Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

She remembered the spilling cold of that blue ocean all around her. The taste of salt water and demon blood. The feeling that the water was pressing her down, crushing her bones.

And the worst part, the fear that once her parents had felt the same pain, the same panic.

She thought of Julian then. The way he had looked in the dining room. The strain in his voice as he'd stood there telling her and Mark everything he'd done for the past five years.

"Emma?"

Emma half-turned and saw Perfect Diego coming down the steps. He looked immaculate, despite the night they'd had, even his boots polished. His dark brown hair was thick and fell charmingly over one of his eyes. He looked a bit like a prince in a fairy-tale book.

She thought of Julian again. His untidy hair, his bitten nails, his dusty boots, the paint on his hands.

"Hey, Perfect Diego," she said.

"I wish you wouldn't call me that."

"You wish in vain," Emma said. "Where are you going? Is Cristina all right?"

"She's asleep." Perfect Diego looked out at the ocean. "It's very beautiful here. You must find it peaceful."

"And you must be kidding."

He flashed a fairly perfect smile. "You know, when there aren't murders happening and small armies surrounding the place."

"Where are you going?" Emma asked again. "It's practically dawn."

"I know the cave will not be open, but I am going to the convergence site to see it for myself. The demons should have disbanded by now. I want to take another look around the area, see if there is anything you missed."

"You are just bursting with tact, aren't you?" Emma said. "Fine. Go ahead. See what we all missed while we were nearly being cut to pieces by giant grasshopper demons."

"Mantids aren't technically grasshoppers--"

Emma glared. Diego shrugged and jogged to the foot of the steps. He paused there and looked back over his shoulder at her.

"Does anyone else in the Clave know about your investigation?" he said. "Anyone but your family?"

"Just Diana," said Emma.

"Diana is your tutor?" When Emma nodded, he frowned. "Weren't Jace Herondale and the Lightwoods betrayed by their own tutor?"

"She'd never betray us," Emma said, outraged. "Not to the Clave or to anyone else. Hodge Starkweather was different."

"Different how?"

"Starkweather wasn't Diana. He was a minion of Valentine's. Diana is a good person."

"So where is she now?" Diego asked. "I'd like to meet her."

Emma hesitated. "She . . ."

"She's in Thailand," said a voice from behind them. It was Julian. He'd shrugged on a hooded army jacket over his jeans and T-shirt. "There was a witch there she wanted to question about energy spells. Someone she knew when she was younger." He paused. "We can trust her."

Diego inclined his head. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise."

Julian leaned against one of the pillars, and he and Emma watched as Diego strode away across the trampled grass and headed down the road. The moon had disappeared entirely and the eastern sky was beginning to turn pink.

"What are you doing out here?" Julian said finally in a quiet voice.

"I couldn't sleep," said Emma.

Julian had his head tipped back, as if he were bathing in the dim illumination of the dawn. The strange light made him into something else, someone made out of marble and silver, someone whose inky curls clung to his temples and neck like the acanthus leaves in Greek art.

He wasn't perfect, like Diego, but to Emma, there had never been anyone more beautiful.

"We're going to have to talk about this eventually," she said. "What you told me and Mark."

"I know." He looked down at his long legs, the frayed hems of his jeans, his boots. "I had hoped--I suppose I'd hoped it would never happen, or that at least we'd be adults when it did."

"So let's be adults about it. Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Do you think I liked keeping secrets from you? Do you think I didn't want to tell you?"

"If you'd wanted to, you could have."

"No, I couldn't." He spoke with a quiet despair.

"Did you not trust me? Did you think I'd tell on you?"

Julian shook his head. "That wasn't it." Enough light had spread over the landscape for the color of his eyes to be visible despite the darkness. They looked like artificially illuminated water.

Emma thought of the night Julian's mother had died. She had been ill, attended by Silent Brothers to the end. There were some diseases even Nephilim magic couldn't cure: She had cancer of the bone, and it had killed her.

Andrew Blackthorn, newly widowed, had been too devastated to be the one to go to Tavvy when the baby cried in the night. Helen had been efficient: heating Tavvy's bottles, changing him, dressing him. But Julian had been the one who stayed with him during the day. While Mark and Helen trained, Julian sat in Tavvy's room and sketched or painted. Emma would sit with him there sometimes, and they would play the way they normally did, with the baby gurgling in his crib a few feet away.

At the time Emma hadn't thought much of it. She, like Julian, had been only ten years old. But she recalled it now.

"I remember when your mother died," she said. "And you took care of Tavvy during the days. I asked you why, and I remember what you said. Do you?"

"I said it was because no one else could," said Julian, looking at her quizzically. "Mark and Helen had to train. . . . My father was . . . well, you know how he was."

"Everything you've done is because no one else would or could do it. If you hadn't covered up for Arthur, no one else would even have thought of it. If you hadn't been so determined to hold everything together, no one else would have. Maybe it started back then, when you took care of Tavvy. Maybe it gave you the idea."

He exhaled. "Maybe. I don't entirely know myself."

"I still wish you'd told me. I know you thought you were being unselfish--"

"I didn't," he said.

She looked at him in surprise.

"I did it for entirely selfish reasons," he said. "You were my escape, Emma. You were my way away from everything terrible. When I was with you, I was happy."

Emma stood up. "But that can't have been the only time you were happy--"

>

"Of course I'm happy with my family," he said. "But I'm responsible for them--I was never responsible for you--we're responsible for each other; that's what parabatai means, don't you understand, Emma, you're the only one, the only one who was ever meant to look after me."

"Then I failed you," she said, feeling a bone-deep sense of disappointment with herself. "I should have known what you were going through, and I didn't--"

"Don't ever say that again!" He shoved himself away from the pillar, the rising sun, behind him, turning the edges of his hair to copper. Emma couldn't see his expression, but she knew it was furious.

Emma got to her feet. "What, that I should have known? I should have--"

"That you failed me," he said hotly. "If you knew--you've been all that's kept me going, for weeks sometimes, months. Even when I was in England, thinking of you kept me going. It's why I had to be parabatai with you--it was completely selfish--I wanted to tie you to me, no matter what, even though I knew it was a bad idea, even though I knew I--"

He broke off, a look of horror flashing across his face.

"Even though what?" Emma demanded. Her heart was pounding. "Even though what, Julian?"

He shook his head. Her hair had escaped from its ponytail and the wind was whipping it around her face, bright pale strands on the wind. He reached up to tuck one behind her ear: He looked like someone caught in a dream, trying to wake up. "It doesn't matter," he said.

"Do you love me?" Her voice was a whisper.

He wound a piece of her hair around his finger, a silver-gold ring. "What's the difference?" he asked. "It won't change anything if I do."

"It changes things," she whispered. "It changes everything for me."

"Emma," he said. "You'd better go back inside. Go to sleep. We both should. . . ."

She gritted her teeth. "If you're going to walk away from me now, you'll have to do it yourself."

He hesitated. She saw the tension in him, in his body, rise like a wave about to break.

"Walk away from me," she said harshly. "Walk away."

His tension crested and fell; something in him seemed to collapse, water breaking against rocks. "I can't," he said, his voice low and broken, "God, I can't," and he half-closed his eyes, bringing up his other hand to cradle her face. His hands slid into her hair, and he drew her toward him. She inhaled a breath of cold air and then his mouth was on hers and her senses exploded.