Page 85 of Better in Black
“I can’t kill you,” Julian said.
Thule Emma’s lip curled. “You killed your own father. You put a dagger through the eye of your ownself.I hardly think you’d hesitate to kill me.”
“I killed my father to protect my family,” Julian said. “And as for your Julian—he was the worst parts of myself. I was happy to destroy those. But Emma…I love all of her. The best and the worst. Her present and past. So whatever you are, it grew out of what I love.” Julian raised his chin. “I can see her in you. The girl she used to be. When it felt like nothing could ever matter but our need for each other.”
“Don’t flatter me,” the Other Emma whispered. “You’re not that good a liar.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, Julian said, “You’re right that things have changed. The Emma I fell in love with would have known me well enough to see that. Likeyousaw it.” Julian’s eyes were so brilliant in the darkness they seemed like phosphorescent glass. Emma could see the Other Emma staring at him, frozen, like a mouse staring at a cobra. “If she dies, I could never forgive you. I could never love you. But I can’t hate you. I can’t kill you.”
“I hateyou,” Thule Emma murmured. It sounded like she was trying to reassure herself. “You took my love from me.”
“Oh, Emma.” Julian smiled, then. The private, incandescentsmile that he had always saved for Emma—the real Emma. “I’m right here.”
He opened his arms and Thule Emma moved toward him, like a magnet drawn against its will. She stepped into his embrace—and screamed. There were two silver flashes. The blades of daggers. The Other Emma fell back, out of Emma’s view.
Emma desperately tried to move, to scramble upright. Then there were arms around her. Julian’s arms, warm and careful and strong. “Emma, my angel, my Emma,” he was murmuring, and the water was sloshing up around them, nearly to Emma’s waist. She felt the tip of his stele scratch her skin, and then a cool relief as the healing rune began to spread its power through her body.
Within seconds, she was able to turn inside the circle of Julian’s arms. She saw the Other Emma, a long dagger piercing each shoulder, pinning her to the porous cave wall like a hideous butterfly. (Emma made a mental note to congratulate herself, later, for having the foresight to teach Julian how to stab forward with both hands.)
The Other Emma’s head was hanging down, her matted hair bloody. Only the rise and fall of her chest indicated she was still alive.
“I know we should keep her alive for interrogation,” Julian said, “but I’m really tempted to let her drown.”
“I thought you couldn’t kill her,” Emma teased, a little weakly.
“That was an obvious lie,” Julian said.
“I know. And I love you for it.”
The water was flowing more freely into the cave now. A wave crashed through, like a slap of thunder. Thule Emma hung limply from the daggers in her shoulders, a bizarre parody of crucifixion. Julian glanced at her, his expression cold.
“If you want her to survive, you have to get her loose from the wall,” Emma said. She struggled to her feet, water churning around her legs; the Drevak demon poison was draining from her, erased by the power of the healing rune, but she was still shaky. Julian rose alongside her, still holding her in his arms. “Or she’ll drown here.”
“I don’t want to let go of you,” Julian protested. “The sea—”
“I can face the sea,” Emma said. “Julian—you have to.”
She saw him frown. Then he stepped away from her, just as a green tide surged into their cave. The ocean had come for them.
Seawater stung Emma’s eyes. She could hear the Other Emma laughing; the laughter sounded like sobs, or maybe those were her own cries. She could no longer tell the difference. And maybe it didn’t matter, joy or pain, one Emma or the other, because there was nowhere to run as the waters rushed in. An immense whirlpool sucked her down.
She was floating, alone, in the black. She reached out. Something caught her hand.Julian?she thought, but it wasn’t Julian. She hung on anyway, letting it drag her through the cold, churning darkness. She thought she saw the light of the moon far above, but it might just have been stars exploding behind her eyes as she lost consciousness.
—
Emma’s first thought, while expelling the sea from her lungs, was that she really hated the taste of salt water.
She blinked her eyes open and stared up at a sky riddled with stars. She’d known Julian had a plan. She’d even known it involved the flooding of the cave while they were still in it. And yet, as she heaved herself upright and peeled a disgusting clump of seaweed off her cheek, she was shocked to find herself not just alive, butcapable of movement, of reaching for Cortana, still miraculously strapped to her back.
Her next thought wasJulian.
She was on her feet in seconds, Cortana in her hand. The tide was still high, but there was a narrow, bare strip of sand between the sea and the caves, and on that bare strip of sand Emma saw Julian. He was soaking wet, just like she was, and he appeared to be in conversation with a dark green kelpie. A short distance away, Thule Emma, her hands bound in front of her, sat slumped against the rock wall. Her hoodie was unzipped, her shirt a mess of seawater and blood.
Julian, seeming to sense that Emma was awake, turned toward her. So did the kelpie, who eyed Cortana with alarm. The kelpie, who wasveryfamiliar.
Oh right,Emma thought.The plan.The one she’d been afraid wouldn’t work. But of course it had, because Julian’s plans had a tendency to do that.
They would follow Thule Emma deep into the sea cave, he’d told her. The cave she’d gone into was sure to fill up with water as the tides rose. At which point, assuming Jarog the kelpie received their acorn message, and assuming he made good on his promise to Julian of eternal gratitude, and assuming he made it there in time, he would dive into the water and would swim them to safety. It had all gone as Julian had planned.
