Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"What are you doing?" she said.

"I need you to come with me." His voice was tight, as if he were screwing his courage up to do something horrible. "I need you to see something."

"You make it sound like you're a serial killer with a freezer full of arms," Emma muttered as he shouldered open the door.

"The Clave would probably be happier about that."

Emma wanted to rub her cheek against his, feel the roughness of his stubble. He was entirely a mess, actually, his shirt on inside out and his feet bare. She felt a rush of affection and wanting so intense that her whole body tightened.

"You can put me down," she said. "I'm fine. I don't need to be princess-carried."

He laughed, a short, choked laugh. "I didn't know that was a verb," he said, but he set her on her feet. Carefully and slowly, and they leaned into each other, as if neither of them could stand the fact that in a moment, they would no longer be touching.

Emma's heart began to pound. It pounded as she followed Julian down the empty corridor, and it pounded as they started up the back staircase and went into his studio. It pounded as she leaned against the paint-covered island, and Julian went to take a key from a drawer by the window.

She saw him breathe in, his shoulders rising. He looked the way he had when he was steeling himself to be whipped.

Having gathered his courage, he went to the door of the locked room, the one that no one but him ever entered. He turned the key in the lock with a decisive click and the door sprang open.

He stood aside. "Go in," he said.

Years of ingrained habit and respect for Julian's privacy held Emma back. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. He was pale. She drew away from the island and crossed the room with a sense of apprehension. Maybe he did have bodies in there. Whatever it was, it had to be something awful. She'd never seen him look like he did now.

She stepped inside the room. For a moment she thought she'd stepped into a funhouse of mirrors. Reflections of herself stared back from every surface. The walls were covered with tacked-up sketches and paintings, and there was an easel as well, set up in one corner near the single window, with a half-finished drawing on it. Two countertops ran the length of the east and west walls, and those, too, were covered in art.

Every image was of her.

There she was training, holding Cortana, playing with Tavvy, reading to Dru. In one watercolor, she was sleeping on the beach, her head pillowed on her hand. The details of the slope of her shoulder, the individual grains of sand stuck to her skin like sugar, had been rendered so lovingly that she felt almost dizzy. In another, she rose above the city of Los Angeles. She was naked, but her body was transparent--one could see only the outlines of it, and the stars of the night sky shone through her. Her hair tumbled down like brilliant light, illuminating the world.

She remembered what he'd said to her when they were dancing. I was thinking about painting you. Painting your hair. That I'd have to use titanium white to get the color right, the way it catches light and almost glows. But that wouldn't work, would it? It's not all one color, your hair, it's not just gold: It's amber and tawny and caramel and wheat and honey.

She reached up to touch her hair, which she'd never thought of as anything but ordinary blond, and then stared at the painting clipped to the easel. It was half-finished, an image of Emma striding out of the ocean, Cortana strapped to her hip. Her hair was down, as it was in most of the pictures, and he had made it look like the spray of the ocean at sunset, when the last rays of daylight turned the water to a brutal gold. She looked beautiful, fierce, as terrible as a goddess.

She bit her lip. "You like my hair down," she said.

Julian gave a short laugh. "Is that all you have to say?"

She turned to look at him directly. They were standing close together. "These are beautiful," she said. "Why didn't you ever show them to me? To anyone?"

He exhaled, gave her a slow, sad smile. "Ems, no one could look at these and not know how I feel about you."

She put her hand on the counter. It suddenly seemed important to have something to keep her steady on her feet. "How long have you been drawing me?"

He sighed. A moment later his hand came to rest in her hair. His fingers twined in the strands. "My whole life."

"I remember you used to, but then you stopped."

"I never stopped. I just learned to hide it." His smile vanished. "My last secret."

"I very much doubt that," Emma said.

"I have lied and lied and lied." Julian spoke slowly. "I've made myself an expert at lying. I stopped thinking lies could be destructive. Even evil. Until I stood on that beach and told you I didn't feel that way about you."

She was gripping the counter so hard her hand ached. "Feel what way?"

"You know," he said, drawing away from her.

Suddenly, she thought she'd done too much, pushed him too far, but the desperation to know inside her overrode that. "I need to hear it. Spell it out for me, Julian."

He went toward the door. Took hold of the knob--for a moment she thought he was going to leave the room--and he swung the door of the small room closed. Locked it, closing them inside. Turned to her. His eyes were luminous in the dim light.

"I tried to stop," he said. "That's why I went to England. I thought if I was away from you, maybe I'd stop feeling what I was feeling. But as soon as I got back, the first second that I saw you, I knew it hadn't made any difference." He looked around the room, his expression almost resigned. "Why all these paintings of you? Because I'm an artist, Emma. These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you."

Her gaze locked with his. "You mean it," she said. "You really mean it."

"I know I lied to you on the beach. But I swear on our parabatai oaths, I'm telling you the truth now." He spoke clearly, deliberately, as if he couldn't bear a single word he was telling her to be misunderstood or lost. "I love everything about you, Emma. I love the way I can recognize your footsteps in the hallway outside my room even when I didn't know you were coming. No one else walks or breathes or moves like you do. I love the way you gasp when you're asleep, like your dreams have surprised you. I love the way when we stand together on the beach our shadows blend into one person. I love the way you can write on my skin with your fingers and I can understand it better than I could understand someone else shouting in my ear. I didn't want to love you like this. It's the worst idea in the world that I love you like this. But I can't stop. Believe me, I've tried."

It was the pain in his voice that convinced her. It was the same pain that had beaten in her own heart for so long that she'd stopped knowing it for what it was. She let go of the counter. She took a step toward Julian, and then another one. "Are you-- Are you in love with me?"

His smile was soft and sad. "So much."

A moment later she was in his arms and kissing him. She couldn't have said how it happened exactly, just that it seemed inevitable. And that for all that Julian's voice had been quiet when he'd spoken, his mouth on hers was eager and his body was wanting and desperate. He clutched her to him, his lips tracing the outline of her mouth. Her hands were fierce in his hair--she'd always loved his hair, and now that she could touch it freely, she buried her hands in t

he thick waves, winding them around her fingers.

His hands slid to the backs of her thighs and he lifted her up as if she weighed nothing. She locked her hands around his neck, clinging on as he held her against him with one arm. She was aware of him grabbing at the papers covering the counter, knocking them to the floor along with tubes of paint, until he'd cleared a space where he could set her down.

She pulled him in, keeping her legs wrapped around his waist. There was nothing closed about him now, nothing diffident or remote or reticent as their kisses grew deeper, wilder, hotter.

"Tell me I didn't screw this up forever," Julian gasped between kisses. "I was such an ass on the beach--and when I saw you with Mark in your room--"

Emma slid her hands down to his shoulders, broad and strong under her grip. She felt drunk on kissing. This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure. "Nothing was happening--"

His hands stroked her hair. "I know it's ridiculous. But when you had a crush on Mark, when you were twelve, it was the first time I remember ever being jealous. It doesn't make any sense, I know that, but the things we're most frightened of, we can't make ourselves dismiss them. If you and Mark ever . . . I don't think I could come back from that."

Something about the raw honesty in his voice touched her. "Everyone has things they're afraid of," she whispered, moving closer into his arms. She slid her fingers under the hem of his shirt. "It's part of being human."

His eyes slipped half-closed. His fingers raked down through her hair; his hands caressed her back lightly, then found her waist, pulling her harder into him. Her head fell back, almost banging into one of the cabinets; his lips burned on her collarbone. His skin was hot under her touch. She could understand suddenly why people talked about passion as fire: She felt as if they had caught aflame and were burning like the dry Malibu hills, about to become ashes that would mix together forever.

"Tell me you love me, Emma," he said against her throat. "Even if you don't mean it."

She gasped; how could he think, how could he not realize--?

There was the sound of footsteps in the studio. "Julian?" Livvy's voice echoed through the door. "Hey, Jules, where are you?"