The Lost Book of the White

After a few minutes of walking in silence, in the dark, with Magnus at least fairly sure they were headed the right way, Ragnor spoke up. “Magnus, I don’t know any way to undo the thorning. Now that the swords are gone, I don’t know how it could be drawn out of you. Or Shinyun, for that matter, not that she wants it removed. You’ll still be stuck with the choice, soon enough, to join Sammael or die.”

“Then I’ll die,” said Magnus.

“You won’t,” said Ragnor with a sigh. “No one chooses to die, when there is a choice to live. You rationalize. You justify.”

Magnus said nothing. There had been a change in the dead air of Diyu. Where before all had been stillness and oppressive silence, now a slight wind had picked up. It blew faint white noise into the silence, and unpleasantly hot air in irregular gusts around Magnus’s face. Ragnor noticed it too, his head lifting when it started, but after a moment his eyes returned to the ground and he resumed walking.

“So,” Ragnor said, “Max.” He cleared his throat. “Your son.”

“He’s named after Alec’s brother,” Magnus said. “The one who was killed by Sebastian.”

Ragnor gave him a wry look. “Did you know, Sammael showed up in the first place because he was trying to reach Valentine Morgenstern’s son, Sebastian? Lilith suggested that Sammael seek him out. Said they had similar goals. Anyway, apparently Sebastian was dead well before Sammael could have found him. That would have been interesting.”

“ ‘Interesting’ is one way to describe it,” said Magnus. He paused. “Ragnor. One thing that happened, that you probably don’t know.” He just had to say it quickly. “Raphael… he died.”

Ragnor stopped walking, and Magnus stopped beside him. All around them blew the faint, dry wind of Diyu, smelling of iron and char.

“Valentine’s son, Sebastian,” Magnus said. “He, uh, he took over Edom.”

“Oh, I know,” Ragnor said, his eyebrows raised. “I didn’t hear the end of it. You think Sammael would be here if he could be in Edom? He loves it there. But—Raphael.”

Magnus took a deep breath. “Sebastian was holding us both prisoner. He ordered Raphael to kill me. Raphael refused. Sebastian killed him.” He looked at Ragnor, who appeared to be going through all the stages of grief at once, his expression flashing rapidly stunned surprise, sorrow, anger, thoughtfulness, and back. “He was paying back his debt to me, he said. For saving his life.”

Ragnor took a long breath and collected himself. “Every war has a body count,” he said bitterly. “And if you live long enough, you’ll see too many friends become part of that body count. Poor Raphael. I always liked him.”

“He always liked you,” said Magnus.

“I get the sense,” said Ragnor after a moment of silence from both of them, the roar of the hot wind of Diyu the only sound in the world, “that it is a good thing that Sammael wasn’t able to meet Sebastian.”

“I don’t know if they would have been able to collaborate,” Magnus said. “Neither of them are exactly good team players.”

“How did you come to adopt Max?”

“It’s a long story,” said Magnus, “which I will tell you in full once we are safely out of Hell.”

“Well, tell the short version,” Ragnor said impatiently. He began walking again, and Magnus followed.

“Another warlock baby abandoned,” said Magnus flatly. “Another horrified parent. They left a note that said, ‘Who could ever love it?’ ”

Ragnor snorted. “The oldest warlock story.”

“He was left at Shadowhunter Academy,” Magnus said. “I was a guest lecturer there. We ended up going home with Max.”

“Truly,” said Ragnor, “this is the culmination of your foolish dedication to rescuing people.”

Magnus gave him an incredulous look. “You’re one to talk.”

“Not that I’m not grateful,” Ragnor allowed.

“That’s not what I mean,” Magnus said. “I don’t mean now. I mean you’re one to talk because all those hundreds of years ago, you rescued me. You idiot.”

The wind was picking up and, worryingly, growing hotter. They walked along the darkened streets, past empty black shells of buildings Magnus couldn’t have identified—presumably, they corresponded to buildings in Shanghai, but here they resided in complete shadow and could barely be distinguished from the landscape around them.

Ragnor said gruffly, “Well, at least that’s one more warlock who will grow up with loving parents. Who know about Downworld.” Magnus knew that coming from Ragnor, this was effusive praise. “Pity about the Shadowhunter influence, though.”

“Hey,” said Magnus. “I was taught by the Silent Brothers, you know.”

“Yes, and look how that turned out,” said Ragnor.

Magnus was silent for a time and they walked. Even here in Hell, there was something companionable about walking alongside Ragnor, as he had done so many times before. Even with the thorn burning in his chest, even with no clear way back home.

“I’m going to marry Alec, you know,” he said after a while.

Ragnor raised his eyebrows. “When?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. The Shadowhunters wouldn’t acknowledge it, but we’re hoping that will change.”

“How would it change?” said Ragnor in a dismissive tone.

“Because we’ll change it,” said Magnus.

Ragnor shook his head. He looked weary. Magnus suspected that at some point, the full horror of what he had done would strike Ragnor. Right now he seemed insulated by shock. “Where you got your hopefulness, I have no idea. I certainly didn’t teach that to you.”

“When we can get married and have it recognized, then we’ll do it,” said Magnus. “Only then. When it’s legal for me to marry Alec. For Tian to marry Jinfeng.”

“For Shinyun to marry Sammael,” Ragnor said dryly, and Magnus choked a laugh, until they turned the next corner and the laugh was cut off.

Ahead of them stood St. Ignatius. It was blowing away.

Here, the hot wind they’d felt before was stronger. It danced around their heads, and, whipped into a frenzy, tore pieces of the cathedral loose and hurled them up into the empty sky. Huge chunks of marble and brick tore free, making a racket of grinding, crashing, and scraping noises. One of the two spires was gone, disappeared into the whirlwind. But what really worried Magnus was the roof.

The roof was missing—no, not missing. The roof was now in pieces, free-floating, huge boulders of tile and stone, as though some great creature had come and torn the church open, like a child unwrapping a present. The chunks of roof hung in the wind, suspended and drifting. It was hard to tell for sure, but if Magnus squinted, he thought he could see a human figure flying around the rocks, swooping and climbing.

Ragnor called, “Alec!” and Magnus looked back at the ground, where Alec, his Alec, was running full tilt toward them, soot on his face. He was yelling something, but Magnus couldn’t make it out.

Only as he got closer could he be understood. “The swords!” he was yelling. “We need the swords!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Avici

ALEC DIDN’T KNOW WHAT HAD become of his friends. He had been awoken by a tremendous sound, like an earthquake, and by the time he had made it up the stairs, the roof had been torn off the cathedral. Above him, against the inky black curtain of Diyu’s sky, two figures cavorted. One of them was Shinyun, who in addition to her elongated limbs had now sprouted a pair of broad insectile wings, iridescent and veined, like a dragonfly’s. She looped around the floating pieces of the cathedral’s roof, clearly enjoying herself.

The other figure was Sammael. He was hard to miss, as he was now easily three times the size he’d been on the iron bridge, floating above Shinyun and looking perfectly at home suspended in the air. He peered into the cathedral from above, occasionally pushing away rocks that drifted into his vision.

Alec had thought it would be unwise to run across the entire length of the cathedral, directly in view of Sammael, to reach his friends. He had to hope that they were seeking some kind of safety. But where was Magnus? He had departed voluntarily: his clothes and shoes were gone. But why had he taken Alec’s sword as well as his own?

The wind, though it was not too strong for him to resist, seemed to be harming the church, which was beginning to come apart in pieces. Alec had known he had to get out of the building, skirting around to avoid being seen until he’d found a low enough opening in the rapidly decaying walls. He hurled himself through it in a forward roll, curled up to protect his head. He’d felt the hot, corrosive wind on him, and then he was clear.

The Alliance rune had burned on his arm, and he had felt Magnus’s presence, not far away. He could see Magnus’s glow in his mind, even through the dark and the wind. He ran toward that glow.

Now he had reached Magnus and, to his surprise, Ragnor, who looked subdued and embarrassed at the sight of Alec. For a moment Alec had worried that perhaps Magnus had been struck a third time by the thorn, that he was with Ragnor because, like Ragnor, he had been lost. But then, as he approached, Magnus and Ragnor began talking at the same time, and it was clear that Ragnor was out from under Sammael’s control, somehow.

Magnus explained quickly about the swords, that they had saved Ragnor, that they were now gone. When he finished, he hesitated and said, “Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m not angry that you used the swords to save Ragnor,” Alec said. “I’m a little angry that you didn’t tell me you were leaving and didn’t take me with you.”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Magnus began, but Ragnor stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Domestic squabbles later,” he said sharply. “Look.” He tilted his chin toward the church.