“I think there is hope for you yet, Will Herondale.I will try to learn how to have it, without you to show me. Tessa, Jem said. She knows despair, and hope as well. you can teach each other. Find her, Will, and tell her that I loved her always. My blessings, for all that it is worth, is on you both.”

“Jem--Jem is all the better part of myself. I would not expect you to understand. I owe him this.""Then what am I?" Cecily asked.Will exhaled, too exasperated to check himself. "You are my weakness.""And Tessa is your heart," she said, not angrily, but thoughtfully. "Not a fool, as I told you," she added at his startled expression. I know that you love her.”

“Jem gave her a wistful look. “Must you go? I was rather hoping that you’d stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must.” “I’ll stay,” Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. “I can minister angelically.” “None too convincingly. And you’re not as pretty to look at as Tessa is,” Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow. “How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared it to gazing at the radiance of the sun.” Jem still had his eyes closed. “If they mean that it gives you a headache, they aren’t wrong.”

“And broken both your hearts? How would that have benefited me? You are as dear to me as another half of my soul, Jem. I could not be happy while you were unhappy. And Tessa—she loves you. What sort of awful monster would I be, delighting in causing the two people I love the most in the world agony simply that I might have the satisfaction of knowing that if Tessa could not be mine, she could not be anybody’s?”

“Tessa poked at her left incisor with her tongue. It was flat again, an ordinary tooth. "I don't understand what makes them come out like that!""Hunger," said Jem. "Were you think about blood?""No.""Were you thinking about eating me?" Will inquired. "No!""No one would blame you," said Jem. "He's very annoying.”

“Your place is with me,” Jem said. “It always will be.”“What do you mean?”He flushed, the color dark against his pale skin. “I mean,” he said, “Tessa Gray, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”Tessa sat bolt upright. “Jem!”They stared at each other for a moment. At last he said, trying for lightness, though his voice cracked, “That was not a no, I suppose, thoughneither was it a yes.”“You can’t mean it.”“I do mean it.”“You can’t—I’m not a Shadowhunter. They’ll expel you from the Clave—”He took a step closer to her, his eyes eager. “You may not be precisely a Shadowhunter. But you are not a mundane either, nor provably aDownworlder. Your situation is unique, so I do not know what the Clave will do. But they cannot forbid something that is not forbidden by the Law.They will have to take your—our—individual case into consideration, and that could take months. In the meantime they cannot prevent ourengagement.”“You are serious.” Her mouth was dry. “Jem, such a kindness on your part is indeed incredible. It does you credit. But I cannot let you sacrificeyourself in that way for me.”“Sacrifice? Tessa, I love you. I want to marry you.”

“The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Tessa, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Tessa with great sadness. "I tried," she said. "I tried to love you. But it isn't easy to love a child that isn't human in the least....""Not human?" said an unfamiliar female voice. "Well, if she isn't human, Enoch, what is she?" The voice sharpened in impatience. "What do you mean, you don't know? Everyone's something. This girl can't be nothing at all....”