Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"I'm glad you're all right," he said, when she was done. His thumb brushed her cheekbone. "Though I guess if you'd been hurt--I would have known."

Emma didn't raise her hands to touch him. They were clenched into fists at her sides. She had done hard things in her life, she thought. Her years of training. Surviving her parents' deaths. Killing Malcolm.

But the look on Julian's face--open and trusting--told her that this would be the hardest thing she'd ever done.

She reached up and covered his hand with hers. Slowly she intertwined their fingers. Even more slowly, she drew his hand away from her face, trying to quiet the voice inside her head that said, This is the last time he'll ever touch you like this, the last.

They were still holding hands, but hers lay stiffly in his, a dead thing. Julian looked puzzled. "Emma--?"

"We can't do this," she said, her voice flat and uninflected. "That was what I wanted to tell you, earlier. We can't be together. Not like this."

He drew his hand out of hers. "I don't understand. What are you saying?"

I'm saying it's too late, she wanted to tell him. I'm saying the Endurance rune you gave me saved my life when Malcolm attacked me. And as grateful as I am, it shouldn't have been able to do that. I'm saying that we're already becoming what Jem was warning me about. I'm saying it isn't a matter of stopping the clock, but of making it run backward.

And for that, the clock will need to be broken.

"No kissing, no touching, no being in love, no dating. Is that clear enough for you?"

Julian did not look as if she had hit him. He was a warrior: He could take any blow, and be ready to strike back twice as hard.

It was much worse than that.

Emma wanted desperately to take back what she'd said, to tell him the truth, but Jem's words echoed in her mind.

Being told that it is forbidden does not kill love. It strengthens it.

"I don't want to have this kind of relationship," she said. "Hiding, lying, sneaking around. Don't you see? It would poison everything we have. It would kill all the good parts of being parabatai until we weren't even friends anymore."

"That doesn't have to be true." He looked sick but determined. "We only have to hide for a little while--only as long as the kids are young enough to need me--"

"Tavvy's going to need you for eight more years," said Emma, as coldly as she could. "We can't sneak around for that long."

"We could put it on hold--put us on hold--"

"I'm not going to wait." She could feel him watching her, feel the weight of his pain. She was glad she could feel it. She deserved to feel it.

"I don't believe you."

"Why would I say it if it wasn't true? It doesn't exactly paint me in the best light, Jules."

"Jules?" He choked on the word. "You're calling me that again? Like we are kids? We're not children, Emma!"

"Of course not," she said. "But we're young. We make mistakes. This thing between us, it was a mistake. The risk is too high." The words tasted bitter in her mouth. "The Law--"

"There's nothing more important than love," Julian said, in an odd, distant voice, as if he were remembering something he'd been told. "And no Law higher."

"That's easy enough to say," Emma said. "It's just that if we're going to take that kind of risk, it should be for a real, lifelong love. And I do care about you, Jules, obviously I do. I even love you. I've loved you my whole life." At least that part was true. "But I don't love you enough. It's not enough."

It's easier to end someone else's love for you than kill your love for them. Convince them that you don't love them, or that you are someone they cannot respect.

Julian was breathing hard. But his eyes, locked on hers, were steady. "I know you," he said. "I know you, Emma, and you're lying. You're trying to do what you think is right. Trying to push me away to protect me."

No, she thought desperately. Don't give me the benefit of the doubt, Julian. This has to work. It has to.

"Please don't," she said. "You were right--you and I don't make sense--Mark and I would make sense--"

Hurt bloomed across his face like a wound. Mark, she thought. Mark's name was like the sly elf-bolt he wore, able to pierce Julian's armor.

Close, she thought. I'm so close. He almost believes.

But Julian was an expert liar. And expert liars could see lies when other people told them.

"You're trying to protect the kids, too," he said. "Do you understand, Emma? I know what you're doing, and I love you for it. I love you."

"Oh, Jules," she said, in despair. "Don't you see? You're talking about us being together by running away, and I just came from Rook's. I saw Kit and what it means to live in hiding, the cost of it, not just for us, but what if we had kids someday? And we'd have to give up being what we are. I'd have to give up being a Shadowhunter. And it would kill me, Jules. It would just rip me apart."

"Then we'll figure out something else," he said. His voice sounded like sandpaper. "Something where we'll still be Shadowhunters. We'll figure it out together."

"We won't," she whispered. But his eyes were wide, imploring her to change her mind, to change her words, to put what was breaking back together.

"Emma," he said, reaching for her hand. "I will never, never give up on you."

It was a strange irony, she thought, a terrible irony that because she loved him so much and knew him so well, she knew exactly what she had to do to destroy everything he felt for her, in a single blow.

She pulled away from him and started back toward the house. "Yes," she said. "You will."

Emma didn't know quite how long she'd been sitting on her bed. The house was full of noises--she'd heard Arthur shouting something when she first came back inside, and then quiet. Kit had been put in one of the spare rooms, as he'd asked, and Ty was sitting outside of it, reading a book. She'd asked him what he was doing--guarding Kit? Guarding the Institute from Kit?--but he'd just shrugged.

Livvy was in the training room with Dru. Emma could hear their muffled voices through the floor.

She wanted Cristina. She wanted the one other person who knew how she felt about Julian, so she could cry in Cristina's arms and Cristina could tell her things were going to be all right, and that she was doing the right thing.

Though whether Cristina would ever really think that what she was doing was right, Emma wasn't sure.

But she knew in her heart it was necessary.

She heard the click of the doorknob turning and closed her eyes. She couldn't stop seeing Julian's face as she'd turned away from him.

Jules, she thought. If only you didn't believe in me, this wouldn't be necessary.

"Emma?" Mark's voice. He hovered in the doorway, very human-looking in a white henley shirt and jeans. "I just got your message. You wanted to talk?"

Emma stood up and smoothed down the dress she'd changed into. A pretty one, with yellow flowers on a brown background. "I need a favor."

His pale eyebrows went up. "Favors are no light thing to faeries."

"They are no light thing to Shadowhunters, either." She squared her shoulders. "You said you owed me. For taking care of Julian. For saving his life. You said you would do anything."

Mark crossed his arms over his chest. She could see black runes on his skin again: at his collar, at his wrists. His skin was already browner than it had been, and there was more muscle on him, now that he was eating. Shadowhunters put it on fast.

"Please continue, then," he said. "And if it is a favor in my power to grant, I will grant it."