Page 86 of Better in Black
Well, okay. Not exactly as planned. There wasn’t supposed to be quite so much faerie poison and evil monologuing. But nothing in the world was perfect.
“Did I do well, my lord?” Jarog asked.
“You did,” Julian said. “You have discharged your obligation to me. You no longer owe me anything.”
“Hmm,” said Jarog, eyeing Thule Emma. “I still don’t understand why you wanted me to save the sickly one. She has the stench of death on her.”
“I have my reasons,” Julian said.
Jarog grinned, revealing his needle-sharp teeth. “After she dies, can I eat her?”
Emma, who had walked over to join Julian and the kelpie, wasn’t going to say she was entirely against the idea. Still. If they hoped to get any last useful words out of the Other Emma…
“I think we’re good here,” Emma told the kelpie. “You’re going to have to find your midnight snack somewhere else.”
“As you wish.” Jarog lowered his forelegs to her in a deep bow, then galloped into the sea, his mane streaming behind him before it became one with the foam on the water.
Julian touched Emma lightly on the cheek. He wouldn’t kiss her, not in front of the Other Emma, but the look in his eyes told Emma everything she needed to know. “You all right with this?” he whispered.
Emma nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Together, they approached Thule Emma. For a moment, Emma thought shehaddied—she was limp, her head hanging down. Her bound hands were motionless in her lap. Sheathing Cortana, Emma bent down to peer into the Other Emma’s face. Shedidseem to be breathing…
“Emma,” Julian said.
He didn’t say it gently—he said it with a sort of weary resignation—but it was clear from his tone which Emma he was addressing. And hearing her name spoken in Julian’s voice seemed to act on the Other Emma like a last shot of adrenaline. She snapped her head up, her face dead pale, her eyes sunken pits, and bared her teeth.
“What,” she whispered, “do you want? I will be dead soon. You will be rid of me, as you wish to be.”
“If you’re dying, there’s no reason not to tell us if there are any others,” Emma said. “Or to tell us how Livia Blackthorn is in your world. Is she alive?”
Thule Emma was silent.
“Perhaps it’s pointless to ask her,” Julian said carefully. “I don’t think she’s capable of anything but lies.”
Thule Emma threw her head back. It should have been a defiant gesture, but all it did was reveal the black, spidering veins in her neck. The cracks, like cracks in china, that fissured her skin. She didn’t seem to have much time left.
“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” the Other Emma whispered harshly. “If you knew what lay ahead for your world, you would beg the sea for a painless death. It saddens me I won’t be here to see your blood run into the earth, but oh, the blood will run.”
“No one likes a vague prophecy,” Emma said. “If you don’t know anything concrete, then admit it.”
Thule Emma turned and met Emma’s eyes. She was dead white, all the color leeched out of her face.
But it was still Emma’s face.
Her memories were still Emma’s memories, in a way. Both Emmas had been raised in a little white house in Venice by John and Cordelia Carstairs. Both Emmas had mourned their deaths. Both had loved the Blackthorns. Both loved Julian.
Emma wondered if this was how Clary felt, when she grieved the loss of Sebastian. A monster, yes, but also a brother who’d had the potential to be something else, something better. If the world were different, he would have been different too.
Then Thule Emma smiled, and her face was no longer Emma’s.“Choose,” she said. “I will tell you whether I came here alone, for vengeance, or whether there are others with me. Or I will tell you of Livia in my world. You can have one. Not both.”
Emma heard Julian suck in his breath as if he’d been punched. It was clear what theyshouldask for—the information about whether the Other Emma had come alone. It was equally clear that what Julian wanted to ask, more than anything else, was for news of Livvy. This was the Other Emma’s last act of torture, to force this choice on Julian—to demand he choose between the good of the world, and his family.
But the Other Emma didn’t understand. She didn’t know what real love meant, only dark obsession. She didn’t understand that it meant taking someone else’s burden and bearing it for them because you were the one who could.
Julian met Emma’s gaze. She saw the pain in his eyes, saw the question, and knew what he was asking of her.Do what I can’t do. Please.
Emma looked down at her double. “Tell us how you got here,” she said. “And if anyone else came with you.”
