Lady Midnight

“I must have been, to do that,” he said.

“To do what?” She was impressed by how clearly and calmly each word came out. Anxiety beat through her like a drum.

“What we did.” He exhaled. “You know what I mean.”

“You’re saying what we did was wrong.”

“I meant—” He looked as if he were trying to contain something that wanted to tear its way out of him. “There’s nothing wrong with it morally,” he said. “It’s a stupid Law. But it is a Law. And we can’t break it. It’s one of the oldest Laws there is.”

“But it doesn’t make sense.”

He looked at her without seeing her, blindly. “The Law is hard, but it is the Law.”

Emma got to her feet. “No,” she said. “No Law can control our feelings.”

“I didn’t say anything about feelings,” said Julian.

Her throat felt dry. “What do you mean?”

“We shouldn’t have slept together,” he said. “I know it meant something to me, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t, but the Law doesn’t forbid sex, it forbids love. Being in love.”

“I’m pretty sure sleeping together is against the rules too.”

“Yeah, but it’s not what they exile you for! It’s not what they strip your Marks for!” He raked a hand through his snarled hair. “It’s against the rules because—being intimate like that, physically intimate, it opens you up to be emotionally intimate and that’s what they care about.”

“We are emotionally intimate.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t pretend you don’t.” There are different kinds of closeness, intimacy. They want us to be close. But they don’t want this.” He gestured around at the beach as if to encompass all of the night before.

Emma was shaking. “Eros,” she said. “Instead of philia or agape.”

He looked relieved, as if her explanation meant she understood, she agreed. As if they had made some decision together. Emma wanted to scream. “Philia,” he said. “That’s what we have—friendship love—and I’m sorry if I did anything to screw that up—”

“I was there too,” Emma said, and her voice was as cold as the water.

He looked at her levelly.

“We love each other,” he said. “We’re parabatai, love is part of the bond. And I’m attracted to you. How could I not be? You’re beautiful. And it’s not like—”

He broke off, but Emma filled the rest in for him, the words so painful they almost seemed to cut at the inside of her head. It’s not like I can meet other girls, not like I can date, you’re what there is, you’re what’s around, Cristina’s probably still in love with someone in Mexico, there isn’t anyone for me. There’s just you.

“It’s not like I’m blind,” he said. “I can see you, and I want you, but—we can’t. If we do, we’ll end up falling in love, and that would be a disaster.”

“Falling in love,” Emma echoed. How could he not see she was already fallen, in every way you could be? “Didn’t I tell you I loved you? Last night?”

He shook his head. “We never said we loved each other,” he said. “Not once.”

That couldn’t be true. Emma searched her memories, as if she were rummaging desperately through her pockets for a lost key. She’d thought it. Julian Blackthorn, I love you more than starlight. She’d thought it but she hadn’t said it. And neither had he. We’re bound together, he’d said. But not: I love you.

She waited for him to say, I was out of my mind because you risked your life or You almost died and it made me crazy or any variety of It was your fault. She thought that if he did, she would blow up like an activated land mine.

But he didn’t. He stood looking at her, his flannel jacket shoved up to his elbows, his exposed bare skin red from cold water and scratched with sand.

She had never seen him look so sad.

She lifted her chin. “You’re right. It’s better if we forget it.”

He winced at that. “I do love you, Emma.”

She rubbed her hands together for warmth, thought of the way the ocean wore down even stone walls over the years, wringing fragments out of what had once been impregnable. “I know,” she said. “Just not like that.”

The first thing Emma saw when they returned to the Institute—having told Julian the story of her experience at the convergence on their way back from the beach—was that the car she’d left at the cave entrance the night before was parked at the foot of the front steps. The second was that Diana was sitting on the car’s hood, looking madder than a hornet.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded as Emma and Julian stopped dead in their tracks. “Seriously, Emma, have you lost your mind?”

For a moment Emma felt actually dizzy—Diana couldn’t be talking about her and Julian, could she? She wasn’t the one who’d found them on the beach? She glanced sideways at Julian, but he was as white-faced with shock as she felt.

Diana’s dark eyes bored into her. “I’m waiting for an explanation,” she said. “What made you think it was a good idea to go to the convergence by yourselves?”