Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(166)

Diego inclined his head. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

Julian leaned against one of the pillars, and he and Emma watched as Diego strode away across the trampled grass and headed down the road. The moon had disappeared entirely and the eastern sky was beginning to turn pink.

“What are you doing out here?” Julian said finally in a quiet voice.

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Emma.

Julian had his head tipped back, as if he were bathing in the dim illumination of the dawn. The strange light made him into something else, someone made out of marble and silver, someone whose inky curls clung to his temples and neck like the acanthus leaves in Greek art.

He wasn’t perfect, like Diego, but to Emma, there had never been anyone more beautiful.

“We’re going to have to talk about this eventually,” she said. “What you told me and Mark.”

“I know.” He looked down at his long legs, the frayed hems of his jeans, his boots. “I had hoped—I suppose I’d hoped it would never happen, or that at least we’d be adults when it did.”

“So let’s be adults about it. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Do you think I liked keeping secrets from you? Do you think I didn’t want to tell you?”

“If you’d wanted to, you could have.”

“No, I couldn’t.” He spoke with a quiet despair.

“Did you not trust me? Did you think I’d tell on you?”

Julian shook his head. “That wasn’t it.” Enough light had spread over the landscape for the color of his eyes to be visible despite the darkness. They looked like artificially illuminated water.

Emma thought of the night Julian’s mother had died. She had been ill, attended by Silent Brothers to the end. There were some diseases even Nephilim magic couldn’t cure: She had cancer of the bone, and it had killed her.

Andrew Blackthorn, newly widowed, had been too devastated to be the one to go to Tavvy when the baby cried in the night. Helen had been efficient: heating Tavvy’s bottles, changing him, dressing him. But Julian had been the one who stayed with him during the day. While Mark and Helen trained, Julian sat in Tavvy’s room and sketched or painted. Emma would sit with him there sometimes, and they would play the way they normally did, with the baby gurgling in his crib a few feet away.

At the time Emma hadn’t thought much of it. She, like Julian, had been only ten years old. But she recalled it now.

“I remember when your mother died,” she said. “And you took care of Tavvy during the days. I asked you why, and I remember what you said. Do you?”

“I said it was because no one else could,” said Julian, looking at her quizzically. “Mark and Helen had to train. . . . My father was . . . well, you know how he was.”

“Everything you’ve done is because no one else would or could do it. If you hadn’t covered up for Arthur, no one else would even have thought of it. If you hadn’t been so determined to hold everything together, no one else would have. Maybe it started back then, when you took care of Tavvy. Maybe it gave you the idea.”

He exhaled. “Maybe. I don’t entirely know myself.”

“I still wish you’d told me. I know you thought you were being unselfish—”

“I didn’t,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise.

“I did it for entirely selfish reasons,” he said. “You were my escape, Emma. You were my way away from everything terrible. When I was with you, I was happy.”

Emma stood up. “But that can’t have been the only time you were happy—”

“Of course I’m happy with my family,” he said. “But I’m responsible for them—I was never responsible for you—we’re responsible for each other; that’s what parabatai means, don’t you understand, Emma, you’re the only one, the only one who was ever meant to look after me.”

“Then I failed you,” she said, feeling a bone-deep sense of disappointment with herself. “I should have known what you were going through, and I didn’t—”

“Don’t ever say that again!” He shoved himself away from the pillar, the rising sun, behind him, turning the edges of his hair to copper. Emma couldn’t see his expression, but she knew it was furious.

Emma got to her feet. “What, that I should have known? I should have—”

“That you failed me,” he said hotly. “If you knew—you’ve been all that’s kept me going, for weeks sometimes, months. Even when I was in England, thinking of you kept me going. It’s why I had to be parabatai with you—it was completely selfish—I wanted to tie you to me, no matter what, even though I knew it was a bad idea, even though I knew I—”

He broke off, a look of horror flashing across his face.

“Even though what?” Emma demanded. Her heart was pounding. “Even though what, Julian?”

He shook his head. Her hair had escaped from its ponytail and the wind was whipping it around her face, bright pale strands on the wind. He reached up to tuck one behind her ear: He looked like someone caught in a dream, trying to wake up. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Do you love me?” Her voice was a whisper.

He wound a piece of her hair around his finger, a silver-gold ring. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “It won’t change anything if I do.”