The Good Storm #4
Will didn’t move. “I can believe she would know who I was. Even who Ella was. But how would she know about the crowberries we used to pick? The stables in Dolgellau? I never spoke of those small things, not even to Jem, or to you.”
“Then there is some other explanation. But believe me, Will—there is some other explanation.”
He brushed his dark gaze over her softly. “Perhaps,” he said. “But what could it be?”
—
Tessa fell asleep that night waiting for Will to come to bed. She meant to stay awake, to wait for him, but she had barely slept the night before. She could feel her eyelids drifting shut even as she listened to him pacing back and forth in the other room.
Will, she thought, curling around her pillow. Come to bed. Let me comfort you.
But what could she even say to him? Tessa thought.
That she loved him, of course, but this was a pain that belonged to an old wound, the loss of his sister.
That she might be somewhere in pain, suffering, adrift where he could not reach her—the idea would be torture to him.
She understood why he could not see around it or past it to the good things in his life.
And he had only just begun to recover from losing Jem…
Tessa’s eyes closed. But what if he cannot recover from this? At least he knows Jem is not suffering, but Ella…What if Will is never happy again?
The thought was so terrible, it struck her like a weight, sending her down into the darkness of sleep, as if her consciousness could not bear the pain of it.
So she did not hear Will, in the other room, as he stopped his pacing, or hear the sound of breaking glass, or see the green light that blazed momentarily beneath the bedroom door…
—
When Tessa awoke in the morning, there was sunlight streaming through the windows, and she was alone in bed. Without Will.
She sat up, a little groggy. She had not plaited her hair before bed, and it spilled down over her shoulders and back in tangles.
Not that her hair mattered at the moment; only Will mattered.
He must have fallen asleep in the other room, she thought, starting to push her covers back, or perhaps he had not slept at all—
With a gasp of surprise, she froze. Will was seated in an armchair by the nightstand—he must have brought it in from the other room—fully dressed, and gazing at her with a calm, quizzical expression.
“Will.” Tessa put her hand to her heart. “You nearly gave me a fit.”
Will tilted his head to the side. His gaze roved over her: frank, curious, exploring. It made Tessa want to blush, which was ridiculous. This was her husband, after all.
“If I may ask an impertinent question,” he said, “who exactly are you?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Tessa reached up to brush her hair back.
The tangles were getting in her eyes. “Will. Don’t be silly.
” She paused, feeling a spark of optimism.
A Will who was being silly was surely a Will who was not in despair.
She smiled at him hopefully, scooting back on the mattress to make room.
“Come to bed,” she said, wishing she had worn something prettier to sleep in than her plain white nightgown.
The familiar spark lit in his eyes, the one that seemed to deepen them to sapphire. “Believe me, I would like to,” he said, his gaze slipping over her again. “But alas, I do have morals. Terribly awkward things, morals. I feel I should at least know your name, since you know mine.”
“Will—”
“That is me,” he said agreeably. “And you are…?”
“Will, this isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t a joke,” he said. “I came into the bedroom, and there you were in the bed. I looked out the window and I realized I was in Paris.” He looked honestly puzzled. “Which is not where I live. I really have to wonder what I got up to last night. I was hoping you would know.”
Tessa’s heart had begun to beat ominously hard in her chest. “What’s the last thing you recall?”
“To be truthful, all I remember is a sense of great melancholy. Something was on my mind, but I don’t know what.
” He rose to his feet, running a hand through his tumbled dark hair.
“I suppose perhaps I was feeling so morbid I hopped a train to Paris, but I must admit, I don’t know why I’d have done that. And if I’d left the Institute…”
He broke off, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. His hand went almost automatically to the side of his throat, where his memory rune was printed starkly against his skin.
“How,” he said, carefully, “er, well, do we know each other?”
Tessa stared at him, her mouth half-open. He froze after he mentioned the Institute. He’s worried about his rune. He’s behaving as if he thinks I don’t know about Shadowhunters.
“Very well,” she said, numbly. “Very, very well.”
Will dropped his hand. “You’d think I’d remember your name.” He closed his eyes. “I recall sorrow, and a flash of green light. A spell, perhaps?” His eyes flew open. “Did you cast a spell upon me?”
A flash of green light. The terrible suspicion that had been growing within Tessa broke over her like a wave. Her heart pounding, she swung her legs out of the bed. Her nightgown slid up, and she saw Will glance at her legs—and blush.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Tessa said, furiously, leaping to her feet. She pushed past Will into the other room, where their traveling trunk lay open, its contents scattered. She knelt down among the tumbled bits of silk and linen, pushing aside a crushed hat.
Will appeared in the doorway. “If you did cast a spell on me, you might as well tell me about it. I’m very forgiving.”
Tessa ignored this. She moved aside a glove. And there it was—the glass globe Ragnor had given them, but it was no longer full of swirling green smoke. The glass had been broken, and the remainder of the globe was empty.
She picked it up, cradling it in her hand, and a flash of what felt like memory burst behind her eyes.
But it was not her memory. She saw Will, holding the globe in his hand, his eyes darkly shadowed with tired sadness.
She saw him bend his head, and heard him whisper, “I wish to forget about Ella. I wish to forget the pain.”
Oh, dear God.
Tessa dropped the globe and got to her feet. Will was still leaning in the doorway, looking bemused. Everything about him so familiar. Black hair, eyes as blue as the Atlantic, the slim, well-muscled body she knew by touch—
“Take your jacket off,” she said. “And your shirt.”
His eyebrows went up. Then he smiled, that wicked Will smile. “Well,” he said. “Since you asked so nicely.”
He shrugged the jacket off, unbuttoned the shirt under it. Beneath it, he wore a white singlet, and he glanced at her inquiringly, as if to ask, Should I remove this too?
“Look at your left arm,” Tessa said. “That mark, a handspan down from your shoulder.”
He looked—and went still. “I’m married?” he said. He tore his eyes from his Wedded Union rune, looking at Tessa in disbelief. “When did I get married? And to who?”
“To me,” Tessa said. “I am Tessa Herondale. Your wife.”
—
When the knock upon the door came, it was already afternoon.
Tessa and Will had spent an awkward day, with Will pacing restlessly around the suite of rooms, and Tessa (having gotten properly dressed, as Will said it was too distracting having a strange woman in her nightdress hanging about) alternating between being miserable on the couch and in an armchair.
She had been trying to read—The Cloven Foot, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon—but, not surprisingly, found it very hard to concentrate.
She was delighted to toss the book aside and rush to the door. When she swung it open, she felt that pressure against her heart, a combination of grief and love and wonder, that she always did when she saw Jem.
Not Jem, she reminded herself. Brother Zachariah.
He stood quietly in his ivory robes, his dark hair curling against his temples, where runes of Quietude had been inscribed. More runes marked his closed eyes. His lashes lay forever still against his cheeks, individual dark lines like the feathers of a black swan’s wing.
He looked wildly out of place in the corridor of a grand hotel. Tessa rather wondered how he’d made it to their room unseen, but Silent Brothers had their ways.
She heard his voice in her mind, a silent caress. Tessa? You called upon me?
She stepped back. “Please come in,” she said. “It’s Will.”
She led him into the drawing room, where the sofas and armchairs were. Will was there, leaning against the wall near the bookcase, looking mildly curious.
“I didn’t realize you’d ordered up a Silent Brother,” he said, with slight surprise, upon seeing Zachariah. He looked harder, narrowing his eyes. “An unusual one, at that.”
He does not remember me? Zachariah’s voice was soft in Tessa’s mind. If he was distressed, it was difficult to tell. That is troubling.
“Just—wait,” Tessa said to Will, and proceeded to tell Jem all of it: Ragnor’s gift, the séance, Madame Dorothea, Ella, Will’s wish. As she spoke, Will’s expression darkened. What a strange jumble it must seem to him, Tessa thought, of the familiar and the forgotten.
“I wished for this?” he said, when she was done, and Tessa realized that he had not even known that.
Does he recall Ella? Brother Zachariah asked.
Will’s eyes darted between Tessa and Zachariah; he could hear the Silent Brother’s voice as well as she could. He shook his head very slightly. “I do not remember an Ella.”
“I haven’t been able to bear to ask what he recalls and what he doesn’t,” Tessa whispered. “I hoped you could simply touch his mind somehow, and restore what he has forgotten.”
But Will held up a hand, his Voyance rune flashing on the back. “But I wished for this,” he said. “I must have had some reason for wanting to forget.”