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It was here.
Magnus could feel the trail in the air, even through the darkness, a trickle of warmth and light. He followed it. He had to follow it. Following it was the only way forward.
Everywhere else was darkness. Around him he could make out the vague outlines of skeletal trees, distant shapes moving between them, legs and antlers and reflective eyes. The creatures here were strange, angular and malformed, and he tried not to dwell on them.
He wondered if he would become like them, if he stayed here for too long.
He had to find the amulet. He had to find it. Alec was waiting at home, shivering, feverish, lost in himself. Magnus had to save him.
He walked on shaking legs, fingertips clenching into his pants and tinting blue in the cold, teeth chattering. He definitely should have worn more layers, but his portal home was far behind him now, and it was too late to turn back.
Not all demon realms were like Edom, hot and scorched to oblivion. This one was cold and dark, the sun set in perpetual eclipse, a wasteland of overgrowth curling into itself. Magnus could stay indefinitely in Edom with no harm coming to him, the realm was part of his magic, his very blood, but here—
Here, his magic turned back on him. Here, he could feel his organs twisting into unnatural shapes, his bones warping as he walked, his body following the curve of this realm’s strange seasons. He didn’t have much time before he wouldn’t be able to make his way out, but he kept walking, following the path through the trees, the faint trail of the amulet.
Magnus.
Magnus squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of the voice. I’m coming back for you, Alexander, he promised silently. Just hang on.
MAGNUS.
Magnus pressed his hands to his ears. He could barely walk as it was, there was no way he could make it where he needed to go with Alec’s voice echoing in his head.
Be quiet, he hissed, even though there was nothing he wanted more than to hear his husband’s voice, lucid and speaking to him. He knew it wasn’t really Alec, just this place messing with him, trying to trap him here, but it was tempting to cling to nonetheless.
The last time he had heard Alec say his name it had been a slurred mumble as Magnus pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling the heat of his skin. That was why he was here. The amulet was the only way to break the demon’s hold over him.
He had to find it.
The trees seemed to whisper with Alec’s voice as he forced himself to push onward, stumbling as the path started to slope downward, slowly at first and then faster, steeper. Everything seemed to accelerate as he tumbled downwards, roots bursting up from the ground and twining towards him, clouds scuttling across the sky, his legs twisting and bending inwards until he was tripping on his own feet.
The very air here was poison, but still he kept walking.
Magnus.
Magnus grit his teeth. BE QUIET.
Magnus. Can you hear me?
I said be QUIET, Alexander, don’t you know how to listen?
Not-Alec fell silent at that, and Magnus felt instantly guilty for telling him off. Who knew when, or if, he’d get to hear his voice again?
“I’m sorry,” he said, out loud this time, his voice catching on the chill air. His lungs were growing tight, but still he spoke, still he walked. “Please, speak. Please—” he tried to swallow but couldn’t quite manage it— “stay with me.”
I’m always with you.
Magnus fell to his knees in the middle of the path, no longer able to walk, braced himself on his hands even though he knew the very earth was toxic to his skin.
I’m always with you, Not-Alec repeated.
Not for much longer, Magnus thought. He wasn’t making it out of here. Even if he found the strength to go further, he wouldn’t be able to make it back to his portal.
I’m sorry, Alexander.
As he thought it, he caught the faintest glimmer of metal in the dirt by his hands. He scrabbled for it desperately, shoving aside the soil until the silver chain of the long-sought-after amulet emerged from the path, gleaming dully under the dark sky. Magnus clutched it in his hands, hope lighting up his chest alongside the glitter of the sapphire at the end of the chain.
Use your magic, Not-Alec urged. Come back to me.
“I— I can’t,” Magnus gasped, the cold air snatching his breath. “It doesn’t work here.”
Please, Magnus.
Magnus was helpless to resist him.
He gripped the amulet between his hands and reached for his magic. It was deep within him, curled around his bones, sheltering from this place, but he drew it out, tried to hold steady as it made contact with the ambient magic of the realm and started to fizzle at the edges.
Good, Alec said, and Magnus imagined he could almost feel the touch of his hand against his cheek, Good. Steady now.
Magnus’s hands shook as he poured magic into the amulet. He watched it glow from within then start to crack, the gemstone fragmenting into shards of light. The realm’s poisonous air flooded his chest where his magic had been, crowding down his throat, into his lungs, tearing and burning until he started coughing and blood splattered over his lips.
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move—
But the amulet was breaking.
Alec would be free.
Magnus!
I’m sorry, Alexander.
Magnus scrambled backwards, hurling the amulet from his hands. He didn’t see where it landed, only knew that he had to get that accursed thing away from him, away from Alec.
“Magnus?”
Alec was sitting cross-legged on the floor before him, hands still outstretched as if he’d been cradling Magnus’s face between them, tear tracks running down his cheeks. Magnus looked at him, then at his own shaking hands, then at the scrying bowl on the floor between them, overturned now, the water spilled out across the floorboards.
“—What? Did you—? How—?”
“I flipped it over,” Alec said. He was still reaching for Magnus, but Magnus was just beyond his hands. “I honestly thought— I worried it would trap you. But I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I was already trapped,” Magnus said, chest heaving. There was blood running out of his nose. “You saved me.”
Alec lunged for him, taking Magnus in his arms and holding him tight. Magnus let him even though he was still struggling to feel like he was part of his own body. He let him and slowly, very slowly, wrapped his arms around Alec’s back.
“I should’ve known scrying with that thing was a bad idea,” he said, still in shock that he wasn’t actually disintegrating in a demon realm. “Whatever knowledge it might hold isn’t worth the curse of it.”
“You were so deep in, I almost thought you couldn’t hear me,” Alec said. His voice rumbled against Magnus’s chest. “What did it show you?”
“Horrible things,” Magnus whispered. “Rot and ruin.” He pulled away from Alec at that, pressing a hand to his forehead to make sure he wasn’t actually burning up. “Are you feeling alright?”
“I’m not the one who mentally teleported to a demon realm.”
Magnus just shook his head. “I thought you were dying.”
“Your nose is bleeding.” Alec swiped at his upper lip, but the blood kept coming in a steady trickle. He frowned as Magnus pushed himself to his feet and out of his arms. “Where are you going?”
“Getting that damn thing out of our house.” Magnus walked on shaky legs to where the amulet had landed. He didn’t have to look for it, its presence drew him just as it had in the forest. It winked at him from the floorboards, the gemstone smooth and unblemished, unfazed by his attempts to destroy it while scrying. Magnus needed it gone.
“Don’t touch it—” Alec started to say.
But Magnus didn’t, just opened a portal below it and dropped it into a safe far, far away from New York. He didn’t have the magic left to destroy it right now, but he’d be damned if he let it stay in their apartment for another second.
Even this small use of magic seared through him like wildfire, and he knew it was just his magic burning out the remaining smoke of the demon realm, but that didn’t stop him from staggering backwards into Alec’s arms.
Alec caught him, of course, and lowered them both to the floor, Magnus’s head in his lap. He looked down at Magnus with worried eyes, and Magnus flailed until he was able to catch one of his hands, brought it to his lips to kiss the knuckles. He needed Alec close, after that, still not entirely sure that one or both of them weren’t on their deathbeds.
Alec brushed his hair away from his forehead. “You okay?”
Magnus nodded but didn’t let go of Alec’s hand. “Just—stay with me for a little while?”
“Always.”
“And,” Magnus added, still having to breath heavily around his words, “next time I decide to do something magically risky like that just to satisfy my own curiosity, tie me to the bed or something, hmm?”
Alec’s lips quirked up, but there was a glimmer of something more haunted behind his eyes. “Will do.”
All of Magnus’s plants were dying.
This was strange, because normally his plants were taken care of magically, his spells woven through the air of his home to ensure they were watered on time and received enough sunlight.
Now, Magnus was staring at the blackened leaves of his largest aloe vera, a plant that he’d had for years, that had been hardy enough to withstand his occasional thoughtlessness and his travels. He could have sworn it had been healthy a week ago, but now its leaves were drooping and curling into themselves, puckering with rot, almost as if it had been overwatered, or acquired some disease, though Magnus had no idea what that could be.
More important than the health of Magnus’s plants, however, was the fact that he owned most of these plants for reasons. Medicinal reasons.
“Magnus, I’m not trying to complain here,” Alec groaned from the living room, “but this actually really burns.”
Magnus cursed, pushing aside the dying plant and summoning a new one from a local greenhouse. He’d have to remember to pay them later.
He sliced open one of its leaves and scraped out the juice, adding it to the poultice he already had brewing over a low flame. A quick burst of magic had it stirred together and congealed into a paste, and he lifted it magically and dunked it in an ice bath.
Then he was running back over to Alec. “It’s alright, darling. This should help.”
“If you made it, then it will,” Alec panted. He was flat on his back on the couch, shirt torn off, a nasty burn stretching over his shoulder and pectoral. Magnus tried not to cringe at the sight as he spread the now-cooled poultice over the wound.
“You know,” Alec remarked mildly, though his voice was strained, “I’ve read about demons that can breathe fire, but somehow I never quite internalized what that would look like.”
“Well, technically they were breathing superheated plasma,” Magnus told him, laying a bandage lightly over the wound.
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Magnus watched Alec’s shoulder anxiously as the poultice went to work soothing the burns, even though there was nothing really to watch. “Is that making you feel better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Magnus settled on the floor by the couch, still keeping an eye on Alec’s wound. “Once that poultice has healed and clarified the surface layer of skin, an iratze should be able to take care of the rest. I think there was demonic residue in the burn tissue that was preventing it.”
“Hmm. Gross.”
Magnus rested his head against Alec’s hipbone, suddenly exhausted by the day’s events. The patrol. The startling blue fire of the demons. Stumbling home under Alec’s weight. He’d been tired a lot, recently.
Alec played with his hair with weak fingers. “Hey, what took you so long, before? I— I’m not complaining,” he hastened to add, though Magnus hadn’t thought he was, “it’s just I’ve seen you put healing potions together like that. Was something wrong?”
Magnus hesitated. He didn’t really like talking about troubling problems until he’d solved them, not even with Alec. But perhaps Alec would have insight he didn’t.
“It’s my plants,” he said finally. “Something’s got into them. Some bug or infection. They’re all rotting. I had to summon new aloe to even complete this potion.”
Alec frowned. “I don’t think I’ve seen you kill a plant in the whole time I’ve known you.”
“Yes, well, I usually don’t!” Magnus rubbed at his eyes in frustration. “I don’t know what’s got into them. Or me.”
Alec patted his head. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Magnus shook himself and looked up at his husband with a wan smile. “Look at me. You were injured and I’m complaining about plants. How does that burn seem, darling?”
Alec looked awkwardly down at himself. “Uh, looks a lot better. Feels better. Can try an iratze now, I think.”
Magnus summoned his stele from where they’d dumped all of his gear by the door. The magic pulled at him strangely, and he frowned, but pushed the thought aside in favor of watching Alec heal his burns, which, fortunately, he was now able to do.
Sometimes Magnus dreamed about the forest. He dreamed of twisted trees and his hands turning into branches. He dreamed of changing, but he didn’t know what he was becoming.
Sometimes he dreamed this as a sort of waking dream, a vision laid over the real world. He was walking to dinner with Alec, but he was also walking along that forest path, desperation driving his steps. Skeletal branches leaned in the corners of his vision.
Alec tugged on his hand, shifting him back into reality, at least for a moment.
“Hey, you okay? Where did you go?”
“I went somewhere?” Magnus asked vaguely, still preoccupied.
“In your head, you did. Something the matter?”
Nothing was the matter. Nothing was the matter, except that Magnus’s plants were dead, and Magnus was dreaming of a forest. “Do you remember that amulet?” he asked, startled by his own asking.
Magnus didn’t look at Alec, but he could feel his presence by his side darken. “Uh, yeah? Though I’d rather not.”
You and me both. “I didn’t tell you the full story behind it.”
Alec stopped where they were walking, turning to face Magnus. He still had Magnus’s hand in his. “You mean how you weren’t trying to scry into that realm just to satisfy your curiosity?”
“How did you—”
“Come on, Magnus. I know you’re relentlessly curious, but that realm is literally toxic to you. And I know you knew that going in, even if you didn’t tell me. I really doubt you’d go scry there just for shits and giggles.”
Alec knew him too well. “There’s an old legend about that place,” Magnus told him, compelled, as he so often was nowadays, by the sensation that he was running out of time. “There’s power in it. In its air, its water.” He took a deep breath, letting it out in increments. “It is supposed to bestow immortality.”
Alec stared at him for a long moment. His grip tightening on Magnus’s hand. “But it’s poisonous,” he finally said, voice tight.
“Yes, well, it can’t just be easy to achieve, can it? And anyway, I was never intending to stay there, or have you stay there. The amulet was a doorway, a guide. And, ideally, a way to corral its power, bring it back to our realm. But—” he scrubbed at his face with his free hand— “I underestimated the realm’s… ability to corrupt. It would have trapped me there, I think, if you hadn’t pulled me out, kept me there forever, going in circles, looking for a way to— to save you.”
Alec sighed then and cradled Magnus’s face in his hand. His eyes were so full of sympathy that Magnus didn’t want to breathe. “Magnus, come on. We said we’d work together, didn’t we? Find a way that doesn’t involve you almost dying in a demon realm.”
Magnus tried to smile at him, but it felt forced. “It seemed so promising. Definitely worth the risk. So little has seemed… promising, recently.”
His voice started to crack towards the end, and Alec pulled him into a hug. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
Magnus was running out of faith, but well. If anyone could promise the impossible, it was Alec.
“Have you ever considered mushrooms?”
Alec blinked at him several times from where he was hanging up his jacket. “Have I… considered… mushrooms? In what way?”
“Looked at them, contemplated them, tasted them, killed someone with one, grown them, used them in potions, poked at them with sticks, there are innumerable ways to consider mushrooms, Alexander.”
Magnus looked at the ones in his hand, which were long and thin with orange tops. They had started growing along the balcony railing. This was a deeply strange place for mushrooms to be growing, but he was trying to make the best of it. At least it was a distraction from the weight growing heavier in his chest day by day. That failed attempt at finding the key to Alec’s immortality had really done a number on his mental state.
There were mushrooms growing along the walls in his apothecary, too, and Magnus half-wondered if his magic might be manifesting them in an attempt to cheer him up.
Alec was still staring at him. “Um… no?”
“Never mind, I’m considering them enough for the both of us.”
Alec finished putting away his gear and came over to him. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Well, I have house mushrooms now, so I’m feeling swell.” He banished the ones he was holding to his apothecary desk so he could take Alec’s hands.
“Is that related to your plants?”
Magnus never had quite figured out what had been up with that. “Hmm. Unclear. Will have to look into it. But for now, I have dinner! It’s not mushrooms, I promise.”
Alec followed him to the kitchen table, where Magnus had already laid out what was probably too much food for the two of them. Good that he eat, though. Maybe it would help with the jitters.
Alec ate slowly, watching him all the while. It was disconcerting, sometimes, being under Alec’s gaze. He was too perceptive, too still.
Magnus was so focused on the weight of his presence that he didn’t notice Alec himself had moved until his husband’s fingers were encircling his wrist.
“You feel… thin,” Alec said, and frowned. “Have you been eating enough?”
Magnus looked away. “Of course I have.” He couldn’t help it if his frustration with his repeated failures had been distracting him, could he? It wasn’t like he was trying to be like this.
“Magnus…”
Alec’s gaze was so concerned. Magnus would do anything to allay that concern.
Of course, that was when his chest seized up and he started coughing blood.
“For the love of all that is holy, will you hold still? One would think you were four years old instead of four hundred.”
“Well, I’ve always said that I’m young at heart,” Magnus grumbled, squirming where he was sitting in bed. Cat’s grip on his chin was firm, though, and he couldn’t go far. Her magic washed through him, and he felt foreign in its presence. Wilting. Rotting. His lungs hurt.
“If you mean in intelligence level, then I agree. What were you thinking going anywhere near Merihem?”
“The demon’s long dead.”
“But his realm lives on and it’s still dangerous, Magnus.” He felt her magic retract from him and she sat back on the edge of the bed, looking at him with a stern expression. “I know you think you can handle anything, but clearly the journey had more of an effect on you than you thought. Even if it was only a mental journey.”
Magnus looked down at his hands. His fingers looked sort of spindly. Maybe Alec was right, he wasn’t eating enough. “You’ve heard the stories.”
Cat was silent for a long moment. Then she took his hands. “Oh, Magnus.”
Magnus hated the pity in her voice. “I had to at least try, you know?”
She pulled him forward into a hug, crushing his fracturing lungs back together. “Look, we’ll figure it out, okay? Without going to poisonous demon realms.”
Magnus didn’t know how, but he didn’t say so. “Will you fetch my poor husband, please?”
Alec was pacing outside the bedroom door—Magnus could hear him from here. He felt terrible for the way he’d frightened him at dinner, spewing blood everywhere.
Cat stood up and went to the door. “Try not to do this again, okay?” Her voice was firm, but not unsympathetic.
Magnus could make no promises as to that.
Cat opened the door, and Alec cornered her for a moment in the hallway, talking rapidly to her in a voice too low for Magnus to make out the words. Then he was rushing into the bedroom and sitting gingerly on the bed at Magnus’s side.
He touched the corner of Magnus’s lips with gentle fingers, letting out a shaky sigh. “Hey.”
Sometimes Magnus felt very small under his hands. “Hey.”
“Cat said… you would be okay. That it was just aftereffects of that— of that demon realm.”
Alec himself looked thin to Magnus now. Thin and worn through. Tired. Strained. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“You need to tell me when you’re not feeling alright,” Alec said. His hand was still on Magnus’s lips. “Please.”
Magnus rested a hand on his thigh. “Yes, alright, darling. I’m sorry.”
He could still taste the blood on his tongue, in his throat. Alec kissed him then, and Magnus wondered if he could taste it, too.
Alec crawled into bed with him, and lay close, his head tucked into the crook of Magnus’s shoulder. Magnus lay awake for a long time, staring up at the dark ceiling.
Thinking of a forest.
Cat had purged Magnus’s apothecary of its mushrooms—“the last thing you need is to be breathing in spores, Magnus”—which was a shame because Magnus had wanted to study them. He wanted to know how something could grow on no substrate, no water, right out of the brick wall.
He was getting bad again. He wasn’t supposed to get like this anymore, not now that he had everything he’d ever wanted.
Well.
Almost.
How selfish, to be so upset over not being able to figure out Alec’s immortality, when he had the man in the flesh right there in front of him. But Magnus was upset over it just the same.
He looked at his hands. His veins seemed more pronounced than he remembered, standing out darker against his skin like tree branches against a winter sky. This was troubling, perhaps. Magnus felt too distant to really know.
There were no more mushrooms in his apothecary, but there was something else.
His scrying bowl.
Magnus stared at it for a long moment, debating. Alec would disapprove, he knew. Alec also wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours.
The stark, sickly forest flashed against the backs of his eyes. It felt more real now than anything physically present with him, grounded and dark and sluggishly alive. All of this here was— was distraction. Answers, truth—they were on the other side of the door.
Magnus had the bowl in front of him before he remembered moving.
The static water stared up at him, faceless and flat. Magnus looked at it, drawn down, down, down, no more presence of mind to know what he was doing. On the other side of the water was the rot, and the rot was him, and he had to be on the other side of the water.
The amulet appeared in his hands, summoned from its banishment. He clutched it like a lifeline. Its spirit danced in his hands, pulling at him, sucking the marrow from his bones.
And, letting his eyes roll back in his head, he sunk down beneath himself, down beneath the floorboards, down into the water, and the darkness that lay therein.
Magnus felt immediately more centered once he rose to his feet in the forest, knew why he was there, was no longer misguided by delusions of saving his husband from a demon. Now he was only saving him from the march of time itself.
Magnus.
Everywhere here echoed with Alec’s voice. Magnus frowned, holding the amulet tighter, letting it ground him.
Don’t distract me, Alexander. I’m here for you, after all.
Here for me? Alec sounded like he was frowning. Did I ask you to do this?
Hush.
Magnus followed the winding path on stumbling feet. This was a different way than the one he’d first found—more twisted, more harrowing. Shaking pines leaned in above him. Magnus drew strength from them, let the wind buffet into him instead of knocking him down. When he wasn’t fighting it, the air of this place no longer felt poisonous, but merely anticipatory. You can have everything you’ve ever wanted, it seemed to whisper. Relinquish the desires of your heart.
And Magnus wanted, and so rarely had he allowed himself to want.
He followed the sound of the wind.
I’ve done some research on this place, you know, Alec’s voice said from behind him. Merihem. It’s been dead too long to be in the standard Clave texts, but I found some stuff. This isn’t a good place, Magnus.
“Oh, really, Alec?” Magnus muttered as he walked. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
This place is sick, Magnus. You’ll be sick if you stay here.
Magnus grit his teeth against Alec’s entreating voice. It may be sick, but it also holds the cure for all sickness. Why else do you think I am here?
Because you’re not feeling well, Alec said, and Magnus swallowed. And like attracts like. Easier to be sick here than in a world where everyone expects you to be well.
QUIET, Alexander.
Alec fell silent, and Magnus missed him.
Merihem was not really so different from Earth, Magnus thought. There was rot at home, too, undergirding everything he held dear. Time. Mortality. Stupid human greed and bigotry. At least the demon realm had the honesty to air its blight out in the open.
You don’t understand what it’s like, Magnus said despairingly, no longer sure Alec was even listening, carrying it all for so many years. I just wanted this one thing to go right. I just wanted to have you to carry it with me.
He waited for several long moments, but there was no response. Magnus’s hands shook where they clutched the amulet. He stopped walking, crunching pine needles beneath his feet. He looked around at the forest, and all at once he could see what he once had, so long ago when he’d first come in search of immortality:
Rotted bark. Tree trunks hollowed with decay. Fungi everywhere, climbing, growing on top of one another. A sky full of spores. Long-limbed animals with empty eyes. Deer turned inside out.
This, then, was the promised eternity of Merihem. Not vibrant, never-ending joy, as he so desperately wanted but knew was impossible to achieve, but decay. An eternal lifetime in the cycle of decay. Consumption and death, consumption and death. Like his mushrooms, growing impossibly from the apothecary wall.
He didn’t want that. Sometimes it was how he felt, like he was rotting from the inside out and consuming himself, but it wasn’t what he wanted. And he especially didn’t want it for Alec.
But when he turned back to the path, it had gone. The forest closed in around him.
“Alec,” he whispered, twisting his hands together around the amulet’s chain, “Alexander. Please.”
He almost collapsed to his knees when the only response he got was the wind.
“Magnus.”
Magnus spun around.
Standing before him, almost but not quite lost in the dense forest, was Alec. He looked a little worse for wear—sleepless, disheveled, distressed. But here.
“Sorry,” he said, out loud because he was here, “I took me a minute to figure out how to get here.”
“Alexander,” Magnus said breathlessly, eyes wide. And then, though it was possibly the least important thing he had to say, asked, “If we’re both scrying, then how the fuck are we going to get out?”
“Oh.” Alec looked puzzled. “I didn’t really think that far ahead.”
Magnus stared at him for a long moment, barely breathing. Then a laugh was bubbling up in his chest, the first in Lord knew how long. “You ridiculous man.”
“Your ridiculous man.” He was grinning now, even amongst the rot and ruin. It didn’t seem to be able to touch him, this realm and its poison. And suddenly Magnus was stumbling toward him, worried that the realm would spring up between them, bind Magnus to his own demise, but it didn’t. He fell into Alec’s arms.
He felt so solid where Magnus’s body had so recently been splintering. Magnus pressed his face into his chest.
“It’s gotten into you, hasn’t it.” Alec touched him gingerly, like he would bruise. “The— the rot, this place, that’s why—your plants, and—”
“No,” Magnus said, “I don’t think so. I think it just… activated a part of me that’s always been there. Decaying. Or waiting to decay.”
“But—you’re immortal,” Alec protested.
Magnus clung to him. “It’s immortal beings that decay the most, I think.”
Alec hugged him tight then, shielded him against the biting and toxic wind. “We need to get you out of here.”
“My magic is—” Magnus reached for it, and it crackled and fled from his grasp— “not an option for us, I’m afraid.”
“I think if I—” Alec closed his eyes, tightening his grip in Magnus’s shirt. “Hold onto me.”
Magnus held on, as he always should have, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, they were back in the apothecary, sitting on opposite sides of the scrying bowl. Magnus lunged for Alec, almost toppling him over with the force with which he crashed into him. “How— how did you—”
“I don’t think it could trap me the way it trapped you. Not when I knew I had to get you out.”
Alec’s voice was sure and steadfast, and Magnus pressed his face tight to his neck, feeling the vitality of him, the strong muscles of his shoulders, the hard beat of his heart, the warmth of his skin. How he could ever have left the comfort of Alec’s arms for a world of decay, he didn’t know.
And then, in the next second, he did.
“I can’t lose you,” he murmured into Alec’s shoulder. “I can’t.”
“It’s okay. You won’t.”
“I can’t, Alexander.” And then he was crying, sobbing into Alec’s shirt there on the apothecary floor.
“Magnus,” Alec said, rubbing a hand up and down his back, “you won’t. Look.”
Magnus looked up. Alec had the amulet in his hand. It was glowing with sapphire light, casting a shimmering layer of blue over the planes of his face, his clothes, the walls of the apothecary. It was so bright that his fingers were tinting red, glowing with the light trying to shine through them. And for the first time in ages Magnus felt hope burning hot again in his chest, spilling out with his tears and ragged breaths.
“I don’t know what you did,” Alec said, “but I don’t think it’s cursed anymore.”
Magnus reached out a reverent hand to touch the stone. “It was never cursed,” he said, realizing. “It was that place, the suffocating weight of it. It couldn’t shine when it was buried.”
Alec placed the gemstone in his palm and held Magnus’s face between his hands instead, scrubbing the tears from his cheeks.
“I couldn’t see it,” Magnus continued, sniffling. “Oh, I was so blind.”
“Blinded,” Alec corrected. “You were hurting. So much so that everything became a part of it.”
“Except you.” Magnus looked up at him, clutching the amulet. “You came after me. You didn’t let it get me.”
“Of course not.” Alec sounded a little offended that Magnus might ever doubt him. “I love you.”
“And I love you, darling.” Magnus let Alec pull him back into a hug and hold him tight, the still-glowing amulet crushed between their bodies. “What would I do without you?”
“If that thing really is what you think, you won’t have to find out.”
“Magnus, I— can I talk to you?”
Magnus looked up from his notes to find Alec leaning in the doorway of his apothecary. He was still wearing his work clothes, the chain of the amulet visible in the open vee of his unbuttoned shirt collar. Magnus was still working on figuring out how to extract the thing’s power and make it more permanent, but for now he was just having Alec wear it.
“Of course, darling. What about?”
Alec made his way into the room, perching on the edge of the desk. He had to push a few plants aside to do it—Magnus might have gone a bit overboard at the greenhouse once they’d started to come back to life.
“I wanted to ask,” Alec started, hesitant, “you— you went to Merihem to get this thing.” He thumbed at the amulet where it rested under his shirt. “Alone.”
Magnus frowned. “Is that a question?”
“Yeah, I just— you had to have known you wouldn’t be able to get out. Not on your own. We’d already tried it once.”
“Perhaps.” Magnus was starting to feel uneasy. “I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly my point. I don’t think you were thinking clearly for a while.”
“Alexander—”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”
Alec’s gaze was so heavy that Magnus had to turn away. “I thought it was rather obvious.”
“I knew you were upset about the immortality thing. I was, too. But I’m talking about—” he swallowed, shifting in his seat— “something deeper.”
Magnus sighed. “It was just the realm—”
“No, it wasn’t.” Alec’s voice was even heavier than his gaze—distressed and strained. Magnus forced himself to look back over at him.
His posture was hunched now, leaning forward and into Magnus’s space, gaze sharp and sad, and he was doing that thing again where he twisted his fingers together, pinching at the skin.
Magnus held out a hand. Alec took it.
“Do you know,” Magnus started, staring at their entwined hands instead of into his husband’s eyes, “that feeling when everything gets so dark that it starts to not look dark anymore?”
He didn’t think he was explaining himself very well, but Alec nodded once.
“Yes.”
“Well…” Magnus got stuck for a moment, and Alec squeezed his hand to encourage him to continue. “That’s how I was feeling, I think. I stopped even realizing that I was feeling badly. The darkness got so big that I… forgot there were edges to it.”
“Got lost among the trees?” Alec suggested, a sympathetic little smile on his lips, and Magnus laughed, teary-eyed.
“I suppose so.”
Alec slipped off the desk and crouched beside Magnus, taking both of Magnus’s hands in his. “Magnus. Listen. It’s okay. You can always let me know if you’re feeling lost. Or if you need someone to help you figure out if you are.”
Magnus freed one hand to cradle his cheek. “I know, dear. And I love you. The thing is just… I get lost a lot.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think there will be a time when I stop getting lost.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
Magnus didn’t think it was very okay. “It’s okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ll just come get you.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, and Magnus stared at him, heart beating fast in his throat. “Then,” he finally managed to say, after struggling to get his voice to work, “I will try. To tell you.”
Alec leaned up to kiss him, resting his forehead against Magnus’s. “I love you.”
Magnus pressed a hand to the amulet resting on Alec’s chest. Thankfully it was no longer glowing, but he almost imagined he could feel it beating, strong, warm, eternal, like a heart. Or maybe that was just Alec. “And I you. Always.”