Life of Bry

Analyzing book No. 1 in The Dark Artifices trilogy

Guys, gals and non binary pals … I am so excited to be writing this post.

I’ve been dying to start The Dark Artifices trilogy ever since I met Julian Blackthorn and Emma Carstairs in City of Heavenly Fire. I absolutely fell in love with how gentle and protective Julian was over his siblings, how Emma was a spitfire fueled by revenge, and how desperate they were to stay together.

However, I stuck by the proper order of Cassandra Clare’s works and read five other books (The Infernal Devices trilogy, The Bane Chronicles and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy) before diving into TDA.

Lady Midnight, the first installment of Clare’s TDA trilogy, catches up with Emma, Julian and the rest of the Blackthorn children five years after the end of the Dark War. 

At 17, Julian is a father to his four younger siblings — a result of the Clave exiling his oldest sister Helen and leaving the elder Blackthorn brother Mark at the mercy of the Wild Hunt due to the Cold Peace. Since he was 12, Julian has taken it upon himself to raise his siblings with love and care, giving up his own childhood to make sure they didn’t miss a moment of theirs. The need to protect and love his children has led Julian to lie and conceal to keep his family together, but it’s only a matter of time before he crumples under the weight of all his secrets.

Meanwhile, Emma doesn’t need love or protection … She needs revenge for her parents’ murders. She still doesn’t believe that Sebastian Morgenstern was the cause of their deaths, and, since the Clave won’t help, she’s been investigating herself. Fueled by revenge, Emma has trained relentlessly to become the best Shadowhunter of her generation despite not having special powers or extra Angel blood like Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild.  But, will killing her parents’ murderer really help Emma sleep at night or will it lead to even more nightmares than before?

Emma and Julian also share a secret, a secret neither has shared with the other, a secret that once shared will change them forever, a secret that can’t and won’t be kept for long.

Here are all my thoughts on Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare.

Julian as a single father of four & my need to be an honorary Blackthorn

I fell in love with the Blackthorn family immediately. I am the youngest of six kids, and there’s a special dynamic between bigger families that Clare captured beautifully with these children. 

All siblings are protective of each other, but I believe that in bigger families it’s a little different. There’s not enough parental eyes to keep track of everyone, so you learn to watch out for each other. I saw it in the way my siblings would always make sure I was safely hidden first when we played hide-and-go seek, because they didn’t want me to get hurt scuttling up a tree or crawling into the garage rafters myself, and I saw it in Ty as he threw his body over Livvy’s to protect her from falling debris.

You also learn more about each other because there’s little space or privacy. I still remember my brothers’ favorite football teams growing up, their bed spreads throughout the years, the movies we all watched a hundred times and dreaded, and my sister’s password for her diary. This is just like how Julian knows Ty is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and Dru is a horror fan.

You operate in a fashion that looks chaotic to outsiders but feels organized and routine to you — like the way the Blackthorns do on pancake day and my family always did on Christmas morning.

The Blackthorns were also extremely relatable in a way I don’t think that any TMI or TID were. This is a family that watches movies and eats pizza, they argue about who’s the best looking Avenger, Julian calls Livvy “runt”, and, when Livvy tells the mundane girls that Mark tried flirting with that he had Syphilis, they all just go along with it. 

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Side note! The Syphilis scene had me crying from laughter. A couple of weeks ago I went to watch my niece cheer at a football game, and my brother showed me a really nasty bug bite on his leg. I immediately told him he had Syphilis, which got me smacked and shoved by nearly everyone around me. It was funny, and I will never retract the joke. I guess it’s a little sister thing. 

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I appreciated that Clare flipped the script by presenting a Shadowhunter family that has knowledge of the mundane world rather than the usual cluelessness. It made the Blackthorns not just more relatable, but more real. It’s unrealistic to think that in the 21st century, kids growing up in Los Angeles would be oblivious to what’s happening in their own backyard. Instead, Clare chose to have the Blackthorn’s embrace pop culture and modern technology, which I believe makes a huge difference in connecting readers to her characters. 

I felt comforted and nostalgic reading about the Blackthorns. 

My mom raised us while my dad worked long hours to keep food on the table. She was a grown woman with the patience of a Saint, and I’m sure it was anything but easy keeping our household running and preventing us from spilling blood on her clean floors. The Blackthorns lost their father in the Dark War and their mother years before. Julian had to step up and be that person for his siblings at only 12. 

Julian was and is the best parental figure for these kids. I adored seeing how gentle he was with them and how he seemingly knew every detail about them. How he knew that Dru was currently really into true crime, how he made little fidget toys for Ty, how he noticed Livvy was becoming boy crazy, and how he let little Tavvy paint with him. 

Not only has Julian made sure these kids were fed, clothed and trained, he also made sure they were loved beyond belief. 

There was a flashback about halfway through the book of the day Arthur Blackthorn arrived at the L.A. Institute that broke me to pieces. All Julian wanted was for this man to love his siblings and take care of them.

“Love them. Love them. For the Angel’s sake, love them. It didn’t matter if anyone loved him. He was twelve. He was old enough. He had Marks, he was a Shadowhunter. He had Emma. But the others still needed someone to kiss them good night, ward off the nightmares, bandage scraped knees, and soothe hurt feelings. Someone to teach them how to grow up.”

(Julian, Page 474)

I hated that Julian already felt like he didn’t need to be loved and cared for at only 12. This passage alone allows Clare to set up exactly the type of person she wants readers to see Julian as. He’s selfless and willing to give up everything to make his siblings happy, even if it hurts him. Julian realized quickly that Arthur was far too damaged from his time in Faerie and the Dark War to love or care for the kids. That would fall on his shoulders.

“Julian determined that he would love them twice as fiercely as any adult could. He would do everything for them … He would make sure they had everything they wanted. He would make sure they never missed what they didn’t have; he would love them enough to make up for everything they’d lost.”

(Julian, 476)

Since then, Julian secretly started running the Institute for his uncle, he learned to cook and clean, he wrote letters to the Clave begging for Helen to be allowed home, he stood true to his word on loving the kids fiercely and, somewhere along the line, the kids became his kids. 

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Side note! Tavvy is truly Julian’s baby. While the other children remember some form of life before the Dark War, Julian is all Tavvy knows. It’s mentioned that even before the war, when the Blackthorn’s mother died of bone cancer, Julian and Emma played beside Tavvy’s crib so that they could take care of the baby. Helen and Mark had to train and Andrew Blackthorn was devastated by grief, so 10-year-old Julian took care of the baby during the day … “because no one else could.” 

During the Dark War, Julian ran through the streets of Alicante holding Tavvy close to his chest in an effort to prevent the baby from seeing the horrors around him. “And still Tavvy woke up with nightmares every week, shaking and sweating and crying. And everytime it happened, the dul realization that he hadn’t really saved his baby brother at all went through Julian like spikes.” I think that Julian has an extra special place in his heart for Tavvy, and we see that in the way they constantly reach for each other in stressful situations. 

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However, Jules is facing a harsh reality that hits all parents eventually. His children are growing up.

The twins, Ty and Livvy, are already 15. Ty has dreams of joining the Scholomance and becoming a Centurion, but Julian fears how the other Shadowhunters will react to Ty’s differences. I’m pretty sure Ty is on the autism spectrum based on the details we got about his audio processing issues, difficulties understanding idioms and social cues, fidgeting and overall way he’s often described as seeing the world differently.

The Clave doesn’t like what’s different. Julian knows that Shadowhunters like Ty are often pushed away into the far corners of the world to be hidden and forgotten about. Jules has always gone out of his way to make sure Ty never felt that something was wrong with him (which there isn’t) and to help him understand the sometimes frightening and confusing world around him, but Julian can’t protect and help Ty if he goes to the Scholomance. … And he doesn’t want to be the one to tell Ty that his differences could hold him back from his dreams at no fault of his own.

It’s this fear and the weight of responsibility that eventually leads to Julian’s breakdown, which was as equally painful as it was satisfying to read. 

Julian leaves the kids with Mark while he and Emma go to question Johnny Rook and shit hits the fan. Ty snuck into the backseat of the car to go with them, then broke into Rook’s basement and held a knife to the son’s throat. At home, Mark had turned the kitchen into a warzone in an effort to make the kids happy. Tavvy was just chilling in a bag of sugar, Dru was drinking a weird mixture that included sour cream, Livvy was locked in her room, the stove was on fire, there’s ketchup on the windows … and Julian snaps. 

The moment he slides down the stove until he’s on the floor was crushing. Emma remembered how much effort Julian had put into learning how to cook and clean, how he dragged groceries up the hill and how the kitchen served as a reminder of Julian’s mother who designed it and also of all the work he’d put into raising these kids. 

Jules is angry that Mark gets to be the fun brother, while he’s been forced to be the parental figure. Mark can make a mess and win his siblings’ hearts over with silliness, but Julian will always have to clean up that mess and be the one to tell them no. Even worse, Mark had the choice to go back to the Hunt and break the children’s hearts. Or, Mark could stay and take over for Julian as their guardian and break his heart.

“He would give up the children he loved to Mark without a murmur, if it was what they wanted. … He would give them up because they were his breath and blood.”

(Emma about Julian, Page 392)

Mark isn’t equipped or prepared to become a parental figure, which we’ll get to later. These are still Julian’s children, which means he has to make some adjustments as they get deeper into the investigation of the murders.

This is a trilogy, but readers already get to see Julian grow as a character so much in just one book as he learns to loosen his grip on his little siblings. He starts out being this strong, independent figure that bears the weight of his family on his shoulders, then we slowly start to see him unravel as that weight becomes too much and the secrets he’s kept for so long start to reveal themselves, and, by the end, readers get a Julian that trusts his siblings to bear a little bit of that weight for him. (I’ll talk more about Julian’s character development down below!)

We see this shift in parenting from Julian when Malcolm Fade, the family’s warlock “friend” who turns out to be the bad guy, kidnaps Tavvy with the intent to kill the boy to complete the necromantic spell. Julian sets all his kids up, even Dru, for battle. He’s handing these children seraph blades, and telling them to “put your blade in his heart.” 

When the battle is won, Julian tells Ty that he was right all along about allowing him to join in the fight and that he fought well. It’s this tiny moment that shows so much growth in Julian. He’s reeled in his protectiveness to show Ty that he’s trusted and capable. 

“Someday he would have to open his hands, let his brothers and sisters go freely into the world, a world that would cut them, bruise them, knock them down and not help them back up again. Someday he would have to do that. But not yet. Not quite yet.”

(Julian, Page 608)

The trust doesn’t go one way. These children trust and rely on Julian, who spends most of Lady Midnight believing his kids will grow up to detest him for being their father instead of a fun brother. As Julian prepares to walk into the Institute and deliver his contrived story of events after the battle, he looks around at his siblings and realizes why he’s so willing to lie and deceive. 

“Chance, circumstance, and determination held them together. … Chance, circumstance, determination — and faith.”

(Julian, Page 610)

The children and Emma have faith in Julian’s ability to keep them together and that is all he needs to do what he feels is right — even if it will haunt his consciousness later. 

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Side note! The Blackthorn’s family motto is “Lex malla, lex nulla”. A bad law is no law. That’s absolutely perfect in the context of this trilogy, at least in the first book. I’ve read 13 of Clare’s Shadowhunter books so far (this includes the Codex), and the main consistency through all of them is that the Clave and its laws are bullshit. The Nephilim preach the motto that “the Law is hard, but it is the Law”, but the Shadowhunters we’ve met always find a way to bend or work around the laws they don’t agree with. The Blackthorns just have a phrase to back up their actions, which I love.

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Yinz really shouldn’t be doing this (Emma and Julian as individuals and as a couple)

While a huge part of Lady Midnight is the family dynamic between the Blackthorns, our main protagonists are Emma and Julian. We met these two way back in City of Heavenly Fire, when their worlds were torn apart by the Dark War. That’s where we learned the basics of these characters. They’ve been best friends since birth, Emma has always been the tougher of the two and Julian the softer, and they would do anything to stick together, including becoming parabatai.

Actually, these two are both equal parts ruthless and gentle, which is spectacular because it adds depth to Emma and Julian’s characters to make them less one-dimensional.

I mentioned in all the ways Julian is gentle. He’s an artist and a caretaker, but he’s also a protector. To protect his family and keep them together, he’s had to get his hands dirty. He killed his father when he was 12 years old. He hid his uncle’s mental health issues from the Clave and ran the Institute himself in secrecy. He doses Uncle Arthur with medicine to make his mind clear when it’s convenient but it always ends with debilitating headaches. He contrives a story of half-truths for the Inquisitor about his family’s investigation and he puts Nightshade at the mercy of the Clave as part of his coverup.

Julian’s ferocity can be seen throughout Lady Midnight. When Kieran calls Emma foolish for stating the obvious when the faeries first come to strike a deal, Julian immediately leaps to her defense.

“Emma is my parabatai. If you ever speak to her like that again, there will be blood on the floor of the Sanctuary, and I do not care if they put me to death for it.”

(Julian to Kieran, Page 134)

We see it again during the kitchen scene when Julian snaps on Mark.

“What is it, Mark? Oh, right, you don’t actually know how to drive, either. And of course teaching someone to drive takes time, but you might not actually be here. Because there’s no guarantee you’re staying. … But Mark has a choice. Tell them, Mark. Tell them you’re sure you’ll choose us.”

(Julian, Page 392)

Jules knows that there’s a possibility that Mark will choose to go back to the Wild Hunt and that he will break the kids’ hearts in doing so. In that scene, Julian cruelly (and rightfully) puts the consequences of Mark’s future decision on his brother’s shoulders. Jules isn’t protecting Mark like he usually does with his siblings, he’s showing the children that Mark has the power to hurt them.

Again, we see what Julian is capable of when Kieran arrives after Tavvy’s been kidnapped, claiming to have information. Jules throws a dagger right next to Kieran’s head to threaten the son of the Unseelie King.

“You will tell us now everything you know about where Octavian is, what’s going on, and how we can get him back. Or I will spill your blood on the floor of this library. I’ve spilled faerie blood before. Don’t think I won’t do it again. … Don’t move or the next blade I throw at you won’t miss.”

(Julian to Kieran, Page 559-560)

Julian has hidden this cruelty and ruthlessness under his gentle exterior, but his armor is slowly cracking to reveal just how merciless he can be.

“Your brother was wrong about you. … He said you were gentle. The most gentle person he knew. You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart.”

“Remember it.”

(Kieran and Julian, Page 569)

Personally, I love this conflict within Julian as a character. He believes that he will “burn” for all the things he’s done in order to keep his family together. He thinks that his family will hate him if and when they discover the lengths at which he lied and deceived to make sure they weren’t separated. He wonders what type of person that makes him for doing all he’s done. 

I’m excited to see the path Clare takes with Julian as I dive deeper into this trilogy. A part of me wants to see this boy absolutely snap and do something absurd. So far, everything Jules has done has been to protect his family, and it honestly hasn’t been too questionable. He’s ruthless, not heartless. I want to see him break to the point where he completely tips the scale in the name of love and family. However, I know that to get to that point, something terrible would have to happen to either one of the children or Emma, and I don’t want that. I’m conflicted.

The other half of our protagonist duo is Emma. She’s the opposite of Julian in that she has a rough exterior and a gentle soul. 

She’s a lot like Jace Herondale. She’s feisty, reckless, sarcastic and a born warrior. She’s fueled by her need to avenge her parents’ murders, which has led her to train relentlessly to become the best Shadowhunter she can be. (Remember when Jace was dead set on finding his father’s murderers when we first met him in City of Bones?)

Our TMI gang is famous now, because they saved the world. In their wake, Emma has built up a reputation for possibly being the next Jace. However, when Cristina Rosales mentions as much to Emma while shopping, she’s not enthused.

“I kill myself training. I get up and train, and run, and I split my hands on the punching bag, and I train for hours into the night, and I have to, because there is nothing else special about me and nothing else that matters. All there is, is training and finding out who killed my parents. Because they were the ones who thought I was special.”

(Emma to Cristina, Page 312)

Emma is special in her own right; however, I like that there isn’t anything “extra” about her. She’s gotten where she is based on her own work ethic and by the circumstances she’s been dealt throughout her young life. In other TSC books, the main protagonists all have defining traits that make them more than the average Shadowhunter — i.e. Jace and Clary have extra Angel blood, Clary can create runes, Tessa is half warlock, Will considered himself cursed and could talk to ghosts and Jem became a Silent Brother. It’s refreshing to see an “average” Shadowhunter be the hero. 

Back to Emma’s character traits. So, like I’ve been saying, Emma outwardly shows a lot of strength and recklessness in her actions. She’s expected to be the one to run into battle, to get hurt and to show up bloody. It’s her nature. 

That’s why Emma steps up to take the whipping from Iarlath when the Faerie convoy shows up to punish Mark for telling Cristina secrets of the Wild Hunt. Emma knows that the whip will break Mark’s spirit even further and she can’t bear to watch and feel Julian be whipped, so she steps in. Of course, she knocks out Julian with a sleep rune first to make sure he doesn’t feel anything.

“The kids — Look, they expect me to fight, to get hurt. They think: There’s Emma, scratched up again, cut up and bandaged. But you, they look to you in a way they don’t look to me. If you were seriously hurt, it would scare them so badly. And I couldn’t stand thinking of them so scared.”

(Emma to Julian, 536)

This scene perfectly highlights the difference between Julian and Emma’s characters. She’s strong enough to take the whip, but it’s for the gentle reason of protecting Julian, Mark and the children. This is just like how Julian is willing to lie and keep secrets for the benefit of his family — different means, same end results. Though, they both feel guilt over their actions.

Perhaps it’s these contradictions that make these two such an ideal pair for being best friends, parabatai and potentially dangerous lovers. 

Yes, Emma and Julian are in love, which is a HUGE no-no for parabatai. It’s like rule No. 1. Clare has presented a couple instances in her other books where parabatai had feelings for each other, but it was always one-sided (Alec Lightwood’s crush on Jace and Michael Wayland’s unrequited love for Robert Lightwood). This is the first time that love is exchanged evenly, and I’m kind of obsessed. It’s a stereotypical “forbidden love” storyline, but it feels so unique because of the circumstances that led to their feelings being criminal.

Quick shoutout to Clare for dropping this love bomb in the first book, because I was terrified that Julian would be pinning over Emma for three whole books while she thought his heart beat faster when she got close because he was nervous for battle not because he’s super thirsty for his own parabatai. 

Before the bomb officially drops, readers get obvious clues from Julian that he’s helplessly in love with Emma. Malcolm mentions it right away, reminding Julian that “every story is a love story” and that “there is nothing more important than love. And no law higher”. 

Julian gives a whole damn monologue about love after watching a sappy movie with the kids, and everything suspiciously relates to his connection with Emma. (Super long quote warning!)

“When you love someone, they become a part of who you are. They’re in everything you do. They’re in the air you breathe and the water you drink and the blood in your veins. Their touch stays on your skin and their voice stays in your ears and their thoughts stay in your mind. You know their dreams because their nightmares pierce your heart and their good dreams are your dreams too. And you don’t think they’re perfect, but you know their flaws, the deep-down truth of them, and the shadows of all their secrets, and they don’t frighten you away; in fact you love them more for it, because you don’t want perfect. You want them.”

(Julian, Page 100-101)

As Emma and Julian’s relationship changes throughout Lady Midnight, you can slowly trace the reasons they love each other back to this rant. 

Since they arrived back at the Institute when they were 12, Emma and Julian both faced nightmares. They developed a system of crawling into each other’s bed and asking to stay because they shared the same nightmares. 

“Stay and make me forget my nightmares. Stay and sleep next to me. Stay and chase the bad dreams away, the memories of blood, of dead parents, of Endarkened warriors with eyes like dead black coals.”

(Emma, Page 65)

Then, when Emma sneaks off to the Convergence site alone and starts to drown, Julian starts coughing up salt water and instantly knows that Emma needs help. 

“He knew in the way that she was a part of him, the way her breathing was his breathing, and her dreams were his dreams, and her blood was his blood, and when her heart stopped he knew that his would too, and he would be glad, because he wouldn’t want to live one second in a world that didn’t have her in it.”

(Julian, Page 409) 

That passage is nearly identical to Julian’s rant on love earlier in the book, which is such a fabulous way at tipping this platonic relationship into a romantic one. All the stress of the investigation, the worrying for his family and the pent-up desire and fear Julian has harvested for Emma just spills out of him as he drags her from the ocean.

“We are bound together, Emma, bound together — I breathe when you breathe, I bleed when you bleed, I’m yours and you’re mine, you’ve always been mine, and I have always, always belonged to you! … I don’t live if you die!”

(Julian to Emma, Page 422)

There’s those lines again, another incredible call back to how Julian defines love just as the scale fully tips when he and Emma do the deed in the sand. Then, it’s Julian’s ruthless heart that allows him to act as if he isn’t in love with Emma after they had sex, and, it’s Emma’s gentle soul, that is crushed by it.

Lastly, as Emma watches Julian explain everything so expertly to Robert Lightwood, she recognizes that there was a moment when Julin when a “quiet strength settled over Jules,” and she fell in love with him despite the flaws and secrets. She fell in love with the man he became, not the boy she grew up with. That’s another callback to Julian’s rant on love. 

OK, most of these passages are from Julian’s POV. He’s always believed in love. It’s Emma who never thought much of it and preferred to drag Cameron Ashdown around when she wanted romantic companionship. In times she and Julian are intimate, Emma mentions that the feelings she has in those moments are what love is meant to feel like, indicating she’s never felt that way in any previous relationship (sorry, Cameron). She also relates love to war, which is so typical of her character.

“This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure.”

(Emma, Page 541) 

It’s this surprising relief and joy that Emma feels in discovering her love for Julian and how right it feels, that makes the ending of Lady Midnight so intensely upsetting. 

Jem, with good intentions, tells Emma about the parabatai curse — if parabatai fall in romantic love, they become so powerful that it will ultimately destroy their lives until everyone they love and themselves winds up dead. Of course, because this is a Cassandra Clare book, Emma doesn’t communicate her fears to Julian, instead she lies to him when he knows she’s a terrible liar (that’s another difference between these two!).

“If we’re going to take that kind of risk, it should be for a real, lifelong love. … I even love you. I’ve loved you my whole life. But I don’t love you enough. It’s not enough.” 

“I know you. I know, Emma, and you’re lying. You’re trying to do what you think is right. Trying to push me away to protect me. … You’re trying to protect the kids, too. … I know what you’re doing, and I love you for it. I love you.”

(Emma and Julian, Page 663-664)

That’s where Emma stakes Julian in the heart by claiming she’s interested in Mark — an insecurity that Julian has mentioned multiple times. The book ends with Emma asking Mark to deliver on his promised favor for taking the whip by pretending to fall in love with her.

Honestly, Emma and Julian may be my favorite TSC couple after Alec and Magnus. Their dynamic and chemistry is simply unmatched. In a way they remind me a lot of Will Herondale and Jem Carstairs. They feel like two souls who have become one. They leaned on each other when the Dark War stole everything else from them. Emma watched over Julian when he was too busy watching over his siblings, and together they bore the burden of raising four children when they were children themselves. 

I love that tragic circumstances forced them to become parabatai to remain together after their worlds were shattered and now they are struggling with the consequences. It’s a tragedy in itself. There doesn’t seem to be a way to have a happy ending. If they continue a romantic relationship and get caught, they lose their family and the life they fought so hard to maintain. If they remain apart, they’re hearts and souls will be broken forever. 

Plus, these two are relatable. I adored the banter they had back and forth, especially those little moments when they’re in the car and feel so carefree with Emma kicking her feet up on the dash and Julian confessing his first crush was Isabelle Lightwood while imagining himself and Emma running away together. Or when, even as Julian is dying of poison and blood loss, Emma finds a way to joke about how he needs to eat more pancakes and he questions her use of the term ‘panic bar’. 

I also love the unique details traits that Clare gives of us about these two away from their lives as Shadowhunters — that Julian is a devoted artist like his mother and sings offkey in the car or that Emma still shops at a thrift store her parents took her to as a child and can’t play an instrument to save her life despite the Carstairs having a family history of music. 

Simply put, they have the chemistry that is only found between two people who have spent their entire lives together, and it makes a difference in the story. The ending truly left a pit in my stomach, and I’m extremely invested in this beautiful trainwreck. 

END OF PART 1

Surprise! This quickly got out of hand, but I can’t figure out a way to cut it down. I’m analyzing way too much, and I cannot stop myself. I’ve had a cold all week, so most of this analysis is Nyquil-fueled. That probably explains a lot.

So, stick around for Part 2 of All my Thoughts on Lady Midnight, where I’ll dive into Mark Blackthorn’s return from the Wild Hunt and struggles with adapting back into his family, Malcolm Fade as the big baddie and the plot as a whole, and a little bit of everything else (KIT). 

See yinz soon!

“These pictures are my heart. And if my heart was a canvas, every square inch of it would be painted over with you.”

(Julian to Emma, Page 540)

This quote is beautiful, I just had to include it somewhere. Also, that secret room full of paintings of Emma gives me serial killer vibes. It’s a little weird out of context. Even in context it’s a little weird. Dru would have some theories based on her true crime knowledge.