The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses #1)(92)

Then there was a twist in the air, like the snap of twigs when something moved in the jungle. There was the first stirring of magic. The boy was somehow able to twist away from his stepfather’s strong grasp.

Magnus coughed and choked, clawing long, wet hair out of his eyes, and gasped out painfully, “I’m sorry. I will be good. I try to be good.”

“This is the only way for you to be good,” his stepfather shouted.

Magnus screamed.

His stepfather’s hands closed around his neck once more, his grip unyielding, his breath panting in Magnus’s ears. There was an awful gentleness in the finality of his voice.

“This will make you pure,” whispered the only father he had ever known. “Trust me.”

He plunged the boy’s head back underwater, this time so deep it smashed into the stony bed of the creek. Magnus felt the numbing pain, felt his knees weaken as the boy began to lose consciousness and sink toward death.

Magnus was drowning, but at the same time he was terribly distant, watching a small boy die. As he watched, he saw a shadow move over the water.

A whisper flooded the boy’s head, colder than the water in his lungs.

“Here are the words that will free you. Speak them and trade his life for yours. Only one of you can survive this. Take hold of your power or die.”

In that moment it was an easy decision.

Calm swept over the boy, and the spell flowed out of his mouth into the water. His hands, flailing in panic, stilled and then made a series of complex gestures. He could not breathe, but he could do this magic.

Magnus had never been able to work out how he had done the spell that killed his father.

Now he knew.

The boy burst into a column of blue flame, so hot it brought the water in the creek to a boil. The fire crawled hungrily up his stepfather’s arms and consumed him.

His stepfather’s screams echoed through the dark barn where his mother had died.

Magnus found himself standing across from the boy and saw his younger self looking back at him. His shirt was charred black, and smoke was still drifting off his body. For a moment, he thought the child could see him. Then he realized the boy was staring at the charred remains of his stepfather.

“I never wanted any of this to happen,” Magnus whispered, to all his old shadows and ghosts, to his mother and his stepfather and the lost, wounded child he had been.

“But you did,” said Asmodeus. “You wanted to live.”

His father was standing beside the boy Magnus had been, looking at Magnus across the smoke.

“Go now,” he murmured to the boy Magnus. “You did well. Go and make yourself worthy. I may come back to claim you one day.”

Magnus blinked away the smoke and found himself in the center of the stage of the amphitheater under a dark sky.

The ground felt unsteady beneath his feet, but that was because he was shaking. Only a few seconds had passed. Shinyun was still frozen, her eyes fixed on him with a desperate intensity. Outside the pentagram, the blank blackness was starting to fade into gray. Magnus could nearly make out the outlines of people, watching him.

Asmodeus was standing beside him, hand curved around Magnus’s shoulder in what almost felt like an embrace.

“You see now,” he said. “I saved you. You chose me. You are my favorite child, because I forged you in that fire. I have come back for you as I said I would. Across all the worlds, there is nobody who will accept you and understand you. There is only me. All you could ever be is mine.”

A knife appeared in Magnus’s hand, its cold weight heavy. His father’s voice was low and crackling with hellfire.

“Take the blade, draw Shinyun’s blood. Sacrifice her, so I can cross the world to you. I have seen all your struggles and been proud of all your rebellions,” said Asmodeus. “My kind has always responded to a rebel. Every pain you have suffered has had a purpose, has made you strong, has led you to this moment. You have made me so proud, my child, my eldest curse. Nothing pleases me more than to lift my worthy son up to a high place, and lay all the kingdoms of the world before him.”

Magnus could almost feel his father’s hand on his shoulder. The faint heat of Asmodeus’s other hand was on Magnus’s wrist, as if Asmodeus would guide the blade straight into Shinyun’s heart.

As he had led Magnus to kill his stepfather, so long ago. Magnus had made a choice, back then. Maybe it had been the right choice.

“You see . . . ,” Magnus said, “the thing is . . . I don’t want the world. The world’s a mess. I can’t even keep my apartment organized. I’m still cleaning glitter out of the lampshades after my cat’s birthday party, and that was months ago.”

Despite the heat and pressure of Asmodeus’s hand, Magnus lowered the knife. He was grown now, worlds and lives away from that terrified child. He did not need to be told what to choose. He could choose for himself.

Asmodeus began to laugh. The world shook. “Is this about that boy?”

Magnus had thought he could not feel more afraid, until he realized he had unwittingly called Asmodeus’s attention to Alec.

“My love life is none of your business, Father,” Magnus said with as much dignity as he could. He knew Asmodeus could feel how deathly afraid he was. Magnus simply would not give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

“I find it very amusing that you have tangled up one of the Nephilim in your net,” said Asmodeus. “Nothing is more fun than a challenge, and what else is it, to corrupt the purest of the pure? The Nephilim burn with such righteous fury. I see the temptation to cast a shadow over all that light. Even the Nephilim are amenable to lures, the sins of the flesh, and all the raging delights of jealousy, lust, and despair. Sometimes especially the Nephilim. The higher they are, the more completely shattered when they fall. I applaud you, my son.”