“Tessa Gray!” Magnus shouted, leaning out of the Portal as if he were leaning over a balcony. Max cooed and waved. “Jem Carstairs! Time to go!”
Someone was walking up the road from the beach. Emma could see only a silhouette. But she knew it was Julian. Julian, coming back from the beach where he had waited for her. She would always know it was Julian.
With the courtliness of a generation many years past, Jem bent over her hand in a gentle bow.
“If you need me, tell Church,” he said, straightening up. “As you’ve seen, he can always find me. He’ll make sure I come to you.”
Then he turned and strode away toward the Portal. Tessa took his hand and smiled up at him, and a moment later they had stepped through the glowing door. It disappeared with a flash of pale gold light, and Emma, blinking, looked down to where Julian stood staring up at her from the foot of the steps.
“Emma?” Julian bounded up the stairs, reaching for her. “Emma, what happened? I waited on the beach—”
She drew away from his touch. A flicker of hurt crossed his face, then he glanced around, as if realizing where they were, and nodded.
“Come with me,” he said in a low voice. Emma followed him, half in a daze, as they circled the Institute to the parking lot. He ducked out past the statues and the small garden, Emma behind him, until they were screened from the building by rows of scrub trees and cactus.
He turned so that they stood face-to-face. She could see the worry in his eyes. He reached to cup her cheek in his hand, and she felt her heart thrash against her rib cage.
“You can tell me,” he said. “Why didn’t you come?”
In a leaden voice, Emma told him about the panicked message from Kit, how she’d bolted immediately for the car. How after everything that the Institute had been through the day before, she hadn’t been able to bear dragging anyone else along with her to Rook’s. How Rook felt like her responsibility. How she’d tried to call Julian to tell him where she’d gone, but he hadn’t picked up. About the Mantids at Rook’s house, Jem and Tessa’s arrival, the truth about Kit. Everything but what Jem had said to her about parabatai.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, when she was done. His thumb brushed her cheekbone. “Though I guess if you’d been hurt—I would have known.”
Emma didn’t raise her hands to touch him. They were clenched into fists at her sides. She had done hard things in her life, she thought. Her years of training. Surviving her parents’ deaths. Killing Malcolm.
But the look on Julian’s face—open and trusting—told her that this would be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She reached up and covered his hand with hers. Slowly she intertwined their fingers. Even more slowly, she drew his hand away from her face, trying to quiet the voice inside her head that said, This is the last time he’ll ever touch you like this, the last.
They were still holding hands, but hers lay stiffly in his, a dead thing. Julian looked puzzled. “Emma—?”
“We can’t do this,” she said, her voice flat and uninflected. “That was what I wanted to tell you, earlier. We can’t be together. Not like this.”
He drew his hand out of hers. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
I’m saying it’s too late, she wanted to tell him. I’m saying the Endurance rune you gave me saved my life when Malcolm attacked me. And as grateful as I am, it shouldn’t have been able to do that. I’m saying that we’re already becoming what Jem was warning me about. I’m saying it isn’t a matter of stopping the clock, but of making it run backward.
And for that, the clock will need to be broken.
“No kissing, no touching, no being in love, no dating. Is that clear enough for you?”
Julian did not look as if she had hit him. He was a warrior: He could take any blow, and be ready to strike back twice as hard.
It was much worse than that.
Emma wanted desperately to take back what she’d said, to tell him the truth, but Jem’s words echoed in her mind.
Being told that it is forbidden does not kill love. It strengthens it.
“I don’t want to have this kind of relationship,” she said. “Hiding, lying, sneaking around. Don’t you see? It would poison everything we have. It would kill all the good parts of being parabatai until we weren’t even friends anymore.”
“That doesn’t have to be true.” He looked sick but determined. “We only have to hide for a little while—only as long as the kids are young enough to need me—”
“Tavvy’s going to need you for eight more years,” said Emma, as coldly as she could. “We can’t sneak around for that long.”
“We could put it on hold—put us on hold—”
“I’m not going to wait.” She could feel him watching her, feel the weight of his pain. She was glad she could feel it. She deserved to feel it.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I say it if it wasn’t true? It doesn’t exactly paint me in the best light, Jules.”