Exit Signs I Missed (A Dark Artifices Fanfiction) ✔️

Illuminated In The Light

"Emma."

She turned towards the door of the training room, and found Mark. She hadn't heard his footsteps coming in; she supposed he had kept that silent-footed step from the Hunt.

"Mark," Emma greeted.

"Well met," he said.

It was a faerie greeting. He was hiding something, holding something back. She nodded, resisting the urge to point out that they'd met multiple times before.

"Did you come here to talk about something?" she asked, continuing her sparring with a punching bag, the thuds and jabs the only noise in the room.

"Yes." His voice was tense, aristocratic. "If you would be so kind as to...."

She stopped beating up the sandbag, and put her hands on her knees, drawing in deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Her heart was pounding.

"Speak, then."

"You're in love with my brother." There was no doubt in his voice, no confusion. He was certain, something he had not been since he'd come back from the Hunt, broken and disoriented. As though everything else were chaos and this one fact, her and Julian's love, was the eye of a storm. "You and Julian - I was wrong. You aren't just parabatai, he's not just my boring, responsible little brother to you. He's the love of your life."

"That he is. Thanks for talking to me, Mark." She felt herself smile, despite everything that had already happened. "Now I don't have to have an awkward confrontation with you."

"You're welcome," he answered. "Although I still believe you have some answers for me."

Emma, caught up in all her angst and jubilation, felt a sudden frisson of guilt. She owed him answers, uncomfortable as they may be. "I think I do. Come to my room; we can talk there."

He followed her down the hall, and waited outside the door while she changed out of her training gear into jeans and a faded, vintage t-shirt with unicorns on it. "Ask me anything."

"You wanted me to lie for you. Why?" His back was to her as he closed the door while she was sprawled out on her bed.

"Julian and I - we couldn't be together. Not just because it's illegal, because there's this awful curse involved. But I knew we were in love, and the only way for him to stop believing that was if I told him that I loved you. You're the only thing that could hurt him - his only weakness." The words tumbled out of her in a rush.

"No," Mark said with a sad sort of smile. "You are his weakness, too."

"Well - you don't know him," she said with a frustrated sigh. "Not anymore. This Julian, he's not the same as five years ago. I could never have fallen in love with him five years ago. He's - so much of him is hidden away, so that he can be strong for the kids. He can't have any vulnerabilities, but he told me once, that me being in love with you - that would be his. That's why I wanted you to pretend with me, so that he would stop being in love with me. So I could break his heart."

"His heart and yours," Mark said gently, sorrowfully. He seemed several millennia old, both ageless and innocent, the way Fae were. "Why are you together now, then, if the curse is so terrible?"

As she spoke the words, she knew them to be true, even if it was a horrible thing to say. "The curse isn't as bad as being without him."

"Then tell me you have found a way to solve this conundrum, Emma. Because I did not get my family back just to watch you break it apart." Mark got up and left as quietly as he had come, leaving her reeling.

:::

The ocean lapped against the shore, as constant as ever. It would keep on going, keep on with its ebb and flow, its crash and break of waves, no matter what happened. It could cause pain and tragedy, sweep people under its force and trap them and drown them, but it could also be a source of great beauty. And no matter how many times Julian painted it, the sea always looked different from any angle at any time of day.

The ocean, he thought, was a lot like Emma. Powerful, beautiful, reckless, careless, and always, always there. Only now, now she might not be - Raziel, the it hurt to form that thought - there. Now, she might sacrifice herself, might throw herself to the demons for their love. Love was important - it was nearly everything - but her life, Emma's life, was worth more. He would rather have her alive and happy with Mark rather than dead because of some plan gone awfully wrong.

"You can't do it, Emma," he said, hearing footsteps on the sand behind him, sensing her presence like a relief, like an amplifier of all his senses: her being here made him feel stronger, better, more attuned to the world around him. "I won't let you."

Emma didn't answer, just sat down on the sand behind him and clutched his hand. She stretched her bare legs out so that her toes nearly touched the ocean. Sand clung to her skin in damp clumps.

They had been children, once, sitting here in the sand, playing games and splashing each other. That felt like a thousand years ago.

Emma finally spoke. "You don't have to. I'm doing it anyways."

"Em, please-"

"'There is nothing more important than love, and no Law higher,'" she quoted. "You told me that once. Don't you believe it?"

"I wouldn't care if you love Mark!" He burst out. "I wouldn't care, as long as you were alive, and happy. I wouldn't care."

"I wasn't alive, or happy." She looked him in the eye, forced him to see that truth. "I was dying, I was the most unhappy I've ever been in my life. I was dying. I was happy with you - I am so happy with you - and you're saying you can't deal with that?"

"I don't live if you die." He held her gaze. "I don't know how to be Julian Blackthorn without Emma Carstairs, I really don't."

"I know, Jules." Her voice softened, gold melting over steel. "But you won't lose me. You won't."

"I don't know that!" He shouted. Something tore in him. Something broke, and he wasn't sure he could fix it, or if he even wanted to. "I can't control that - I can't control everything - "

"You don't have to." For once, Emma did not know him better than anyone else did, had not tied herself, her heart and soul and her morals and principles to his, so tightly that they were one and the same. For once, she was wrong about him. "What if you told me not to get revenge on my parents? Not to hunt down their killer, or make my wall of crazy, what then?"

"This is different."

"There's no difference!" She snapped. "You've never been like this about me being in danger, before."

"This time, I can't save you. This time, you won't let me save you - "

"I can handle myself!" Her words knocked him down, shattered his convictions, left him bare and ashamed. "I can handle myself, and you know that. That's not the problem. I think that deep down, you don't think we're worth it. Deep down, you don't believe that our love is worth it, is worth this - me, risking my life."

"Emma, that's not - "

"Yes, it is." Her eyes were hard and steely. Colder than he'd ever seen them. "And when you realise that, come find me."

She left him on the beach, alone.