Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(119)

“Mom,” Emma whispered. “Dad. I need your help.”

She had taken off her dress and boots and stashed them in a corner with her weapons. The weather had worsened: Gusts tore around the Institute, rattling the copper gutters, streaking the panes of glass with feathery patterns of silver. In the distance, lightning flashed over the water, illuminating it like a sheet of glass. In her pajamas, Emma sat cross-legged, facing her open closet.

To a stranger the closet might look like a jumble of photos and string and scribbled notes, but to her it was a love letter. A love letter to her parents, whose photograph was at the center of the compilation. A photo of them smiling at each other, her dad caught in the middle of laughing, his blond hair shining in the sun.

“I feel lost,” she said. “I started this because I thought there was some connection between these murders and what happened to you. But if there is, I think I’m losing it. Nothing connects to the attack on the Institute. I feel like I’m wandering through fog and I can’t see anything clearly.”

It felt like there was something stuck in her throat, something hard and painful. Part of her wanted nothing more than to run out into the rain, feel it spill down over her. Walk or run down to the beach, where the sea and the sky would be melding into one, and let her screams be drowned out by thunder.

“There’s more,” she whispered. “I think I’m messing up. As—as a Shadowhunter. Ever since the night Jules got hurt, when I healed him, ever since then when I look at him, I feel—things I shouldn’t. I think about him the way you aren’t supposed to think about your parabatai. I’m sure he doesn’t feel the same way, but just for a few minutes tonight, when we were dancing, I was . . . happy.” She closed her eyes. “Love’s supposed to make you happy, isn’t it? It’s not supposed to hurt?”

There was a knock on her door.

Jules, she thought. She scrambled up just as the door opened.

It was Mark.

He was still in his formal clothes. They were very dark against his blond hair. Anyone else would have seemed awkward, she thought as he moved into the room and glanced at her closet, then at her. Anyone else would have asked if they were barging in or interrupting, considering she was in pajamas. But Mark behaved as if he’d arrived for an appointment.

“The day I was taken,” he said. “It was the same day your parents were killed.”

She nodded, glancing at the closet. Having it open made her feel strangely exposed.

“I told you I was sorry about what happened to them,” he said. “But that isn’t enough. I didn’t realize that this investigation would become about me. About my family trying to keep me here. That my presence would be stealing from you the meaning of what you were doing.”

Emma sat down on the foot of the bed. “Mark . . . It’s not like that.”

“It is like that,” he said. His eyes were luminous in the strange light—her window was open, and the illumination that streamed in was touched by the glow of lightning-infused clouds. “They should not be working on this only to keep me, when I might not stay.”

“You wouldn’t go back to Faerie. You wouldn’t.”

“All that was promised was that I would choose,” he said. “I have not—I cannot—” His hands balled into fists at his sides, the frustration clear on his face. “I thought you would understand. You are not a Blackthorn.”

“I am Julian’s parabatai,” she said. “And Julian needs you to stay.”

“Julian is strong,” he said.

“Julian is strong,” she agreed. “But you are his brother. And if you go—I don’t know if I can pick up those pieces.”

His eyes flicked back to her closet. “We survive losses,” he whispered.

“We do,” Emma said. “But my parents didn’t leave me on purpose. I don’t know what would have happened to me if they had.”

Thunder cracked, snapping through the room. Mark’s hand crept to his throat. “When I hear thunder, see lightning, I think I should be riding through it,” he said. “My blood calls out for the sky.”

“Who gave you that pendant?” she asked. “It’s an elf-bolt, isn’t it?”

“In the Hunt, I had skill with them,” he said. “I could strike at an enemy while riding, and hit the target nine times out of ten. He called me ‘elf-shot’ because—” Mark broke off, turning to look at Emma where she perched on the bed. “We are alike, you and I,” he said. “The storm calls you as it calls me, doesn’t it? I saw in your eyes earlier—you wanted to be out in it. To run on the beach, perhaps, as the lightning comes down.”

Emma took a shaking breath. “Mark, I don’t—”

“What’s going on?” It was Julian. He had changed out of his suit and was standing in the doorway. The look on his face as he glanced from Mark to Emma—Emma couldn’t describe it. She’d never seen Jules look like that before.

“If you two are busy,” he said, and his voice was like the edge of a knife, “with each other, I can come back some other time.”

Mark looked puzzled. Emma stared. “Mark and I were talking,” Emma said. “That’s it.”

“We are done now.” Mark rose to his feet, one of his hands resting on the elf-bolt.