“I could summon a bull, too,” Magnus proposed. “For verisimilitude.”
“No bull,” said Alec.
Their last shot was in New Delhi, among the brightly colored throngs in front of the Jama Masjid for Eid-al-Fitr. Magnus conjured silver bowls of gulab jamun, rasmalai, kheer, and a few other favorites, and they took turns feeding the sweets to one another, mugging for the camera.
Alec reached out to pull Magnus in for a kiss, then hesitated, his fingers sticky with sugar. Magnus gestured, and a glittering ripple of magic followed his hand, cleaning up the desserts, the backdrop, and the syrup from their hands. He leaned in, fingers curled under the line of Alec’s jaw, and kissed him.
“Now that we’ve got the vacationing part of our vacation out of the way,” said Magnus, “we can enjoy ourselves.”
He leaned against a bookcase crowded with ancient spell books and took Alec’s hand. “That would be great,” Alec told him shyly.
“In retrospect,” said Magnus, “an extravagant holiday may have been slightly excessive for something as new as . . . this.” He gestured to indicate the two of them.
Alec began to grin. “I kept worrying I would mess things up.”
“How could you possibly mess things up?”
Alec shrugged. “Could I keep up with you? Would I be interesting enough?”
Magnus started laughing. “I wanted to show you the world, show you the grand and romantic adventure that life can be. That’s why I planned that balloon-ride dinner over Paris. Do you know how long that took to figure out? Just keeping the table and chairs upright with the crosswinds was hours of magic you never saw. And I still crashed.”
Alec laughed with him.
“I might have gone a little overboard,” Magnus admitted. “But I wanted to lay all the grandeur and dazzle of Europe at your feet. I wanted you to have fun.”
When he looked at Alec again, Alec was frowning.
“I did have fun,” he said. “But I didn’t need any of that. They were just places. You don’t have to set any scene to convince me. I don’t need Paris, or Venice, or Rome. I just want you.”
There was a pause. The afternoon sun was streaming through the open windows, making the dust in the apartment twinkle and casting a warm glow on their linked hands. Magnus could hear the sound of Brooklyn traffic, yellow cabs honking and jostling.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Magnus. “When Shinyun and I were fighting in the pentagram in Rome, you shot her. You told me that you could see dozens of illusions of me fighting dozens of her. How did you know which one was really her?”
“I didn’t,” said Alec. “I knew which one was you.”
“Oh. Was one version of me more handsome than the others?” Magnus said, charmed. “More debonair? Possessed of a certain je ne sais quoi?”
“I don’t know about that,” said Alec. “You reached for a knife. You had it in your grasp, and then you let it go.”
Magnus deflated.
“You knew it was me because I’m worse at fighting than she is?” Magnus asked. “Well, that’s terrible news. I imagine ‘pathetic in combat’ is on the top ten list of Shadowhunter turnoffs.”
“No,” said Alec.
“Number eleven, just below ‘doesn’t actually look good in black’?”
Alec shook his head again. “Before we were together,” he said, “I was angry a lot, and I hurt people because I was in pain. Being kind when you’re in pain—it’s hard. Most people struggle to do it at the best of times. The demon who cast that spell couldn’t imagine it. But among all those identical figures, there was one person who hesitated to hurt somebody, even at the moment of utmost horror. That had to be you.”
“Oh,” said Magnus.
He took Alec’s face in his hand and kissed him again. He had kissed Alec so many times before, and he could never get used to the way Alec responded to him, the way he responded to Alec. Every time, it felt new. Magnus never wanted to get used to it.
“We’re alone,” Alec murmured against his mouth. “The loft is warded. No demons can interrupt us.”
“The doors are locked,” Magnus said. “And I have the best locks money and magic can buy. Not even an Open rune works on my doors.”
“Great news,” said Alec.
Magnus barely understood him. The movement of Alec’s lips against his own sent all reasonable thoughts flying out of his head.
Magnus flicked his fingers at the bed behind his back and sent the gold-and-scarlet duvet flying to the other side of the room, fluttering like a rogue sail. “Can we . . . ?”
Alec’s eyes lit with desire. “Yes.”
They tumbled onto the mattress, twining together against the silk sheets. Magnus slid his hands under Alec’s T-shirt, feeling hot smooth skin under worn cotton and the flutter of muscles in Alec’s bare stomach. His own desire was a flame low down in his belly, spreading through his chest, constricting his throat. Alexander. My beautiful Alexander. Do you know how much I want you?
But a shadow voice whispered in the back of Magnus’s head, murmuring that he could not tell Alec the truth about his father, his life. Magnus wanted to lay every truth of his existence at his beloved’s feet, but this one would only endanger Alec. It would have to be held back.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Magnus gasped.
“Why?” Alec asked, mouth kiss-swollen and eyes dazed with desire.
Why indeed. Good question. Magnus shut his eyes and found light still brimming behind them, the lines of Alec’s body fitting warm and sweet and perfect against his. He was drowning in light.
Magnus pushed Alec back, though he could not bear to push him away far. Alec ended up a handspan away from him, across an expanse of crimson silk.
“I just don’t want you to do anything you might regret,” said Magnus. “We can wait for as long as you want. If you need to wait until—until you’re sure how you feel—”
“What?” Alec sounded bewildered, and a little irritated.
When Magnus pictured beautiful and sensual moments with his beloved Alec, or moments in which he himself was self-sacrificing and noble, he had not envisioned his beloved Alec looking so annoyed.
“I kissed you in the Hall of Accords, in front of the Angel and everyone I know,” said Alec. “Couldn’t you tell what that meant?”
Magnus remembered facing Alec at the start of a war, thinking he had lost him forever and realizing he had not. He had known certainty for only a single glorious moment, ringing through the Great Hall and his whole body like a bell. But such moments could not be kept. Magnus had let shadows of doubt about himself, about his past, about Alec’s future, insinuate themselves and dislodge that certainty from his grasp.
Alec was watching him intently. “You started a demonic cult centuries ago, and I didn’t ask any questions. I followed you all around Europe. I slaughtered a whole pack of demons on the Orient Express for you. I went to a palazzo full of murderers and people who wanted to make small talk and dance, for you. I lied to the Rome Institute for you, and I would have lied to the Clave.”
Put together, it was a lot. “I’m sorry you had to do all of that,” Magnus murmured.
“I don’t want you to be sorry!” said Alec. “I’m not sorry. I wanted to do it. I wanted all of it, with you. The only thing that bothered me was when you were in trouble without me. I want us to be in trouble together. I want us to be together, no matter what. That’s all I want.”
Magnus waited in the silence. After a moment, Alec said quietly, “I’ve never loved anybody like this before. Maybe I’m not saying it right, but it’s what I feel.”
I’ve never loved anybody like this before.
Magnus’s heart seemed to break open, spilling love and desire through his veins. “Alec,” Magnus whispered. “You said everything perfectly.”
“Then is anything wrong?” Alec knelt up on the bed, his hair deliciously mussed, his cheeks flushed.
“It’s your first time,” Magnus said. “I want it to b
e perfect for you.”
To Magnus’s surprise, Alec grinned. “Magnus,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for this for so long. If we don’t do this literally right now, I will jump out the window.”
Magnus started to laugh. It was odd to laugh and feel desire at the same time; he wasn’t sure he’d had that with anyone but Alec. He reached out across the space between them and pulled Alec toward him.
Alec gave a sharp gasp as their bodies collided, and very quickly neither of them were laughing anymore. Alec’s breath came short as Magnus drew off his shirt. His touch was hungry, exploring. He found the collar of Magnus’s shirt and ripped it open, pushing it off Magnus’s shoulders. His hands smoothed down Magnus’s bare arms. He pressed kisses to Magnus’s throat, his bare chest, his flat navel-less stomach. Magnus wound his fingers into Alec’s wild dark hair and wondered if anyone had ever been this lucky.
“Lie back,” Magnus whispered at last. “Lie back, Alexander.”
Alec stretched out on the bed, his beautiful body bare from the waist up. His eyes fixed on Magnus, he reached back, grabbing the headboard of the bed, the muscles in his arms standing out. The sunlight from the window fell on Alec, bathing his body in a faint luminescence. Magnus sighed, wishing for magic that could stop time, that would let him stay in this moment indefinitely.
“Oh, my love,” Magnus murmured. “I am so glad to be home.”
Alec smiled, and Magnus bent his own body over Alec’s. They moved and curved and fitted together, chest against chest, hips against hips. Alec’s breath stuttered and caught as Magnus’s tongue found its way into his open mouth, and Magnus’s hands rid Alec of the rest of his clothes, and they were skin to skin, breath against breath, heartbeat against heartbeat. Magnus trailed his rings down the line of Alec’s throat, up to his lips; Alec licked and sucked at Magnus’s fingers, the stones of his rings, and Magnus gave a shiver of shocked longing as Alec bit gently at his palm. Everywhere they kissed and everywhere they touched felt like alchemy, the transformation of the commonplace to gold. They progressed together, starting slow and moving to sharp urgency.
When movement had stilled and gasps had turned to soft whispers, they lay holding each other in the fading light of the sun, Alec curved in against Magnus’s side, his head on the warlock’s chest. Magnus touched Alec’s soft hair and looked up in wonder at the shadows above the bed. It felt like the first time anything like this had happened in the world, felt like the start of something shining and impossibly new.
Magnus had always had a wanderer’s heart. Over the centuries, he had adventured in so many different places, always looking for something that would fulfill his restless hunger. He never realized how all the pieces could fall together, how home could be somewhere and someone.
He belonged with Alec. His wandering heart could rest.
THE PORTAL OPENED JUST OUTSIDE the worn hongsalmun near the top of the hill. The red paint that had once brightened the wooden gate had peeled away a century ago, and choking vines had crawled up its poles and bars.
Shinyun stepped out of the Portal and breathed in the crisp mountain air. She surveyed her domain and its impassable wards. Only a fox had trespassed here, long ago, starving and searching for food. It had found none, and only its skeleton remained.
She followed the winding trail of broken stones and undergrowth as it snaked up the hill. Her family’s old home in Korea was known to the locals as a cursed, haunted place. Shinyun supposed, in a way, that it was. She was the ghost of her family, the last one. She had been abandoned here and she could never truly leave.
As she walked into her home she waved the house alive. A fire burst in the fireplace. Her two Nue demons, red eyes and razor teeth shining in their monkey faces, started from the hearth and came toward her with their snake tails waving in the air.
The two demons followed close behind their mistress as they walked down the main hallway to the back of the house. They reached a dead end, and then the wall flickered and disappeared. Shinyun and her demons passed through, and the wall became whole again behind them as they descended the hidden staircase.
At the back of the cellar, there stood a rusty metal cage reinforced by powerful wards. Shinyun’s demons were not pets. They were guardians. They kept intruders out. They also kept things in.
She slid the bolts free and walked into the cage. The demons hissed at the pile in the corner, and the filthy, green-skinned warlock raised his head. His face was almost obscured by a snarled mass of hair that had once been white as snow, but was now gray with grime.
“Oh, you’re alive,” he said. “That’s too bad.”
He leaned back against the pile of hay and sacking as if it were silk.
“I’m thrilled to see you don’t look well,” he added. “Magnus Bane proved a more formidable opponent than you imagined? Who could have guessed? Wait, I told you that you had no chance against him. Repeatedly.”
Shinyun aimed a vicious kick at his midsection. She kept kicking, until she was rewarded with a groan.
“Maybe things didn’t work out as I hoped,” she panted. “You’ll be as sorry for it as I am. I have another plan, a plan for all the eldest curses, and you are going to help me.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “I’m not the helpful type.”
Shinyun hit him. She kicked him until he curled up around the pain, and she turned her face aside so he would not see her tears.
“You have no choice. Nobody is coming to save you,” she said, cold and sure. “You’re all on your own, Ragnor Fell. Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
Acknowledgments
ALEC LIGHTWOOD FIRST TOOK SHAPE in my mind in 2004, a boy in frangible old sweaters with holes in the cuffs, with angry blue eyes and a vulnerable soul. Magnus exploded into my heart not long after, all outsized personality and carefully guarded emotions. And I knew they were perfect for each other: the Shadowhunter and the Downworlder, the warlock and the archer boy.
When I was a teen, LGBTQ+ representation in young adult lit was something found largely on the pages of “problem novels”—when it was found at all. My gay, lesbian, and bisexual friends searched in vain for representations of themselves in the kind of books they liked to read: swashbuckling fantasy adventures. When I set about to write the Shadowhunter books, including Alec and Magnus was something I did because I loved their characters and thought they belonged in a swashbuckling fantasy adventure: the pushback from schools, from book fairs, from stores that didn’t want to carry the books because of them, the marking out by media watchdog sites who noted the presence of gay characters as “sexual content” though they had not yet even kissed shocked and sobered me, just as the groundswell of support from LGBTQ+ readers made me more determined to tell their story.
There were challenges. I tried to maintain a balance in which Magnus and Alec were always present in the books, always human and relatable, always heroes, without pushing past what was considered “acceptable content” and resulting in a situation that would keep the books off the shelves of bookstores and libraries, so the kids who most needed to read about characters like Alec and Magnus would still be able to find them. But I itched to do more.
The writing and publication of The Bane Chronicles in 2014 was a shot across the bow: a book unapologetically about Magnus, his life and loves of both genders and his eventual commitment to Alec. It did modestly well—well enough for me to feel like the time had come to do something I had always wanted, and tell a swashbuckling romantic fantasy story in which Magnus and Alec were the protagonists. I had already left a gap for that story to take place—the “vacation” Magnus and Alec take during City of Fallen Angels, during which their relationship clearly deepened in seriousness. We knew they’d rollicked across Europe—but what happened exactly? This book aims to tell that story.
So thank you to my friends and family who supported me during the writing process, to my publisher for taking a chance, to my editor and agent, and to my cowriter, Wesley Chu. And thanks above al
l to Alec and Magnus and to those who’ve loved and supported them over the years. In 2015, a Texan librarian took one of my cowriters aside at a convention and told her that The Bane Chronicles was the only LGBTQ+-led book she was allowed to have in her library. All others were ruled out as “inappropriate,” but as kids who were Shadowhunters fans persistently asked their parents for the book, she was told she could make an exception. Thank you above all to the kids who asked, and to that librarian and all other librarians, teachers, and booksellers who get the right books into the right hands. And let us hope for a world in which someday everyone knows that LGBTQ+-led books are not only “appropriate” but necessary.
—C. C.
THE RED SCROLLS OF MAGIC was written during a time of significant transition. Before I was asked to cowrite Magnus and Alec’s story, I thought my heart was full living in Chicago with my wife, Paula, and our Airedale terrier, Eva. Then we welcomed our son, Hunter, to the world and moved cross-country to Los Angeles, and like the Grinch who stole Christmas’s, my heart grew three sizes and burst out of my chest. These past few years during the time I worked on this book have been the most fulfilling and challenging in my life, both personally as well as professionally, and I feel that my growing capacity to love and what I feel for my family, my new home, and this project shows on these pages.
I am grateful to my beautiful wife, Paula, for showing me what unconditional love and support looks like, and for offering eternal patience as I spent the thousands of hours on the keyboard. I am also grateful to my parents and in-laws for helping take care of Hunter, which gave me the time and space to dedicate my thoughts to Magnus and Alec. Thanks also to my agent, Russ Galen, for believing in me enough to trust me with this project, and to the teams at Simon & Schuster for making everything else happen.
The love and dedication of the Shadowhunter fans never ceases to amaze and inspire me. Thank you. We’re all in this together. Burn strong. Burn vividly.
The Red Scrolls of Magic Page 31
