Exit Signs I Missed (A Dark Artifices Fanfiction) ✔️

My Neck (The Feeling of Your Soft Lips)

AN: First time writing a little bit of Ty! Tell me how I did. :)

Julian stretched, his knuckles knocking against the bedroom wall harshly. He winced, opening his eyes to see sunlight, and two unexpected visitors: a very glittery Magnus, and his older brother, whose pointed ears were peeking through his ash-blond hair.

"Mark?" Julian swung his legs over the side of the bed - far too quickly - and a frisson of nausea and dizziness swept over him, his ears roaring as though the room held a white noise machine set to OCEAN. Once his head cleared and he had vomited into a trash can (hastily conjured up by a disgusted warlock ) he spoke again, feeling weak. This was not how he wanted his older brother to see him, not at all how he had wanted Mark to settle back into his life as a Shadowhunter; Julian was falling apart, unable to hold himself together, let alone his family. "Mark, what are you doing here?"

"My, my," Magnus cut in before Mark could answer. "More surprised to see your brother than you are to see the High Warlock of New York? Now I know why Emma was worried."

"What did Emma tell you?" Julian asked, anxious as he stumbled out of bed.

"That you were sick," came a voice from the door. It wasn't Mark, who had yet to say anything. It was Ty, and this was his worst nightmare; that the children would see a part of him that he did not want him to, the parts of him he showed only to Emma, who had been avoiding him, Emma whose presence was no longer a balm to his soul but sometimes the demons that hounded it.

"Ty," he said. "Ty, you shouldn't be here."

"Is it true, that you're sick?" Tiberius Nero Blackthorn stared at his older brother, the grey eyes filled with a myriad mix of emotions; fear, hope, sadness, anger. Julian thought of Emma's words, thought of Diana's: You can't protect them forever.

No, but he could damn well try. "No," he said finally. "I've just been - "

"Cursed," Magnus stated suddenly. Julian suspected that he had been waiting for such a moment to appear all powerful and magicky and dramatic. "That's what I'm here to tell you; Emma had me do some investigating. When Malcolm died, the powerful enchantments he had put on the cave rebounded on the person that killed him. That person was supposed to be Emma, but because of her parabatai connection to Julian, it affected him instead. A twofold curse. I've seen these things happen before, in a few cases."

"You have?" Emma appeared at the doorway, and Julian began to feel a little annoyed with all the people barging into his bedroom with announcements and questions. "It's true, the? It was just Malcolm? Nothing to do with parabatai?"

"Did you hear a thing I just said?" Magnus turned to Emma, looking as irritated as Julian felt.

"Yeah, yeah, warlock curse, enchantments, cave, rebounding, connection. Is Julian going to be okay?" Emma put her hands on her hips, glaring at the Downworlder.

"Once I diagnose the spells used on the cave, I can have him back to Shadowhunting and whatever it is you do around here for fun in about two weeks." Magnus clapped his hands together in a matter-of-fact way, and he half expected to see glitter fall from them.

He felt all the tension release from the room, but Julian was looking at Emma, and she was not looking back.

:::

That night, flooded with relief that the parabatai curse had managed to stay out of one facet of Julian's life, Emma dreamed of Julian.

He was dressed in white, the colour that Shadowhunters wore for mourning: white ceremonial gear and a white button-down shirt, so thin it was almost sheer, Marks showing through it. His parabatai rune was visible on his skin, glowing with the radiant glory of heavenly fire instead of the matte black that runes usually were.

They were in a large ballroom, with a ceiling that gleaned as brightly as Cortana, and in the same gold. The floor appeared to be rippling water, the surface changing every time she looked down. Music was playing from an unseen source, slow and classical with plenty of string instruments.

He spoke. "Dance with me?"

She stepped into his arms, his hands at her back and on her bare shoulder. Emma looked down, and saw that she was wearing the dress she'd bought for the Midnight Theatre's Lottery. It was paler than she remembered, almost the same hue as Julian's clothes.

They spun around to the music in perfect sync. Emma spoke. "Why are we wearing white, Jules?"

"Don't be silly, Emma," he said, grinning down at her. "You're the most Shadowhunter-y Shadowhunter I know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She gripped his arms; they seemed to be waltzing at a faster pace, a dizzying, feverish whirl. The walls were blending together into molten gold before her eyes like ichor.

"It means what it means, Emma." Julian smiled again, a little sadly. "It means I'm dead."

And then they were spinning madly through the ballroom, her feet no longer on solid ground, only Julian was disintegrating before her. His white suit turned black, brittle, and his body became ashes. Shadowhunters were burned when they died, their ashes given to the Silent City, but Julian wasn't dead yet, not her Julian, not Jules, no -

"No!" she started screaming and didn't stop, even after she'd woken up.

Julian couldn't be dead. Magnus was going to heal him, Jules would live -

"Emma!"