The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,110
carefully. After a moment he said, “How do you feel?”
Alec looked uncertain. He lifted his arm up and held it out for Magnus to see. The Angelic Power rune on the inside of his forearm was glowing, a dark but definite red color.
“That’s new,” he said.
“Other than that?”
Alec waited. “Nothing,” he said. “I feel fine.” Experimentally, he drew a quick Awareness rune on the same arm, just a simple loop and line. They both watched it for a long moment, but it just seemed to be a regular rune, behaving normally.
“It seems to be okay,” said Magnus.
“It does,” murmured Alec. Then he leaned forward to kiss Magnus.
Magnus kissed him back, expecting a simple good-night kiss, but instead Alec reached out and tangled his hands in Magnus’s wild hair, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss into something much stronger, something wild, almost ferocious.
Alec’s arm slipped down and wrapped around Magnus’s waist, pulling his boyfriend on top of him. Magnus growled low in his throat: the feel of Alec’s body stretched along his always made him wild. He kissed Alec deeply, reveling in the scrape of his stubble, the softness of his lips; Alec gasped and clutched at Magnus’s back, pulling him closer, as close as they could be.
Magnus paused. “How do you feel?” he said, his lips moving against Alec’s.
Alec thought. “Worried about you.”
“No,” said Magnus, rolling them both over, so Alec was on top of him. “I mean, how do you feel about this?”
He slid his hand down and did a thing he knew Alec liked.
“Ohhh,” said Alec. “Oh! Uh, I’m definitely interested in this. But still worried about you,” he added. His beautiful eyes looked directly into Magnus’s. “Just keep it in mind. You’re my heart, Magnus Bane. Stay unbroken, for me.”
“Noted,” said Magnus, doing the thing he knew Alec liked again, and put out the light.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Heibai Wuchang
IT WASN’T A BETRAYAL, MAGNUS told himself; not really. But he knew that he would never get a chance to do what he wanted to do, with the Shadowhunters along with him. He could probably have convinced them to let him and Alec go together, but… as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Alec would be a liability in this situation too, for what he had in mind.
And Alec would never let him go on his own.
Alec would be right, probably.
But Magnus knew what he was doing. At least, he thought he knew what he was doing.
Alec slept on in the pitch-black of the cathedral office. It had been perhaps five hours since they had fallen asleep, but when Magnus woke up, he had done so feeling energized, rested, ready to go.
He would go and come back before Alec even noticed, he told himself.
Magnus had always been good at seeing in the dark, and in the last few days his vision had become even keener. He needed no illumination to guide him as he dressed in the lightless room, careful to remain quiet as he strapped his shoulder harness on.
With a gesture, a darkened surface appeared before him, a shimmering mirror. In that dark glass, Magnus saw his own face. He saw the darkness writhing at his throat and in his eyes. The worst was the razor gleam of his teeth, the way they seemed to pull his face into an entirely new shape.
Magnus knew a mundane story about a witch’s mirror that had broken into pieces: when a piece lodged in a child’s heart, that heart would turn to ice. He could feel the magic of the thorn twisting in his chest, as if it were a key opening a door he’d tried to keep shut. He didn’t need to glance down at his hands to see the veins standing out in red and black, or the marks of chains growing stronger. He could feel the subtle, terrible alteration of his being as his blood itself changed.
He had to do something. This was something.
Before he left, he held out a hand and gestured toward himself. Slowly, without a sound, Black Impermanence rose into the air from where Alec had carefully laid it down next to him. Careful not to disturb Alec or even the blankets, Magnus turned the sword in the air and floated it toward him. He held his breath, but in a moment Fan Wujiu was in his hand. He waited to see if he would explode; the smiths hadn’t said anything about being worthy to wield both swords at once.