“Do you know why I’m sure?” he whispered, kissing her temple, her cheek where it tasted like salt. “Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, everything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are made of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone’s are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That’s why we’ve always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together.” He held her tighter. “Your name, Emma, means universe, you know,” he said. “Doesn’t that prove I’m right?”

She gave a sobbing half-laugh, lifted her face, and kissed him hard. His body jumped as if he’d touched an electrified wire. His mind went blank, just the sound of their breathing in his ears and the feel of her hands on his shoulders and the taste of her mouth.

He couldn’t stand it; holding her, he rolled sideways, taking her with him so they lay crossways on the coverlet. His hands moved under her oversize shirt, cupped her waist, thumbs tracing the angles of her hips. They were still kissing. He felt raw, cut open, every nerve a bleeding edge of desire. He licked sugar off her lips and she moaned.

Everything about the fact that this was forbidden was wrong, he thought. Nobody belonged together more than he and Emma did. He almost felt as if their connection scorched its way through their parabatai Marks, winding them closer, amplifying every sensation. Just his hand tangling in the soft strands of her hair was enough to make his bones feel as if they were turning to liquid, to fire. When she arched up against him he thought he might actually die.

And then she drew away, taking a long and shuddering breath. She was shaking. “Julian—we can’t.”

He rolled away from her. It felt like ripping off a limb. His hands dug into the blanket, gripping hard enough to hurt.

“Emma,” he said. It was all he could say.

“I want to,” she said, raising herself up on an elbow. Her hair was a mess of golden tangles, her expression earnest. “You have to know I want to. But while we’re still parabatai, we can’t.”

“It won’t make me love you any more or differently,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I love you either way. I love you if we never touch.”

“I know. But it seems like tempting fate.” She reached to stroke his face, his chest. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“It always does,” he said, “when it’s you.” He kissed her, a kiss that accepted that tonight, there would be no more than kisses. “Only you. No one but you.”

It was true. He had never desired anyone before Emma, and never anyone since. There had been times when he was younger that it had puzzled him—he was a teenager, he was supposed to be full of inchoate longings and wantings and yearnings, wasn’t he? But he never wanted anyone, never fantasized or dreamed or longed at all.

And then there had been one day on the beach, when Emma had been laughing next to him and she had reached up to undo her barrette, and her hair had spilled down over her fingers and against her back like liquid sunlight.

His whole body had reacted. He remembered it even now, the driving pain as if something deadly had struck him. It had made him understand why the Greeks had believed love was an arrow that tore through your body and left a blazing trail of longing behind.

In French, falling suddenly in love was the coup de foudre. The bolt of lightning. The fire in your veins, the destructive power of a thousand million volts. Julian hadn’t fallen suddenly in love: He always had been in love. He had only just that moment realized it.

And after that, he longed. Oh, how he longed. And wished for the time he’d thought he was missing something by not longing, because the longing was like a thousand cruel voices that whispered to him that he was a fool. It was only six months after their parabatai ceremony, and it had been the biggest mistake he’d ever made, and totally irrevocable. And every time he saw Emma after that it was like a knife in his chest, but a knife whose pain he welcomed. A blade whose hilt he held in his own hand, pressed against his own heart, and nothing and no one could have taken it away from him.

“Sleep,” he said. He gathered her in his arms and she curled up against him, closing her eyes. His Emma, his universe, his blade.

* * *

“You see,” Diana said. “It’s exactly what we thought it was.”

The silver-black moon shone down on Brocelind Forest as Jia Penhallow stepped out of the blighted circle of ashy trees and burned grass. As she did, the seraph blade in her hand blazed with light, as if a switch had been flipped.

She stepped back into the circle. The seraph blade went dark.

“I sent photos to Kieran,” said Diana, looking at the Consul’s grim face. “They—Kieran said these were the same kind of circles of blight he has seen in the Unseelie Lands.” Most of what Kieran had recently seen in the Unseelie Lands had been the inside of a cage.

Jia shuddered. “It is awful to stand inside this circle,” she said. “It feels as if the ground is made of ice and despair is in the very air.”

“These circles,” Diana said. “They are in the places that Helen and Aline said were dark on their map, aren’t they?”

Jia didn’t have to look. She nodded. “I had not wanted to bring my daughter into this.”

“If she and Helen can be present during the Council meeting, they can speak up as candidates for the Institute.”

Jia said nothing.

“It is what Helen desperately wants,” said Diana. “What they both want. The best place to be is not always the safest. No one is content in a prison.”

Jia cleared her throat. “The time it would take to have the Council clear the request—Portals to Wrangel Island are tightly regulated—the meeting would be over—”

“You leave that to me,” Diana said. “In fact, the less you know, the better.”

Diana couldn’t believe she had just said the less you know, the better to the Consul. Deciding she was unlikely to come up with a better exit line, she turned and strode from the clearing.

* * *

Dru dreamed of underground tunnels split by roots like the bulging knuckles of a giant. She dreamed of a room of glittering weapons and a boy with green eyes.

She woke to find the dim light of dawn illuminating her mantel, where a gold hunting dagger inscribed with roses pinned a note to the wood.

For Drusilla: Thank you for all your help. Jaime.

* * *

Sometime in the night Kit woke, the iratze softly burning on his arm. The infirmary was lit with warm yellow light, and outside the window he could see the rooftops of London, sturdy and Victorian under a waning moon.

And he could hear music. Rolling onto his side, he saw that Ty was asleep on the bed next to Kit’s, his headphones on, the faint sound of a symphony coming from them.

A memory teased the edge of Kit’s consciousness. Being very young, sick with the flu, feverish in the night, and someone sleeping by the side of his bed. His father? It must have been. Who else could it have been but his father, but certainty eluded him.

No. He wouldn’t think about it. It had been a part of his earlier life; he was someone now who had friends who would sleep by his bed if he was sick. For however long that lasted, he would appreciate it.