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bamf-alec · 3 years

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All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 26-30

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Summary: Magnus had waited a long time for his soulmate to be born. Fate must have had a sick sense of humour, though, because after all these centuries, it had handed him a Shadowhunter. Magnus didn’t know who this Shadowhunter was, or how they could possibly be meant for each other, but he did know that this story wouldn't have a happy ending.

Alec also knew all about fate's sense of humour. He had known this his whole life. But the ground was coming up from under him and everything he knew was being turned on its head, systematically picked up and pulled apart and handed back to him looking nothing like it did before. Valentine was alive. His own parents had been members of the Circle. The Lightwoods’ grip on the Institute was slipping. And, through all this, his siblings had found their soulmates.

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 26

Because no one was ever allowed to have one blissful, quiet night to just sit and take a break from every blow life wanted to sock them over the head with, everything went to shit.

Magnus got the call from Alec only a few hours after he’d made it back to his loft. Hodge was a filthy traitor, the bastard, and Lydia was in need of medical assistance. She’d been about to take the cup back to Idris and hand the reins of the Institute over to Maryse when Hodge had assaulted her and stolen it for himself. Or, more likely, for Valentine.

After her outburst at the trial, Magnus had taken a liking to Lydia. It was somber to see her unconscious on the bed in front of him. It was even more somber to cast his magic on her and feel just how hard the blow to her head had been. She’d be fine in the end, if Magnus had anything to say about. There was a reason he was the High Warlock.

Just add it to the list of atrocities Valentine was responsible for.

Alec was gone. He and Jace had gone after Hodge like a pair of vengeful bounty hunters. Magnus could have helped them track him if they’d waited, but Clary informed him that they’d already asked Luke and his pack. She was the one who led him to the infirmary.

“There’s something else,” she confessed, once he’d finished his healing spell and sat back in his chair. “We need the Book of the White. It can’t wait any longer. Camille will give it to us if Simon signs a contract saying he wanted her to turn him.”

Camille was about the last person on the planet that Magnus wanted to see right now, but he knew how to set his personal feelings aside. This wasn’t just about waking Clary’s mother. It was about stopping Valentine from raising an army of Shadowhunters to hunt down every Downworlder in the city. Magnus’s people mattered more than his contempt for his ex.

He released a long exhale. “She wants a writ of transmutation. And none of you are fluent in drafting magical contracts.”

Clary gave him an apologetic look. “She asked for you specifically.”

“Of course she did,” he sighed. “Where is she?”

“They’re headed to your loft as we speak.”

Reluctantly and with another exaggerated sigh just to make it absolutely clear this was the last thing he wanted to do, Magnus flicked his hand. A portal tore open in the middle of the infirmary. Violet light cast across the floor, a swirling abyss of black at its centre.

They were already at his loft when he arrived, though they’d been relegated to the downstairs. It was good to know his wards still worked, and that even someone as deplorable as Camille couldn’t finagle her way past them. Reluctantly, he let them in.

“Magnus. How long has it been?” greeted the venomous snake. She wore a very tight red dress and elaborate makeup, her hair perfectly curled. No one would know she’d been trapped in a coffin for months.

“Not long enough,” Magnus said under his breath, knowing full well the vampires in the room would hear him. “Camille. I haven’t missed you.”

Camille flicked her long hair behind her shoulder. She ran a finger down his chin, her crimson-painted nail leaving an angry scratch mark. “Of course you have, my love. Looks like I was right about the Nephilim stirring up trouble. Aren’t you so glad I warned you, darling?”

Magnus pushed her hand away. “I would have found out one way or another. And it’s not Nephilim. It’s Valentine. Some of the Shadowhunters are on our side.”

He made a point of looking at Clary and Isabelle. Camille followed his eyes and scoffed in distaste. “Don’t tell me you’ve made friends with them, Magnus. It’s not like you to care so little for all the Downworlders they’ve burned. Are you really choosing the Nephilim over your own people?”

It was the lowest blow she could have dealt him, to bring up the ones they’d lost in the war. It hurt, and she knew it. Every reminder of the people he’d lost stung, but it was even worse now with Ragnor so fresh on his mind.

The last time he’d seen her, not all that long ago, he would’ve shared some of her sentiments. He’d had little faith in the Nephilim to do the right thing and evolve past their history of discrimination and oppression. The era of the Circle was as much a time his people would never recover from as it was one their people could never make right. Or so he’d believed.

It was true that the Clave still hadn’t changed much in all the dealings he’d had with them throughout the centuries. But he had hope for the future now, and he had realized it wasn’t fair to hold the crimes of one group of radicalists against an entire race, and especially against a generation that had had nothing to do with it. A generation that was learning from their parents’s mistakes so as not to repeat them.

“I’m not choosing anything,” Magnus told Camille. “It isn’t us against them. We all want to see Valentine brought to justice. And on that note, where is the Book of the White?”

Camille tsked. “Not so fast. Payment first. You of all people should understand that.”

“Of course,” Magnus agreed easily. He brought his hand over the table at the side of the room that was usually reserved for mixing up potions. Or drinks. God, he could use a drink right about now.

His magic swirled from his fingertips, a blue cloud of smoke twisting into a piece of paper. It took nearly nothing out of him, practiced as he was in spelling up contracts. Writs of transmutation, especially. He’d been with Camille long enough.

Simon had disappeared into one of his rooms. It was a bit rude, him making himself at home like that. What if Magnus had had something embarrassing in there? He didn’t, of course. He also understood the need to escape Camille, so he wasn’t as upset as he could’ve been. Clary followed him soon after. Isabelle remained all the way across the room, inspecting one of his shelf-fulls of magical artifacts. She typed something quickly into her phone, probably asking for backup.

Once they were virtually alone, Camille slithered closer to him like the serpent she was. She assessed him for a long, uncomfortable minute. It always felt like she was seeing inside of him, laying her eyes on his every flaw and filing them away to use against him at a later date. Once, it had made him feel understood. Now, it just made him bitter.

She smiled like she’d found what she wanted. “You’re still upset by my dalliance with that short-lived Russian.”

Of course Camille would bring that up. It hadn’t been the first dalliance of hers, but it had been the last. It was the final straw after far, far too many straws. The straw that finally forced him to wake up and realize she loved toying with him more than she loved him. He hadn’t gone crawling back to her, no matter how much he’d wanted to.

“Upset?” Magnus scoffed. He didn’t take his eyes away from the contract. “I gave up feeling anything for you over a century ago.”

Camille hummed, unbothered. “Love is fleeting. Even more so when you’re immortal.”

Her cynicism had rubbed off on him over the years, but in the last century Magnus had really tried to put it aside. “And yet true love can never die.”

“But people can,” Camille asserted.

“People are more than just toys for your amusement,” he snapped at her.

She scoffed. She leaned in far too close. Her perfume wafted towards him, floral and sweet. A venus flytrap luring her victims in with the promise of something tasty, only to snap her jaws shut and destroy them. He wondered if she kept a bottle of it on her person, just in case she ever got trapped in a coffin and needed to mask the smell of dust.

Camille smiled venomously. “Hundreds of years old and still so naïve. You wouldn’t know what to do with love if you found it.”

Until now, Magnus had been playing her game of back and forth quips, but now he stopped. He tried to focus his attention back on the contract, which would’ve been finished had he not gotten distracted. He was acutely aware of Isabelle on the other side of the room, pretending not to be eavesdropping.

It was a mistake. Camille picked up immediately on the shift in mood. Predators knew when their prey was weak, when they stumbled. It was the precise opportunity to pounce on them.

She stepped behind him. He could feel her breath on the back of his neck. Her heels clicked against the floor. “Or do you think you already have?” she inquired.

Then Camille stopped. Her head turned towards the door, her expression calculating. Out of nowhere, she dragged him into a kiss.

Which, of course, was the exact moment Alec showed up.

He paused in the doorway while Magnus turned wide eyes on him. Isabelle walked over to him, abandoning her faux inspection of a three hundred year old pot. She and her brother shared a quick, silent communication that involved a lot of frowning and a wiggle of Isabelle’s fingers, adorned with rings Magnus hadn’t noticed before but would have loved to have had himself.

Alec gave her a very unhappy, tight look in return, but it was clear she’d won whatever fight they were having. He turned to Camille, who was smirking happily, her hand still on Magnus’s arm. “Where’s the book?” Alec demanded, straight to the point.

Magnus stepped forward before she could say anything. “It’s complicated,” he offered, uncertain.

Alec raised an eyebrow. “Clearly.”

“I have it,” Camille volunteered.

Magnus glared down at her. His tone was biting as he explained, “And she’s so graciously offered it in exchange for her freedom.”

He could see the question written on Alec’s unimpressed face. It read something along the lines of ‘Her freedom requires a liplock?’. But Alec didn’t say anything. Instead, he stepped forward until he was close enough for his height to be intimidating. “We don’t negotiate with prisoners.”

Camille, who was never intimidated by anything, smirked at him. Alec glanced at Magnus, who raised one finger to his temple, twirled it in a circle, and pointed at the woman beside him. “Prisoner?” she scoffed. “I beg to disagree. You see, I’m your only chance at saving the world.”

Alec wasn’t pleased at that, but he also couldn’t argue. This hadn’t been the plan. The plan was to wake her up at the Du Mort, maybe lie about letting her go if she told them where the book was, maybe let Clary deck her again if she said something nasty, which she probably would. Forced the book’s whereabouts out of her. Then, they would have safely locked her back where she belonged and gone about their merry little way.

Of course, Magnus should have known. All these centuries he’d known her, and still he’d underestimated her. If you dealt Camille a losing hand, she would cheat her way to a royal flush.

“He’s cute,” Camille said suddenly, as if to prove his point. She was looking at Alec with a pitying expression. “Too bad it won’t last.”

“Say that again and you won’t last,” Isabelle bit out, but Magnus didn’t feel angry in the slightest. He felt relieved, actually.

It meant she didn’t know that they were soulmates, if she thought this was just some fleeting fling he would grow bored of. Maybe she would’ve still thought so if she did know, but then she would’ve probably laughed in his face.

Camille had a soulmate, once. Magnus had even known her when she did. A serpent snaked around her wrist, beautiful and dangerous. But Camille was yet more beautiful and yet more dangerous, and having a soulmate didn’t magically make you a better person. She’d destroyed it, one piece at a time, like she did everything. Camille was incapable of love, soulmate or no soulmate.

She had always told Magnus the whole thing was overrated. When he got his, he would understand. He would break the bond just like she had, regardless of the consequences. He was too much of a free spirit to be tied to anything but her, too much of a mess for anyone to put up with the way she did.

Looking at her now, it was difficult to see how he had fallen so irrevocably in love with her.

Alec, king of hyperfocusing on whatever mission was at hand, ignored her. “Where’s Clary?”

Magnus pointed a finger at the room she and Simon had disappeared into earlier. Off Alec went without another word. Camille watched him go with a smirk, and Isabelle with a grimace.

Isabelle looked Camille up and down. He had never seen such contempt on her lovely features. “Jealous, much?”

Camille bristled. “Of who? Please. I give it less than a decade before Magnus grows bored of him or he goes out in some sad blaze of glory to a demon nest. Isn’t that how it usually goes with you lot?”

“Grow bored of him,” Isabelle repeated. She scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

She glanced at Magnus.

Don’t say anything, Magnus pleaded with his eyes. Please, don’t tell her.

He couldn’t deal with Camille’s mind games around this, too. Not today. Probably not ever. He didn’t want to know how she would twist it to make him doubt himself, but he knew that she would find a way.

Isabelle opened her mouth and closed it. “Alec isn’t boring,” she finished lamely, because she couldn’t say what she wanted to.

Camille preened like she’d won first prize in a contest. Izzy scowled, but Magnus gave her a grateful look, and she gave him an understanding one back.

Camille snatched the finished contract off the table. “Let’s get this show going, shall we?”

Chapter 27

Alec was not a hateful person. He was surly and he was unfriendly and he was easily exasperated, but he was not hateful. Even when Jace got ichor on his favourite jacket and ruined it, after taking it without asking to impress a girl on his patrol team because he’d already wrecked his own. Even when Isabelle came to him crying after her first boyfriend cheated on her. Even when one of the new recruits was an absolute asshole to Max. Even when Raj opened his mouth, which happened too often.

Alec had an endless pool of patience. He’d had to, growing up with his siblings, running things at the Institute.

But, fuck, it was difficult to find any of that patience now. It was unnerving, just how much hatred he’d managed to dredge up in only a couple of weeks. First at Clary, though that had passed now that the sting of her being Jace’s soulmate was gone. Then at his parents and Raziel and whatever bullshit mystical force soulbonds were made of. Then at the Clave. At the Circle, at Valentine, at the world and the division between his people and the Downworld.

This was probably why Alec didn’t feel much of anything towards Camille beyond annoyance. He’d used up all the hatred he had in him.

It probably also helped that Magnus had only spoken of her once, very briefly, and it hadn’t been a particularly glowing review. He was a little bit concerned for Magnus, who was clearly hating his life right now, but that could wait. Jace couldn’t save the world by himself today, which seemed much more pressing.

“This place creeps me out,” Izzy said what everyone was thinking.

They stood in the middle of Camille’s apartment, in what looked to be a library. There were paintings in elaborate frames on the walls that made sure anyone looking knew they were priceless. A self-portrait from what must’ve been the renaissance era hung behind a desk. Shelves and shelves of books lined the walls. There wasn’t a speck of dust in sight, despite Camille’s absence, but that was unsurprising. They’d been greeted by one of her servants.

Camille dragged Simon aside to all but sign his soul away. Clary braved one of the ladders to examine the books.

Once the writ was signed and she’d handed it off to her servant, Camille faced the rest of them with a charming smile. She kissed Simon’s cheek. “Thank you.”

Clary descended the ladder to fold her arms and scowl at her. “We did what you asked. Give us the Book of the White.”

“I’d love to,” Camille hummed. She crossed the room with purpose, raising a finger to point along one of the shelves like she was narrowing in on its location. Suddenly she pulled back. “But I can’t. I have no idea where it is.”

Clary took an angry step towards her. “Dot gave it to you.”

Camille rolled her eyes. “I’m sure it’s here somewhere, but if the idea was to hide it, telling you would defeat the purpose. Dot must have put it somewhere when I wasn’t looking.”

“We have to search the whole apartment?” Clary asked. Despair crossed her face and she turned to her friends. When she didn’t find any hope in them, the despair grew.

“That’s the spirit,” Camille commended. “Although, I’d start now. I’ve got four more rooms just like this one.”

And then she was gone. It should have been a blessing to be rid of her, but Alec didn’t think any of them were feeling very relieved at the moment. They all stood there for a solid minute, wallowing.

Magnus clapped his hands. “Let’s get to it! Alec and I will take the east wing.”

Alec wasn’t overjoyed at being volunteered to take what looked like the creepiest part of the apartment, but he didn’t say that. He followed Magnus dutifully down the hall and into another room covered in books, all of them old enough to be the one they were looking for.

Alec inspected the shelf closest to him with a sigh, pulling one of the books off the shelf. Not it.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus said suddenly, drawing his attention.

Alec knitted his brows together. “For what?”

Magnus waved his hands to indicate their surroundings. “Camille. She kissed me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know,” Alec reassured him. “Are you okay? It seemed like she was getting to you.”

“Oh,” Magnus exclaimed, caught off guard. It took him a moment to compose himself. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Are you? I’m sure you’re worried about Jace.”

“Yeah,” was all Alec could say. He turned back around to keep looking at the books, biting his lip.

He was worried about Jace. He was pissed at him for the stunt he’d pulled, disappearing with Hodge and the cup to no doubt confront Valentine on his own. Mostly, though, worry was all Alec could feel. Jace had been in a terrible place since finding out Valentine had raised him. Alec felt it, this weight in his chest that told him his parabatai wasn’t okay. It had never been this bad before. The times that he had felt it, less strongly, Jace had gone and done something stupid and reckless that cost Alec at least a week of sleep.

“He’s Jace,” Alec added, more to reassure himself than Magnus. “He’ll be fine.”

If Magnus wasn’t convinced, he didn’t get the chance to say so. There was a commotion from down the hall. He and Magnus looked at each other. Voices echoed, one of them definitely not belonging to their friends.

They raced back into the room. Jace had beat them there, seraph blade pointed at his surrogate father and a look on his face that Alec had never seen before. Valentine’s lackeys had a hold of Simon and Isabelle, blade at their throats and snarls on their faces. Simon struggled with all the strength he had, but the Shadowhunter had years of experience hunting vampires.

Alec and Magnus were afforded the same warm welcome no sooner than they’d stepped through the door. Alec tugged at the grip on his arm, not really sure what his goal was. Even if he got free, they were outnumbered.

“Are you really ready to kill your own father?” Valentine pressed, because he knew that Jace wasn’t.

He’s vulnerable, Alec thought. Valentine was focused on Jace. His blade hung absently from his hand. He was so confident that Jace would be too conflicted to follow through with his threats that his posture was loose, not alert and ready to defend.

“You abandoned me,” Jace accused him. His blade was steady, his body poised to fight.

Alec could feel Jace’s anger like it was his own. His pain. It was heavy, dark. It felt like it might crush him.

Valentine scoffed. “I was protecting you. You weren’t ready then, but you’ve grown. You’ve become the warrior I trained you to be.”

It was disgusting, the pride on his face. Alec knew what kind of training it had been. He knew the lessons he had instilled in Jace, and what he’d done to make sure he never forgot them. He knew because he’d comforted Jace through his nightmares and consoled him through his doubts. Alec and Jace didn’t talk about girls, or about soulmates, or about all their lamest hopes and dreams, but they did talk about their pain. It was hard not to when each could feel the other’s.

Jace didn’t lower his blade. “You’ve trained me well.”

“And yet, I still have so much to teach you. I brought you here for a reason. Fight me and watch your friends die,” Valentine stepped closer. The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “See, you are strong. But they make you weak.”

Clary interrupted, commanding her father’s attention. The brave, stupid girl that she was. “Let us go. You can have the book. We won’t be able to stop you without it.”

“Ah, Clarissa. So like your mother. Willing to do anything for those that you love. I’m touched, but the book was never part of my plan. I want you to wake up your mother. I know that you’ll both join me eventually.”

Valentine smiled. It was slow and sinister. “It’s fated.”

The bravery escaped Clary so all she looked was crushed. Even the devil had a soulmate, and there was only one person who had ever loved Valentine. It was a sad fate that she’d loved her daughter more, too much to do what it took to free herself of him and risk Clary growing up alone.

Satisfied that he’d said all he needed to say, Valentine turned his attention back to Jace. “You ready?”

Jace looked at Alec, then Isabelle, then Valentine. He lowered his blade. “If I go with you, promise me you won’t hurt them.”

Valentine raised his hands magnanimously. “You have my word.”

They stared at each other, a war of wills while Jace decided whether he believed him. Clary broke it. “This is insane.”

“I’m sorry, Clary,” Jace said, as Valentine approached his side.

“Jace,” desperation filled her voice. “What are you doing? You can’t be serious. Valentine is wrong. You’re not like him.”

Jace shook his head. Pain was written all over him. “You don’t know that, Clary.”

“Let them go,” Valentine ordered his men, who did just that.

Simon rushed to Clary’s side. Alec and Isabelle both made a move towards Jace.

“Get back!” Jace warned them. He met his brother’s eyes, raising a hand to keep him away. “Alec, I mean it.”

The portal opened. Clary called his name, but Valentine was already leading him through. She made a move to follow. Alec rushed to stop her. She struggled against him.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, yanking herself out of his grip.

Alec waited until she’d calmed down enough to listen before he said, as firmly as he could, “Saving your life. If you enter a portal not knowing where you’re going, you’ll be stuck in limbo forever.”

Clary turned back to the portal, wide-eyed, just in time to watch it close. She collapsed in his arms. Alec held her, as tightly as he would Isabelle. She was crying, burying her face in his jacket. He wanted to cry, too, but he didn’t. He met his sister’s eyes over Clary’s shoulder.

Isabelle moved forward to place a hand on Clary’s shoulder, comforting. “It’ll be okay, Clary. We’ll get him back. You’ll see him again.”

Alec wanted desperately to believe that, but he could feel Jace disappearing. He must’ve gone somewhere he couldn’t be tracked, where even the parabatai bond was muted. There was enough left to know he was alive and he was a mess, but it was nowhere near as overwhelming as it had been just a few moments ago.

Clary didn’t have that. Her soul was connected to Jace’s, too, but without the bonding all she had to reassure herself that he was safe was hope.

Alec prayed she was better at it than he was.

Chapter 28

The trip back to the Institute was a solemn one. No one had anything to say that could make it better. Clary held the Book of the White like it was a liferaft in a storm. She would drown if she let go.

At least they had that. This morning, it had felt like the holy grail. If they just found the book, they could wake Jocelyn, and they’d win. Now, it was a consolation prize that did little to ease the sting of their loss.

Alec left the others as soon as they arrived. He knew he should be there for Isabelle. That Jace would want him to make sure Clary was okay. He saw how Magnus looked at him and knew it’d be hypocritical to leave him to worry after Alec had asked him not to do the same when he’d been the one grieving.

Alec knew all of these things, but he didn’t feel any of them. He was numb. It didn’t feel real, coming home without his brother. There was a haze all around him that he couldn’t navigate without him.

It was ironic. Like they were coming full circle. Only a few months ago, Alec had been caught in a status quo of shame, self-doubt, and cynicism. He’d felt like his destiny was to be alone. One day, his siblings would all find their soulmates and be part of new families. Alec would still be here, where he had always been, and he would be the only one left.

Things had just started to change. The truth had sent him spiralling in confusion and righteous anger, causing him to question everything he’d believed. The ground he’d always thought was steady, the path ahead so clear, had crumbled under his feet.

But he’d come out better for it. He was finding new ground. The path ahead was uncertain, but Alec was beginning to believe it would lead to a better place. He was putting himself back together, all the pieces he’d cut out throughout the years so he could live with a phantom pain that never should’ve been there in the first place.

Alec was, for once in a life, starting to wonder if maybe he could be happy after all. But of course that was a lie. There was no such thing as happiness without Jace. Even fulfilling a soulbond wouldn’t fill the space that would be left in his soul where Jace should be.

“Knock, knock,” Magnus greeted gently, guiding him out of his thoughts. They were standing in a hallway, so of course there was no actual door to knock on. He assessed Alec like he could see every crack and was working out the best way to help patch them back up without scaring him off. He settled on a quiet, “You’ll get him back.”

Alec laughed humourlessly. “You don’t know that.”

“No,” Magnus admitted. “But I believe it enough for the both of us.”

Alec didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all. They leaned against opposite sides of the hallway in silence.

Eventually, Magnus whispered, “You can still feel him, can’t you?”

Alec swallowed. He couldn’t explain what he felt, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t trust himself to speak without crying. He shook his head. It wasn’t a no. It was to tell him that it was too painful to answer.

Magnus understood, because of course he did. Magnus had understood him better than most people right from the moment they’d met.

Gently, he said, “I can feel you, you know.”

Alec looked at him. There was no hesitation on Magnus’s face, no expectation. Magnus wasn’t afraid of the truth like Alec was, even when it was too big for just him.

“Our bond,” Magnus clarified, though he didn’t need to.

Slowly, Alec extended his hand to him. “Show me?”

Magnus did. He took his hand, saying nothing of the parabatai rune that graced his wrist where Alec’s was bare. His magic was invisible, all of it underneath their skin, but Alec felt it. It was familiar like something you’d seen in your dreams was familiar. Then it had been taking, but now it was only offering.

Alec accepted. He felt what he’d felt that night he’d lent Magnus his strength. This bridge between them, waiting to be crossed. Magnus’s magic, greeting him like there had never been a day it didn’t know him. He felt more than that, too, though. Feelings that weren’t his own. Alec’s were a mess right now, all tangled up into one big ball of anguish. Magnus’s were steady, calm. Certain.

Alec pulled his hand away. “It doesn’t make up for him.”

“I know,” Magnus appeased him. “But, at the very least, it can offer some comfort. Ease some of the pain. If you’d like it to.”

Alec shook his head. The floor was swimming, but he didn’t let the tears fall. “I can’t. We shouldn’t bond just because we’ve both lost someone.”

Finally, Magnus crossed the space between them. His hand came to Alec’s shoulder, his touch warm. “That isn’t what I meant. It’s different for warlocks, not like your rune. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. You can build it slowly. All it takes is to open the door, and see where it may lead.”

Alec lifted his gaze from the floor to meet Magnus’s eyes. They were beautiful like this, cast with a glamour to look human, but he thought they must be even more beautiful without it. A cat eye, his mother had told him, and he’d seen Magnus’s file in their database long before he’d ever met him.

Hesitation passed over Magnus’s face for the first time. He searched Alec’s eyes for whatever he was worried he would find. When he came up empty-handed, he dropped the glamour.

Alec brought his hand to his cheek. He ran his thumb across the skin just beside his eye. His pupils were slits, his irises gold.

Alec gave him the best smile he could manage when he still had tears fighting to be let out. “Maybe we could start with cracking a window?”

Magnus exhaled a shaky laugh. He smiled back, pulling Alec’s hand from his cheek so he could hold it. “A window, I can do.”

They kissed.

Magnus pretended he couldn’t feel Alec’s tears in it, and Alec pretended his world wasn’t ending.

Chapter 29

“Are we ready?” Magnus asked the room. He received somber nods in response. Clary handed him the Book of the White.

“You really think this is going to work?” she asked. There was little optimism left in any of them, but Clary was the worst at hiding it. Alec, for his part, had dried his tears, put on his head of the Institute hat, and showed up even though he’d rather have been anywhere else.

It felt necessary, that all of them be there. To share in this one win.

Magnus’s expression was grim, but he tried to reassure her anyway. “Let us hope.”

Lithe fingers thumbed through the pages of the book. It fell open easily, hundreds of years of use making its spine easily pliable. When Magnus found what he was looking for, he took a deep breath.

He snapped his fingers and set his hand over Jocelyn, suspended in the tomb of her sleeping spell. His magic, a haze of blue, fell across her. It surrounded the green, trying to overtake it, while Magnus’s brow knitted in concentration.

Magnus’s voice carried through the room as he cast the spell. Alec didn’t know latin, or whatever language the book was written in, but the words sounded powerful. He’d never seen Magnus do anything like this. The most magic he’d seen him use was in healing Luke, and then there had been no spell or ancient words to guide it.

No one breathed. The air in the room was pregnant. Charged with anticipation as much as it was Magnus’s magic.

With one final shout, Jocelyn’s emerald cage shattered. Luke caught her before she fell, lifting her into his arms as she blinked her eyes open. They landed on him. A smile graced her face, her hand coming to his shoulder.

“Luke,” she breathed. He buried his head in her hair before setting her down.

It took Jocelyn a minute too long to notice Clary behind her, who’d started crying when she’d opened her eyes. They rushed to hug each other.

“Mom. I missed you so much,” Clary said, weepy. She clung to her like she was afraid to let her go and lose her again.

Alec looked away. He was happy for her. Her happiness was important to him because it was important to Jace.

But Jace wasn’t here. All this time, all the things he’d done to get Clary her mother back, and he wasn’t here.

He could feel Magnus’s eyes on him, but Jocelyn drew his attention before he had the chance to say anything.

“Thank you, Magnus,” she said, with a smile that showed she really meant it. “For helping my daughter.”

“It was the least I could do,” Magnus replied.

Jocelyn’s smile lost some of its joy. “I know. I’m sorry. I never should have asked you to take her memories.”

Magnus shook his head. “I could have refused you. But it doesn’t matter. Let bygones be bygones, and all that. I’m just glad she has you back. It’s all she’s been able to think about, you know.”

Jocelyn nodded. She pulled Clary close again, wiping the tears off her face with her thumb. Luke took them both into his arms and held them tight. The picture of a perfect family reunion after too long apart.

Isabelle set her hand on Alec’s arm. He hadn’t even noticed her coming up beside him.

“Jace is going to be so happy when he gets back,” she told him. “Now that Clary doesn’t have a one-track mind for waking Jocelyn, maybe they can sort out the whole soulmate thing.”

Alec swallowed thickly. He pulled his eyes from the happy trio to look down at Isabelle. It was hard to remember a time where it had just been the two of them. Before Jace and before Max, when Isabelle was too young to understand anything and Alec too old not to. She was everything, then. His entire world, all bundled up in her tiny little face.

She was still everything, but she hadn’t been the only thing in a very long time. Now, it was just the two of them again, but they had friends and other people who needed them. It wasn’t them against the world. Alec wondered if he would feel better if it was.

Isabelle made sure that the others were still busy fawning over Jocelyn before she asked, “Have you? Sorted out the whole soulmate thing?”

Alec frowned. He opened his mouth, closed it. Magnus wasn’t looking at them, but Alec knew that it was a very conscious decision.

“I’m getting there,” Alec told her honestly. It was the first time in his life that he wasn’t upset she’d asked. “You were right. About my soulmark. I should have told you sooner.”

Isabelle smiled, soft and private and nothing like the practiced smirk she usually offered other people. “Alec, it’s okay. I don’t need to know I’m right. I just need to know that you’re happy.”

Alec went quiet. He considered it. If this was the conversation he wanted to have right now. If he wanted to get into things, or if he wanted to keep them to himself a while longer. If he wanted to be honest or be reassuring.

“I’m not,” he settled on. “Not without Jace. But I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been.”

It was enough for her. She hugged him quickly, just a tight squeeze before releasing him.

He kissed her cheek. “I hope you find him soon,” Alec told her. He knew it must be disappointing to see everyone else find their soulmate when all their lives, she’d been the only one looking forward to it.

Isabelle waved him off. “I already have. Simon.”

Alec paused. “What?” he asked. “Does he know? How long have you known?”

“A while,” Isabelle confessed. She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. He’ll figure it out. I’m in no rush. And besides, I’m really enjoying this will-they-won’t-they kind of friendship we have going on.”

Alec shook his head in disbelief. She never ceased to amaze him. Isabelle’s favourite hobby was subverting expectations, and she was incredibly talented at it.

He gave a breathy laugh and pulled her into another hug, a real one this time. He buried his nose in her hair, smelling her shampoo. Magnus turned to look at them and he caught his eye. Alec turned the corners of his lips up, just enough to tell him everything was fine. Magnus smiled back, satisfied.

Rare as it was, Alec did, occasionally, take his sister’s advice. He did so now.

He clung to hope, no matter how foreign it was.

Chapter 30

Alec wasn’t sure he was where he was supposed to be. He double-checked the crumpled address in his hand. It matched the numbers on the door in front of him.

Only, he had been to this address before. And this was not the door that should’ve been there.

Alec turned around, checking the street behind him. It was the same as before. Two kids raced their bikes down the road without helmets. Tall trees full of leaves whistled in the wind.

A garden snaked along the edge of the house, a sea of complimentary colours and well-trimmed bushes. No roses in sight. The flowers here were planted in the ground instead of pots, and they looked like they’d been growing for years.

The door swung open with a gust of air. A plump older woman stood in front of him with short, dark hair.

“Um,” Alec said, because he was beginning to question his sanity.

The woman raised an eyebrow, looking him over. “Can I help you?”

“No, um, I— Sorry, I thought—” Alec floundered. He leaned back to check the street number again. “Did someone else used to live here?”

The woman’s brow furrowed. She looked like she was starting to question his sanity, too. She also looked like she was considering if she should shut the door in his face. “Not in your lifetime. I’ve been here twenty years.”

“Oh,” Alec replied dumbly. He frowned. If he peeked around her, he could see a well-lit hallway and a spiraling staircase. Picture frames hung along the length of the wall. He could smell something sweet baking.

He stepped back, stumbling over the top step of the stoop. “Sorry to bother you. I’ll just—”

Alec made a vague gesture behind him, and then fled the scene before she could say anything else.

Somehow, he made it back to the Institute. He didn’t remember the journey, but those were definitely the Institute doors he was going through. Or were they? Who could say anymore?

Izzy gave him a strange look from the ops centre as he passed, but he barely noticed. He barely noticed anything until he’d sunk down on the edge of his bed, staring at his grey walls and his bow and quiver, propped against his dresser. He hadn’t had the energy to put them back in weapons storage after he’d gone to the roof to train last night.

Alec examined his hands. He’d used an iratze, so there was nothing to see. Another thing that should’ve been real, solid, but had been wiped away like it was never there. Like his soulmark. Like the Diviner.

He had a terrible feeling.

She’d helped him. She’d condemned the black magic used to erase his mark. But now she was gone like he’d only imagined her. Magnus had never heard of her. She hadn’t asked for payment, like warlocks usually did. She’d just smiled wistfully when he’d asked and told him she’d expect to receive reward enough in the near future.

There was a knock at his door. Isabelle stood at the entrance of his room, watching him with concern. “Alec?”

He stared back at her, wide-eyed. “Iz,” he said, slowly. “I think something really strange is going on.”

Isabelle frowned. She closed the door behind her and crossed the room to stand in front of him. “What do you mean?”

Alec shook his head. “I don’t know.” Then, more frantic, “I don’t know.”

Alec hadn’t thought his soulmark could get any more complicated.

But in the name of Raziel, what the hell was going on?

#shmb2021 #malec #shadowhunters #magnus bane #alec lightwood #my writing

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bamf-alec · 3 years

Text

All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 21-25

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 21

This had quite possibly been the longest day of Magnus’s life. He was emotionally exhausted after all the ups and downs, the “Izzy’s getting exiled!”s and “Nevermind, Izzy’s saved!”s. He’d taken her out for a much needed drink after at his favourite bar and then portaled her home when she had one too many.

Now, finally back at his loft, all Magnus wanted to do was run a bath with bubbles and salts and maybe some candles. He peeled his jacket off and threw it on one of the couches before collapsing on it. Chairman Meow emerged from whatever hole he’d been hiding to mewl at his feet and cover his most expensive pair of pants in cat hair. Magnus picked him up to coo at him, scratching his chin.

In the end, it had all worked out. Isabelle was a free woman. The cup was back somewhere safe. Clary had finally been reunited with her mom, even if Jocelyn was in a deep slumber and had missed the reunion.

And Alec was either absolutely enraged about the Clave’s treatment of his sister or his parents had said something truly terrible before the trial or he was coming to terms with their being soulmates and that was why he’d been so coarse and huffy and unhappy when he’d come to deliver the news that Izzy was no longer facing the imminent demise of her Shadowhunter life. Magnus hoped it was the latter, or at least a combination of the three.

He peeked under his sleeve to check his soulmark, even though he’d told himself he’d try not to look until Alec had accepted their bond and told him it was okay. During the trial, it’d been the Clarity rune. Understandable that Alec would want to keep a clear head, to ignore whatever emotional turmoil he was in to save his sister. Magnus hadn’t looked at it since, but he did now.

Magnus stopped. Everything stopped.

Magnus was no expert in Shadowhunter runes. He’d grown more familiar over the years since his soulmark had turned into one, but he took whatever rune-naming test young shadowhunters in train did, he would almost definitely still fail. He knew the obvious: angelic power, parabatai, iratze.

And this. This one he definitely knew.

He’d always thought it was the most beautiful of their runes. All soft, curved lines. Two distinct shapes, almost flower-like, that met at the center and braided together into one. It was the soulbond rune. Where warlocks could activate the bond with a spell, other species had different methods of cementing the soulmate connection. For Shadowhunters, it was a rune, usually bestowed during the grandest of ceremonies, grander even than their weddings.

Magnus stared at it so long it started to blur into one big mess of really important lines. He was right, right? That was definitely the bonding rune?

Magnus was still in shock when he reached blindly for his phone with his other hand. He scrolled through his contacts until he found Alec. And then he stopped.

He didn’t know what this meant. Maybe Alec had agreed to an arranged marriage and this was just him saying goodbye to any potential of a soulmate. Maybe Alec was cursing the fact that soulmates were a thing at all, and wishing the bonding rune didn’t exist.

A knock at the door successfully halted his mind from coming up with anymore terrible alternatives, of which he was certain there were plenty.

Magnus rarely felt anxious about anything, but he felt it now as he crossed the room and placed his hand on the doorknob.

“Hey,” said Alexander Lightwood, standing in front of the door to Magnus’s loft. He sounded like he was here with a lot of urgency, enough urgency that someone was either dying or the world was imploding or Alec’s world, at least, was imploding. “Can I come in?”

Blinking, Magnus stepped aside to let him, just like he had the last time Alec had shown up announced. He watched Alec pace halfway across the room and then turn very quickly back to face him. Everything about him seemed to be in motion — his hands twisted, he bit his lip and released it over and over again, his leg bounced ever so subtly.

Magnus did his absolute best to summon his usual poise and flamboyancy. He put on his most sly smile, and said in his usual (at least when talking to Alec) flirty tone, “Did you think of an excuse this time?”

Alec frowned at him. “What?” he said, a little out of breath. Faster than Magnus could clarify that it was a callback to his last visit, Alec shook his head and said, “I needed to see you.”

It was so direct it caught Magnus off guard for a second. Usually Alec danced around anything that could possibly be construed as him having any kind of feelings for Magnus like it was his career. He was usually more awkward, and more nervous, and more uncertain. Alec wasn’t any of those things now.

“That’s...” Magnus floundered. He gestured to himself. “Well, here I am.”

Alec snorted. “Here you are.”

They stared at each other from across the room as silence dragged out. Magnus wasn’t sure what to say, not with the day he’d had and not while he was still spiraling from what he’d seen just before Alec showed up. Alec, for his part, seemed like he was searching Magnus’s face for something he was extremely determined to locate.

He must’ve found it because, very suddenly, Alec had crossed the room and Magnus was being kissed.

It took him a disappointingly long time to respond after he registered the fact that Alec was kissing him, but finally he did. He rested his hand on Alec’s cheek, felt the warmth of him, the presence. As far as kisses went, it was one of the most urgent Magnus had ever received. Yet it was also soft, gentle, like Alec wasn’t taking anything, was just meeting him halfway.

It was also the most intense kiss Magnus had ever received, because it wasn’t just a kiss. It was a kiss with his soulmate. He could feel that, their bond, far more settled than it had been the last and only time Magnus had felt it. A hundred different emotions flipped around inside him, all of them warm and happy and elated. If Magnus had thought a half-assed hug was spectacular, then this was earth shattering.

It was also ending way too soon, because Alec had pulled away to look at him. And there it was — the nerves and the uncertainty — more panicked than Alec had probably ever been in his presence.

“Oh, God,” Alec whispered while Magnus blinked at him. “I’m so sorry. I’m not— That was— Are you—”

“Alexander,” Magnus interrupted. He stroked his cheek with his thumb, holding him there before Alec pulled away completely and fled the scene like a frightened deer. “I’m really glad you did that.”

Alec frowned, searching his eyes to make sure he really meant that. They were so close that Magnus could still feel his breath on his face. “Yeah?” Alec murmured.

Magnus smiled. “Yeah.”

Alec grinned back in disbelief. He kissed him again, much less intensely and for much less time, sadly. Resting his forehead against Magnus’s, his hand resting on the back of his neck, Alec whispered, “I’m not crazy, right? This is real?”

Magnus put his hand over Alec’s and squeezed. He knew what he was trying to say. He pulled back enough to tug up his sleeve, which had already fallen down a bit during their kiss, and show Alec the rune on his wrist. “It’s real,” he reassured him.

Gently, Alec took his arm. He traced one of the winding figures and then the other and then the path between them. There was so much reverence in his touch, so much care, that it was almost overwhelming.

They were both a little teary-eyed, which was horribly embarrassing, so neither of them mentioned it.

Alec eventually let him go. He looked pained, running a hand down his face.

Not wanting to ruin the moment, Magnus hesitated to ask, “What happened?”

Alec shook his head with a deprecating laugh. “Too many things. Most of them sum to shitty parents.”

“Ah,” Magnus offered, unsurprised. He pulled his lip between his teeth, wondering if Alec would leave now that he’d done what he’d come here to do and probably had a million matters to attend to back at the Institute. Assuming all he’d come here to do was kiss Magnus senseless out of nowhere. Maybe they’d play cat and mouse for another few weeks until everything with Valentine settled and there was nothing else to do but figure out this thing between them.

Alec must’ve sensed his thoughts were taking a turn. Hesitantly, he met Magnus’s eyes and said, “Make me a drink and I’ll tell you about it?”

Magnus tried not to beam at him and give himself away, but failed horribly. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, anyway.

Chapter 22

Alec did his very best to not look at Magnus as he entered the briefing room and took a seat beside Isabelle. It was difficult, because Alec was standing at the head of the table by the displays, which everyone was staring at. Magnus smiled at him in greeting, perfectly cordial, and Alec was so flustered that he looked back at Magnus like he’d grown two heads. Magnus, for his part, seemed amused rather than offended.

Alec cleared his throat. “Right, well. Now that we’re all here. We’ve narrowed down the list of warlocks powerful enough to give Jocelyn the potion to these three.”

Magnus immediately leaned over the table, his hand half-raised, to interject, “Why is Ragnor Fell up there? He’s not more powerful than I am.”

Hodge waved him off while Alec, Jace, and Izzy shared looks. “Some would disagree. He is older than you.”

Alec tried not to look like he wanted to laugh, if only because Magnus had frowned at him in a ‘Can you believe this bullshit?’ kind of way. Under his breath, Magnus muttered, “Certainly not wiser.”

Clary, leaning against the table beside Jace, cut in to bring them back on track. “Who’s Ragnor Fell?”

“The former high warlock of London.” Jace patted her arm. It looked a bit condescending and Clary seemed to agree. She scowled at him. They must’ve had a fight. Or she’d realized that Jace was insufferable and was cutting her losses before they bonded and she was stuck with him for life.

“One of my oldest friends. Very prickly. Likes to keep to himself,” Magnus added, just for her. Alec didn’t understand why he was so fond of Clary. He was trying not to be displeased by it. Alec and Clary were making amends, anyway. They definitely weren’t friends, but they were tolerating each others’ presence for Jace’s sake, so there was that.

Hodge was starting to get impatient. He had the air of someone who had been trying to wrangle six rowdy children for long enough that it’d taken years off his life. “Focus, everyone. We just need to figure out which one of these warlocks had enough access to Jocelyn that they could create the potion for her without anyone discovering what they’d done.”

As soon as Magnus opened his mouth, Hodge looked like he wanted to cut him off. For once, though, Magnus was volunteering pertinent information and not some clever, unhelpful remark. “By the early nineties, Ragnor was a professor at the Shadowhunter Academy in Idris. I believe it was one of the Clave’s efforts to show off just how progressive they were while still jailing and executing Downworlders for inconsequential infractions against their beloved laws.”

“Isn’t that when my mother lived there?” Clary asked, ignoring the slight against the Clave. “Could he have made the potion for her?”

She jumped when Magnus clapped his hands. “The little bugger! That’s why he hasn’t responded to my fire messages!” he exclaimed. Then, to the rest of the room’s raised eyebrows, “Ever since Valentine began hunting warlocks, Ragnor’s been holed up in his secret country house just outside of London. For all I know, Ragnor suspected my fire message was a ploy by Valentine to lure him out of hiding. We’ll have to confront him face to face.”

Hodge startled, pointing a finger at him. “We? You’re going on this mission?

Magnus looked at him like he’d grown four heads. “Of course. I’m the only one Ragnor trusts.”

Before Hodge had the chance to object, Alec interrupted. “Great. Magnus, Jace, and Clary will pay this Ragnor guy a visit. Izzy, I need your help with something.”

“Me?” Izzy questioned, pointing at herself. Everyone else started clearing the room, but not before giving them confused looks. Magnus raised an eyebrow at Alec before he left, who waved him off as subtly as he could with his sister staring him into the floor.

Once everyone else was gone, Alec leaned against the table. “Mom and Dad are coming back tonight.”

“What? So soon?” Izzy was sufficiently concerned. “They just went back to Idris last night.”

Alec shrugged. “I got the portal order an hour ago.”

Isabelle sat with the news. She sighed. “Can’t be anything good. Is that what you needed my help with? Processing the news that our parents are coming to town? Alec, you’re a big boy. I have full faith in your ability to put on a brave face and face whatever awful shit they have to say about you rejecting the marriage.”

“That’s not it,” Alec replied, rolling his eyes. He didn’t question how Izzy knew what his father had asked of him, or how Alec had responded. It was Izzy. She always knew. Sometimes, Alec wondered if she was secretly a mind reader. “I need your help finishing these reports so that when they do get here, they don’t have anything to complain about.”

Izzy grumbled about it, like he knew she would, but ultimately took half of the outstanding reports. Lydia, though still acting head of the Institute, had delegated them to him. He got the sense she was delegating most things to him so that he would still feel like he was in charge, because she felt bad about taking over. She didn’t seem to want to be here anymore than they wanted her to be.

“So,” Isabelle started after working in silence for as long as she could stand. She leaned forward like they were conspiring over something. “Where were you last night?”

Alec froze. Instead of looking at her, he stared at the sentence he’d just abandoned writing. “What? What do you mean?”

“Last night,” Isabelle repeated slowly, like he was stupid. “Where were you? I was wasted, so I went by your room. You weren’t there. I waited a while, but you never showed up. Where were you?”

Isabelle had a habit of going straight to Alec’s room whenever she came home drunk. It was Alec’s fault for being too indulging. He’d help her take off her makeup, give her a glass of water, and let her cling to him until she fell asleep mumbling how he would have to go with her next time.

“Training,” Alec stumbled to say. “I was training. In the training room. Couldn’t sleep.”

Izzy flicked a hand at him, throwing her feet up on the table and leaning back in her chair. “No you weren’t,” she grinned. She turned back to her work. “But okay.”

Alec blinked. “That’s it? Just okay?”

Izzy shrugged. “It’s your business.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Alec demanded, reaching across the table to grab her hand. He made a show of checking her pulse and then her temperature. “Have you been possessed? Replaced by your doppelganger?”

“Ha, ha,” Izzy replied, shoving him away. She smoothed her hair. “I’m turning over a new leaf. Trying this new thing where I let you come to me, rather than forcing it out of you. Besides, you don’t seem as grumpy as usual. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“Wow,” said Alec, genuinely taken aback. Then, because he was still a big brother who had a solemn duty to tease her whenever the opportunity arose, rare as those opportunities were, “Are you finally maturing, Iz? My little sister, becoming a respectable young woman. They really do grow up too fast.”

Izzy rolled her eyes, snorting. “Fuck off.”

They went back to their respective work, but it didn’t last long. Alec had just finished his next report when Jace and Clary returned. They looked grim.

Isabelle pulled her feet off the table and set down the tablet. “Who died?”

It was meant to be a joke to lighten the mood, they all knew, but Clary immediately teared up. Panic crept in, as slowly as dread, while Alec fixed his gaze on the door behind them. No one else was coming through.

Jace caught the terrified look on his face before he managed to hide it, thankfully, and hurried to say, “Ragnor did. The warlock. Magnus stayed with him. He was pretty upset, I don’t think he’ll be back for a while.”

Alec exhaled as subtly as he could, but the terrible feeling remained. It morphed from panic into pain, and he pulled out his phone while Clary filled them in on the rest of what had happened.

Are you okay?

He typed it out quickly, but hesitated before pressing send. Magnus probably wanted space. He would reach out himself if he wanted to talk to Alec, wouldn’t he? He didn’t need Alec bothering him when he was handling the death of one of his oldest friends. If he needed someone, it would be Catarina, the only other friend he’d had as long and been as close with as Ragnor.

Magnus had told him about Ragnor, the night he’d lent him the books. Catarina and Ragnor, the three of them a chaotic trio, and all the wild stories they had together. Alec tried to imagine how it must feel to lose him, to lose one of the very, very few people Magnus considered family. He thought it’d probably be like losing Izzy or Max.

If Alec lost Izzy, he’d want to talk to Magnus. More than Jace, who would be too much of a reminder and too deep in his own grief to be of any comfort.

He sent the text. Magnus could always just ignore it, anyway.

Chapter 23

Magnus had grown accustomed to losing the people he loved. It never hurt any less, but he moved on more quickly each time, learning how to carry them with him while going on with his life, like they would’ve wanted. During the war, he’d seen so much death he’d started to grow numb to it.

Ragnor, though. Ragnor was one of the only constants. An insufferable bastard who was always psychoanalyzing him, judging his taste in music, and holding him while he cried through his pain, even if Magnus had brought that pain on himself. He couldn’t hold him now.

He’d have to tell Catarina. He picked up his phone, but it felt like an impossible task.

He had a text from Alec, who had no doubt heard from Jace and Clary what had happened.

Magnus bit his lip, considering. He’d put Ragnor to rest outside his cottage, a burial spell he’d cast far too many times. Now, he sat in his living room, surrounded by Ragnor’s things, everything he couldn’t leave behind to collect dust and spider webs and wither away to time. He paged through one of them now, a photo album that had yellowed over the decades.

“How I loathe that photograph. I must remember chin down, eyes up, otherwise I look like a squinty toad,” came a withering voice from over his shoulder. Ragnor’s voice, as though he were really here and not just a ghost conjured by Magnus’s magic, unchecked in his grief.

“You’re here,” Magnus said, turning to him. Of course Ragnor wasn’t, but it was so real that he could’ve been.

Ragnor smirked, just as the real Ragnor would’ve. “You didn’t think you’d be rid of me that easily, did you? My dear friend, I will always be here for you.” He rested a gentle hand on Magnus’s cheek. Magnus couldn’t feel it, but he knew it was there. “Now please, put away that horrid photograph. It commemorates a night I’d rather forget. Oh, how I had to comfort you.”

Magnus released a breathy laugh. He traced his fingers over the photo, thinking back to Camille and the night he’d ended things with her. Sometimes it felt like it was just yesterday, but most times it felt like it was lifetimes ago.

“How I loved her,” he mused. “I prayed she would love me the same. She just laughed. To Camille, immortals aren’t supposed to feel true love. So cynical. She broke my heart.”

Ragnor leaned forward. “You let her break your heart, my friend,” he corrected. “You’re immortal, yet she all but killed you.”

Magnus hummed. He picked his drink up off the end table and took a long sip. He’d made it stronger than he should’ve, but he figured he was allowed to drown his sorrows for the night. “I think I’ve recovered quite well.”

“By building walls around your heart,” Ragnor admonished. “I’m glad to see someone is starting to tear them down.”

Magnus closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I kept meaning to talk to you. To tell you about him. As soon as I realized he would be a Shadowhunter. Time just… slipped away from me. I thought that if it worked out, if he turned out not to be like the others and I didn’t have to break the bond, you might meet him some day.”

Ragnor rested a hand on his knee to comfort him. It was ghostly still, but now at least Magnus felt the comfort it was meant to offer. “I’m sure I would’ve loved him. If he loves you as much as you deserve, as I’m sure he must, then I would’ve loved him.”

Magnus’s lips quirked into an almost smile. He closed the album and set it aside. “It’s a bit early to say it’s love, I would think. And it’s all so new to him. I’ve had decades to come to terms with who my soulmate is. He’s had less than a month. He didn’t even know he had a soulmate.”

“Shadowhunters,” Ragnor said, offering a smile. “Nothing’s ever simple with them, is it?”

Magnus smiled back, however small. “No, it isn’t.”

Ragnor waited, and Magnus enjoyed his friend’s company, even if it was just a trick his magic was playing on him. He’d known Ragnor so well for so long that it’d even gotten the barely noticeable freckle by his ear and three errant beard hairs on his cheek right.

“I’m worried,” Magnus admitted eventually. “I’m worried he’s too upset to be thinking right and that once he’s gotten over what his parents did and the shock of realizing he has a soulmate at all, he’s going to realize he wishes that soulmate wasn’t me.”

“Did it seem like that was all it was?” Ragnor asked without judgement. “In that time you spent together, did it seem like he wasn’t thinking clearly?”

“No,” Magnus conceded. “Actually, it seemed like he was being more open and honest than he’d ever been in his life.”

Ragnor leaned back on the couch, waving a hand through the air. “There you have it, then. Sometimes a good thing is just a good thing, Magnus, and not another opportunity to be hurt.”

“You’re right,” Magnus sighed, because Ragnor usually was.

Ragnor gave him an expectant look, smiling fondly. He prodded, “Maybe it’s time you let yourself be vulnerable, too?”

Magnus took a sip of his drink. His phone sat on the end table. Eventually, he traded his drink for the phone. He turned it over in his palm, meeting Ragnor’s eyes for one, final time. “Even in death, you give the best advice, my dear friend.”

Ragnor quirked his lips up. “Be nice if you took it more than once every three hundred years.”

“But that would be too sensible,” Magnus argued. “And where’s the fun in that?”

“Ah, yes. You always were one for an adventure. I think you’ve found yourself one, here.”

“Yes,” Magnus agreed, turning his phone on. “Or, perhaps, a reason to settle down.”

Chapter 24

Alec really did give very good hugs, Magnus thought to himself. This might just have been the longest, tightest hug he’d ever received, and it didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. He wasn’t complaining. It was quite different than one of Ragnor’s, but it was equally as nice.

“I’m okay,” he tried to say, but it was muffled by Alec’s shoulder.

Alec stopped hugging him to give him a very stern look, which had not been Magnus’s intention. Alec didn’t go very far, though, holding Magnus in place. “No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” Magnus agreed, touching his cheek. “But I will be. There’s more pressing things to attend to, anyway.”

“You don’t have to—”

“It’ll be a good distraction,” Magnus cut him off, pulling away. He fiddled with the buttons on his jacket, undoing the top one and then doing it back up. He cast his gaze to their surroundings.

They were in Alec’s bedroom, where Alec had brought him when he’d showed up on the Institute’s doorstep. It was both disappointing and exactly what he’d have expected. Practical, tidy, grey. There was, however, a stack of books on his nightstand that made Magnus smile and a picture of all the Lightwood children together at what looked like someone’s runing ceremony. Probably Isabelle’s, judging by their ages.

“We should go find the others. They’ll need to hear this. Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t just come here to cry all over you.”

It was meant to be a joke, but Alec didn’t laugh. He pulled Magnus into another quick hug, his head pressed into Magnus’s hair through all the gel and glitter. Surprisingly, none of it came off on Alec. Magnus did not think about how he would’ve looked if it had, or precisely what colour of glitter would suit his eyes best.

“It would’ve been fine if you had,” Alec murmured. Then he reluctantly let him go and crossed the room to open the door for Magnus. “Everyone’s in the ops centre.”

Alec led the way, thankfully, with the ease and sense of direction that only someone who’d lived in this labyrinth of poor décor their entire life could achieve. Magnus had been so relieved when Alec had met him at the door. He’d been bracing himself to have to navigate the maze once more to find him, or whatever room he said to meet him in. He’d nearly cried right then and there. Thankfully, he’d held out until they were safely behind Alec’s closed door.

When they went to the ops centre, Clary, Jace, and Isabelle all looked at him like they’d kicked his dog and were mentally playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who had to tell him. He rolled his eyes at the lot of them and wasted no time summoning the collection of knickknacks he’d found at Ragnor’s place. He didn’t want to hear their condolences, or have them dance awkwardly around him, not sure how to treat him. He gave his magic a bit of extra flair, just for good measure.

“I pulled every item of magical importance from Ragnor’s belongings, but I can’t determine which will lead to the Book of the White,” he announced.

They’d each immediately picked up something to investigate. Predictably, Alec and Jace both went for the weapons, while Isabelle admired a necklace. Clary scanned the contents and then snatched a bookmark that had been sat in the middle of the chaos.

“This bookmark,” she said, looking around the room at each of them. “I’ve seen it before. In the alternate dimension, you showed me a book of spells and this was in it. Must’ve been the Book of the White.”

“If that’s the case, we can use the bookmark to track the owner of the book,” Alec said. As soon as he had, Jace went to take it from her. Magnus intercepted.

He couldn’t help waving it in Jace’s face just to see the look of indignation it brought on. He didn’t try at all not to be patronizing as he pointed out, “Warlock tracking is stronger.”

Jace was annoyed. Magnus saw him give Alec a look of frustration, like somehow Magnus was his responsibility, or like he couldn’t believe this was someone Alec wanted to be with. It made Magnus wonder just how much Jace knew. Alec had mentioned that his siblings had kept pushing them together, including Jace, but not if he’d told them that it’d worked, or even whether they knew Alec felt the same, or if he just knew that Magnus was a massive flirt who’d taken an interest in Alec.

Focus, Magnus thought angrily to himself for about the billionth time since he’d met Alec. It was too easy to be distracted by him.

Magnus weaved his magic through the bookmark, closing his eyes. He immediately regretted that he had when he saw Camille’s screeching face on the backs of his eyelids.

The universe was mocking him. It had to be. Fate, his old friend, was playing tricks on him just when he was starting to think it’d been on his side all along.

He opened his eyes to a room full of expectant Shadowhunters. Awkwardly, he cleared his throat and set the bookmark down.

“Well,” he began, examining a very important speck of dust on the table. “There’s good news and bad news. The good news is I know the owner. The bad news is it’s Camille.”

“Camille?” Clary exclaimed, with appropriate horror.

He pursed his lips, nodding at her. “Looks like Raphael has her locked up in the basement of the Hôtel Du Mort.”

Clary inhaled very deeply. Contemplatively, she said, “After I punched her, there’s no way she’ll help me.”

Punched her? Magnus thought, while they carried on the conversation. Sweet little Biscuit? Camille was very punchable, but it usually took a minute before she’d infuriated anyone enough to go through with it. Just what had he missed?

Eventually, it was settled that they’d deal with it tomorrow. They dispersed to their various corners of the Institute. Magnus caught how Jace’s hand rested on the small of Clary’s back as they left and wondered if they’d finally sorted out whatever issues they’d been having.

That left just him and Alec, who had his arms folded and was staring intently at one of the spellbooks on the table. He looked so focused that Magnus almost didn’t want to disturb him. Magnus glanced at the title of the book, but it was in olde latin, at which he was a bit rusty. Something about illusions, he thought.

“Have you heard of the Diviner?” Alec asked suddenly, unfolding his arms.

Magnus raised an eyebrow. He gave it some thought. It was difficult without context. “No, I don’t think so.”

Immediately, Alec looked concerned. “Really? She’s a warlock.”

“I don’t know every warlock in the world, Alec,” Magnus informed him gently.

Alec brushed it off. “Of course not. But she lives in New York. It seemed like she was… prolific.”

Magnus frowned. “She must’ve just moved here, then. Why? Does she have something to do with Jocelyn?”

“No,” Alec said, cryptically. Ever the man of mystery, apparently. He promptly changed the subject. “My parents will be here soon.”

It was a very effective change in subject, because it immediately had every ounce of Magnus’s attention. And his concern. “Your parents? Here? Didn’t they just leave?”

Alec shrugged like it was no big deal, but there was a crease to his brow that said he thought there was something strange about it, too.

“Did they say why?” Magnus asked. He was already trying to decide whether this meant he should leave at once, make himself scarce around the Institute for a few hours, or grab the two of them and shake them really, really hard until they explained all this business with Alec’s soulmark.

Alec shook his head, biting his lip. He was nervous. The last time he’d seen them hadn’t gone well and they’d yet to patch things up since. Though, from what Magnus gathered about the typical Lightwood parenting style, it was possible he would’ve been nervous even if they hadn’t just had the worst fight of Alec’s life. Instilling fear and doubt in their children was second nature to them.

It drew forth the image of a much younger Maryse, soaked to the bone and holding her son like nothing else existed in the world but him. If she’d meant what she’d said, if nothing had really mattered but protecting him, Alec would have had a very different life.

“You might want to…” Alec trailed off. It was clear he didn’t want to ask Magnus to leave, but also that he didn’t want Magnus to have to face his mother. Today of all days, no less.

“Leave?” Magnus finished for him. Some of the anger he was feeling at Alec’s parents bled out into his voice, despite his best efforts. “Right. Wouldn’t want her to see a filthy Downworlder colluding with her precious children.”

He shouldn’t be taking this out on Alec, he knew. It was centuries of bottled contempt for Shadowhunter culture that Alec didn’t need to shoulder, and that Magnus had been working on overcoming ever since he’d met him. Some days it was harder than others, and no day was worse than today.

“Magnus,” Alec breathed. He stepped closer to put a hand on one of Magnus’s arms, which he’d crossed without realizing it. It was a comforting gesture, but Alec almost immediately withdrew it. Magnus looked up to frown at him, thinking someone else had probably entered the room, but it was just the two of them. Alec was frowning at his palm, discomfited, a little wide-eyed.

“What?” Magnus questioned, a bit unkindly. “Worried someone will see?”

Alec was taken aback, but he recovered quickly. He returned his hand to Magnus’s arm, who debated shrugging it off. “That’s not it. I was just surprised. You’re just feeling so much right now that I think it just… Leaked through? I felt some of it. I’m sorry. I don’t care what anyone thinks, I’m here for you.”

“Oh,” Magnus deflated. He was a terrible person. He felt much worse now. In fact, he might even be about to cry. He blinked rapidly. Then, when that didn’t work, subtly rubbed the tears away with his free hand. God, he was such a fucking mess. If Ragnor could see him now.

He’d told him to be vulnerable. Magnus thought he was definitely doing that, even if he was also being way too defensive to compensate for it. He certainly felt vulnerable. Ragnor probably hadn’t meant it like this, though.

Alec started to say something else, but was interrupted by the click of heels on the tiled floor. It was the only herald to Maryse’s presence. Magnus felt Alec hesitate before pulling his hand away again, but he wasn’t upset about it. Random shadowhunters in the Institute who might see and Maryse Lightwood, Alec’s mother, were two very different beasts.

“Alec,” Maryse greeted. Then, in a much less neutral tone, “Magnus Bane.”

“Maryse,” Magnus said. He didn’t unfold his arms, his lips pursed.

He expected her to purse her lips right back and look down her nose at him, make some snide comment or tell him to leave. She didn’t. Instead, she overlooked him entirely and focused on her son. He could see her take a deep breath, her hands clenched together. On her wrist, a thick band covered her soulmark. Magnus knew why. The hypocrite that she was.

“How are you?” she asked.

Alec, suspicious, replied, “I’m fine.”

“Good,” she nodded to herself. “It’s just me tonight. Your father had business to attend to.”

“Business being avoiding me or business like finding some nice, respectable woman to set me up with?” Alec snapped.

Magnus had never seen him lose his temper and had, since he met him, never thought he was the type to stand up to his parents. Alec let things slide. He made every accommodation necessary to make everyone around him comfortable. He respected their values enough to abide by them, even when he disagreed.

“I bet he yelled at them,” Isabelle had declared drunkenly at the bar after her trial. “Normal Alec would never, but Alec all righteous and angry and defending my honour totally would. I wish he’d stand up for himself, too, like he always does for us.”

Her wish had come true. Maryse was cowed. She looked away from Alec when she said, quietly, “I told him to drop all that, Alec. He’s not setting you up with anyone.”

“What?” Alec’s anger turned into disbelief so fast it must’ve given him whiplash. “You did?”

Maryse nodded slowly. She glanced at Magnus, then back at Alec. “You were right,” she told him, in a tone that made Magnus feel for the first time like he was an intruder rather than a provider of moral support. “It was convenient. But that’s not all it was, Alec. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here.”

Alec was quiet for a long time. Magnus could see the conflict on his face, but it was subtle, guarded. It sounded like it was about his arranged marriage, but Magnus wasn’t sure. Based on Alec’s expression, he had a feeling this was about the soulmark somehow, but Alec hadn’t mentioned that he’d said anything to her about it. Just that they’d fought about marriage and values and whether they gave a shit about their children, and that the second fight he’d had later with his father had been even worse.

“Is that why you came back?” Alec asked after a while. It was very quiet and very careful.

Again, Maryse glanced at Magnus. Quickly, then away. She stepped forward to rest her hand on her son’s shoulder, who tensed under her touch. Sadness crept into her expression, the sadness of a mother who loved her children and didn’t want to see them hurting.

“This is where I should be. Where my children are,” she said, as though it were that simple. She withdrew her hand, pulling herself together.

She looked at Magnus again, but this time she smiled, however forced. “Magnus. It’s good to see you. Thank you for everything you did for my daughter. You’ve been a good friend.”

Magnus waited until she’d left to frown, and then a moment longer to look at Alec. Alec looked equally as taken off guard as Magnus was. He shrugged at Magnus, who raised his eyebrows back.

“So,” Alec began with the air of someone desperately trying to change the subject. “Are you, um, staying or going back to the loft? If you didn’t want to be alone, I could… sleep on the couch. Or, if you did, then I could leave you alone and see you tomorrow, I guess, at the Du Mo—”

“Alec,” Magnus interrupted. He stepped closer to him. “You’re sweet to worry, but I really am fine.”

“I know that,” Alec acquiesced. “But can’t I worry anyway?”

Magnus released a surprised breath. He turned his lips in a smile. Checking quickly to make sure they were still alone, he leaned up to kiss him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Alec agreed, but he pulled him in for another hug before he let him leave.

Chapter 25

Alec found his mother in her office, or what used to be her office. It technically belonged to Lydia now, but most of the belongings on the desk were Alec’s. Maryse sat behind it, her chair turned around to face the stained-glass portrait of Raziel.

“I used to love this,” she said, after he’d hovered in the room for too long without saying anything. The door was closed and the fireplace was on, casting a warmth to the space that seemed out of place given the tension between them. “The Angel, bestowing upon us his greatest gift. A soulmate. Someone to ease the burden of all the trials he would have us face, to ensure we wouldn’t weather the storm alone.”

She paused. “The Clave’s twisted that now, of course. As they do everything. This rhetoric that Shadowhunters are only ever meant for each other, and only for someone of the opposite sex. That no other bond is possible. It’s not true, but with the way Clave covers up any other type of bond, it looks like it is, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Alec agreed. He watched flames dance in the fireplace, climbing and falling, coming together and coming apart. Alec himself had certainly believed that was the truth. He bit his lip hard, debating whether he wanted to ask the question. He’d come here to talk. They couldn’t do that if he was scared to broach the subject. “You think Raziel blesses those other bonds?”

She turned around, just enough to look at him. “I’m trying to,” she told him. “Now, I’m trying.”

They both knew there had been a time where she hadn’t. A time where she had believed the opposite so intensely that she’d done the unspeakable. Alec couldn’t speak it, even now. It wasn’t only anger that stopped him, like he’d thought it would be. It was love, too. She was still his mother, no matter what she might have done, and he had always been certain that she would never accept him for who he was, if she knew. Yet here she was, seeming like she was trying to do just that.

It was bittersweet. He felt at war with himself. The dutiful son, who would always sacrifice himself and his happiness for the good of his family. The disillusioned soldier, who’d been burned too badly to still want to make a martyr of himself for a cause he was no longer sure he believed in.

Magnus had told him, the night Alec had confessed to what his mother had done, that he didn’t owe forgiveness or absolution to anyone. He thought of Izzy, when she’d curl up in his bed and tell him he should get to be happy too, playing with the bracelet she’d given him to soothe the phantom pain of a mark that should’ve always been there.

Alec was trying to believe them, but the picture they painted was simpler than reality. In reality, the mother Alec knew, who devoted herself to the Clave, didn’t seem like the same woman who’d burned the Circle rune into her neck. She had never been a great mother, never been warm or made sure her love felt unconditional, but she’d always done what she’d thought was best for them, even when it was misguided. In his anger, he wanted her to be a horrible monster who knew exactly what she was doing in putting her prejudice before her children. Outside of it, he knew that she was fallible, capable of making mistakes, and that that was what it’d been when she’d believed she was saving him.

If Alec was trying to change, was trying to be just a tiny bit selfish for once, then he wanted to believe that she could try, too. The pain hadn’t lessened any, and neither had the sting of the betrayal, but he was willing at least to try to understand.

He took a seat on the couch, close enough to feel the heat of the fire.

"What was it?" Alec asked.

Maryse looked pained when she answered, without hesitation, "A cat eye. The iris was gold."

Alec digested that for a moment. He’d never seen a soulmark with colour. He tried to imagine what it might've looked like. Then he tried to imagine hating anyone that wasn't a Shadowhunter so much that something so innocent was enough to condemn him. He tried to imagine the fear it must've taken to act on that. On that tiny, tiny suspicion that it didn't just mean his soulmate was a Shadowhunter who loved felines.

It wasn’t as difficult as it should have been. Alec understood fear. He knew better than most how their culture forced them to either cut away the pieces of themselves that didn’t fit or be an outcast. The pressure to conform was immense, so great that it warped everyone within it until they did. Until they lost sight of themselves, until they convinced themselves they were something they weren’t, until they let go of empathy and kindness so that all that was left was judgement and condemnation.

Sed lex dura lex. The law is hard, but it is the law. How many times had Alec heard those words? How many times had theyit been used to justify something terrible?

“If you hadn’t done it,” Alec hesitated to venture. “If you’d left it and found out for sure that my soulmate was a Downworlder… Would you have thought less of me? Would you have been ashamed of me?”

“Alec,” his mother exhaled. She blinked quickly. The pain was written on her face, her eyes a little wet, but it was hard to tell what was behind it. Guilt at knowing the answer was yes or anguish over him thinking that it ever could be. She shook her head, opening and closing her mouth as she worked out what to say. “I love you. Nothing will ever change that.”

Alec searched her face. “That’s not what I asked.”

Maryse bit her lip. She looked away. Finally, she admitted, “I don’t know. I don’t know how I would’ve felt about it, back then. But I do know how I feel about it now.” She gave him a teary smile, soft and affectionate, the rarest kind when it came to her. “My perfect son. If anyone tries to tell you that you’re less than because of who you love, don’t listen to them. Soulmates are a gift from the Angel, and He would never have given you one He didn’t believe was right.”

Alec turned his gaze back to the fireplace. He smiled, sad but still genuine. They’d never really talked about soulmates beyond that his siblings had them and he didn’t. An off-hand comment here and there. Izzy’s soulmate wouldn’t want someone so irresponsible. Jace’s would be lucky to have him. Max’s wouldn’t like him very much if he burned down the Institute, ‘accident’ or not. Neither of his parents had ever talked about theirs, or about what they thought of soulmates in general.

While they were being honest, it seemed like the time.

“Mom,” Alec began, as he’d wanted to for years. “What happened to your soulmate?”

He had always been curious about the thick band on her wrist, tight so that it rarely moved no matter what she was doing. By the time he was ten, he’d understood that it was covering her mark. From that, he’d understood that his parents weren’t soulmates. They must’ve died, or she must have never met them, if she’d married Robert and had Alec and his siblings. To the Clave, soulmates trumped everything. They wouldn’t bless a marriage that could jeopardize that, and his parents weren’t the type to go against the Clave’s wishes.

Maryse took a deep breath. If she was surprised at the shift in focus, she didn’t show it. She dropped her hand to touch her wristband, considering.

“Your father’s had passed away when we met. A hunt gone wrong when he was just sixteen. Mine was… more complicated. I had a feeling that it was someone I knew, but he was in love with someone else and I was focused on my career anyway. I always thought I’d have time to figure it out later, once I’d achieved what I wanted to. Then we joined the Circle, and not long after he was... gone. Robert was there. And then, so were you.”

“Gone?” Alec questioned. He wasn’t surprised that his parents hadn’t had some epic love story, or that they had probably only gotten married because Maryse had fallen pregnant.

It was clear Maryse was uncomfortable. She repeated, “Gone. It doesn’t really matter how. Whatever chance we’d had at being together, being bonded, it died.”

Alec mulled that over. “Even now?”

“Even now,” she affirmed. She stood, crossing the room to crouch in front of him. She brought one hand to his knee and the other to his cheek. There was nothing but grief in her face when she implored him, “I don’t want that for you, Alec, despite how it might seem. I was terrified, when I saw your mark. When I thought who it might lead to. I was still in the Circle. Everything around me told me it was something I needed to protect you from, that you would be damned if I didn’t. I really believed I was giving you your best chance.”

Alec cupped her hand where it still rested on his cheek. “I understand,” he told her, and was surprised to find he meant it. “And I’m trying to believe that’s changed. That you’ve changed. I think the wound is still too fresh for me to forgive you, but I want to. It’s going to take time.”

Maryse nodded. She dropped her hand, smiling at him through the tears she was trying not to shed. He wouldn’t have judged her if she had, but he thought she needed to cling to whatever was left of the visage of propriety she’d put on for as long as he remembered. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her cry before.

She moved to sit beside him on the couch. He let her pull him closer, until his head rested in the crook of her neck and her arms could wrap around him.

“I love you,” Maryse told him, for the second time. “I’m sorry I haven’t shown you that the way I should. I’m happy that, despite what I did, you still found him.”

“Even though he wouldn’t be your first choice?” Alec asked, trying to sound a little lighter.

“He wouldn’t have been my hundredth choice,” she laughed. “But it turns out I don’t always know what’s best for you. He’s growing on me, anyway.”

Alec squeezed her tight before letting her go. Subtly, he wiped his eyes. Unsubtly, she wiped hers.

“Thank you,” he whispered. She squeezed his hand.

He searched her eyes for another moment before he found the courage to ask, “And Dad?”

Maryse’s expression grew troubled, but she tried to hide it. “He’ll come around. I don’t think it’s just about you. He’s not in the best place right now. Things are complicated.”

Alec nodded, pursing his lips. “He cheated on you.”

Her eyes went wide. “He told you?”

“No,” Alec said, unable to keep the disdain from his voice. “I saw him at the conference in Idris last year.”

“Of course,” Maryse released a dry laugh through her wet tears. She swallowed, staring at a spot on the wall. “We’re getting a divorce. Please don’t tell your siblings yet. We’d like to be the ones to do it, once everything’s more settled.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “He’s an asshole.”

Maryse shook her head. “It wasn’t meant to be. We both knew that.”

“That doesn’t give him free reign to hurt you.”

“I’ve hurt him, too, Alec,” she told him gently. “Marriage is complicated. Even more so when you aren’t soulmates.”

Alec hesitated. He leaned his elbows on his knees, looking at the carpet when he asked, “Did he know? Or does he really think I don’t have a soulmate?”

“He saw your mark when you were born, but he was on a mission for Valentine when I… By the time he came back, the mark was gone. I told him it had just disappeared one night, that Raziel had changed his mind or something had happened to your soulmate. You didn’t have the mark of the dead like he did, but he believed they’d gone to another dimension, or disappeared somehow. Somewhere unreachable, so that your fate didn’t matter anymore.”

Maryse frowned before she continued. “I think he believed what he wanted to believe, because deep down he’d known, too, that it wasn’t a Shadowhunter.”

Alec exhaled shakily, processing.

“Do you think he’s changed?” he asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “But if he hasn’t, he will. He loves you. You should’ve seen how excited he was to be a father.”

And what a great father he’s been, Alec thought but didn’t say, because he didn’t want to hurt her anymore than she was already.

He took a deep breath, and then kept breathing until he stopped having to think about it. Eventually, he turned his head to look at his mom again. “Don’t go back to Idris. Stay here, with us. Let Dad handle whatever mess is going on over there. It’s the least he can do.”

There were still tears on her face and her dress was all crinkled, but Alec had never thought she was stronger than in this moment. He reached out to take her hand, a peace offering. “Stay here, and we’ll try to fix all the shit that’s broken between us.”

Maryse squeezed his hand. “I’d like that.”

#shmb2021 #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #my writing

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bamf-alec · 3 years

Text

All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 16-20

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 16

For most of her childhood, Isabelle Lightwood had bought into every fairytale. Soulmates were a gift from the angel and soulmarks a guide to the right path. They were a little bit magical — this mystical tether between two people, a string they could follow until they found the person who would be perfect for them. A reward for everything the Nephilim did for them, for all of their hard work and the difficult, battle-driven lives they led. For Downworlders, they were a consolation for which they should be grateful. For which they should feel honoured by. How merciful, how kind, how magnanimous the angels were to give this gift to the devil’s children too so that they might have some good, some light as well.

Now, Isabelle knew the fairytale was bullshit. Soulmates were as much a curse as they were a gift, and they were only magical by the most practical definition. The bond was made of magic, but they weren’t beautiful, mystical stories. Isabelle had spent too many years seeing how they hurt the people she loved to think otherwise.

To be fair, it had all worked out for Jace. Jace was as happy as she’d ever seen him, and Clary was almost a perfectly respectable young Shadowhunter woman like the Clave would approve of. Almost. If it wasn’t for her father, or her stealing the mortal cup, or her generally doing spectacularly risky things in the name of saving her mother.

“You’re doing what now?” Alec demanded.

Clary huffed. She’d been getting more impatient by the second for too many seconds. “This portal is the only way to get to Valentine.”

Alec was unfazed. Alec was rarely fazed by stubbornness or stupidity, unless it was so stupid that it couldn’t be expected, even from someone as impulsive as Jace. “This portal in some unknown alternate dimension that you could lose yourself in and be stuck forever?”

Clary nodded. “That’s the one.”

“It’s your funeral,” Alec sighed. He made the face he’d make when he was tired of dealing with people who couldn’t be reasoned with. Isabelle had seen it many, many times.

“Actually,” Jace cut in, looking sheepish. “It’s our funeral. I’m going with her.”

Alec stared at him. “To the alternate timeline, where you’ll be put in alternate-you’s mundane body, who you might end up as forever or, if you don’t, then you find a portal that takes you to Valentine, whom you face alone because no one else is stupid enough to go into this alternate dimension with you?

Jace nodded. “That’s the one.”

Isabelle, who had been letting them hash this all out for a while now, finally stepped in. She put a hand on Alec’s arm. “We can trust Meliorn. If he thinks this will work, then I believe him. It’s worth the risk.”

Jace pointed a hand at her in agreement, raising his eyebrows at Alec. Alec shook his head. He held Izzy’s gaze until he found what he was looking for. Or until he caved, because Alec had always had a soft spot for Izzy’s pleading face. She knew that, and she wasn’t above putting it to use. Alec made a ‘go-ahead’ gesture with his hand, and then folded his arms and turned around to glare at the trees.

Meliorn opened the portal. It was rare that Isabelle saw seelie magic, and she was always taken aback by the beauty of it. It was an extension of the world around it, like a conversation between seelie and nature.

Meliorn made a face when Jace stepped through the portal. He hadn’t wanted him to go with Clary, but he, too, was not immune to Izzy’s pleading face. So off they went to find the portal and hopefully put a stop to Valentine.

Isabelle shivered. It was still unthinkable that he was back, and that his goals hadn’t changed from before he’d faked his death. She couldn’t imagine being so hateful of the Downworld, just as she couldn’t imagine committing such atrocities against innocent people, whether they had demon blood or not. Sometimes, Izzy preferred the Downworld to her own. They had their prejudices and their conflicts, but it was nothing like the swift and merciless hand of the Clave striking down anyone who stepped a toe out of line.

When she looked at Alec, she could see the tension in his shoulders. It had been getting worse and worse the past few weeks. She’d hoped that after the memory demon he might’ve relaxed a bit, let down his guard ever so slightly now that the secret was out and the world hadn’t ended. Instead, it’d had the opposite effect.

Isabelle had stopped wondering when her brother would let himself be happy some time ago, but she still held out hope that it would happen.

She approached him carefully and rested her hand on his back. “Alec,” she said softly, moving her head to try to get him to meet her eyes. He stared resolutely at the trees. She sighed. “They’ll be okay.”

Alec shook his head. “It’s not just them I’m worried about. You helped Meliorn escape Clave custody, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure that out. If they haven’t already. Actions have consequences.”

Actions have consequences. Alec had been saying that to her since she’d picked up her first training sword. When she skipped out on her rune lessons. When she and Jace played a prank on Hodge. When she snuck out of the Institute. When she started seeing Meliorn. He kept saying it, but most often it wasn’t true. Not for her. It was only now, as she was older and as this mess with her family name had opened her eyes to what it meant to be a Shadowhunter and a Lightwood, that she realized her actions did have consequences. It just usually wasn’t her that felt them.

“You didn’t have anything to do with that,” she reassured him.

Alec snorted. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

It never was. Alec spent all of his worry on his family, and all of his shame and anger on himself. She could see the leather bracelet she’d made for him years ago, though his wrist was tucked into the fold of his arms. She rested her hand on it, feeling the woven leather under her fingers.

Her voice was soft, still aware of Meliorn behind them, when she asked, “Did you see Magnus?”

Alec turned his head to look at her. His jaw was a tight line, right up until he moved his hand out of the fold of his arms and into hers. Then he just looked tired. “Isabelle, please.”

Isabelle felt guilty only for an instant. She knew that she was part of his constant exhaustion. She didn’t mean to be. She never wanted to be. It was just that Alec had always loved her so fiercely, had always done absolutely everything for her, that she kept thinking she could do the same thing for him. Only, she never seemed to get it right.

The bracelet, at least, she knew had been right. It was reassuring now, when she looked at him and saw the weight on his shoulders or the walls he’d put up while she looked for a window. This, at least, she knew had helped.

She squeezed his fingers. She gave him a smile, the best she could when all she felt was worry, and then let him go. She said her goodbyes to Meliorn while Alec waited, and they walked back to the Institute in silence.

Actions have consequences, Isabelle thought bitterly to herself. She folded her legs over each other, the leather couch tugging at her skin. She smoothed down the front of her dress. Alec slammed his hands on the desk, then leaned into them, his back a picture of tension from where she sat.

“The cup is your only way out of this,” he muttered. She wasn’t sure if it was directed at her, or if he was just thinking out loud and bemoaning their current predicament. “I knew I shouldn’t have let them go.”

“And if you hadn’t?” Izzy demanded. “What difference would it make? We can’t give the Clave the cup, Alec.”

Alec looked over his shoulder at her. “Why not?”

Izzy stood. She crossed the room in swift steps, heels clicking, until she leaned against the desk beside him. “The cup is the only way of getting to Valentine. That’s the priority. Saving the Downworld. If we give it to the Clave, who knows what they’ll do with it? They’ll probably lock it away in Idris and keep pretending they’re making every effort to find Valentine while doing everything but what will actually stop him. And by then how many more lives will he have taken?”

They held each other’s gaze until Alec looked away. He looked at the stained glass window behind the desk, Raziel with the mortal instruments, weaving the souls of two faceless Shadowhunters together. Alec’s voice was quiet when he said, “You’ll be deruned.”

Isabelle put her hand over his. He was wearing the family ring, as he had since their parents had given it to him at his runing ceremony. A bulky, victorian thing, passed from son to son through generations. For Izzy’s runing ceremony, Alec had given her the serpent-shaped whip she wore around her wrist.

She smiled sheepishly. “Know any good lawyers?”

It had the desired effect. The hopeless look on Alec’s face eased enough for him to breathe out a laugh. He turned around, folding his arms against his chest. It pulled his shirt taut, and there was no bulge where a bandage would have been. Magnus must have healed him after all.

Isabelle bit her lip. She played with her bracelet, the snake’s head twisting in and out of sight. It would be manipulative, she knew. It would be another push that Alec didn’t want. It would be the same as every other time she had tried to help and only ended up reminding him of his hurt.

But…

This was different, wasn’t it? Magnus was different.

Pushing him towards Alec when he’d come to fix the wards had been the same kind of thing, and that seemed to have worked out.

“Alec,” she began carefully. When she found herself under his scrutiny, she hesitated. Then she pushed her shoulders back and reminded herself that she was Isabelle Lightwood, social butterfly, smooth-talker extraordinaire, relationship expert. “Do you think Magnus would do it?”

Alec’s face immediately twisted. “Magnus? He’s not even… Lydia said she would help, if we could give her a way to do it.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “I doubt she can be both the prosecutor and my representative.”

Alec shook his head. He brought his thumb up to worry his bottom lip, searching for an answer in the floor. He muttered, “We need more time.”

“The Inquisitor’s already here. We don’t have more time. Magnus— ”

“Just,” Alec held up a hand. He gave her a hard look. “Just let me talk to Mom and Dad first. If they made it out of the Circle as the heads of this Institute, then… Let me talk to them.”

Izzy sighed, but relinquished. “Fine. But if they can’t help then will you please just consider—”

Alec clasped her shoulders, cutting her off. He kissed the top of her head. She put her arms around him, stealthily slipping one hand into his pocket. “I’ll go find them. You just stay here and keep playing solitaire.”

The door closed behind him. It echoed. Raziel stared down at her in judgement, the mortal cup in hand.

Isabelle threw herself back onto the couch, this time with much less poise. Petulantly, she muttered, “Maybe I’ll even try Mahjong.”

Chapter 17

“I have to say,” Magnus declared as he fixed the buttons of his suit jacket. He inspected the stained glass and stuffy, boring furniture. “I was surprised to get your fire message. Have we devolved from texting?”

“They took my phone,” Isabelle replied. She sat in the chair, her feet kicked up on the desk. She wore a stunning pair of thigh-high leather boots that could not have been comfortable to run around in. “And my stele. I stole Alec’s.”

Magnus abandoned his inspection of the pileup of dust on the fireplace to whirl around and raise his eyebrows at her. “Stole it? He doesn’t know you called me?”

Isabelle shrugged mysteriously. “I mentioned something about it.”

Magnus narrowed his eyes. It was an elaborate way of saying no. Magnus was a fan of all things elaborate, but he was not a fan of possibly sneaking around behind the back of someone whose feelings he cared about. Not to mention he’d done it once already, helping them smuggle out the cup. Though was that sneaking if Alec had been nowhere in sight and Isabelle had sworn to tell him right after? He hoped she had told him. He hoped the reason Alec wasn’t here, once again, was because he didn’t know what was going on, and not because he was so angry at his siblings for getting into this mess that he was leaving them to fix it themselves.

That didn’t sound like Alec, as far as Magnus knew. So there was that, at least.

Magnus sighed. He folded himself down on the stylish leather couch, clearly placed there by someone who was not involved with decorating the rest of the room. “I’m going to be honest, Isabelle. The Clave does not have a notable record of dropping cases, least of all when there’s an example to be made of someone. And you, my friend, would make quite the example indeed.”

Isabelle hummed. It was clearly nothing she didn’t already know. “Can you fight it?”

Magnus moved his hands around enigmatically. Coloured light from the stain-glass window bounced off his myriad of rings. “Will I try my absolute best? Of course. Will the Clave listen to a Downworlder and a traitor? Hard to say.”

Isabelle laughed. “I knew you were the right person to call. Alec didn’t—” She cut herself off abruptly, drawing her lips into her mouth. It was entirely unsubtle and, just to make sure of it, she looked completely away from Magnus, too.

Magnus wondered if he was being played, or if she genuinely hadn’t meant to mention Alec. Isabelle had a way of making everything she did seem intentional.

He took the chance. “Alec didn’t… What? Want me here?”

Isabelle gave him an apologetic look. “He wanted me to wait until he’d exhausted all other options. He went to talk to our parents. But it’s been an hour, so I don’t think it’s going well.”

Magnus contemplated. “If Alec doesn’t want my help, I’d hate to go against his wishes.”

“No, no, no,” Isabelle said urgently, pulling her feet off the desk. Her heels hit the floor and she rounded the desk to grab Magnus’s hands. “It’s not like that. He’ll be glad you’re here. And I need you. Help me, Magnus. You’re my only hope.”

“Have you actually seen Star Wars?” Magnus questioned dubiously.

Izzy shrugged. “My soulmark,” she said, like that explained it, which it mostly did.

Magnus sighed. He squeezed her hands before he dropped them. He could never turn away a friend in need, least of all one who had only been trying to help the Downworld. This generation of Shadowhunters was most definitely proving more trouble than they were worth, but it was a much better kind of trouble than the generation before them.

“Alright,” he relinquished. “Let’s work on your defense.”

Izzy gave him an uncertain look, but it was charming. “Do I even have a defense? I’m guilty. I helped Jace steal the cup, and I helped Meliorn escape, and I helped them all head off into the abyss after Valentine.”

Magnus shook his head. “We’re not arguing that you’re not guilty. We’re arguing intention. Everyone here has a common goal — hunting down that monster and putting an end to his reign of terror. Everything you did was in furtherance of that goal. We just have to hope that the Clave despises Valentine more than they do one misguided teenager who went about things a little bit wrong, but whose heart was ultimately in the right place.”

Izzy snorted. “I don’t think the Clave puts much weight on heart.”

“Then hopefully they’ll just see you as a nuisance who’s unlikely to evolve into anything worse, and not want to bother with all that sentencing and deruning and shunning.”

“But shunning is their favourite pastime,” Izzy said gravely.

Magnus laughed. Izzy did, too.

He thought about telling her that even if this went terribly, she would be okay. Magnus had experience acclimating exiled Shadowhunters to mundane life, and he wouldn’t mind a roommate for a while. It sounded comforting to him, but he also knew that Shadowhunters tended to like to remain Shadowhunters, and didn’t tend to like to think about the alternative.

So he didn’t. Instead, he focused on her case. He wasn’t entirely up to date on Clave law, but he was certain it hadn’t changed that much in the last few centuries. Few things among the Nephilim ever did. Even the window, Raziel bestowing upon his loyal soldiers the consolation prize of a soulbond, had been here since the Institute was built.

Magnus checked his cufflink, just to make sure his sleeve wasn’t going anywhere.

Sed lex dura lex, his mark read. The law is hard but it is the law. Unlike the usual tidy print the words that showed up on his wrist took, this one was written in more of an angry scrawl, like someone had been pressing the pen really hard into the paper, even when it kept piercing through.

Magnus understood. That was how he had always felt about the Shadowhunters’ little motto. Looking at Isabelle, he hated it even more now.

Chapter 18

It was like Alec’s parents knew their daughter was facing imminent doom and had purposely made themselves as difficult as possible to locate. He checked all their usual places, including their bedroom, and asked three different Shadowhunters, who gave him three different answers. Every room he didn’t find them in sent his heart rate skyrocketing, anxiety building as the time ticked down.

He finally found them in one of the ops rooms he’d checked on his first pass, but had circled back to out of lack of anywhere else to look. He worked really hard to calm himself before he entered. They weren’t the ones he was frustrated at. They were on the same side. They all loved Isabelle. They would help. Or, at least, they would want to.

“Mom,” Alec greeted. He was a little out of breath. “Dad. We need your help.”

Maryse and Robert Lightwood looked at each other. Then, Alec’s mother sat carefully in one of the chairs around the holographic table. Robert gestured for Alec to take one, too, and joined her. Alec didn’t.

“Isabelle,” Robert nodded. “We know. The Inquisitor went over all the charges with us.”

Alec’s voice was hurried. “Then you know how bad it is. She could be deruned. Please, tell me you have a plan to stop this. Are you going to represent her?”

Robert shook his head. “Alec, sit.”

“I don’t want to sit, I want to help my sister. Where the hell have you been? Did you even go to see her?”

“Alexander,” Robert said very sternly. He pinned his son with a dangerous look until Alec reluctantly took the chair across from them. Then, he huffed and leaned back in his seat. “We’ve been discussing the matter and we think we have found a solution that will work for all parties involved. When we faced trial after… those events, we received leniency for a number of reasons. The primary one being you, Alec.”

Robert scratched at his wrist, where Alec knew his soulmark was nothing but a grey line. Maryse caught the movement and folded her hands together on the table, leaning towards Alec to finish the story. “It wasn’t just that the Clave was reluctant to exile an infant Shadowhunter along with his parents. It was also the fact that we had you, that you were healthy and well-taken care of. It was proof of our values. That family was as important to us as it is to the Clave. Our marriage, as well. Duty, honour, commitment. That’s what a marriage signifies.”

Alec shook his head. His foot tapped, and he put a hand on his knee to stop it. “So, what? You’re saying Izzy should fake being pregnant? Engaged? Everyone knows she has a soulmark.”

Maryse glanced nervously at her husband, and Alec was reminded that he’d been avoiding her for over a week now. It seemed so petulant now, so ridiculous. Maybe if he’d gone to her sooner, as soon as he’d found out those idiots had taken the cup, then none of this would have escalated as it had.

“Right now our family doesn’t represent the Clave’s values. But if we did, if the Lightwood name were respectable again…”

Robert interrupted his wife, never one for dancing around the point. “Marry Lydia Branwell. The Inquisitor holds her in good standing, and her family is one of the most respectable there is.”

“Lydia?” Alec gasped. He looked back and forth between his parents, wondering if they were joking. They both looked sternly back, faces tight and serious. “You hate Lydia.”

Maryse glanced at her husband. “We disliked her taking over the Institute. But that would be a different story if she were our daughter-in-law. She’d be family. The Institute would belong to us again. Besides, we know she’s already expressed an interest.”

“So that’s what this is about?” Alec scoffed. Anger boiled hot inside him. “Do you care about Izzy or is this just an opportunity to further your agenda of having your children clean up your mistakes?”

Maryse rose from her chair, towering. A picture of the swift hand of discipline that had descended on all the Lightwood children exponentially more often than the hand of kindness or support. “Do not speak to us that way, Alexander,” she snapped, but she caught herself. She breathed, squared her shoulders, and tried to be as gentle as Maryse Lightwood ever could when she said, “Even if you find another way to protect Isabelle now, it’s only a matter of time before something else threatens this family. The Clave is unsatisfied and distrustful of us. They don’t want us here, in power. A good, respectable marriage would put all this to rest once and for all.”

“A good, respectable marriage,” Alec repeated, mockingly. He shook his head. His tone left no doubt that he didn’t mean it as a compliment when he said, “Like what you have?”

Maryse inhaled sharply, but Robert’s expression only narrowed. “Watch yourself, Alec.”

Alec stood. “No. Is this what you want for your children? What you have? That’s the kind of life you want to condemn us to? Or, no, sorry not us. Because unlike the Circle, the Clave thinks soulmate bonds are the holiest of bullshit. So Izzy and Jace are out, and Max is too young, which just leaves me to clean up the mess you’ve made of the Lightwood name because I don’t have a mark. How convenient.”

“Convenient?” Maryse shook her head in confusion. She looked to Robert, but his brow was furrowed too. “Alec, none of this is convenient. It’s just what needs to happen. I know you’re young and your siblings have filled your head with their love of Downworlders so you’ve forgotten how the Clave works, but for us duty must come before anything else. You have a duty to this family. And, yes, you are the one in the best position to fulfil it because you don’t have a soulmate. So think about your siblings. Jace can bond with Valentine’s daughter, and Isabelle with whoever she finds. They’ll be happy, and bonded, and they will still enjoy all of the privileges and affordances that come with leading the Institute. And all thanks to you.”

“A noble sacrifice,” Alec said flatly. He took his seat again. “It is convenient, though, isn’t it? That I don’t have a mark. I’m a blank slate you can match up with whoever serves this family best.”

“Alec,” Maryse sighed. It was sad, tired, as it always was when a young Alec used to ask about his wrist. She had very rarely humoured him, usually avoiding the subject. Alec was beginning to understand why, and it wasn’t for the reasons he’d always thought. “I’m sorry. I hope you know that I would’ve wanted that for you. You deserve a soulmate as much as anyone else. But this is the reality, and one day you’ll need to accept that.”

Alec stared at her. He realized he was playing with his sleeve, pushing it up enough to run his thumb across his skin. He took a breath, and then another, until he could speak without the anger or frustration that seemed so constant now. The numbness had passed, as had the war of countless emotions, and had settled into a cloud of acrimony. “I accepted that a long time ago, Mom, but I’m not sure it is the reality.”

Silence collapsed on the room. Maryse searched her son’s face, every one of her muscles frozen. It was quiet long enough for him to know that she knew what he wasn’t saying, long enough for him to know that she’d known already what he’d only just found out. That she had known for a long, long time. They stared at each other in a wordless communication.

Robert broke it. He pushed his chair back and stood, righting his jacket where it’d ridden up. His expression was as impassive as ever. “This is pointless. Alec, make a decision. I’m going to see how the trial is coming along.”

That got Alec’s attention. “The trial? It hasn’t started.”

Robert frowned at him. “It started ten minutes before you came in here.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

Robert looked at him like he was crazy. “I thought you knew. Besides, I didn’t think you’d need this much convincing to do the right thing,” he said. It was stern, disappointed. A familiar tone.

After a beat, he shook his head and left. His hand rested on his wife’s lower back when he passed her, and she gave him a small, grateful smile.

Alec watched with a clenched jaw. Then, he stood too. Whatever else was going on, Isabelle came first. If the trial had started, then he was too late, anyway. All that was left now was to show her his support by holding her hand while whatever happened played itself out. These things usually took at least an hour, with all the Clave’s fanfare, so maybe he still had time to make a phone call and get her an advocate. Not the option he’d hoped for, but the only one he seemed to have.

He didn’t make it to the door when his mother grabbed him by the arm.

“Alec,” she said imploringly, her voice barely a whisper. Her expression was pleading. It was unfamiliar. Alec had never seen his mother look anything but disappointed, proud, or carefully neutral. The hand she had grabbed him with was the one with her soulmark, covered with a tight band just as it had been his whole life.

He shouldn’t do this now. He couldn’t help it. He’d been pushing it down for over a week, every time he saw her, never knowing how to bring it up or if he even wanted to. But he couldn’t avoid it anymore. “Was it you? Or did you just help cover it up?”

Maryse’s eyes widened. He thought she looked a little panicked, but it was hard to tell when he’d never seen it on her before. “I don’t—”

“Don’t, Mother. For once, can we please not lie to each other?”

Alec heard her inhale, watched pain fill her eyes. She opened her mouth and closed it, gave him a hopeless look. It was clear she didn’t know what to say. Alec didn’t, either.

Maryse Lightwood had always been a pillar in the New York Institute. In Alec’s life. Unshakeable, strong. She handled every challenge with dignity and grace, had a firm command over everyone born out of respect, honour, duty. She was the perfect Shadowhunter. A leader, a soldier, a diplomat. She had married into a strong Shadowhunter name and passed it to three strong children. She had taken in another when he had nowhere else to go, and he, too, had made her proud. She had trained them, taught them, guided them on the right path, instilled in them good, Shadowhunter values.

Alec had only one memory of her as a mother that stood out to him. Before Jace or Max, when it was just him and Isabelle, and Robert spent more time in Idris than he did with his family. Alec hadn’t been able to sleep, and he’d snuck into the kitchen to steal some sweets where he knew the chef hid them. She’d caught him. He’d been terrified, certain he was about to be reprimanded and assigned double the training time for the next week. His arms were already sore from having double that week.

She hadn’t. Instead, she had leaned down and flicked his nose with a smile. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” she’d said. She had even kissed the top of his head, squeezing him tight for just a second.

Maryse had never been shy with her pride or with her praise when they performed admirably at their assigned tasks. But she had never been affectionate, either. Warmth was not something that came easily to Maryse. Unconditional love didn’t, either. Maryse had never been shy with the conditions that came with it.

Alec ripped his arm out of her grip. “I’m going to help Izzy.”

Chapter 19

The trial was already underway when Magnus finally saw Alec. He came in through the back and quietly took the seat behind him and Isabelle, his expression positively stormy. He could see their parents a few rows back, looking equal parts disapproving and distraught. Their talk must not have gone well, then.

Magnus frowned at Alec, who met his eyes. Alec pursed his lips, shaking his head to say either ‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘my parents are assholes who can’t help and whom I’m feeling very inclined to murder right now’. Magnus offered a consolatory nod and turned his attention back to where everything was falling spectacularly apart.

Isabelle’s questioning had gone about as well as could be expected. Lydia had proven to be far more ruthless than Magnus had given her credit for. His opening argument hadn’t been a roaring success, either. It hadn’t been his best moment, but he’d been so overcome by his frustration with the Clave and their oppressive regime that seemed only to exist to hurt people, that he’d devolved to petulantly exclaiming, “It’s the cup’s fault. Put the cup on trial!”

And then he’d immediately gone back to his seat to question all of his life choices and come to terms with the fact that his friend was going to be deruned because he couldn’t contain his temper long enough to finish making a reasonable argument.

So here they were, the case pretty much closed in the eyes of the Clave. He could see it written all over the Inquisitor’s stony, wrinkled face. She had judged Isabelle and found her lacking. Isabelle’s outburst on the stand, condemning all of Shadowhunter culture and siding herself with the Downworld had only cemented her fate.

Still, Magnus couldn’t help but to be proud. He was right about these Lightwood children, though he hadn’t known just how right until now. They were good. They were the kinds of Shadowhunters they’d waited eons for. Maybe there was hope of bridging the abyss between them and the Downworld yet, with this generation in charge.

Probably not if they all got deruned before they had the chance to change anything, though.

In a last ditch effort banking mostly on Isabelle’s “She’s perfectly fine” and Alec’s, the night he’d come over unexpectedly, “I think she’s on our side”, Magnus called Lydia to the stand.

She took her seat with trepidation. Her eyes darted to the Inquisitor, who gave her a stony look back until Lydia straightened her posture and steeled her face. Magnus gave her a moment to simmer while he stood from his chair and rounded the table in front of him.

“I just have one question,” Magnus began, with grandeur. “Why are you prosecuting this case?”

Silence reigned for a long, uncomfortable moment during which Lydia grew both confused and concerned, the Inquisitor grew impatient, and Magnus grew hopeful.

Lydia was frowning when she said, lacking any conviction, “Because the law is hard, but it is the law.”

Magnus rolled his eyes. The Clave’s defense for everything, apparently. He was just starting to turn around and brace himself for the sentencing when Lydia spoke up again, more certain. “But that doesn’t make it right. We’re trying someone for being compassionate, thinking for herself. She saved a life that was being sacrificed for nothing.”

Surprised, Magnus raised one very pleased eyebrow. He could feel himself starting to smile, before the Inquisitor tried to interrupt. Lydia brushed her off and continued, “Looking out at the faces here… A brother and sister who disagree on everything except for how much they love one another and how loyal they are to each other. A man who took this case because he believes injustice towards his friends is intolerable, in spite of how horribly we treat him and people like him.”

Magnus blinked. He turned around to catch Isabelle’s eye, who looked like she was on the verge of tears. Behind her, he caught Alec’s, who for once made no attempt to mask how he was feeling. Magnus could see the concern, and the anger, the surprise and the hope that this was going somewhere that wouldn’t lead to him losing his sister.

If there was anything Magnus knew for certain about Alec, it was that there was absolutely nothing in the world that was more important to him than his siblings. He wouldn’t be the same without any of them, if he would even be anything at all.

Mostly, Magnus was here because Isabelle was his friends. But he was also here because he cared about Alec, and he couldn’t imagine letting him lose such a big part of himself if there was anything he could do to stop it.

“Loyalty, decency, compassion, love,” she continued. “These are the concepts that we should consider to decide guilt or innocence in a case like this.”

The Inquisitor slammed an angry hand against her armrest. “Those are not the concepts of the law. Now enough of this nonsense.”

Lydia looked equally angry, gritting her teeth. “I agree. The case is nonsense. I withdraw the charges.”

The room erupted into applause, proving just how well-liked Isabelle was at the Institute, the social butterfly that she was. Magnus let himself breathe for the first time since the trial had started. He drew her into his arms, squeezing tightly. Isabelle pulled away to grin at him, looking absolutely radiant. She’d changed her outfit to something much more respectable but much less her, but she still pulled it off like she’d been born to wear it. Around her neck, his necklace was on full display.

The relief was all-encompassing. He’d been so certain it was over, that they’d lost.

He took a moment to look behind him and smile at Lydia to show his gratitude, but a touch on his arm made him turn back around. Immediately, arms wrapped loosely around him. He had only a moment to revel in the fact that Alec was hugging him before he pulled away with a pat on Magnus’s back and focused on his sister instead.

Only an instant, barely a real hug at all, and Magnus had felt safe, had felt comfortable, had felt wanted. If this was what having a soulmate was like, anything more might actually kill him. What would it feel like to kiss him?

Focus, Magnus hastily shook himself out of it. They were in a courtroom, surrounded by Clave envoys, celebrating Isabelle. Or, they had been.

The Inquisitor, who had made it her life’s mission to destroy every good feeling anyone had, banged her gavel until the room was silent. She waited until everyone’s attention was locked on her. “If you think refusing to prosecute exculpates the defendant, you are wrong,” she spat. “She is guilty.”

Dread filled Magnus.

The Inquisitor stood, towering over the room from her raised stand. She looked right at Magnus when she said, “The defense was correct. The Clave wants the mortal cup. If it is returned within twenty-four hours, this ruling will be vacated. If not, Isabelle Lightwood will be stripped of her runes and exiled from the society of the Shadowhunters forever.”

She banged her gavel to signify the trial was over, and left them all to their misery. Anger took over the dread in Magnus as he stared at the door she’d gone out of, the familiar rage he felt whenever he dealt in Nephilim politics. It was strange to be on this side of it, to be inside of it, defending a Shadowhunter, but it was just as awful as every discriminatory ruling or hateful rhetoric they’d spewed at him and his kind.

Alec and Isabelle were whispering together, too low and too overtaken by the other voices in the room for Magnus to hear. He looked between them, fixing the buttons of his suit jacket, before he interrupted. “So, where is the cup?”

Alec and Isabelle shared a panicked look, until Alec looked away. He scrubbed a hand down his face. His knuckles were split and bruised. He shook his head, and then he was gone, disappearing into the crowd of people in the room.

Isabelle looked after him with a pained expression. She did nothing to hide it when she turned back to Magnus and explained, glumly, “Jace and Clary took it through a seelie portal to another dimension.”

“Oh,” said Magnus intelligently. What he actually wanted to say was Fuck.

“They’ll be back,” Izzy reassured him. It was too convincing. It was clear it was meant for the both of them. “They will.”

Magnus rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure they will,” he agreed.

Isabelle wrung her hands. Her smile was weak and disingenuous. “Stay with me until then?”

Magnus smiled back. “Of course.”

Chapter 20

Alec stared at the floating redheaded woman, suspended in green magic in the middle of one of the private rooms in the infirmary. Clary, who hadn’t left her mother’s side since they’d arrived at the Institute, looked a lot like her. The parts that didn’t probably looked like Valentine, but that was a disturbing thought, so Alec tried to stop thinking it.

“How’s Izzy?” Jace said from beside him, watching his soulmate like a hawk. He hadn’t said much since they’d gotten back and Alec could feel through the parabatai bond that he was upset, but he was giving him space to talk when he was ready.

Alec sighed, unfolding his arms. “She’s good. Relieved. Dodged a bullet.”

It was a low blow, especially when he knew Jace was dealing with something already. Alec had never been in a worse mood in his life, though, and was having trouble controlling how that manifested. He’d left the trial immediately after everything went downhill with nothing he could do to stop it, pounded his fists into some punching bags. When he’d gone to deliver the news to Izzy (and Magnus, who was unexpectedly still here), he hadn’t stayed.

His skin itched. His knuckles had only just stopped bleeding and the pain pulsed through his hands. He was so restless he had to keep reminding himself to stay still.

He wasn’t angry with Jace. He was so happy and so relieved for Izzy. He was grateful for Magnus. He just couldn’t trust himself to be around any of them without saying something he’d regret, so caught up in all of this anger.

He was just about to leave Jace to keep staring at his soulmate, halfway out the door when Jace stopped him.

“Valentine raised me.”

Alec turned. He contained his surprise, every other thought or emotion vanishing while he reaffirmed that he’d heard him correctly. Jace wouldn’t look at him. He stood with his arms crossed, staring at nothing. Pain was written all over his face. It was so unlike Jace, who was so good at pretending that nothing ever got to him.

“He pretended to be Michael Wayland,” Jace continued. “After he murdered him. He took me in and pretended to be my father, all those years.”

Alec locked eyes with Clary, who had only looked up from her mother for a moment. She gave Alec a sad look, commiserating in Jace’s pain, and Alec hated her a little less for how much she cared about his brother.

“I’m sorry,” Alec said, when it was clear Jace had nothing else to add. He wasn’t sure what he should be sorry about. Jace was still Jace, the same Jace he’d been the day before. It didn’t matter if the asshole he’d spent his first ten years with was Michael Wayland or Valentine Morgenstern. Not to Alec, at least.

“I don’t even know…” Jace trailed off, lost. “I don’t even know who my parents are. If I am a Wayland, or if he took me from someone else. If he killed them, or if they’re alive somewhere, missing their son, with no idea that I’m here.”

Alec stepped closer to him. “It doesn’t change who you are, though. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Jace said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Alec watched him for a second. Their bond was no less chaotic than it had been a moment ago, Jace’s side still in turmoil. “If it’s important to you, we can try to find out. Your parents. There have to be records or magic or something that can give you some answers.”

Jace glanced at him, nodding absently. “Yeah, right.” Then, with a quick glance at Clary, “And you?”

Alec frowned. “Me, what?”

“What’s going on with you?” Jace urged. He was meeting his eyes now, his eyebrow raised. He sounded both unimpressed and like he’d lost all the patience he’d ever had when he added, “Don’t think I can’t feel that you’re all fucked up, too. This bond isn’t just one way.”

Oh.

Alec swallowed. He didn’t even know where to start. He didn’t know which parts were most important, most distressing. It felt a bit like everything had piled on top of each other, one after another, until he was left with a stack of explosives that had detonated his life.

Jace was harder to talk to than Izzy, too. He wasn’t as intuitive and he was just as bad with feelings as Alec was. Jace was comforting because Alec didn’t talk to him, because Jace never expected him to and was always there when Alec needed him, willing to distract and just be in his presence without Alec feeling like he had to say or do things he wasn’t up to.

Their deep, emotional talks were much, much rare than with Izzy. It gave them more weight. Weight that felt crushing now that Alec stood in front of him, no ground under his feet and feeling more lost than he’d ever been.

Alec waved his hand. “My soulmark thing,” he said. “You know.”

Jace looked at him for a very long moment. “Magnus?”

Alec inhaled shakily, then masked it with a shrug. “Maybe. Among other things. I got in a fight with mom and dad.”

Jace hummed. Jace was no stranger to getting into fights, but he was a stranger to getting into fights with Maryse and Robert. They adored him too much, ever the golden child who could do nothing wrong. Not even bonding with Valentine’s daughter, apparently.

Alec killed the bitterness as soon as it rose up. Whatever happened with his mark, whatever his parents felt about his soulmate, it was his and his alone. It had nothing to do with Jace, Izzy, and Max, and their soulmates.

As though summoned through sheer force of never wanting to speak to him again, Robert Lightwood appeared in the doorway. “Alec,” he called, hovering. “Can we talk?”

Jace offered a sympathetic look and waved him off to meet his demise. Alec grimaced back at him.

In the hallway, Robert spent a good minute staring at the wall behind his son instead of his son before he finally said, “Did you put any more thought into the marriage?”

Alec stared at him. He couldn’t process what he was hearing. He blinked twice, just to make sure that was really what his father had chosen to open with, and then took a very long time sorting through all of his feelings and all of the terrible things he could say.

“No,” he settled on finally. He had to bite it out through a clenched jaw. “No, sorry. I was too focused on making sure my sister wasn’t going to be banished for the rest of her life.”

Robert sighed, like he was tired of Alec’s antics. Like Alec had antics to be tired of, like he hadn’t spent two decades being the perfect, placating son. “What reason do you have not to? It doesn’t have to be Lydia. There are a few other girls who would do just fine, too. You can meet them all and decide which is the best fit for you.”

“Right, I’ll just have my pick of the litter,” Alec said, enraged. If anyone spoke about Isabelle or anyone he knew like that, like they were stock at an auction just waiting to be bid on, Alec would’ve destroyed them. Passive aggressively, by assigning them the shittiest stations for the rest of eternity and making sure all of their shifts coincided with anything fun that might be going on, so they would never enjoy another day in their life. If he were still the head of the Institute, that was.

Robert had the decency to finally look uncomfortable. “Stop being difficult, Alexander.”

“Okay,” Alec replied. “Then, if you need an answer right now, the answer is a very enthusiastic no.”

His father huffed, pursing his lips at him. He looked his son up and down, appraising him and not liking what he saw. Then, a terrible frown furrowed his brow as he peered at Alec’s face. “You’re seeing someone. That’s why.”

It wasn’t a question, so Alec didn’t treat it like one. Seeing someone was so far down the list of things Alec was doing or cared about doing right now, but Robert would always believe whatever he wanted to, and Alec wasn’t about to try to explain that the real reason he didn’t want to get married was because he was gay, and he had a soulmate, and he was starting to think the family name should just burn itself to the ground, and he couldn’t look at his parents without wanting to burn himself down with it.

“Don’t we have more important things to focus on? Like, I don’t know, Valentine.”

Sighing, Robert reluctantly let it go. Not without one final comment, though. “Whoever it is, they must not be appropriate or you would’ve told us already. This family can’t take anymore disgrace, Alec.”

Alec stared after him, his footsteps echoing down the hall.

In the doorway to the infirmary, Jace leaned out and said, emphatically, “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Hypocrite.”

“Yeah,” Alec muttered, but he was suddenly feeling less upset than he had been. “You’re right.”

#shmb2021 #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #my writing

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bamf-alec · 3 years

Text

All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 11-15

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 11

Alec could not believe that he was here. He wasn’t sure that he was, actually. The crumpled address in his hand didn’t feel real. Neither did the door in front of him.

This was stupid. This was pointless.

Valentine was alive and sending Forsaken into the Institute. Valentine’s daughter was sleeping in the room across from Jace. Alec’s family was in very real danger of losing control of the Institute. Lydia had politely asked him if getting married might save it. Alec had nearly said yes, and then he had said no, and then he had said that he needed a minute to think about it.

In that minute, he had gone through the Institute database and found a warlock that specialized in souls, and the bonds between them. Then, he had taken a second minute. In that minute, Alec had taken a page out of his siblings’ book and snuck out of the Institute before anyone was awake enough to notice.

This would lead nowhere. Alec would reaffirm what he had always known, the voice of doubt Izzy had infested his mind with would quiet, and that would be that.

The door swung open so swiftly that Alec felt his hair move. A very pixie-like woman stood in front of him, barely coming up to the top of his ribcage. Her hair seemed like an entire other person, stark white, long, and massive. It looked like it was floating more than sitting on her head.

“Um,” Alec said, because the reason he was here had suddenly escaped him.

The woman sighed breathily, like she was quite tired or perhaps like she was bored of this plane of existence. She said, “Yes.”

Alec thought it was meant to be a question, but it didn’t sound like one. He shook himself. He glanced behind him at the street, which looked perfectly normal. Roses were dying in pots that went all the way around the house.

“You’re the Diviner?” he asked, despite how stupid it felt. The Diviner. Like it was pulled from a fairytale. A cliché one at that.

“Oh my,” she said, inexplicably. “You’d better come in. Yes, you’d better.”

Alec wasn’t sure all of that had been directed at him, but he stepped inside nonetheless. As the door closed behind him, most of the light in the room was shut out. Everything was cast in dark shadows. The winding staircase seemed to reach into oblivion, and he wasn’t certain that if he stepped forward there would be a floor there to catch him.

There was. She led him down the hallway to a sitting room, which had large bay windows that let in giant swaths of sunlight. Lace curtains did their best to temper it, to no success. When prompted, Alec took a seat on one of the floral couches. The Diviner sat across from him, a coffee table between them with an old-fashioned tea set on top.

“Tea?” she asked. He shook his head. She sighed that same, breathless sigh. “All the better. I only have mint.”

Alec sat on her couch, trying to figure out what to do with his hands, while she drank her mint tea and watched him. She didn’t blink.

He cleared his throat. It took him two attempts to get out the words, and even he could hear the reluctance in his tone. “I’m here about soulmates.”

“Yes,” she said. Again, it wasn’t a question. Alec thought it was probably because most people who came to see her were here about soulmates. He waited to see if she would say anything else. She didn’t.

His fingers only shook a little, not noticeable to anyone but him (he hoped), as he rolled up his sleeves to show her his wrists. Bare, as they had been for as long as he could remember.

“Blank,” she noted, unhelpfully. She took another sip of her tea. “They said it means you’re alone.”

It still wasn’t a question. She seemed to know everything about him already. He couldn’t decide if it was a relief or unnerving.

Alec frowned. Self-consciously, he tugged his sleeves back down. “They did.”

“You believe them?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a tricky thing, belief. Sometimes it makes things true. What’s that called again? Plack… Plum…”

“Placebo effect,” Alec offered. “Are you saying I don’t have a soulmate because I don’t believe I have a soulmate?”

She sighed again. She drank her tea. She looked out the large, bay windows. “Did I say it was your belief?”

Alec blinked. She waited for an answer. Uncertainly, he said, “No?”

She leaned forward to reach across the table with an impatient flick of her fingers. The tea had vanished and, now that he thought about it, Alec couldn’t remember her ever having brewed it. It had just appeared, cup full in her hands, despite the teapot between them.

It took him a moment to understand what she wanted, and then another to roll his sleeves back up and offer her his wrist.

Her fingers were cold when they closed around it. Dainty. He watched her face instead. Her eyes were very dark, or maybe very bright. It was hard to tell. She pressed her nail into his skin until it bled, and he winced, resisting the urge to snatch his arm back. She seemed pleased by this.

“The other,” she demanded. He gave her his left wrist. She dug her nail in again. She seemed more pleased. “What a neat little lie. The sort we’re not supposed to tell.”

Alec felt dizzy. He stared at her very strange eyes and her nail, still digging through the first couple layers of his skin, and his wrist, blank. Not even a rune trespassed on it. “What?”

“Barbaric,” she continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. He did not interrupt her look of deep thought to tell her that ‘neat’ and ‘barbaric’ were two things that tended not to describe the same entity.

She dropped his arm. “Do you like stories, Mr. Lightwood?”

“No,” he said, because he had a feeling she wanted to tell him one, and he could feel his skin crawling all over with the need to just know, already. He ignored the fact that he had never given her his name. She was in the business of souls, and it seemed unsurprising that she would have some magic way of finding it out.

She looked a little disappointed. “Oh. Well, then I will just tell you. Your mark’s been erased.”

Alec felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He struggled, for many long seconds, to recover his breath. Fucking Isabelle, he thought, but the thought barely reached his conscious.

“Erased?” he repeated, urgently. “So I had one?”

She nodded. “So you had one. This kind of magic’s been outlawed since… Well, for quite a while. One of the few things that nearly everyone can agree on is that it's....”

“Barbaric?” he offered, but he wasn’t looking at her. He stared down at his hands, the two half-moons on his wrists. He ran his fingers over the left one, like he would feel whatever had been there, but of course he could not. So many emotions warred for dominance inside of him that instead he felt numb. He swallowed. “Can I get it back?”

“No,” she said, putting precisely zero effort into softening the blow. Alec had only an instant to feel both crushed and weightless at the same time before she continued. “But just because the mark is gone, doesn’t mean the bond is. Like ridding you of the symptoms, but not the disease. Denial is not as strong as belief, you know. It always falls apart.”

Alec ignored that she’d just compared having a soulmate to having a disease. He scrubbed his hands down his face and breathed in and out. He wondered if his siblings knew. He wondered if his parents knew.

And then he immediately felt stupid because of course his parents knew. Who else could have done this?

“I think I’ll take that tea now,” Alec muttered.

There was a knock at Alec’s door.

Please, Alec thought desperately to the ceiling, sprawled out on his bed. Please, Jace. Go save the world by yourself today.

Jace knocked again. When there was still no response, he opened the door to peer inside. It was the middle of the day and his room had two windows, but Alec had turned the light on anyway. He could feel the frown from across the room as Jace picked his way through scattered papers to the side of the bed.

“Dude,” he said, poking Alec’s foot. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Alec replied despairingly. Alec was not usually melodramatic, and he was not being melodramatic now. It was very possible that, in fact, everything was wrong.

Jace said agreeably, “Okay,” and then yanked on Alec’s feet until Alec’s knees slid off the end of the bed and he was forced to sit up.

Alec glared at him. “What?”

Jace had been Alec’s parabatai for too many years not to be immune to his glare. “Come with me.”

Alec laid back down. “No.”

Witheringly, “Alec.”

Also witheringly, “Fuck off.”

Jace sighed. He looked over Alec, assessing the damage, then patted his leg. “Wanna go kill some demons?”

Alec considered it. “No,” he decided.

Enticingly, Jace said, “There’s a whole nest of raveners at the docks.”

Less certainly, Alec repeated, “No.”

Jace seemed to realize the gravity of the situation, then. The bed dipped under his weight, his knee knocking into Alec’s. When Alec glanced up to see what he was doing, he found Jace watching him with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?” he asked. “For real?”

Alec looked at him. He swallowed. He was running his fingers over the blank skin on his wrist. It was going numb, and it was definitely red, but he couldn’t stop. Even when he knew that Jace had noticed.

His voice was very small when he admitted, “No, I’m really not.”

Jace, who had never heard him sound so lost in all the years they’d known each other, looked alarmed. He cast a glance at the door, probably wondering where Isabelle was, because usually she was the one that coaxed the truth out of Alec. But Jace knew that Isabelle was with Clary, and so did Alec.

Jace hesitated to ask, “Is this about Magnus?”

Alec didn’t react. He wanted to be surprised, or to be terrified that Jace had picked up on this thing that he had never told him. He could feel it, too, the shame and the fear and the knowledge that if he blew Jace off, he wouldn’t ask again. But it was so distant, so buried, beneath this numbness that had settled over Alec this morning and not gone away since.

“He seems nice,” Jace offered. When Alec looked at him, he looked supremely uncomfortable, because they both knew that this was not a thing they talked about. Jace didn’t talk about girls with Alec, either.

To spare him the awkwardness, Alec snorted. “Nice,” he repeated. “Yeah, he’s nice.”

Jace nodded. He looked away, around the room, seeking a change in subject.

Alec dug his fingernail into his wrist, right beside where someone else had done so already. “Did you feel it?” he asked. “Clary. If you hadn’t seen the mark, would you have known?”

Jace turned back to look at him again. His brow furrowed, but he gave the question real thought. “Maybe,” he replied. “Maybe not. I wanted it to be, and I felt connected to her, but I think… I don’t think, without the mark, that I would’ve been sure enough to act on it. I would’ve had too many doubts.”

It was not the answer Alec would have hoped for, if he’d been accustomed to hope. Of course Jace would have had doubts. Of course anyone, with no mark, would have doubts. The mark was a confirmation, a reassurance, a certainty. They existed for a reason.

This one, it said, with no room to question it. This is the one.

He thought about telling Jace about his stolen mark. He couldn’t find the words. What could Jace say that would help, anyway?

Nothing. There was nothing. The mark was gone. It would never not be gone. Alec would live in doubt for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.

I suppose, the Diviner had told him when he’d asked how he would know the bond when he found it, you will just have to ask around.

Alec thought about asking Magnus about his soulmark, and shivered. There was absolutely no universe where he could be that brave.

Did he have to ask? Or would he know if he saw it, on Magnus’s wrist?

How foolish and naive to even consider that Magnus Bane could be his soulmate.

But doubt — stupid, niggling doubt — gave him pause. Alec wanted to know. He wanted to be certain.

He knew where he needed to go.

Chapter 12

“Hey,” said Alexander Lightwood, standing in front of the door to Magnus’s loft in jeans and a t-shirt. He scratched the back of his neck. He didn’t have any of his regular shadowhunter gear with him, nor were there any obvious wounds to tend to. He didn’t sound like he was here with urgency, so no one must be dying. “Can I come in?”

Delighted but trying not to show it, Magnus stepped aside to let him through. He watched Alec, hands tucked in his pockets, inspect his living room like he’d never seen it before. Magnus had only swapped out a few statement pieces since the last time he’d been here.

Magnus shook himself. “Drink?” he asked, gesturing to his drink cart. It was his favourite part of the loft, and he was not ashamed of it.

Alec gave him a dubious look. “It’s five in the afternoon.”

“Suit yourself,” Magnus shrugged. He tapped his fingers on the back of his couch, a plush green velvet. His rings clicked against each other. “Not that I’m complaining, but what brings you here this fine evening, Alexander?”

Alec frowned a bit at the use of his full name, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes flitted over Magnus, and then over his bookshelf, and then back over Magnus. They stayed just a second too long on his wrist, covered by his silk dress shirt.

Oh? Magnus thought, a thrill running through him.

“I wanted, um,” Alec paused. He looked away. His brow furrowed in distress. Adorable. “Actually, I didn’t really think of an excuse.”

Magnus laughed. “You could just say that you wanted to see me.”

He’d meant for it to ease the tension Alec was clearly feeling, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Alec’s jaw tightened, and he looked out the balcony doors at the city.

So maybe he hadn’t just wanted to see Magnus. He was here for a reason. A reason that had him pretending not to be looking at Magnus’s wrist again. Magnus’s heart tried to pick up its pace, but he stopped it before it got too carried away.

Alec let out a frustrated breath and shook his head, but it was directed at himself. He inspected one of the couches, debating if it was safe to sit on. Magnus threw himself onto one to demonstrate, and Alec gingerly took a seat. Across from Magnus, further away than he’d hoped.

Alec was looking at his hands when he said, “When you did the autopsy, and you came in while I was training. Did you see…?”

“Your mark?” Magnus finished for him. Alec looked immediately relieved, like that was answer enough, which confused him. “No. Why?”

“No reason,” Alec said too quickly. He leaned back on the couch, much less tense. He looked around, obviously trying to change the subject as fast as possible. His eyes lit up a bit when he found something. “Books. You have so many. You read?”

Magnus did not laugh, even though he wanted to, because it might’ve been strange when Alec didn’t know that Magnus had read more pieces of literature from his wrist than from any book in the last two decades. He also did not laugh at the desperate, stilted attempt at small talk, because Magnus was nice and he found the awkwardness endearing.

“I used to,” he offered conversationally. “Not so much anymore. I think I stopped around the… 20’s? 30’s? I had enough stories of my own, and I was growing bored of reading other people’s made-up ones. You?”

Alec hummed thoughtfully. “I used to,” he echoed. “It’s hard to find the time, now.”

Magnus was reminded that the boy across from him had many things on his shoulders, probably more than Magnus knew about. “Would you like to borrow something? I can think of some recommendations I might have.”

“Oh,” said Alec, a bit taken aback, but in a good way. “Yeah, sure. That’d be… That’d be nice.”

Smiling amiably, Magnus set about retrieving the books he was thinking of. He passed them each to Alec, who had followed him into his study where he kept most of them, and gave him a brief synopsis of each. Because he was Magnus, most of the synopses were inaccurate and consisted more of jokes than any valuable information. Alec only smiled, amused.

At six, Alec finally allowed Magnus to make him a drink. They drank them on the balcony. It was winter, so the sun was already starting to set, and it cast an orangey-pink hue over the city.

At eight, Alec’s phone went off, and he made an unhappy face at whatever name was on the screen. He looked at Magnus, stuffing it back in his pocket. His eyes followed the length of Magnus’s arm to the glass he was holding, but stopped just a bit short.

“I should go,” he said. “Institute things to take care of.”

He’d waved a vague hand around to indicate the things that needed doing. It was charming.

Magnus sighed, softly, so that Alec wouldn’t hear. “Of course. You’ll tell me what you think?”

Alec looked confused for a second before he followed Magnus’s gaze to the short stack of books on the coffee table inside. “Oh!” he said. “Right, yeah. I’ll text you?”

“Or you could come over and tell me in person,” Magnus offered, but he also shrugged to indicate that both were equally sound options.

Alec met his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe.”

He looked like he’d gotten a bit lost in space for a second, but then he smiled. He politely handed Magnus his empty glass, retrieved the books, and let Magnus walk him to the door.

Magnus waved him off when the door opened, already beginning to tidy up the mess he’d made while mixing their drinks. He looked up in confusion when he didn’t hear the door shut.

Alec had stopped in the doorway, his hand on the knob. He turned back to Magnus, and his expression was steeled. Magnus raised one questioning eyebrow at him.

“I don’t have one,” Alec said suddenly. He sounded very decisive. “I asked if you’d seen my mark, because I don’t have one. I think my parents probably figured out it wouldn’t lead to someone they approved of, so they got rid of it.”

The door shut behind him, the sound infinitely louder than it should’ve been, and Magnus could do nothing but blink.

Chapter 13

It took Magnus a very long time to process the information he’d been given. It grew dark outside while he sat on his couch. He’d collapsed onto it a while ago, when his knees had gone a bit weak.

Magnus considered the facts.

Alec was his soulmate. He was certain of it, now. The marks matched too well, and he had felt it with his magic.

Alec did not know that he was his soulmate, because Alec didn’t have a soulmark.

Alec didn’t have a soulmark, because someone wretched had wiped it away.

Magnus had been waiting impatiently for Alec to just figure it out already, because surely the mark couldn’t be that difficult to interpret, while Alec had actually not been figuring anything out, because bare skin was quite difficult to interpret.

No, he’s definitely figured something out, Magnus amended.

He replayed the words again. He brought up Alec’s face, and his tone, and how he’d looked when he’d first gotten here, too.

It seemed like this was new information to him, too. And if that was true, then Alec’s bare wrist must have meant something different to him before. Then Alec had spent his whole life thinking there was nothing there because there was noone for him.

Now, Magnus remembered that Izzy had texted him to ask about his mark, and he realized she had been asking because she had been hoping this wasn’t true. Had Alec? Or had he just accepted it and resigned himself to being alone forever while everyone around him found love?

Magnus was beginning to get to know Alec, and he thought the latter was much more likely.

He looked at his mark, now.

Fearless.

Magnus was probably reading too much into it, but it seemed darker than it had the last time he’d seen it, years ago. More certain. Conviction, rather than desperation.

Magnus leaned back until he could look at the chandelier above him. It was a magnificent thing. It wouldn’t be allowed in his loft if it wasn’t.

Very, very slowly, in the manner of dread and things much more awful, something crept up on him. He remembered a woman at his doorstep, the rain, and the circle carved into her neck. The tiny little thing in her arms, the only reason she would have ever put aside her uncompromising beliefs. The memory had been gone for years, buried because it was insignificant to him and his own life.

He reached for it now. It came back, some pieces so vivid he thought he could smell the rain in the air, and some pieces still blurry enough that it felt like a disc in a record player, skipping.

Nothing matters but protecting them, Maryse Lightwood had told him, holding her son in her arms. She had seen his eyes, cat-like. One of a kind.

Magnus did not let himself wonder if that was what had done it. He did not let himself wonder if this was his fault, if she might’ve been oblivious before she met him and left her son’s soul alone. He wouldn’t have been able to close his eyes ever again, if he did.

Magnus did let himself wonder how it had happened. Who had done it? It took magic — the dark, twisted kind — to bury a soul inside itself.

Could it be undone?

Magnus’s eyes cast into his study, where he knew he had a book on soulmagic. He stared at where he thought it might be on the shelf. He twisted his rings around and around.

No. He shook himself. Alec hadn’t asked for that. Alec hadn’t asked for anything. Magnus didn’t know what he wanted, and it wasn’t right to assume that he might.

He didn’t know how much Alec already knew.

Did he know Magnus was his soulmate? Or had he told him for some other reason, because it was a magic kind of curse and Magnus, too, was magic? Because it was a very different kind of thing and Magnus, too, was a very different kind of person? Because Alec’s only friends were his siblings, and his family was too caught up in it already?

Magnus wanted to call Catarina or Ragnor to say all of this out loud, but he couldn’t do that, either. Alec had trusted him, and he couldn’t break that.

So Magnus sat, and he drank, and he avoided looking at any of his spellbooks, and he wondered when it would be appropriate to ask Alec if they could see each other again.

Chapter 14

Alec couldn’t stand to be in the same room as his parents, and his mother was beginning to notice. Maryse was working up to confronting him about it, her frustration rising each time he left the room shortly after she entered it. It was frustration born mostly out of confusion, but also out of the fact that Alec had yet to give them an answer on his hypothetical impending nuptials.

Alec did not want to be confronted, so he avoided the Institute in general as much as he could. Thankfully, Maryse hadn’t been on active duty for pretty much as long as she’d lived in New York, so she kept mundane hours. When it was dark and she was most likely asleep, Alec was free to roam the Institute as much as he wanted. Most of his roaming ended in the training room.

“So,” Jace said. He was cut off briefly by Alec’s fists pummeling the punching bag he held steady against his chest, knocking some of the breath out of him. Jace shifted his feet to brace himself better. “You want to tell me what’s up or am I going to have to guess?”

Alec didn’t look at him or stop pummeling the punching bag. “You’re going to have to guess.”

“Okay.” Jace shrugged. He squinted like he was really assessing his parabatai. “A ravener demon snuck into your room last night and poisoned you, and now you are both suffering from, you know, being poisoned, but also not getting enough sleep. Because of the ravener demon. Am I close?”

Alec snorted. “Yes,” he said, taking a step back. He wiped the sweat from his brow and pushed the hair that was clinging to it off his face. “You got me, Jace. That’s exactly what happened.”

“I knew it,” Jace agreed happily. He patted the side of the punching bag as he stepped up to see Alec without having to crook his head around it. “For real, though. I can feel when something’s wrong, Alec. And lately the parabatai bond’s been… a mess. I let you have your moment the other day and gave you time to sort it out yourself, but now I’m worried, man.”

Alec clenched his jaw, inspecting his knuckles. Bleeding, ripped open where they hadn’t had a chance to heal from yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that. He barely felt it.

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“Okay. Then how about it’s none of your business?”

“Alec,” Jace sighed. He gave Alec a longsuffering look. Alec gave him the same look back, but more surly. They stared each other down for a minute, both too stubborn to look away and admit defeat.

Finally, Alec let out a long breath. He scraped his fingers through his hair, wet from the hour he’d been in here before Jace showed up under the guise of helping him train. He should’ve known. Jace was nowhere near as bad as Izzy, but he, too, was a nosy dick who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Not when it came to Alec.

Alec had been tired of his siblings always having something to say about his personal life years ago, and since then it had only gotten worse. It was only ever getting worse because in their eyes Alec was never getting better. How many times had Izzy made unsubtle comments about cute boys he might like to go out with? How many times had Jace slapped his shoulders and asked if he needed a wingman? How many sad, pitiful looks had they given him and his blank wrist and his nonexistent love life?

Like he could hear what Alec was thinking, Jace glanced around quickly. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice when he said, “Is this about your soulmark thing?”

Your soulmark thing.

That was what Jace had always called it, ever since Alec had fessed up and told him that he didn’t have one. Jace hadn’t believed him at first. Everyone had a soulmark. He’d turned both of Alec’s arms this way and that, like it was hiding in there somewhere, before he’d finally given up and accepted that Alec was telling the truth. Then he’d shown Alec the easel that spread across his entire wrist with a grim expression and admitted that he thought his soulmate might be a mundane. Shadowhunters didn’t have time for such hobbies, unless they were retired. It was doubtful a fourteen year old’s soulmate was in their sixties.

Alec wondered if it was strange for warlocks who had to wait centuries just for theirs to be born. How much life they had lived before them, how much they knew, and how little their soulmate would when they met them. Even if it were someone who shared their immortality, another warlock or a vampire or a seelie, they would have lived a dozen lives before the one they eventually shared with their soulmate.

It sounded lonely.

Did Magnus seem lonely?

Alec pursed his lips and burned the thought from his head, with fire. He shook his head at Jace. “It’s not about ‘my soulmark thing’.”

It was, of course.

Jace eyed him suspiciously. “Are you sure? Because the other day you were asking me about Clary, and I thought that maybe it sounded like you’d found someone you liked, and that maybe you thought they could be the one.”

“I don’t have a soulmate, Jace,” Alec told him, even though he knew now that it was a lie. The lie came off his tongue as easily as breathing, because it had sounded like the truth for so many years now.

“But you found someone?” Jace asked. It was much gentler, quiet and hopeful, hesitant. Even more so when he ventured to add, “Maybe someone like Magnus Bane?”

Alec’s throat closed. He dug his fingers into the knuckles on his other hand. He looked his parabatai dead in the eyes, steadied himself, and said, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Jace looked back for a very long moment. Then, he looked past Alec, out the archway that led into the hub. It had been a quiet night so far, so there were only two people watching the screens for signs of activity.

“Yeah,” Jace sighed eventually. He clasped Alec’s shoulder and gave him a wry smile on his way out. Jace waited until he was halfway out the door to turn around and add, “By the way, Lydia called Magnus in to fix the wards. From the Forsaken attack. I think he’s coming tomorrow.”

That fucking… Alec didn’t finish the thought. He made a frustrated noise, combing his fingers none too gently through his hair, digging them into his scalp. The frustration swelled quickly into anger, overwhelming only because he’d never felt it like this before. It was an all-encompassing anger, extending from his absent soulmark and his parents to Jace and Izzy and his expected marriage and Valentine and Clary and—

And…

Alec went back to his room. He peeled off his clothes, damp with sweat, and splashed water on his face. In the mirror, an unhappy face looked back at him. He pursed his lips and looked away, left the bathroom to sit on the edge of his bed.

He played with the bracelet on his wrist. Leather, worn over the years but still strong. A thin, intricate braid that must’ve taken weeks of work for someone so young, but so determined to make sure it was perfect.

Isabelle had given it to him when she was eight. She’d said that this way, just like everyone else who had a soulmark, if he looked at his wrist he would always know there was someone who loved him unconditionally.

It took a moment for Alec to realize he was crying. A sob ripped out of him before he could stop it. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and bit down hard on his lip. Minutes passed. He breathed deeply, in and out, until it felt like he was getting enough air again.

Then he dropped his hands. He twisted Izzy’s bracelet around his wrist, smoothing his thumb over the familiar pattern.

He glanced at the short stack of books on his desk, one finished and another bookmarked halfway through, and then at his phone on the nightstand, and then at the door. Somewhere, Izzy was probably taking off her makeup or picking out which heels she should slay demons in tomorrow. Jace was probably either with Clary or pretending he didn’t want to be. Magnus was probably… Doing whatever warlocks did. Brewing potions? Casting spells? Mixing drinks?

The thought of being alone when his head was such a mess sucked, but the thought of talking to any of them also sucked, so Alec chose what was most familiar. He turned the light off, kicked off his boots, and went to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling for hours, praying for sleep but knowing it likely wouldn’t come.

Chapter 15

Magnus, though he did fix the Institute’s wards, ended up overstaying his welcome. He was pulled into some intricate plot to smuggle the mortal cup out of the Institute. Alec was notably absent for the entire process of retrieving it from some super special Shadowhunter storage box, but neither Jace nor Isabelle volunteered any information as to his whereabouts. When Magnus tried to ask, Izzy pursed her lips.

“I haven’t seen him all day. He’s probably…” She shared a look with Jace, who didn’t mask his concern in time. Izzy turned back to Magnus with a decisive nod. “Busy. He’s busy.”

Magnus frowned, but he let them be mysterious. “Well then, I suppose I’ll leave you to it. Give Biscuit my best.”

He saw Jace mouth ‘biscuit?’ to Isabelle, who shrugged. She smiled at Magnus. “Thank you so much for your help. We’ve got it from here. We’ll walk you out.”

“Actually,” Magnus interrupted. He looked between the two of them, the duffle bag Izzy was holding with the mortal cup, and the hub full of busy Shadowhunters. Robert Lightwood, who’d accompanied him while he reinforced the wards, was conspiring with a group of people at one of their holographic tables. Alec was still nowhere in sight. He turned a charming smile on the remaining Lightwood children. “I should check the wards again. Make sure everything’s in order. Don’t want any more Forsaken finding their way in.”

Jace shrugged and left, off to bring Clary the mortal cup. Isabelle stuck around for another moment. She watched Jace’s back until it disappeared through the door before she took a deep breath.

“He’s probably on the roof,” Isabelle told Magnus. She held his gaze, unwavering. “He was injured in the Forsaken attack. Maybe you could speed up the healing process for him.”

“Ah,” said Magnus. He rested a hand on her arm, squeezing. “Thank you.”

Isabelle smiled. It was tight and sad. Then she left, and Magnus immediately regretted not asking how to get to the roof. He sighed and braced himself for a long journey navigating the maze that was the Institute.

It did not take as long to find the access to the roof as it had to find the morgue, thank God, but it was still at least fifteen minutes before Magnus could breathe a sigh of relief and stop feeling dizzy at the endless identical hallways. It was only when he found the stairwell up that he paused.

Magnus hadn’t spoken to Alec since he’d paid Magnus that visit. It’d been well over a week. He’d hoped for a text or a call or another impromptu knock at his door, some sign of life, but received none. Magnus had questions and he had worries, and he had things that were both, but he also had no idea what was going on in Alec’s head. Would he want to talk about it? Or had he said what he’d said only to say it, to have it be said, and then to never have to bring it up again?

Magnus didn’t know. He liked to think he was starting to understand Alec, but clearly not well enough. Perhaps the best thing was just to give him space and wait for Alec to come to him. He must’ve known Magnus was coming. If he’d wanted to see him, he would have. The sensible thing was to leave.

Ah, well. Magnus had never been one for sensibility.

Alec was, in fact, on the roof. He was in a t-shirt that couldn’t possibly be warm enough for the windchill up here, but it gave Magnus a nice view of his arms and his shoulders. He had very nice, strong, Shadowhunter muscles, and was using them to draw back the string of his bow and fire arrows into the abyss.

Magnus stopped a few feet away from him. “Did the Institute run out of training dummies?”

Alec started, his fingers slipping on the arrow he’d been about to draw from the quiver. He spun with a frown that only deepened when he saw Magnus. Then he seemed to shake himself. Alec lowered the bow. “It’s quieter up here.”

Magnus hummed in agreement. He played with the insides of his pockets. He would never admit that he had spent twice as long as usual picking out what to wear, but he felt overdressed now. His cashmere, printed suit jacket blocked out most of the wind, but it didn’t compare to Alec’s t-shirt and jeans, both of which he could now see were full of holes.

Magnus’s brow furrowed. “Your arm,” he said. He waved a hand at the bandage around Alec’s left bicep. “May I? Free of charge.”

Alec shifted his jaw. He looked down at his arm. He shook his head, dark hair a moving mess. He made a ‘go ahead’ gesture and extended his arm to Magnus when he stepped forward to take it.

Magnus peeled the bandage back gently. The wound was deep and angry red, made an even angrier red by its contrast to the fresh iratze beside it. Magnus poked the rune. Alec hissed, jerking his arm a bit, and looked at Magnus like he’d been horribly betrayed.

“Sorry,” Magnus murmured. More carefully, he moved his hand over the wound and reached for his magic. It danced into his fingers and twirled into the space between his and Alec’s skin, and then vanished into the wound. The cut stitched itself shut in a blue haze and then smoothed itself over until it was like nothing had ever been there to start with.

Involuntarily, Magnus’s gaze dropped to Alec’s other arm. His wrist was still bare. Magnus shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was still finding it difficult to get used to the idea of someone just… not having a soulmark. This someone in particular.

Alec caught him looking and gently tugged his now healed arm free, pulling Magnus’s attention away. “Thanks.”

Magnus took a half step back and smiled. “My pleasure. As I said, if you ever need anything, I’m here. You could’ve called.”

“Yeah.” Alec shifted uncomfortably, not looking at him. He touched the top of his bow where it rested against the roof’s ledge. “I could’ve. Sorry, I… I didn’t text you. About the books. They were good.”

Magnus continued watching Alec’s face, even though it was turned away from him. “That’s alright. I’m glad you liked them. If you want, you could come over and I could lend you some more.”

Alec met his eyes, then started a bit like he hadn’t expected to. He rubbed his neck where the deflect rune was impossible to miss. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, his frown many meters deeper than when Magnus had first stepped out onto the roof. Then, he shook his head and met Magnus’s eyes again. The smile he offered was small and private. “I’d like that.”

Magnus offered the same kind of smile back. They looked at each other for another long moment while Magnus decided whether this was the time and place to have a real conversation.

It wasn’t. They were in the Institute, for one. Alec’s siblings were doing something that would no doubt get them into monumental trouble any minute now. Magnus needed to send a fire message to the warlock community with an update on the Valentine situation. Alec was bleeding, still, but from his hands. Magnus had felt it when he’d healed his arm, and he could see it now where it dripped between his fingers. He’d been up here a while, no protective gear while he fired arrow after arrow until every pull of the string dug into open wounds.

Magnus let out a breath. “Right, well. Call me? Or just stop by. Whenever you have the time. I’m usually around, and even more so after dark. I can make you a drink that you might not hate this time, and we can just… talk.”

He watched Alec swallow. He watched him inspect the cuts on his hand, poking at them until all of his fingers were bloody. When it didn’t seem like he was going to say anything, Magnus put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and said, “Okay. I’ll be seeing you, then. Take care of yourself, Alexander.”

Magnus only hesitated for a second before he gave Alec’s now healthy arm a squeeze. He turned away immediately after to go back the way he came. Not that he knew what way that was. He should’ve drawn a map.

Alec stopped him before he’d left the roof. “I’m sorry,” he said. He waited for Magnus to turn back around before he repeated it. “I’m sorry. For last time. Just dumping that on you. I know it’s a lot and it doesn’t really have anything to do with you.”

Magnus looked at Alec. Alec dug his bloody nails into his wrist. His bow rattled against the ledge with the wind.

“It does,” Magnus stated. He offered nothing else.

Alec looked at Magnus. Magnus let him, waiting patiently. He had centuries of experience in patience, despite what his friends might think.

Alec looked away, shaking his head. When he kept not looking at Magnus, Magnus accepted that that was that. He nodded, and turned around again to leave. This time, Alec let him.

He had wondered if Alec knew. He had wondered it as soon as he’d met him, and more when he’d realized it for himself, and more still after the last time they’d seen each other.

Alec did know. Magnus was certain of it now. It’d been written all over his face. He’d known when he’d showed up at Magnus’s door, and he knew it now, too.

Magnus knew from personal experience that accepting it was another story.

#shmb2021 #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #my writing

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bamf-alec · 3 years

Text

All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 6-10

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 6

Magnus had considered calling Alec. He’d even gone to the trouble of getting his number off Isabelle, which was really not much trouble at all. She was only too happy to provide.

He didn’t call. In the end, he thought it through a hundred times and decided it was probably best if he gave Alec space to deal with… with everything the incident with the memory demon may have brought up.

It turned out not to matter. Alec’s friends were making a habit of showing up on his doorstep, this time with a dying werewolf in tow. Luke was getting blood all over Magnus’s freshly remade loft, but he decided it would probably be rude to comment on it. With how frantically Clary hovered over him, clasping Luke’s hand and shushing him every time he tried to talk, they probably would’ve ignored Magnus, anyway.

“Was he bitten by an alpha?” Magnus asked, dread building inside him as Luke continued to bleed on his new sofa.

It was the boy Magnus didn’t know who answered, nearly as frantic as Clary, glasses all askew. A very stereotypical nerd, if Magnus had ever seen one. “Yeah, why?”

Well, shit, Magnus thought, as Luke thrashed. What have you gotten yourself into this time, my friend?

Luke did not answer. Luke was too busy growling and baring his teeth, his eyes supernatural green. Magnus pushed him carefully back down where he’d risen off the couch, ignoring Clary and her friend’s wide eyes pinned on him. Then, much less carefully, Magnus went off in seek of the ingredients he’d need to fix this mess.

These kids were proving more trouble than they were worth.

Magnus glanced at his wrist. That was not entirely true.

Most of what he needed, Magnus didn’t have. He cursed to himself, dancing his fingers over the shelves in search of something that might at least buy them more time. Finding what he was looking for, he plucked it off the shelf and went over to shove it between Luke’s pointy teeth.

“What’s happening?” Clary asked. She was looking at Luke, concern painted all over her face. Magnus recalled somewhere in the back of his mind that Luke had helped Jocelyn acclimate to mundane life, and had stayed present in it ever since. For someone who’d already lost her mother, it was understandably upsetting to be losing another one of the only constants she’d had since childhood.

“Random werewolf transformation,” Magnus told her. “It’s a side effect of the poison in the alpha bite.”

Clary didn’t look like the knowledge of what was happening had reassured her whatsoever. Magnus made sure Luke wasn’t going to attack them or fall off the couch, and then left the three of them to see what he could dredge up for a more permanent solution.

It wasn’t much. He tossed a few things into his bowl, grabbed a few more off the shelf in his study, and brought them all out into the living room where Clary and her friend were hugging like the world was ending. With Valentine out on the loose again and Luke dying on Magnus’s couch, maybe it was.

“The bark will stop the transformation for now,” he said to announce his presence. They jumped apart. He surveyed his collection of things. Not enough. “But Luke needs an antidote to stop the poison in his system. And I don’t have all the ingredients here.”

As expected, Clary volunteered to go fetch what he needed, but he waved her off. He’d already sensed a breach in his wards just a moment ago, and he’d let the potential intruder pass through. As expected, Jace rounded the corner, marched through the open door, and said, very gallantly, “I’ll go.”

“Jace,” Magnus greeted magnanimously. Unexpectedly, Jace’s face was a mess. Magnus used his finger to push Jace’s chin into the light and examine the damage. He didn’t think he could deal with healing him, too, while Luke was already on the brink of death. It didn’t look too bad, at least. “What happened to you?”

Jace shrugged him off. Reluctantly, he admitted, “Luke’s car may have found its way into a pole while I was stashing it.” Then, to defend himself from Clary and her friend’s disbelieving expressions, he muttered, “I don’t do mundane driving.”

He and Simon had some kind of ego measuring contest, which Magnus ignored in favour of bringing more things out of his study until the table he was putting them on looked sufficiently cluttered. He bit out a list of ingredients, effectively interrupting their display of masculinity. It started up again only seconds later. Clary looked as impressed as Magnus.

Just as they were about to head out the door, Magnus had a thought. A terrible, stupid thought.

He caught the edge of his soulmark, small and dark, words again. He had been trying not to look at it since it’d changed, feeling like he was breaching parts of Alec’s soul that he wasn’t welcome to, but it was very hard not to when it was, you know, tattooed on his arm.

Time, which sees all things, has found you out.

Magnus hesitated only for a second before he called to Jace, “One more thing. I need Alexander.”

Jace’s frown was very intense. “Why do you need Alec?”

It was a good question, one which Magnus had not prepared for in the moment between having the stupid thought and saying it out loud. He floundered, waving his hands about with purpose so as not to seem like he was floundering. “Virgin shadowhunter energy.”

Alec would kill him, if he ever found out. Magnus didn’t know him very well, but he knew that if he were Alec, he would definitely kill him, too.

The mundane said, “That explains so much.”

Magnus winced. If Alec did kill him, he would probably make it very slow and painful.

Magnus had only a moment to regret it while Jace, flummoxed, tripped over whatever he wanted to say in response. He looked pained. Magnus thought maybe it was because he was thinking about his brother’s virginity, but that turned out not to be the case.

“I can’t,” Jace said finally, pursing his lips. It looked like it had taken everything in him to admit it.

So they weren’t on good terms, then. Magnus didn’t want to be so curious, but he was. Had it been this way since the demon summoning? Was it because Jace knew, now, and he didn’t like what he’d found out? Or was it something else that happened in the time between then and now?

Maybe this was common for them. Brothers fought. Jace seemed like a very easy person to want to fight and also like someone who was very willing to be fought.

Clary stepped up, her hand on Jace’s shoulder. “Just ask, please” she said, imploringly. Then, when Jace didn’t look swayed, “You guys need to talk.”

However begrudging, Jace looked like he would. Magnus felt only slightly bad that he didn’t really need Alec at all, and it was easily soothed by the satisfaction that came with upsetting Jace.

Because sometimes Magnus couldn’t help but to be a dick when there was someone who was a bigger dick than him in the room, he asked, “Trouble in paradise?” and pretended to be surprised.

Jace looked like he wanted to strangle something, and he looked around the room like he might find that very something. He didn’t. With a great huff and some snarky comment to the mundane, he grabbed Clary’s friend by the front of his shirt and dragged him out the door with him. When they were gone, Clary sighed.

Magnus watched her carefully while he measured out the few ingredients he already had. She sank onto the couch across from Luke. She rested her elbow on the armrest and rubbed her forehead. There was still blood on her hands from carrying Luke into the loft.

When there was nothing left to measure, Magnus took the seat beside her.

“He’ll be okay,” he told her, resting a hand on her knee. She gave him a weak smile. Both to distract her and because he was horribly curious, he asked, “What’s wrong with Jace and Alec?”

Clary snorted, barely. “Boys don’t know how to talk like grown ups,” she replied. Then, catching Magnus’s frown, she dropped her hand from her forehead and sighed.

“Alec doesn’t like me,” she said more seriously. “I understand why. I’ve barely been here two seconds and I’ve got the whole Shadowworld up in flames. And Jace and Izzy have to keep breaking the rules to help me, and Alec…”

She paused, like she couldn’t work out what she should say, or if she should say it. Finally, she changed tracks, “Basically, Alec was put in charge of watching me. I got tired of him beating me up with a training stick, so I went to do something more useful and got myself and Simon kidnapped by some werewolves.” She waved a hand at Luke. “Downhill from there. I don’t know. By the time they showed up to rescue us, they didn’t seem to like each other very much. Probably Jace is pissed at Alec for losing me and Alec is pissed at Alec for losing me, but Alec is also pissed at everyone, primarily Jace, for breaking Clave rules. Again. Because of me.”

Clary paused.

“Understandable,” she finished, though she didn’t sound very understanding. She seemed a little pissed herself, in fact, but maybe it was just because her only father figure was dying on the couch across from them.

“You don’t like him, either?” Magnus hesitated to ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Was it bad etiquette to ask after your soulmate’s flaws from someone who hated them, before you really knew them at all? Probably.

Thankfully, Clary shook her head. She leaned forward to play with her hands, elbows resting on her knees. “I thought he was a dick, at first. He was a dick. Is a dick. But I can also see where he’s coming from, now, and I think he mostly has good intentions.” She paused. She turned her hands over, pushing her fingers through the drying blood. “He really loves his family. We have common ground there, at least.”

Clary blinked. She realized she’d probably said too much, and that Magnus had probably just wanted something short and sweet about why the golden boy had looked constipated at the mention of his parabatai. She had given him way more than that.

Magnus didn’t mind. His fingers fluttered over his wrist, wanting to touch, but they didn’t. He wondered if Alec had figured it out by now. And, if he hadn’t, he wondered when he would. When they weren’t strangers anymore? When Alec looked at Magnus’s wrist and saw a reflection of himself, an arrow or a rune or something Magnus didn’t know yet? When he stopped living in denial about his sexuality and was willing to see it?

Magnus caught himself. He was getting ahead of himself, and that last thought had filled him up with dread. How stupid, he had been, to think that it would be so easy not to care when he finally met his soulmate. To just cut the bond and be done with it.

He was beginning to think he wouldn’t need to. Alec and his siblings were different than most shadowhunters, and especially the ones that had come dreadfully to mind the first time he saw a rune on his wrist. If there was anything about Magnus that would give Alec pause, he didn’t think it would be that he was a warlock.

As though sensing he’d floated off into his thoughts, Luke let out a cry that swiftly pulled Magnus back to earth. They rushed to his side. Luke struggled to speak, but was very pressed to do so, grabbing at Clary. They waited. Magnus hesitated. He glanced at the door. He could cast a spell now to slow down the poison, but he didn’t know how long the others would be, and if his magic would last long enough, or if there would be enough left once they got here to finish the job.

He didn’t have a choice. Magnus summoned his magic and pressed it into Luke’s chest, then spread it through the rest of his body.

Luke continued to struggle, and the boys continued to be nowhere in sight. They were running out of time. The spell wore off, and Luke got worse, and Magnus found himself beside him, pouring everything he had into keeping him alive.

Hurry up, he willed Jace and Simon. He wondered if they were taking so long because Alec didn’t want to come. If that was the case, and if Luke died while they waited, Magnus would probably never sleep again.

Maybe the universe heard him. As soon as he’d thought it, someone was holding his shoulder, keeping him upright. Magnus didn’t have to look to know that it was Alec. He could feel it, now, with his magic all around them, wandering because he didn’t have enough energy to keep it focused on Luke. He felt it, this little piece of Alec that was familiar only because it felt like something of Magnus’s.

Alec was looking at him wide-eyed, his hand hovering on his shoulder, not sure what to do next.

Magnus said, “Help me.” He pulled a hand away from Luke to extend it to Alec, who took it before Magnus had even said what it was for. “I need your strength.”

He got it. He could feel it. Angelic power, energy that didn’t belong to him but felt like it could. It flowed through him where his magic usually did, unfamiliar and a little bit thrilling. If he thought about it, he could feel Alec’s pulse in it. He could feel Alec’s feelings, blurry as they were.

As soon as he felt them, he closed the door on them. That was the bond, ready and waiting to click into place. How close he had been to letting it.

Magnus didn’t register the others racing into the loft. He didn’t register them frantically throwing the rest of the potion together. He didn’t register much of anything, until all of a sudden the poison was gone and his magic paused, hovering in the air now that it had nothing to do.

And then Magnus promptly collapsed into Alec’s arms.

Chapter 7

Alec scrubbed vigorously at Magnus’s couch, but Luke’s blood was stubborn. The couch remained red where it should’ve been blue. Alec scrubbed some more.

When he risked looking to see what Magnus was doing, he saw he was mixing a drink. Two drinks, actually. Alec frowned. He stared accusingly at the rag he was using to scrub the couch, because it still wasn’t working. It looked like it was just spreading the red around even more.

“You know I have magic for that, right?” Magnus interjected mildly. He had come over to watch what Alec was doing. Alec wasn’t quite sure what to make of his presence now that there was nothing life-threatening happening.

Alec turned his eyes back to his work. “I think you’ve exerted yourself enough for one day.”

Magnus hummed. Alec thought he might make some kind of dirty joke here, as he had the last time they met, but he didn’t. Instead, Magnus extended one of the drinks he had made towards Alec. “Drink break?”

Alec considered it. It kind of felt like he would be accepting a glass full of poison, or a glass full of other, smaller, sharper bits of glass. It also kind of felt like, if he accepted the drink, then he would have to drink it, and it would be impolite to down it all at once, so he would have to drink it in more than one sip, and that would take a bit of time.

Alec considered the rag. It was white when he started, but now it was red. The stain was not coming out of the couch. He sighed.

Standing from where he’d been kneeling on Magnus’s hardwood floor, Alec took the drink. He eyed it warily. Magnus, smirking a little, snapped his fingers over it. The top layer exploded into a blue cloud, and Alec was even more wary. But, fuck it, he’d made it this far.

“To us,” Magnus said, and clinked his glass with Alec’s. His drink looked much more ordinary. Was he showing off for Alec?

Alec took a sip. It was even more terrible than he’d expected, and he tried to get all of the disgust out onto his face and then off again before Magnus had a chance to notice and be offended. Either he succeeded, or Magnus let him pretend that he had.

Alec hesitated for only a second before he asked the question that had been on his mind since Jace called him, “Why did you ask for me?”

It had been bothering him since Jace had called. Jace had been very mysterious about it, and Alec thought it was probably because it was something embarrassing, but he couldn’t think what that could be. If Magnus had just needed his strength, why had Jace been so weird about it?

“Jace didn’t tell you?” Magnus looked surprised, and then he didn’t. He looked a bit sheepish actually. He waved a hand, stepping away from Alec to look out the window at the city. “Doesn’t matter, it was a lie anyway.”

Alec wanted to be bothered, but instead he was amused. “Are warlocks always this cryptic?”

Magnus laughed. It was a nice sound, breathy and short. “I’m not being cryptic. I’m being coy.”

He turned back to Alec. When Alec only looked at him with raised eyebrows, he sighed and continued, “Let me spell it out for you. I wanted to see you again.”

Alec wasn’t sure what to make of that. He furrowed his brows, regarding Magnus carefully like he could deconstruct him if he only looked hard enough. He couldn’t. Magnus was frustratingly enigmatic. “Why?”

Magnus smiled, small and private, like he knew a secret and was only waiting for Alec to figure it out, too. Before he answered, if he’d even intended to, Alec’s phone went off in his pocket. He pulled it out, inspecting the caller ID.

It was his mother, probably to yell at him about tonight’s events. Or not yell, because Maryse rarely needed to yell, but rather to tell him very sternly and with much disappointment that he’d failed. But Alec didn’t feel much like a failure at the moment, when he had not only helped save Luke and patched things up with both Jace and Clary, but also managed to take another sip of that awful drink, this time without even making a face.

He declined the call. He didn’t think about whatever consequences there would be when he returned to the Institute.

“I thought about calling you,” Magnus confessed, changing the subject. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.”

Alec considered. Had he wanted to hear from him? Alec hadn’t put much thought into Magnus other than that Alec found him attractive and that Magnus had probably been flirting with him, and that those two things rarely applied to the same person. And by rarely, Alec meant never.

Usually the people that flirted with Alec were much more drunk and much more female. Sometimes Alec humoured them while he waited for Jace and Izzy to get tired of dancing, and sometimes he didn’t and left Jace and Izzy to dance by themselves in favour of going home.

Alec didn’t bother wondering how Magnus had his number. It was probably Isabelle. When in doubt, it was usually Isabelle.

They’re setting you up, Isabelle had told him, angry on his behalf. Mom and Dad. They think that if you marry someone respectable, it’ll save the family name.

By ‘respectable’, Isabelle didn’t mean ‘from a good shadowhunter family’, though he was certain that his parents did. Isabelle meant ‘a woman’, and she meant it in a way that said that he should be outraged by this, too. He wasn’t. Alec had given up on anger when it came to this many, many years ago.

It would be someone whose soulmate had died. Who had possibly never even met them before they’d lost them. Or, like him, it would be someone who didn’t have a soulmate, but those were outstandingly rare. Alec had never met or heard of another like him, and he knew the percentage began with a zero and continued with zeros well after the decimal place before ending in a one.

Alec had time. It would take them a while to find someone suitable who fit those criteria, and then longer still to find one that wanted to take the Lightwood name in its current state. And even longer still because Alec had heard this from Isabelle and not from his parents, and it wasn’t happening until they told him it was happening.

Bravely, Alec said, “You could call me now.” Then amended, because he thought he might’ve sounded like an idiot, “I mean later. After I leave. If you wanted.”

Magnus smiled at him, a genuine, surprised little smile like Alec had said something very unexpectedly pleasing. He brought his hand up to toy with his earrings, of which there were many. His sleeve slipped down, just a little.

Alec’s eyes landed on something on Magnus’s wrist. Magnus caught him looking and searched his face. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it. He discreetly lowered his hand and pulled his sleeve back down, the edge of the mark vanishing from sight.

Oh, Alec thought. Of course.

“I should go,” he said, setting his still mostly full glass on Magnus’s silver drink cart. He was already shrugging on his jacket. When he chanced a look at Magnus before he officially left, he thought he looked a bit disappointed and a bit sad, too, but then it all twisted into a brilliant smile as Magnus swept an arm towards the door.

“Of course,” he replied graciously. “I’ll call you.”

Alec paused for a second at that, but then shook it off and left.

Chapter 8

Magnus peered over the body. He could already smell the rot taking hold. He tapped his face shield, which did nothing to block the odour. He’d been peering at it for a while, probing with his magic, before Isabelle pushed aside the plastic covering the doorway and stepped into the morgue, her heels clicking across the Institute floor.

She was not the Lightwood he wanted to see, but she was a sight for sore eyes nonetheless.

“Isabelle,” he greeted warmly as she picked up a face shield of her own. She looked more like a caricature of a mortician than a real one, in her heels and her necklace and her tight dress under her white lab coat, but Magnus had absolutely zero doubts about her ability to take apart a body.

“Magnus,” she replied with equal warmth. She peered over the body with him. “You found your way in alright?”

Magnus had not found his way in alright. First, he had stood in the hub while everyone in the room very inconspicuously stopped what they were doing to stare at him. Then, not wanting to be stared at, he had taken off in the direction he thought the morgue was in with as much purpose as he had ever had. Then, he had ended up very, very lost because the last time Magnus had been to the morgue in the New York Institute was a very, very long time ago. Then, he’d cursed the Lightwoods for calling him in and then seemingly forgetting he was coming, as no one had been there to greet them. Then, he’d been rescued by Clary, who’d tried not to laugh when she found him inspecting a wall just to look like he intended to be there. He’d told her he was checking the wards, but he didn’t think she believed him. Either way, she’d led him to the morgue.

“Yes,” Magnus said witheringly. “I found my way in alright.”

Isabelle flicked her eyes up at him and then back to the body in the manner of someone who knew what they were doing but was pretending they didn’t. She said, with no particular inflection, “Did you run into my brother, by any chance?”

Magnus had not, despite hoping that he would. And if he had discreetly peered through every doorway on his merry little jaunt around the Institute to see if he might catch a glimpse of the elusive eldest Lightwood, that was nobody’s business but his own.

He flicked his eyes up at Isabelle and then back to the body. “No, I did not. Is he around?”

“He’s around,” Isabelle said. She looked disappointed, but she masked it quickly.

They both peered at the body some more. Grabbing a tool off a nearby tray, Magnus gave it an experimental poke. “I hear there’s a new head of the Institute.”

Isabelle’s lips curled up. “Temporary,” she said, with a lot of emphasis. “Temporary head of the Institute.”

Interest piqued, Magnus leaned back from the body to look at her. “Not a fan?”

“She’s perfectly fine,” Isabelle said in a perfectly fine tone of voice.

“But?” Magnus prompted.

Isabelle sighed, abandoning her inspection of the body. “But, she’s not Alec or my parents.”

“Ah.”

They both just stood there, pretending to examine the body while both knowing they should be examining it for real. Eventually, Isabelle sighed and wheeled the tray of tools closer. While she did her thing, Magnus looked at the door.

Isabelle was cracking open the Forsaken’s chest when she told him, “He’s upset about something.”

It took Magnus a moment to realize she was talking about her brother. He raised an eyebrow. Well, if she was volunteering the information, who was Magnus to deny it? It wasn’t being nosey or prying where he shouldn’t if Isabelle was choosing to share.

“About what?”

Isabelle shrugged. “I don’t know. Lydia Branwell? They went to fetch the body and he came back moody.” She paused, reconsidering. “More moody than usual, anyway.”

Magnus frowned. It wasn’t about him, then, at least. He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or disappointed. Part of him had hoped that maybe Alec had started piecing together the soulmark, and part of him had worried that Alec didn’t like the picture it was forming.

Magnus thought back to the last time he’d seen Alec. He wondered if Alec had left because he thought Magnus was his soulmate, or because he thought he wasn’t Magnus’s. Both options were equally discomfiting, but Magnus reminded himself not to put too much thought into it. To care too much. Hadn’t he himself hated the very idea of his soulmate only a month ago?

Magnus had magic to confirm what he’d already suspected. Alec was probably still working things out.

Begrudgingly, Magnus had to admit that fate seemed to know what it was doing, even when Magnus didn’t.

“I could talk to him?” Magnus offered. He could hear how hopeful he sounded, and he winced.

Isabelle looked at him, a sly smirk on her face. She slid her gaze back to the work she was doing. “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she agreed.

It was only after he had left, a short report on what they knew about the Forsaken so far in hand, that he started to think this had been her plan all along, and she had only tricked him into thinking it was his idea. He shook his head, terribly fond of her already.

Unlike his first traipse through the Institute, this time it was much easier to locate Alec. He was in the training room, out of sight of the main hub, surrounded by old wood and sunlight creeping through stained glass windows and an array of weapons that would’ve been alarming had they been literally anywhere else. He was also shirtless, pounding a punching bag like it had personally offended him. He didn’t notice Magnus until he’d placed his ringed fingers and painted nails gently on the side of bag to stop it from swinging.

“Magnus,” Alec said, more like he was confirming his presence than greeting him.

Magnus smiled. “Alec,” he echoed. He flicked the folder out to Alec. “The preliminary autopsy findings.”

Alec took it. He flipped it open, quickly scanned the page, then tossed it onto a nearby bench. His voice was tight. “Thanks. Should’ve given them to Lydia.”

“And yet I’m giving them to you,” Magnus countered. He watched Alec aggressively tug on a hoodie. “It bothers you that the Clave sent her to take over?”

“No,” Alec replied. He looked even more bothered than he had before, though.

Magnus raised an eyebrow. He’d realized too late that Alec had just been shirtless, and therefore his wrist had been bare, and therefore he may have satisfied this itching curiosity to know what was deeply important to himself. Now, the hoodie covered it. He tried to think back, reconstruct the sight in his mind, but he’d been too focused on his runes and his chest and his broad shoulders to pay enough attention to anything else.

Alec scrubbed a hand over his face. Magnus was just considering trying to weasel more out of him when, unprompted, Alec huffed. “Did you know?” he asked, sounding a bit accusatory but also like he was trying not to. He had pinned Magnus with a very intent look that did not falter. “That my parents were in the circle?”

Magnus met his eyes, and did not falter either. “Did you not?”

He hadn’t meant to rub salt in the wound, but it was clear that he had. Alec’s face tightened and then shuttered, anger and whatever else he was feeling disappearing behind the mask. He pulled off the half gloves he was wearing to protect his knuckles, tossing them onto the bench with the autopsy report.

Magnus tried to reverse the damage. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been a shock. I didn’t mean to… Yes, I knew. Everyone who was around back then knew. None of us can forget the things they did.”

Alec was quiet. He contemplated this, testing out his bruised knuckles with his fingers. He must’ve been at it for a while.

“I’m sorry, too,” Alec said eventually. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“But you did,” Magnus replied. He twisted one of his rings around his finger, blue sapphire reflecting the sunlight. “If it makes you feel any better, your parents don’t seem like bad people, anymore. I think they may have nearly made up for their mistakes. And they managed to raise three very good, surprisingly progressive kids, so their views must have changed since then.”

Something pained passed over Alec’s face, and he looked away.

Magnus regretted digging the hole deeper. “Or maybe not.”

“No,” Alec said. He sighed. He struggled to find what he wanted to say, and then struggled again with whether he should say it. Magnus could see the moment he reconsidered and chose the safest route instead. “You’re right. Thanks for the report. And thanks for coming in to help. I know you didn’t have to.”

Magnus smiled. He meant it when he said, “I wanted to. I’m growing quite fond of you Lightwoods. It must be your jovial nature.” He got a half-smile and an almost laugh from Alec at that before he continued, more seriously. “And if you ever need anything, I will always be willing to help. I mean it.”

Alec nodded, but his brows had furrowed a bit, like he was confused. A second later he’d brushed it off to clap Magnus amiably on the shoulder as he passed him to go do whatever dethroned heads of Institutes did nowadays.

Chapter 9

“He has a soulmark,” Alec confessed quietly into his dark bedroom. So quietly, it was only audible because everything else was silent. He didn’t look at Isabelle, who lay beside him, both of them covered in bruises and smelling of ichor but too tired to do anything about it. He’d flicked the light on, at first, but it had only hurt his eyes after so long hunting demons that preferred to come out under cover of darkness. So now they lay on his bed in the dark, Alec’s jacket still on and Izzy’s thrown over his desk chair, where she’d tossed it when she’d come in to check on him.

She was curled on her side, facing him. She said nothing. Isabelle was very good at waiting him out when he was like this. He loved her so much in these moments that it hurt. Always, she knew when he was silent and gone to the world, and caught in the dark because his thoughts felt too real in the light. And always, she would do nothing but be there, with him, whether he chose to share those thoughts or not. Sometimes they’d wake up in the morning, not sure when they’d fallen asleep, and they would both pretend that Alec was perfectly fine.

Alec ran his eyes back and forth along the crack in the wooden beams that he could only just make out, and then only because he knew it was there.

“So, it doesn’t matter,” he concluded.

She inched her hand across the mattress until it rested on his shoulder. It was small, dainty, elegant, her long nails carefully maintained. It was hard to believe she fought demons with it.

“I hope you find him,” he told her. “I really do, Iz. I don’t ever want this for you.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder now, too, and he knew it was because she didn’t want him to know that she was crying. She swallowed hard, and then again, until her voice was steady enough to say, “This doesn’t have to be it for you, Alec. Please don’t lose hope.”

Hope.

Alec had never had hope to begin with, but he couldn’t tell her that. Not even if she already knew. Shadowhunters had soulmarks from birth. If they’d been born before their soulmate, the angelic power rune filled the space on their wrist while they waited. A promise. Their fated was there, waiting, and the angels would deliver them soon.

Alec knew it was different for the others. Warlocks had nothing, no matter how many centuries they had to wait, until the moment their soulmate took their first breath. Mundanes didn’t have them, didn’t even know they existed, so vampires’ marks only showed after they’d turned, and the same was true of werewolves.

But not Shadowhunters. From the moment they were born, there was a guarantee etched onto their wrist. They were destined for one person and one person only, and that person was always another Shadowhunter. Angelic power. There could be nothing else.

Except, there was. Not something else, but the lack of it. Of anything. Alec’s bare wrists had haunted him since he was old enough to understand what that meant.

He felt alien, whenever he saw them. Unmoored. Like there was something deeply broken inside of him, some piece that should’ve been there but wasn’t. His parents had refused to comment on it, except for his mother running her fingers through his hair the first and only time she caught him crying about it. He’d been young, and she’d been present, then. She’d pressed a kiss to the top of his head and told him it was nothing to be ashamed of.

It looked so out of character now. Alec wasn’t completely sure that it had really happened. Some days, it felt like his parents had taught him nothing but shame.

“What was it?” Isabelle asked when she had let him drown in his thoughts for too long. He came back to his bedroom, his fingers tracing his left wrist, soothing a phantom pain. He pulled them away. He had taken too long to answer. Isabelle clarified, “His soulmark.”

Alec sighed. “I didn’t see it. Just the edge of it. Words, I think.”

She hummed. She seemed deep in thought.

“Do you think he’s playing with me?” he asked her in a whisper. He was too ashamed to say it any louder. “That, maybe, this is just fun for him while he waits to meet them?”

He had expected her to vehemently disagree with him, maybe punch his shoulder, but instead she remained silent for a very long pause. Then, pensively, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Alec sighed again. He traced the crack in the ceiling. He had never felt so confused, or so tired.

“Alec,” Isabelle said, very carefully. “Do you think that, maybe, there’s something strange about your soulmark?”

His soulmark. Alec looked at her like she was insane. Of course there was something strange about his soulmark, and that was that he didn’t have one. She chewed her lip, resting her palm on his chest like she was preparing to soothe him.

“I’ve never heard of anyone who doesn’t have anyone,” she said. Her tone suggested that she hoped he would understand what she was getting at, but he didn’t.

She sighed. She rolled onto her back until no part of her was touching him. In the dark, he could make out her playing with her bracelet. “Someone told me about this ritual that makes soulmarks vanish.”

Alec’s breath caught. Or maybe it was knocked out of him. He whipped his head to look at her, the sheets ruffling under him. He clenched his jaw, and then unclenched it.

Hope, she had said. Isabelle had always had it in plenty, and Alec had always been starved of it.

“Isabelle,” he said. It was very firm and very tight, no room for argument. “Don’t. You’re only making it worse.”

He could feel that she wanted to argue, and also that she was hurt, but sometimes Alec didn’t have the energy to humour his siblings’ whims. Sometimes, they were just too much.

Because they were laying on his bed in his dark bedroom, and because she had found him silent and gone to the world, Isabelle didn’t say another word. They lay there for another hour, not speaking, while Isabelle pretended she couldn’t feel his pain like she was wounded, too, and Alec pretended that he was not playing her words out in his head, over and over and over again until they felt like a dream. A nightmare, maybe.

They managed to raise three very good, surprisingly progressive kids, so their views must have changed, Magnus had said of his parents. But Magnus didn’t know Maryse and Robert Lightwood, and he definitely didn’t know Alec. Alec didn’t know how much he and Izzy had talked, but he was pretty sure he didn’t know her well, either.

Alec and his siblings were not progressive because of their parents. They were progressive because of their parents’ absence. Because, in truth, Alec had raised his siblings, and the weight of the shame and otherness he felt had made him go to great lengths not to impart such things on them. Because, in her formative years, Izzy had started to realize that their parents didn’t pay them much attention and, in an effort to change that, had started doing things that were hard to ignore. Wearing sequined dresses out to Downworld clubs, fraternizing more with them than her own kind. Because, in Alec’s formative years, he had watched one of his superiors pound in the face of a werewolf who’d accidentally brushed his shoulder when he passed, and he couldn’t unhear the things that he’d called him.

Alec did not dare to think, Maybe. Not even for a second.

(Maybe I don’t know my parents at all. Maybe Magnus isn’t playing with me. Maybe he had hidden his soulmark because I would’ve recognized the words. Maybe this phantom pain never goes away because something was taken from me.)

(Maybe someone knew my soulmark pointed at a Downworlder and they erased it.)

Chapter 10

“He’s playing hard to get,” Magnus sighed. He lounged across one of his long, velvet chairs, a very strong and very blue drink hanging from his fingertips. “I don’t mean to be impatient.”

Catarina snorted. “Magnus Bane,” she said, with no inflection. “King of patience.”

Magnus shot her a nasty look, but he had to admit that it was true. He was still in his pyjamas, which meant he was still in shortsleeves, which meant they could both spend a considerable amount of time staring at his wrist.

A rune. Wedded union. Magnus did not want to be concerned.

“A bit fast, isn’t it?” Catarina finally said, after two hours of avoiding the elephant in the rune.

Magnus smiled, a ghost of a thing. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. He stared at the lines that criss-crossed over each other and the crescent moon that framed them. Quietly, he admitted, “I don’t think it’s for me. I’m not sure it’s for anyone, really.”

Catarina went very silent. Then, “Maryse and Robert Lightwood. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Denying a soulbond won’t make it go away, and forcing their son into some sham of a marriage to cover it will only do more harm than good.”

Magnus had heard the news from Isabelle, who had, even through text, sounded very worried. She thought Alec might be starting to take it seriously. She thought that Alec might not stand up to their parents. She thought that Magnus might care.

Magnus wondered if she knew. Perhaps she’d seen Alec’s soulmark and figured it out. Maybe it did point clearly to Magnus, after all, but Alec wasn’t ready to accept it, and so he was blind to it.

“I don’t think,” Magnus said softly, “either of us really understand what it means to be a shadowhunter.”

It was a difficult but inevitable truth that Magnus had come to. He’d had to face the fact that he’d painted himself a picture of the Nephilim and stenciled it onto every one of them he met, the same way they did to Downworlders. Magnus felt a bit arrogant for assuming that he understood their culture well enough to be disgusted by it.

And he was. It was oppressive and cold and in the business of building child soldiers. But the disgust had extended to the victims of it, too, because he hadn’t thought there were any.

Magnus only helped exiled Shadowhunters. He had never thought about the ones who lived with that fear inside them, with the knowledge that sometimes just being yourself was enough of a crime to be deruned.

It pained him, now, to remember the first few runes his mark had shown.

“Should I tell him?” Magnus asked.

Catarina immediately shook her head. “God, no. I don’t think a boy who’s seriously considering the nice woman his parents pick out for him is a boy who’s ready to run off into the sunset with his male, warlock soulmate.”

Magnus sighed. “Yes, you’re probably right.”

His phone went off. He fished it out of his pocket. Isabelle. Magnus was starting to think they might be friends.

Magnus.

He waited. Another text came in.

I really hate to do this. Please don’t ever tell Alec. He’ll never trust me again.

He waited again, now with a frown and bated breath.

He said you have a soulmark. He didn’t see what it was. Is it for him?

Magnus blinked. Straight to the point. Isabelle was the kind of person who wouldn’t stab you in the back, but instead go straight through the chest. Direct and efficient, but with very beautiful nails and much grace.

“What?” Catarina asked, leaning forward in her chair. “What’s wrong?”

Magnus glanced at her. He shook his head. “Nothing.” Then, when he still couldn’t figure out how to respond, he amended, “Isabelle. She is… quite something.”

Catarina frowned. “What did she say?”

Magnus smiled. “Nothing,” he replied, and tucked his phone back in his pocket without sending a response. “I don’t think I’ll need to be patient much longer, though.”

If Isabelle knew, then surely Alec would be close behind. It sent a thrill through him. Lately, everytime he closed his eyes, he felt Alec’s hand in his as he cast his magic on Luke. He remembered the feel of him, of the bond, so close but still just out of reach. In Magnus’s dreams, he tried to work out what it would feel like for it to be made whole. It was too difficult to imagine, so he woke restless and unsatisfied, his patience waning.

Magnus reminded himself that they didn’t know each other very well. It felt like they did. Or, maybe, that they were meant to. Once Alec figured it out, they could fix that. He could come to Magnus’s loft without his friends in tow and stay long enough to finish his drink.

Magnus looked at his wrist again. There was so much potential there. So much possibility. Surely, Alec saw it too?

#malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #my writing #shmb2021

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bamf-alec · 3 years

Text

All Things By A Law Divine

Chapters 1-5

Artist: Lady Koalart (who did an absolutely incredible job)

Beta: @jeanboulet

Pairings: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, various background pairings

Alec had found Magnus. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Link to AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33515842/chapters/83272549

** I would really prefer you read it on AO3! **

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Mini Bang 2021: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Chapter 1

A shadowhunter. All these centuries he’d waited, and his soulmate was a shadowhunter.

Magnus stared at the symbol on his wrist. He vaguely recognized it as what he thought was the deflect rune. Only a moment ago, the black ink had bled to cover his skin and replace the words he’d carried for the past year.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

There had been many over the years, but Magnus had grown particularly fond of this one. His soulmate liked Harry Potter. Perhaps a young warlock enthralled by its magic. Or a mundane who loved the impossibility of fantasy. They’d have to, if they were meant for him.

But there was no room left to wonder now. His soulmate was a shadowhunter. Magnus couldn’t believe fate and the universe had conspired against him like this — to give him someone who would surely hate him just as their people always had. Even if his soulmate was less prejudiced than their brothers and sisters in arms, they were unlikely to risk being deruned just to be with a lowly Downworlder.

Maybe nephilim culture would see a drastic shift in ideology the next couple years, and everything would be different by the time they met. Magnus wasn’t very hopeful. In the past decade, the Clave had been given many opportunities to change and had taken precisely none of them. More than likely, the Clave would remain the Clave and Magnus would have to come to terms with the fact that they were a mismatched pair. He’d have to prepare for the day the shadowhunter worked out who he was and came knocking on his door to break the bond.

He ran his thumb over the thick black lines. He didn’t want to be curious about them, knowing it would go nowhere. Yet, he couldn’t help it.

Deflect seemed an odd choice, didn’t it? The soulmarks always reflected something that was deeply important to your soulmate. Deeply tended to vary among people, and especially with age. Magnus’s first soulmark had been a teddy bear, and his second an indiscriminate scribble that had almost definitely been done in crayon.

Still, he didn’t think the deflect rune was important to most Nephilim. Angelic power, stamina, sight — there were many he knew if only because he saw them on every shadowhunter he had the misfortune of meeting. This one was much rarer, and had dwindled even more over the centuries.

In spite of himself, he pulled out one of his books on the Nephilim and flipped through for the section on basic runes. It had to be basic — his soulmate must be around 12 years old. He didn’t think they learned the complex ones until they’d finished training and were sent out to fight.

Deflect - fends off incoming blows. Impractical in battle, but effective when applied to defensive structures. Requires constant reapplication.

Odd choice, Magnus thought, for this to be the first rune important enough to them to show up as a soulmark. Perhaps he had dreams of being an engineer? An architect? He wasn’t sure what needed building in Alicante these days, but he was sure they still had use for such occupations somewhere.

He tried not to ponder it much more than that. Instead, he dove into work head-on, mixing new things together to see what happened. Pretty much everything that needed doing had a spell or a potion that did it, but who knows? Maybe he could invent something spectacular, like the portal all those years ago. Granted, he’d had help. Henry Branwell. A rare, like-minded soul.

Those were simpler times. When shadowhunters and downworlders were at odds but not at war. Before Valentine and his circle had brought the ugly truth to light.

The deflect rune lasted longer than any of the soulmarks before it. So long that he became so accustomed to its presence he no longer noticed it. It was a difficult task to remember to glamour it when he had company, but thankfully his wardrobe consisted of many long sleeves that did the remembering for him.

Nearly two years later, though, he sat in his study with Chairman Meow on his lap and watched the ink twist and flow into a new shape. This one, he knew for sure. Parabatai.

His soulmate had one, then. That was a relief. If their soul was already tied to someone else’s, they wouldn’t feel so empty when he broke the soulbond.

Parabatai stayed for a while, too. Just under a year. He’d thought it would last longer than deflect had, being that it was one of the most important runes in shadowhunter culture, like, ever. Tying your soul to someone else’s wasn’t something done lightly.

But it changed nonetheless.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

They’d gone back to literary quotes, then. It was odd that a shadowhunter so occupied with missions and training — they should be at that age, now (but time was so hard to keep track of when you’d had so much of it) — would take the time to read classic literature. But Magnus was glad for it. For a moment, he felt that magic kind of wonder he’d had looking at his soulmark before it had twisted into a rune.

Magnus kept them all, copied carefully with a spell into a leather-bound notebook he was sure would stand the test of time. The teddy bear, the indiscriminate scribble, even the runes.

It was a good thing that he did because after the first reappearance of his soulmate’s love for literature it changed so often he almost missed it more than once. His soulmark was a chaotic thing, the reflection of a chaotic mind, and Magnus wondered if his soulmate wasn’t deathly ill, holed up in bed with nothing but books for company, loopy from the drugs they were being treated with.

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Then, the accuracy rune. (He’d had to look that one up. He hadn’t even been sure it was a rune. The crayon scribbles of years past came to mind.)

That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!

Then, Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

Then, naturally, the fearless rune. That one stuck the longest - just over two months. Magnus was just beginning to think the mark was settling when it twisted into Capability. He had to look that one up, too.

Next, an arrowhead. He’d seen it before, years ago, when he now assumed they’d first started to specialize their training to a chosen weapon. A month passed where he watched it, wondering why it had regained importance. Perhaps they’d received a special bow as a gift or something. Perhaps they’d killed their first demon with it, though it seemed a little late by shadowhunter standards.

And then— Exiled.

Magnus knew the exiled rune. He’d seen it on some of the only shadowhunters he’d helped happily, those who’d been cast out from everything they’d ever known into an unfriendly world they knew little about. Most who’d done nothing but question their orders or protect the Downworld when the Clave toed the line of the Accords. He’d helped them assimilate to lives as mundanes, as much as was possible when they’d spent their whole lives in the Shadow World.

His chest went tight at the thought that that was his soulmate — lost, alone, wandering, in need of assistance. They couldn’t be more than seventeen now, still so young in the grand scheme of things. Too young to be dealt such an awful blow.

Still, it wasn’t surprising. Perhaps fate hadn’t been toying with him after all. Magnus should have known better — it was so, so rare for soulmates to be wrong. So rare that most people didn’t know the bond could even be broken.

Of course they were meant to be and of course his soulmate wasn’t a shadowhunter. Not anymore. It made perfect sense. Maybe, like others before them, they would come knocking on his door for help, and the bond would snap into place like it was meant to.

And if he wondered what they’d done — Had they saved a vampire wrongly accused of turning mundanes? Had they refused orders to clean out a Downworld hangout? Had they gone willingly, rejecting their culture and everything it stood for? (Had they done something so horrible, so cruel, even the Clave couldn’t let it pass?)

Well, he tried not to. So far, his guesses about his soulmate hadn’t led him anywhere he wanted to be.

When the exile rune twisted into an iratze, Magnus learned his lesson twice over. Maybe they were just longing for their old life, trying to heal the scars where their runes used to be, but Magnus didn’t have the energy to hope. Most likely, the Exile rune had been a fluke. A baseless fear that would pass, as it had. Hadn’t the fearless rune been close behind it? Maybe they’d faced a tribunal for some great crime only to be let off the hook.

He tried to stop caring. He tried to let it go, to let the universe play out as it wanted to.

The universe decided it wanted to play out in the form of Camille, his ex-girlfriend, sitting gingerly on his couch.

“A bit beneath you, isn’t it?” she said, curling her lips up at the grime on the window.

Magnus didn’t grace that with a response. He quite liked this place, actually. It was warehouse-chique, industrial and worn so that he never felt bad when he spilled an acidic potion and it burned a hole right through the floor. He could always clean it up with magic, but every little piece of a place that he replaced made it less authentic. So far this one was mostly untouched, save for some repainting of the walls every few months.

“What do you want?” he asked. He stood at his drink cart, pouring a shot of tequila into his concoction. Then he remembered the woman on his couch and added another two shots, just for good measure.

Camille hummed. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other,” she said in that drawn out, sultry way of hers, “and this is how you greet me?”

Magnus could think of many worse ways to greet her, but he kept them to himself. “What do you want, Camille?”

She rolled her eyes. She lounged on his couch like it was hers, like everything in the room was hers, despite how beneath her she thought it. Camille had always been convinced the world belonged to her. “I just thought you might like to know the little Nephilim are stirring up trouble again. Rumor has it he-who-shall-not-be-named is back.”

A shiver ran down Magnus’s spine at the thought of Valentine Morgenstern, the genocidal maniac who had shrunk the count of living Downworlders down significantly the last time he showed his face. Magnus had thought they were rid of him. The Clave had assured them as much.

Never trust a shadowhunter, he reminded himself. He very consciously did not look at the iratze on his wrist.

“Good to know. Thank you,” he told Camille, and he meant it. History made it difficult to stand on the same side as her, but in this the Downworld would always be united. The enemy of my enemy, and whatnot. Basic survival instincts said there was safety in numbers and if Valentine really was back, they would need all the safety they could get.

Camille plucked herself up off the couch in one fluid move. Her heels pushed her height just a little bit above Magnus’s. Her dress, a red as deep as blood, clung to every one of her curves. It had so many straps in such an intricate pattern that he wondered how long it would take to remove.

Very quickly, he caught himself. They had played this out too many times. He knew how it went.

A smile graced her features, like she knew that he’d been looking. She crossed the room to run her hand down his arm, slow and purposeful. “We should negotiate a union,” she said. Then, when she knew she had his reluctant attention, added, “Between my clan and the warlocks.”

Magnus shook her off. “If we did, we should have the Seelie Queen and whatever alpha’s wrangling the cubs these days there, too. Should we not?”

It wasn’t really a question. Camille’s smile twisted a bit in frustration, darkened, but she let her hand fall away from him. She flipped some of her long hair over her shoulder. “Of course,” she replied, though it was clear she didn’t mean it.

Magnus held his breath while her heels clicked across the floor to the door. Once she’d opened it, she paused, hand on the doorknob. For the first time since he’d come home to find her on his couch, Magnus met her eyes.

She looked pleased. “Stay safe, won’t you?” she said. “If you died, I think I might miss you.”

Magnus frowned after her long after the door had shut. He was sure that she meant it as much as Camille meant anything, but he was also sure that it would be more like missing a favourite toy than an old friend or an ex-lover.

Magnus sighed. He tossed back what was left of his drink and threw himself down on the newly vacated couch. As he stretched his arms out across the back of it, his sleeve rode up. Black ink snaked out from under it, twisting over the tendons in his wrist.

Please, he begged whatever higher powers were at work. Please let them be on the right side of this.

Chapter 2

Sometimes, Alec wished he’d been born an only child.

Like right now, for example. Standing in front of an ominous tomb; the cold, dark night lit only by medieval-looking torches. Three shadowhunters, one redheaded imp, and one annoying mundane walk into a graveyard. It sounded like the start of a bad joke.

“Lighten up, Alec,” Isabelle said, punching him in the arm. Alec’s sister had the peculiar skill of looking like she belonged absolutely anywhere while also standing out extraordinarily. The annoying mundane had clearly noticed, and the urge to punch him for it was alarmingly strong.

Alec gave her a withering look. She rolled her eyes. Simon looked between them like they were pit vipers he hoped he’d never step on. It sent a small thrill through Alec. Yes, he thought, you don’t want to be here. Please, fuck off already.

Simon said something stupid. Isabelle laughed. Alec furrowed his brows at her. She shrugged, grinning. Alec tuned out their conversation until it seemed like they might be leaving.

“Why don’t you show me some of your music?” Isabelle offered, flicking her hair over her shoulder. It had the intended effect. Simon followed the movement carefully, a little bit wide-eyed, and then shook himself. His grin was massive and suggested he’d probably never had the interest of a woman before. He definitely doesn’t have Clary’s, Alec thought, a bit vindictively. Who would even like her?

The two of them left Alec to stare at the ominous tomb and the medieval torches and contemplate why he was even there. It was a fruitless effort, though. Of course Alec was there. Here was where Jace and Izzy were, and so here was where Alec was.

Sometimes, Alec really wished he’d been born an only child.

‘First born’, Izzy had said jokingly to Simon. ‘Heavy is the head that wears the crown’.

She had no idea. And she seemed to enjoy stacking weights on top of it.

As if on cue, Jace and Clary re-emerged from the silent brothers with matching looks of concern. Alec immediately pushed off the wall he was leaning against. “What happened?” he demanded.

They both looked at each other. It bothered Alec more than it should’ve, that they shared something just the two of them, even if they were about to share it with him, too.

Jace barely met his eyes when he confessed, “Valentine is Clary’s father.”

Valentine. Alec took a moment to process. Valentine was like a bedtime story told to them as children, the big evil monster hiding under the bed. But more and more Valentine was stepping off the pages of the storybook and into the real world, where he was much more dangerous. More and more, it was beginning to feel like a set-up — like they were pawns being put into place — with Clary at the heart of it all.

He said as much.

Clary, close to tears, bit back at him. “You think I planned for my mom to get kidnapped? Or for Dot to be taken? Or to have a giant sword dangled over my head and find out that my father’s one of the most dangerous people in the world? Really,” she snapped. Jace put a hand on her back to comfort her, and it only heightened the dread climbing through Alec’s stomach.

He didn’t have a chance to respond before she was distracted. Her head turned frantically. She sounded panicked when she asked, “Where’s Simon?”

Alec was about to tell her that he was fine, he was with Isabelle, when Isabelle showed up sans Simon.

Fuck, Alec thought, as the others took off back to the van to hunt for him. This day keeps getting better.

Fuck, he thought again, when a vampire dangled the annoying mundane out above them, upside down. He thought it a little more emphatically when said vampire disappeared, mundane in tow.

Clary didn’t look at any of them as she stormed into the van, slamming the door behind her. Isabelle glanced at her brothers, then followed her into the backseat. Through the window, Alec could see her hand on Clary’s shoulder. She was probably saying something comforting.

Alec scrubbed a hand down his face. He looked back up at where Simon had been, now nothing but dark sky and firelight overhead.

“Stop it,” Jace said from beside him. Alec met his pointed gaze.

“Stop what?”

Instead of answering, Jace said, “It’s not her fault. None of this is her fault.”

Alec stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “That doesn’t mean we need to be involved.”

For a long moment, Jace only looked at him, like he was assessing him. It was the same look he’d worn before carving the parabatai rune into Alec’s ribs. The same look he’d worn the first night Alec came into his room to help him through a nightmare. ‘Can I trust you?’ it asked, because no matter how many times someone proved it, Jace was never sure.

Then, slowly, Jace rolled up his sleeve to show Alec his wrist.

At first, Alec didn’t know what he was looking at. Or, more accurately, what he was looking for. There was Jace’s soulmark, as it always was. Only, for most of the time that Alec had been privy to it, it’d been an artist’s palette. Now, it was a cup, splotchy and abstract, like whoever had drawn it wasn’t quite sure what it looked like.

Alec didn’t want to say it. To be the one to give it voice. So he waited for Jace to do it while hoping that he wouldn’t.

“It’s her,” Jace told him. Alec looked away, trying to school his expression as he always had. For good measure, Jace added, “I’m helping her. I have to. You can walk away if you want, but you’re my parabatai and she’s… She should be important to you, too.”

Because she’s important to me, he didn’t say. Because they were parabatai. Because Alec and Jace shared a soul, and Jace’s piece of it was meant for Clary.

Alec closed his eyes. It was starting to rain, or it had been raining for a while and he hadn’t noticed it before.

“Yeah,” he said, because what else was there but this inevitability? “Okay.”

Chapter 3

There were few things Magnus regretted. He was too old for it to be any other way. Centuries had taught him not to hold onto things, especially the ones that hurt, and also that most wrongs would eventually find a way to be righted.

But Clarissa Fairchild was definitely something he regretted. If he didn’t regret wiping her memories, over and over as they resurfaced again and again throughout her childhood, then he regretted feeding them to a memory demon when it became clear they would keep coming back to her otherwise. Of course she would come looking for them one day. And memory demons were tricky, tempestuous beasts. Ever hungry, it made snatching their food back from them a difficult endeavor.

He covered it up well, the remorse. Even when Clary Fairchild stood in front of him, angry and accusatory. Magnus inspected the necklace her golden friend had handed over. The club’s strobelights bounced off it, a rainbow of colours.

Of course, that was when everything went to shit. An arrow whizzed past him, narrowly missing his chest, and embedded itself in the man who’d been sneaking up behind him. The circle rune stood out on his neck. Magnus frowned at it.

The owner of the arrow, who Magnus now realized wasn’t either of the two shadowhunters he’d been talking with (which meant they’d brought backup — typical shadowhunters, always ready for the slimy Downworlder to turn on them and start a fight), descended the stairs and pushed through the buzzing crowd. It parted like the red sea, no one quite sure what to make of the body on the floor.

The shadowhunter crouched to retrieve the seraph blade from beside the body, flipping it over in practiced hands. Magnus watched for as long as he dared, entranced, forgetting for a moment the portal open behind him.

Dark hair and strong arms, tall, a well-crafted bow hanging off his shoulder. That was all Magnus caught before he remembered himself and that he was supposed to be escaping.

“I’ll be going, then,” Magnus declared, with one last look at Clary. She didn’t look like she had any intentions of coming with him, so he went through the portal alone.

It was not an escape. On the other side of the portal was not the safe haven of warlocks he’d left, but a graveyard of bodies. A seraph blade pressed to his neck, wielded by someone behind him.

For one awful moment, Magnus was paralyzed. How many years had it been since he’d seen this last? Since he’d lost friends, failed his people, stood in a room full of innocents, slaughtered by radicalists. However long it’d been, it wasn’t long enough.

But grief wouldn’t do him any good, so he turned it into careful anger. The blade spiraled out of the woman’s hand and Magnus stepped cleanly out of her grasp. He pressed his fingers to her forehead, blue magic dancing across her skin, and she dropped to the ground like a ragdoll.

He reached out with his magic through the warehouse, looking for survivors. There were fewer than he’d hoped. The woman hadn’t been the only one of Valentine’s goons that was looking for them. Interestingly, though, he also felt a somewhat familiar presence stepping past what was left of his failed wards. Four little shadowhunters, and one of them was Clary.

Interesting, he thought. He didn’t have any time to elaborate on that thought, though, because another man had just come through the door and was readying his blade. Magnus threw the bookshelf at him. It was disappointingly useless. The man stepped cleanly over it, unscathed.

“Your magic’s strong, Warlock,” he spat, circling Magnus. “Much stronger than that horned weakling I killed this morning.”

“Ellios,” Magnus breathed. His magic flickered. No, he thought, clinging to anger. Now is not the time for grief.

The man spat more poison at him, and Magnus tried to ignore his words. Ellios had sold them out, but Magnus couldn’t blame him. Torture tended to be an effective tool for drawing out confessions. He thought of his warlock mark, those lovely horns, probably stuffed in one of these Nephilim’s bags like a prized trophy to be taken back and hung on their wall. It was a disturbing thought that only served to rile Magnus up even more. He could sense the magic in his palms growing from a wounding blow to something much more dangerous.

Suddenly, an arrow sailed past him into the man’s legs, and he fell.

Magnus didn’t wait. He launched the magic at him, knocking him across the useless bookshelf. Magnus wrung out his hands. He looked at the arrow, the same as in the club. Something itched under his skin, like a secret waiting to get out.

“Well done,” said a voice from behind him.

Thoughtlessly, Magnus joked, “More like medium rare.”

And then he registered that yes, in fact, he was in a room with a shadowhunter, and yes, in fact, those were two shadowhunter bodies at his feet along with his people. Animals, he thought, looking at the blood on one of his friends’ shirts where their wings had been sawed off. With heat coiling through his stomach, Magnus glamoured his cat eyes back to something human.

He turned.

Oh, said a quiet part of him.

Tall, dark, and handsome looked back at Magnus, frowning a little. He hitched his quiver back onto his shoulder where it’d started slipping off. Arrows, Magnus noted quietly to himself, filing it away for later. On his neck, the deflect rune was stark and black and impossible to miss. Magnus filed that away for later, too.

Magnus composed himself, fixing the lapels of his suit. Thank god he’d put as much effort as he had into getting ready before he’d left. He knew he looked good. In fact, he thought he probably looked quite badass, too, after blasting a man halfway across the room.

“I’m Magnus Bane,” he offered, coming to meet him in the doorway. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

Tall, dark, and handsome blinked, and then smiled, the kind of awkward, surprised one that only came when you hadn’t intended it to. “Alec,” he replied. He hadn’t looked away from Magnus’s eyes. He seemed a bit entranced.

Magnus tried not to preen, but it was difficult. Alec, his name, niggled somewhere in the back of his mind, but now didn’t seem like the time to go looking for it. He smiled back at Alec, amused.

“Perhaps we should rejoin the party?” he asked, when it was clear Alec wasn’t going to say anything else. He waved a hand out the door.

“Right,” Alec nodded. Then he nodded again, to himself this time, and led the way.

Magnus watched him carefully. It was hard not to. He catalogued Alec’s easy, lithe (shadowhunter) movements. The edge of the deflect rune he could see from behind. His bow and quiver, before they were glamoured. His wrist—

Oh, Magnus thought. Was there nothing there? He couldn’t be sure. He must’ve missed it.

Alec had started rolling down his pushed up sleeves when they’d met up with the others. Magnus tried to get another look at it while they vacated the survivors, and then while Alec’s friends took up positions around what used to be his living room.

Discreetly, he checked his own wrist. It hadn’t changed from this morning, same as it’d been for almost a week now. Parabatai.

Magnus looked at Alec. He stood with his golden-haired friend, a stern, unhappy look on his face while they whispered emphatically back and forth. Jace was rolling his eyes. He clearly didn’t think Alec’s concerns were justified, whatever they were. Jace waved discreetly with one hand towards the other, then looked around to make sure no one else had seen. His eyes landed on Clary. Alec’s followed the path from Jace’s wrist to Clary.

Then, Alec’s eyes caught Magnus behind Clary, and he almost smiled before he frowned. He looked away, fidgeting with the thin leather bracelet on his wrist. His right wrist, Magnus realized with disappointment. Magnus’s mark was on his right wrist, which meant his soulmate’s would be on their left. Alec’s left was still out of sight.

Stop it, he chided himself. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Focus on the task at hand.

Magnus had already cleared out the bodies and moved the apartment. He appraised his furniture. Most of it had survived intact, but all of it felt wrong now.

He sighed. “Ah, it’s inevitable,” Magnus said to no one in particular. “After every move, I get the itch to redecorate.” Then, at Alec, righting a table with his foot for dramatic effect, “Normally, I love a dirty lair, but this one’s just sloppy.”

It didn’t have the desired effect, though Magnus wasn’t sure himself what effect he’d desired. Alec looked at him like he was crazy, and then went back to pretending his bow was very interesting. All well. Magnus turned his attention to Isabelle instead. She looked glorious in a sparkling silver dress. He wondered if taking down circle members in six inch heels was something they taught at the academy, or if she’d worked that out for herself.

He stepped towards her, fetching the necklace they’d given him from out of his pocket. “I believe in payment for services rendered,” Magnus said, holding it up. It swung like a pendulum between them. Earnestly, he continued, “Thank you for defending the warlocks.”

Isabelle shook her head, part of a smile on her face. She had the kind of smile that made one feel like they shared a secret, or an inside joke, that no one else in the room was privy to. “I couldn’t,” she said.

He waved her off, already moving behind her to do up the necklace’s clasp. “Oh, but you could. And you should. The Lightwoods have been wearing this for years.” Magnus could feel the others watching him, namely the two boys, so he leaned in and lowered his voice when he added, “Besides, this would look silly on your brother.”

She laughed. Her brothers frowned at her, Alec’s hand going up to his quiver like he thought he might need to defend her honour. Ridiculous, really, but also oddly charming.

Magnus pulled his gaze away from Alec. Don’t, he told himself. Don’t do it. It doesn’t matter. Focus.

He couldn’t stop himself.

“About Alec,” he whispered to Isabelle, pulling her hair through where it was caught in the necklace. “Is he more of a flower or cologne man?”

Isabelle snorted but, disappointingly, didn’t give him an answer. He couldn’t ask again, though, because Clary had drawn all their attention back to the most pressing matter at hand. Namely, her missing memories. Ironic that Magnus had forgotten why she was here.

Tricky, tempestuous beasts, memory demons were. He warned them as such, but Clary was as stubborn as her mother and it seemed like the others were along for the ride, no matter where it took them.

Magnus shrugged. If they had a death wish, so be it. It was unlikely the demon would go for him, anyway. Biting the hand that feeds you, and such.

“Pretty boy,” Magnus said, pleased with himself before even seeing the reaction. “Get your team ready.”

Jace stepped forward, ever the golden boy. Magnus scoffed at him. He put a hand on his chest to stop him. “Not you. You,” he corrected, pointing at Alec. Alec stared at him, then blinked, then looked behind him like he expected Magnus to be pointing at someone else. Jace gave him a very confused look, and Alec gave him a very confused look back.

Satisfied, Magnus left them to their confusion. Then he left Clary with some chalk and a book at least two hundred years older than her to copy the symbol for the summoning from. He could feel Jace’s eyes on him the entire time like he thought Magnus might kidnap Clary if she was out of sight. Magnus resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

They traded places. Jace went into the room cleared out just for this, his hand touching the small of Clary’s back while he spoke to her. Magnus watched them with mild interest, but then got bored when it was clear they were just doing what he��d asked to prepare.

That left Magnus and two Lightwoods in the living room, their soundtrack Clary’s scream as Jace carved a rune into her shoulder. It was an impressive scream. Glass-shattering, Magnus thought, though all of his glasses were shattered already. He eyed his drink cart with despair.

“Angel,” Alec muttered to no one in particular, though he was leaning towards his sister. “That’s dramatic.”

Isabelle slapped his shoulder none too gently. She gave him a hard look. Alec threw his hands up just a bit to demonstrate that he thought the punishment was unwarranted.

Magnus almost felt bad broaching the bubble of silent communication they had going on. It was quite amusing, and also a small insight into their character. But he was curious. “Do first runes always hurt that bad?”

“No,” said Alec, at the same time that Isabelle said, “Pretty much.”

They looked at each other like they were fighting just with their eyes. Alec won, or Isabelle decided it wasn’t worth her time. “No,” Alec repeated. “They don’t. Clary’s just…”

He didn’t finish. It was clear whatever word came next wasn’t going to be a nice one, and that he’d stopped himself for the sake of not looking like an ass. Or maybe just avoiding another bruise from his sister. Or, maybe, because Jace had just reemerged from the summoning room.

Jace looked between the three of them with a frown. Alec didn’t meet his eyes, investigating a nearby wall, and Isabelle flipped her hair over her shoulders like she had not participated in whatever conversation had just happened and was therefore bored. Jace shook his head. He turned to Magnus, “She’s good. She’s drawing the thing.”

“The summoning circle,” Magnus offered, sitting on one of his couches. It left him much shorter than everyone else in the room, but his presence was large enough that he seemed much bigger than them. He had carefully arranged his legs and arms to make sure of it.

“Right,” Jace agreed, dismissive. He turned to his siblings. He stared at Alec until Alec looked back at him. “You’re staying?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

Alec’s expression went a little bit stormy before it cleared, so quickly Magnus didn’t think anyone else had caught it. He let out a breath like he was offended. When that didn’t satisfy Jace, he rolled his eyes. “I’m staying.”

Jace clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man.”

“What are brothers for,” Alec said, but he sounded a little bitter about it.

Chapter 4

The summoning went terribly.

Jace, who had nearly been eaten alive, rubbed the bruises on his stomach. Alec, who was mostly responsible for the being eaten alive, wouldn’t look at any of them. Clary, who had stopped the being eaten alive, hovered by Jace as though he might collapse any minute and need someone to catch him. Isabelle, unsure which brother needed her more and a neutral party to the being eaten alive situation, looked back and forth between them with a concerned frown.

Magnus was rolling down his sleeves. He’d rolled them up before the ritual and couldn’t be bothered to keep up on the glamour on his wrist with his magic so depleted now. It was still the parabatai rune, but it looked a little different now. It took Magnus a long moment to work out what was wrong, but once he did, he couldn’t stop seeing it until it’d disappeared under the silk fabric of his shirt.

It was moving. Like it was trying to change, but it hadn’t quite gotten there yet. It faded in some places, twisted in others, then became dark again and twisted back. Slowly, one micro shift at a time.

Magnus loved coincidences, but this didn’t feel like one.

He saw Alec, standing apart from the others, watching the place Jace had collapsed after being ripped from the grasp of the memory demon. There was nothing on his face, but it was the practiced kind of nothing.

Once, when Magnus had treated a young Shadowhunter’s wounds, he’d caught her staring up at the ceiling like everything was her fault and told her not to be so hard on herself.

“But it’s my fault,” she’d said, her fingers dancing over her bandaged side. “I was distracted. I was worried about my mom, of all things. She was supposed to portal in from Idris today.”

Magnus had frowned. He’d rested his hand over hers to stop her from pressing it too hard into her healing wounds. “That sounds perfectly normal to me,” he’d reassured her. “It happens to the best of us.”

“No,” she’d said, very firmly and with perfect certainty. “Not to us. We’re soldiers. Emotions get in the way. We’re supposed to block them all out.” She stared directly up at the light on the ceiling. It must have been hurting her eyes, but she didn’t look away. To herself, she murmured, “I’ll get better at it.”

Magnus had felt nothing but pity for her, this young girl who should’ve been worrying about crushes and friends and what she wanted to do when she grew up. He had also felt foreign, an intruder in the Institute even more than when he’d first entered. Shadowhunters, he’d thought to himself. He would never understand them.

Now, Magnus thought it was a very lonely way to live if you always had to shut your feelings out. If you treated them like traitors, or ticking bombs, something to be carefully dismantled and contained before they caused any damage.

They were standing in the aftermath of a bomb that was uncontainable, but Alec was trying to put it back together and disarm it nonetheless.

Isabelle had finally chosen Jace and was distracted applying an iratze to his arm while Clary watched, so Magnus thought it safe to approach him. Alec didn’t look at him. He could feel him very consciously not looking at him, and the amount of effort that it took.

Magnus thought about what to say. He played with the hem of his sleeve.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Alec,” he settled on. His voice was quiet and sympathetic, something he’d never anticipated directing at a shadowhunter, least of all a Lightwood.

Alec’s jaw clenched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Magnus sighed. Maybe he’d done more harm than good. He patted Alec’s shoulder, and only afterwards realized it was the first time he’d touched him outside of the ritual. Alec flinched, but covered it well.

“You will,” Magnus told him.

Alec continued to not look at him the rest of the time that they were there, while Jace finally caught his breath enough to be able to make it back to the Institute. Magnus had offered a portal, but Alec’s expression had gone very tight, so he’d retracted the offer.

And then they were gone.

It was just Magnus, his sloppy apartment, the intricate pentagram on the floor, and his drink cart full of smashed glass. He sighed. He considered fixing everything now, but he was quite tired. Instead, he flicked his hand at just the drink cart, stitching glassware back together and summoning ingredients from somewhere they wouldn’t be missed.

Magnus fixed himself a drink with one shot of tequila. Then he remembered the day he’d had and he added three more shots. He collapsed onto one of his velvet lounge chairs. It was soft. It was also nearly ripped in half.

Chairman Meow, who had been conspicuously absent throughout the whole ordeal, emerged as though from thin air. His white hair was still perfectly white and perfectly groomed, not a scratch on him. Magnus laughed, lifting the cat to his lap, and smoothed his hands through the fur.

“Indestructible little devil, aren’t you?” he cooed at him affectionately. “Perhaps I will throw you a birthday party, after all. God knows I could use the pick me up.”

Magnus sighed. He took in the state of his loft. So many holes that would need patching, and by the end it would be made more of magic than anything else. He could move, perhaps. And not just magicking the entire loft into another building. He could move into another space entirely. A house, maybe. A mansion? He had the money for it.

He rolled up his sleeve to look at his soulmark. It was still the parabatai rune, but it was nearly completely faded now.

He wondered what Alec was thinking. He wondered if Alec would come back. He wondered if he cared. He wondered if he should care. He wondered if Alec knew, or if his marks lacked enough clues. Magnus knew. He was nearly certain.

Magnus wondered what mark a soulmate of his would have. What did he love? The Chairman, purring on his lap. His apartment, but it was ruined now. Camille, a long time ago. His people. The Downworld.

His box of loved ones lost that he couldn’t decide if he wanted to cling to or forget. Which would hurt less? All these centuries, and Magnus still hadn’t figured out the answer.

A shadowhunter, Magnus thought for what must have been the hundredth time in the last two decades. Why, of all things, a shadowhunter?

The Chairman grumbled in his lap like he was chiding him. Magnus felt only a little guilty. He smiled, scratching The Chairman’s chin, before he let himself drift back into his head.

He tried to stitch what he knew about his soulmate from the marks into the Alec he met today. He was almost certain they were one and the same, and almost was quite enough.

The arrowheads were obvious, and the deflect rune clearly held some significance if he’d painted it so big and so prominent on his neck.

Setting Chairman Meow on the sofa, Magnus made his way over to the bookshelf he’d thrown earlier. It took some poking, but eventually he found what he was looking for. The Chairman returned to his lap the moment he sat back down. He removed the placekeeper from the notebook, running his fingers down the page he’d most recently filled with his soulmark.

The first time he had seen the parabatai rune, he had thought to himself, thank God. Parabatai’s were like soulmates, only the bond went even deeper and they got to choose who was at the other end. If his soulmate had one of those, Magnus had thought, then he wouldn’t need Magnus. He’d thought that he could break the bond and leave him to his shadowhunter ways while Magnus carried on with his life as he had in the centuries before he’d ever had a soulmark.

Magnus felt a bit ashamed of it now, though he couldn’t have known.

He traced the rune, and then closed the book. It felt wrong to look through it now, like he was invading Alec’s privacy. All these little bits of Alec’s soul. How many of them were secrets? How many of them were scars?

Magnus sighed. He magicked the book into the ether for safekeeping.

The Chairman looked at him with narrowed, judgemental eyes.

I know, he thought, petting the judgement away. What a mess.

Chapter 5

Alec was beginning to feel like soulmates were everywhere he looked.

Over there, Jace watching Clary and Clary watching Jace and neither of them admitting what they both knew. Over here, his mother’s tight face as she tugged the band that covered her right wrist back into place. And now, Isabelle sighing dreamily as she tossed herself elegantly onto his bed.

“Whatever you’re going to say,” Alec greeted her, not looking up from his book. “Don’t.”

Izzy pouted up at him. She wiggled herself back a few inches so she could rest her head on his leg. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I don’t care.”

She huffed. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Alec had been waking up on the wrong side of the bed all week, since they’d returned from Magnus’s, and maybe a few weeks before that since Clary had arrived, but he didn’t say this. He poked the top of her head.

“Go away.”

“Alec,” she whined, and then pretended he hadn’t said anything at all. She grinned up at him and waited for him to ask her what she was so excited about. When he didn’t, she volunteered it anyway. “Did Jace tell you?”

Of course, Alec thought, but he stared at the middle of his page. His hand tightened on the cover of the book and he relaxed it before he snapped the cardboard. “Tell me what?”

Izzy smiled. “Clary’s his soulmate.” She waited for a reaction. When none came, she sighed. “He told you.”

“He told me,” Alec confirmed. He turned the page even though he hadn’t read it.

Izzy hummed. She pushed herself up to sit against the headboard with him, her knees against his thigh. From the corner of his eye, he could see her touching her wrist where he knew her soulmark would be.

How different, the three of them were. Jace, who kept his mark so carefully private, who had only showed it to Alec after they became parabatai and Isabelle another year after that. Isabelle, who flaunted hers so openly, who picked bracelets that would draw attention to it in case the person looking was her soulmate. And Alec, who…

He shook it away. Because he loved Isabelle more than he begrudged Clary, he set his book aside and pulled her to him, smoothing her hair down the side of her head. “You’ll find him too, Iz,” he murmured into the top of her head. She leaned it firmly against his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his middle.

Then, as though sensing that what she was about to say was going to make him pull away from her, Isabelle tightened her grip. “So, Magnus,” was all she had to say.

Alec tried to pull away. He removed his arm from around her, but she was holding too tightly to his stomach, even when he tried to push it down between them to peel her off. His arm hung uselessly in the air for a second before he gave up and put it back around her shoulders.

Even if he couldn’t see her, he could feel Isabelle rolling her eyes.

“He likes you,” she declared. She twisted in his grip enough to turn her head up and look him in the eyes. “He seems nice.”

“Nice,” Alec scoffed. He retrieved his book. Isabelle grabbed it. They fought for control of it for a second before it became clear neither was going to win. It hung between them, Isabelle’s hand on one side and Alec’s on the other.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Alec.”

“Isabelle.”

Izzy wrinkled her nose. He rarely called her by her full name, unless she was in trouble. “Why are you being like this? After all that, can’t you just admit it already and ask out the cute boy who likes you?”

By ‘all that’, she meant the memory demon. And by ‘it’ she meant the fact that he was gay. And by ‘cute boy’ she meant Magnus Bane, warlock extraordinaire and unsubtle flirt.

Alec clenched his jaw and ground his teeth until his thoughts focused. He shook his head, looking away from her and instead at the wall across the room. Grey. He’d chosen it. Simple, practical. Lacking any particular sentiment.

Petulantly, he said, “No,” and then, when she kept her narrowed eyes on him, tiredly, “No.”

Isabelle sighed. They’d had this conversation more times than he could count, always in this roundabout way where neither said the words that would really call out the elephant in the room.

I’m gay, Alec tested, but it didn’t sound right. It sounded as dangerous as it always had. Nothing had changed.

He looked at his arm on Isabelle’s shoulder. His wrist was blank, just bare skin where all around it were runes or the faded scars where runes used to be. He looked at his hand on the book, which now rested in his lap. This wrist was blank, too.

“Please stop,” he murmured and, only because he sounded so pathetic, Izzy did.

His sister pressed her head back to his shoulder and squeezed his stomach. She kicked one leg over his so that everything around him was just her. He buried his face in her hair, which smelled like citrus and flowers, her new shampoo. He let go of the book to bring his other around her, too, and he held her as tight as he possibly could.

‘You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

He could hear it, as clearly as he had when Magnus had said it. He could hear it in Izzy’s voice, too, from the countless times she’d said the same.

He had so much to be ashamed of, and only a fraction of it was Jace.

#shmb2021 #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #my writing

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