Lady Midnight (66 page)

Emma thought of the healing runes she’d drawn on Julian after the arrow poisoning. The way they’d glowed. The Endurance rune he’d given her. How it had behaved like no Endurance rune she’d ever known.

“It was not long after the ritual had been in use for some generations,” Jem said, lowering his voice, “that it was discovered that if the bond was
too
close, if it tipped into romantic love—then it would begin to warp and change the kind of power that was generated by the spell. One-sided love, a crush even, all that seems to pass by the rule—but real, requited, romantic love? It had a terrible cost.”

“They’d lose their power?” Emma guessed. “As Shadowhunters?”

“Their power would grow,” Jem corrected. “The runes they created would be unlike any others. They would begin to wield magic as warlocks do. But Nephilim are not meant to be magicians. Eventually the power would make them mad, until they became as monsters. They would destroy their families, the others they loved. Death would surround them until eventually they died themselves.”

Emma felt as if she were choking. “Why don’t they tell us that? Why not warn Nephilim, so they know?”

“It’s
power
, Emma,” said Jem. “Some would have wisely avoided the bond, but many others would have rushed to take advantage of it for the wrong reasons. Power will always attract the greedy and the weak.”

“I wouldn’t want it,” Emma said softly. “Not that kind of power.”

“There is also human nature to take into account,” Jem said,
and smiled down at Tessa, who was off the phone and coming up the path toward them. “Being told that love is forbidden does not kill love. It strengthens it.”

“What are you two talking about?” Tessa smiled up at them from the foot of the steps.

“Love,” Jem said. “How to end it, I suppose.”

“Oh, if we could end love just by willing it, life would be very different!” Tessa laughed. “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—ideally both.” Her eyes were wide and gray and youthful; it was hard to believe she was older than nineteen. “To change your own heart, that’s nearly impossible.”

There was a shimmer in the air. A Portal suddenly appeared, glowing like a ghost door, just above the ground. It opened, and Emma could see as if she were looking through a keyhole: Magnus Bane stood on the other side of the Portal, and beside him was Alec Lightwood, tall and dark-haired and holding a little boy in a white shirt, with navy-blue skin. Alec looked messy and happy, and the way he held Max reminded Emma of the way Julian used to hold Tavvy.

In the middle of raising a hand to greet Emma, Alec paused and turned his head, and said something that sounded like “Raphael.” Odd, Emma thought. Alec handed Max over to Magnus and disappeared back into the shadows.

“Tessa Gray!” Magnus shouted, leaning out of the Portal as if he were leaning over a balcony. Max cooed and waved. “Jem Carstairs! Time to go!”

Someone was walking up the road from the beach. Emma could see only a silhouette. But she knew it was Julian. Julian, coming back from the beach where he had waited for her. She would always know it was Julian.

With the courtliness of a generation many years past, Jem bent over her hand in a gentle bow.

“If you need me, tell Church,” he said, straightening up. “As you’ve seen, he can always find me. He’ll make sure I come to you.”

Then he turned and strode away toward the Portal. Tessa took his hand and smiled up at him, and a moment later they had stepped through the glowing door. It disappeared with a flash of pale gold light, and Emma, blinking, looked down to where Julian stood staring up at her from the foot of the steps.

“Emma?” Julian bounded up the stairs, reaching for her. “Emma, what happened? I waited on the beach—”

She drew away from his touch. A flicker of hurt crossed his face, then he glanced around, as if realizing where they were, and nodded.

“Come with me,” he said in a low voice. Emma followed him, half in a daze, as they circled the Institute to the parking lot. He ducked out past the statues and the small garden, Emma behind him, until they were screened from the building by rows of scrub trees and cactus.

He turned so that they stood face-to-face. She could see the worry in his eyes. He reached to cup her cheek in his hand, and she felt her heart thrash against her rib cage.

“You can tell me,” he said. “Why didn’t you come?”

In a leaden voice, Emma told him about the panicked message from Kit, how she’d bolted immediately for the car. How after everything that the Institute had been through the day before, she hadn’t been able to bear dragging anyone else along with her to Rook’s. How Rook felt like her responsibility. How she’d tried to call Julian to tell him where she’d gone, but he hadn’t picked up. About the Mantids at Rook’s house, Jem and Tessa’s arrival, the truth about Kit. Everything but what Jem had said to her about
parabatai
.

“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.”

“If Julian asks—” She steadied her voice. “No. Whether he asks or not. I need you to pretend with me that we’re dating. That we’re falling in love.”

Mark’s arms fell to his sides. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said. She wished she could read Mark’s face. If he protested, she knew that she had no way of forcing him. She could never bring herself to do that. She lacked, ironically, Julian’s ruthlessness.

“I know it seems strange,” she began.

“It seems very strange,” said Mark. “If you want Julian to think you have a boyfriend, why not ask Cameron Ashdown?”

If you and Mark ever . . . I don’t think I could come back from that.

“It has to be you,” she said.

“Anyone would be your boyfriend. You’re a beautiful girl. You don’t need someone to lie.”

“This isn’t for my ego,” Emma snapped. “And I don’t want a boyfriend. I want the lie.”

“You want me to lie just to Julian, or to everyone?” Mark said. His hand was at his throat, tapping against the pulse there. Looking, perhaps, for his elf-bolt necklace, which Emma only now realized was missing.

“I suppose everyone will have to believe it,” Emma said reluctantly. “We can’t ask them all to lie to Julian.”