Bred in the Bone #6
Emma laughed, then choked on a sob. How was it, even when she was bloody, tearstained, bruised, and afraid, Julian could cajole her into smiling?
She leaned forward and kissed him hard, and if she’d been worried he hadn’t fully recovered, that worry vanished quickly.
He drew her toward him, kissing her back fiercely, as if they’d been separated for months and only just reunited.
She wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.
Not because she was trying to exorcise any possible trace left behind by the Endarkened Shadowhunter and her Endarkened Tongue (though if she happened to do so: bonus).
And not just because she enjoyed it, because she certainly did.
But because as soon as they stopped kissing, they’d have to go after Thule Emma.
They couldn’t let her vanish into the city, as much as Emma never wanted to see her again.
Julian knew it too. Reluctantly, he broke off the kiss and stood up, helping Emma to her feet after him.
They gathered their weapons and crawled out the bathroom window, taking care not to cut themselves on the glass.
(Some of the shards had bloody edges—the Other Emma clearly hadn’t been similarly careful.)
The window fed into an alley. It was empty, except for a couple of overfilled dumpsters and a scrawny cat. Not that Emma had expected anything else, but still. They paused to regroup.
“She could have gone anywhere from here,” Julian said. “We should call the Institute. Get every Shadowhunter in LA on it. If she gets away…”
“We have to alert the Clave,” Emma said. “If there’s another passageway open to Thule, anyone—or anything—could have come here.” She tried not to show the cold dread she felt. Thule was poison. So much poison leaking through to their world could be irreparable. At the same time…
“I don’t get it.” Julian paced up and down. Emma was content to watch him. Even scuffed and bloody, he was beautiful. Maybe even more beautiful. “They’re supposed to be dead. The Endarkened. When Sebastian died—we saw them die too.”
“We saw them collapse,” Emma said, slowly. “We assumed they were dead, but…”
But I was wrong, before. In our world, the Endarkened didn’t die when Sebastian did. They died when the Infernal Cup was destroyed. Maybe in Thule, they’d seen what they wanted to see. What made it easier for them to flee back to their own world, their own fight.
“The thing is—I still want to talk to her,” Julian said. “If she was able to get here, she might be able to tell us how Thule Livvy could come to our world too.”
“Then…maybe we shouldn’t tell the Clave.
” Emma couldn’t blame Jules; she felt the same longing to bring Livvy from the other world here, where it was safe.
But it was something the Clave would never approve of.
She couldn’t imagine any situation in which they’d allow it.
Not that that would ever stop Jules. “But we need to figure out what’s going on. ”
“I feel like we abandoned them.” Julian said them. But Emma knew he meant Livvy.
“Livvy wanted to stay and fight,” Emma reminded him.
“Because she thought she could win!”
“Julian, you know she would have wanted to fight no matter what. And we don’t know what’s going on over there. Maybe the resistance won and this Emma’s on the run. She could be the only Endarkened left.”
“Or she could be the start of an invasion.” Julian turned to look at her. “You found her before. Do you think you can locate her again? Wherever she is?”
Emma swallowed hard. “I don’t know how much I can think like her, really.”
“I get it.” Julian’s voice was rough. “She’s not you. She’s a rotting trash heap of evil wearing an Emma costume.”
Emma leaned against the wall, the rough stone hard against her back.
She was remembering Thule, the knife going through Endarkened Julian’s eye.
His body dropping, lifeless, to the ground.
It was easy to know it wasn’t Julian; harder to feel it.
Not when she could close her eyes and see it, even now: Julian, dead.
Her worst nightmare. Which the Other Emma was living. Half her soul cut away, consigned to darkness.
After Julian’s father had died—after Julian had killed his father—he had nightmares.
He would wake in the night, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Always silent, because even half-asleep, Julian knew better than to alarm his siblings.
Only Emma knew. Emma would hold him, and she would whisper, in the dark, “It wasn’t really him.
” Over and over. Until one night, he stopped her.
“You don’t have to keep telling me,” he had said. “I know. It wasn’t him.”
She wasn’t sure whether to believe him.
“Emma, if I thought that was still my father, if I thought any part of him was still in there—do you think I could survive it?” It was the new Jules who had said it, the ruthless grown-up Jules she was still getting used to.
Emma used to ask herself who her Jules might have become, if the Dark War had never happened.
She never asked herself if she would have loved that hypothetical Julian—gentle, soft, even quiet—more.
There was no way to love him more. Her love was operating at full capacity.
She also tried never to ask herself if she would have loved that Julian less.
“Whoever she is now,” Emma said, “before she was Endarkened, before the timelines split, she had the same experiences as me. She thought the same, she felt the same. She lived here, in the Institute, just like I did. So where would she go if she didn’t want to be found, not just by us, but by any Shadowhunters? ”
Julian just looked at her, and Emma closed her eyes.
She reached back, into her earlier self, before she was the angry, desperate, vengeful girl who’d lost her family.
Back when the things she’d had to hide from were ordinary agonies: the humiliations of adolescence, the cruelty of people like Paige Ashdown, fights with her parents. Where had she gone to be alone?
A picture formed behind her eyes. She knew she was right, somehow, like she always knew where Cortana was without looking; she knew it like she knew Julian had come to Psychopomp in secret because he was trying to protect her from facing the warped version of herself; she knew it like she knew her own vengeful heart.
“The sea caves,” Emma said.
And Julian nodded.
—
On a clear night at Leo Carrillo Beach, you could see the Milky Way.
You could lay a blanket on the sand, then lie back, safely hidden from everything but sea and sky, and count the stars until you fell asleep.
You could, if you were lucky, lie beside the person you loved, your body curved around his, your hearts beating together.
You could also, if you wanted, stroll to the water’s edge, to the spot where your parents’ bodies had washed ashore.
You could venture up into the hills and find the caves that hollowed out the bluffs. You could feel your way through the darkness to a place that had once held witness to the raising of the dead.
You could lose yourself forever, in the dark.
Or you could wait for the tide to rise, and the ocean to carry you away. She remembered an old fragment of poetry: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, / Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits.
Emma had almost drowned, not far from here, swept into the sea, destined to wash up on a far different shore.
That was the night she and Julian had been together for the first time.
Drowning in the ocean; drowning in Julian.
It had felt the same, in those days, their love an immense, beautiful darkness.
An inexorable force pulling them down and down and down.
What they had now was better. Healthy. Calm. Safe. Love less like ocean than like air, lifting them up. She couldn’t start questioning that, just because Thule Emma implied that safe, calm, and happy were just alternate words for boring.
But.
I knew your desire.
Your need.
Did Julian miss it, the way their love had cut like a blade that could tear their universe apart?
The incoming tide was licking at their feet. Emma half turned. “Jules, do you ever think—”
But Julian laid his hand on her arm, gesturing her to be quiet.
Emma looked ahead, to where the cliffs were honeycombed with caves that looked like pockmarks in the rock.
There was a pale figure in the mouth of one of the caves.
Emma’s Night Vision rune kicked in as she squinted: She saw the Other Emma clearly, her face a pale moon, framed by her black hood.
Seeming to see them, Thule Emma ducked swiftly, turned, and vanished into the shadows of the cave.
Emma started forward. Julian caught at her wrist, his fingers moving gently against the skin of her palm, writing out what he wanted to say.
I-T-S-A-T-R-A-P
Emma looked up at him. Her Julian, lit by the light of the moon over the ocean. “I know,” she said softly. “The tide’s going to come in. Fill up the cave.”
“She might drown,” Julian said. “On the other hand, I suppose we don’t know the full extent of the power being Endarkened gives her.”
“And if she drowns,” Emma said, “there won’t be any answers about Livvy. Or Thule. Or anything.”
“Okay.” Julian closed his eyes. “Before we go in, we need a plan.”
It was so perfectly Julian, she could have kissed him.
Actually, never mind: She did kiss him. Then, “Let me guess, you already have one?”
He grinned. “I love how well you know me.”
—
Emma inscribed one last rune on Julian’s shoulder. Sure-Strike. She’d given him Night Vision and Endurance, and he had given her Speed and Stealth. They were ready.
“Should we send another message?” Emma asked. “Just in case?”
“Either he got it or he didn’t,” Julian said. “Either he’ll come or he won’t.”