Lady Midnight from Mark's POV

Entry Seven

The second I opened Emma's door I knew I wasn't the one she wanted to see. I could see her eyes light up then diminish when she realized it was just me, and I could also see who she wanted to be at her door. Emma wanted Julian to be the person knocking on her door late at night after a long night, because that was who she loved; not me. Emma knew she shouldn't love Julian, he was her parabatai and the only love that could ever be between them had to be platonic, but never eros, romantic love between parabatai was forbidden by the Clave. Yet, I could see the love between them, and I didn't understand why the Clave had the right to take that away from them. I pushed these thoughts out of my mind and glanced behind Emma, into her closest. I had heard Julian talk about 'the wall of crazy' in her closet where she had tried to map out her parent's death and I had always thought it was a little odd for Emma to run herself ragged over their deaths, but now I understood why. Their deaths had fuelled her for years and now that Emma had the chance she had to solve them.

"The day I was taken by the Wild Hunt," I said slowly. "It was the same day your parents were killed."

She nodded, glancing at the closet as if she suddenly wished she had closed it before I had come in.

"I told you I was sorry about what happened to them," I shuffled uncomfortably on my feet. "But that isn't enough. I didn't realize that this investigation would be about me. About my family trying to keep me with them. That my presence would be stealing from you the meaning of what you were doing."

Emma sat down on the foot of her bed, the mattress springs creaked under her. "Mark..." She sighed. "It's not like that."

"It is like that."I argued. "They should not be working on this only to keep me, when I might not stay."

Emma looked flabbergasted. "You wouldn't go back to Faerie. You wouldn't."

Would I? I was not instrumental here, they could still be happy without me. Julian and the others have each other. Kieran was cast out by his family and mocked by the rest of the Wild Hunt, he has only me.

"All that was promised was that I would choose." My hands balled into fists, why did everyone expect me to pick them? "I thought you would understand. You are not a Blackthorn."

"I am Julian's parabatai,"She said. "And Julian needs you to stay."

"Julian is strong," I said.

"Julian is strong."Emma echoed. "But you are his brother. And if you go, I don't know if I can pick up those pieces."

My eyes flickered back to her closet, to the photos of her mother and father smiling and laughing. "We survive losses." I whispered.

"We do," Emma said. "But my parents didn't leave me on purpose. I don't know what would have happened to me if they had."

Thunder crackled, snapping through the room. It reminded me of the wildest nights with the Hunt, the night when we rode through hurricanes and electric storms where the lightening was so frequent it was as bright as day. I had soared through all those storms with Kieran laughing and howling right next to me, and tonight he would be riding without me. I sat down on the bed with Emma and stared out at the sky outside her window, it felt so foreign to have a window, to have walls around me during a storm like this. "When I hear thunder,see lightning, I think I should be riding through it," I murmured. "My blood calls out for the sky."

Emma was also looking at the storm, there was a look in her eyes that reminded me of the look that the other hunters got when they weren't allowed to fly.

"We are alike, you and I." I said. "The storm calls you as it calls me, doesn't it? I can see it in your eyes, you want to be out in it. To run on the beach, perhaps, as the lightning comes down."