Lady Midnight

“Please,” he said, desperation clear in his voice. “Just—just one more try.”

“One more?” she echoed.

“You’ll fix this. You’ll fix me, because we’re parabatai. We’re forever. I said that to you once, do you remember?”

She nodded warily, hand on the phone.

“And the strength of a rune your parabatai gives you is special. Whatever was on that arrowhead was meant to prevent healing magic, but Emma, you can do it. You can heal me. We’re parabatai and that means the things we can do together are . . . extraordinary.”

There was blood on her jeans now, blood on her hands and her tank top, and he was still bleeding, the wound still open, an incongruous tear in the smooth skin all around it.

“Try,” Jules said in a dry whisper. “For me, try?”

His voice went up on the question, and in it she heard the voice of the boy he had been once, remembered him smaller, skinnier, younger, standing upright before his siblings in the Great Hall in Alicante as his father advanced on him with his blade unsheathed.

And she remembered what Julian had done then. Done to protect her, to protect all of them, because he always would do everything to protect them.

She took her hand off the phone and gripped the stele, so tightly she felt it dig into her damp palm. “Look at me, Jules,” she said, and he met her eyes with his. She placed the stele against his skin, and for a moment she held still, just breathing, breathing and remembering.

Julian. A presence in her life for as long as she could recall, splashing water at each other in the ocean, digging in the sand together, him putting his hand over hers and them marveling at the difference in the shape and length of their fingers. Julian singing, terribly and off-key, while he drove, his fingers in her hair carefully freeing a trapped leaf, his hands catching her in the training room when she fell, and fell, and fell. The first time after their parabatai ceremony when she’d smashed her hand into a wall in rage at not being able to get a sword maneuver right, and he’d come up to her, taken her still-shaking body in his arms, and said, “Emma, Emma, don’t hurt yourself. When you do, I feel it too.”

Something in her chest seemed to split and crack; she marveled that it wasn’t audible. Energy raced along her veins and the stele moved in her hand, tracing the graceful outline of a healing rune across Julian’s chest. She heard him gasp, his eyes flying open. His hand slid down her back and he pressed her against him, his teeth gritted.

“Don’t stop,” he said.

Emma couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. The stele seemed to be moving of its own accord; she was blinded with memories, a kaleidoscope of them, all of Julian. Sun in her eyes and Julian asleep on the beach in an old T-shirt and her not wanting to wake him, but he’d woken anyway when the sun went down and looked for her, immediately, not smiling till his eyes found her and he knew she was there. Falling asleep talking and waking up with their hands interlocked; they’d been children in the dark together once but now they were something else, something intimate and powerful, something Emma felt she was touching only the very edge of as she finished the rune and the stele fell from her fingers.

“Oh,” she said softly. The rune seemed lit from within by a soft glow. Julian was breathing hard, his stomach muscles rising and falling quickly, but the bleeding had stopped. The wound was closing, sealing itself up like an envelope. “Does it—does it hurt?”

A smile was spreading across Julian’s face. His hand was still on Emma’s hip, gripping hard; he must have forgotten. “No,” he said. His voice was hushed, soft, as if he were speaking inside a church. “You did it; you fixed it.” He was looking at her like she was a rare miracle. “Emma, my God, Emma.”

Emma slumped against his shoulder as the tension drained out of her. She let her head rest there as his arms circled her body.

“It’s all right.” He slid his hands down her back, clearly able to tell that she was shaking. “Everything’s fine, I’m fine.”

“Jules,” she whispered. His face was close to hers; she could see the light freckles across his cheekbones, under the smears of blood. Could feel his body against hers, vividly alive, the slamming of his heart in his rib cage, the heat of his skin, as if on fire from the power of the iratze. Her own heart was beating hard as her hands found his shoulders—

The front door of the car flew open. Light streamed in and Emma jerked away from Julian as Livvy clambered into the front seat.

Livvy was holding a witchlight in her right hand, and its irregular beams illuminated the strange scene in the back of the Toyota: Emma in her bloody clothes; Julian, shirtless, jammed against the rear door. His hands fell away from Emma.

“Is everything okay?” Livvy demanded. She was gripping her phone in one hand; she must have been waiting for more messages, Emma thought guiltily. “You texted nine-one-one—”

“Everything’s fine.” Emma slid across the bench seat, away from Jules.

He struggled upright, looking down dubiously at his shredded shirt. “Someone shot me with a crossbow bolt. The iratzes weren’t working.”

“Well, you look fine now.” Livvy eyed him, puzzled. “Bloody, but . . .”

“A little parabatai magic,” said Jules. “They weren’t working, then they were. Sorry to scare you.”