The moment the door closed behind them, Julian slumped against the wall, tipping his head back, his eyes closed. His thin chest rose and fell quickly under his T-shirt. Emma hung back, unsure what to do.

“Jules?” she said.

He looked toward her. His eyes were dark in the low light, fringed by thick lashes. She could tell that he was fighting not to cry.

Julian was part of Emma’s earliest memories. They had been put in cribs together as babies by their parents; apparently she had crawled out, and bitten through her lip when she’d hit the ground. She hadn’t cried, but Julian had screamed at the sight of her bleeding, until their parents had come running. They had taken their first steps together: Emma first as always, Julian afterward, hanging determinedly on to her hand. They had started training at the same time, had gotten their first runes together: Voyance on his right hand and on her left. Julian never wanted to lie, but if Emma was in trouble, Julian lied for her.

Now they had lost their parents together. Julian’s mother had died two years before, and watching the Blackthorns go through that loss had been terrible, but this was a different experience altogether. It was shattering, and Emma could feel the breakage, could feel them coming apart and being glued back together in a new and different way. They were becoming something else, she and Julian, something that was more than best friends but not family, either.

“Jules,” she said again, and took his hand. For a moment it lay, still and cold, in hers; then he seized her wrist and gripped it tightly.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t take care of them. Tavvy’s just a baby, Ty hates me—”

“He’s your brother. And he’s only ten. He doesn’t hate you.”

Julian took a shuddering breath. “Maybe.”

“They’ll figure something out,” Emma said. “Your uncle lived through the London attack. So when this is all over, you’ll move in with him, and he’ll look after you and the others. It won’t be your responsibility.”

Julian shrugged. “I barely remember Uncle Arthur. He sends us books in Latin; sometimes he comes from London for Christmas. The only one of us who can read Latin is Ty, and he just learned it to annoy everyone.”

“So he gives bad gifts. He remembered you at Christmas. He cares enough to take care of you. They won’t have to just send you to a random Institute or to Idris—”

Julian swung around to face her. “That’s not what you think is going to happen to you, is it?” he demanded. “Because it won’t. You’ll stay with us.”

“Not necessarily,” Emma said. She felt as if her heart were being squeezed. The thought of leaving Jules, Livvy, Dru, Tavvy—even Ty—made her feel sick and lost, like she was being swept out into the ocean, alone. “It depends on your uncle, doesn’t it? Whether he wants me in the Institute. Whether he’s willing to take me in.”

Julian’s voice was fierce. Julian was rarely fierce, but when he was, his eyes went nearly black and he shook all over, as if he were freezing. “It’s not up to him. You’re going to stay with us.”

“Jules—” Emma began, and froze as voices drifted up from downstairs. Jia and Patrick Penhallow were passing through the corridor below. She wasn’t sure why she was nervous; it wasn’t as if they weren’t allowed full run of the house, but the idea of being caught wandering around this late at night by the Consul made her feel awkward.

“. . . smirking little bastard was right, of course,” Jia was saying. She sounded frayed. “Not only are Jace and Clary gone, but Isabelle and Alec along with them. The Lightwoods are absolutely frantic.”

Patrick’s deep voice rumbled an answer. “Well, Alec is an adult, technically. Hopefully he’s looking after the rest of them.”

Jia made a muffled, impatient noise in response. Emma leaned forward, trying to hear her. “. . . could have left a note at least,” she was saying. “They were clearly furious when they fled.”

“They probably thought we were going to deliver them to Sebastian.”

Jia sighed. “Ironic, considering how hard we fought against that. We assume Clary made a Portal to get them out of here, but as to how they’ve blocked us from tracking them, we don’t know. They’re nowhere on the map. It’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Just like Sebastian has,” said Patrick. “Doesn’t it make sense to assume they’re wherever he is? That the place itself is shielding them, not runes or some other kind of magic?”

Emma leaned farther forward, but the rest of their words faded with distance. She thought she heard a mention of the Spiral Labyrinth, but she wasn’t positive. When she straightened up again, she saw Julian looking at her.

“You know where they are,” he said, “don’t you?”

Emma put her finger to her lips and shook her head. Don’t ask.

Julian huffed out a laugh. “Only you. How did you—No, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know.” He looked at her searchingly, the way he did sometimes when he was trying to tell if she was lying or not. “You know,” he said, “there’s a way they couldn’t send you away from our Institute. They’d have to let you stay.”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it, genius.”

“We could—” he started, then stopped, swallowed, and started again. “We could become parabatai.”

He said it shyly, half-turning his face away from her, so that the shadows partially hid his expression.

“Then they couldn’t separate us,” he added. “Not ever.”

Emma felt her heart turn over. “Jules, being parabatai is a big deal,” she said. “It’s—it’s forever.”

He looked at her, his face open and guileless. There was no trickery in Jules, no darkness. “Aren’t we forever?” he asked.

Emma thought. She couldn’t imagine her life without Julian. It was just a sort of black hole of terrible loneliness: nobody ever understanding her the way he did, getting her jokes the way he did, protecting her the way he did—not protecting her physically but protecting her feelings, her heart. No one to be happy with or angry with or bounce ridiculous ideas off. No one to complete her sentences, or pick all the cucumbers out of her salad because she hated them, or eat the crusts off her toast, or find her keys when she lost them.

“I—” she began, and there was a sudden crash from the bedroom. She exchanged panicked looks with Julian before they burst back into Ty and Livvy’s room, to find Livia sitting up on the bed, looking sleepy and puzzled. Ty was at the window, a poker in his hand. The window had a hole punched through the middle of it, and the window glass was glittering across the floor.

“Ty!” Julian said, clearly terrified by the shards piled around his little brother’s bare feet. “Don’t move. I’ll get a broom for the glass—”

Ty glared out at both of them from beneath his wild dark hair. He held up something in his right hand. Emma squinted in the moonlight—was it an acorn?

“It’s a message,” Ty said, letting the poker drop from his hand. “Faeries often choose objects from the natural world to send their messages in—acorns, leaves, flowers.”