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Alec’s pained smile curdles at the sight of the figure stepping out of the portal. It’s not the beautiful, powerful warlock his heart longs for, that he could never have as Acting Head of the Institute. A role he is no longer shackled to.
-because he betrayed you too-
The man is tall, with close-cropped, white hair, and a cruel smirk.
“Well, well, well. Look what we have here.”
-this can’t be happening, we’re in front of the Institute for Raziel’s sake-
But it is happening.
Bleeding, bruised, and so very weak, Alec can do nothing to fight back. He slaps weakly at the man’s legs, and receives a swift kick that makes him curl up over his screaming ribs.
-please no, not this, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go-
“You’re going to be fascinating to work with, I can already tell. I wonder what we can make of you?”
-please, Jace, Izzy, someone-
No one comes.
And Valentine Morgenstern grabs a fistful of Alec’s hair and drags him into hell.
“I knew your mother well,” says Valentine conversationally. Pale fingers dance over a selection of needles Alec can only see if he lifts his head from the cold metal table he’s strapped to. “Fierce woman. A dedicated believer, back then. Oh, you should have seen her in her prime! She was a pristine blade that sliced through the filth without question or mercy.”
Valentine lifts a thick needle to the light, inspecting the golden liquid within with narrowed eyes.
His gaze flicks to Alec’s battered face and hardens. “You really should have seen her. The Maryse I knew would never have raised such a weak and corruptible son.”
He puts the needle down with a harsh clack, shaking his head.
“The heir to the Lightwoods. Acting Head of an Institute, at a remarkably young age. And you threw it all away on sentiment.”
Valentine’s face twists in disgust, but then it smooths into a cruel smile.
“At least,” he purrs, pulling up the blood-stained t-shirt Alec’s worn since being thrown out of the Institute three? four? days ago. Alec winces as the cool air bites at his exposed skin, raw from bruises. “You didn’t drag my son down with you.”
Valentine traces the faded outline of Alec’s parabatai rune. Alec tries and fails to suppress a shudder.
His heart thuds against his ribs. His son? He can’t mean- Jace?
“Oh yes,” Valentine smirks. “Jonathan Christopher, my boy. I raised him to be the best, to surpass all others, no matter who he had to step on to get there. I was disappointed when he seemed to have forgotten my lessons, when he bound himself to someone else, someone weak and with an unnatural inclination towards him to boot, and weakened himself in the process. But it seems he worked it out, and took back his strength.”
-he knows, he knows-
The panicked thoughts are familiar, and Alec almost laughs. What does it matter that Valentine knows he’s gay, somehow? Being straight wouldn’t magically save him from Valentine’s torture or twisted experiments.
Valentine shakes his head, a rueful smile on his face. “Children. Sometimes they just have to make their own mistakes before they’ll learn.”
And Alec wants to shout, to defend Jace from this twisted man who’d scarred him so badly…
-but Jace did turn his back on me, he left me, left me to take the fall for him like he always does-
The words stick in his throat.
Valentine smiles again, and pats his cheek.
“Now the question is, what to do with you?” He cocks his head, reptilian gaze fixed on Alec’s face. “Your unending shame provides a unique opportunity. After all, you may be deruned, but the blood of angel’s still runs in your unworthy veins.”
Valentine reaches out for another needle, and this one is a terrifying, iridescent black. Ichor, thicker than any Alec has ever seen.
“I think it’s only fitting that your blood be as corrupted as the rest of you,” he sneers.
He plunges the needle into Alec’s arm.
And Alec screams.
He’s burning from the inside.
He can feel every beat of his heart as liquid flame scorches through his blood vessels. The ichor eating away at him, burning him. Opposing demonic and nephilim energies battling each other under his skin.
It’s agony.
He’s barely conscious when the guards come. His skin steams and one yelps as they try to grab him, backing off and swearing. The ground below him is scorched, concrete warping under his heated flesh.
“He’s gonna burn down the building at this rate, sir,” says a pained voice.
“Hmm,” says Valentine. “Then perhaps it’s time to send him where he belongs.”
Alec drifts to a discordant harmony of voices around him, his only focus the pain that is keeping him conscious.
-it hurts it hurts just let me die please let me die please-
A spark. Purple and blue.
Something tugs at his memory, and he raises his head.
-Magnus?-
It’s not him. It’s another warlock, a young man that would probably be pretty, with his shimmery blue scales like freckles dusting his skin, if he didn’t look like he was on death’s door. Black circles under his haunted eyes, gaunt cheeks, painfully thin. He’s shaking. Part of Alec, the part he’s never been able to switch off, wants to reach out to him, to comfort him.
And then the warlock’s shaking hands twist.
“This is where we part ways, Alexander,” says Valentine, and Alec hates the way this man’s tongue curls around the syllables, like a mockery of someone else who used to murmur his name with admiration. “I’m afraid you’re too much of a monster to remain here. But don’t worry. We’ll be sending you home.”
He nods to the warlock, a cruel smile on his face.
The floor disappears beneath Alec.
And
He
Falls
Red.
Red dust.
Red ash.
Red blood.
Everything is red.
Alec is alone, broken, but the air burns hot enough to make even his scorched veins feel cool by comparison.
There’s no water here. No food. Nothing. Just an endless red sky and a barren rocky plain.
He lies there, waits to die, begs for it.
And then the demons come.
It’s muscle memory at this point.
He doesn’t have his runes, or his weapons. He’s been burning alive for the last few days. He hasn’t slept or eaten in even longer.
And yet… the Ravener demons scuttle around him, tearing into his flesh with sharp teeth and barbed tails. But what is a little poison to a dying man with pure ichor in his veins? What are teeth and claws to a man condemned, with nothing left to lose?
Alec tears the things apart with his bare hands. One by one, they fall, and he’s still, somehow, standing. He’s bloody, wounds pouring acid over his skin.
He doesn’t care.
Somehow, he’s still alive.
Something within him flickers, a ghost of that old stubborn tenacity that had carried him so far, until the betrayals spelled the end of the line.
Except he’s still here, still fighting, and suddenly he’s furious. And he decides that he’s not done.
He falls to his knees, and stretches trembling hands to a still twitching Ravener. The rest of the horde are already ash and ichor smears, but this one is still alive, too broken to move, too stubborn to die.
Kind of like him really.
He tears off a leg, and the thing screeches. He hisses at it, bearing bloodied teeth, and it shudders and falls silent.
Alec raises the leg to his mouth
-by the Angel, am I really doing this, why-
and bites down.
It’s foul. Simultaneously rotten and burnt. Ichor sprays across his chin, but he barely registers the sting.
He chews methodically and swallows, shuddering.
He forces the leg down, bite by nauseating bite. Then he takes another leg. And another.
By the time the Ravener disintegrates, he barely registers the taste anymore. On some level, he’s disgusted with himself.
On another, he feels full for the first time in weeks.
He curls up right there on the stained, scorched ground, and closes his eyes.
He sleeps deeper than he has in years.
He awakes to red skies and cooler temperatures. He feels better, stronger, with the weight of demon flesh heavy in his stomach.
He sits up, back aching from lying on the hard ground. He’s kind of amazed nothing came for him while he slept. Surely if one pack of Raveners found him, another would soon enough?
He stares at the carnage he wrought the previous night - not that the sky seems to change here - and wonders if the circle of ichor surrounding him warned them off. He shakes his head. Raveners aren’t intelligent enough for that. So why?
A flare on his arm makes him look down. His hands are stained and burned from dried ichor, but what catches his attention is the scar on his arm. The faint lines that are all that’s left of his Angelic Power rune.
Except it’s turned black.
He tilts his arm, watches as the rune gleams iridescent like oil. The little flicks under its two branches are no longer tightly curled underneath, instead they curve up.
Like a pair of horns.
He searches within himself, feels something humming within. Power, ancient like the Angel’s, but barbed and sharp. Before, the power of his runes felt like tapping in to an ocean: bright and clean and so pure it drowned all sense of self until there was nothing but duty and battle. Now, it’s coiled and calculated. Waiting. Hungry.
-what have I done?-
He shakes the doubts away. It’s done. And if he wants to survive, he’ll have to do more.
Alec cuts a path through what he discovers, from the demons that are smart enough to talk, is actually Edom.
Every demon he kills and consumes fuels that sense of power flaring from his corrupted Enkeli rune, the scorching heat in his veins lessening with every bite. He paints over his old rune scars with ichor, carving them into his flesh anew with severed and bleeding limbs. It shouldn’t work, but the runes blacken to life once more as though drawn with a stele.
Strength floods his body once again. His senses sharpen. His body is once more honed into the perfect weapon, forged for the endless Shadow War. Alec laughs a hollow laugh, and returns to his old duty.
It’s the only thing he has left.
“I think something’s happening in Edom,” says Isabelle.
It’s the first time she’s spoken up in the Ops room in months.
After her brother was deruned, Isabelle didn’t think things could get any worse.
She was wrong.
Without Alec covering for her, she quickly discovered she was nowhere near as sneaky as she’d thought. Her years of flaunting her freedoms and ignoring the rules had left her with few friends outside her immediate family, and now all three of her brothers were gone. Max was safely tucked away in the Mumbai Institute, far out of reach. A confrontation with Valentine had cost them Jace, when he’d revealed himself as Jace’s real father. Jace had chosen to follow him, turning his back on her as she screamed at him that he was a traitor, they were his family, what would Alec think of him? And Alec… Alec was gone, and it was all her fault.
Clary was no help. She was focused on finding a way to wake her mom, and on getting Jace back, coming up with wild plans to go rescue him. Izzy tried to explain to her that they needed to be careful, that things were different now without Alec, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.
Mom was gone, in Idris doing damage control. And then Robert - that man was not her father - had tried to sell her off to Aldertree, now that Alec could no longer maintain control of the Institute through marriage to Lydia.
Izzy’s passionate declaration in the centre of Ops in response, that she’d ‘rather marry a demon than Aldertree, and she’d slice off his manhood with her electrum whip before she bore him children’ was met with appalled silence. And then her own father slapped her in the face, and threw her in the cells for insubordination.
Her little speech had killed the marriage plans, as she’d hoped, but she’d quickly found out that she’d also pretty effectively killed her career prospects too.
Stuck with brutal retraining, ichor duty, and endless hours of paperwork ‘to teach her discipline’, her existence was one of endless monotony, drudgery, and grief. There was talk of sending her to the Iron Sisters, although the consensus seemed to be that she didn’t deserve the honour.
They were probably right. Her brothers are gone, and it’s her fault.
Guilt gnawed at her. Every time she wanted to open her mouth again, to rail against her punishment as unfair, she thought of Alec. How they left him behind and he’d shouldered the blame - that wasn’t his! - without complaint. And she chose to keep her head down and do her job, without distractions or rebellions for the first time in her life.
It was through the endless proofing and filing of reports that she’d noticed a pattern. While Valentine had the Downworld all stirred up, demon incursions were down. Specifically, there’d been no sightings of demons that hailed exclusively from Edom at all.
“And what would bring you that conclusion, Ms Lightwood,” says Aldertree, condescension dripping from his words.
Isabelle takes a breath, and then explains her discovery. She can already tell, from the smarmy little smile on Adertree’s slimy face that he’s not taking her seriously.
“While that’s certainly an… interesting theory, Ms Lightwood,” he says once she’s done, “perhaps it’s simply that, with competent leadership, the fine Shadowhunters of New York are finally able to do their jobs effectively.”
He claps, turning and smiling at his surrounding sycophants, who nod and chuckle. “Fantastic work, all of you, truly. It goes to show that when we follow the Law, instead of blundering along on our own misguided paths, we can drive back the demon hordes and achieve spectacular results.”
Isabelle really wants to punch him.
The city is broken and warped, but is clearly a mirror of Alicante. The broken spires of the demon towers are shattered and dead. The Gard is smashed to near rubble, but the Accords Hall still stands, draped in sinful red silks. Above it all, bat-winged demons swirl through the sky, staining the endless red a rippling, reptilian black.
The flying demons shriek and dive-bomb him as soon as he enters the city. Alec raises his spear, a sharpened long bone harvested from a previous kill and carved with Angelic (Demonic?) Power runes. The runes shimmer with light that shifts between white and oil-slick gold. The hands that wrap around the staff are darkened, the skin permanently stained by ichor that no longer burns him.
Alec bears his teeth, and feels his corrupted runes flare with power. He has work to do.
He’s never seen the things attacking him before. Huge, leathery-skinned, batlike monstrosities that twist and scream, flowing around each other like a deadly flock of starlings. In the centre of the horde, Alec twirls his weapon, swatting them out of the air, cracking skulls and skewering bodies. They rend his flesh and Alec laughs. Iratzes flare without him having to draw them, his wounded skin sloughing off into red ash to reveal uninjured skin beneath.
He fights for hours, or is it days? He doesn’t know anymore. There is no sun to set in Edom by which to count the passage of time, and he no longer needs to sleep. Who knew ichor and demon flesh were better than caffeine?
The demons swarm together, their skin fusing into one enormous figure. It screeches at him in outrage, in defiance.
Alec screams right back at it.
It’s fast, but he’s faster, and while this thing is bigger than the others, it’s got the same weaknesses. Alec dances around its swiping claws, hunkers down under billowing gusts from colossal wings, and rolls away from blasts of fire thrown from clawed hands. As it rears back for another throw, he slams his spear into the ground and leaps. His strength, stamina, agility, and accuracy runes sing with power as he hurtles through the air. He slashes down, slicing a line through a leathery wing.
The demon roars in anger as he lands and dodges again.
Cut by cut, he shreds those powerful wings, until the Greater Demon is struggling to stay aloft. It’s weakening, but so is he - his stomach is hollow and the ichor in his veins is beginning to burn once more. His body aches, each subsequent leap less powerful, and his skin is taking longer to renew after every wound.
Finally, he sees his chance.
He throws himself into the air.
The demon screams in triumph. His aim is off and he’s finally within reach of those massive claws. The wind whistles as it goes to swat him out of the air.
At the last second, he twists. Vaulting off its arm, he launches himself higher.
His runed spear plunges straight into the creature’s chest.
With a howl of rage, it collapses to the ground, shrinking to human size.
He lands on all fours, panting.
The demon no longer looks like a demon.
Before him, his spear lodged in her chest, lies a beautiful woman. Her light brown skin shimmers with sweat, her golden dress clings and pools around her like liquid. Her dark eyes are huge and pleading, her lips a seductive pout.
“Please,” she whispers in a voice like honey. “No more.”
He steps closer, and she reaches out a trembling hand to him. The other clutches his spear, holding it in place. Familiar black blood pools around the wound, dripping thick and viscous onto her dress. Elegant red nails beckon him closer.
“Whatever it is you desire, it is yours, if only you let me live.”
Alec smiles at her, a smile so full of relief. She smiles back at him softly, and inhales. Her eyes blow wide.
“You are one of mine?” Her eyes look him up and down. “You are of my blood. My boy. My son.”
She reaches out a hand as he kneels beside her, touching his face with wonder. His skin burns under her touch.
“I am no one’s but my own,” he murmurs.
Alec grabs the spear and shoves it further into her chest.
She screams, her eyes turning pure black. Ichor drips from her mouth and she collapses on the dusty ground, surrounded by the corpses of her fellow demons.
Alec pulls out his spear and flicks away the ichor, then hums, considering.
She looks human, but she isn’t.
And after all that fighting, he’s very hungry.
Her heart tastes like the finest meat, marinated in a sweet apple sauce. It’s the opposite of divine, and yet it tastes like heaven.
Inside the Accords Hall turned palace, Alec finds him.
At first he thinks it’s a burnt corpse, but then it shifts.
“Mother?”
Alec stares at the boy, who stares back with anguished black eyes. His body is just layers of skin burnt black, peeling to raw, bloody red muscle. Alec adjusts his grip on his bloody spear. Something tells him that this boy is not a demon, but how is he still alive if he isn’t?
Come to think of it, do female demons birth warlocks in hell?
Something twists inside his chest at the thought of this boy’s miserable existence.
“If she was the big bat thing that turned into a lady in a gold dress, she’s dead.”
The boy chokes, body spasming like Alec’s words are a physical blow. Alec strangles the instincts, honed through years of soothing Jace through his nightmares, to comfort him, and holds his position.
“Who are you?” Alec asks.
“Jonathan,” says the burnt boy. “Jonathan Morgenstern.”
Alec exhales. Of course. Of course Valentine would sire a warlock son and abandon him in Edom.
Alec sinks into a crouch, unwilling to fully drop his guard, but unable to maintain a threatening posture in the face of Jonathan’s obvious misery.
“Valentine’s son?” he asks, just to be sure.
Jonathan’s face twists, burnt skin ripping away as the muscles shift. Alec suppresses a wince.
“That bastard threw me in here to suffer.”
“Me too,” says Alec.
Jonathan stares at him, body tensing. Alec internally readies himself to spring back to his full height, to defend and strike.
“You don’t look like how I remember Jace,” Jonathan spits out.
This boy knew Jace? Wait, Valentine said Jace was his son... Did Jace know Jonathan?
-did Jace leave him behind too?-
“Jace is my… my adopted brother. I’m Alec.”
Black eyes narrow.
“You look older than me. But you must have demon blood if you’re surviving here. Are you an earlier experiment?”
Alec grips his weapon tight to steady himself.
“Valentine gave his own son demon blood?” he asked, fighting to keep the horror out of his voice. He remembers the cold metal, the cruel smiles, the sting of the needle and fire in his veins. To do that to his own son…
“I was supposed to be a new breed of shadowhunter, with the blessings of the angels and the strength of the demons. But I was never as good as his perfect Jace.”
-“Jace is the greatest shadowhunter of this generation. You being his parabatai will only slow him down.”
“Why are you always such a disappointment?”
“Your best isn’t good enough, Alec!”-
Even here in Hell, his mother’s voice still cracks like a whip, flaying him open.
“I’m sorry,” says Alec. His voice is heavy. “I could never seem to live up to him either.”
Jonathan’s goes still. His eyes are locked on Alec’s staff.
“What’s that rune?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. After I woke up here, my angelic rune had changed. It seems to work better here. It kills demons, anyway, which is all I need.”
“I could hear the fight, hear her screams. You killed her, didn’t you?” His gaze has slid to the black ichor still staining the weapon. “My mother. Lilith.”
Alec sighs. “Yeah.” Then Jonathan’s words catch up with him. “Wait, Lilith? As in, Mother of Demons Lilith?”
Jonathan nods, eyes studying Alec. “Are you going to kill me too?”
“You’re not a demon,” Alec says carefully.
“I’m a monster.” Jonathan’s voice is unwavering, and there’s a challenge in his black eyes.
“Are you? Or is that what everyone else told you?”
“Is there a difference?”
Alec lifts one shoulder. “I think so. I was always a disappointment to my family, despite doing almost everything they asked of me. I held myself back so I could be there to protect my younger siblings, and they labelled me a failure. I proposed to a woman so my family could keep the Institute they forced me to run, despite being gay and interested in someone else, but my siblings treated me like I was insane for denying my true self. Like my true self wasn’t illegal in the eyes of the Clave. My parabatai, Jace, sabotaged my mission and left me behind, and it broke our bond. I loved him for years, and he left me to take the fall for everything he’d done, all for a girl he’d known for less than a month. I was branded a traitor, despite never betraying the Clave, and deruned for it. And then Valentine grabbed me off the street and injected me with demon blood, telling me that I was weak and that he’d make me as corrupted and shameful as I’d proven myself to be.”
He twists the spear slowly in his grip as he talks, thumb stroking over one of the roughly carved runes. His voice hardens. “And yet, I’m here in Edom, doing my job of hunting demons, without backup or equipment. And I apparently killed the Mother of all Demons single-handedly.”
“So tell me,” Alec says, feeling his twisted Enkeli burn with power, his body thrumming with the heartbeat of Edom itself, “am I weak? Am I a disappointment? Am I a traitor to the cause?”
Jonathan stares at him, black eyes blown wide. Alec smiles at him, but it’s more of a baring of teeth in challenge.
“So maybe you are a monster. Or maybe Valentine, who tortures innocents and injected demon blood into his own son, treated you like one so he could control you. Maybe no one ever gave you a chance to show them who you really are.”
Jonathan takes a shaky breath.
“I’ve always had impulses. To hurt and to kill. Valentine encouraged them, trained me to hone that violence. So I saw no reason to hold myself back. But even though the violence is what he wanted from me, he decided it was too much.”
“Then I suppose the question is, do you still want to be that person? Valentine’s monster?” Jonathan flinches. “Or do you want to be someone new?”
“What’s the point? I’m stuck here, like this.” He gestures to his burnt body.
“Not long ago, I thought I was condemned to be an exiled, powerless mundane, and then a corpse in Valentine’s lab.”
Jonathan closes his eyes. When they open again, they're a deep blue. “I don’t want to be a monster,” he whispers. “I just wanted him to be proud of me. To love me the way he loved Jace.”
“If my Fall taught me anything,” Alec says, finally sitting down next to Jonathan, “it’s that you can’t control how other people see you. You have to show them who you are, and let go of the ones who refuse to truly see you.”
“But who’s going to look past this?” Jonathan says in disgust, gesturing to his horrific appearance.
“I will.”
Jonathan stares at him, and Alec can see the naked hope shining in sapphire eyes. Alec offers his hand.
Jonathan reaches out slowly, as if afraid Alec will pull away. Jonathan’s hands are just as burnt as the rest of him, tipped with black clawed nails. They tremble as he reaches out. Alec doesn’t waver. He knows he no longer looks like the perfect angelic soldier, knows that warlocks too are marked by their heritage but not shackled to it, so how can he judge Jonathan?
Jonathan grips his hand, and stares into his eyes.
“Above all things, we are Shadowhunters,” says Alec. “We exist to protect those who cannot or will not protect themselves. Our duty is endless, but it is our duty, and we serve with honour. This realm fell to demons once, long ago. Now we are here, and I will fight to take it back from them. Are you with me?”
“Whither thou goest, I will go,” Jonathan whispers reverently.
The faded rune on Alec’s side bursts to life, the one he thought he’d lost forever. The bond, a void in his soul he’d learnt to ignore, fills with hope and light and warmth, and Alec basks in the feeling of completeness, of rightness.
A golden glow encompasses them both. Jonathan screams as his ruined skin splits. Alec keeps hold of his hand, pushing strength and calm down the newly formed bond in response to Jonathan’s terror. Dead skin sloughs off him, revealing pale, trembling flesh beneath.
Jonathan pitches forward, whimpering. Alec pulls him into his arms, resting Jonathan’s head against his chest. He’s still scarred, looking as though long ago he’d battled an army of dragonidae and emerged from their flames, alive but forever marked. A warrior, not a walking corpse.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” Alec soothes him. He strokes the growing white-blond hair, and notes a touch of red at the roots. “You’re all right now.”
On Jonathan’s side, a mirror of Alec’s parabatai rune glows iridescent gold.
They stay in the city, that Jonathan calls Idumea, for a while. There’s actual food here, and Alec relishes the taste of real fruit after so long. The meat is still all demonic flesh, but he has the means to cook it now. It helps settle the part of him that still bristles with disgust at what he’s done to survive, the part of him that speaks with his mother’s strident voice and the Clave’s uncompromising words. Jonathan’s happiness is palpable every time Alec serves him a portion, as if this basic act of care is remarkable. Alec supposes that to a boy thrown into Hell and raised by demons, it is.
Alec and Jonathan train and spar together, testing the limits of their new bond and changed bodies. Jonathan is fast and strong, even more so than Jace, but Alec keeps up with him easily. He’s vicious where Alec is focused, ambitious and relentless where Alec is steadfast and analytical. They meld into something greater, Jonathan’s raw power harnessed by Alec’s tenacity. Jonathan’s bloodlust hums through their bond, and Alec sharpens it into the razor-edged precision of a seraph blade.
But greatest of all is Jonathan’s hunger: for life, for freedom, for love. It soaks into the numbness Alec has existed within for most of his life. Years of denial, of self-recriminations, of sacrificing himself piece by agonising piece for people who took but never gave - and who never thanked him for any of it - had left him fractured and bleeding on the inside. He’d pushed it all down, down, down, until there was nothing left of him but the mission: to protect, at all costs. Jonathan’s unbridled desire for more, his rage at the unfairness of their lot in life, finally eases the pressure that’s been threatening to crush Alec for years. With Jonathan’s fire and fury pounding in his chest, Alec feels like he can breathe deeply for the first time, and not apologise for taking up space. It’s liberating. It’s intoxicating.
He catches himself admiring the strength of Jonathan’s form, the toned muscles now visible under scarred skin, the coiled power of a predator. Jonathan’s glances linger on him as well, sending sparks of heat down their growing bond that make Alec shiver.
Alec can sense the growing restlessness in his new parabatai, though. The urge to hunt, to kill, sings along their bond. Alec channels it towards their goal, and offers a plan to secure the city as their base, before they move on to take down Asmodeus.
They tear through the demonic scouts that poke around the outskirts of the city, laughing as they dance around their prey.
They carve runes into the city walls, anoint them with the ichor of their kills until they blare to life with unholy power. They’re nothing like the demon towers of Alicante, but they still hum with a threatening aura that warns lesser demons away. Without warlocks to ward or holy adamas to weaken, that’s the best they can do.
Asmodeus is tricky. While Lilith favoured a frontal assault and followed it up with a seduction doomed to failure, Asmodeus conjures illusions, and attacks from writhing shadows before disappearing like smoke. Golden cat eyes gleam in the darkness, taunting them.
His minions, the asmodei, lash out at them suddenly and disappear into the roiling walls of shadow encircling them. Jonathan and Alec stand back to back, guarding each other, as they cut the lesser demons down. Alec can feel Jonathan’s frustration, and sends his own icy focus to him. They need a way to draw Asmodeus out.
Magic crackles suddenly, and they both tense. Across from them, shadows swirl in the shape of a portal. Beyond it, Alec can see the New York Institute, the regal facade that no longer feels like home.
Out of the portal, steps Jace.
“Alec! Thank the Angel!”
Jace rushes forward, arms open to embrace him, but Alec keeps his weapon up.
Jace’s eyes are shining, hands held out towards him. “My parabatai, my brother, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. I’ve been searching for you, ever since I came home and discovered you gone. I’m so glad you’re alive!”
Jonathan whirls to face Jace. Bitter poison snakes through the bond, rage and hunger and hatred. Alec shifts closer to him, eyes scanning the room for threats that could target their now exposed backs.
“You are not his parabatai!” Jonathan spits. “Not anymore!”
Jace’s face crumples. “I- I know. I’m so sorry. I fucked up, it’s all my fault. But you’ll always be my brother, my parabatai, rune or no rune! Let me take you home, we can help you, we can fix everything!”
Jonathan goes unnaturally still, but Alec feels his control snap.
“Jonathan!” Alec cries in warning, but it’s too late. Jonathan snarls and launches himself at Jace, and the two fall back and are swallowed up by the coiling smoke.
Alec spins, searching for his parabatai, and for threats now he’s an easier target. A low chuckle reverberates around him.
“Oh Alexander,” a melodic voice purrs. Alec feels his hackles rise, and unbidden, a memory of someone else caressing his name with their tongue in the exact same intonation flares to life. He shakes the memory away, chills his panicking thoughts, and readies for battle.
“Always so alone. People promise you the world, but they always leave you behind.”
Alec senses rather than sees, whirling to slice his spear into pooling smoke before it can form.
It dissipates, but the voice chuckles again.
“So strong, and yet so desperate for love. Were you honestly foolish enough to believe the words of that demon-blooded brat of Lilith’s? That he’d stay by your side, where no other ever has? Alexander,” the voice drips with mocking disappointment. “He’s using you.”
Coiled shadows strike like snakes, wrapping around his wrists before he can dodge. Alec struggles, but can’t break free.
“He wants to be free. He thought you could be his way out, and so he followed you. But if I offer him an easier path, he’ll leave you behind without a second glance. Just. Like. Jace,” it hisses.
Alec roars. He can feel Jonathan in his soul, a snarling, feral animal lashing out in rage and terror. He tries to soothe him, but his forced calm cannot cut through the blind fury.
“It’s such a pity, how you cling to human sentiment. I’ve never seen a mortal Fall as we did. Perhaps the blood in your veins could have made you great, if you could only let go of your human weakness. Instead, your story ends here.”
He feels the brush of a shadowy blade at his throat, before the voice screams and the smoke dissipates fully. Alec spins around.
Behind him stands Jace, bloodied and panting, seraph blade glowing white. Jonathan is nowhere in sight.
“Alec!”
Alec backs away from his brother. “Where’s my parabatai?”
Jace looks at him in confusion. “I’m right here. Did you hit your head? Are you losing your memories? C’mon, let’s get you back to the Institute. Izzy will check you over.”
“No,” says Alec firmly. “Not without Jonathan.”
“Jonathan’s gone,” says Jace. Alec reaches for the bond but there’s nothing. Just emptiness, hollow and horrifying.
Alec drops to his knees, clutching his side where his parabatai rune burns. “No. No, no, no, not again, no!”
“Alec!” Jace rushes forward and grips his shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry. This place… it twists you. If it doesn’t kill you, it warps you into a demon and he… he turned into this bat-winged monster. A parabatai bond breaks when a shadowhunter stops being a shadowhunter. He’s gone. No different to the asmodei now. I’m so sorry.” He reaches out, and Alec flinches away. “But it’s not too late for you, Alec. We need to get out of here, quickly. Magnus is waiting for my signal to portal us home, we can help you. Please Alec. Forget this place, and come home.”
“NO!” Alec screams, shoving him back. “No! He’s not a monster, he’s my parabatai, my friend, my soul! I won’t leave him behind, I won’t!”
-not like you left me-
Alec sobs, clutching the hollow in his chest where his heart should be. “He can’t be gone. He didn’t want to be a monster, he wanted to stay with me. He was gonna stay with me, he chose me,” he whispers. “Whither thou goest, I will go.”
“He lied,” says Jace softly. “Maybe he didn’t mean to break his promise, but he lost himself to the monster within. You have to know that, must have felt the rage and the madness before the bond broke. You can’t save him, there’s nothing human left. Please, don’t sacrifice yourself for someone who doesn’t deserve it. Not again. Please, let me take you home.”
Pain howls through the void in his chest, and for a second, he’s tempted to take his brother’s outstretched hand. Would it be better to be with people who will only use him, just so he doesn’t have to be alone? Jace’s offer echoes in his mind.
‘Please, let me take you home.’
“No.” Alec shakes his head, and grips his spear tightly. “I have no home without him.”
He surges to his feet and with a bellow of raw anguish, skewers Jace through the chest.
-Jace doesn’t ask, doesn’t care about what I want, what anyone else wants. He asks for forgiveness, not permission, which means-
“You’re not my brother. And I’m not leaving without my parabatai.”
Jace chokes and spasms. Blood spurts from his mouth. He looks at Alec with wide, betrayed eyes.
Eyes that slowly bleed into gold with slit-pupils.
Blond hair darkens into black curls. Pale skin darkens to a warm gold, and Jace’s face shifts into an older, regal man’s - one who bears a noticeable resemblance to Magnus Bane.
And behind him, revealed by collapsing shadow walls, stands Jonathan. He’s staring at Alec with unbridled awe, dark blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. Relief floods Alec at seeing him alive. Their bond flares back to life as shadowy threads break off from Alec’s body, where they’d been smothering his parabatai rune.
Asmodeus chokes on his own blood as Alec twists the spear. Red light spills from the wound, and the runes of his bone spear glow oil-slick gold. The light wraps around the staff like a slithering serpent, twisting up Alec’s arm and flooding his body. He can feel the scorching flames of Edom wrapping around his heart, his blood humming with the power of a realm. He can see every corner of it, feel every panicked demon clawing and screaming as their king dies.
Asmodeus’ body shrivels in on itself, skin flaking away into shadow, and shadow into ash that falls to the ground in a pile of glittering golden dust.
Alec stands, panting, as he feels his awareness snap back to his body. He can finally embrace his parabatai through their bond again, a melody of mutual joy and relief as their entwined souls reach out. His body thrums with energy but he forces himself to remain still, to assess.
There are no more demons with them - those fled with the shadows after Asmodeus collapsed. He scans Jonathan, searching for injuries. He’s bleeding from a wound in his shoulder that starts healing as soon as Alec glares at it.
“You chose me,” Jonathan breaks the silence with a reverent whisper. “He offered you a way out, and you chose me.”
“I will always choose you,” says Alec, eyes locked on the other half of his soul.
“He wanted me to betray you, to side with him. He offered me freedom. The cost was leaving you behind.” Jonathan steps closer, booted feet kicking up the ashes of the dead Greater Demon. “I refused. Said we’d find a way out together. He told me he’d prove you weren’t worth it. He said you’d choose Jace. Everyone always chooses Jace.”
“You’re my parabatai, the other half of me. I will always choose you,” Alec vows again.
There is a moment of stillness, where the words hang in the air.
Then Jonathan is on him. He leaps, wrapping his legs around Alec, and smashes their mouths together. Alec kisses him back hungrily. Deep in his soul, Alec can sense Jonathan’s wonder, awe, relief, love-
Alec grips him tight, relishing the firm planes of muscle flexing against him. Kissing him feels like the first breath of oxygen after being underwater too long. His tongue snakes inside Alec’s mouth, and he can’t fight the groan that escapes him. He’s painfully aware of how tight his trousers are becoming, wonders if he should pull back, try to calm things down… but why should they stop when everything feels so good? And then Jonathan shifts to press his hard cock against Alec’s own, and suddenly he’s on fire. His desperate want echoes back to him from Jonathan’s side of the bond, and he rushes to pin him against the nearest wall. Jonathan’s clawed nails dig into his shoulders as Alec frantically tugs at his pants. They can’t stop kissing, rutting against each other frantically even as Alec prepares him roughly. It’s everything, and not enough all at once.
Sinking into Jonathan feels like release, like completeness, like two broken pieces slotting together. He’s warm and tight and so, so perfect, Alec feels dizzy and overwhelmed by need. And then they’re fucking, hard and fast and frantic. Heat scorches through his veins, the ichor in his blood singing with his lust. Alec’s thrusts are brutal, and Jonathan meets every one eagerly with fast and filthy rolls of his hips. He bites Alec’s lip hard, soothing the sting with that wicked tongue that makes Alec groan. Jonathan has a tight fistful of Alec’s hair, and Alec’s vicious grip on Jonathan’s thighs is enough to bruise.
Their pleasure builds like a thunderstorm, crackling up their spines until they’re both shaking with it. They come together, moaning into each other’s bloodied mouths.
“Mine,” hisses Jonathan, digging his claws into Alec’s parabatai rune and sending aftershocks of pleasure-pain-pleasure through Alec’s body.
“Mine,” Alec groans, sinking his teeth into Jonathan’s scarred neck. Jonathan arches into him, bearing his throat.
They moan in unison as their bond pulses between them.
Magnus staggers, his glass of martini slipping from his fingers and smashing on the floor. He grabs a nearby table for support.
“Magnus? What’s wrong?” asks Catarina, rising to her feet.
“I don’t know, I-” Magnus paws at his chest, desperately searching with his magic for the source of that monumental shift- “Edom,” he whispers. “I can’t feel Edom.”
“Well, that can’t be good,” says Ragnor, and starts chugging his drink.
“No, because that means either my father has a new heir-”
Magnus stops dead, heart hammering. “Or someone’s dethroned him.”
Ragnor recites an impressive litany of swearwords across four languages and seven time periods.
Magnus’ magic roils, unsettled. His power is still his own, the only thing missing is his awareness of the realm he has spent centuries avoiding, and yet he feels a strange sense of loss he can’t place.
“Alert everyone. There may be a powerful young warlock in need of help. And I need to summon something nasty to interrogate about just what is happening in Hell.”
Alec wakes to a deep ache in his shoulder blades.
He doesn’t need to sleep anymore, he functions just fine without rest, but it’s still nice to lie in Jonathan’s arms and just… drift. It’s a luxury, a feeling of warmth and safety he’s long been denied.
He groans and rolls onto his stomach, flexing the muscles in his back in an attempt to get relief. His skin feels too tight over his upper back.
Jonathan stirs beside him. Blue eyes blink open to gaze at him before his nose scrunches adorably.
“Ow. I’m pretty sure I’m the one that should have back ache this morning after being fucked senseless, so why are you the one hurting?” He frowns, concern bleeding through. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
Alec can’t help but flush with heat at the memory of their tryst. “Not in any way I didn’t enjoy.”
He feels Jonathan’s mood shift in response, letting out a husky groan that sends shivers down Alec's spine.
Jonathan crawls over him, and presses kisses to his bare back. Alec melts into silken sheets with a sigh. Despite the aches, this might be the most relaxed he’s ever felt.
“Hmm,” Jonathan hums against his skin, tongue laving over a particularly sensitive point that makes Alec shudder. “There’s something here.”
Warm, dexterous fingers massage his muscles, and Alec moans.
“Oh, Angel, yes,” he hisses out. “Fuck, that’s good.”
“Careful,” Jonathan says, moving up to nip at his ear. “You keep making sounds like that, and I’ll get distracted fucking you instead of helping you ease that ache.”
“I’ve heard sex is a good pain reliever,” says Alec in a strained voice. His hardening cock is pressed into the mattress, and he grinds down once, before pushing his ass up against Jonathan’s front. “And I’ve got more than one ache you could help me with.”
“Hmm, well then, I guess I’d better help you out,” Jonathan replies, in a voice so low it practically drips with ichor. Alec’s heart rate accelerates and he grins. “It’s what a good parabatai would do.”
Some time later, Alec sprawls across their bed, boneless and sated. Next to him, Jonathan radiates a lazy and contented smugness. Claws trail up and down his back, brushing gently over the still sore spots.
“They’re bigger.”
“Hmm?” Alec’s barely conscious, fully relaxed after being so thoroughly used.
“Your shoulder blades are more pronounced. I noticed it earlier, before you thoroughly distracted me by being all sexy.”
Alec grins and sends his own pulse of smugness through their bond. Jonathan leans over and bites his ass cheek in response, causing Alec to yelp.
“You’re a menace.”
“Mmm, you love it,” Jonathan agrees.
There’s a flicker in their bond, a tiny flame of insecurity. Alec pushes himself up and locks eyes with his soulmate before he answers, with full sincerity, “I do.”
Jonathan blushes. His usual confidence and sharp edges are gone. Like this he looks soft, and a little lost. His dark blue eyes are shimmering pools, hopeful and hesitant all at once. Alec ignores his protesting body to sit up fully so he can kiss his each cheek, and then his lips. He keeps this kiss chaste and gentle, and he pours all his love for this man who chose him, who made him feel whole again after the world had stripped him to the bone.
Warmth flares between them, and that flicker of doubt is snuffed out.
Alec pulls back but Jonathan chases his lips, and how can he deny him? They kiss again, deepening it but keeping it slow and heartfelt.
When Jonathan finally pulls back to draw in a gasping breath, Alec leans his forehead against his. They breathe together quietly, enjoying the intimacy of the moment.
Pain flares across his upper back, and Alec jerks. He doubles over, groaning.
Jonathan holds him, checks him over.
“Oh shit.”
“What?” asks Alec through gritted teeth. His back feels like it’s about to split open.
“Your shoulder blades are growing, they’re pushing up through the skin.”
“Wha-ARGH!” Alec breaks off, swearing. He can feel it now, his bones shifting beneath the skin, pushing outwards.
“Alec, parabatai, I need you to trust me,” says Jonathan with frigid calm.
“Always,” Alec grunts, pressing his face into Jonathan’s bare chest.
Seconds later, white hot agony lances across his back as a blade slices him open. Alec spasms, feeling careful hands adjust his bones to push up through the new openings.
Jonathan shifts him back to lay flat on his stomach again, and strokes his hair with bloodied hands. “It’s all right, you’re all right, everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Wha- what’s happening… to me?” Alec spits out through gritted teeth.
“I think…” Jonathan trails off as another spasm rocks through Alec, making him bite down on a scream. When he continues, there’s a note of awe in his hushed voice. “Alec, I think you’re growing wings.”
Alec freezes.
“What?!”
“Think about it. You’ve killed two Greater Demons, the twin rulers of a Hell dimension. You ate Lilith’s heart, the Mother of All Demons, and you absorbed Asmodeus’ life essence, a literal fallen Angel. Alec…”
He trails off again, as Alec’s body rocks with tremors.
“Am I… am I becoming a demon?” Alec whispers. His heart is ice in his chest, his hands twisted into the sheets below him. He can’t look up at Jonathan.
“If you are,” Jonathan replies slowly, “then I’ll still be right by your side.”
“I… don’t want this!” Alec gasps. “I wanted to kill demons, to… make people- unf! Safe. Not… not become one!”
“Then you won’t,” Jonathan says firmly. He untwists one of Alec’s hands, and grips it tightly. Alec is scared he’s going to crush his parabatai’s fingers, but he can’t help but hold on as a fresh wave of agony makes his back bow.
“You said it yourself, that how other people define you doesn’t matter. You choose who you are. If you don’t want to be a demon, then you won’t become one. You’re too good to truly Fall, Alec.”
Alec sobs into a pillow, and tries desperately to believe him.
Their bed is a mess of ichor, sweat, and feathers.
By the time the wings have fully emerged from Alec’s back, Jonathan has brought him two simple meals he could barely touch. The rest of the time, he’s stayed right by Alec’s side, holding his hand, stroking his hair, and whispering words of comfort and encouragement. At one point, the wings got stuck, their bulk too large to escape through the neat slits Jonathan had cut into his back, and Jonathan had had to widen the holes and manoeuvre the wings around until they broke free.
Alec is exhausted, and the weight across his back feels awkward and heavy. The ruined skin around the wing joints aches, and stings any time he moves. Jonathan traces iratzes in Alec's blood over his back, which sink into his skin slowly.
“They’re beautiful, Alec,” Jonathan says in a whisper. “You’re not a demon, not a monster. You never could be. You saved me. You’re an Angel.”
Alec passes out with his trusted soulmate’s fingers smoothing down his sweaty hair, a bone-deep relief resounding through their soul bond.
Alec has to learn how to fight all over again. The wings are awkward and clunky, and get in the way of his usual fluid movements. More than once, he wacks Jonathan mid-whirl as he misjudges his reach. Jonathan just laughs every time.
Alec can’t help but admire the wings, despite his frustration. Jonathan wasn’t wrong: they are beautiful. The feathers feel soft but look glossy. Their colour varies depending on the lighting: a glimmering white that shifts into iridescent, oil-slick gold. They’re huge, big enough to hold him aloft if he dared to test them. He knows Jonathan is thrilled with the idea that Alec might actually be able to fly - “Think of the new combinations we can pull off in battle, Alec!” - but Alec can feel the strain on his muscles just from holding them up so they don’t drag across the dusty ground.
He adds extra training to his daily schedule. Jonathan takes over dinner duty, while Alec sits cross-legged on a nearby table. He flexes his back muscles over and over, getting used to the pull on his wing joints, moving each wing slowly and deliberately. Strength and control. He breathes deeply, and repeats the exercises.
As the days pass, Alec can feel Jonathan’s desire for battle growing, but it’s muted. When Alec questions him about it, he rolls his eyes and smiles. “Yeah, I want to get out there and fight. But I’m not putting you in danger by dragging you out there before you get a handle on these.” He strokes the nearest feathers with the back of his black clawed nails with such gentle tenderness, Alec’s heart aches. He surges forward to kiss his love, and Jonathan wraps his arms around him, careful not to crush his wings. Warmth pulses between them, their souls wound as tightly around each other as their arms.
When they’re not in training, they explore Asmodeus’ palace. They’re wary, but doors open for them without them needing to touch them, and they come across numerous traps that disarm themselves at their passage, reactivating behind them.
When a shadowy door parts to grant them entrance to a grand library, they turn to each other with wide eyes.
“Asmodeus was known for his powerful magic. If there’s a way for us to escape Edom, it’s here,” says Jonathan.
They devour the shelves. Alec reads while he trains his wing muscles, discovering the history of this realm that once mirrored their own. How the Shadowhunters here rejected the Downworlders completely, and the Warlocks and Seelies sided with their demonic parents to survive. How, without allies or adamas weaponry, the Nephilim fought a losing war on two fronts, until they were exterminated. How the demons flooded this realm once there was no one holding them back, and burned it to a near-lifeless husk. How the Demon Princes of Hell have squabbled and skirmished over who controls Edom ever since.
“I think I have something,” says Jonathan, after a few days of scouring the library. “It looks like the Nephilim of this world were looking for a way to escape to another realm, when they realised they were about to be overrun.”
He brings an ancient, leather-bound tome, the cover embossed with golden angelic runes, to Alec’s table. They pore over the research journal, Jonathan’s hair brushing Alec’s shoulder. The words are hard to parse - it’s in English, but in the same way that Old English is technically still English, despite reading like an almost entirely different language.
“I think…” says Alec slowly, a deep frown on his face, “that they gave up, because they needed both angelic power and demonic magic to make it work. And there was no way the warlocks would help them.”
“Well,” says Jonathan. “I don’t think that’s out of reach for us. You’re an Angel, and I’m-”
He cuts off, and a squirming feeling of shame and doubt floods through from his side of the bond as he looks down at his claws. Alec reaches across and grabs his chin, forcing him to meet his gaze.
“You’re mine, and you’re perfect as you are.”
Jonathan blushes.
“Besides, we both have demon blood. And as we can see from the records here, the Nephilim’s ideas of purity are bullshit and got them all killed, not to mention everyone else living here. If that’s what being morally good and pure is, then they can keep it. I’d rather actually save people.”
Jonathan kisses his temple in wordless thanks as Alec turns back to the book. Alec carefully wraps one of his wings around his parabatai, cradling him.
They painstakingly carve the pentagram they’ll need, the runes to power as well as contain the portal surrounding it. The runes are a mix of the traditional angelic and their demonic alterations. Alec can feel Asmodeus’ power humming under his skin, reaching out to both sets of runes. He holds it back until they’re ready.
They’ve packed up as many of the books as they can carry. Both of them are reluctant to leave so much knowledge behind, but unwilling to prolong the portal’s opening to transport more through in case either of them get trapped behind.
They have no idea if this will work, just their fervent hopes.
“Are you ready?” says Alec.
“Yes! Let’s get the fuck out of Hell!” Jonathan declares.
They slit their palms, their blood dripping onto the carvings. The runes flare to life, angelic gold and demonic red illuminating their hopeful faces. The magic crackles, but Alec can sense there’s something missing… an essence of something more, something divine.
Instinctively, he reaches back, grabs hold of one of his feathers, and yanks. Pain flares briefly, but he ignores it. The glistening feather lays in his bloody palm, and he offers it to the ritual circle.
“What are you-”
Jonathan’s question cuts off as the feather floats upwards into the centre of the pentagram. It glows a brilliant gold, and vanishes. The air rips apart as reality splits.
Cold air whips through the portal, nearly-forgotten scents of rotting garbage and smoggy city air reaching through.
Alec and Jonathan twine their still bleeding hands, take a breath, and step through.
“We’ve got an incursion!” shouts Raj. “Demonic portal just opened in Brooklyn.”
“Shit,” Izzy swears. Behind her, she can hear Jace gearing up.
It’d been a hellish year. Valentine was still at large, causing mayhem and suffering wherever he went. Jace had returned to them, after Clary pulled some reckless and stupid bullshit unsanctioned rescue mission that shouldn’t have worked. He’d managed to avoid being deruned or executed by returning with the Soul Sword, having stolen it from Valentine after he’d worked from the inside to earn his trust. But the victory proved to be hollow, because Hodge had stolen the card holding the Mortal Cup in all the chaos, and brought it to Valentine.
At least Izzy had one of her brothers back, and she apologised for doubting him, for what she’d screamed at his back as he walked away to risk his life as an undercover operative.
Jace shrugged. “It made it more believable.”
It’s not forgiveness. It’s not absolution. Izzy doesn’t deserve it, having betrayed two brothers now. She’s just glad that this time, she has an opportunity to make amends.
Jace and Clary’s burgeoning romance is dead in the water however, with Valentine’s dramatic reveal that they are in fact siblings. Izzy heart aches for them, because they’re clearly still mad about each other, even if they’re both trying to fight it.
Then things got worse. They don’t know how Valentine got the Mortal Cup out of the tarot card, but somehow he did. The Circle’s ranks swell as more and more brutish mundanes drink from the Cup and Ascend, forming an endless supply of cannon fodder. They barely have enough trained soldiers to keep up. Valentine doesn’t seem to care whether his troops live, he can always make more, but their numbers are painfully finite. The death toll keeps rising, and it’s eventually enough to pull Izzy off desk duty just to fill out the rosters. She’s out of practice, and when she takes a Ravener sting to the spine because her assigned partner is too busy slicing up a demon to cover her back, she realises how naked she feels on the battlefield without Alec watching over her, bow trained and ready to dispatch anything that tries to sneak-attack her.
She wakes up in the infirmary, still weak from the poison, to a frantic Clary telling her that Simon is gone. When Izzy snaps at her, asking her what she expects her to do about it from her hospital bed, the redhead flounces off. All she can think of is her big brother’s unending frustration at the girl, and she finally understands just how patient he truly was.
Clary had apparently roped Jace into her search, and the two ended up breaking Simon out of some super-secret holding facility. He’d been tortured for days, denied blood, and experimented on by Aldertree, all in an attempt to ‘cure’ him of his vampirism. When Izzy, freshly back on duty, regretfully told them she couldn’t help them challenge Aldertree, that they didn’t have that kind of power, she'd watched something in Simon’s eyes shutter.
The next thing she knew, the Downworld was up in arms, and Raphael Santiago and Magnus Bane were on the warpath. It was a bloodbath. The wards of the Institute fell (because when the warlock who set and maintains them is now your enemy, his own defences aren’t going to keep him out), and Aldertree was chained by barbed and crackling magic before being dragged through a portal.
They found his corpse three days later, dumped on the Institute’s front steps, completely drained of blood. A large, circular burn mutilated his face. A message was pinned to his chest, elegant writing in reddish brown ink:
We will no longer tolerate those who belong to or behave like the Circle. We will treat you as you treat us.
It was strange, to realise that they were vastly outnumbered by a united and furious Downworld. Shadowhunters were barred entrance to any number of locations, by magic and numbers alike. The Shadowhunters that tried to push their way in anyway usually ended up dead or grievously injured, and the corpses all had the Circle symbol carved or burnt into their faces if they were recovered.
The Clave was outraged, but with Valentine’s endless forces of new Shadowhunters and twisted experiments, they didn’t have the manpower to enforce peace. They placed Lydia Branwell back in charge of the Institute temporarily, but she was drowning under the weight of violent distrust as she desperately tried to smooth things over.
And now there’s a portal in Brooklyn that they need to deal with. Izzy just hopes that Magnus Bane isn’t the one behind it, and won’t object to their presence in his territory.
Magnus feels the energy spike of incredibly powerful magic tearing open a rift nearby. He doesn’t think, already opening his own portal to the site. While he’d rather leave the demon-fighting to the Nephilim, this is too close to his home for comfort. And quite frankly, he doesn’t trust the vast majority of them anywhere near his territory.
-not after what they did to Simon and the others. Not after they killed Alexander-
Oh, he knows that derunement doesn’t out and out kill, but it does leave a Nephilim hopelessly vulnerable. And between Valentine’s violent opportunism and the oppressed Downworld looking to settle some scores, a vulnerable Nephilim is almost certainly a dead one. Magnus has searched for the pretty, soulful boy that had so captured his attention, had given him hope that this new generation of Shadowhunters could be better than their parents, but there hasn’t been hide nor hair of him since that fateful day. And every day that goes past leaves another slice of regret over his armoured heart. Because he’d chosen to help Jace and Biscuit, he knew it could go badly, he knew what the Clave was like - it was why he’d agreed to the plan in the first place, to protect Meliorn. He had to look out for the Downworlders, it was part of his duty as High Warlock. It was only after everything fell apart that he realised he’d traded Alexander for Meliorn. Someone had to take the fall for Meliorn’s escape, and for the loss of the Mortal Cup, and he’d set it up perfectly for it to be Alexander. And while he could tell himself that he’d done the right thing, protecting Downworlders from the Clave, he couldn’t help but wish he’d thought to protect Alexander as well.
Brushing aside melancholy thoughts he doesn’t have time for right now, he steps through his portal to face whatever is ripping its way into his domain.
What he sees stops him dead.
A rift in space and reality reveals the sinister red glow of Edom. Already stepping through are two young men. One is heavily scarred, but the other… the other one has wings. Enormous, beautiful white-gold feathers that shimmer under the fluorescent streetlights.
As Magnus’s gaze slides from the wings up to the man’s face, he feels his heart stop.
“Alexander,” he whispers.
That beautiful face has haunted him for almost a year now, but it is not unchanged. Hazel eyes gaze back at him, but they lack that fragile innocence hidden behind reserved stoicism that they used to have. More alarming is the stained skin below his mouth, a darkened smear to his chin and spilling over that gorgeously sharp jawline. He blinks, realising that that delicious deflect rune still sits proud on his neck, but it’s wrong. It’s not the pure black of a Shadowhunter’s stele-drawn rune, but the oily black-gold of ichor.
“Magnus,” Alexander replies coolly. It’s his cold and professional voice, and that hurts more than he expected.
The man beside him stiffens. His face is scarred too, although his scars are numerous old burns that cover most of his bare flesh. His eyes are a dark blue, and narrow as they take him in.
The second man steps closer to Alexander quickly. It’s only then that Magnus notices, with another unjustified pang of loss, that they’re holding hands. Deliberately, without breaking eye contact with Magnus, the man places a kiss on that tempting deflect rune.
-message received-
Alexander snorts and gives the man a fond smile.
“Where are we?” says the other man, his attention now solely focused on Alexander.
“New York.” Alexander sighs. “I’d hoped to avoid it, too many bad memories, but it was the only place I knew well enough to anchor the portal to.”
Magnus winces, but he can’t help himself but to ask. “What happened to you?”
Alexander’s eyes snap to him. “After I was deruned and dumped on the steps of the Institute, Valentine picked me up. After he was done playing with me, he chucked me into Edom.”
Every word is a blow. Magnus makes an aborted motion to reach out to him, but the tense posture of both the men makes it clear the gesture would be unwelcome.
“I’m sorry.”
Alexander stares him down, then shrugs. His feathers ruffle behind him with the movement. Magnus has to smother the impulse to move over and touch them. He eyes them longingly.
“You were protecting your people. We might have had a mutual interest, a flirtation, but you didn’t really know me. Not enough to trust I had the Downworld’s best interests at heart. Not enough to risk your own people for me.”
Magnus wants to argue, because even though the words are true, they don’t feel it. He did know Alexander, he did know that he was a good man, a kind man. Hampered by the Clave perhaps, but someone who would lend his strength to save a werewolf, someone who lived solely for others. Balancing his heart with his duties, as all great leaders do.
And that past tense in Alexander’s words, while one magnificent wing wraps around another man, that feels like glass in his heart. Magnus has had many regrets in his life. He's not sure he regrets anything more than the choices that cost him his chance with Alexander.
“Still, I feel I should apologise. I never meant for you to get hurt. I am sorry.”
It's not enough. Nothing ever could be, but he still needs to say it.
Alexander nods, accepting, but it only lifts some of the burden from Magnus’ soul.
“The wings are new!” he says, desperate to fill the silence, and insatiably curious. Sue him.
Alexander actually grins at that. It’s not his old smile that lit up his face and made him look softer than the deadly weapon he’d been trained to be. This one is more a baring of teeth in feral delight.
-He’s been in Edom for a year. An Angel-blooded shadowhunter should have died almost instantly. What happened down there?-
“Yes, they showed up after I killed Asmodeus. Hurt like a bitch when they started growing out of my back.”
Magnus, for the first time in possibly a century, is truly speechless.
“You- what?” he finally manages. Not his usual level of eloquence, admittedly, but he thinks he can forgive himself for it considering the mind-boggling implications of that statement.
He remembers that night, the panic at the tectonic shift in his magic. The scramble to find any baby warlocks who might be his half-sibling, before Asmodeus could get his claws into them, or Shadowhunters slaughtered them. The summoning ritual he'd performed, the demon who'd revealed that Edom was all but lost. That something had torn its way through the realm, killing everything in its path. Including both rulers. His visceral fear over just what could be strong enough to do that, and whether it would set its sights on Earth once it had finished chewing up Edom.
“He tried to separate us,” says the other man. That same feral energy glitters in his eyes, and for a moment they almost look pure black.
Magnus shifts his posture into a more battle-ready one, covering up the change with a dramatic flourish. He sends a subtle tendril of magic out to assess the stranger. If a demon has hitched a ride…
But he’s not possessed. It’s strange, he feels like a shadowhunter, but with an edge of something else. The scent of burnt sugar and brimstone. Broiling demonic power contained by the searing purity of angelic might. The closest comparison he can think of is dear Tessa Gray, the warlock born from a Nephilim. But the powers of this one are imbalanced. The demonic power is there, but it’s less prominent than the angelic.
Alec, on the other hand, glows like a Lilith-damned beacon. The energies in his body twist and turn, swirling golden divinity chased by black oil. The power feels familiar. His father’s magic and essence, he realises.
Alec’s not a demon. He’s not an Angel. He’s…
“Fallen,” he whispers. “You’re a Fallen Angel.”
Alec inclines his head.
“I hope I can trust you to keep that information to yourself. The Clave is corrupt, and their Law serves only them. I gave myself to their mercy once before, I will not be doing so again. I have no interest in myself or my soulmate ending up in one of their cells for the crime of existing.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t recommend it. Especially now,” says Magnus faintly. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the mortal becoming divine.
Alec raises an eyebrow.
“The Clave appointed a new Institute Head who was no better than Valentine.”
The other man snarls. Good, no love lost there then. He doesn’t need to worry about these two joining him. Not that he thinks Alexander would, but the other one… there’s a hunger for violence in his eyes and a threat in his body language, and Magnus doesn’t like it. It has nothing to do with the possessive way he clutches Alexander close to him.
“It was one step too far, with the Circle back and Valentine breeding new Shadowhunters to slaughter us, to find out that the Clave-approved Head was also torturing captured Downworlders in his spare time. The Accords are broken, and the Shadow World is at war.”
“What does that mean for us?” says Alec.
“That depends on whose side you’re on,” says Magnus apologetically.
“Our side,” says the other man.
“We’re Shadowhunters,” says Alec carefully, and Magnus feels his heart break all over again at the thought of having to fight this man. “Our job is to protect the mundane and the innocent from demons. Having demon blood doesn’t make you a demon.”
Magnus doesn’t miss the way Alec squeezes his lover’s hand, how the other man looks at Alec like he is a revelation.
“We’ve got personal scores to settle with Valentine,” says the man. That feral hunger is back, and no, Magnus didn’t imagine it before, his eyes turn fully black before going back to the more human blue. “After that, we plan to live. We’ll find a place, and hunt the demons that try to invade it. Any Nephilim or Downworlder that tries to hurt us or an innocent under our protection is fair game. Everyone else can do whatever the fuck they like.”
Magnus nods. He can work with that.
“Then shall I help you get settled? I am responsible for the Downworlders in this city.“
Alec tilts his head, considering, but before he can answer, they’re interrupted by a feminine shout.
“ALEC!”
The trio turns to see that the Shadowhunters have arrived. In the lead is Izzy, her hand poised over her snake bracelet, her old club wear swapped out for more traditional shadowhunter gear. Behind her, Jace stares wide-eyed at Alec.
“You- you’re- by the Angel, you’re alive! And you’ve got wings, what the fuck? Where have you been?!” Izzy sputters.
“In Edom,” says Alec shortly.
Izzy stops dead, her lips parted.
“That’s why there’ve been no demons from Edom,” she whispers. “You’ve been killing them.”
Alec shrugs his shoulders, an expression of cold amusement on his face. “Yeah. Guy’s gotta eat, after all.”
It would almost be funny, how the Shadowhunters blanch - Jace looks practically green - if Magnus wasn’t wrestling down his own nausea at the thought.
“That’s disgusting!” says Jace.
“Yeah, well, it’s Hell, what did you expect? A five course meal?” Alec’s lover snaps. He’s glaring at Jace like he wishes he could set him on fire.
Alec turns and presses a kiss to the side of his white-blond hair. The little gesture of affection seems to soothe the other man, but he still looks vaguely murderous. Izzy and Jace blink at them in shock.
“Who are you?” Izzy asks tentatively.
The other man grins, sharp as a seraph blade. “Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern. Hello again, little brother.”
The only thing that stops Magnus from blasting the boy in the face with magic is the way Alexander’s wing is still draped around him. Izzy has no such compunction, and with a touch, her bracelet is a lethal whip coiled at her feet.
Jace looks white as bone. “We’ve never met?”
Jonathan rolls his eyes. “You’ve never met me. Father made it clear that while you were the prodigy, I was the mistake. I got to watch you grow up with all the things I wanted but couldn’t have. At least until he threw me into Edom.”
Jace recoils. “You actually wanted my childhood? Are you insane?”
“It was better than mine,” Jonathan hisses, eyes darkening once more. “Trust me. He raised you to be his perfect soldier. He raised me to be his monster.”
“Alec, step away,” says Izzy. “That's a demon.”
“He is not!” Alec roars, wings spreading wide in a truly intimidating threat display. Magnus can't help but stare at him in awe. He looks like an avenging Angel, ready to smite the unworthy. “Valentine experimented on him, but he’s still human, still a Shadowhunter. You won’t touch him!”
“Even so,” Izzy’s voice trembles, “As Valentine’s son, he needs to be taken in for questioning.”
“Then take that one,” Jonathan spits, pointing a clawed finger at Jace. “I haven’t seen that bastard I call a father since I was ten years old!”
“Alec, please. You always said ‘the Law is hard, but it’s the Law’. Since I lost you, I’ve done my best to live up to your example. Surely, you understand we have to bring him in.”
Alec takes a deep breath and leans forward. “Fuck the Law.”
Izzy staggers backwards, shock plain on her face.
“We’re done here,” says Alec. “That offer still on the table, Magnus?”
“Yes,” says Magnus, and with a twirl of his fingers, a portal opens.
“Alec, wait!” cries Jace.
Alec doesn’t look back. He pulls Jonathan by the hand as they dart through the portal.
Magnus watches the devastation crumple Isabelle’s beautiful features, watches Jace stare at his brother’s retreating back while he clutches at his side. Then he steps through after the devastatingly beautiful man he thought he'd never see again, who still seems so desperately out of reach.