City of Heavenly Fire

Helen squeezed his hand. “I hate leaving you,” she said. “I’d take care of you if I could. You know that, right? I’d take over the Institute. I love you all so much.”


Julian squirmed in the manner that only a twelve-year-old boy could squirm upon hearing the word “love.”

“I know,” he managed.

“The only reason I can leave is that I’m sure I’m leaving you all in good hands,” she said, her eyes boring into his.

“Uncle Arthur, you mean?”

“I mean you,” she said, and Jules’s eyes widened. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” she added. “But I also know I can depend on you. I know you can help Dru with her nightmares, and take care of Livia and Tavvy, and maybe even Uncle Arthur could do that too. He’s a nice enough man. Absentminded, but he seems to want to try. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “But Ty is—” She sighed. “Ty is special. He . . . translates the world differently from how the rest of us do. Not everyone can speak his language, but you can. Take care of him for me, all right? He’s going to be something amazing. We just have to keep the Clave from understanding how special he is. They don’t like people who are different,” she finished, and there was bitterness in her tone.

Julian was sitting up straight now, looking worried. “Ty hates me,” he said. “He fights me all the time.”

“Ty loves you,” said Helen. “He sleeps with that bee you gave him. He watches you all the time. He wants to be like you. He’s just—it’s hard,” she finished, not sure how to say what she wanted to: that Ty was jealous of the way Julian so easily navigated the world, so easily made people love him, that what Julian did every day without thinking seemed to Ty like a magic trick. “Sometimes it’s hard when you want to be like someone but you don’t know how.”

A sharp furrow of confusion appeared between Julian’s brows, but he looked up at Helen and nodded. “I’ll take care of Ty,” he said. “I promise.”

“Good.” Helen stood up and kissed Julian quickly on the top of his head. “Because he’s amazing and special. You all are.” She smiled over his head at Emma. “You, too, Emma,” she said, and her voice tightened on Emma’s name, as if she were going to cry. She closed her eyes, hugged Julian one more time, and fled out of the room, grabbing her suitcase and coat as she went. Emma could hear her running downstairs, and then the front door closing amid a murmur of voices.

Emma looked over at Julian. He was sitting rigidly upright, his chest rising and falling as if he’d been running. She reached over quickly and took his hand, traced onto the inside of his palm: W-H-A-T-S W-R-O-N-G?

“You heard Helen,” he said in a low voice. “She trusts me to take care of them. Dru, Tavvy, Livvy, Ty. My whole family, basically. I’m going to be—I’m twelve, Emma, and I’m going to have four kids!”

Anxiously she started to write: N-O Y-O-U W-O-N-T—

“You don’t have to do that,” he interrupted. “It’s not like there are any parents to overhear us.” It was an unusually bitter thing for Jules to say, and Emma swallowed hard.

“I know,” she said finally. “But I like having a secret language with you. I mean, who else can we talk about this stuff with, if we don’t talk to each other?”

He slumped down against the headboard, turning to face her. “The truth is, I don’t know Uncle Arthur at all. I’ve only seen him at holidays. I know Helen says she does and he’s great and fine and everything, but they’re my brothers and sisters. I know them. He doesn’t.” He curled his hands into fists. “I’ll take care of them. I’ll make sure they have everything they want and nothing ever gets taken away from them again.”

Emma reached for his arm, and this time he gave it to her, letting his eyes fall half-closed as she wrote on the inside of his wrist with her index finger.

I-L-L H-E-L-P Y-O-U.

He smiled at her, but she could see the tension behind his eyes. “I know you will,” he said. He reached his hand out and clasped it around hers. “You know the last thing Mark said to me before he was taken?” he asked, leaning against the headboard. He looked absolutely exhausted. “He said, ‘Stay with Emma.’ So we’ll stay with each other. Because that’s what parabatai do.”

Emma felt as if the breath had been pulled out of her lungs. Parabatai. It was a big word—for Shadowhunters, one of the biggest, encompassing one of the most intense emotions you could ever have, the most significant commitment you could ever make to another person that wasn’t about romantic love or marriage.