The Good Storm #5
Tessa wanted to scream. She was sure he hadn’t wished to forget as much as he had, only to forget what Madame Dorothea had told him about Ella. But how could she convince Will of that when he didn’t even remember making the wish at all?
Gently, Zachariah said, I will change nothing about your memories, Will. Let me simply see what has been done to your mind. I promise, I will do nothing else.
Will looked as if he wanted to protest, but his gaze never left Jem’s face. As if there remained something in Will that told him to trust Jem. Something that recognized a piece of his soul, even if he could not consciously recall it.
Slowly, Will nodded. And Jem came over to him, and laid his slender, runed fingers against Will’s temple.
For a long moment, the three of them stood motionless and silent. Only Will’s eyes moved, roving over Zachariah’s face with a sort of puzzlement, as if he were trying hard to place him. At last, Zachariah drew his hand back, and spoke silently to Tessa alone:
The wish he made was to forget all pain, and so he no longer remembers anything associated with pain. Not you, for he remembers the pain of knowing he could never be with you. And not me, because of all that has happened to separate us.
“What is it?” Will said. “What did you see?”
Zachariah said, You made a wish to forget a painful incident, and you have forgotten more than just that.
Will’s eyes flashed. “I made a wish and that was what I used it on? Why didn’t I wish for a hundred trained puppies that respond only to my commands?”
At another time, Tessa would have laughed—Will could always make her laugh. Instead, she smiled faintly at him. “I suppose you must have had your reasons.”
It is time. I must go, Zachariah said, so suddenly it jolted Tessa. He walked out of the bedroom, leaving Will looking even more puzzled.
Tessa hurried after Zachariah. She caught up with him at the front door, barely restraining herself from catching at his arm to hold him back. He was a Silent Brother now, she reminded herself. She could not touch him like that, as if he were still her Jem.
“Please,” she said. “What do I do?”
Zachariah stopped, his hand on the doorknob. His face turned away from Tessa’s, he said, This is warlock magic, and of a type that must be undone by a warlock. But he made this wish freely, Tessa. This was his choice.
“It can’t be what he would have wanted,” Tessa said.
I, too, would prefer to think it is not, he said, somewhat surprising her.
Silent Brothers rarely spoke of their wishes or preferences.
But there was a faint undercurrent of pain in Zachariah’s silent voice that reminded Tessa of the ways in which he was not like the others.
It pains me that he does not recall me too, Tessa.
“I am sorry,” Tessa whispered. “If only he had merely wished to forget Ella.”
Zachariah opened the door before turning to her one last time.
It might not have helped if he had. Those foundational losses have a way of touching everything.
Sorrow and joy are linked with loss and contentment.
A Will Herondale who forgot any part of his past would not really be Will.
That I know. But, Tessa, there are many things I have never doubted about Will, and one is how much he loves you.
Here you are in Paris, on your honeymoon.
Maybe you can remind him that without his past losses he would not have his present happiness. If anyone can do it, it will be you.
—
Remind him of his present happiness, Tessa thought, straightening her hat.
It was a blue day, with a cool wind blowing, and she’d decided there was no point in continuing to lurk about the Meurice.
If reminding Will that he would be happier if he remembered everything in his life, not just parts of it, was the goal, it would not be accomplished in their hotel rooms.
They had walked down the Rivoli, back to the Place Vend?me and its shops.
Tessa glanced at Will, who was looking curiously into the window of a watchmaker.
He certainly seemed freed from the melancholy that had plagued him the day before.
His eyes were bright as he looked around at everything, as if the world puzzled and pleased him in equal measure.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the mechanism of a watch, laid out on display. “Such delicate workmanship.”
Tessa, who still shuddered a bit at the sight of gears, glanced up at him. “Do you remember the London Institute?” she said, deciding she might as well be straightforward. “What about Charlotte and Jessamine?”
“Of course I remember the Institute,” he said. “And Charlotte. I don’t recall a Jessamine, but—” He smiled crookedly. “I do recall something about jam tarts.”
“Yes,” Tessa said eagerly. “Agatha made them.”
Will shook his head. He began to walk again, and Tessa paced beside him. “I don’t remember Agatha. I do remember Bridget,” he added. “Are you sure it wasn’t Bridget?”
“I’m sure,” Tessa said. They had passed out of the square and onto the Rue de Castiglione. She could see the green fringe of the Tuileries Garden up ahead of them.
“So we got married, you and I,” Will said, glancing down at her as they crossed the street. “We must have been in love.”
His voice went up at the end of the statement—it was clearly a question. Were we in love? Tessa felt her heart cracking. “We went through a lot together,” she said. “Good and bad.”
“So it was more of a shared friendship? Warm feelings, but not romance?” Will actually sounded disappointed. Tessa thought of the other night, in the hotel bedroom, and felt her cheeks turn red.
“Certainly not,” she said.
She thought she saw Will smile. “All right. When did I ask you to marry me?”
They had reached the garden. Standing among the windblown greenery, Tessa closed her eyes. She thought of a cold night, of snow falling white and crisp and perfect, of the stars visible above, where the clouds parted. Of the music that poured from the Institute.
“At the London Institute,” she told him now, her voice whipped away by the wind, “at Christmas. You said that I should marry you and stay with you and never leave you, for you could not bear another day of your life to go by that did not have me in it.”
Will took her hands in his. Passersby parted around them, hurrying past what must have seemed like just another pair of lovers in Paris.
Tessa paid them no heed. She was looking up into Will’s face, seeing every part of it that was beloved to her: every curve and angle, every scar.
“Those words,” he said. “It is as if I am hearing them not with my ears, but with my heart. I know that I love you—I feel that I love you, and yet there is so much I cannot remember. Our first kiss…”
His voice trailed off, his blue eyes troubled.
“This memory spell,” Tessa said, “it can be removed, with the help of a warlock. Please, Will. I know this is not at all what you would have wanted. It is not only me you have forgotten, but so much that is precious to you.”
He held her hands tighter. “Yet I wished to forget,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me what I wanted to erase from my mind.”
“But it won’t mean anything to you,” Tessa cried. “I can tell you that you forgot Ella, your sister. Your sister, Will. And Jem, your parabatai.”
“I have a parabatai rune,” Will said quietly. “But it is white. A scar. My parabatai is dead?”
The question hit like a blow. “Not exactly—”
“But I lost him,” Will said. “There was some separation. I know that much, just from the look on your face. I want to remember you, Tessa Gray. But I am terrified of what else there might be that I have forgotten. What kind of pain I felt that I could not bear to the extent that I wished it away. My sister—”
“Is dead, yes. I can only tell you, Will, that you were still happy. Even having lost what you lost, you were happy.”
“I want to believe that.” He folded her hands inside his own, trapping them between his palms. “I want to believe you. I just—” He glanced away, up at the darkening sky. “Let me have tonight, at least, to decide. Let us do something Parisian and romantic, as any wedded pair might do.”
Tessa took a deep breath, inhaling past the pain lodged in her chest. “What sort of thing?”
Will was still gazing at the sky. “The opera,” he said. “I have always wanted to go to the opera in Paris, I think.”
That was Jem’s wish, not yours. If you wanted to go, it was to accompany him, and see how much he enjoyed the music.
But Tessa only nodded slowly. A plan had begun to form in her mind, born out of desperation. A plan that depended on her knowledge of Will and of his heart. Even if his mind had changed, his soul, she felt, had not.
“All right,” she said. “Let us go to the opera.”
—
They made their way back to the hotel quickly and in silence, hurrying to return before the sun set. Upon reaching the lobby, as they crossed the parquet floor to the grand staircase, Tessa caught sight of a familiar sign.
THE WORLD BEYOND?
Tonight, for the special pleasure of our guests, the MEURICE is hosting A GREAT SéANCE, led by the famed Madame Dorothea…
Tessa drew her hand out of Will’s. “Go on upstairs,” she said. “I must fetch a new book from the reading room. I shall meet you in the suite, in a moment.”
Will assented with a lack of surprise that told Tessa that even if he did not remember her specifically, he entirely expected that he would have married someone who enjoyed books.
He took himself off upstairs with only a quick reminder that the maid would arrive in their suite soon, to help Tessa get ready for the opera.
Tessa made her way to the reading room. She found the door closed, but eased it open as quietly as she could, her pulse jumping as she peered into the gloom beyond and saw Madame Dorothea moving about.