Her voice held the satisfied tone of a sibling tattling on another sibling.
“Sure,” said Emma. “Did you check the studio? He might be there.”
There was a rustle. “No, I didn’t. Good idea. See you later!”
“Bye,” Emma said, faintly. Dru’s footsteps were already receding down the hall.
Finally Emma let herself look at Julian. He was leaning against the wall, his chest rising and falling fast, his eyes half-lidded, teeth digging into his lip.
He exhaled. “Raziel,” he whispered. “That was close.”
Emma got to her feet, her nightgown swishing around her knees. She was shaking. “We can’t,” she started. “We can’t—we’ll get caught—”
Julian was already across the room, taking her in his arms. She could feel his heart slamming against his rib cage, but his voice was steady. “It’s a stupid Law,” he said. “It’s a bad Law, Em.”
There is a reason you can’t fall in love with your parabatai, Emma. And when you find out what it is, you will feel the cruelty of the Shadowhunters just as I have.
Malcolm’s voice, unwelcome and unavoidable, pushed its way into Emma’s brain. She’d done all she could to forget it, forget what he’d said. He’d been lying—he’d lied about everything else. This had to be a lie, too.
And yet. She’d put it off, but she knew she had to tell Julian. He had the right to know.
“We have to talk,” she said.
She felt his heart skip. “Don’t say that. I know it’s not good.” He pulled her tighter against him. “Don’t get scared, Emma,” he whispered. “Don’t let us go because you’re frightened.”
“I am frightened. Not for me, for you. Everything you’ve done, all the hiding and pretending, to keep the kids together—the situation hasn’t changed, Julian. If I hurt any of you—
He kissed her, stemming the tide of words. Despite everything, she felt the kiss all through her body. “I used to read Law books,” he said, drawing away from her. “The parts about parabatai. I read them a million times. There’s never been a case of a pair of parabatai who fell in love and got caught and were forgiven. Only horror stories. And I can’t lose my family. You were right. It would kill me. But the horror stories are about the ones who got caught.” He breathed in deep, holding her gaze. “If we’re careful, we won’t be.”
She wondered if Julian had pushed himself past some point the night before, a point where the responsibilities that bowed him under seemed insurmountable. It was absolutely unlike Julian to want to break the rules, and though she wanted what he wanted, it unnerved her nonetheless.
“We’d have to set rules,” he said. “Strict ones. When we could see each other. We’d have to be careful. Much more careful than we have been. No more beach, no more studio. We have to be absolutely sure, every time, that we were somewhere we wouldn’t be walked in on.”
She nodded. “In fact, no talking about it either,” she said. “Not in the Institute. Not where someone might hear us.”
Julian nodded. His pupils were slightly dilated, his eyes the color of an oncoming storm over the ocean.
“You’re right,” he said. “We can’t talk here. I’ll throw some lunch together for the kids, so they don’t keep looking for me. Then meet me down on the beach, okay? You know where.”
Where I pulled you out of the water. Where this all started.
“Okay,” she said, after a slight hesitation. “You go first and I’ll meet you there. But I still have something I need to tell you.”
“The important thing is that we stay together, Emma. That’s what matters—”
She raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. A long, slow, intoxicating kiss that made him groan low in his throat.
When she drew away, he was staring at her. “How do people handle these feelings?” He seemed honestly bewildered. “How are they not all over each other all the time if they’re, you know, in love?”
Emma swallowed against the sudden urge to cry. In love. He hadn’t said it before.
I love you, Julian Blackthorn, she thought, looking at him there in her room, as he had been a million times before and yet it was completely different now. How could anything be so safe and familiar and yet so terrifying and all-encompassing and new at the same time?
She could see the faint pencil scratch markings on the doorframe behind him where they had once recorded their heights each year. They’d stopped doing it when he’d gotten taller than her, and the highest of the marks, now, was far below Julian’s head.