The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,34

to sleep,” said Magnus. “Except obviously it’s somehow connected to Sammael, who isn’t part of Norse mythology, so no, I guess we have only done the barest minimum research so far, now that I say it out loud.”

“Outside of mundane myth,” Shinyun said, “it has quite a history. My first task from Sammael was to recover it from its hiding place and attune it to my master. It was quite an adventure, actually. I faced many perils, and engaged in many small intrigues—”

“Please,” said Magnus, holding up his hand. “I don’t care.” He put his hand to his chest, felt the heat emanating from the wound. The node of magic in his chest continued to thump and beat like a second heart, stronger than before. It felt—well, actually, it felt pretty good.

Shinyun sat herself down next to Magnus where he knelt on the grass. She seemed quite calm. “You’ll come to understand,” she said, as though confiding a secret. “I thorned myself as soon as I was given permission to do so. I have never regretted it. Soon you’ll appreciate what I’ve done for you.”

“If I don’t,” said Magnus, “are you going to stab me again?”

Shinyun shook her head. She seemed excited, as though she’d had to wait a long time to tell Magnus something, and now she was finally getting to do so. “No,” she said. “Now you have a choice. Now you’ll choose to be struck again by the thorn.”

Magnus could tell that she desperately wanted him to ask what she meant. He refused to give her the satisfaction, and just waited silently while Shinyun watched him eagerly.

Finally she said, “Once you’ve tasted the thorn twice—”

“Please don’t say ‘tasted,’ ” said Magnus, put off.

“—you are connected to the power of my master. A third taste—”

“Please,” said Magnus.

Shinyun made an impatient gesture, but she said, “A third wound with the thorn will make you his entirely. He shall become the master of your will, and with your newfound gift, you will serve him.”

Magnus goggled at her. “Why would I ever do that?”

“Because,” she said, almost bouncing on her knees with glee, “if you aren’t wounded a third time, the thorn will burn you from the inside out. You’ll be consumed by its flame. Only by accepting Sammael into your heart can you avoid death.”

Magnus put his hand to his chest again, alarmed. “What?” he said. “So I have to accept Sammael into my heart literally? Or I die?”

“That’s how it works,” Shinyun said. “No magic can reverse the course of the thorn once it has burrowed into you.” She playfully pointed at Magnus’s chest. He slapped her finger away. “Soon enough,” she said, “you’ll realize this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“I would be very surprised,” said Magnus, forcing himself to stand up, “if it made it off the ‘worst things that have ever happened to me’ list. But I’ll keep you posted.” He took a deep breath around the wound and looked at Shinyun. “I thought you’d learn. We tried to help you, we really did.”

“And now I’m helping you,” she said. “The next time we meet, you’ll feel differently. I promise.”

“And when will that be?”

“The time is closer than you think. The time may be closer than even I think.” Shinyun was almost dancing, she was so pleased with herself.

“What does that mean?” Magnus yelled in exasperation. “Why are you so crazy?”

But a blood-red fog had appeared beneath Shinyun’s feet, and it swiftly swirled in a rising cloud to cover her completely. When it dissipated into the morning breeze, she was gone.

CHAPTER SIX Tian

IT WASN’T SOMETHING HE WOULD admit to anybody but his closest friends, but Alec kept a list in his head of the Institutes he most wanted to visit.

Obviously there were hundreds of Institutes that he would like to visit. This was just a simple top ten.

There was the Maui Institute, of course, where there were no external walls and little ceiling and, it was said, very minimal demon activity. The Amsterdam Institute, a huge invisible boat permanently anchored in the IJ. The Cluj Institute, a great stone castle jutting into the sky, high above the timberline in the Carpathian Mountains. And there was the Shanghai Institute.

Unlike any other Institute Alec could think of, Shanghai’s was in a place that had been well-known and sacred to mundanes long before the Shadowhunters were even created. Once the building had been part of Longhua Temple, a complex of Buddhist monasteries and shrines that had stood