City of Heavenly Fire

Alec cut his eyes sideways. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the warlock look so vulnerable.

“It’s not fair to you,” Magnus said. “I’ve always told myself I was going to be open to new experiences, and so when I started to—to harden—I was shocked. I thought I’d done everything right, not closed my heart off. And then I thought about what you said, and I realized why I was starting to die inside. If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I did that were good, the things I did that were shameful—if I kept them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear. And then I would disappear.”

“I . . .” Alec wasn’t sure what to say.

“I had a lot of time to think, after we broke up,” Magnus said. “And I wrote this.” He pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket: just a very ordinary spiral-bound notebook of lined paper, but when the wind flapped it open, Alec could see that the pages were covered with thin, looping handwriting. Magnus’s handwriting. “I wrote down my life.”

Alec’s eyes widened. “Your whole life?”

“Not all of it,” Magnus said carefully. “But some of the incidents that have shaped me. How I first met Raphael, when he was very young,” Magnus said, and sounded sad. “How I fell in love with Camille. The story of the Hotel Dumort, though Catarina had to help me with that. Some of my early loves, and some of my later ones. Names you might know—Herondale—”

“Will Herondale,” said Alec. “Camille mentioned him.” He took the notebook; the thin pages felt bumpy, as if Magnus had pressed the pen very hard into the paper while writing. “Were you . . . with him?”

Magnus laughed and shook his head. “No—though, there are a lot of Herondales in the pages. Will’s son, James Herondale, was remarkable, and so was James’s sister, Lucie, but I have to say Stephen Herondale rather put me off the family until Jace came along. That guy was a pill.” He noticed Alec staring at him, and added quickly, “No Herondales. No Shadowhunters at all, in fact.”

“No Shadowhunters?”

“None in my heart like you are,” Magnus said. He tapped the notebook lightly. “Consider this a first installment of everything I want to tell you. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped—if you wanted to be with me, as I want to be with you, you might take this as evidence. Evidence that I am willing to give you something I have never given anyone: my past, the truth of myself. I want to share my life with you, and that means today, and the future, and all of my past, if you want it. If you want me.”

Alec lowered the notebook. There was writing on the first page, a scrawled inscription: Dear Alec . . .

He could see the path in front of him very clearly: He could hand back the book, walk away from Magnus, find someone else, some Shadowhunter to love, be with him, share the kinship of predictable days and nights, the daily poetry of an ordinary life.

Or he could take the step out into nothingness and choose Magnus, the far stranger poetry of him, his brilliance and anger, his sulks and joys, the extraordinary abilities of his magic and the no less breathtaking magic of the extraordinary way he loved.

It was hardly a choice at all. Alec took a deep breath, and jumped.

“All right,” he said.

Magnus whipped toward him in the dark, all coiled energy now, all cheekbones and shimmering eyes. “Really?”

“Really,” Alec said. He reached out a hand, and interlinked his fingers with Magnus’s. There was a glow being woken in Alec’s chest, where all had been dark. Magnus cupped his long fingers under Alec’s jawline and kissed him, his touch light against Alec’s skin: a slow and gentle kiss, a kiss that promised more later, when they were no longer on a roof and could be seen by anyone walking by.

“So I’m your first ever Shadowhunter, huh?” Alec said when they separated at last.

“You’re my first so many things, Alec Lightwood,” Magnus said.



The sun was setting when Jace dropped Clary off at Amatis’s house, kissed her, and headed back down the canal toward the Inquisitor’s. Clary watched him walk away before turning back to the house with a sigh; she was glad they were leaving the next day.

There were things she loved about Idris. Alicante was still the loveliest city she had seen: Over the houses, now, she could see the sunset striking sparks off the clear tops of the demon towers. The rows of houses along the canal were softened by shadow, like velvet silhouettes. But it was heart-achingly sad being inside Amatis’s house, knowing now, with certainty, that she would never come back to it.