see the rocks now, dark and jagged on the horizon. He saw Edmund’s future without Shadowhunting, how he would yearn for the danger and the risk. How he would find it at the gaming tables. How fragile he would always be once his sense of purpose was gone.
And then there was Linette, who had fallen in love with a golden Shadowhunter, an avenging angel. What would she think of him when he was just another Welsh farmer, all his glory stripped away?
Yet love was not something to be thrown aside lightly. It came so rarely, only a few times in a mortal life. Sometimes it came but once. Magnus could not say Edmund Herondale was wrong to seize love when he had found it.
He could think Nephilim Law was wrong for making him choose.