Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

Still, she waited until she was halfway down the path to Alicante to read it. To bring her a message in the middle of the day, even under cloud cover, Gwyn must have something serious to say.

Inside the acorn was a tiny piece of paper on which was written: Come to me now, outside the city walls. It is important. The Blackthorn children are in danger.

Flinging the acorn aside, Diana bolted down the hill.

*   *   *

The rain started up as Julian and Emma made their way back from Porthallow Church in silence. Julian seemed to remember the way perfectly, even cutting across the headlands on a path that led them directly down into the Warren.

The sunbathers on the dock and out by the pools under Chapel Rock were hurrying to gather up their things as the first drops of rain splashed down, mothers yanking clothes back onto their unwilling, swimsuited toddlers, bright towels being folded up, beach umbrellas put away.

Emma remembered the way her own father had loved storms on the beach. She recalled being held in his arms as thunder rolled out over the Santa Monica Bay, and he had told her that when lightning struck the beach, it fused sand into glass.

She could hear that roaring in her ears now, louder than the sound of the sea as it rose and began to pound against the rocks on either side of the harbor. Louder than her own breathing as she and Jules hurried up the slippery-wet path to the cottage and ducked inside just as the sky opened up and water came down like the spill through a breaking dam.

Everything inside the cottage seemed almost terrifying in its ordinariness. The kettle silent on the stove. Teacups and coffee mugs and empty plates scattered around the rag rug in front of the fireplace. Julian’s sweatshirt on the floor, where Emma had wadded it up and made a pillow out of it the night before.

“Emma?” Julian was leaning against the kitchen island. Water droplets had spattered his face; his hair was curling the way it always did in the humidity and damp. He had the expression of someone who was braced for something, some kind of awful news. “You haven’t said anything since we left the church.”

“You’re in love with me,” Emma said. “Still.”

Whatever he had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. He had been moving to unzip his jacket. His hands froze in midmotion, fingers reaching. She saw his throat move as he swallowed. He said, “What are you talking about?”

“I thought you didn’t love me anymore,” she said. She pulled off her coat, reached to hang it on the peg by the door, but her hands were shaking and it fell to the floor. “But that isn’t true, is it?”

She heard him inhale, slow and hard. “Why are you saying that? Why now?”

“Because of the church. Because of what happened. We burned a church down, Julian, we melted stone.”

He yanked the zipper on his jacket down with a vicious jerk and threw it. It bounced off a kitchen cabinet. Underneath, his shirt was wet with sweat and rain. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with—” She broke off, her voice shaking. “You don’t understand. You can’t.”

“You’re right.” He stalked away from her, turned in the middle of the room, and kicked out suddenly, violently, at one of the mugs on the floor. It flew across the room and shattered against a wall. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it, Emma, I don’t understand why you suddenly decided you didn’t want me, you wanted Mark, and then you decided you didn’t want him either and you dropped him like he was nothing, in front of everyone. What the hell were you thinking—”

“What do you care?” she demanded. “What do you care how I feel about Mark?”

“Because I needed you to love him,” Julian said. His face was the color of the ashes in the grate. “Because if you threw me away and everything we had, it had better be for something that meant more to you, it had better be for something real, but maybe none of this is ever real to you—”

“Not real to me?” Emma’s voice tore out of her throat with such force it hurt. Her body felt as if electric sparks were running under her veins, shocking her, pushing her rage higher and higher, and she wasn’t even angry at Jules, she was angry at herself, she was angry at the world for doing this to them, for making her the only one who knew, the guardian of a poisonous, poisoning secret. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Julian Blackthorn! You don’t know what I’ve given up, what my reasons are for anything, you don’t know what I’m trying to do—”

“What you’re trying to do? How about what you did do? How about breaking my heart and breaking Cameron’s and breaking Mark’s?” His face twisted. “What, am I missing someone else, some other person whose life you want to wreck forever?”

“Your life isn’t wrecked. You’re still alive. You can have a good life! You kissed that faerie girl—”