Diana woke from dreams of flying to the sound of scratching at the door of her tent. She rolled out of her blankets and caught up a knife, rising to a crouch.
She heard the sound of two voices, one rising over the other: “Octopus!”
She had a vague memory that this was the code word they had all chosen earlier. She put her knife away and went to unzip the flap of the tent. Emma and Julian stood on the other side, blinking in the dark, pale and wide-eyed like startled meerkats.
Diana raised her eyebrows at them. “Well, if you want to come in, come in. Don’t just stand there letting all the cold air in.”
The tents were just high enough to stand up in, unfurnished by anything but rugs and bedding. Diana sank back into the nest of her covers, while Julian leaned against her pack and Emma sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Sorry for waking you up,” said Julian, ever the diplomat. “We didn’t know when else we might get to talk to you.”
She couldn’t help yawning. Diana always slept surprisingly well the night before a battle. She knew Shadowhunters who couldn’t get to sleep, who stayed awake with pounding hearts, but she wasn’t one of them. “Talk to me about what?”
“I want to apologize,” Julian said, as Emma worried at the frayed knee of her jeans. Emma didn’t seem like herself—hadn’t for a while now, Diana thought. Not since they’d come back from that other world, though an experience like that would change anyone. “For pushing you to be the head of the Institute.”
Diana narrowed her eyes. “What brought this on?”
“The Thule version of you told us about your time in Bangkok,” Emma said, biting her lip. “But you don’t have to talk about anything to us that you don’t want to.”
Diana’s first reaction was a reflex. No. I don’t want to talk about this. Not now.
Not on the eve of battle, not with so much on her mind, not while she was worried about Gwyn and trying not to think about where he was or what he might do tomorrow.
And yet. She’d been on her way to tell Emma and Julian precisely what they were asking about now when she’d found out she couldn’t reach them. She recalled her disappointment. She’d been determined then.
She didn’t owe them the story, but she owed it to herself to tell it.
They both sat quietly, looking at her. The night before a battle and they had come to her for this—not for reassurance, but to let her know it was her choice to engage or not to.
She cleared her throat. “So you know that I’m transgender. Do you know what that means?”
Julian said, “We know that when you were born, you were assigned a gender that does not reflect who you actually are.”
Something in Diana loosened; she laughed. “Someone’s been on the Internet,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right, more or less.”
“And when you were in Bangkok, you used mundane medicine,” said Emma. “To become who you really are.”
“Baby girl, I’ve always been who I really am,” said Diana. “In Bangkok, Catarina Loss helped me find doctors who would change my body to represent who I am, and people who were like me, to help me understand I wasn’t alone.” She settled back against the rolled-up jacket she’d been using as a pillow. “Let me tell you the story.”
And in a quiet voice, she did. She didn’t vary the telling much from the story she’d told Gwyn, because that story had eased her heart. She watched their expressions as she spoke: Julian calm and silent, Emma reacting to every word with widened eyes or bitten lips. They had always been like this: Emma expressing what Julian couldn’t or wouldn’t. So alike and so different.
But it was Julian who spoke first when she was finished. “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him in a little surprise, but then of course—that would be what would strike a chord with Jules, wouldn’t it?
“In some ways, the hardest part of any of it was not being able to talk about Aria,” she said.
“Gwyn knows, right?” Emma said. “And he was good about it? He’s kind to you, right?” She sounded as fierce as Diana had ever heard her.
“He is, I promise,” Diana said. “For someone who reaps the dead, he’s surprisingly empathic.”
“We won’t tell anyone unless you want us to,” Emma said. “It’s your business.”
“I worried that they’d find out about my medical treatment if I ever tried to become Institute head,” said Diana. “That I’d be taken away from you children. Punished with exile.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “But the Inquisitor found out anyway.”
Emma sat up straight. “He did? When?”
“Before I fled Idris. He threatened to expose me to everyone as a traitor.”
“He’s such a bastard,” Julian said. His face was tight.
“Are you angry with me?” Diana said. “For not telling you before?”
“No,” Julian said, his voice quiet and firm. “You had no obligation to do that. Not ever.”
Emma scooted closer to Diana, her hair a pale halo in the moonlight streaming through the tent flap. “Diana, these past five years, you’ve been the closest thing I’ve had to an older sister. And since I met you, you’ve shown me the kind of woman I want to grow up to be.” She reached out and took Diana’s hand. “I feel so grateful and so privileged that you wanted to tell us your story.”
“Agreed,” Julian said. He bent his head, like a knight acknowledging a lady in an old painting. “I’m sorry I pushed you. I didn’t understand. We—I—thought of you as an adult, someone who couldn’t possibly have problems or be in any danger. I was so focused on the kids that I didn’t realize you were also vulnerable.”
Diana touched his hair lightly, the way she often had when he was younger. “That’s growing up, isn’t it? Figuring out that adults are people with their own issues and secrets.”
She smiled wryly just as Helen stuck her head in through the still-unzipped flap. “Oh good, you’re up,” she said. “I wanted to go over who’s staying behind tomorrow—”
“I’ve got a list,” Julian said, sliding his hand into the pocket of his jacket.
Emma got to her feet, murmuring that she needed to go find Cristina. She slipped out the door of the tent, stopping only to glance back once at Julian as she went, but he was deep in conversation with Helen and didn’t seem to notice.
Something was going on with that girl, Diana thought. Once they’d gotten through tomorrow, she’d have to find out what it was.
29
TEMPT THE WATERS
“Cr
istina! Cristina!”
Voices rang through the woods below. Surprised, Cristina stood up, peering down into the darkness.
It had been too painful at the campfire, looking at Mark and at Kieran, knowing she was counting down hours until one or both of them left her life forever. She had slipped away to sit among the trees and grass and shadows of Brocelind. There were white flowers here, among the green, native to Idris. She had seen them before only in pictures, and to touch their petals gave her a feeling of peace, though her sorrow remained beneath it.
Then she had heard the voices. Mark and Kieran, calling for her. She had been sitting at the top of a green rise of grass between the trees; she rose, brushed herself off, and hurried down the hill toward the sound of her name.
“Estoy aquí!” she called, nearly tripping as she rushed down the hill. “I’m right here!”
They burst from the shadows, both white-faced. Mark found her first and swung her up off her feet, hugging her tightly. After a moment he released her to Kieran’s arms as they tried to explain: something about Magnus and traps and being afraid she’d fallen into a pit lined with knives.
“I would never do that,” she protested as Kieran stroked her hair back from her face. “Mark—Kieran—I think we were wrong.”
Kieran let her go immediately. “Wrong about what?”
Mark was standing next to Kieran, their shoulders just brushing. Her boys, Cristina thought. The ones she loved. She could not choose between them any more than she could choose between night and day. Nor did she wish to.
“Wrong that it’s impossible,” she said. “I should have said it before. I was afraid. I did not want to be hurt. Isn’t that what we all fear? That we will be hurt? We keep our hearts in prison, in terror that if we let them go free in the world they would be injured. But I do not want to be in a prison. And I think you feel the same, but if you do not—”
In his soft, husky voice, Mark said, “I love both of you, and I could not say I love one of you the most. But I am afraid. The loss of both of you would kill me, and here it seems I am risking having my heart broken not once but twice.”