Also by Cassandra Clare

ody. “I used to read Law books,” he said, drawing away from her. “The parts about parabatai. I
read them a million times. There’s never been a case of a pair of parabatai who fell in love and got
caught and were forgiven. Only horror stories. And I can’t lose my family. You were right. It would
kill me. But the horror stories are about the ones who got caught.” He breathed in deep, holding her
gaze. “If we’re careful, we won’t be.”
She wondered if Julian had pushed himself past some point the night before, a point where the
responsibilities that bowed him under seemed insurmountable. It was absolutely unlike Julian to want
to break the rules, and though she wanted what he wanted, it unnerved her nonetheless.
“We’d have to set rules,” he said. “Strict ones. When we could see each other. We’d have to be
careful. Much more careful than we have been. No more beach, no more studio. We have to be
absolutely sure, every time, that we were somewhere we wouldn’t be walked in on.”
She nodded. “In fact, no talking about it either,” she said. “Not in the Institute. Not where someone
might hear us.”
Julian nodded. His pupils were slightly dilated, his eyes the color of an oncoming storm over the
ocean.
“You’re right,” he said. “We can’t talk here. I’ll throw some lunch together for the kids, so they
don’t keep looking for me. Then meet me down on the beach, okay? You know where.”
Where I pulled you out of the water. Where this all started.
“Okay,” she said, after a slight hesitation. “You go first and I’ll meet you there. But I still have
something I need to tell you.”
“The important thing is that we stay together, Emma. That’s what matters—”
She raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. A long, slow, intoxicating kiss that made him
groan low in his throat.
When she drew away, he was staring at her. “How do people handle these feelings?” He seemed
honestly bewildered. “How are they not all over each other all the time if they’re, you know, in
love?”
Emma swallowed against the sudden urge to cry. In love. He hadn’t said it before.
I love you, Julian Blackthorn, she thought, looking at him there in her room, as he had been a
million times before and yet it was completely different now. How could anything be so safe and
familiar and yet so terrifying and all-encompassing and new at the same time?
She could see the faint pencil scratch markings on the doorframe behind him where they had once
recorded their heights each year. They’d stopped doing it when he’d gotten taller than her, and the
highest of the marks, now, was far below Julian’s head.
“I’ll see you on the beach,” she whispered.
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and walked out of the room. There was a strange feeling of
foreboding in her chest as she watched him go—how would he react to what Malcolm had told her?
Even if he dismissed it as lies, how could you plan a life of hiding and sneaking around as if it were a
happy thing? She’d never really understood the point of engagement parties and the like before
(though she was happy for Isabelle and Simon) but she got it now: When you were in love you wanted
to tell people about it, and that was exactly what they couldn’t do.
At least she could reassure him, though, that she loved him. That she always would. That no one
could take his place.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud buzzing. Her phone. She padded over to the bureau to pick
it up, using her thumb to open the home screen.
A text message was displayed there, in bold red letters.