Also by Cassandra Clare

find it ourselves.”
“Good.”
“Good?” She sounded surprised.
“It’s going to take a few days for Malcolm to translate those papers, and I don’t want to spend
those days sitting around the Institute, staring at Mark, waiting for him to—waiting. It’s better if we
keep working, have something to do.” His voice sounded stretched thin to his own ears. He hated it,
hated any visible or audible sign of weakness.
Though at least it was only with Emma, who he could show these things to. Emma, alone in his life,
did not need his caretaking. Did not need him to be perfect or perfectly strong.
Before Julian could say anything else, Emma’s phone went off with a loud buzz. She pulled it out of
her pocket.
Cameron Ashdown. She frowned at the llama on the screen. “Not now,” she told it, and shoved the
phone back into her jeans.
“Are you going to tell him?” Julian asked, and heard the stiffness in his own voice, and hated it.
“About all of this?”
“About Mark? I would never tell. Never.”
He kept his grip on the wheel tight, his jaw set.
“You’re my parabatai,” she said, and now there was anger in her voice. “You know I wouldn’t.”
Julian slammed on the brakes. The car lurched forward, the wheel slewing out of his hands. Emma
yelped as they skidded off the road and bumped down into a ditch by the side of the highway, in
between the road and the dunes over the sea.
Dust was rising up around the car in plumes. Julian whirled toward Emma. She was white around
the mouth. “Jules.”
“I didn’t mean it,” he said.
She stared. “What?”
“You being my parabatai is the best thing in my life,” Julian said. The words were steady and
simple, spoken without a trace of anything held back. He’d been holding back so tightly that the relief
of it was almost unbearable.
Impulsively she undid her safety belt, rising up in her seat to look down on him solemnly. The sun
was high overhead. Up close he could see the gold lines inside the brown of her eyes, the faint spatter
of light freckles across her nose, the bits of lighter, sun-bleached hair mixed with the darker hair at
her nape. Raw umber and Naples yellow, mixed with white. He could smell rose water on her, and
laundry detergent.
She leaned into him, and his body chased the feeling of closeness, of having her back and near. Her
knees bumped against his. “But you said—”
“I know what I said.” He turned toward her, slewing his body around in the driver’s seat. “While I
was away, I realized some things. Hard things. Maybe I even realized them before I left.”
“You can tell me what they are.” She touched his cheek lightly. He felt his whole body lock into
tension. “I remember what you said about Mark last night,” she went on. “You were never the oldest
brother. He always was. If he hadn’t been taken, if Helen had been able to stay, you would have made
different choices because you would have had someone to take care of you.”
He breathed out. “Emma.” Raw pain. “Emma, I said what I said because—because sometimes I
think I asked you to be my parabatai because I wanted you to be tied to me. The Consul wanted you
to go to the Academy and I couldn’t stand the thought. I’d lost so many people. I didn’t want to lose
you, too.”