Lady Midnight
Page 123

“So let’s be adults about it. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Do you think I liked keeping secrets from you? Do you think I didn’t want to tell you?”
“If you’d wanted to, you could have.”
“No, I couldn’t.” He spoke with a quiet despair.
“Did you not trust me? Did you think I’d tell on you?”
Julian shook his head. “That wasn’t it.” Enough light had spread over the landscape for the color of his eyes to be visible despite the darkness. They looked like artificially illuminated water.
Emma thought of the night Julian’s mother had died. She had been ill, attended by Silent Brothers to the end. There were some diseases even Nephilim magic couldn’t cure: She had cancer of the bone, and it had killed her.
Andrew Blackthorn, newly widowed, had been too devastated to be the one to go to Tavvy when the baby cried in the night. Helen had been efficient: heating Tavvy’s bottles, changing him, dressing him. But Julian had been the one who stayed with him during the day. While Mark and Helen trained, Julian sat in Tavvy’s room and sketched or painted. Emma would sit with him there sometimes, and they would play the way they normally did, with the baby gurgling in his crib a few feet away.
At the time Emma hadn’t thought much of it. She, like Julian, had been only ten years old. But she recalled it now.
“I remember when your mother died,” she said. “And you took care of Tavvy during the days. I asked you why, and I remember what you said. Do you?”
“I said it was because no one else could,” said Julian, looking at her quizzically. “Mark and Helen had to train. . . . My father was . . . well, you know how he was.”
“Everything you’ve done is because no one else would or could do it. If you hadn’t covered up for Arthur, no one else would even have thought of it. If you hadn’t been so determined to hold everything together, no one else would have. Maybe it started back then, when you took care of Tavvy. Maybe it gave you the idea.”
He exhaled. “Maybe. I don’t entirely know myself.”
“I still wish you’d told me. I know you thought you were being unselfish—”
“I didn’t,” he said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“I did it for entirely selfish reasons,” he said. “You were my escape, Emma. You were my way away from everything terrible. When I was with you, I was happy.”
Emma stood up. “But that can’t have been the only time you were happy—”
“Of course I’m happy with my family,” he said. “But I’m responsible for them—I was never responsible for you—we’re responsible for each other; that’s what parabatai means, don’t you understand, Emma, you’re the only one, the only one who was ever meant to look after me.”
“Then I failed you,” she said, feeling a bone-deep sense of disappointment with herself. “I should have known what you were going through, and I didn’t—”
“Don’t ever say that again!” He shoved himself away from the pillar, the rising sun, behind him, turning the edges of his hair to copper. Emma couldn’t see his expression, but she knew it was furious.
Emma got to her feet. “What, that I should have known? I should have—”
“That you failed me,” he said hotly. “If you knew—you’ve been all that’s kept me going, for weeks sometimes, months. Even when I was in England, thinking of you kept me going. It’s why I had to be parabatai with you—it was completely selfish—I wanted to tie you to me, no matter what, even though I knew it was a bad idea, even though I knew I—”
He broke off, a look of horror flashing across his face.
“Even though what?” Emma demanded. Her heart was pounding. “Even though what, Julian?”
He shook his head. Her hair had escaped from its ponytail and the wind was whipping it around her face, bright pale strands on the wind. He reached up to tuck one behind her ear: He looked like someone caught in a dream, trying to wake up. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Do you love me?” Her voice was a whisper.
He wound a piece of her hair around his finger, a silver-gold ring. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “It won’t change anything if I do.”
“It changes things,” she whispered. “It changes everything for me.”
“Emma,” he said. “You’d better go back inside. Go to sleep. We both should. . . .”
She gritted her teeth. “If you’re going to walk away from me now, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
He hesitated. She saw the tension in him, in his body, rise like a wave about to break.
“Walk away from me,” she said harshly. “Walk away.”
His tension crested and fell; something in him seemed to collapse, water breaking against rocks. “I can’t,” he said, his voice low and broken, “God, I can’t,” and he half-closed his eyes, bringing up his other hand to cradle her face. His hands slid into her hair, and he drew her toward him. She inhaled a breath of cold air and then his mouth was on hers and her senses exploded.
She had wondered, in the back of her mind, if what had happened on the beach between them had been a fluke born of their shared adrenaline. Surely kisses weren’t meant to be like that, so all-encompassing that they ripped through you like lightning, tore down your defenses and decimated your self-control.
Apparently not.
Her hands fisted in the material of Julian’s jacket, dragging him toward her, closer, closer. There was sugar and caffeine on his lips. He tasted like energy. Her hands slid up under his shirt, touching the bare skin of his back, and he broke away from her to suck in his breath. His eyes were closed, his lips parted.
“Emma,” he breathed, and the desire in his voice tore a scorching path through her. When he reached for her, she almost fell against him. He swiveled her body around, pushing her back against a pillar, his body a strong, hot line against hers—
A sound cut through the fog in her mind.
Emma and Julian tore apart, staring.
Both of them had been in the Hall of Accords in Idris when the Wild Hunt had come, howling around the walls, tearing at the ceiling. Emma remembered the sound of Gwyn’s horn, blasting through the air. Vibrating every nerve in her body. A high, hollow, lonesome sound.
It came again now, echoing through the morning.
The sun had risen while Emma had been wrapped up in Julian, and the road that led down to the highway was illuminated by sunlight. There were three figures coming up it, on horseback: one black horse, one white, and one gray.
Emma recognized two of the riders immediately: Kieran, sitting his horse like a dancer, his hair nearly black in the sunlight, and next to him, Iarlath, wrapped in dark robes.
The third rider was familiar to Emma from a hundred illustrations in books. He was a big, broad man, bearded, wearing dark armor that looked like the overlapping bark of a tree. He had tucked his horn under his arm; it was a massive object, etched all over with a pattern of deer.
Gwyn the Hunter, the leader of the Wild Hunt, had come to the Institute. And he did not look pleased.
Mark stood at an upstairs window and looked out at the sun rising over the desert. The mountains seemed cut out of dark paper, sharp and distinct against the sky. For a moment he imagined he could reach out and touch them, that he could fly from this window and reach the top of the highest peak.