The iratze was finished. Emma drew her hand back, watching as the cut began to heal itself, closing up like a seam.
“You’re not even wearing gear,” Julian said. He sounded quiet, intent, but his fingers were trembling as he put his stele away. “You’re still human, Emma.”
“I was fine—”
“You can’t do this to me.” The words sounded as if they had been dredged up from the bottom of the ocean.
She froze. “Do what?”
“I’m your parabatai,” he said as if the words were final, and in a way, they were. “You were facing down what, two dozen Mantid demons before we got there? If Cristina hadn’t called you—”
“I would have fought them off,” Emma said heatedly. “I’m glad you showed up, thank you, but I would have gotten us out of there—”
“Maybe!” His voice rose. “Maybe you would have, maybe you could have done it, but what if you didn’t? What if you died? It would kill me, Emma, it would kill me. You know what happens . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence. You know what happens to someone when their parabatai dies.
They stood, staring at each other, breathing hard. “When you were away, I felt it here,” Emma said finally, touching her upper arm, where the parabatai rune was etched. “Did you feel it?” She splayed her hand over the front of his T-shirt, warm from his body. Julian’s rune was at the outside edge of his collarbone, about five inches above his heart.
“Yeah,” he said, eyelashes lowering as his gaze traced the movement of her fingers. “It hurt me being away from you. It feels like there’s a hook dug in under my ribs, and there’s something pulling at the other end. Like I’m tethered to you, no matter the distance.” Emma inhaled sharply. She was remembering Julian, fourteen years old, in the overlapping circles of fire in the Silent City, where the parabatai ritual was performed. The look on his face as they each stepped into the central circle and the fire rose up around them, and he unbuttoned his shirt to let her touch the stele to his skin and carve the rune that would bind them together for their whole lives. She knew if she just moved her hand now, she could touch the rune cut into his chest, the rune she had put there. . . .
She reached out and touched his collarbone. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. He half-closed his eyes, as if her touch hurt. Please don’t be angry, Jules, she thought. Please.
“I’m not a Blackthorn,” she said, her voice ragged.
“What?”
“I’m not a Blackthorn,” she said again. The words hurt to say: They came from a deep place of truth, one she hesitated to look at too closely. “I don’t belong in the Institute. I’m there because of you, because I’m your parabatai, so they had to let me stay. The rest of you don’t have to prove you’re giving back. I do. Everything I do is a—is a test.”
Julian’s face had changed; he was looking down at her in the moonlight, the cupid’s bow of his lips parted. His hands came up and gently looped her upper arms. Sometimes, she thought, it was as if she were a kite, and Julian the flier: She soared above the ground, and he kept her tethered to the earth. Without him she would be lost among the clouds.
She lifted her head. She could feel his breath on her face. There was something in his eyes, something breaking open, not like a crack in a wall but like a door swinging wide, and she could see the light.
“I’m not testing you, Emma,” he said. “You’ve proved everything to me already.”
There was a wild feeling in Emma’s blood, the desire to seize Julian, to do something, something, crush his hands in hers, put her arms around him, cause them both pain, make them both taste the same seeking desperation. She couldn’t understand it, and it terrified her.
She moved aside, gently breaking Julian’s hold on her. “We should get back to Mark and Cristina,” she murmured. “It’s been a while.”
She turned away from him, but not before she saw the expression on his face shut, a slamming door. She felt it like a hollow in her stomach, the intractable certainly that no matter how many demons she had killed that night, her nerve had failed her when she needed it most.
When they got back to the front of the restaurant, they found Mark and Cristina seated on top of a picnic table, surrounded by cardboard boxes of french fries, buttered rolls, fried clams, and fish tacos. Cristina was holding a bottle of lime soda and smiling at something Mark had said.
The wind off the ocean had dried Mark’s hair. It blew around his face, highlighting how much he looked like a faerie and how little he seemed like Nephilim.
“Mark was telling me about the fight at the convergence point,” said Cristina as Emma clambered onto the table and reached for a fry. Julian climbed up after her and snagged a soda.
Emma launched into her own version of events, from their discovery of the cave and the wallet to the appearance of the Mantid demons. “They crushed Mark’s motorcycle so we couldn’t get away,” she said.