Leading the young wolf down the hallways to the weapon room - and away from any witnesses - Alec opened the door and showed the wolf in first. Magnus entered the dark room last, closing the door behind him with a sinister snap. To heighten the mood, Alec drew the witchlight from his pocket and gave it to Magnus to hold while he swept Ben toward the shelves lined with ancient weaponry to reminiscence about a time before the accords. They were of course stretched accounts and less than half-truths, but either way, his words seemed to be working on the frightened cub. Magnus listened to Alec with amusement, spinning the witchlight around in his hands so that light and shadows danced from his fingertips and gleamed from deadly blades and stakes of silver.

"And do you know why I told you these never before heard stories?" Alec inquired lightly, as if they had only been talking about the weather and not gruesome death.

Ben shook his head, praying that this wasn't going to end with his disappearance, "To deepen the bonds between the Downworlders and the Shadowhunters?" His voice came out high, and it sounded very pinched, so the two knew that they were doing their job.

"No." Magnus shook his head, not a spike out of place. He smirked at Alec, taking over the conversation now, "He told you that so you know the dangers of messing with a shadow hunter. Do you know what happens to those who break the heart of a downworlder?"

Bennett gulped, shaking his head, "... You'll make me rue the day I was born?"

Glad that he got the message, Magnus dipped his head regally, "I will personally see to it that you will never stop suffering."

XxX You Think You Love Me XxX

Running down the stairs from the Institute, Nexus tried to shove everything from her mind as she ran, but the words of the Seelie Queen kept coming back to her. Child, came with me, and you will understand everything... Even those dreams that haunt you. She had wanted to show her to her biological father, but why? Was it to undermine her parents? Was it all a ploy in order to bring her back into the midst of her real peoples? Or could there have been another, more sinister reason for the Queen's sudden interference? Was it possible that she had something to do with Dae-Jung and Devon Grey? And what of her nightmares? Was it somehow possible that her father, or a third party, had slipped passed her layers of protection?

No, she brushed that last possibility off, having complete faith in her father. Magnus. No, she scolded herself, Magnus was not Magnus and Alec was not Alec - they were her parents. She had even been named for the warlock before her mother's death, so that meant that her mother must have thought of Magnus as more of a father to her than her actual father. Magnus Bane and Alexander Lightwood were her fathers, not some spook who had been locked away this entire time. It was all about who raised you, not who contributed DNA.

So if they were still her parents, didn't that mean that she was still the same girl? Of course she would have liked to have said yes to that, but because of the shock, edged in doubt, her mind was too rattled to see that that she hadn't changed at all, only the information she had. Shock had a very nasty way of overshadowing reason.

"So you've returned already." The voice of the fairy hit Nexus like a ton of bricks, bringing the girl back to senses to realize that she had run all the way back to the Seelie Queen for whatever answers she held for the girl. She glanced at the fairy before her, suddenly regretting her run, because next to the clean creature, she was a mess - hair clung to her neck in sweat, her skin was shinning in an unflattering manner, and worst of all, she was breathing raggedly.

She found herself nodding to the messenger, walking behind him as he led her to the Seelie Court, and most startling of all, she did not look back once. She was entranced by the siren calling to her, not the candle that led her down into the earth, away from her friends and family. Nexus should have been more cautious, more aware of the fairy tricks, but the lack of sleep she had been enduring these past several nights was beginning to wear on her, to tear down her guards and seep into her very actions. It didn't help that she was distraught and emotionally compromised.

"Nexus Bane, you've come back to the halls of your kin I see." The Seelie Queen came out from behind a door hidden in the wall, "I trust that you've finally learned the truth those inferior creatures have tried to hide from you, you, poor child. Had your mother not chosen the likes of that Child of Lilith, you could have been royalty. You could have had everything your heart desired." The Queen lowered her hand to the girls wrist, taking it in a mock display of concern, "You have finally learned that your father is alive, but the question remains, what do you want?"

Nexus looked at the Queen, a ghost of a smile on her clearly inhuman lips, "Take me to him... I want to meet my father..."

Smiling as if the child had spoken some sort of releasing word, the Queen summoned a gangly boy about Nexus' age, vanishing suddenly as if she had never been there in the first place. The boy looked at Nexus for about a second before leading her down a number of passageways, "So, you're the legitimate one, the one born of his wife, the one destined to inherit everything. You look nothing like him."

Baffled by the boy's hostility, she asked him who he even was, "Sorry? Who are you, and how do you know who I am?"

The boy scoffed irritably, "You know nothing! It should have been me, you know that? But no, my mother had to frighten him away into the arms of your mother. You ignorant fool, I am Kendovich, the son of the fearsome - "

"Enough!" A rough male voice cracked like a whip of hell, coming from behind the walls of a nearly invisible cell door, "You had do best to mind yourself, lest I leave you with less than nothing! Kendovich, you whelp, go! Now!"

The boy bowed to the door, looking apologetic for his rash actions, backing away so that Nexus could look inside, her voice small and faint even to her own ears, "Dae-Jung?"

The thing inside of the cell was horrible, but from Alec's strict tutoring she knew what he was and that for what he was, he wasn't quite as horrible as she had first thought. Sensing his daughter's fear, the criminal smiled, acting almost like a father figure. Nexus couldn't quite imagine him as her own father, but she could see him as a daddy to another.

"Do not be afraid of me, my child. You look so much like your mother, like my beautiful Devon." His smile grew as he spoke of his late wife, making her think that he had truly cared about his family, or her mother at the very least, "Has life treated you fairly? The warlock raising you well? His Shadow-Hunter mate being kind?"

She bobbed her head ever so briefly, thinking back guiltily of her parents, "My parents have given me a good life, no, the best life... But what about you?" She began to tumble her words over themselves as she asked breathlessly, "How did you end up here in this place? Why did my mother take me from you? What happened? Who was the boy who brought me here? What am I?"

He chuckled, a cruel sound that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, "My child, you ask so many questions! I shall give you the answers that you seek, starting first with what you are. I, I am a dullahan born to a king, and your mother was a fey in origins, but certain tampering to her blood made her become a thing more like a warlock. That is probably why you can use magic like your Magnus Bane. It was such a burden, when Devon became sick... I tried so hard to cure her, but my tampering changed her, and it stayed her illness until it came back... We were so worried that you would contact it from her womb! When she lost her memories, she ran from me, thinking me evil. Worsening her condition was a crazed woman that I once knew. She was obsessed, and I tried to pacify her, but that only made matters worse. I regret it, and I regret it even more when I look upon the face of her son."

Glancing over her shoulder at where the boy had disappeared, Nexus felt a knot in her stomach, "Kendovich. That boy is my brother?"

Dae-Jung nodded, "Alas, he is. I try to do right by him, but he holds such hatred for Devon and his mother. It breaks my heart. The whole thing breaks my heart! When I tried to find your mother again, she was already near dead, and a will had already been redrawn, naming Magnus Bane as next in line to inherit you. And the Seely Court had by that time found evidence to place me at the scenes of many crimes I did not commit. The fools still believe the lies that had been told."

Nexus frowned, reaching to the bars of the cell, "I promise you father, I will find the truth!"

And so she resolved to help out her father...


A/N:

Wows. That's pretty... Well, why don't you fill in the rest? I mean, geez, you read it, didn't you? But I wonder who's telling the truth? Is Dae-Jung really innocent? Or is the Seely Court right? It was pretty fun writing Magnus/Alec speaking to Ben, I hope that you found it amusing!

Read and Review!