Can I beg your forgiveness? Or am I bound for the stake?
I'm so sorry it took this long. I got really caught up in my novel, and when I'd remember about this, I'd be in the middle of class. So, I'm sorry again. On the bright side, there are only a few chapters left till the end, and I'm on winter break, so I'll try my best not to get distracted.
Disclaimer: I may be evil, but I don't own the Mortal Instruments.
The Seelie Queen tensed, every muscle in her sinewy body going rigid. "Kill them!" she screeched, the first truly angry, emotion-ruled words Magnus had heard her say. He thought 'off with their heads' would've sounded more appropriate.
Loyal to a fault, her courtiers sprang forward, long fingers hooked into claws, lips pulled back in snarls more animal than anything else. But Rhiannon laughed and threw back her head, light spazzing up and down the length of her hair. Faeries overflowed through the doorway, surging past Jace, their inhuman hands filled with knives that glittered like glass and clubs that could've been branches ripped from living trees.
Magnus was an island amid the writhing ocean; his arms wound so tightly around Alec that he could feel the hammer of his heart--stronger now, a drumbeat rather than a flutter--pounding against his own chest. The faeries ignored him, but the Seelie Queen didn't.
Half mad with rage, she blew through the fight, her perfectly pale limbs coming out unscathed. From nowhere she summoned a sword of blindingly flashy silver, one that looked far too heavy for her to lift.
"This is all your fault," she hissed, her icy eyes bulging nearly out of her sockets, veined with pulsing red. She looked like an enraged bull, common sense left behind to watch from her throne, looking on with cold, calculating disdain.
What a dysfunctional family.
"All your fault." The sword swung high above her head, it's point glittering. "I'm going to kill you."
Magnus grit his teeth and shifted so that every inch of Alec's body was protected with his taller one. He didn't have the strength to move both of them out of the way. He could only hope the Queen wasn't powerful enough to cut right through him and into Alec.
The pain he was waiting for didn't come, and he swiveled his head to look up.
Jace had his angel blade locked hilt to hilt with the Queen's sword, his iron knife chasing after her, hungry to bite into her exposed belly. Snarling like a lion, the Queen jerked away, freeing her sword for another swing at Magnus.
Jace didn't have enough time to stop her, but Rhiannon did. Materializing in the Queen's path, the dark faerie conjured a wicked black blade that whizzed upwards to meet its silver sister mid-air. Rhiannon's shadowy wings quivered happily as the Queen's face melted from rage to dismay.
The sisters fought in blurs and clashes of metal on metal. Dresses fluttering, hair whipping, related features morphing into expression after expression. Fury, hatred, laughter, triumph, pain. They had their own bubble amid the churning fight, a battle within a battle.
Jace wasn't watching. He collapsed to his knees beside Magnus, helping him roll away from Alec and onto the blood-slicked floor. Gold hair sticking to his skin with sweat, the Shadowhunter heaved in rasping breath after breath, fingers flickering over his brother's neck, hunting for a pulse.
"He's alive," Magnus coughed, wiping at the dirt ground into his skin. A bit came off on the heel of his palm, but most had fused resolutely to his face. "He's alive." The words sounded like a chant, like a tether tying him to the shore, keeping him from sinking. His heart battered against his ribs like a caged bird, wings aflutter inside his chest. "He's alive."
Jace didn't look away from Alec, his filthy bloodied hand clamped on the space where he'd finally chased down a heartbeat. "Thank the Angel," he whispered, the lines gouged into his face making him look a hundred years old. Alec still hadn't opened his eyes, but color was slowly flushing back into his cheeks, and the creases of pain had been erased.
Neither of them said anything, caught amid a throng of faeries and blood. There was nothing they could say.
"ALEC!"
The two snapped to attention, two pairs of gold-ish eyes watching as Isabelle tore herself free of the fight, her blood-spattered whip trailing along like an obedient dog. Her hair was bound back, her pale face dirty but ecstatic. Moving with all the care and grace of a water buffalo, she folded down beside her brother, squeezing slim shoulders in between Jace and Magnus.
"It's okay Izzy," Jace said, when her expression went downhill at Alec's stillness. "He's breathing. Just sleeping."
Her tears came anyway, painting clean streaks over her cheeks. Magnus would've been crying too--for his own reasons--if he'd been able to feel much of anything besides relief.
Alec was alive. He was okay.
Over the half-animal screeches, squelches and clangs, Jace's cell phone gave the distinctive two-toned beep that told him of a new text. Fishing it out, he checked the screen. "What do you know?" he said, one blond eyebrow bobbing. "I get service in the Seelie Court." Then his eyebrows flashed together, and his lips quirked into a frown.
"What's wrong?" Isabelle asked, blinking away the wetness.
"Clary's here with Luke and his pack," he said, snapping his phone shut in such a way that made it sound angry. "Dammit," he swore, flowing to his feet. From the ground, he looked terrible and dangerous. "I told her not to come. I told Luke not to let her come. Dammit."
Isabelle rose beside him, the tears sucked away. "I'll come with you. Magnus, keep Alec safe, will you?"
Magnus' look implied her stupidity. "I would've done that anyway."
With an eye roll and a brusque, annoyed snort, the two vanished, slipping like wraiths out the door. Magnus crawled closer to Alec, levering the boy's rag doll head onto his lap. The faeries were still ignoring them, and the Queen was busy enough trying not to lose her head, but if push came to shove, he could slither out and up in the blink of an eye. For Alec, he could fight, even if his muscles felt like Jell-O left out in the sun and his bones had been ground into dust. He had to.
"Magnus?" Alec's voice came quiet but soft as velvet. Healthy sounding. Huge blue eyes staring up at the warlock, his hand shook itself free of his side, sliding over to brush something off Magnus' cheek.
"Yes, darling," Magnus said, the meat behind his eyes beginning to burn and prickle. His nose itched from the inside, almost like a need to sneeze, but not quite. I'm happy. I shouldn't want to cry. "I'm here."
The touch of Alec's fingers left a trail of fire that smoldered even when his hand had flopped back into his lap. "I love you Magnus," he said, his lips flitting with a smile. "Even if you are a lying son of a bitch."
"I didn't lie," Magnus pointed out. "I didn't say anything that was a lie."
Alec's eyes shrunk to narrow slits, his face suspicious. "Are you going to leave me again? Are you going to vanish?"
Magnus sighed. No, he wanted to say. Wanted it so badly that an ache built up behind his heart, throbbing painfully. I'll be there forever.
But the lie wouldn't spring to his lips.
"Not for now," he said, the space in his chest giving an angry pulse. "For now I'm right here."
Magnus didn't even see it coming. He didn't register the movement until Alec was already kissing him.
Familiar arms--icy from their brush with death--knotted around him, one wound into his sweaty, god-awful hair, the other cinched around his waist. Alec tasted like the coppery poison of blood and mildew and himself. There was nothing more delicious in this world or the next.
Magnus kissed him back with more force than he'd thought he'd had lurking in the husk of his body. Nothing felt more right than that one noisy, adrenaline-drenched kiss.
Or the one that followed.
Or the one after that.
And when they pulled apart, Magnus wasn't sure if he could ever take more than a few steps away from Alec again.
"Ahaha!" A terrible voice crowed, cutting through Magnus' brain like fingernails on a chalkboard. No, worse, like the howl of hungry wolves in the deep, shadowy forest with a bloated harvest moon hanging overhead. A sound that woke up the part of him that was made of fear and instinct and the voice that said run, dammit.
Rhiannon stood in the middle of the suddenly frozen room. It was like some great power had pushed pause on the astral remote, and she was the only one left on play. Her black blade was slippered with blood, her lower half painted with it. On the ground was the Seelie Queen, all-too-still in a pool of crimson that bubbled from her stump of a neck. A few feet away bobbled her severed head, her hair the same color as her blood.
Laughing, Rhiannon nudged her sister's head with her foot like it was a soccer ball. "The witch is dead!"
Magnus wasn't so sure.
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