Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"I was thinking about what you said earlier," he said. "About all the dead ends. All the times we've thought we found something that pointed toward what happened to your parents, but it was nothing."

She looked toward him. The moonlight made his profile sharp.

"I was thinking maybe there was a meaning to it," he said. "That maybe finding out who it was had to wait until now. Until you were ready. I've watched you train, I've watched you get better. And better. Whoever it is, whatever it is, you're ready now. You can face it down. You can win."

Something fluttered under Emma's rib cage. Familiarity, she thought. This was Jules, the Jules she knew, who had more faith in her than she had in herself.

"I like to think things have a point," she said softly.

"They do." He paused for a moment, eyes on the sky. "I've been counting stars. Sometimes I think it helps to set yourself a pointless task."

"Remember, when we were younger, we used to talk about running away? Navigating by the North Star?" she said. "Before the war."

He folded his arm behind his head. Moonlight spilled down, illuminating his eyelashes. "Right. I was going to run off, join the French Foreign Legion. Rename myself Julien."

"Because no one was ever going to crack that code." She tipped her head to the side. "Jules. What's bothering you? I know something is."

He was silent. Emma could see his chest rising and falling slowly. The sound of his breath was drowned out by the sound of the water.

She reached over and laid her hand against his arm, her finger tracing lightly down the skin. W-H-A-T I-S I-T?

He turned his face away from hers; she saw him shudder, as if a chill had passed over him. "It's Mark."

Julian was still looking away from her; she could see only the curve of his throat and chin. "Mark?"

"I've been thinking about him," Julian said. "More than usual. I mean, Helen is always there for me on the other end of the phone if I need her, even if she's on Wrangel Island. But Mark might as well have died."

Emma sat up straight. "Don't say that. He's not dead."

"I know. You know how I know?" Jules asked, his voice tightening. "I used to look for the Wild Hunt every night. But they never come. Statistically, they should have ridden by here at least once in the past five years. But they never have. I think Mark won't let them."

"Why not?" Emma was staring at him now. Jules hardly ever talked like this. Not with this bitterness in his voice.

"Because he doesn't want to see us. Any sign of us."

"Because he loves you?"

"Or because he hates us. I don't know." Julian dug restlessly at the sand. "I'd hate us, if I was him. I hate him, sometimes."

Emma swallowed. "I hate my parents, too, for dying. Sometimes. It's not--it doesn't mean anything, Jules."

He turned his face toward her at that. His eyes were huge, black rings around the blue-green irises. "That's not the kind of hate I mean." His voice was low. "If he was here, God, everything would be different. Would have been different. I wouldn't be the one who ought to be home now in case Tavvy wakes up. I wouldn't be doing an immoral thing, walking down to the beach because I needed to get away. Tavvy, Dru, Livvy, Ty--they would have had someone to raise them. Mark was sixteen. I was twelve."

"Neither of you chose--"

"No, we didn't." Julian sat up. The collar of his shirt hung loose, and there was sand on his skin and in his hair. "We didn't choose. Because if I'd ever been able to choose, I would have made really different decisions."

Emma knew she shouldn't ask. Not when he was like this. But she had no experience of Julian like this; she didn't know how to react to him, how to be. "What would you have done differently?" she whispered.

"I don't know if I would have wanted a parabatai." The words came out clear and precise and brutal.

Emma flinched back. It felt like standing in knee-high water and being slapped in the face suddenly and unexpectedly by a wave. "Do you actually mean that?" she said. "You wouldn't have wanted it? This, with me?"

He got to his feet. The moon had come out entirely from behind the clouds and it shone down undimmed, bright enough that she could see the color of the paint on his hands. The light freckles across his cheekbones. The tightness of the skin around his mouth and temples. The visceral color of his eyes. "I shouldn't want it," he said. "I absolutely shouldn't."

"Jules," she said, baffled and hurt and angry, but he was already walking away, down toward the shoreline. By the time she'd scrambled to her feet, he'd reached the rocks. He was a long, lean shadow, climbing over them. And then he was gone.

She could have caught up to him if she'd wanted to, she knew that. But she didn't want to. For the first time in her life, she didn't want to talk to Julian.

Something brushed against her ankles. Looking down, she saw Church. His yellow eyes seemed sympathetic, so she picked him up and held him against her, listening to him purr as the tide came in.

Idris, 2007, The Dark War

When Julian Blackthorn was twelve years old, he killed his own father.

There were, of course, extenuating circumstances. His father wasn't his father anymore, not really. More like a monster wearing his father's face. But when the nightmares came, in the dead of night, it didn't matter. Julian saw Andrew Blackthorn's face, and his own hand holding the blade, and the blade going into his father, and he knew.

He was cursed.

That was what happened when you killed your own father. The gods cursed you. His uncle had said it, and his uncle knew quite a lot of things, especially things that had to do with the curses of gods and the price of bloodshed.

Julian had known a great deal of bloodshed, more than any twelve-year-old ought to know. It was Sebastian Morgenstern's fault. He was the Shadowhunter who had started the Dark War, who had used spells and tricks to turn ordinary Shadowhunters into mindless killing machines. An army at his disposal. An army meant to destroy all of the Nephilim who would not join him.

Julian, his brothers and sisters, and Emma had been hiding in the Hall of Accords. The greatest hall in Idris, it was meant to be able to keep out any monster. But it could not keep out Shadowhunters, even those who had lost their souls.

The huge double doors had cracked open and the Endarkened had surged into the room, and like a poison released into the air, where they went, death followed. They cut down the guards, and they cut down the children who were being guarded. They didn't care. They had no conscience.

They were pressing farther into the Hall. Julian had tried to herd the children into a group: Ty and Livvy, the solemn twins; and Dru, who was only eight; and Tavvy, the baby. He stood in front of them with his arms outstretched as if he could protect them, as if he could make a wall with his body that would hold back death.

And then death stepped out in front of him. A Dark Shadowhunter, demon runes blazing on his skin, with tangled brown hair and bloodshot blue-green eyes the same color as Julian's.

Julian's father.

Julian looked around for Emma but she was fighting a faerie warrior, fierce as fire, her sword, Cortana, flashing in her hands. Julian wanted to go to her, wanted it desperately, but he couldn't step away from the children. Someone had to protect them. His older sister was outside; his older brother taken by the Hunt. It would have to be him.

That was when Andrew Blackthorn reached them. Bloody cuts scissored across his face. His skin was slack and gray, but his grip on his sword was tight, and his eyes were fixed on his children.

"Ty," he said, his voice low and hoarse. And he looked at Tiberius, his son, and there was rapacious hunger in his eyes. "Tiberius. My Ty. Come here."

Ty's gray eyes opened wide. His twin, Livia, clutched at him, but he strained forward, toward his father. "Dad?" he said.

Andrew Blackthorn's face seemed to split with his grin, and Julian thought he could see through the split that tore it open, see the evil and darkness inside, the writhing pestilential core of horror and chaos that was all tha

t animated the body that had once been his father's. His father's voice rose in a croon. "Come here, my boy, my Tiberius . . ."

Ty took another step forward, and Julian pulled the shortsword from his belt and threw it.

He was twelve. He was not particularly strong or particularly skilled. But the gods who would soon hate him must have smiled on that throw, because the blade flew like an arrow, like a bullet, and plunged into Andrew Blackthorn's chest, knocking him to the ground. He was dead before he hit the marble floor, his blood spreading around him in a dark red pool.

"I hate you!" Ty threw himself at Julian, and Julian threw his arms around his little brother, thanking the Angel over and over that Ty was all right, was breathing, was thrashing and pounding his chest and looking up at him with tearful, angry eyes. "You killed him, I hate you, I hate you--"

Livvy had her hands on Ty's back, trying to pull him away. Julian could feel the blood rushing through Ty's veins, the rise and fall of his chest; he felt the force of his brother's hatred and knew it meant that Ty was alive. They were all alive. Livvy with her soft words and her soothing hands, Dru with her enormous, terrified eyes, and Tavvy with his uncomprehending tears.

And Emma. His Emma.

He had committed the most ancient and worst of sins: He had killed his own father, the person who gave him life.

And he would do it again.