Also by Cassandra Clare

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.”