Emma only looked at him.
"Every other parabatai have feared the Law more than the curse," Julian said. "They've always either separated, left the Clave, or hidden what was happening to them until they were caught or the curse killed them. Magnus said we'd be the first, and that would count for something with Robert. And he pointed out something else, too. Robert was exiled, because he was in the Circle years ago. The exile temporarily suspended his bond with his parabatai. Magnus said Alec told him about it--that it cut their bond enough that Robert didn't even realize his parabatai was dead."
"Exile?" Emma's voice shook. "Exile means the Clave sends you away--you have no choice about it--"
"But the Inquisitor is the one who chooses terms of exile," said Julian. "Robert is the one who decided Aline could stay with Helen when she was exiled; the Clave was against it."
"If one of us has to be exiled, it'll be me," said Emma. "I'll go be with Cristina in Mexico. You're indispensable to the children. I'm not."
Her voice was firm, but her eyes were glimmering with tears. Julian sensed the same wave of desperate love he'd felt before threatening to overwhelm him and forced it back.
"I hate the idea of being separated too," Julian said, running his hand over the blanket, the rough texture comforting against his fingers. "The way I love you is fundamental to me, Emma. It's who I am. No matter how far we are from each other."
The glimmer in her eyes had become liquid. A tear spilled down her cheek. She didn't move to wipe it away. "Then--?"
"Exile will deaden the bond," he said. He tried to keep his voice steady. There was still a part of him that hated the idea of not being Emma's parabatai, despite everything, and hated the thought of exile, too. "Magnus is sure of it. Exile will do something separation can't, Emma, because exile is deep Shadowhunter enchantment. The ceremony of exile lessens some of your Nephilim abilities, your magic, and having a parabatai is part of that magic. It means the curse will be postponed. It means we can have time--and I can stay with the kids. I'd have to leave them otherwise. The curse doesn't just hurt us, Emma, it hurts the people around us. I can't stay near the kids thinking I might be some kind of threat to them."
She nodded slowly. "So if it gives us time, then what?"
"Magnus has promised to bring everything he has to bear on figuring out how to break the bond or end the curse. One or the other."
Emma raised her hand to rub at her wet cheek, and he saw the long scar on her forearm that had been there since he'd handed her Cortana in a room in Alicante, five years ago. How we have left our marks on each other, he thought.
"I hate this," she whispered. "I hate the idea of being away from you and the kids."
He wanted to take her hand, but held himself back. If he let himself touch her, he might crumble and fall apart and he had to stay strong and reasonable and hopeful. He was the one who'd listened to Magnus, who'd agreed to this. It was on him.
"I hate it, too," he said. "If there was any way it could be me going into exile, I would do it, Emma. Look, we'll only agree to it if the terms are what we want--if the exile period is short, if you can live with Cristina, if the Inquisitor promises no dishonor will accrue to your family name."
"Magnus really thinks Robert Lightwood is going to be that willing to help us? To basically let us dictate the terms of our exile?"
"He really does," said Julian. "He didn't say why exactly--maybe because Robert was exiled himself once, or because his parabatai died."
"But Robert doesn't know about the curse."
"And he doesn't need to," said Julian. "Just being in love breaks the Law long before the curse is triggered. And the Law says we'll have to be separated or have our Marks stripped anyway. That's not good for the Clave. They're hurting for Shadowhunters, certainly ones as good as you. He'll want a solution that keeps you Nephilim pretty badly. And besides--we have leverage."
"What leverage?"
Julian drew in a long breath. "We know how to cut the bond. We've been acting like we don't, but we do."
Emma went rigid all over. "Because we can't even consider the idea," she said. "It's not something we could ever do."
"It still exists," Julian said. "We still know about it."
Her hand shot out and grabbed the front of his shirt. Her grip was incredibly strong. "Julian," she said. "It would be an unforgivable sin to use whatever magic it is the Seelie Queen was talking about. We wouldn't just be hurting Jace and Alec, Clary and Simon. All the people we don't know that we'd be harming--destroying this thing that's as fundamental to them as how you love me and I love you--"
"They are not us," Julian said. "This isn't just about you and me, this is about the children. About my family. Our family."
"Jules." The dismay in her eyes was stark. "I've always known you'd do anything for the kids. We've always said we both would. But when we talk about anything, we still mean there are things we wouldn't do. Don't you know that?"
Julian
You scared me
"Yes, I know that," he said, and she relaxed slightly. Her eyes were wide. He wanted to kiss her even more than he had before, partly because she was Emma and that meant she was good and honest and thoughtful.
Ironic, really.
"It's just a threat," he added. "Leverage. We wouldn't do it, but Robert doesn't need to know that."
Emma let go of his shirt. "It's too much of a threat," she said. "Destroying parabatai as a thing that exists could rip the whole fabric of Nephilim apart."
"We're not going to destroy anything." He took her face in his hands. Her skin was soft against his palms. "We're going to fix it all. We're going to be together. Exile will give us the time we need to find out how to break the bond. If it can be done the Seelie Queen's way, it can be done some other way. The curse was like a monster at our heels. This gives us breathing room."
She kissed his palm. "You sound so sure."
"I am sure," he said. "Emma, I am totally sure."
He couldn't stand it any longer. He pulled her into his lap. She let her weight fall against his body, her face pressed to the crook of his neck. Her hand traced the collar of his T-shirt, just where his skin touched the cotton.
"Do you know why I'm sure?" he whispered, kissing her temple, her cheek where it tasted like salt. "Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, everything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are made of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone's are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That's why we've always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together." He held her tighter. "Your name, Emma, means universe, you know," he said. "Doesn't that prove I'm right?"
She gave a sobbing half-laugh, lifted her face, and kissed him hard. His body jumped as if he'd touched an electrified wire. His mind went blank, just the sound of their breathing in his ears and the feel of her hands on his shoulders and the taste of her mouth.
He couldn't stand it; holding her, he rolled sideways, taking her with him so they lay crossways on the coverlet. His hands moved under her oversize shirt, cupped her waist, thumbs tracing the angles of her hips. They were still kissing. He felt raw, cut open, every nerve a bleeding edge of desire. He licked sugar off her lips and she moaned.
Everything about the fact that this was forbidden was wrong, he thought. Nobody belonged together more than he and Emma did. He almost felt as if their connection scorched its way through their parabatai Marks, winding them closer, amplifying every sensation. Just his hand tangling in the soft strands of her hair was enough to make his bones feel as if they were turning to liquid, to fire. When she arched up against him he thought he might actually die.
And then she drew away, taking a long and shuddering breath. She was shaking. "Julian--we can't."
He rolled away from her. It felt like ripping off a limb. His hands dug into the blanket, gripping hard enough to hurt.
"Emma," he said. It was all he could say.
"I want to," she said, raising herself up on an elbow. Her hair was a mess of golden tangles, her expression earnest. "You have to know I want to. But while we're still parabatai, we can't."
"It won't make me love you any more or differently," he said, his voice hoarse. "I love you either way. I love you if we never touch."
"I know. But it seems like tempting fate." She reached to stroke his face, his chest. "Your heart's beating so fast."
"It always does," he said, "when it's you." He kissed her, a kiss that accepted that tonight, there would be no more than kisses. "Only you. No one but you."
It was true. He had never desired anyone before Emma, and never anyone since. There had been times when he was younger that it had puzzled him--he was a teenager, he was supposed to be full of inchoate longings and wantings and yearnings, wasn't he? But he never wanted anyone, never fantasized or dreamed or longed at all.
And then there had been one day on the beach, when Emma had been laughing next to him and she had reached up to undo her barrette, and her hair had spilled down over her fingers and against her back like liquid sunlight.
His whole body had reacted. He remembered it even now, the driving pain as if something deadly had struck him. It had made him understand why the Greeks had believed love was an arrow that tore through your body and left a blazing trail of longing behind.
In French, falling suddenly in love was the coup de foudre. The bolt of lightning. The fire in your veins, the destructive power of a thousand million volts. Julian hadn't fallen suddenly in love: He always had been in love. He had only just that moment realized it.
And after that, he longed. Oh, how he longed. And wished for the time he'd thought he was missing something by not longing, because the longing was like a thousand cruel voices that whispered to him that he was a fool. It was only six months after their parabatai ceremony, and it had been the biggest mistake he'd ever made, and totally irrevocable. And every time he saw Emma after that it was like a knife in his chest, but a knife whose pain he welcomed. A blade whose hilt he held in his own hand, pressed against his own heart, and nothing and no one could have taken it away from him.
"Sleep," he said. He gathered her in his arms and she curled up against him, closing her eyes. His Emma, his universe, his blade.
*
"You see," Diana said. "It's exactly what we thought it was."
The silver-black moon shone down on Brocelind Forest as Jia Penhallow stepped out of the blighted circle of ashy trees and burned grass. As she did, the seraph blade in her hand blazed with light, as if a switch had been flipped.
She stepped back into the circle. The seraph blade went dark.
"I sent photos to Kieran," said Diana, looking at the Consul's grim face. "They--Kieran said these were the same kind of circles of blight he has seen in the Unseelie Lands." Most of what Kieran had recently seen in the Unseelie Lands had been the inside of a cage.
Jia shuddered. "It is awful to stand inside this circle," she said. "It feels as if the ground is made of ice and despair is in the very air."
"These circles," Diana said. "They are in the places that Helen and Aline said were dark on their map, aren't they?"
Jia didn't have to look. She nodded. "I had not wanted to bring my daughter into this."
"If she and Helen can be present during the Council meeting, they can speak up as candidates for the Institute."
Jia said nothing.
"It is what Helen desperately wants," said Diana. "What they both want. The best place to be is not always the safest. No one is content in a prison."
Jia cleared her throat. "The time it would take to have the Council clear the request--Portals to Wrangel Island are tightly regulated--the meeting would be over--"
"You leave that to me," Diana said. "In fact, the less you know, the better."
Diana couldn't believe she had just said the less you know, the better to the Consul. Deciding she was unlikely to come up with a better exit line, she turned and strode from the clearing.
*
Dru dreamed of underground tunnels split by roots like the bulging knuckles of a giant. She dreamed of a room of glittering weapons and a boy with green eyes.
She woke to find the dim light of dawn illuminating her mantel, where a gold hunting dagger inscribed with roses pinned a note to the wood.
For Drusilla: Thank you for all your help. Jaime.
*
Sometime in the night Kit woke, the iratze softly burning on his arm. The infirmary was lit with warm yellow light, and outside the window he could see the rooftops of London, sturdy and Victorian under a waning moon.
And he could hear music. Rolling onto his side, he saw that Ty was asleep on the bed next to Kit's, his headphones on, the faint sound of a symphony coming from them.
A memory teased the edge of Kit's consciousness. Being very young, sick with the flu, feverish in the night, and someone sleeping by the side of his bed. His father? It must have been. Who else could it have been but his father, but certainty eluded him.
No. He wouldn't think about it. It had been a part of his earlier life; he was someone now who had friends who would sleep by his bed if he was sick. For however long that lasted, he would appreciate it.
*
The high doors of the Sanctuary were made of iron and carved with a symbol Cristina had known since birth, the four interconnected Cs of Clave, Council, Covenant, and Consul.
The doors opened noiselessly at a push onto a large room. Her spine tightened as she stepped inside, remembering the Sanctuary in the Mexico City Institute. She had played there sometimes as a child, enjoying the vastness of the space, the silence, the smooth cold tiles. Every Institute had a Sanctuary.
"Kieran?" she whispered, stepping inside. "Kieran, are you here?"
The London Sanctuary dwarfed the Mexico City and Los Angeles ones in size and impressiveness. Like a vast treasure box of marble and stone, every surface seemed to gleam. There were no windows, for the protection of vampire guests: Light came from a number of witchlight torches. In the center of the room rose a fountain; in it stood a stone angel. Its eyes were open holes from which rivers of water poured like tears and spilled into the basin below. Words were inscribed around the base: A fonte puro pura defluit aqua.
A pure fountain gives pure water.
Silvery tapestries hung from the walls, though their designs had faded with age. Between two large pillars a circle of tall, straight-backed chairs were tumbled on their sides, as if someone had knocked them down in a rage. Cushions were strewn across the floor.
Kieran stepped noiselessly out from behind the fountain. His chin was raised defiantly, his hair the darkest black Cristina had ever seen it. Even the glare of the witchlight torches seemed to sink into it and vanish without reflecting off the strands.
"How did you get the doors open?" Cristina asked, glancing over her shoulder at the massive iron wedges. When she turned back, Kieran had raised his hands, open-palmed: They were scored all over with dark red marks, as if he had picked up red-hot pokers and held them tightly.
Iron burns.
"Does it please you?" Kieran said. He was breathing hard. "Here I am, in your Nephilim iron prison."
"Of course it doesn't please me." She frowned at him. She couldn't help the small voice inside that asked her why she'd come. She hadn't been able to stop herself--she'd kept thinking of Kieran alone, betrayed and lost. Perhaps it was the bond between them, the one he'd spoken of in her room. But she'd felt his presence and his unhappiness like a whisper at the back of her mind until she'd gone to look for him.
"What are you to Mark?" he demanded.
"Kieran," she said. "Sit down. Let's sit down and talk."
He only stared at her, watchful and tense. Like an animal in the woods, ready to break away if she moved.
Cristina sat down slowly on the scattered cushions. She smoothed her skirt down, tucking her legs under her.
"Please," she said, holding out her hand to indicate the cushion across from hers, as if she were inviting him to tea. He lowered himself onto it like a cat settling, fur ruffled with tension. "The answer is," she said, "that I don't know. I don't know what I am to Mark, or he to me."
"How can that be?" Kieran said. "We feel what we feel." He gazed down at his hands. They were faerie hands, long-jointed, scarred with many small nicks. "In the Hunt," he said, "it was real. We loved each other. We slept by each other's sides, and we breathed each other's breath and we were never apart. It was always real. It was never false." He looked at Cristina challengingly.
"I never thought that. I always knew it was real," she said. "I saw the way Mark looked at you." She looped her hands together to keep them from shaking. "You know Diego?"
"The very handsome stupid one," Kieran said.
"He's not stupid. Not that it matters," Cristina added hastily. "I loved him when I was younger, and he loved me. There was a time when we were always together, like you and Mark. Later he betrayed me."
"Mark spoke of it. In Faerie he would have been killed for such disrespect of a lady of your rank."
Cristina wasn't entirely sure what Kieran thought her rank was. "Well, the result was that I thought that what we'd had was never real. It hurt more to think that than it did to think that he'd simply stopped loving me--for I had stopped loving him that way too. We had grown out of what we had. But that is a natural thing and happens often. It is much more painful to believe that your love was always a lie."
"What else am I meant to believe?" Kieran demanded. "When Mark is willing to lie to me for the Clave he despises--"
"He didn't do it for the Clave," said Cristina. "Have you been listening to anything the Blackthorns have been saying? This is for his family. His sister is in exile because she is part faerie--this is to bring her back."
Kieran's expression was opaque. She knew family meant little to him in the abstract; it was hard to blame him for that. But the Blackthorns, in all their concrete realness, their messy and honest and total love for each other . . . did he see it?
"So do you no longer believe your love with the Rosales boy was a lie?" he said.
"It was not a lie," she said. "Diego has his reasons for what he's doing now. And when I look back, it is with pleasure at the happiness we had. The bad things can't matter more than the good things, Kieran."
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