"Cortana," Emma gasped.
She thrashed upward and cried out in pain. Sheets were tangled around her waist. She was in bed, in her room. The lamps were on but dimly lit, the window cracked open slightly. The table next to the bed was piled with bandages and folded towels. The room smelled of blood and burning.
"Emma?" An incredulous voice. Cristina was sitting at the foot of the bed, a roll of bandages and some scissors in her hand. She dropped them to the floor as she saw that Emma's eyes were open, and flung herself onto the bed. "Oh, Emma!"
She threw her arms around Emma's shoulders, and for a moment, Emma clung to her. She wondered if this was what it was like to have an older sister, someone who could be your friend and also take care of you.
"Ouch," Emma said meekly. "It hurts."
Cristina pulled back. Her eyes were red-rimmed. "Emma, are you all right? Do you remember everything that happened?"
Emma put a hand to her head. Her throat hurt. She wondered if it was from screaming. She hoped not. She hadn't wanted to give Iarlath the satisfaction. "I . . . how long have I been passed out?"
"Out? Oh, asleep. Since this morning. All day, really. Julian has been in here with you the whole time. I finally convinced him to eat something. He'll be horrified that you woke up and he wasn't here." Cristina pushed Emma's tangled hair back.
"I should get up. . . . I should see . . . Is everyone all right? Did anything happen?" Her mind suddenly full of awful images of the faeries, done with her, going after Mark or Julian or somehow, even, the children, Emma tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed.
"Nothing has happened." Cristina pushed her back gently. "You are tired and weak; you need food and runes. A whipping like that . . . You can whip someone to death, you know that, Emma?"
"Yes," Emma whispered. "Will my back be scarred forever?"
"Probably," Cristina said. "But it won't be bad--the iratzes closed the wounds quickly. They couldn't quite heal them all. There will be marks, but they will be light." Her eyes were red. "Emma, why did you do it? Why? You really think your body is so much stronger than Mark's or Julian's?"
"No," Emma said. "I think everyone is strong and weak in different ways. There are things I'm terrified of that Mark isn't. Like the ocean. But he's been tortured enough--what it would have done to him, I don't even know. And Julian . . . I felt it when they whipped him. In my body, in my heart. It was the worst feeling I've ever felt, Cristina. I would have done anything to stop it. It was selfish."
"It was not selfish." Cristina caught Emma's hand and squeezed it. "I have thought now for a while that I would never want a parabatai," she said. "But I would feel differently, I think, if that parabatai could have been you."
I wish you were my parabatai, too, Emma thought, but she couldn't say it--it felt disloyal to Julian, despite everything.
Instead she said, "I love you, Cristina," and squeezed the other girl's hand back. "But the investigation--I should go with you--"
"To where? The library? Everyone has been reading and searching all day for more information about Lady Midnight. We will find something, but we have plenty of people to look at pages."
"There are other things to do besides look at pages--"
The door opened, and Julian was on the threshold. His eyes widened and for a moment they were all Emma could see, like blue-green doors to another world.
"Emma." His voice sounded rough and cracked. He was wearing jeans and a loose white shirt and beneath it the outline of a bandage, wrapping around his chest, was visible. His eyes were red, his hair tousled, and there was a faint sprinkling of stubble along his chin and cheeks. Julian never went without shaving, ever since the first time he'd shown up with stubble and Ty had told him, without preamble, "I don't like it."
"Julian," Emma said, "are you all ri--"
But Julian had thrown himself across the room. Without seeming to see anything but Emma, he dropped to his knees and flung his arms around her, burying his face against her stomach.
She reached down with a shaking hand and stroked his curls, raising her eyes in alarm to meet Cristina's. But Cristina was already rising to her feet, murmuring that she would tell the others that Julian was looking after Emma. Emma heard the lock click as she closed the bedroom door behind her.
"Julian," Emma murmured, her hand tangling in his hair. He wasn't moving; he was entirely still. He breathed in shakily before lifting his head.
"By the Angel, Emma," he said in a cracked whisper. "Why did you do it?"
She winced, and he was suddenly on his feet. "You need more healing runes," he said. "Of course, I'm so stupid, of course you need them." It was true: She did hurt. Some places ached dully, others with a sharper pain. Emma breathed in as Diana had taught her--slowly, steadily--as he retrieved his stele.
He dropped down on the bed beside her. "Hold still," he said, and put the instrument to her skin. She felt the pain ebb until it was a dull ache.
"How long--when did you wake up?" Emma asked.
He was in the act of putting his stele back on the table. "If you mean did I see them whip you, no," he said grimly. "What do you remember?"
"I remember Gwyn and the others came . . . Iarlath . . . Kieran." She thought of blazing-hot sun, a tree with bark the color of blood. Black and silver eyes. "Kieran and Mark love each other."
"They did," Julian said. "I'm not sure how Mark feels about him now."
She drew in a ragged breath. "I dropped Cortana--"
"Mark brought it inside," he said in a voice that indicated that Cortana was the last thing on his mind. "God, Emma, when I came back to consciousness the convoy was gone and you were on the ground, bleeding, and Mark was trying to lift you up and I thought you were dead," he said, and there was not a trace of remoteness in his voice, just a fierce wildness she had never really associated with Julian before. "They whipped you, Emma, you took the whipping meant for Mark and for me. I hate that you did that, you understand, I hate it--" Emotion crackled and burned in his voice, like a fire raging out of control. "How could you?"
"Mark couldn't have stood the whipping," she said. "It would have broken him. And I couldn't have borne watching them whip you. It would have broken me."
"You think I don't feel the same way?" he demanded. "You think I haven't been sitting here all day totally shattered and ripped apart? I'd rather cut my arm off than have you lose a fingernail, Emma."
"It wasn't just about you," she said. "The kids-- Look, they expect me to fight, to get hurt. They think: There's Emma, scratched up again, cut up and bandaged. But you, they look to you in a way they don't look to me. If you were seriously hurt, it would scare them so badly. And I couldn't stand thinking of them so scared."
Julian's fingers tightened into a hard spiral. She could see the pulse running under his skin. She thought, randomly, of some graffiti she had seen on the side of the Malibu Pier: Your heart is a weapon the size of your fist.
"God, Emma," he said. "What I've done to you."
"They're my family too," she said. Emotion was threatening to choke her. She bit it back.
"Sometimes I wish--I've wished--that we were married and they were our kids," he said rapidly. His head was bowed.
"Married?" Emma echoed, shocked.
His head came up. His eyes were burning. "Why do you think that I--"
"Love me less than I love you?" she said. He flinched visibly at the words. "Because you said so. I as much as told you on the beach how I felt, and you said 'not that way, Emma.'"
"I didn't--"
"I'm tired of lying to each other," said Emma. "Do you understand? I'm sick of it, Julian."
He scrubbed his hands through his hair. "I can't see any way for this to be all right," he said. "I can't see anything but a nightmare where everything falls apart, and where I don't have you."
"You don't have me now," she said. "Not in the way that matters. The truthful way." She tried to kneel up on the bed. Her back ached, and her arms and legs felt tired, as if she
had run and climbed for miles.
Julian's eyes darkened. "Does it still hurt?" He fumbled among the items on the nightstand, came up with a vial. "Malcolm made me this a while ago. Drink it."
The vial was full of a chartreuse-gold liquid. It tasted a little like flat champagne. The moment Emma swallowed it, she felt a numbness sweep over her. The ache in her limbs receded, and a cool, flowing energy replaced it.
Julian took the vial from her and dropped it onto the bed. He slid one arm under her knees, the other under her shoulders, and lifted her bodily off the bed. For a moment she clung to him in surprise. She could feel his heart beating, smell his soap and paint and cloves scent. His hair was soft against her cheek.
"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?"