Gift of the Black Tome

The Ocean

Blue eyes that hadn't moved for nearly a century snapped open. Long lashes brushed against pale cheekbones, and long-fingered hands braced against the lid of a coffin.

In rushed the seawater.

The corpse—no, not a corpse, not anymore, he was too alive, too bright and fierce to be dead any longer—resisted the urge to gasp for air, shutting his eyes tightly. London had made his swimming skills rusty, but he recalled how, recalled Welsh lakes and pools he had swum in years before life became something he hated, and then something he could not have, and then something he felt he would only experience in its true glory by having the people he loved at his side.

Perhaps he should've swum naked in the Thames, if only for Tessa's amusement. And Jem's. And to hone his skills, of course. The former corpse shook his head slowly in the water, striking out blindly towards the surface, hands clawing at the salt water like a demon clawed at the earth.

He broke it, and breathed air for the first time in seventy-nine years. The man—boy, really, his rebirth had turned back the clock until he was barely twenty—floundered in the heaving waves, rain and sea-spray soaking his face further.

Rain, sea-spray, and tears.

He had seen Tessa and Jem last on Blackfriar's Bridge, but wherever they were now...he would find them. He had to.

The black-haired man started swimming towards the shore, driven by an iron will, a fierce burning inside of him that drowned out the battering of the waves and the rolling of the thunder. Hours later, he staggered into the shore.

Black hair long and damp, clothes tattered and sticking to his body, soaking wet and barefoot, blue eyes blazing like a night sky in Hell, he stared up at the sky, the gray of it, the lightning flashes. Anyone who saw him would've seen a monster, a man who climbed out of the sea.

But he didn't care.

There were two people he had to find, and find them he would.

William Herondale placed a hand over the parabatai rune, which had sparked back to glorious life, before touching his marriage rune (set me as a seal upon thine heart).

My Tess, Jem....erochmai.

I am coming.

And I will never leave you again.

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1878 Cadair Lane, Los Angeles

Tessa had always thought that their street address was quite ironic, considering her past—the past she shared with the man sleeping beside her. The brunette sighed, shaking her head slowly. She had always found storms soothing, but tonight...something felt different. There was a tingling in her skin, on the only rune she'd ever been able to bear, and she feared it and the wild hopes it brought.

Foolishness, she thought bitterly. This is foolishness. She pressed her hands against her eyes, trying the prevent the pressure behind them from coming out.

When Tessa was certain her tears would not fall, she tucked herself into bed beside Jem, falling asleep almost immediately.