Emma thought of the way Arthur had clutched his head after the meeting with the faerie representatives in the Sanctuary. The memory of the agony on his face—she couldn’t push it away, though she wanted to.
“Sometimes I’d try to keep him out of the way with other methods,” Julian said, his voice full of self-loathing. “Like tonight, Malcolm gave him a sleeping draught. I know it’s wrong. Believe me, I’ve felt like I might go to Hell for it. If there is a Hell. I knew I shouldn’t do what I was doing. Malcolm kept quiet, he never told anyone, but I could tell he didn’t exactly approve. He wanted me to tell the truth. But the truth would have destroyed our family.”
Mark leaned forward. His expression was unreadable. “What about Diana?”
“I never exactly told her,” said Julian. “But I think she’s guessed at least some of it.”
“Why couldn’t she have been asked to run the Institute? Instead of it being in the hands of a twelve-year-old boy?”
“I asked her. She said no. She said it was impossible. She was genuinely sorry, and she said she’d help however she could. Diana has—her own secrets.” He turned away from the portrait of Jesse. “One last thing. I said I hated Arthur. But that was a long time ago. I don’t hate him now. I hate the Clave for what they would do to him, to us, if they knew.”
He bent his head. The extraordinarily bright witchlight turned the edges of his hair to gold and the scars on his skin to silver.
“So now you know,” he said. His hands tightened on the back of the chair. “If you hate me, I understand. I can’t think of anything else I could have done. But I’d understand.”
Emma stood up from her chair. “I think we knew,” she said. “We didn’t know . . . but we knew.” She looked at Julian. “We did, didn’t we? We knew someone was taking care of everything and that it wasn’t Arthur. If we let ourselves believe he ran the Institute, it was because it was easier. It was what we wanted to be true.”
Julian closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were fixed on his brother. “Mark?” he said, and the question was implicit in the single word: Mark, do you hate me?
Mark slid off the table. The witchlight turned his pale hair to white. “I have no right to pass judgment upon you, brother. Once I was the elder, but now you are elder than I. When I was in the faerie country, each night I would think of each of you—of you and Helen, of Livvy and Ty and Dru and Tavvy. I gave the stars your names, so that when I saw them wink to light in the sky I felt as if you were with me. It was all I could do to still the fear that you were hurt or dying and that I would never know. But I have come back to a family not just alive and healthy, but whose bonds have not been severed, and that is because of what you have done. There is love here, among you. Such love as takes my breath out of my body. There has even been enough love left for me.”
Julian was looking at Mark with hesitant astonishment. Emma tasted tears in the back of her throat. She wanted to go to Julian and put her arms around him, but a thousand things held her back.
“If you want me to tell the others,” Julian said hoarsely, “I will.”
“Now is not the time to decide,” Mark said, and in that single sentence, in the way he looked at Julian now, for the first time since Mark had returned Emma could see a world in which Mark and Julian had been together, had raised their siblings together and come to agreements about what to do together. For the first time, she could see the harmony they had lost. “Not when there are enemies circling us and the Institute, not when our lives and blood are on the line.”
“It’s a heavy burden to bear, this secret,” said Julian, and there was a warning in his tone, but hopefulness as well. Emma’s heart ached for the wrongness of all of it: for the painful and desperate choices made by a twelve-year-old boy to keep his family with him. For the darkness that surrounded Arthur Blackthorn, which was not of his making but which if revealed would only find him punished by his own government. For the weight of a thousand lies, told in good faith, because lies told in good faith were still lies. “And if the Followers go through with their threat—”
“But how did they know?” Emma said. “How did they know about Arthur?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I think we’re going to need to find out.”
Cristina watched as Diego, having laid her down on one of the infirmary beds, realized that he couldn’t sit beside her with a sword and crossbow attached to him and began awkwardly to remove them.