He wanted to take her hand, but held himself back. If he let himself touch her, he might crumble and fall apart and he had to stay strong and reasonable and hopeful. He was the one who’d listened to Magnus, who’d agreed to this. It was on him.

“I hate it, too,” he said. “If there was any way it could be me going into exile, I would do it, Emma. Look, we’ll only agree to it if the terms are what we want—if the exile period is short, if you can live with Cristina, if the Inquisitor promises no dishonor will accrue to your family name.”

“Magnus really thinks Robert Lightwood is going to be that willing to help us? To basically let us dictate the terms of our exile?”

“He really does,” said Julian. “He didn’t say why exactly—maybe because Robert was exiled himself once, or because his parabatai died.”

“But Robert doesn’t know about the curse.”

“And he doesn’t need to,” said Julian. “Just being in love breaks the Law long before the curse is triggered. And the Law says we’ll have to be separated or have our Marks stripped anyway. That’s not good for the Clave. They’re hurting for Shadowhunters, certainly ones as good as you. He’ll want a solution that keeps you Nephilim pretty badly. And besides—we have leverage.”

“What leverage?”

Julian drew in a long breath. “We know how to cut the bond. We’ve been acting like we don’t, but we do.”

Emma went rigid all over. “Because we can’t even consider the idea,” she said. “It’s not something we could ever do.”

“It still exists,” Julian said. “We still know about it.”

Her hand shot out and grabbed the front of his shirt. Her grip was incredibly strong. “Julian,” she said. “It would be an unforgivable sin to use whatever magic it is the Seelie Queen was talking about. We wouldn’t just be hurting Jace and Alec, Clary and Simon. All the people we don’t know that we’d be harming—destroying this thing that’s as fundamental to them as how you love me and I love you—”

“They are not us,” Julian said. “This isn’t just about you and me, this is about the children. About my family. Our family.”

“Jules.” The dismay in her eyes was stark. “I’ve always known you’d do anything for the kids. We’ve always said we both would. But when we talk about anything, we still mean there are things we wouldn’t do. Don’t you know that?”

Julian

You scared me

“Yes, I know that,” he said, and she relaxed slightly. Her eyes were wide. He wanted to kiss her even more than he had before, partly because she was Emma and that meant she was good and honest and thoughtful.

Ironic, really.

“It’s just a threat,” he added. “Leverage. We wouldn’t do it, but Robert doesn’t need to know that.”

Emma let go of his shirt. “It’s too much of a threat,” she said. “Destroying parabatai as a thing that exists could rip the whole fabric of Nephilim apart.”

“We’re not going to destroy anything.” He took her face in his hands. Her skin was soft against his palms. “We’re going to fix it all. We’re going to be together. Exile will give us the time we need to find out how to break the bond. If it can be done the Seelie Queen’s way, it can be done some other way. The curse was like a monster at our heels. This gives us breathing room.”

She kissed his palm. “You sound so sure.”

“I am sure,” he said. “Emma, I am totally sure.”

He couldn’t stand it any longer. He pulled her into his lap. She let her weight fall against his body, her face pressed to the crook of his neck. Her hand traced the collar of his T-shirt, just where his skin touched the cotton.

“Do you know why I’m sure?” he whispered, kissing her temple, her cheek where it tasted like salt. “Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, everything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are made of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone’s are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That’s why we’ve always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together.” He held her tighter. “Your name, Emma, means universe, you know,” he said. “Doesn’t that prove I’m right?”

She gave a sobbing half-laugh, lifted her face, and kissed him hard. His body jumped as if he’d touched an electrified wire. His mind went blank, just the sound of their breathing in his ears and the feel of her hands on his shoulders and the taste of her mouth.

He couldn’t stand it; holding her, he rolled sideways, taking her with him so they lay crossways on the coverlet. His hands moved under her oversize shirt, cupped her waist, thumbs tracing the angles of her hips. They were still kissing. He felt raw, cut open, every nerve a bleeding edge of desire. He licked sugar off her lips and she moaned.

Everything about the fact that this was forbidden was wrong, he thought. Nobody belonged together more than he and Emma did. He almost felt as if their connection scorched its way through their parabatai Marks, winding them closer, amplifying every sensation. Just his hand tangling in the soft strands of her hair was enough to make his bones feel as if they were turning to liquid, to fire. When she arched up against him he thought he might actually die.

And then she drew away, taking a long and shuddering breath. She was shaking. “Julian—we can’t.”

He rolled away from her. It felt like ripping off a limb. His hands dug into the blanket, gripping hard enough to hurt.

“Emma,” he said. It was all he could say.

“I want to,” she said, raising herself up on an elbow. Her hair was a mess of golden tangles, her expression earnest. “You have to know I want to. But while we’re still parabatai, we can’t.”

“It won’t make me love you any more or differently,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I love you either way. I love you if we never touch.”

“I know. But it seems like tempting fate.” She reached to stroke his face, his chest. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“It always does,” he said, “when it’s you.” He kissed her, a kiss that accepted that tonight, there would be no more than kisses. “Only you. No one but you.”

It was true. He had never desired anyone before Emma, and never anyone since. There had been times when he was younger that it had puzzled him—he was a teenager, he was supposed to be full of inchoate longings and wantings and yearnings, wasn’t he? But he never wanted anyone, never fantasized or dreamed or longed at all.

And then there had been one day on the beach, when Emma had been laughing next to him and she had reached up to undo her barrette, and her hair had spilled down over her fingers and against her back like liquid sunlight.

His whole body had reacted. He remembered it even now, the driving pain as if something deadly had struck him. It had made him understand why the Greeks had believed love was an arrow that tore through your body and left a blazing trail of longing behind.

In French, falling suddenly in love was the coup de foudre. The bolt of lightning. The fire in your veins, the destructive power of a thousand million volts. Julian hadn’t fallen suddenly in love: He always had been in love. He had only just that moment realized it.

And after that, he longed. Oh, how he longed. And wished for the time he’d thought he was missing something by not longing, because the longing was like a thousand cruel voices that whispered to him that he was a fool. It was only six months after their parabatai ceremony, and it had been the biggest mistake he’d ever made, and totally irrevocable. And every time he saw Emma after that it was like a knife in his chest, but a knife whose pain he welcomed. A blade whose hilt he held in his own hand, pressed against his own heart, and nothing and no one could have taken it away from him.

“Sleep,” he said. He gathered her in his arms and she curled up against him, closing her eyes. His Emma, his universe, his blade.

*

“You see,” Diana said. “It’s exactly what we thought it was.”