The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,125
waiting at home. Better one parent than no parent. The calculus of it was self-evident, the conclusion inevitable.
Before Shinyun could act, though, Alec was moving. He was reaching out, and he was wrapping his hand around the blade of the Svefnthorn, and he was grimacing with effort and resolve, and he was thrusting the Svefnthorn into his own chest, piercing his own heart. From where he knelt, Magnus could see the thorn run all the way through him, emerge through his back, and remain there. Alec’s eyes were still open, still wide, still staring right at Magnus.
Magnus opened his mouth to scream, and crimson magic exploded from Alec’s chest, from his back, a blinding flash that turned the permanent night of Avici briefly to day. In the glare, beyond sight, still under the iron grip of Sammael’s hand, all Magnus could see of Alec were his eyes, clear and bright and filled with love.
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Endless Way
BY HIS NATURE, ALEC DIDN’T like acting on hunches. He liked to study a situation, make a plan, and execute the plan. It got him teased by Jace, by Isabelle, who both believed in jumping off a cliff and somehow sewing a parachute on the way down. They acted on instinct, and usually it turned out all right. But Alec didn’t have the same kind of faith in his own instincts. He believed in gathering intelligence, doing research, being prepared. (To be fair, Isabelle and Jace also believed in those things; they just believed other people should do them, because they were boring.)
This was a fine strategy for most Shadowhunting missions, but sometimes it all fell apart. Sometimes there was a no-win situation, where your only choice appeared to be between dying one way and dying a different way.
Diyu, and Sammael, and Shinyun had all confounded Alec’s ability to organize and plan. Shinyun’s motivations were so confused and contradictory that Alec was sure she herself didn’t understand them. Diyu was a surreal ruin. And Sammael acted as though it was all just a distracting game, as though nothing they did could have any meaningful effect.
For this whole mission they’d been working on hunches, mostly Magnus’s hunches. A hunch that Peng Fang would know something about the warlocks in the Market. A hunch that the cathedral would be in Diyu and would be safe. A hunch that the Heibai Wuchang could be used to save Ragnor.
So Alec had acted on an intuition of his own and asked Magnus if they could use the Alliance rune.
Now, faced with the choice of losing Magnus in one fashion or losing him in another, he acted, plunging the Svefnthorn into his own heart. He only had time to register the surprise on Shinyun’s face before everything exploded.
Crimson light burst, so intense it whited out Alec’s vision. He felt a harsh, burning energy pour into him, caustic and alien in his chest. He could feel his runes heating up, as if by friction, as if abraded by the demonic magic of the thorn, like a meteor falling through the upper atmosphere. All except the Alliance rune, which sizzled on his arm. The power of Sammael and the power of Raziel battled within his own body, but he could feel the Alliance rune absorbing the friction, smoothing it, teaching the different magics to cooperate.
Alec’s vision was beginning to clear. He could see the desolate black space of Avici, the tableau of Shinyun, Sammael, Magnus, all watching him, Magnus’s face a mask of horror.
I’m alive, Alec realized. He was a little surprised.
Shinyun jerked the thorn back. She looked nearly as horrified as Magnus, as the thorn slid free of Alec’s body. It was painless. There was no blood on the thorn, and when Alec glanced down, he saw no mark on himself to show where it had pierced him.
Shinyun had staggered back. She held the Svefnthorn out in front of her, staring: it glowed red, like iron heated in fire, and with some astonishment Alec saw that the thorn’s glow was visible to him in Magnus and Shinyun, too. In each of their chests hung a miniature star, a fireball made of magic, spinning madly behind the wounds the thorn had made. Shinyun’s fireball was somewhat larger than Magnus’s, but more importantly, a thick rope of magic extended out of Shinyun’s wound, terminating in the middle of Sammael’s own chest. Magnus had no such rope connecting him to Sammael—presumably because he had not suffered the third strike from the thorn.