Exit Signs I Missed (A Dark Artifices Fanfiction) ✔️

Overanalyze Again

"Is he going to be okay?" Emma was standing anxiously by Julian's bed, her hand on Cortana - though for once, it brought her no comfort.

A Silent Brother - at Diana's insistence; Emma had wanted to call Magnus - stood over the bed. Julian looked sick, listless, febrile. His cheeks had hollowed, his eyes sunken, his limbs resting limply on the sheets like wilted lettuce.

This sickness is strange, Brother Malachi declared. You are parabatai, and therefore it should affect both of you. However, you are not as ill as him, if you are ill at all. We may need to take samples back to the Spiral Labyrinth to run tests. This may not be an illness; it could be the results of a curse.

There was another Silent Brother with him, taking bits of Julian's hair, his DNA. Emma hardly noticed it as a maelstrom of thoughts ran through her head, wild and dark as the Hunt.

A curse?

"Rare... rare doesn't mean deadly, does it?" Julian was fine. Julian would be fine. He was a Shadowhunter, not some scrawny mundane. He'd be fine. She knew that. Emma didn't need to tell herself that.

Fine, fine, fine.

"Emma, you shouldn't be in here, you should be training." Diana stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest. Mark was behind her, looking oddly guilty.

"But - "

"Julian will be fine. Now, get going." The tutor was stern, and her voice brokered no argument.

Mark put a hand on her back as she walked down the hallway towards the training room; his touch felt like poison, like a catalyst for the guilt she felt. 

Julian was a dead end, a brick wall she couldn't stop running into at full speed. The parabatai Mark etched on her skin felt like a wound rather than a rune, leaching the life out of her.

:::

Cristina was in the kitchen, preparing lunch, when Emma entered with Mark.

She looked up at the Blackthorn, then Emma, and for a brief moment sadness flitted over her face before it disappeared. Maybe she was just anxious about Julian, like they all were?

"Hey, Tina," Emma greeted her, swinging onto the counter where Cristina was crushing tortilla chips, muttering something about chiles. "Whatcha making?"

"Tortilla soup." The older girl was so busy, Emma doubted she even noticed Mark's arrival as she busied herself around the kitchen. "Chop those onions for me, would you?"

"Um...okay." As she obliged, sliding off of the table, Mark stepped into the room, and was put to work a while later.

It was funny, how Julian had always been the domestic one, and now Cristina was here, in his place, not half as comforting but a solace all the same for the distraction she provided.

She fumbled with the knife, taking a few minutes to get a rhythm down, wondering how she could be so proficient with Cortana yet not even handle a simple kitchen knife. Or maybe it was thoughts of Julian, worries of Julian, plaguing her like a drug she couldn't get out of her system, dogging her steps.

"How are you holding up, Cristina? I know you didn't sign up for this - " Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked then away. They were onion-dicing tears. Nothing more. "You're not supposed to be taking care of us."

"It's fine." The older girl's back was turned. "I'm sure Julian will be fine."

The words did nothing for Emma's anxieties. What kind of disease or curse could have taken down Julian, who was the children's father, her own parabatai, the other half of her, strong in ways she could never be? What curse was there?

Curse? Malcolm had warned her about the parabatai curse, and Jem had elaborated on it, but what if they were missing something?

What if there was a part of the curse they hadn't touched upon - the part that took place when parabatai stayed away from each other instead of being together?

"I have to go." She dropped the knife, dropped her worry, and let purpose flood her instead. "There's something I need to do."

:::

Emma listened to Kit's voice echoing through the Institute. She didn't think she ought to interfere unless it led to bloodshed.

It was nice to have someone to worry about that wasn't Julian and research on the parabatai curse - even if it was Ty, and the box of Sherlock Holmes DVDs he'd tried to bribe Kit with to come out of his room.

"I don't want your stupid DVDs! Just leave me alone or I swear, I'll kill you." Kit was shouting, sounding a little out of breath. What were Ty and Livvy up to now?

His voice was accompanied by the sound of fists pounding against wood. Was that Ty and Livia at Kit's door? Probably, since they seemed to be the only people he had talked to since his arrival at the Institute - except Julian, and those conversations only centred around mundane things such as food and blankets.

"You couldn't kill him if you tried!" Livvy was yelling back, her voice slightly muffled.

"Why, 'cause he's got his big sister to defend him?" Kit's voice was antagonizing, and the mood felt likely to lend itself to physical fights, so Emma went down the hallway to the room Kit had taken residence in.

Livia and Ty had taken up residence outside the room Kit had barricaded himself in, and one twin carried a tray of food while the other held the box of Sherlock Holmes DVDs.

"I'm going to leave this here, Herondale!" Livvy left the food on the floor and turned to leave. Tiberius stayed.

"That's not my name!" He shouted. This appeared to be the final straw, because the door opened, and out tumbled one Christopher Jonathan Herondale.

Ty looked at him, eyes wide, before he spoke. "Nice seeing you again."

"Yeah, well you look a lot better when you don't have a knife to my throat."

"Like I said, that was business." Ty backed away from the door, and Kit followed him. "Nothing more."

A/N: Oh my gosh!!!! Who else read that chapter sampler of Lord of Shadows - it's floating around on Tumblr - and died???