The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,124

through him, Magnus took to the air himself.

“The more you use your magic,” Shinyun said to him, “the closer you get to losing yourself completely. The changes will accelerate.”

In the void above Avici, Magnus fought Shinyun. She was determined to attack Alec, recognizing that he was the more vulnerable target, and also knowing that Magnus would protect him above all else. Magnus flew defensively, getting in Shinyun’s way, blocking her magic, distracting her. But with the full power of the thorn behind her, Shinyun was more than a match for him. And Alec couldn’t touch Shinyun unless she got close, which she was clearly not about to do.

Worse, as he fought, Magnus could feel the magic of the thorn flowing in and through him. It gave him power, but power that was alien to him, something separate from him. He could feel its hunger, its desire to fill him until, inevitably, it replaced him.

“If you just gave yourself to the thorn,” Shinyun yelled in frustration, “there’d be no need for any of this.”

“Yes,” Magnus said through gritted teeth, “that’s kind of the whole point.”

They grappled there in the empty sky, neither able to attain a real advantage over the other. “Shinyun!” Sammael called. “I noticed you haven’t gotten the Book back yet. Do you need some help?”

“No!” said Shinyun angrily. Magnus took the opportunity to knock her off balance.

“I don’t know,” said Sammael. “It sure looks like Magnus is keeping it away from you. Let me just give you a hand.”

“No!” screamed Shinyun again, but Sammael was already reaching out with his hand, and while he remained where he was, it grew and extended and grabbed hold of Magnus, plucking him from the sky and smashing him down into the rough plain of Avici. One moment Magnus was flying toward Shinyun, and the next he was on his knees on the ground, next to Sammael. Sammael was leaning his hand, now normal size again, on Magnus’s shoulder in a casual, avuncular fashion, but Magnus found he was unable to move from its grip.

“You’re cheating,” he said, looking up at Sammael.

Sammael frowned, seeming puzzled. “My dear curse, how could you still think we were playing a fair game here?”

Magnus spun around, Sammael’s hand biting hard into his shoulder. The breath left Magnus’s body in a single, hard exhale. No, he thought, and then: I should have known.

Shinyun had hold of Alec. She stood behind him, grasping him around the neck with her arm and holding the point of the Svefnthorn to his chest. His seraph blade lay in front of him, guttering like a spent match.

His face was impassive, his blue eyes steady. He could have been looking out over a beautiful landscape, or studying a subway map. Magnus had seen Alec frightened—had seen him in every phase of vulnerability, clear and open as a summer sky—but Alec would never show such a thing before Shinyun and Sammael.

“Oh, interesting,” said Sammael with delight.

“Magnus!” Shinyun’s voice was hoarse and cracked. “I demand that you take the third blow from the Svefnthorn. I demand it. Or I will kill the thing you love best.” Her eyes were wild, monstrous, more inhuman than ever.

She twisted the point of the Svefnthorn against Alec’s ribs, over his heart, and Magnus felt it like a stab to his own gut. The thorn was warlock magic—there was no way it could be anything but death for a Shadowhunter.

He had no options left. If he took the thorn, Shinyun won: he’d become a willing minion of Sammael, and maybe the whole world would be destroyed. If he refused the thorn, Alec would be murdered before his eyes, he himself would die, and Sammael would go on toward the war he wanted.

“Will you spare Alec?” he said quietly. “Promise you’ll let Alec go, and I’ll do it.”

She glanced at Sammael; he shrugged. “You have my permission. It’s not like this one Shadowhunter poses any real threat. I can’t guarantee his safety once the invasion of Earth starts, of course,” he added. “That’s a different story.”

Magnus nodded. Alec was looking at him, his gaze still steady, still unreadable. Magnus wondered what would become of his love for Alec after the thorning. Would it vanish like it had never been? Would he love only Sammael? Or would he still love Alec, but demand that he also turn to Sammael’s side?

But the choice between him and Alec both definitely dying, and only one of them dying, was no choice at all. Max was