The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses #1)(82)
“The Great Poison is a failed prophet of false teachings! Before you, my brothers and sisters, I shall strike him down and assume my place as your rightful leader, and then I will offer this unworthy fool as a sacrifice to my father. Asmodeus will rise in glory. The daughter of Asmodeus will lead you!”
The crowd stirred from their eerie silence. The cultists began to chant. “Cursed Daughter. Cursed Daughter.”
Magnus was dragged onto their little stage. Through the haze of pain and disorientation, he noticed that the cultists were careful not to trample the lines of moonflowers that circled and ran underneath the wooden platform.
Bernard had just completed salting a pentagram into the center of the stage. Rough hands grabbed Magnus by the elbow and threw him into the pentagram. Magnus got himself up into a sitting position, legs crossed under him, and tried to look casual. Bernard began to struggle through the incantation that would seal the pentagram.
After a little while, Magnus yawned loudly. “Need any help?”
Bernard’s face flushed. “Be quiet, Great Poison. I know what I’m doing.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t be here. Trust me.”
This was going to be an insultingly weak and fragile pentagram. If Magnus had his magic, he could’ve dispelled it with a breath.
Bernard finished his spell and scurried backward as showers of sparks flew up from each point of the pentagram. Magnus waved his arms around to keep the embers away, and after a moment, a few of the cultists realized that the fire could be a problem given the wooden stage, and began waving their arms and their hats at the sparks to disperse them.
The ritual was beginning in earnest.
Shinyun held out her hand, and one of the cultists put her samgakdo in it. She strode forward, the blade pointed at Magnus’s throat. She jerked her hand, nicking him just below the Adam’s apple, a shallow cut and a twinge of pain. Magnus looked down and saw crimson dripping onto his white robes.
“Do you have any club soda?” he said to Shinyun. “These stains are going to set unless we get to them quickly.”
“You will be blotted out,” said Shinyun. “You will be forgotten. First, you will know what you have lost. Time to remember, Great Poison.”
Shinyun began her own incantation. The crowd resumed chanting “Cursed Daughter,” more quietly than before. Black clouds gathered above the amphitheater, and lightning cracked around the villa, once, twice, three times. The clouds began to swirl in a dizzying circle overhead, forming a vortex that, Magnus guessed, was the beginning of the link between this world and the other.
A voice in Magnus’s head, dreadful as a door opening onto pitch dark, said, Yes, time to remember. Time to remember everything.
A harsh, unpleasant white light appeared at the center of the swirling clouds, and the tip of a funnel began to materialize. Streaks of smoke or insects or black static swarmed the white light. The tip of the funnel began to descend from the sky, directly toward Magnus, who waited helplessly for the storm to reach him. He closed his eyes.
He did not want to die like this, by the hand of a raging wounded warlock, in front of misguided and badly dressed fools, with all the stupid mistakes of his past coming to swallow the possibility of his future. If he did die, he did not want regret to be the last thing he felt.
So he thought about Alec.
Alec, with his heartbreaking contradictions, shy and brave, relentless and tender. Alec’s midnight-blue eyes, and the look on his face when they had their first kiss. And their last. Magnus had not thought today’s kiss would be their last. But nobody ever did know, when the last kiss came.
Magnus saw all his dearest friends. All his lost mortals, and all those who would live on. His mother, who he could never make laugh; Etta of the beautiful voice that had kept him dancing; his first Shadowhunter friend, Will. Ragnor, always the teacher, who had gone on before. Catarina, her healing hands and endless grace. Tessa of the steadfast heart and great courage. Raphael, who would sneer at this sentiment. His Clary, the first and last child Magnus had ever watched grow up, and the warrior woman he knew she would become.
And then Alec again.
Alec running up the steps of Magnus’s brownstone in Brooklyn to ask him out. Alec holding on to him in cold water, offering Magnus all his own strength. The stunning surprise of Alec’s warm mouth, his sure, strong hands, in the hall of his angelic ancestors. Alec shielding Downworlders at the palazzo in Venice, coming for Magnus through a cloud of demons, trying to shield Magnus through every land and at every turn. Alec choosing Magnus over the Clave every time, without hesitation. Alec turning against the Laws he had always lived by to protect Magnus and keep his secrets.
Magnus had never thought he would need protecting. He had thought it would make him weak. He had been wrong.
Dread died away. Shaking, hardly able to move, with darkness bearing down upon him, Magnus felt only gratitude for his life.
He wasn’t ready for death, but if it came today, he would face it with his head held high and Alexander Lightwood’s name on his lips.
The pain hit, shattering and abrupt. Magnus screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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Chains of Magic
ALEC TOOK THE MASERATI AND followed where the tracking rune led, up a winding road that spiraled around a mountain. Helen and Aline yelled at him to drive slower. He did not, taking the curves at breakneck speed. Helen smacked his shoulder, and then stared.