The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,11

quiet,” said Magnus.

He was right. It had been a relatively peaceful year—aside from the Cold Peace, of course, which continued to loom over all of Downworld. They had both barely been called away from New York, and certainly not overnight. They had left Max with others, but only for a few hours—a Conclave meeting, a fight breaking out somewhere locally, Downworlder politics gone awry. They had never been away from Max for longer than that. Max had never gone to sleep without them there.

Through force of will, Alec stopped his train of thought before it got too far out of the station. “We will make a plan for Max,” he said, “in four hours.” He threw himself onto the bed and reached out to pull Magnus down next to him. The warlock lay on his side, and Alec curled himself around Magnus, feeling a long exhale leave Magnus’s body as they nestled comfortably together.

The thrum of tension in Alec’s stomach slowed and eventually came to a rest. By the time Chairman Meow appeared from under the bed and perched smugly on top of Magnus’s hip, Magnus’s breathing was even and low. Alec planted a soft kiss on the top of his boyfriend’s head and allowed himself, too, to finally sleep.

* * *

IN HIS DREAM MAGNUS RULED over a ruined world. He sat on a golden throne at the top of a million golden stairs, calling orders in a language he didn’t understand to scurrying gray creatures far below him. He was so high that clouds floated by on the stairs below his throne, and beyond the stairs he could see the sun, bloated and red, reflected in flames on the surface of a vast flat ocean.

No other people were there. Other than the bedraggled, beaked gray things that lurched below him, he was alone. Slowly he stood up and walked, curious, down a few of the stairs. He thought that if he descended far enough, he would be able to see himself reflected in the ocean below.

He kept walking down the stairs, although when he glanced over his shoulder the throne barely seemed to recede behind him. Eventually he looked down at the surface of the sea and beheld himself. He was gigantic, he realized—fifty feet tall, a hundred feet tall. His cat’s eyes were huge and luminous. There was no sign of the wound in his chest that the Svefnthorn had made. Instead the skin of his chest was rough, textured, thick like the hide of an animal. He raised his hands up in front of him, palms out, and noted with some interest the huge curving claws at the ends of his fingers.

“What is this for?” he yelled. “Why would I be in this place?”

The gray creatures all stopped as one and turned to gaze at him. They spoke to him, but he couldn’t understand them. They seemed either to greatly love him or to be greatly frightened of him. He couldn’t tell which. He didn’t want either.

* * *

MAGNUS KNEW HE HAD SLEPT late when he awoke and saw the angle of the sunlight on the wall. He found the other side of the bed empty and concluded that Alec had decided to let him sleep in before their departure.

He found his robe, blinked the sleep from his eyes, and went into the kitchen, where Jace Herondale was pouring coffee into Magnus’s I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL mug.

Magnus was glad he had not wandered out into the kitchen naked. “Don’t you have your own coffeepot?” he said blearily.

Jace, blond hair in its usual, preternaturally excellent state, flashed him a winning smile that Magnus was not prepared to deal with before he, too, had some coffee. “I hear you got stabbed by a weird Norwegian thorn,” Jace said. “Also, do you have any soy milk? Clary’s doing a whole soy milk thing now.”

“What are you doing in my apartment?” said Magnus.

“Well,” said Jace, now rummaging in the fridge, “I’d like to think I’d be welcome anytime, what with my close relationship with all three of you. But in this case, Alec called us. Said something about Shanghai.”

“Who is us?” Magnus said suspiciously.

Jace waved his coffee cup around. “Us! You know. All of us.”

“All of you?” Magnus repeated. He held up a hand. “Wait. Stop. I am going to go put on something more substantial than a robe. You are going to use your angelic powers to pour me as large a mug of black coffee as you