The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,113

complex that the Tracking rune had led them to, in their initial hunt for Ragnor.

Magnus climbed the steps and peered into the open front door.

The room inside was fairly bare. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling, illuminating the plain wooden chair where Ragnor sat, glaring, in a shabby robe belted over trousers. He had evidently been expecting Magnus.

“You stole my blankets,” he said sourly.

“And a couple of pillows,” Magnus said. “You know how hard it is to find any kind of textiles in this place?”

“I know very well,” said Ragnor. “Unless you like sleeping on old tapestries crispy with bloodstains.”

Magnus looked more closely around the room. There was a simple platform in one corner, which Magnus assumed had been Ragnor’s bed before Magnus had stolen all the linens off it. There was a small wooden table, on which was, not surprisingly, the Book of the White. Ragnor’s chair had been placed facing the front door, as if Ragnor had been sitting and waiting for hours. He might have been.

Magnus stood in the doorway. He hadn’t really made a plan that went further than this. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you would have done it,” he said cautiously. “Taken the third thorn of your own free will, I mean.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Ragnor’s eyes gleamed. “When it came to it, I decided that I didn’t want to die. Nor should you.”

“Well,” said Magnus, casting his gaze around at the dingy interior of the temple. “Now that I’ve seen the perks that come with the job, how could I resist?”

Ragnor sighed.

Magnus could stand it no longer. “When you faked your death. In Idris. You told me you would contact me,” he blurted. “And then you didn’t. I assumed—”

“You assumed that Sammael had caught me,” said Ragnor. “You were right, of course.”

“I assumed you were dead,” Magnus said.

Ragnor shrugged. “I could have been. For a while, I might as well have been.”

It was so strange, talking to Ragnor like this. He sounded like—well, he sounded like Ragnor, Magnus’s first and oldest friend, who had done more than anyone to make Magnus into who he was. But Magnus could see the star of red light gleaming against Ragnor’s chest, and he knew that as gruff and familiar as Ragnor’s demeanor might be, he had become Sammael’s creature, maybe irrevocably.

His curiosity was too great not to continue this conversation, though he knew he might not have time, that perhaps Shinyun or Sammael even now knew he was here. But he had to know. The question had eaten at him for too long now. “What happened?” he said.

“Shinyun happened,” Ragnor said. “Take a seat.”

There was another plain wooden chair next to the open door, and Magnus dragged it over and sat across from Ragnor, like he was interviewing him on a talk show.

“Sammael was looking for me,” Ragnor said. “He was still mostly Void, and looking for a demon realm in which he could become embodied and make his plans. My name reached his ears.”

“I remember,” Magnus said. “So you faked your death during the Mortal War and fled.”

“Quite. Most people didn’t believe it could be the real Sammael who had returned, but Shinyun did. She found me, and she stuck me in a cage.”

“A cage?” said Magnus.

“A cage,” confirmed Ragnor. “It was not my most dignified moment. This was before Shinyun had sworn fealty to Sammael, you understand. But she knew about him. She knew about the way he’d been banished, knew he was able to return in brief, faint bursts. Knew he’d been looking for me. I was the bait she thought she could attract his attention with.” He smiled bitterly. “It worked.”

Magnus was uncomfortably aware of the concept of “bait” as a central axis of his and his friends’ own plan.

Ragnor went on. “She told me about how she had met you and Alec Lightwood, how she had been rejected by Asmodeus. How, in the end, you took pity on her. And rather than bringing her to the Spiral Labyrinth, or letting the Nephilim have her, Alec let her go.”

Magnus let out a deep breath. “Alec is the one who let her go,” he said, “because he is a better person than almost anyone else I know. He told me about it when we got home from Italy. I think we both hoped that Shinyun would take that mercy as an opportunity to rethink her choices. To think about a different path than just seeking the most powerful entity available and declaring