Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(206)

Kieran half-closed his eyes. “Mark—”

But Mark had already turned away. Kieran stood and watched him go, and though he did not move or speak, at the edge of the bluff Windspear reared up and cried out, his hooves pawing at the sky.

Julian’s window looked out over the desert. At any point during the past five years he could have switched out for Mark’s room, which had a view of the ocean, but it would have felt like giving up on the idea that Mark would ever come back. And besides, his was the only room with a window seat, lined with now slightly threadbare cushions. He and Emma had spent hours there together, reading and drawing, the sun through the glass turning her pale hair to fire.

He was sitting there now, the window cranked open to carry away the scents that still seemed to hang over him, even after a shower: blood and wet stone, seawater and dark magic.

Everything ended eventually, he thought. Even the strangest night of his life. Clary had taken him and Emma aside after Anselm had been captured, hugged them, reminded them that they could always call. He knew Clary was, in her quiet way, trying to tell him, tell both of them, that it was all right to lay their burdens on her.

He knew he never would.

His phone trilled. He glanced down at the screen: It was Emma. She’d sent him a photo. No words, just the picture of her closet: the door open, the photographs and maps and string and notes spilling out.

He threw on jeans and a T-shirt and headed down the hall. The Insitute was dead silent, wrapped in sleep, the only sound the desert wind outside, soughing against glass and stone.

Emma was in her room, sitting up against the footboard of her bed, her phone on the floor beside her. She was wearing a nightgown, long with thin straps, pale white in the fading moonlight.

“Julian,” she said, knowing he was there without looking up. “You were awake, right? I had a feeling you were awake.”

She stood up, still looking at her closet.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “I spent such a long time collecting everything that seemed like evidence, making guesses, thinking about this and nothing but this. This was my big secret, the heart of everything I did.” She looked toward him. “Now it’s just a closet full of junk.”

“I can’t tell you what you should do with all that,” he said. “But I can tell you, you don’t need to think about it now.”

Her hair was down, like spun light around her shoulders, tickling her face with the ends of curls, and he dug his fingers into his palms to keep himself from pulling her against him so he could bury his face and hands in it.

He looked instead at the healing cuts on her arms and hands, the fading red of her burned wrist, the evidence that tonight had not been easy.

Nothing they did ever was.

“Mark’s staying,” she said. “Right? There’s nothing the Clave can do to take him away now?”

Mark. Her first thought is about Mark. Julian pushed the thought down, away: It was unworthy, ridiculous. They weren’t twelve anymore.

“Nothing,” Julian said. “He was never exiled. The rule was only that we couldn’t look for him. We didn’t. He found his way home and they can’t change that. And I think, after the help he gave us with Malcolm, it would be a very unpopular move if they tried.”

She flashed a faint smile at him before clambering up onto the bed, sliding her long bare legs under the coverlet. “I went to check on Diego and Cristina,” she said. “He was passed out in her bed and she was asleep in the chair next to him. I’m going to make so much fun of her tomorrow.”

“Is Cristina in love with him? Diego, I mean,” Julian asked, sitting down on the side of Emma’s bed.

“Not sure.” Emma wiggled her fingers. “They have, you know. Stuff.”

“No, I don’t know.” He copied her gesture. “What’s that?”

“Unfinished romantic business,” Emma said, pulling the blanket up.

“Finger wiggling means unfinished business? I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Julian felt a smile tug the corners of his mouth. Only Emma could make him smile after a night like the one they’d had.

She turned back a corner of the blanket. “Stay?”

There was nothing he wanted more than to crawl in beside her, to trace the shape of her face with his fingers: wide cheekbones, pointed chin, half-lidded eyes, eyelashes like lace against his fingertips. His body and mind were beyond exhausted, too worn out for desire, but the yearning for closeness and companionship remained. The touch of her hands, her skin, was a comfort nothing else could reproduce.

He remembered the beach, lying awake for hours, trying to memorize what it was like to hold Emma. They’d slept beside each other so many times, but he’d never realized how different it was when you could encompass the shape of someone else in your arms. Fit your breathing to their breathing.

He crawled into bed beside her, clothes still on, and slid under the covers. She was on her side, her head propped on her hand. Her expression was serious, intent. “The way you orchestrated everything tonight, Julian. You scared me a little.”

He touched the edge of her hair, briefly, before dropping his hand. A slow ache was spreading through his body, a deep ache that seemed to come from the marrow of his bones.

“You should never be scared of me,” he said. “Never. You’re one of the people I would never hurt.”